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scary-senpai · 2 years ago

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“explosive power fueled by a broken heart”

Resurrection and rebirth appear in One-Punch Man--people “evolve” and “awaken,” they’re “reborn”--a symbolic journey that typically leads to Enlightenment, or, at least, personal growth. In the OPM-verse, characters often become physically stronger while staying entrenched in their own flaws and fallacies. To me, it seems like everyone’s just putting themselves on a massive hamster wheel of suffering, rather than trying to break themselves out of a painful cycle.

Although many characters are guilty of this, Garou serves as a consummate example of what it means to be chief architect of one’s own misery.

As far as we can tell, at the start of Garou’s journey, nobody’s bothering him--although you could draw a parallel between Garou “going wild” at the dojo and “going wild” with the bullies at his primary school, but there’s nothing else in cannon that implies that.

But at the start of Garou’s story, nobody’s bullying him--Garou is the one seeking out fights and making enemies. Again, it’s hard to tell with limited information, but as Top Disciple to an S-Class Hero, Garou seemed to be doing pretty well for himself (although I’m sure there’s more to it than that)... Still, Garou goes out of his way to put himself in the exact same situation he fled from, one where he’s othered and antagonized. Why?

Yes, Garou has a noble(ish) goal of scaring people into world peace--a curious way of intertwining himself with the world while simultaneously staying separate--but Garou doesn’t begin that way. In the beginning, he’s hunting heroes mostly for fun, sometimes for learning, and while there’s a vague abstraction of idealism mixed in, there isn’t much.

Garou is beating up heroes for fun, much in the same way Saitama is beating up monsters for fun.

In terms of introductions, Saitama saying (to himself) “I’m only acting as a hero as a way of self-satisfaction—fighting evil under the name of Justice gives me pleasure and excitement” is much more troublesome that Garou announcing aloud “I’m a villain! Bad guys attack first!” as wails on The Bad Roads Gang and thereby indirectly avenges Bang’s dojo. In the latter example, at least we can all agree on what we’re dealing with.

Getting back to Garou and his self-imposed treadmill of suffering... In Buddhism, there’s this notion of the “second arrow.” A similar idea appears in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras (another text dealing with enlightenment and rebirth, and what it means to do good in an imperfect world): we can’t avoid the pain that’s coming, but we can avoid getting hurt twice by the same thing. When we ruminate on an experience, we essentially walk ourselves back to the past instead of moving forward--towards our own growth. Sometimes revisiting the past is necessary--there’s such thing as a healing pain--but all too often, dwelling on past events is tantamount to surrendering control of your present and your future to a bygone situation that isn’t directly acting on you now.

Repeating painful cycles is, coincidentally, a very common thing for survivors of trauma to do. Garou's always seemed like a sad/anxious kid with C-PTSD / PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). Most people are familiar with Post Traumatic Stress Disoder (PTSD), which the Mayo Clinic defines as “a mental health condition that's triggered by a terrifying event — either experiencing it or witnessing it.” The “C” in PTSD stands for “Complex”:

PTSD typically results from “short-lived trauma,” or traumas of time-limited duration. Complex PTSD stems from chronic, long-term exposure to trauma in which a victim has limited belief it will ever end or cannot foresee a time that it might.

Source:https://www.beautyafterbruises.org/what-is-cptsd

As states above, one of the most insidious aspects of trauma is its ability to rob us of our imagination, of the idea that life could be anything otherwise. In The Body Keeps the Score, author Dr. Bessel Van Der Koke explains that:

When people are compulsively and constantly pulled back into the past, to the last time they felt intense involvement and deep emotions, they suffer from a failure of imagination, a loss of the mental flexibility. Without imagination there is no hope, no chance to envision a better future, no place to go, no goal to reach.

Garou is someone who is ostensibly strong but never feels safe in his own body, even as he grows to be one of the strongest and most capable fighters around--like he’s still stuck in those moments of powerlessness he felt as a kid, and the same force that drives him to heal from those experiences also leads him to relive them. As Van Der Koke goes on to say:

“traumatized people have a tendency to superimpose their trauma on everything going on around them, and have trouble deciphering anything that is going on around them.”

...sounds familiar, no?

All those factors can make it difficult to think straight. “How much agency does Garou have over his own actions” has been a focal point of the past couple of chapters, but I think this question has been central to his story arc all along. If we focus too much on the fanciful elements, I wonder if perhaps we miss the point of what is story could tell us, is perhaps meant to tell us. Real people don’t get mind-fucked by the World’s Worst Deus Ex Machina, but they do survive painful things, and then struggle to navigate past the things they’ve experienced–and, unfortunately, bleed outward.

Even before this “Divine Intervention,” I’ve felt that Garou was held captive by his own emotions, very much to his own detriment, and the detriment of those around him. I’m thinking of a quote someone recently shared with me:

“Anger is our friend. Not a nice friend. Not a gentle friend. But a very, very loyal friend. It will always tell us when we have been betrayed. It will always tell us when we have betrayed ourselves."

That’s Garou’s whole story arc, “explosive power fueled by a broken heart.” Just as Saitama begins the story with nothing to gain, Garou begins the story with nothing to lose—no home, no friends, nothing to keep him company other than his own anger.

Rage--even though it clouds our thinking--can be sustaining in the absence of hope. You know, like Maria Bamford says: “If you stay alive for any reason, please--do it for spite.” (For various reasons--better or worse--I often feel this in my bones.) But in any case, it’s very difficult to let go of the things that hold us together--even if they no longer serve us, and especially if we’ve actively welded them into our identity, as Garou has done.

It strikes me that Garou is taking a moment to thank God (no ID) here--and this makes me think of something that’s also true for trauma survivors: they feel that they aren’t seen, that they’ve done horrible things that set them apart from other people, and people, with the best of intentions, are trying to instill in them a sense of hope that they just can’t fathom yet. I suspect one of the reasons that Garou gets squicked by Saitama saying “you’re a hero, you’re a hero,” is that Garou--like most people--doesn’t want to be loved for his best self, he wants to be loved for his worst one.

And it reminds me, tangentially, of Werewolves in Their Youth—where the author reminisces on a childhood friend that insisted he was a werewolf (to the point that he was nearly expelled from school), and the author, Michael Chabon, finally shakes his classmate out of it by playing along:

I thought for a second, and then I turned back toward them and raised an imaginary rifle to my shoulder. "This is a dart gun," I announced. Everyone looked at me, but I was talking to Timothy now. I was almost, but not quite embarrassed. "It's filled with darts of my special antidote. And I made it stronger than it used to be, and it's going to work this time. And also, there's a tranquilizer mixed in."

Timothy looked up and bared his teeth at me. And I took aim right between his eyes. I jerked my hands twice and went "Foop, foop!" Timothy's head snapped back, and his eyelids fluttered. He shook himself all over. He swallowed once, then he held his hands out before him as if wondering at their hairless pallor.

In my previous life, I worked a lot with elderly clients with memory impairment as well as adults living with various levels of psychosis. We were always advised to “go where the client is”—if I show up and you mistake me for your secretary from 40 years ago, I don’t care. Those details are irrelevant. My goal is to get you to let me into your house, so that I can make you lunch, give you your medication, and be the help you don’t think you need.

This works for folks with cognitive impairment, but I’ve found that this is a good rule for helping anybody—do your best to enter their reality, and help them find their own way out of it. As one of my teachers said, healers have only one job: to create the space that someone needs for healing. That can look wildly different, depending on the person.

Garou’s narrative is disconnected from reality (which we’ve seen), but he’s actively working to manifest his delusions. Trapped in the past and removed from facts, he starts out at a decision-making disadvantage, and it just gets worse—not just because of the power he has, but what power does to people. Divine forces aside, simply being in a position of power causes people to make bad decisions. It’s enough of a thing to appear in applied psychology, including some of my Human Resource readings, but I really enjoyed Jerry Useem’s article from The Atlantic breaking down the neuroscience of the thing:

Sukhvinder Obhi, a neuroscientist at McMaster University... found that power, in fact, impairs a specific neural process, “mirroring,” that may be a cornerstone of empathy. Which gives a neurological basis to what Keltner has termed the “power paradox”: Once we have power, we lose some of the capacities we needed to gain it in the first place.

source:https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/07/power-causes-brain-damage/528711/

So being in power causes people to be less empathetic. In a sense, you have to be. There’s a saying that “in order to be a leader, you have to be willing to chop off a foot to save a leg”—decision making requires a thick skin, which is doubly dangerous because getting drunk on power is literally a thing. In The Power Paradox by Dacher Keltner, Kelter points out:

Research demonstrates that people who feel powerful are more likely to act impulsively: to have affairs; to drive inconsiderately; to lie; to argue that it is justifiable for them to break rules others should follow; and, in one entertaining study by Keltner and his colleagues, to steal sweets from children. Rich people even shoplift more than the poor. All in all, accumulating power seems to trigger a tendency to self-absorption: in experiments, when people are asked to draw the letter E on their own foreheads so that others can read it, powerful people are more likely to draw it the right way round to themselves, and backwards to onlookers. In a literal sense, they no longer see the world from other people’s perspective.

[source:https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/may/18/the-power-paradox-how-we-gain-and-lose-influence-dacher-keltner-review]

Again, I don’t think Garou is the sole character guilty of this--especially given the recent Bonus Chapter outlining the inner workings of the Hero Association. There’s a lot of questionable things happening at high levels, and on a broad scale. To some extent, the larger an organization gets, the bigger the risk of scope creep/mission drift...of forgetting the people you set out to help. When you form an actual company, things get easier but also more complicated—because just the lights on is, in itself, a goal.

Going back to humans misconstruing their goals and forgetting their roots... I often think of the panel where Garou lashes out at a tearful Tareo, frustrated that the boy cannot understand his grand vision--a world where no children cry!--while somehow missing the irony of that moment. If Garou took a step back, he’d see that he was the only one around making kids cry, and that he was the only one with the power to stop it. It almost seems to echo that panel between Mob and Reigen (which I can’t seem to find)--a potential client is angry that Reigen won’t do what he asks. “I came all the way here!” he laments. “Yeah,” Reigen says. “But nobody asked you.”

And that’s kind of what’s happening--Garou’s taken up the banner of the weak when nobody’s asked him to (or, at least, nobody’s asked him to do this particular thing specifically). In psychology, there’s a concept called “sublimination”

Sublimation (German: Sublimierung) is a type of defense mechanism where socially unacceptable impulses or idealizations are unconsciously transformed into socially acceptable actions or behavior, possibly resulting in a long-term conversion of the initial impulse.

[source:https://www.instituteofclinicalhypnosis.com/psychotherapy-coaching/sublimation-psychology-defense-mechanism/]

This one’s a bit of a stretch, but I’ll put it out there: sublimination in chemistry is the transformation of physical matter immediately into gas (like dry ice) and in alchemy it’s the transition of body into soul... so I think of the Dr. Saitama scene where Garou is just... sitting there fuming and...

I dunno. File it under “Fun with Symbolism” emphasis on “Fun.”

But there’s a reason why sentient creatures are always at war for one reason or another. Fighting is seductive because it gives us something to rally around, a sense of purpose when we have none--as well as a good ol’ fashioned adrenaline rush.

From Fields of Blood by Karen Armstrong:

It may be too that as they give free rein to the aggressive impulses from the deepest region of their brains, warriors feel in tune with the most elemental and inexorable dynamics of existence, those of life and death. Put another way, war is a means of surrender to reptilian ruthlessness, one of the strongest of human drives, without being troubled by the self-critical nudges of the neocortex.

So, when Webcomic Garou insists that he’s better off dead, he’s neither the first nor the only one to conflate “I have nothing left to fight for” with “I have nothing left to live for.”

I’ve always seen that as a central tenant of the hero’s struggle--to die for the populace or live for those that love you. At first glance, it feels like a diametric opposition but really it all comes from the same place: the very human need to be useful, and to be accepted, to be part of something larger, and how it manifests says a lot about us and the things we carry.

#one punch man #opm #opm meta #manga spoilers #meta #garou #saitama #I just put everything I was thinking into one essay instead of writing several small ones

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qqueenofhades · 3 years ago

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The Green Knight and Medieval Metatextuality: An Essay

Right, so. Finally watched it last night, and I’ve been thinking about it literally ever since, except for the part where I was asleep. As I said to fellow medievalist and admirer of Dev Patel @oldshrewsburyian, it’s possibly the most fascinating piece of medieval-inspired media that I’ve seen in ages, and how refreshing to have something in this genre that actually rewards critical thought and deep analysis, rather than me just fulminating fruitlessly about how popular media thinks that slapping blood, filth, and misogyny onto some swords and castles is “historically accurate.” I read a review of TGK somewhere that described it as the anti-Game of Thrones, and I’m inclined to think that’s accurate. I didn’t agree with all of the film’s tonal, thematic, or interpretative choices, but I found them consistently stylish, compelling, and subversive in ways both small and large, and I’m gonna have to write about it or I’ll go crazy. So. Brace yourselves.

(Note: My PhD is in medieval history, not medieval literature, and I haven’t worked on SGGK specifically, but I am familiar with it, its general cultural context, and the historical influences, images, and debates that both the poem and the film referenced and drew upon, so that’s where this meta is coming from.)

First, obviously, while the film is not a straight-up text-to-screen version of the poem (though it is by and large relatively faithful), it is a multi-layered meta-text that comments on the original Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the archetypes of chivalric literature as a whole, modern expectations for medieval films, the hero’s journey, the requirements of being an “honorable knight,” and the nature of death, fate, magic, and religion, just to name a few. Given that the Arthurian legendarium, otherwise known as the Matter of Britain, was written and rewritten over several centuries by countless authors, drawing on and changing and hybridizing interpretations that sometimes challenged or outright contradicted earlier versions, it makes sense for the film to chart its own path and make its own adaptational decisions as part of this multivalent, multivocal literary canon. Sir Gawain himself is a canonically and textually inconsistent figure; in the movie, the characters merrily pronounce his name in several different ways, most notably as Sean Harris/King Arthur’s somewhat inexplicable “Garr-win.” He might be a man without a consistent identity, but that’s pointed out within the film itself. What has he done to define himself, aside from being the king’s nephew? Is his quixotic quest for the Green Knight actually going to resolve the question of his identity and his honor – and if so, is it even going to matter, given that successful completion of the “game” seemingly equates with death?

Likewise, as the anti-Game of Thrones, the film is deliberately and sometimes maddeningly non-commercial. For an adaptation coming from a studio known primarily for horror, it almost completely eschews the cliché that gory bloodshed equals authentic medievalism; the only graphic scene is the Green Knight’s original beheading. The violence is only hinted at, subtextual, suspenseful; it is kept out of sight, around the corner, never entirely played out or resolved. In other words, if anyone came in thinking that they were going to watch Dev Patel luridly swashbuckle his way through some CGI monsters like bad Beowulf adaptations of yore, they were swiftly disappointed. In fact, he seems to spend most of his time being wet, sad, and failing to meet the moment at hand (with a few important exceptions).

The film unhurriedly evokes a medieval setting that is both surreal and defiantly non-historical. We travel (in roughly chronological order) from Anglo-Saxon huts to Romanesque halls to high-Gothic cathedrals to Tudor villages and half-timbered houses, culminating in the eerie neo-Renaissance splendor of the Lord and Lady’s hall, before returning to the ancient trees of the Green Chapel and its immortal occupant: everything that has come before has now returned to dust. We have been removed even from imagined time and place and into a moment where it ceases to function altogether. We move forward, backward, and sideways, as Gawain experiences past, present, and future in unison. He is dislocated from his own sense of himself, just as we, the viewers, are dislocated from our sense of what is the “true” reality or filmic narrative; what we think is real turns out not to be the case at all. If, of course, such a thing even exists at all.

This visual evocation of the entire medieval era also creates a setting that, unlike GOT, takes pride in rejecting absolutely all political context or Machiavellian maneuvering. The film acknowledges its own cultural ubiquity and the question of whether we really need yet another King Arthur adaptation: none of the characters aside from Gawain himself are credited by name. We all know it’s Arthur, but he’s listed only as “king.” We know the spooky druid-like old man with the white beard is Merlin, but it’s never required to spell it out. The film gestures at our pre-existing understanding; it relies on us to fill in the gaps, cuing us to collaboratively produce the story with it, positioning us as listeners as if we were gathered to hear the original poem. Just like fanfiction, it knows that it doesn’t need to waste time introducing every single character or filling in ultimately unnecessary background knowledge, when the audience can be relied upon to bring their own.

As for that, the film explicitly frames itself as a “filmed adaptation of the chivalric romance” in its opening credits, and continues to play with textual referents and cues throughout: telling us where we are, what’s happening, or what’s coming next, rather like the rubrics or headings within a medieval manuscript. As noted, its historical/architectural references span the entire medieval European world, as does its costume design. I was particularly struck by the fact that Arthur and Guinevere’s crowns resemble those from illuminated monastic manuscripts or Eastern Orthodox iconography: they are both crown and halo, they confer an air of both secular kingship and religious sanctity. The question in the film’s imagined epilogue thus becomes one familiar to Shakespeare’s Henry V: heavy is the head that wears the crown. Does Gawain want to earn his uncle’s crown, take over his place as king, bear the fate of Camelot, become a great ruler, a husband and father in ways that even Arthur never did, only to see it all brought to dust by his cowardice, his reliance on unscrupulous sorcery, and his unfulfilled promise to the Green Knight? Is it better to have that entire life and then lose it, or to make the right choice now, even if it means death?

Likewise, Arthur’s kingly mantle is Byzantine in inspiration, as is the icon of the Virgin Mary-as-Theotokos painted on Gawain’s shield (which we see broken apart during the attack by the scavengers). The film only glances at its religious themes rather than harping on them explicitly; we do have the cliché scene of the male churchmen praying for Gawain’s safety, opposite Gawain’s mother and her female attendants working witchcraft to protect him. (When oh when will I get my film that treats medieval magic and medieval religion as the complementary and co-existing epistemological systems that they were, rather than portraying them as diametrically binary and disparagingly gendered opposites?) But despite the interim setbacks borne from the failure of Christian icons, the overall resolution of the film could serve as the culmination of a medieval Christian morality tale: Gawain can buy himself a great future in the short term if he relies on the protection of the enchanted green belt to avoid the Green Knight’s killing stroke, but then he will have to watch it all crumble until he is sitting alone in his own hall, his children dead and his kingdom destroyed, as a headless corpse who only now has been brave enough to accept his proper fate. By removing the belt from his person in the film’s Inception-like final scene, he relinquishes the taint of black magic and regains his religious honor, even at the likely cost of death. That, the medieval Christian morality tale would agree, is the correct course of action.

Gawain’s encounter with St. Winifred likewise presents a more subtle vision of medieval Christianity. Winifred was an eighth-century Welsh saint known for being beheaded, after which (by the power of another saint) her head was miraculously restored to her body and she went on to live a long and holy life. It doesn’t quite work that way in TGK. (St Winifred’s Well is mentioned in the original SGGK, but as far as I recall, Gawain doesn’t meet the saint in person.) In the film, Gawain encounters Winifred’s lifelike apparition, who begs him to dive into the mere and retrieve her head (despite appearances, she warns him, it is not attached to her body). This fits into the pattern of medieval ghost stories, where the dead often return to entreat the living to help them finish their business; they must be heeded, but when they are encountered in places they shouldn’t be, they must be put back into their proper physical space and reminded of their real fate. Gawain doesn’t follow William of Newburgh’s practical recommendation to just fetch some brawny young men with shovels to beat the wandering corpse back into its grave. Instead, in one of his few moments of unqualified heroism, he dives into the dark water and retrieves Winifred’s skull from the bottom of the lake. Then when he returns to the house, he finds the rest of her skeleton lying in the bed where he was earlier sleeping, and carefully reunites the skull with its body, finally allowing it to rest in peace.

However, Gawain’s involvement with Winifred doesn’t end there. The fox that he sees on the bank after emerging with her skull, who then accompanies him for the rest of the film, is strongly implied to be her spirit, or at least a companion that she has sent for him. Gawain has handled a saint’s holy bones; her relics, which were well known to grant protection in the medieval world. He has done the saint a service, and in return, she extends her favor to him. At the end of the film, the fox finally speaks in a human voice, warning him not to proceed to the fateful final encounter with the Green Knight; it will mean his death. The symbolism of having a beheaded saint serve as Gawain’s guide and protector is obvious, since it is the fate that may or may not lie in store for him. As I said, the ending is Inception-like in that it steadfastly refuses to tell you if the hero is alive (or will live) or dead (or will die). In the original SGGK, of course, the Green Knight and the Lord turn out to be the same person, Gawain survives, it was all just a test of chivalric will and honor, and a trap put together by Morgan Le Fay in an attempt to frighten Guinevere. It’s essentially able to be laughed off: a game, an adventure, not real. TGK takes this paradigm and flips it (to speak…) on its head.

Gawain’s rescue of Winifred’s head also rewards him in more immediate terms: his/the Green Knight’s axe, stolen by the scavengers, is miraculously restored to him in her cottage, immediately and concretely demonstrating the virtue of his actions. This is one of the points where the film most stubbornly resists modern storytelling conventions: it simply refuses to add in any kind of “rational” or “empirical” explanation of how else it got there, aside from the grace and intercession of the saint. This is indeed how it works in medieval hagiography: things simply reappear, are returned, reattached, repaired, made whole again, and Gawain’s lost weapon is thus restored, symbolizing that he has passed the test and is worthy to continue with the quest. The film’s narrative is not modernizing its underlying medieval logic here, and it doesn’t particularly care if a modern audience finds it “convincing” or not. As noted, the film never makes any attempt to temporalize or localize itself; it exists in a determinedly surrealist and ahistorical landscape, where naked female giants who look suspiciously like Tilda Swinton roam across the wild with no necessary explanation. While this might be frustrating for some people, I actually found it a huge relief that a clearly fantastic and fictional literary adaptation was not acting like it was qualified to teach “real history” to its audience. Nobody would come out of TGK thinking that they had seen the “actual” medieval world, and since we have enough of a problem with that sort of thing thanks to GOT, I for one welcome the creation of a medieval imaginative space that embraces its eccentric and unrealistic elements, rather than trying to fit them into the Real Life box.

This plays into the fact that the film, like a reused medieval manuscript containing more than one text, is a palimpsest: for one, it audaciously rewrites the entire Arthurian canon in the wordless vision of Gawain’s life after escaping the Green Knight (I could write another meta on that dream-epilogue alone). It moves fluidly through time and creates alternate universes in at least two major points: one, the scene where Gawain is tied up and abandoned by the scavengers and that long circling shot reveals his skeletal corpse rotting on the sward, only to return to our original universe as Gawain decides that he doesn’t want that fate, and two, Gawain as King. In this alternate ending, Arthur doesn’t die in battle with Mordred, but peaceably in bed, having anointed his worthy nephew as his heir. Gawain becomes king, has children, gets married, governs Camelot, becomes a ruler surpassing even Arthur, but then watches his son get killed in battle, his subjects turn on him, and his family vanish into the dust of his broken hall before he himself, in despair, pulls the enchanted scarf out of his clothing and succumbs to his fate.

In this version, Gawain takes on the responsibility for the fall of Camelot, not Arthur. This is the hero’s burden, but he’s obtained it dishonorably, by cheating. It is a vivid but mimetic future which Gawain (to all appearances) ultimately rejects, returning the film to the realm of traditional Arthurian canon – but not quite. After all, if Gawain does get beheaded after that final fade to black, it would represent a significant alteration from the poem and the character’s usual arc. Are we back in traditional canon or aren’t we? Did Gawain reject that future or didn’t he? Do all these alterities still exist within the visual medium of the meta-text, and have any of them been definitely foreclosed?

Furthermore, the film interrogates itself and its own tropes in explicit and overt ways. In Gawain’s conversation with the Lord, the Lord poses the question that many members of the audience might have: is Gawain going to carry out this potentially pointless and suicidal quest and then be an honorable hero, just like that? What is he actually getting by staggering through assorted Irish bogs and seeming to reject, rather than embrace, the paradigms of a proper quest and that of an honorable knight? He lies about being a knight to the scavengers, clearly out of fear, and ends up cravenly bound and robbed rather than fighting back. He denies knowing anything about love to the Lady (played by Alicia Vikander, who also plays his lover at the start of the film with a decidedly ropey Yorkshire accent, sorry to say). He seems to shrink from the responsibility thrust on him, rather than rise to meet it (his only honorable act, retrieving Winifred’s head, is discussed above) and yet here he still is, plugging away. Why is he doing this? What does he really stand to gain, other than accepting a choice and its consequences (somewhat?) The film raises these questions, but it has no plans to answer them. It’s going to leave you to think about them for yourself, and it isn’t going to spoon-feed you any ultimate moral or neat resolution. In this interchange, it’s easy to see both the echoes of a formal dialogue between two speakers (a favored medieval didactic tactic) and the broader purpose of chivalric literature: to interrogate what it actually means to be a knight, how personal honor is generated, acquired, and increased, and whether engaging in these pointless and bloody “war games” is actually any kind of real path to lasting glory.

The film’s treatment of race, gender, and queerness obviously also merits comment. By casting Dev Patel, an Indian-born actor, as an Arthurian hero, the film is… actually being quite accurate to the original legends, doubtless much to the disappointment of assorted internet racists. The thirteenth-century Arthurian romance Parzival (Percival) by the German poet Wolfram von Eschenbach notably features the character of Percival’s mixed-race half-brother, Feirefiz, son of their father by his first marriage to a Muslim princess. Feirefiz is just as heroic as Percival (Gawaine, for the record, also plays a major role in the story) and assists in the quest for the Holy Grail, though it takes his conversion to Christianity for him to properly behold it.

By introducing Patel (and Sarita Chowdhury as Morgause) to the visual representation of Arthuriana, the film quietly does away with the “white Middle Ages” cliché that I have complained about ad nauseam; we see background Asian and black members of Camelot, who just exist there without having to conjure up some complicated rationale to explain their presence. The Lady also uses a camera obscura to make Gawain’s portrait. Contrary to those who might howl about anachronism, this technique was known in China as early as the fourth century BCE and the tenth/eleventh century Islamic scholar Ibn al-Haytham was probably the best-known medieval authority to write on it extensively; Latin translations of his work inspired European scientists from Roger Bacon to Leonardo da Vinci. Aside from the symbolism of an upside-down Gawain (and when he sees the portrait again during the ‘fall of Camelot’, it is right-side-up, representing that Gawain himself is in an upside-down world), this presents a subtle challenge to the prevailing Eurocentric imagination of the medieval world, and draws on other global influences.

As for gender, we have briefly touched on it above; in the original SGGK, Gawain’s entire journey is revealed to be just a cruel trick of Morgan Le Fay, simply trying to destabilize Arthur’s court and upset his queen. (Morgan is the old blindfolded woman who appears in the Lord and Lady’s castle and briefly approaches Gawain, but her identity is never explicitly spelled out.) This is, obviously, an implicitly misogynistic setup: an evil woman plays a trick on honorable men for the purpose of upsetting another woman, the honorable men overcome it, the hero survives, and everyone presumably lives happily ever after (at least until Mordred arrives).

Instead, by plunging the outcome into doubt and the hero into a much darker and more fallible moral universe, TGK shifts the blame for Gawain’s adventure and ultimate fate from Morgan to Gawain himself. Likewise, Guinevere is not the passive recipient of an evil deception but in a way, the catalyst for the whole thing. She breaks the seal on the Green Knight’s message with a weighty snap; she becomes the oracle who reads it out, she is alarming rather than alarmed, she disrupts the complacency of the court and silently shows up all the other knights who refuse to step forward and answer the Green Knight’s challenge. Gawain is not given the ontological reassurance that it’s just a practical joke and he’s going to be fine (and thanks to the unresolved ending, neither are we). The film instead takes the concept at face value in order to push the envelope and ask the simple question: if a man was going to be actually-for-real beheaded in a year, why would he set out on a suicidal quest? Would you, in Gawain’s place, make the same decision to cast aside the enchanted belt and accept your fate? Has he made his name, will he be remembered well? What is his legacy?

Indeed, if there is any hint of feminine connivance and manipulation, it arrives in the form of the implication that Gawain’s mother has deliberately summoned the Green Knight to test her son, prove his worth, and position him as his childless uncle’s heir; she gives him the protective belt to make sure he won’t actually die, and her intention all along was for the future shown in the epilogue to truly play out (minus the collapse of Camelot). Only Gawain loses the belt thanks to his cowardice in the encounter with the scavengers, regains it in a somewhat underhanded and morally questionable way when the Lady is attempting to seduce him, and by ultimately rejecting it altogether and submitting to his uncertain fate, totally mucks up his mother’s painstaking dynastic plans for his future. In this reading, Gawain could be king, and his mother’s efforts are meant to achieve that goal, rather than thwart it. He is thus required to shoulder his own responsibility for this outcome, rather than conveniently pawning it off on an “evil woman,” and by extension, the film asks the question: What would the world be like if men, especially those who make war on others as a way of life, were actually forced to face the consequences of their reckless and violent actions? Is it actually a “game” in any sense of the word, especially when chivalric literature is constantly preoccupied with the question of how much glorious violence is too much glorious violence? If you structure social prestige for the king and the noble male elite entirely around winning battles and existing in a state of perpetual war, when does that begin to backfire and devour the knightly class – and the rest of society – instead?

This leads into the central theme of Gawain’s relationships with the Lord and Lady, and how they’re treated in the film. The poem has been repeatedly studied in terms of its latent (and sometimes… less than latent) queer subtext: when the Lord asks Gawain to pay back to him whatever he should receive from his wife, does he already know what this involves; i.e. a physical and romantic encounter? When the Lady gives kisses to Gawain, which he is then obliged to return to the Lord as a condition of the agreement, is this all part of a dastardly plot to seduce him into a kinky green-themed threesome with a probably-not-human married couple looking to spice up their sex life? Why do we read the Lady’s kisses to Gawain as romantic but Gawain’s kisses to the Lord as filial, fraternal, or the standard “kiss of peace” exchanged between a liege lord and his vassal? Is Gawain simply being a dutiful guest by honoring the bargain with his host, actually just kissing the Lady again via the proxy of her husband, or somewhat more into this whole thing with the Lord than he (or the poet) would like to admit? Is the homosocial turning homoerotic, and how is Gawain going to navigate this tension and temptation?

If the question is never resolved: well, welcome to one of the central medieval anxieties about chivalry, knighthood, and male bonds! As I have written about before, medieval society needed to simultaneously exalt this as the most honored and noble form of love, and make sure it didn’t accidentally turn sexual (once again: how much male love is too much male love?). Does the poem raise the possibility of serious disruption to the dominant heteronormative paradigm, only to solve the problem by interpreting the Gawain/Lady male/female kisses as romantic and sexual and the Gawain/Lord male/male kisses as chaste and formal? In other words, acknowledging the underlying anxiety of possible homoeroticism but ultimately reasserting the heterosexual norm? The answer: Probably?!?! Maybe?!?! Hell if we know??! To say the least, this has been argued over to no end, and if you locked a lot of medieval history/literature scholars into a room and told them that they couldn’t come out until they decided on one clear answer, they would be in there for a very long time. The poem seemingly invokes the possibility of a queer reading only to reject it – but once again, as in the question of which canon we end up in at the film’s end, does it?

In some lights, the film’s treatment of this potential queer reading comes off like a cop-out: there is only one kiss between Gawain and the Lord, and it is something that the Lord has to initiate after Gawain has already fled the hall. Gawain himself appears to reject it; he tells the Lord to let go of him and runs off into the wilderness, rather than deal with or accept whatever has been suggested to him. However, this fits with film!Gawain’s pattern of rejecting that which fundamentally makes him who he is; like Peter in the Bible, he has now denied the truth three times. With the scavengers he denies being a knight; with the Lady he denies knowing about courtly love; with the Lord he denies the central bond of brotherhood with his fellows, whether homosocial or homoerotic in nature. I would go so far as to argue that if Gawain does die at the end of the film, it is this rejected kiss which truly seals his fate. In the poem, the Lord and the Green Knight are revealed to be the same person; in the film, it’s not clear if that’s the case, or they are separate characters, even if thematically interrelated. If we assume, however, that the Lord is in fact still the human form of the Green Knight, then Gawain has rejected both his kiss of peace (the standard gesture of protection offered from lord to vassal) and any deeper emotional bond that it can be read to signify. The Green Knight could decide to spare Gawain in recognition of the courage he has shown in relinquishing the enchanted belt – or he could just as easily decide to kill him, which he is legally free to do since Gawain has symbolically rejected the offer of brotherhood, vassalage, or knight-bonding by his unwise denial of the Lord’s freely given kiss. Once again, the film raises the overall thematic and moral question and then doesn’t give one straight (ahem) answer. As with the medieval anxieties and chivalric texts that it is based on, it invokes the specter of queerness and then doesn’t neatly resolve it. As a modern audience, we find this unsatisfying, but once again, the film is refusing to conform to our expectations.

As has been said before, there is so much kissing between men in medieval contexts, both ceremonial and otherwise, that we’re left to wonder: “is it gay or is it feudalism?” Is there an overtly erotic element in Gawain and the Green Knight’s mutual “beheading” of each other (especially since in the original version, this frees the Lord from his curse, functioning like a true love’s kiss in a fairytale). While it is certainly possible to argue that the film has “straightwashed” its subject material by removing the entire sequence of kisses between Gawain and the Lord and the unresolved motives for their existence, it is a fairly accurate, if condensed, representation of the anxieties around medieval knightly bonds and whether, as Carolyn Dinshaw put it, a (male/male) “kiss is just a kiss.” After all, the kiss between Gawain and the Lady is uncomplicatedly read as sexual/romantic, and that context doesn’t go away when Gawain is kissing the Lord instead. Just as with its multiple futurities, the film leaves the question open-ended. Is it that third and final denial that seals Gawain’s fate, and if so, is it asking us to reflect on why, specifically, he does so?

The film could play with both this question and its overall tone quite a bit more: it sometimes comes off as a grim, wooden, over-directed Shakespearean tragedy, rather than incorporating the lively and irreverent tone that the poem often takes. It’s almost totally devoid of humor, which is unfortunate, and the Grim Middle Ages aesthetic is in definite evidence. Nonetheless, because of the comprehensive de-historicizing and the obvious lack of effort to claim the film as any sort of authentic representation of the medieval past, it works. We are not meant to understand this as a historical document, and so we have to treat it on its terms, by its own logic, and by its own frames of reference. In some ways, its consistent opacity and its refusal to abide by modern rules and common narrative conventions is deliberately meant to challenge us: as before, when we recognize Arthur, Merlin, the Round Table, and the other stock characters because we know them already and not because the film tells us so, we have to fill in the gaps ourselves. We are watching the film not because it tells us a simple adventure story – there is, as noted, shockingly little action overall – but because we have to piece together the metatext independently and ponder the philosophical questions that it leaves us with. What conclusion do we reach? What canon do we settle in? What future or resolution is ultimately made real? That, the film says, it can’t decide for us. As ever, it is up to future generations to carry on the story, and decide how, if at all, it is going to survive.

(And to close, I desperately want them to make my much-coveted Bisclavret adaptation now in more or less the same style, albeit with some tweaks. Please.)

Further Reading

Ailes, Marianne J. ‘The Medieval Male Couple and the Language of Homosociality’, in Masculinity in Medieval Europe, ed. by Dawn M. Hadley (Harlow: Longman, 1999), pp. 214–37.

Ashton, Gail. ‘The Perverse Dynamics of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Arthuriana 15 (2005), 51–74.

Boyd, David L. ‘Sodomy, Misogyny, and Displacement: Occluding Queer Desire in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Arthuriana 8 (1998), 77–113.

Busse, Peter. ‘The Poet as Spouse of his Patron: Homoerotic Love in Medieval Welsh and Irish Poetry?’, Studi Celtici 2 (2003), 175–92.

Dinshaw, Carolyn. ‘A Kiss Is Just a Kiss: Heterosexuality and Its Consolations in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Diacritics 24 (1994), 205–226.

Kocher, Suzanne. ‘Gay Knights in Medieval French Fiction: Constructs of Queerness and Non-Transgression’, Mediaevalia 29 (2008), 51–66.

Karras, Ruth Mazo. ‘Knighthood, Compulsory Heterosexuality, and Sodomy’ in The Boswell Thesis: Essays on Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, ed. Matthew Kuefler (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), pp. 273–86.

Kuefler, Matthew. ‘Male Friendship and the Suspicion of Sodomy in Twelfth-Century France’, in The Boswell Thesis: Essays on Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, ed. Matthew Kuefler (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), pp. 179–214.

McVitty, E. Amanda, ‘False Knights and True Men: Contesting Chivalric Masculinity in English Treason Trials, 1388–1415,’ Journal of Medieval History 40 (2014), 458–77.

Mieszkowski, Gretchen. ‘The Prose Lancelot's Galehot, Malory's Lavain, and the Queering of Late Medieval Literature’, Arthuriana 5 (1995), 21–51.

Moss, Rachel E. ‘ “And much more I am soryat for my good knyghts’ ”: Fainting, Homosociality, and Elite Male Culture in Middle English Romance’, Historical Reflections / Réflexions historiques 42 (2016), 101–13.

Zeikowitz, Richard E. ‘Befriending the Medieval Queer: A Pedagogy for Literature Classes’, College English 65 (2002), 67–80.

#the green knight #the green knight meta #sir gawain and the green knight #medieval literature #medieval history #this meta is goddamn 5.2k words #and has its own reading list #i uh #said i had a lot of thoughts?

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katsidhe · 3 years ago

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Scrolling through your blog and reading abt your thoughts in regards to dean and Sam and their ability or inability to sdjust to a life outside hunting/interact and bond with people outside that life.

I like to theorize that a lot deans issues with that stem from his the fact that all the shit that's so common in hunters as coping mechanisms and/or personality traits (the violence, the bottling up of emotions, lashing out, black and white world view etc) simply isn't sustainable in a 'normal' life.

Because it's much more stationary. Because the consequences of your actions will catch up to you. Not as an apocalypse, which you can fight by way of more violence and more bottled up emotion, where you have a distinct 'enemy'.

Instead consequences will manifest for example as a failing relationship, with a partner, a child whatever. People in general eventually not putting up with your harmful habits anymore. And this is something that can only ever be 'fought' by actively improving yourself.

I think the show could have done very interesting things with this, especially in later seasons as Dean got more and more extreme. But characteristically, it didn't.

The closest thing it ever did was in school days. Now, I love that episode for the reasons every Sam inclined person does but I also really love its characterization of dean. And how even as a kid his adoption of all of John's (hunters in general) habits/coping mechanisms severely hindered him in forming any kinds of relationships where he could be held accountable for his actions. (I don't think he can really be blamed for that yet. He was a kid after all. And John was his father.) And he only had to stay there for I think a bit over a month?

I of course love every single instance of any female character putting dean in his place but the one in school days is one of my favorites. Because she reads him so accurately and it's such small stakes but you can see how this would develop into adulthood so well!)

Uh anyway. Everything comes back to deans (and the shows and to a lesser degree every other characters) inability to hold dean accountable. Bc the boys didn't have a childhood where accountability for the way they treated other people was a thing. They ditched whatever place they were at before anything could catch up.

Sam of course spends a lot of time in the show holding himself accountable and pointedly improving himself. Which is why he functions outside of hunting in multiple instances.

The truth about a 'normal' life is that it's meant to exists in stability and peace. And those things require introspection and work. And, of course not as simply as that, but people can leave. And they can hold you accountable. Not just practically but emotionally.

It's much more difficult to bring yourself to hold someone accountable for their violent outbursts when you know they've been tortured in hell, been tortured into torturing, than it would be in a normal situation.

I think subconsciously dean is constantly relying on how many reasons the hunting life gives him to behave the way he does. And uses that to bind people to him who have difficulty holding him accountable. Especially Sam.

But seriously what the fuck am I doing. I'm so sorry. I love everything you write so you get any essay completely unrelated to any of it.

I find this really interesting actually! Because I think you’re right, that a lot of Dean’s commitment to (and terror of anything but) hunting is a need to maintain the socially impermissible ways he maintains his identity. This encompasses a lot of things, some of them benign and others less so, but Dean’s built himself on this strange combination of both sharply conforming to certain societal ideals, and taking pride in how off the norm he actually is. Like, he’s built himself of a movie version of the ~cool outsider type~.

I will say that I think s6 explores this relationship a little bit more, with Dean and Lisa’s relationship. And that of course ends disastrously, with Dean’s inability to completely protect (and control) Lisa and Ben making him decide to take matters into his own hands, in the hunting world: he takes their memories. This is an egregious violation, of course, and on a certain level Dean knows it—but what gives Dean what he sees as his right to do this is the intersection with his world. It’s because hunting has touched Lisa and Ben that Dean feels justified in exercising an authority he’s used to having in this sphere of his life.

Furthermore, Dean even eschews community within hunting itself. He and Sam are isolationist first by habit, then by necessity, then by a mixture of both. Even though Dean gets along well with plenty of individual hunters and conducts himself well in gatherings like eg 12.06, he’s fundamentally drawn towards the small, the close, the intimate: one on ones rather than large groups, which he distrusts. It’s Sam and Mary rather than Dean who organized and gravitated towards the Apocaworld group, for instance. It’s visible in 14.10, too.

It’s not that Dean isn’t a good leader, or that he doesn’t do well in leadership positions—it’s that he strongly prefers the insular model he’s used to. And that he strongly prefers the hierarchical role he finds himself taking in that model! Like you say, the people close to Dean, who know his history and his reasons for behaving the way he does, generally aren’t going to call him out.

#dean and lisa #dean and romance #12.06 #14.10

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no-droids · 4 years ago

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Ch 17 was so, so, so good (thank you!!) 🥺 i am still processing. ((Edit: this turned into an essay so i Am Very Sorry in advance, there is a tldr at the end though))

First of all. We get to see Din going through it the same way sweet girl was a couple chapters ago and I love it! She’s been so clear from the start that she doesn’t want to run away from him and now Din’s getting to the point where he doesn’t want to chase her anymore because he just wants her to be physically there with him again. The second night of comms while she’s camped out at the orphanage?? “I thought this was going to be alright, but I hate it.” ??????????? i am a Puddle of Emotions no one look at me 😭

And then the way he’s so unsure about whether she hasnt begun to reconsider wanting to keep up with his bounty-hunter life now that she’s finally gotten a break if being forced to outrun a mandalorian can be really even be called a break for the first time in a year?? And he can SEE all the places she’s stopped to talk to people on this planet (his comment about the number of times the blond guy turned around to talk to her in the line? 🥺.) Din knows she’s enjoying these small encounters with people, getting to interact with a new planet and learn new things as she’s making her way through each place, and since they’re only talking at night he gets to think about it literally all day long as he follows her trail and tries to figure out what her plan is. This is truly an exercise in Din thinking nonstop about sweet girl (which ofc he does already, but like, thinking critically about what she thinks/wants/does/needs and why) and I feel like that’s causing him to slowly start to second guess himself in terms of where he would put himself on sweet girl’s list of priorities. And I wonder how much of this he’s actually considering for the first time? because it’s always him who leaves and comes back when he gets jobs — this is the first time that sweet girl has left him instead of the other way around. Sweet girl has had tons of time to think about these things, whereas Din hasn’t really had to... because it’s not the one who leaves who feels the absence most, it’s the one who’s left behind (even if just temporarily).

I can just picture Din’s increasing doubts as the chase keeps going, whether he’s worth putting up with his lifestyle and whether sweet girl wouldn’t rather have a life like the people he sees in the footprints around hers? because he knows her, knows she likes soft beds and meeting people and fresh fruit and beautiful scenery, which are all things that living on the razor crest can’t always provide except for the last one bc Din Djarin IS beautiful scenery let’s be clear and just. the ANGST. I cannot. ( a n d meanwhile sweet girl is having a breakdown thinking he wants to STOP looking and LEAVE her? As if)

So when she shuts down his tentative doubts about it on the second night she’s at the orphanage and Din starts asking questions about favorite animals and flowers and things?? 🥺🥺🥺🥺 I lost it. Din is mirroring the love and care he receives from sweet girl (and learning to tap into those emotions as he does) and I am just in awe of both his character development from ch 1 to here and your ability to show that gradual shift in your writing.

Tl;dr thank you very much for this latest chapter! I will continue to be a soft emotional little puddle for the foreseeable future, or at least until I can figure out to scrape myself off the floor and function like a human being who has not just read rough day ch 17 and promptly dissolved as a direct result🌻

okay

okay first of all ma’am/sir/friend, please do not put tl;dr’s on a fucking MASTERFUL DISSECTION LIKE THAT like I genuinely hope people read every word of what you have written because you’re so spot on about everything that I was almost taken aback JEJFJJDJFJF

I would like to say, and I need to do this in list form because you have presented so many beautiful points that I’d like to address them one by one,

1.) Din Djarin is used to being alone. Full stop. Like even with sweet girl helping out with the baby and agreeing to stay on the ship while he goes and grabs quarry, he’s gone for weeks sometimes. He is used to being by himself, to fending for himself, protecting himself, patching himself up, EVERYTHING by himself. He is the most independent self-sufficient driven bounty hunter Karga has on the payroll and he’s reliable, which is why Karga would give him four pucks at a time. Giving anyone else four pucks would mean that if they happened to die during their hunts, then more than one puck would be lost and that’s money down the drain. Din doesn’t die, he always comes back with all four bodies and he’s fucking quick about it. Him telling sweet girl “I thought this was gonna be alright” is apt, because he’s been able to exist without her and do good work while he knows she’s safe on the Crest. In fact, the only time he EVER didn’t do good work is when a) she was attacked on the Crest on Corellia, or b) when he desperately wanted to get back to her as quick as possible and he pushed himself too hard and put himself in danger (aka frozen on Hoth scene). And actually c) when he stole Grogu back from the empire and had Karga and the guild on his ass about it. Those were the only times Din had trouble doing his job. The only times he stopped looking and gave up. “I thought this was going to be alright, but I hate it” means that YES ABSOLUTELY DIN DJARIN DOES NOT LIKE STAYING PUT WHILE SHE LEAVES, even though he’s okay with going out and doing his job when she stays. Even though he’s still hunting, it’s like the roles have been reversed. She’s understanding his side, and he’s understanding her side. It’s been 4 days and he hates it, so imagine weeks or months of that. Not being able to move or chase after her either, just hanging out on the crest with Grogu and waiting to see if she’ll be able to make it back. Which

2.) makes it hurt just a lil more in that wonderful delicious angsty way when he actually asks if she wants this life. On Naboo, he didn’t know where she went or where the kid was—he didn’t know if they were in danger, if she was safe. He said he’d rip the galaxy apart to find her if she ever disappeared like that again. But... she’d be safe on Sanctuary II. This is different, and just like you said, he’s had multiple days where all he did was try to think like her. Get in her head, predict her. Understand her more than he’s ever attempted to do before, in a NECESSARY capacity, like he would a bounty he’s hunting. Din Djarin is used to being alone. He’s used to being silent and that’s how connections are severed before they can even be established. His only practice at empathy was through his job, a job that he is very very good at, but it was never enough to get him to stop looking. He would never be able to empathize enough to ask if the bounty wanted him to stop looking for them. Even with the baby, he turned him in at first and then let the guilt eat him alive before going back to save him. So, if you couple that with his true connection to sweet girl, the natural empathy he has for her and the kid (him immediately following her after he accidentally snapped at her on the Crest and apologizing) and Din is now TRULY beginning to understand her on a level he’s never experienced with another person

3.) BUT!!! Even though he “needed to ask” (meaning he understood enough to know that asking the question was necessary) he started out the entire conversation by admitting he doesn’t think he could do it. Before ever telling her what specifically he doesn’t think he could do, he already knows this about himself and says it flat out. I don’t think I could. Even if you asked me to, even if you said you’d be happier if I did, even if you told me right now that it’s what you wanted, I don’t think I could ever stop looking. And a lot of the turmoil he experiences is because of that. I make you sleep on the floor. I teach you to fight when you just want to look at waterfalls. I do all these things that you’d never willingly do yourself, and I’m a bad person BECAUSE I still want you to always be here with me in spite of all that.

4.) Meanwhile sweet girl just has no fucking clue all this is happening and it seems to come out of nowhere, all she knows is that he’s been in the city when he should’ve caught up to her days ago. She’s out experiencing things and meeting new people and yet she always comes back to Din and the baby and how much they should be here with her. She tries to come up with clever ways to outthink him but she also offers to give her coordinates to him practically every single night. Her wanting to be with him so bad but trying to hold out (“ask me again tomorrow”) while Din is also wanting to be with her so bad and also trying to hold out (“find her again tomorrow”) 🥺

So yeah basically in conclusion I love them together and they’re so different but they make each other somehow both stronger and softer in so many ways and yeah u mighta heard of DD/LG u kinky fucks but lemme present to u DD/SG

#ask #anon #I am so sorry I rambled so long jshdjdjdjddh #rough day spoilers

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hardlyinteresting · 4 years ago

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Risks Worth Taking 2/2

This is the second half, part 2/2 of the story, thank you to everyone who has read it! Professor!Zemo x Student reader Part 1 here The reader takes Zemo’s philosophy class focusing on Machiavelli. Posted in 2 parts because it exceeded the textbox limit. Apx 3k words.

Warnings: student-teacher relationship (the reader is of age, no real focus on power imbalance), implied age gap, consumption of alcohol, implication that the reader is sleeping with Zemo for better grades (she's not) and of course let me know if you want me to add anything else!!

Week five, he is not shocked to find she’s once again the first one in class. “Good evening,” he greets warmly, unwrapping his scarf from around his neck as he makes his way to his desk. She smiles back, “I left my paper on your desk there, I figured I’d get the pile started”. He laughs setting down his coat and bag, “Something tells me there will be few submissions for this class”.

He’s right. Less than half the class bothers to show up. Most of her peers seem to be getting a head start on winter break, at least the class is quiet she thinks content listening to Helmut summarize the most recently assigned chapters, providing historical context where needed.

“Enjoy your break Helmut,” she says softly as he shuts the lecture hall door.

“You as well. Do you have plans?” She shakes her head, “No, just reading”. He smiles, “Then I am sure it will be a good break indeed”.

The cafe is warm and cosy. She settles comfortably into her favourite booth with her favourite book and a second cup of tea.

The bell at the front door dings as a man enters in a long black coat and leather gloves. Fancy she thinks to herself as he approaches the counter to order. It's usually other students dressed in sweatpants and hoodies, the man’s put together dress piques her interest. He orders and then she watches over the top of her book as he drops a $10 bill into the barista’s tip jar. Oh, well dressed and exceedingly well mannered. She can't help but watch him as he waits. Removing his gloves he tucks them into his pockets and unbuttons his coat, she swears she can smell his cologne from where she sits; it's incredible!

“Cherry blossom tea for Helmut?” The barista calls sliding the cup across the counter.

Helmut? It isn't. Is it? He turns after saying a polite thank you, and she can feel her heart hammering as he turns and she sees his face. It is. She's not sure why she's shocked, she did tell him about this place after all. Do I say something? She wonders, weighing the pros and cons, but her thoughts are halted when she hears his voice,

“Hello,” he smiles softly, “I didn't expect you to be here--I know you pointed this place out, but I wasn't--”

He's worried he's intruding. Oh, how the tables have turned.

“No, no. It's okay! I don't own the place-- did you want to sit? You don't have to--”

He chuckles as her nerves get the best of her.

Silently he sets down his cup shrugging out of his coat, putting it over the back of the chair before sitting down.

“What are you reading?” He smiles, trying to peak at the cover.

Again, after their initial stiffness, the conversation flows smoothly, just like it had in his office. After several warm drinks, and a couple croissants ordered between the two of them it’s grown dark outside. Neither had noticed the cafe empty out slowly over the hours, the barista cleaning up for the night until she clears her throat from behind the counter. They both turn to look at her, finally noticing how quiet the shop is.

“Sorry, we’re closing now,” the barista smiles sweetly. “Not a problem. I apologise, we lost track of time. We’ll get out of your way,” Helmut apologizes. The pair collect their things sliding back into their coats and gloves. Helmut waits patiently for her to be ready to go his hand resting gently at the small of her back as she slips out of the booth and past him.

Helmut stops and puts another bill in the girl’s tip jar.

“Sorry for keeping you,” he apologises again.

Outside the winter wind is cold against their faces.

“Are you hungry?” Helmut asks.

“I could eat,” She responds. “Ever been there?” Helmut asks pointing to the pub across the street. “I don’t know if it’s your speed. It’s not super nice or anything, but their food is decent,” she says honestly. He laughs, “‘Decent’ is better than what I can make at home by myself”.

She bites her lip thinking about it, does he want to spend more time with me?

“Okay,” she smiles as they make their way across the street.

Settled at a table, they wait for their server, she asks, “Was that a fifty dollar bill I saw you put in that tip jar?”

He shrugs, “Yes”.

He says that as if it’s normal, she thinks.

“I know you’re not from here, but you do know that’s a lot of money right?” “Yes,” he shrugs again, “But she made excellent tea all afternoon, she let us stay as late as she could and she was polite. And I have been here long enough to know that servers of any kind don’t get paid fairly. I can afford it, she deserves it”.

She feels the smile grow across her face, she considers gushing that he’s such a good person, but instead what comes out is, “I’m really starting to consider becoming a professor”.

He laughs, “I told you, it’s family money, not my facility pay”. God, that laugh, sets off butterflies in her stomach, the warm, genuine sound of his laughter.

He continues, “Before Sokovia fell, my family were royalty. I was a Baron there”. “I knew your name sounded familiar,” she sighs, “I remember hearing about Sokovia on the news. I remember your name, you were building orphanages and relief centres”.

He nods sadly, “Many of us thought we could salvage what we had left after everything. We couldn’t”.

“I’m so sorry,” she says, without thinking she reaches across the table to place a comforting hand on his arm. His hand comes to cover hers, so much larger than her own.

There’s a silence between them for one of the first moment since he sat down with her earlier at the cafe. But it’s not uncomfortable, it’s the opposite -- a silence of understanding, both parties knowing there’s nothing they can say to make things better-- they can only ruminate.

The peace is broken by a waiter coming to take their orders. “Do you drink Helmut?” She asks with a mischievous smile. “I have been known to indulge,” he confesses, his eyebrows furrowed. “Two shots of ?” she turns to look at Helmut expectantly. “Vodka,” he replies. “Two shots of vodka, and an order of cheese fries to share please,” she orders, “thank you”.

The waiter returns not before long, placing the drinks and food on the table.

She holds her shot glass up waiting for him to do the same. “Prost,” he says raising his glass towards her. “Cheers,” she responds clinking her glass into his before they both tip them back.

And that’s how their night begins.

It’s nearing midnight when they settle their bill, Helmut insisting he pay-- though she put up a good fight. “Can I walk you home?” He asks looking at her under the light of the street lamps. She nods, her face feeling warm both from his attention and the alcohol coursing through her bloodstream. Her apartment is only three blocks away, but time seems to slow down as they walk arm in arm through the freshly fallen snow. At her door they stop, she looks up at him, him down at her. Without a thought, lips meet. It’s not rough or particularly sexy, but she feels her knees go weak when his hand comes to cup her cheek, his other splayed across the small of her back pulling her closer. This kiss deepens and she clutches the lapel of his wool coat before they both pull away. “Sorry,” he mumbles. “Don’t be,” she sighs.

Then the thought hits her, “How are you getting home?” “Oh-- I was going to get a cab and go back to the cafe to pick up my car in the morning,” he explains. “Nonsense-- you can stay here,” she offers unlocking her door and stepping inside, he doesn’t follow. “Not in my bed,” she laughs flicking on the light, “I’ll set you up on the couch”. He steps inside.

In the morning he wakes to the sun shining through the window. It takes him a minute to orient himself remembering he crashed on her couch. He sits up taking a moment to look around the apartment, it’s cute. Books and textbooks and notebooks strewn about the place. It’s homey and inviting and every bit what he’d expect her space to look like. Carefully he grabs one of the open notebooks tearing out a page he writes a quick note:

Good morning, I find that I feel very sorry for having to leave before you wake. Alas, I have much to get done, and I do not wish to trespass in your home longer than needed. I am grateful for your hospitality, and even more, your company. If my memory serves correctly I must also apologise for making that advance towards you last night. It was ungentlemanly, and you are unquestionably deserving of much better. I hope you can forgive me, and that you might allow me to make it up to you. -Helmut

Week six.

“He should appear to be compassionate, faithful to his word, guileless, and devout.” Is written across the board. When she settles into her seat. She’s not early this week, rather just on time. Helmut notes the heavy rise and fall of her chest as she tries to catch her breath, he holds back a smile at the thought of her sprinting to his class. When the class is settled, he proceeds to hand back all of the submitted essays, now marked. He smiles as he sets hers on her desk, “Bravo,” he says quietly enough that just she hears it as he shuffles along to the next row of students. She anxiously flips to the last page, red pen scrawl reads 100%. Her jaw drops. There’s no way. She thinks back to the rumours she heard on campus at the beginning of the year, about how difficult a marker he is. Bullshit. Her blood boils, rage sizzling beneath her skin. She avoids his eyes for the rest of class staring down at her notebook as she notices the indents in the blank page-- indents left from where he had written her a note that morning. Her anger freezes replaced by the cold sinking feeling in her chest. All his kind words, all those moments shared-- did he really think she was just spending time with him for a better grade? What kind of handout does he expect to get from her? She scolds herself now for the little crush she’d developed-- how stupid could she be? The prince must appear to be virtuous in order to hide his actions, She remembers from her reading, a dagger to her chest as she thinks bitterly that she’s not shocked that the professor is practising what he preaches.

The class ends and he moves to collect his paperwork, sorting it back into his bag. She stays. “I’m glad you stayed behind,” he starts. “I’m sure you are,” she says sharply. Confused he puts his things down turning to face her. “Have I done something to upset you?” He asks seriously his head tilted to the side as he racks his brain for anything he may have done to make her so cross. Perhaps his note was not sufficient in conveying his apology? “Do you think I’m stupid? Or that I’m naive?” she asks arms crossed, “I’m not sleeping with you for a good grade,” she states firmly, sliding her essay back across her desk, “feel free to adjust my grade accordingly”. Is that what she thinks? His mouth goes dry, his mind and heart racing with all the different ways he wants to apologise, to tell her that she has it wrong. He approaches her, finally making eye contact with her, “Your grade will stay as it is. I mark all of my student’s work without looking at the cover pages. I have always strived to remain impartial. Your essay was marked no differently,” He explains calmly, “I would be wrong to say that I don’t hold any affections for you-- it is quite the opposite. I enjoy the time we have spent together, and I would like to continue to remain in your company; I hope to eventually find myself in your affections-- but none of this has any bearing on your grade. I am sorry that I have acted in a way where this was not clear”. Her throat clenches, oh. “I’m sorry--Oh my god--I’m so stupid!” her hand flies to cover her mouth. “You have nothing to apologise for-- I should be the one apologising,” he insists. She shakes her head standing to stand in front of him, “We’ve both been obtuse”. “I’d like to make it up to you. I’d like to take you out for dinner-- a proper meal. If you’ll allow me”. She nods her hand coming to rest on his cheek, thumb running gently across his cheekbone, “I would like that,” she says quietly, her eyes glazing at his lips, “But only after the semester is done and I’ve graduated”. “If that is what you want,” he nods understanding. She can feel him leaning in, her eyes flickering up to his caramel eyes and back down to his lips, his hand rests on her hip, but he waits for her to close the gap between them.

Last day of the school year.

She waits by the door to the lecture hall as he speaks to his class. She listens to the back and forth of conversing ideas from the students, her heart beating faster every time Helmut speaks. It takes a while for everyone to leave when the class is over, but he does his best not to make her wait too long, gathering his things as quickly as possible, he makes his way over to her.

“Maybe I should’ve taken this course, the conversation was much more lively!” She laughs. “Your intelligent thoughts would have been wasted here, my dear” He smiles shutting the door behind him, “your class needed a brilliant mind in it”.

The summer goes by quickly. Fine dining, nights in. reading during rainstorms. Nights of soft romance, followed by nights of passion. Pasts shared. Futures envisioned. In his bed the night before the new school year she rolls over to lay almost on top of him, laughing when he lets out an oof. “Old man she teases,” earning a playful pinch on the thigh from him.

She glances at his nightstand, a copy of The Prince laying there.

“And what are your personal feelings about Machiavelli anyway? You never speak about your own thoughts”

“You're so clever,” he laughs, “but you're right”.

He sighs pulling her closer. he tries to focus on his hand running up and down her arm, how soft her sweater is under his fingertips. He takes a deep breath before speaking, “every time I read it, my opinions change,” he confesses, “there was a time when I was young and stupid; thought I was invincible that I agreed with a lot of his ideals. Then I grew older, fell in love--I thought him stupid and lonely. I experienced an incredible loss--”

She squeezes his side as she hears his voice grow tense with tears, he swallows and continues, “and then I thought I understood him. I learned how to grieve and I thought him intolerable. In the end I learn more about myself than I do him”.

She smiles, “and have you read it lately?”

He nods kissing her softly, “I have”.

“And?”

“I learned to trust my instincts. To take the risks that are worth taking”

“You're kind of a sap,” she laughs, her face getting warm she buries it in his chest. Part 1 here

#zemo x reader #helmut zemo x reader #professor!zemo #daniel bruhl x reader #zemo #daniel bruhl #baron zemo x reader

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number5theboy · 4 years ago

Note

I wanna hear your material on why five should’ve been the one to pull the trigger!! I kinda agree but I haven’t read the comics-

Anonymous asked: Whats the rant on five pulling the trigger? I havent read the comics but i know he hes the gunman and says 'i never really liked you" or something similar

A piece of writing that is part rant, part analysis, and part creative writing for the two of you so kind as to drop into my inbox, as well as @mysticmoondustt, @maren-emilie, @waywardd1 and @millartiste, and @poisonpam, whose marriage proposal started all this.

User @sunriseseance brought to my attention that the way I framed this sidelines Allison completely and takes away from her character arc, which was not my intention in writing it, but is something this text communicates anyway. Giving over Allison’s (aka the only black woman in the cast) important story beat over to Five (aka one of the several white boys) without making the effort of keeping Allison just as important to the story was poorly thought-out. I have thus edited and rewritten the following with that in mind.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

Five’s Storyline Deserved To Be Properly Tragic or: Why Five Ultimately Causing The Apocalypse in The White Violin Would Have Rounded Out His Arc

In this mini-essay, I go into detail as to why I think, from a story-telling perspective, Five should have been the one to ultimately cause the apocalypse by intervening with Vanya rather than Allison. The apocalypse is Five’s storyline. It’s his trauma, his pain, and what he has worked towards preventing for forty-five years, and yet, he is almost completely written out of the pivotal events in The White Violin, the Season 1 finale, and has little to no impact on why the apocalypse does happen, in the end. Making Five the one who triggers the apocalypse would make his entire storyline become the proper tragedy it is supposed to be, with him being the last domino to fall into place, his action of disrupting Vanya being what makes her fall, makes her destroy the moon, and makes Five the man who causes what he so desperately wanted to stop. The easiest way to do that would be to give Five Allison’s role of being the one to point that gun at Vanya, but as explained above, that was the original argument of this text, and one that was insensitive and should have had more effort put into. The following rewrite still sees Five firing the gun, but in a different context and with a different lead-up, one where Allison’s moment of mercy and kindness to Vanya comes before Five’s decision to fire the gun, so that Allison’s moment with Vanya and the moment that inadvertently causes the apocalypse are two separate ones rather than a single one. I just really would have loved to see Five and the apocalypse be a self-fulfilling prophecy. One still should keep in mind that this does appropriate a moment that was solely Allison’s in canon and should thus still be taken with a grain of salt. That being said, I do think that it would have made sense for Five to fire the gun that causes the apocalypse. There are so many established points in Five’s storyline that build up to him being the character most relevant and most appropriate to point that gun at the back of Vanya’s head: his ruthlessness in eliminating anyone who stands between him and preventing the apocalypse, the fact that he is the only sibling we’ve seen kill methodically in cold blood, how Five is pragmatic by nature and was ready to sacrifice a single life in exchange for saving billions, his awareness of space and how to use it to his advantage, his tendency to use other people’s weapons to his own advantage, the fact that he is the only sibling Vanya doesn’t resent for their childhood, the fact that he trusts and likes Vanya, that when faced by Luther with the choice between violence and love before, Five chose love… But Five was not the triggerman, and the following, under the cut, explores the ending of an arc that could have been.

I’m going to start with Vanya’s demise and how the apocalypse happens in the source material. Full disclosure, I still have not read the comics, but I have seen the last few pages of the Apocalypse Suite, and even though my argument as to why Five should have been the triggerman for Vanya in the show is not based on ‘because it was him in the comics’, I still think it’s relevant for the point I’m trying to make. In the Apocalypse Suite, Klaus distracts Vanya as she is playing her violin, and Five takes that moment to go and shoot her in the head. Despite the concert coming to a bad close, it was a little too late, the moon still comes crashing toward Earth, and Five says: “You know something, Vanya…? I never liked you.”. It doesn’t quite stop there, but for the purposes of this mini-essay, that’s enough. What does matter is that the TUA showrunners have this nasty habit of taking bits of the comic and putting them into the show, but usually warped to the point of disrespect, where they simply never looked deep enough into why comic fans liked a moment, and instead just want to ~subvert their expectations~. Here, I think the subversion is not necessarily about the actions, as they are still similar (gun is fired in the vicinity of Vanya’s head, it takes her out, but not enough to prevent the apocalypse) and is instead about the identity of the triggerman. Or rather, triggerwoman.

In the show, Allison holds that gun to the back of an oblivious Vanya’s head before shifting it to next to her ear, and then pulling the trigger. The sound of the gun going off disrupts Vanya, who faints, but the energy she had been pulling from the soundwaves had to release to somewhere, and it bundles into a beam that shoots up and destroys the moon, giant pieces of which barrel to Earth.

And it’s a good ending for their arc. It’s the ultimate proof that even at Vanya’s lowest, in a moral sense, literally suspending their brothers in midair and hurting them, Allison still loves her, enough to not hurt her. Allison wants to do right by her, and it shows in its most extreme in this moment. The only thing that bothers me personally about this moment is that the second it showed that it was Allison holding the gun, I knew Vanya would not be harmed, I knew that Allison loved her too much, that Allison had flat-out refused to even consider Luther’s proposal that they should be prepared to stop Vanya by any means necessary. And so I started thinking about which character could make this moment more tense. Who was “with Luther on that one”? Who knows that they “can’t give her a chance to fight back”? Who have we seen to be merciless and cutthroat, who has ruthlessly killed people in cold blood because they stood between him and preventing the apocalypse? Which sibling pointing a gun at the back of Vanya’s head would have actually given the viewer pause and make them consider the possibility that one of the Hargreeves would be hard enough to shoot his own sister in the head?

It could have gone like this, with several references to Five’s fighting skills that were established beforehand but mysteriously absent during the actual climax. It starts as it does in the show, Luther rallying his brothers to attack and Allison refusing to be part of it. But instead of trying to convince us that Five would be stupid enough to run straight on at Vanya, Five blinks away and disappears. The other three still get caught in Vanya’s energy tentacles, but Allison is not. We see Five appear next to the Commission soldiers he killed when protecting Klaus, swiping one of their guns, showcasing both his spatial awareness and his tendency to use enemy weapon to his advantage, which we saw in both the Istanbul Not Constantinople scene and in him getting the upper hand on the Handler. He blinks away again.

Cut to Vanya on stage, holding her brothers, fixing them with a merciless and empty gaze. Then there is a small noise on the side of the stage, and Vanya looks over. It’s Allison, one hand behind her back, similar to the Luther and Vanya scene from Season 2, and we see the gun gleaming there, showing that both Allison and Five had the same tactical idea. But Allison is not pointing the gun, because she saw a glimpse of good in this violinist just moment before, when she smiled at her. I’m turn about whether or not Allison should be holding a sign in this. If she would, it’d be interesting for it to read ‘I love you’, even though that’s terribly cliché, it’s also the sentence that made Vanya lash out at Allison in the first place. I like the idea of Vanya seeing it again and the memory of her regret at her action, at the pain she caused someone who only tried to be there for her, to make amends, to support her, to love her, break the façade of the White Violin as she recognises her sister, looks at her, truly sees her. The energy tentacles release her brothers in one swoop, them falling to the floor, exhausted, as the tentacles retreat back into Vanya, but she underestimated her powers.

There’s too much, the energy slamming back into her, and for a moment, you see Vanya through the mask of the White Violin, scared of the power she holds and doesn’t know how to control. It’s an overload, like it was when she was little, and because nobody ever took the time to teach her how to control it, she doesn’t know how. Allison’s fingers twitch around her gun behind her back, and then her gaze shifts. Five steps behind Vanya and points the gun at the back of her head. And the viewer remembers everything Five has gone through because of the Apocalypse, what he had to become to survive, how he sacrificed everything to come back and stop the end of the world. How ready he was to end the life of an innocent gardener to change the course of history. And here is where a more interesting subversion of the source material would come in. Remember comic!Five saying “You know something, Vanya…? I never liked you.”?

Because show!Five is established to like Vanya, love her even. She was the first one he told about the apocalypse and that he wants to stop it (Five having that gun would also have made the first season come full circle in an incredibly satisfying way) , the first one he trusted, the sibling he treats with gentleness and kindness even though he is not gentle or kind. Her words brought him comfort for decades in the barren wasteland, and he is the only sibling that she canonically doesn’t resent for how she was treated in their childhood. She had bandaged up his wounds, probably the first time since he left the Academy on that fateful day without saying goodbye that someone touched him carefully, lovingly, and she told him that she hadn’t seen him in a long time and that she didn’t want to lose him again. And now he is faced with the prospect of shooting her in the head to achieve what he worked forty-five years towards.

And here is the kicker if this would have been the version we got to see in the show: there would have been foreshadowing to this very moment, because it would not have been the first time in the show that Five pointed a gun at a sibling. As Five set to go kill the previously mentioned innocent gardener with his father’s rifle, Luther grabs Delores and dangles her out of the window, giving Five the choice between the literal embodiment of the better half of his mind, the one who thinks beyond, the one created out of love, or the bloodshed he had been trained to solve every problem with. Bluntly put, Luther put him on the spot and made him choose between love and violence.

Five chose love.

Over Vanya’s shoulder, Five meets Allison’s eye. And even though she’s terrified of this side of Vanya that makes her pulsate with energy, on the brink of world extinction, she still looks him in the eye, and almost imperceptibly shakes her head, a silent plea to spare Vanya. Because Allison knows what Five has done, she has easily called him a mass murderer before, she knows that he could do it. And so he grips the gun he’s pointing at Vanya just a little tighter, to keep himself from trembling. He moves his arm just a little, bringing the barrel of the gun next to Vanya’s ear, and he pulls the trigger. The gunshot goes off, Vanya’s crumbles to the floor, Allison rushes to her side to catch her. The energy bundles and shoots out, straight into the core of the moon. On stage, Five looks in disbelief at the gun in his hand. He did it. It’s over. And Vanya is still alive.

And then Klaus’ voice pipes up. “Guys? Do you see that big moonrock coming towards us?”

And Five looks up. And Five understands, in a second, in a moment. He pulled that trigger, and the world is doomed. His singular act of mercy brought about exactly what he had given up everything to prevent happening.

As the song that played over Five’s arrival in the apocalypse says: this race is a prophecy. It’s just that nobody told Five that it is a self-fulfilling one.

I just think it would have been good to give some kind of pay-off to Five’s apocalypse storyline that isn’t him running away from it at the end of the season. I think having him be the one who ultimately brings the apocalypse about through the act of shooting that gun would have rounded out his arc. As I said in the beginning, this is the revised and re-edited version of this, which involves Allison in more of the plot. Her inadvertently causing the apocalypse in the show has no real bearing on her mind or her character past the act of firing the shot, while the same action would have deeply shaken Five to the core, and so I personally think it should have been Five to actually carry out that last action. In this new and improved version, I tried my best to keep Allison’s connection to Vanya, her act of love, and just have Five be the executioner rather than the only one in the scene. It’s not perfect, but it’s an improvement on the very narrow view I had before. I just think Five being a self-fulfilling prophecy would shift the dynamics between him and the Hargreeves in Season 2 interestingly. It would be more justified how harsh and dismissive the Hargreeves are towards Five. It would make his decision to take Vanya back to do right by her even more interesting, as it would be him choosing love over violence again immediately after it failed spectacularly for him, and his and Vanya’s dynamic in Season 2 so much more tense and high-stakes. It was wrong of me to completely strip Allison of any agency in this scenario, and I hope I have done better this time around, while still keeping my conviction that Five inadvertently causing the apocalypse would have been a better culmination of his arc.

#The Umbrella Academy #Five Hargreeves #my meta #Replies #nocternaljunipers

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chudleycanonficfest · 3 years ago

Text

all of the stars

Day 14, story #2 is by @accio-broom

Title: all of the stars Author/Artist: accio-broom Pairing: Hannah/Neville Prompt: Stargazing AU Rating: T Trigger Warning(s) (if any): mentions of violence and beatings

The Astronomy Tower is the tallest spot in the whole of Hogwarts, its peak barely grazing the clouds, but still looming over the rest of the castle. During the day, Hannah avoids it like the plague. She hates how dizzy the height makes her, with the Great Lakes and its mountains tiny, just like in one of her playsets from when she was younger. She feels like a giant, ready to stomp on the inhabitants of a small village, or that she might just fall off the edge and disappear.

But at night, when it’s just her and her telescope and the pitch-black darkness surrounding her, that’s when she feels most at home.

Her dad was the one who taught her how to find beauty in the stars, long before the academic explanations and essay writing almost stole the fun away from it. They would go to the beach, set up the telescope so that it pointed towards the ocean, and listen to the sounds of the waves crashing onto the shore as they plotted the paths of the stars.

After the events of last summer, the other students avoided the tower, so it was the only place Hannah could find solitude. The last spot tethering her love of the stars to her long-gone Dad.

Tonight, however, she is distracted. Every day, life at the castle is getting worse. The Carrows and Snape dole out more horrifying punishments, taking pleasure in torturing the children that dare to put even a toe out of line. Hannah longs for the before, when all she had to worry about was not writing enough inches for History of Magic or what to wear for the next Hogsmeade trip.

Grieving thoughts take over Hannah’s mind, and she’s so absorbed that she doesn’t notice the closing of the door to the tower or gentle steps on the metal stairs.

“What are you doing up here?” a soft voice calls.

Hannah jumps a mile, her heart pounding in her chest as she reaches for her wand and points it at the source of the intrusion. Her hand shakes, but she sets a steady gaze into the darkness until a tall, sandy-haired boy appears at the top of the staircase.

“Neville?”

“Yeah, sorry for scaring you. I wasn’t expecting anyone up here.” Pink blotches appear on his cheeks, and he shuffles his feet towards her.

Now that he’s standing in the light, she can see how bad he looks. She’s heard rumours of the beating he has been given in his plight to protect his classmates, but she hasn’t had a chance to check them out for herself.

Fresh cuts mark his forearms and neck. A ring of bruises sits under his left eye, violent greens and reds blooming across his face, and dark circles rest above his cheeks. Any uncovered inch of his skin is pale, and he looks like he hasn’t eaten a decent meal in a few months. His uniform hangs off his body, his red and gold tie askew.

Hannah sets what she hopes is a comforting smile on her face. “I didn’t have you pegged for a stargazer. I thought Herbology was more your thing?”

Heat crawls onto her neck at her admission. She doesn’t want to give away that she knows more than she should about the Gryffindor man. She has admired him from afar for a while now but hasn’t dared to ask him out. What would he want with a meek Hufflepuff like her?

But Neville doesn’t notice her slip. Instead, a small chuckle escapes his lips.

“I do like working in the Greenhouses, yes. But Sprout spends a lot of time out there, so I’ve started coming here to think instead.”

“Me too. It’s funny we haven’t bumped into each other before now. Nobody else comes up here anymore.”

“Nah, they’re all scared.”

“And you?”

Neville pauses for a beat, and Hannah worries she might have overstepped the mark. He drums his fingers against the metal railing before turning to look at her. “War is coming. There’s nothing we can do to stop it.”

“Then we should take the opportunity to enjoy the beauty in the world before everything explodes.”

“By doing your Astronomy homework?” Neville scoffs.

Hannah laughs. “I think most of the school has given up on their homework now.”

“Yeah, and I’ve got the beatings to prove that.”

She ponders him for a moment. He’s so scathing and severe now, nothing like the nervous, fumbling boy she met in first-year Herbology.

But she knows what might cheer him up.

Tearing her gaze away from Neville, Hannah drops her head down to concentrate on the telescope. She sets it to one of her favourite astrological views then beckons him over.

“It’s not homework. There’s far more to the night skies than what Professor Sinistra teaches us.”

“Like what?”

“Take a look.”

She steps back to give Neville space to lower his head to the viewfinder. He winces as the fresh bruises around his eyes make contact with the black plastic, but she’s sure the pain will disappear as soon as he takes in the beautiful galaxy of stars Hannah has focused on.

“That’s the Crab Nebula. One of my Dad’s favourite clusters. Mine too.”

“Huh. The colours match some of my bruises.”

Hannah frowns. It’s not the reaction she was hoping for. “Okay. Now try this.”

Nudging Neville out of the way, being careful of his injuries, she fiddles with some of the dials, and the telescope shifts a tiny amount to the right. “This is the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules.”

Neville wrinkles his nose up in disgust. “Ugh, I don’t think I want to see that.” He pushes his head back against the viewfinder again, his mouth opening in surprise. “Wow. That’s a good cluster.”

“And I think we can see the Northern Lights tonight.”

She leans against Neville to tweak the set-up again, but he grabs her hand, holding her still. An unfamiliar sensation churns in her stomach as she listens to every breath he takes.

“Wait. I’m still looking at the stars.”

He laces their fingers together as he watches the view for a while longer before eventually pulling away. Hannah’s heart catches in her throat as she realises just how close to each other they’re standing. Her pulse thuds in her ears, and for a moment, she panics that he can hear it. She’s never been in such proximity to a guy before, especially not one like Neville Longbottom, who is ferociously brave and had grown into his stocky build and looks, until the Death Eaters decided to make him their punching bag.

An overwhelming sense of courage takes hold of her, abolishing Hannah’s final grip on her common sense. Before she can stop herself, she’s pressing her lips against Neville’s in a soft kiss. The action takes her by surprise, but it’s not an unwelcome moment. She’s fancied Neville for a long time, and all the talk of war has scared her into action. It’s now or never, isn’t that what everyone’s been saying?

It’s her first-ever kiss, and a flurry of thoughts invade her mind, taking some of the shine off it. Is she even doing it right? Where should she even put her hands? Hannah is inexperienced and hyper-aware of the cuts and swellings around his mouth from the many fights he’s been in recently, but still, kissing him is the best experience of her life.

As the kiss continues, she realises that Neville isn’t reciprocating. Hannah pulls away before she embarrasses herself even more. A burning heat floods her face as she turns her head to gaze out from the tower, loosening her grip on him and letting her hands drop to her sides with a resigned sigh.

“Neville, I’m sorry, I—”

She doesn’t get a chance to finish her sentence. Neville steals her words away with a second kiss, hungrier and needier than the last. He pushes them away from the telescope and slides his arms around her waist, pulling her flush to his body. She responds by carding her fingers into his hair and letting a content moan escape her lips.

Their snog continues until their lungs burn for air. They pull away, gasping. Neville gives her a shy smile before laughter erupts.

“What’s so funny?” she asks, a frown on her face.

“Nothing. I’m just happy, I guess. I didn’t expect to come up here and experience my first kiss tonight. And definitely not with you. I didn’t even know you fancied me, to be honest.” He calms down, and his smile grows in confidence a little. “Amongst everything that’s going on, there’s finally a light at the end of my tunnel.”

Hannah’s expression relaxes, and a warm feeling spreads from her heart to the tips of her fingers and toes. If she’d known he might be interested in her, she would have made a move a long time ago, so they could have enjoyed this for longer.

Carefully, so as not to hurt him, she pulls Neville back to her. She wraps her arms around his body, tucks her head under his chin then closes her eyes.

There are no other words to say, not yet, and she’s content to enjoy the moment before the war comes to steal their peace.

#chudleycanonficfest2021 #HP fest #hp canon pairings #canon fest romantic #submission #tw: mentions of violence #tw: mentions of beatings #neville longbottom x hannah abbott #nevannah #hannah abott x neville longbottom

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justasimplesinner · 4 years ago

Note

Ok ok Eddie with a jock friend (and eventual s/o), here's what I'm thinking: High school Eddie (whatever version honestly) mouths off to some teachers or embarrasses them with his superior intellect in an insulting way and gets sent to the principal's office. Since this is a repeat offense (try seven times and counting) the punishment is more severe...but the principal says she'll lighten his detention sentence if he uses his smarts for good and enters the high school's peer tutoring program for at least a month. Cue jock who is eager to learn but maybe has a learning disability or ADHD and their course material just isn't sticking.

They come to Eddie for help and he's a bit of an ass at first but then he realizes that they're not just looking for answers; they are genuinely interested in what he has to say and wants to learn so they can do their homework on their own. He gets to know them and how intelligent they are in other ways and his little heart goes doki-doki.

this invoked violent daydreaming in me, i've gotten distracted by my own thoughts every 5 minutes while writing this

Edward with a dumb jock s/o hcs:

safe to say, this situation isn't ideal, and Eddie is not happy at all. he has to deal with idiots and brutes every day anyway, and now they're taking some of his only spare time away from them all just because he was right and his teacher was wrong? why is he constantly being punished for being right, for being smart?

he doesn't get along with his fellow peers from the program at all. some of them recognized him already and knew it was better to stay away lest they wanted to get insulted either by him or everyone else for talking to him, some of them tried to reach out but gave out pretty quickly. in highschool, Edward became way more bratty and mean. in middle school, he was still trying to fit in but he was incredibly overwhelming for other kids and also an easy target, and that really made him resent everyone around him. so getting along with the other students wasn't really an option

however, he dreaded meeting the ones he had to tutor even more. partly because he did not want to deal with some idiots that couldn't get an equation right, partly because he knew most of those idiots are going to be the same ones that always pick on him. half the football team had to be assigned to that program so they would pass their classes. sports don't always give you a get out of jail free pass apparently, and they were forced to study, which didn't sit well with them at all

and then, you came along. he didn't know if you were better or worse than the rest of the jock community that he had the displeasure of meeting. you were just so... dense. it's like you were smart but didn't even know it and couldn't quite use that to your advantage. it fucking annoyed him. incredibly so. you were frustrating beyond imagination. you were getting distracted so easily, and he had to explain the same thing over and over to you and it was driving him up the wall. why couldn't you just get it? Edward both thinks he's the smartest and that nobody will ever understand the lengths his knowledge goes to, and can't quite grasp the fact that people just can't understand something that's so blatantly obvious to him. safe to say, he would not be a good teacher

Ed is absolutely appaled by your eagerness to learn though. practically everything he says flies over your head and despite all his rambling, you still don't understand jack shit, but at the same time... you're such an avid listener. you genuinely think this peer tutoring program could help you get better. you want to get better. and as much as he doesn't want to admit, it really scores you some brownie points in his eyes. because despite everything, you at least try. you don't expect him to do your homework for you and guarantee you a good grade, you genuinely want to work for it. you expect him to explain things to you so you can do that homework yourself and you can be proud of yourself for doing something right. sometimes, he thinks he'd prefer it if you just threatened him to do your work for you because getting you to remember something is an impossible task, but he doesn't mean that

he remembers one of your first study sessions together when he just snapped and almost screamed at you that you were an idiot. to his absolute astonishment, you didn't beat his ass, you didn't even scream back. you just smiled your stupid dorky smile and laughed your stupid dorky smile, saying that he clearly wasn't in the mood so instead of studying you took him for a late lunch. a lunch. and instead of learning more about what you were supposed you, you were trying to learn more about him. best thing is, that day was the first and only time he shared any form of personal information with you and - as opposed to the Mendeleev's table - you memorized most of what he said. hell, next time you saw him, you brought him that specific chocolate he somehow admitted to liking

more and more often, you were bringing him small things, 'thank you gifts' as you called them. as if you knew you were hard to put up with sometimes, at least for him. of course, at first he took it as some sort of bribe, that you tried to worm your way into his graces so he'd do your homework for you or whatever but soon enough you made him realise that you were just genuinely being nice. he has never met someone quite like you, you were an enigma to him

soon enough, he didn't even realise he was looking forward to those study sessions with you. he was constantly lying to himself about how annoying and dense you were, and yet he started feeling more comfortable around you and talking with you freely. he started liking your stupid inquires that usually were something along the lines of "what kind of animal is the Pink Panther", even smirking at them under his nose as if he found idiocy amusing. it was both a nightmare and a blessing to have you around

he couldn't quite understand the weird feeling he got whenever you referred to him as your friend or greeted him at the corridors. or when you offered to have some study sessions at your house because you couldn't keep quiet in the school library and put all the librarians on edge. he didn't really get what was going on with him when he smiled and laughed along with you, in your messy room, as you were trying to figure out how to write a proper essay

he... liked coming to your house. it was admittedly better than the library. your parents were really warm and welcoming, weirdly supportive which he couldn't quite understand since you weren't... well, the brightest. the food was nice, too. and your room was so... you. that's the only way to describe it, what with all the little trinkets and posters and things laying around, and with some music or movies in the background. he also noticed a constantly reoccuring theme amongst your possessions and he was surprised how much knowledge you had on one or two specific subjects. your small little obsessions that you somehow learned about a lot easier than anything else

at some point, without even realising it, you two started hanging out. like, really hanging out, not just meeting up to study. you played some games and talked about random stuff, with you always inquiring about everything, which in turn made him feel like someone actually listened to him for once and rambling for hours to no end. you even tried to teach him your favourite sports, despite his protests, and he was really shocked when you didn't laugh at his general clumsiness and awkwardness when it came to physical activities. you were actually just as weirdly supportive of him as your parents were of you. he didn't see you get annoyed at him even once, and you always tried to explain to the best of your abilities how things worked in sports. show him the proper moves and stances. he didn't quite pick it up, but you two had... fun

spending so much time with you made him notice your strengths, and there were suprisingly many, not just physical (but god, you could just lift him up like a stick? like he wieghed nothing?). he started to slowly figure out your thinking process which made him use different teaching methods that suited you better and lo and behold, there was progress. nothing too crazy, but it was progress. he didn't know which one of you was more proud - you or him

you finally found a way to learn and you started getting better grades. you didn't have to sacrifice school for sports or vice versa. you were going to pass. and all those small victories made Ed realise that soon enough, you won't need him anymore. you'll be capable of learning by yourself, since now you found a good way to do it. you weren't going to meet up with him so often, instead going out with your actual friends since now you could. now you had time. and when i tell you that he almost sabotaged you both just to force you to stick with him for a little while longer-

who was going to tell him stupid jokes now? who was going to listen to him? who was going to talk to him? who was going to cuddle him on your bed and fall asleep there with him from the pure exhaustion from studying? who was going to be his golden retriever friend when you were gone? he wouldn't ever imagine he'd be so sad to get rid of a bumbling idiot in his life? you were his bumbling idiot, and he really didn't want to go back to how things were before he knew you. he didn't want to be alone again. he didn't want to stop being so happy

so let me tell you, the pure fucking relief on his face when you start telling him about how many fun things you two can do now that you don't have to study all the time and hang out more is unimaginable. you never felt him hug you so tight as in that one moment

#riddler #edward nigma #edward nygma #the riddler #edward nashton #my writing #headcannons #fluff #some angst #sovereign of succ #god this is my favourite trope #i love it here

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worldwidemochiguy · 5 years ago

Text

Sweets (Soft Yandere! Jungkook)

You keep being visited by the most peculiar thief…

➵ in which jungkook steals your lip balm and perfume instead of talking to you, you leave a post-it note with your number on it for the strange thief who only seems to take the most inexplicable items and has a strange sense of responsibility for your wellbeing, and the cute boy in your photography class with the fluffy hair and the oversized sweater keeps getting more and more endearing…

➵ Warnings: Soft Yandere Jungkook, Breaking & Entering but without the Breaking, Reader is a bit of a ditz (lol sorry guys)

➵ Word Count: 4.2K

➵ Masterlist

“Hello, uh, I’d like to… report a crime?”

Your statement, which had always sounded suitably firm and assertive when you practised it in front of the bathroom mirror, ended with an unplanned upturn, making it sound more like a question than you would like.

“Please state your name and address, ma’am.”

You did so, listening anxiously to the tap of a keyboard as your information was filed away. The undoubtedly over-worked police officer on the other end of the line sounded like he was two seconds from falling asleep, and you questioned yourself for the millionth time over whether you really needed to report this or not.

“What is the nature of the crime you are reporting, ma’am?”

“Um… well…”

You twisted your hand into the fabric of your shirt self-consciously, trying to decide the best way to explain the strange little occurrences that had been surrounding your apartment over the last few months. You had not yet found a way to put it without sounding ridiculous, but you supposed there was a first time for everything.

“I, uh, I think someone’s breaking into my apartment and stealing things.”

“You have an intruder?”

“Uh huh,”

“…Are they currently in your residence?”

“No, I think… they come and take things when I’m not here and then they’re gone by the time I get back.”

“What items have been stolen?”

You bit your lip.

“I know it sounds silly, but…”

“No crime is too small to report, ma’am. We are committed to making the lives of everyday citizens safer.”

“Well… they’ve stolen my lip balm like… several times. I keep buying new ones and they keep being stolen after a week or so. And my perfume. And my hairbrush one time, and-”

“Ma’am,” The officer cut you off with the impatience you had been both anticipating and dreading ever since you decided to call the police, “Listen, we don’t have the capacity to deal with prank callers-”

“It’s not a prank call!” You blurted, a momentary burst of desperation overtaking you, “I- um, sorry for interrupting, officer, but this isn’t a prank call. Things have been going missing. I can’t afford to keep replacing my lip balm.”

A sigh crackled across the line, and you pictured the officer maybe taking off his glasses, pinching the bridge of his nose like those people in movies always seemed to do when they got frustrated. Personally, you had never found that it helped.

“Are you sure you aren’t just… misplacing them?”

You gasped, offended that even a stranger could think you so stupid. “No! I remember exactly where I leave things and then they just vanish! I swear!”

“Has anything of value ever been taken from your apartment?”

“Yes!” You exclaimed, excited to be able to prove the officer wrong, “My bunny plushy! Mr Snuggles is extremely valuable to me!”

“…Monetary value, I meant. Has anything expensive ever been taken from your apartment?”

There was an embarrassing silence. The officer sighed again, with a little more exasperation colouring his tone.

“If anything significant is stolen, call us back. For now, just… be a bit more careful with your possessions.”

He hung up. You pressed your forehead against the wall and wished your strange thief had taken your phone in one of his little visits. Maybe then you would’ve avoided making that agonising call.

The next morning as you were leaving to go to class, you noticed a pile of discarded post-it notes on your desk — the remnants of a redbull-fuelled late night study session. Your newly purchased lip balm lay next to it. Impulsively, you grabbed a pen and scrawled a message on one of the post-its, sticking it horizontally to the curved surface of the lip balm tube.

it reads:

pls don’t take this i just bought it and this brand is actually v expensive and i am only a struggling college student with loans and chapped lips (。•́︿•̀。)

It might have been a little too polite considering it’s intended recipient was someone who had stolen multiple items from your apartment, but you figured there was no point in being rude. They probably wouldn’t even read it anyway.

You strolled out of your apartment, planning to pick up a smoothie on the way to your lecture, and promptly forgot all about it.

When you returned home to find a pile of newly bought lip balms on your desk — all embossed with the logo of your favourite brand — you were slightly puzzled. But, once you remembered the note you had left- well, the confusion didn’t exactly vanish, but at least you were given some context.

The note had disappeared, along with the lip balm you had used a scant few times. But, you didn’t understand what the thief’s aim was. Why on earth would they steal small things like lip balm and perfume? And why would they buy you new copies of the product? Wasn’t that counterproductive?

you’re very bad at your job

Your next note read, stuck to your fridge as you left to grab coffee with your study group. It remained there for a few days, and you couldn’t ignore the way your heart sank a little each time you saw it hadn’t been taken.

After six days, when it finally vanished, you felt an odd sense of happiness bubble up within you. Yes, there was someone routinely breaking into your apartment, but at least now you had an open channel of communication with them. They had left a brand new bottle of your preferred perfume — which had been stolen at least twice before you stopped bothering to buy it because perfume is pricy — resting on your kitchen counter, beside a box of your favourite chocolates.

As you dug into the box later, snuggled in a blanket and having a Studio Ghibli film marathon, you didn’t even consider the fact that the sweets might be tampered with. If they wanted to kill me, they would’ve killed me already, you reasoned to yourself, sucking the icing sugar off your fingers. Nor did you question how they knew your favourite chocolate. If they broke into your apartment as much as you assumed they did, they probably knew you better than your own parents by now.

You were the very definition of a broke college student. As far as you were concerned, if this random stranger wanted to buy you things and sometimes clean up your apartment — you had definitely come back to a home tidier than you had left it more than once — then you certainly weren’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Maybe it was a little naïve of you, but… you had already called the police, and they hadn’t cared.

thank you for the perfume and chocolate <3

You wrote next morning, hesitating slightly before putting the heart. Before you could convince yourself not to, you scribbled another line underneath.

i wish you’d write back someday…

As you walked to class, you scolded yourself for the butterflies swooping in your stomach. They’re literally a criminal, you told yourself, Stop getting crushes on anyone who shows you the slightest bit of attention. You don’t even know their name.

Despite the small amount of common sense that you did have mocking you all day, you sat in classes and daydreamed about your mystery home intruder. Would they read the note? Would they be happy about your appreciation? Would they — you bit your lip — would they write back?

You felt like a dumb schoolgirl, excited by the prospect of a badly written love note shoved in her locker. And, like a school girl, you trudged back home with your arms weighed down by class work, a billion essays and quizzes that had to be completed overnight. Did your professors not realise you had a life outside of college? Not that you did, of course, but like… in principle.

You were so preoccupied with the coursework that you didn’t even notice the note stuck to your bedroom door. After an hour of studying, you rose wearily to start fixing yourself something to eat, and your eyes snagged on a flash of yellow.

You squeaked, almost falling over yourself in your rush to get to the door and read the note.

i’m glad you liked them. i’m sorry i took your things, that was mean of me. i tried to only take things you wouldn’t miss, but i guess that backfired… i just wanted to feel close to you. and these notes… are the closest i’ve ever been. i know that must sound weird, but… well. i’m a weird guy, i guess. i just liked hearing from you. that’s all.

~ koo <3

You didn’t stop freaking out for a full five minutes. After that, you poured over every detail of the letter, eager to extricate any fragment of knowledge possible. You ended up with a list which you scribbled down in your diary, above which you pasted the note.

The list went as follows:

They want to feel close to you

They have not talked to you before, since the notes are the closest they’ve ever been, but they must have seen you in person at least once

They are a he

(you adamantly did not get flustered about that)

and

4. He calls himself Koo

When you left your apartment the next morning, you placed your note on the exact same spot he had left his. An indirect touch.

hi koo !!!!!!!!

i was so excited to see you had written something!! you know, if you want to talk to me more often, there is an easier way…

Underneath you had scrawled your phone number, hastily and not allowing for regret before you flounced out of the apartment. The reason why you were in such a rush was because you were about to go to your favourite class: Photography 101.

You had taken it as an extra credit, something that interested you but not enough that you wanted to pursue it as a career. You had expected it to be fun, something artistic to break up the monotony of classes. What you had not expected was the dreamy boy who sat in the first row and had full possession of your heart.

You didn’t even know his name, but you were pretty sure you were half in love with him. With fluffy brown hair that fell over his forehead whenever he leaned over to scribble down notes, and cute bunny teeth that stuck out in a flustered smile whenever the professor praised his work in class, he was perhaps the cutest boy you had ever seen.

Though you were sure he had many girls sighing after him, he seemed to be really shy, only ever speaking in class when called on, and even then it was in a quiet, soft voice. He was kind of like you in that respect. But that was where your similarities ended.

Yes, you thought, sighing as you watched him pay avid attention to the professor’s lecture on the composition of frames, his cute doe eyes wide and twinkling like stars were embedded in the pupils, He is way out of my league.

It took three days for you to lose hope. You hadn’t received a text, nor had you found any notes left for you. You tried not to be disappointed, even as your traitorous sub-conscience mocked you for being able to scare away the one person who arguably paid you the most attention.

You didn’t really have many friends, and the ones you did have preferred each other over you, and often left you out of activities because of your shy nature. You guessed this whole thing had just been a way to feel like you actually mattered to someone, like, for once, someone cared about you, but-

You were pulled out of your musings as your phone chimed.

From: Unknown Number

[6:48 PM]

this is koo

The two of you texted every day, and soon enough you were hiding your phone underneath your desk in order to chat to him, keeping your phone on your person at all times in case koo wanted to talk. Of course, the only class you didn’t do this in was Photography, so you could spend a blissful forty-five minutes staring at the boy who played the role of your husband in all of your favourite daydreams.

Koo still broke into your house occasionally, and he still left you sweet, considerate gifts. Often, you would receive texts like this:

From: koo ✨

[3:24 PM]

sweets i’ve been checking your groceries and your vegetables are not being eaten as often as they should be

i know you have a sweet tooth and that’s cute but please try to stay healthy

To: koo ✨

[3:25 PM]

but i can’t cook all i know how to make is microwaveable mac n cheese :///////

You came back home that day to discover a bunch of Tupperwares full of pre-made healthy meals and a note stuck to the top of them.

try microwaving these :)

To: koo ✨

[3:01 AM]

koo are you awake?

From: koo ✨

[3:01 AM]

i am now

what’s wrong?

To: koo ✨

[3:02 AM]

i can’t sleep :////////

From: koo ✨

[3:02 AM]

sweets you need to go to bed

you have an early morning class

To: koo ✨

[3:02 AM]

i knowwwwww

i just… i can’t sleep without mr snuggles :((

From: koo ✨

[3:03 AM]

Mr Snuggles??

???

To: koo ✨

[3:03 AM]

my cuddly bunny :((((

i think you took him a while ago

could i maybe have him back…?

From: koo ✨

[3:03 AM]

Shit

i didn’t know you couldn’t sleep without him

[3:04 AM]

sweets im so sorry

To: koo ✨

[3:04 AM]

its okay koo

From: koo ✨

[3:04 AM]

no it isn’t

you’re loosing sleep because of me

fuck

i could… bring him to you?

To: koo ✨

[3:05 AM]

you’d do that?

…i could see you?

From: koo ✨

[3:05 AM]

no i’d leave him outside

you’d have to promise not to come out until i text you saying i’ve left

To: koo ✨

[3:06 AM]

but kooooo :(((((

From: koo ✨

[3:07 AM]

sweets

To: koo ✨

[3:07 AM]

okay :((((((((((

but i expect you to leave a big box of chocolates on my pillow for me to come home to tomorrow evening!!

From: koo ✨

[3:08 AM]

of course sweets <3

im gonna get going now

don’t look outside your apartment

To: koo ✨

[3:08 AM]

okay

From: koo ✨

[3:34 AM]

im gone and mr snuggles is waiting outside for you

he might have a little gift with him

You trudged outside your apartment, rubbing your eyes blearily, and looked down to see your beloved plushie clutching a single rose in its paws. You gasped, leaning down to pick up the flower gently, and you noticed all the thorns had been taken off. Koo must’ve removed them so that you didn’t accidentally hurt yourself.

You felt warmth flood you, drowning the butterflies in your stomach and replacing them with something much less fleeting, much less shallow.

It sunk into your bones, into your heart, into your breath as you sighed, squeezing your long-lost Mr Snuggles close to your face. He carried the familiar scent of nostalgia, but also something different, something sharper. You realised with a jolt that you were smelling Koo’s cologne.

You went back to bed, nuzzled your face into the plushy’s furry belly, and dreamed of fluffy brown hair and bunny smiles.

Though with Mr Snuggles’ help you were able to sleep wonderfully, you were only able to do so for four hours before your alarm jolted you back into early reality. Honestly, you were sorely tempted to just ditch class, but it was Photography, and if you missed your regular dose of the cute boy in the front row then you thought you might just crumble into dust.

You dragged yourself out of bed, pulling on your softest oversized hoodie — a gift from Koo which, now that you thought about it, smelled like the same cologne that Mr Snuggles did. You flushed at the thought of him giving you one of his hoodies to wear, though you couldn’t say exactly why that image charmed you.

You stumbled into the lecture, arms full of textbooks because you knew you wouldn’t have the energy to return back to your apartment to retrieve the relevant materials for your next class later in the day. Your excellent plan was to crash in the library directly after this, have a two hour power-nap, and then make yourself get up in time for Calculus.

You barely had the energy to listen to the professor droning on and on about… the perfect lense, or whatever. You allowed yourself the indulgence of tuning out, resting your chin on your palm and gazing dreamily at the boy in the front row. He was taking notes, as per usual. What a good student! You praised him in your head. I bet he has the best handwriting.

Despite your best efforts, you fell asleep within ten minutes. You were woken as the class concluded by the clamour of students grabbing their materials and the scrape of chairs as your classmates stood up, leaving you behind — the only one half-splayed across the desk in front of you.

You jerked upright, grabbing your stuff in one hand as you tried to tug on your bag, eventually succeeding with much struggle, only to drop it all again as soon as you stood up. You whimpered, watching helplessly as your textbooks fanned across the floor. You saw one of them split along the spine as it landed on an open page.

That cost me two hundred dollars, you thought absently, and I just chucked it down like a bouncy ball.

Suddenly, you glimpsed someone crouching down and gathering them all up into a sturdy pile. As he stood up, your vision was full of fluffy brown hair, errant strands falling into star-filled doe eyes.

Oh. Oh no.

“H-Here you are,” He murmured, passing you the pile gently, making sure you were able to take the weight before leaving them in your arms. When he leaned close to you, you breathed in a scent that was oddly familiar, and yet new at the same time. As his hands receded, his skin brushed against yours for a second and you swear your vision blanked out.

“Thanks,” You whispered, your gaze so firmly focused on the floor that you didn’t notice his flushed cheeks.

As soon as you got to the library, you whipped out your phone, all tiredness banished from your system by that momentous experience. You had talked to him.

To: koo ✨

[8:47 AM]

koo i think im in love

From: koo ✨

[8:47 AM]

what

with who

To: koo ✨

[8:47 AM]

this boy in my photography class

he’s just so-

[8:48 AM]

i can’t even explain it

i dropped my textbooks and he picked them up for me and i stg i almost cried

From: koo ✨

[8:48 AM]

wait

seriously??

To: koo ✨

[8:49 AM]

yeah i cry at like the drop of a hat

From: koo ✨

[8:49 AM]

no-

cute

but i mean

that’s who you’re in love with?

To: koo ✨

[8:49 AM]

yeah?

From: koo ✨

[8:49 AM]

gray sweater

[8:50 AM]

big eyes

tall-ish

that’s him???

To: koo ✨

[8:50 AM]

OMG YOU’RE IN MY PHOTOGRAPHY CLASS AREN’T YOU

From: koo ✨

[8:50 AM]

WHAT

IM NOT

To: koo ✨

[8:50 AM]

OMGGGGGGG

YOU SAW HIM HELP ME SO YOU MUST BE IN MY CLASSSS

[8:51]

okay!

are you the frat guy who always comes in hungover???

no judgement

From: koo ✨

[8:51 AM]

To: koo ✨

[8:52 AM]

are you the guy who only ever wears knitwear???

From: koo ✨

[8:52 AM]

To: koo ✨

[8:53 AM]

…are you the professor?

From: koo ✨

[8:53 AM]

NO!!!!!

oh my god lets just meet up or something before i explode

To: koo ✨

[8:53 AM]

WAIT

ARE YOU SERIOUS????

From: koo ✨

[8:54 AM]

…you’re that excited to meet me?

To: koo ✨

[8:54 AM]

OF COURSE I AM

OH MY GODDDD

WHEN?

From: koo ✨

[8:54 AM]

now?

i can meet you at the campus coffee shop in like five minutes?

To: koo ✨

[8:55 AM]

five minutes???

that’s not enough time koo i have to go home and pick out something pretty to wear !!

From: koo ✨

[8:55 AM]

it doesn’t matter what you wear, you’re always beautiful to me

To: koo ✨

[8:56 AM]

you

you think im

b-beautiful

: ’ ))))))))))

From: koo ✨

[8:57 AM]

…

haha see you there!!

To: koo ✨

[8:57 AM]

GET BACK HERE WE HAVE TO TALK ABOUT THIS-

You sat on an empty table, fiddling with the tea bag tag which hung over the side of your mug. You had bought Green Tea as an effort to calm yourself down so you weren’t too anxious to meet Koo, but it hadn’t worked because you were impatient and sipped it too soon so now you were sat there nursing a burnt tongue like an idiot.

You knew it was irrational to be self-conscious. He already knew who you were, and seemed to like you, it was just you that was in the dark. You went over the possible people Koo could be, mentally cycling through the boys in your photography class. It was an annoyingly large class, which meant he would be anyone from the guy who smelled like Funyuns to-

Fluffy-haired boy strolled into the coffee shop and you let out an involuntary sigh. He seemed to be cheerful, a smile exposing his bunny teeth and making his cheeks bunch up adorably, with like, five different sets of dimples poked into them. You had never agreed more with the saying that dimples were caused by an angel’s kiss.

Well, at least I’ll have something nice to look at while I wait, you thought, just before all your thoughts suddenly tipped out of your head when you realised he was walking towards your table.

“Is this seat taken?” He grinned, before sliding into the seat across from you.

You whimpered, and his smile grew devastatingly wider.

“Hi,” He breathed, before his gaze flickered down to your mug of tea, clutched so tightly in your hands that you worried the ceramic might shatter. “You didn’t get hot chocolate? I thought you had a sweet tooth?”

“Uhm-” You choked, before forcing yourself to get a grip. How would Koo feel if he walked in here and saw you sitting with another guy? “I’m actually- I’m waiting for someone. Sorry.”

If it was possible — and it certainly seemed to be — the boy’s grin broadened even more, his eyes crinkling into adorable half-moons.

“Is that so? Is he your boyfriend?”

“No!” You blurted, before flushing profusely. The boy across from you seemed to be thoroughly enjoying the display. “I mean- uhm, I don’t know. Maybe? This is our- this is our first actual meeting.”

“Oh?” The boy tilted his head, “Really? How exciting.”

You hummed in agreement, eyes fixed on your slowly cooling beverage. You raised it to your mouth to take a hesitant sip and- nope, still too hot. You whined quietly, rubbing your sore tongue against the inside of your cheek to try and soothe it.

“Oh, sweets,” The boy murmured across from you, and you were too distracted to notice the nickname. He plucked the mug out of your hands and placed it on the other side of the table, as if he was trying to make sure it couldn’t hurt you anymore. “Are you okay? Do you want me to take you to the campus infirmary?”

“Wha- no, it’s okay,” You mumbled, lisping slightly on your burnt tongue and blushing when he cooed over you, “It’s- I’m waiting here for someone, and- I mean, I don’t even know your name-”

“It’s Jungkook,” He interrupted cheekily, deliberately ignoring the rest of your statement, “Some people call me Kookie, and really special people call me… Koo.”

Oh. Oh.

Fuck.

“Really special people?” You asked, your voice small, and not because of the burn.

“Well, people…” Jungkook- Koo paraphrased, tilting his head slightly, “I guess it would be more accurate to say… one really special person.”

“Really?” You breathed, and Jungkook leaned over the table, close enough that you could smell his cologne, the same scent embedded in the fabric of your hoodie- his hoodie.

“The most special person.” He murmured, the fervent emotion packed in each word speaking louder than any increase of volume could.

You had never been anyone’s most special person before, but, as you looked into Jungkook’s chocolate eyes, you started to believe you could almost taste it, sticky sweet on your lips. And when Jungkook eventually, finally coaxed your lips in a gentle kiss, you let him in, and found out that happiness tastes reassuringly honey-sweet.

#bts fanfiction #Yandere bts #soft yandere bts #yandere jungkook #soft yandere jungkook #bts fanfic #bts fic #bts imagines #bts x reader #bts scenarios #yandere kpop #bts jungkook x reader #bts jungkook #bts jungkook imagines #bts Jungkook fanfic #bts jeon jungkook

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incoherentbabblings · 3 years ago

Note

Hi!

I love your content, your love for TimSteph, and I was actually going to ask what you love so much about them. I, for extra credit for English, decided to write an analysis of Stephanie (and why I love her so much), but I just got into comics, and cannot really put my feelings for her in words ... which is odd, considering how much I love her and writing. Also, I was going to do a section on why TimSteph is narrative genius, and I needed help elaborating on that too.

Could you help me out, please? Thanks!

(I feel the need to mention that I have read quite a lot of comics with Stephanie in them, though not all. I'm not much of a comic book fan, but I'm really interested in the Batfamily!)

I'll be very happy to write out bullet points that you could talk about, and feel free to go through my ask and I'll babble/TimSteph meta tags for anything that you think may be worth discussing in your own words - there's like four or so years of stuff there to spark your brain.

HOWEVER!!!! Keep in mind though that much of what I have written is half based on textual evidence and half me just writing what I like/wish would crop up in canon.

For example, yes I like to draw comparisons between Tim being cold and Steph being warm, moon and sun and so on, but there's genuinely nothing in text to hint as this being an actual character trait or symbolism. If anything Tim's stated to be warm several times, more than Steph.

So, and I am sorry to be so blunt, but if I take your request in bad faith for a moment, don't use either directly or indirectly what I've written for your work. Especially without actually going and reading the arcs I talk about. A lot of the time it doesn't hold up under genuine textual scrutiny, and we want to be good academics here! There's Death of the Author and then there's me making crap up because I want to include it in a fanfic. Not the same thing! My blog is called IncoherentBabblings for a reason after all!

I will therefore say this: If you want to write about Steph as a character, I would use the below video as a point of reference. Using the below, you can then go into why she resonates with you the way she does, or why her relationship with Tim is so interesting to you.

youtube

If I were you: focus on her dynamic character development: cynical to idealistic. And use three points in her publication history to do this: her introduction in Detective Comics, War Games, and Batgirl. I am sorry to recommend War Games as something to read but it is important to her character. Use the Stephanie Brown Wiki to help!

That lends itself to a biography of her character, a look at her motivations and values, her role within the batfam, and so on. You can also use this to make comparisons with her peers, specifically Tim moving in the exact opposite direction development wise; Babs and Cass in their approaches to Batgirl; and the other Robins through her similar character progression as Dick, which in turn allows her to be a good mentor to Damian, and finally how her character arc runs perpendicular to Jason's. Does that make sense?

Anyway, let's get going! If I were to write an academic piece on Stephanie, these are the main points I would work through. In other words, this is what I would do. You probably will not need nor want to go into this level of depth, and you will want to make it much more personal about why she resonates with you, which may be different to why I love her. So don't worry about touching base with all of them. This is like... 10,000 word essay level stuff. And don't get overwhelmed. I've taken your request far too seriously is all.

Again, I can't write it for you! You gotta do the reading and writing I'm afraid.

...But I still wrote 1,500 words anyway. Gosh darnnit.

Steph’s Character Development

Always keep three points in her character history in mind – her aged 14/15 in her introductory arc in Detective Comics, her aged 16 in War Games, and her aged 18/19 in her Batgirl run.

How does she change? How does she grow as a character? What events caused these changes? Compare that angry 14-year-old trying to choke her father, to the 19-year-old crying happily on the roof. A lot happened between those two points! Outline the main plot beats.

Steph's Role as a Batfam Character:

Protagonist or Antagonist: Supporting Protagonist

Static or Dynamic: Dynamic (think of her character development - angry to alturistic; she softens in her life outlook and in the way she treats others as the years go by)

Minor or Major: Minor and we all mourn that fact :(

Foil or Symbolic: A foil to Tim Drake (and to a lesser extent the other Robins, specifically Jason Todd)

Importance of the character/Position in Society: Fourth Robin, third Batgirl, own superhero. Tim's girlfriend, Cassandra's best friend, one of many of Bruce's 'children'. Initially introduced just as a one-off character for a small arc in Detective Comics, brought back with the intention of being a supporting character to Tim Drake, and eventual love interest. Eventually gained enough popularity on her own terms to support her own solo comic, but has since returned to a supporting role. The character she supports, at the end of the day, is Bruce Wayne.

Motivation

What influences their decisions?: Stephanie's dynamic characterisation comes in here. Compare her motivations during her introductory arc, versus why she does what she does in War Games, versus why she dresses up at Batgirl - Stopping her father, getting Batman's approval, need for redemption.

What do they value?: Values emotional openness, vulnerability, second/third/fourth chances.

Goals/Hopes/Dreams: No long term goals/hopes/dreams in the domestic sense... Continue to be vigilante. Be respected by her peers. Continue to improve self worth through deeds. Graduate college?

What are their views: Views the justice system and police as corrupt, but still trusts in the inherent goodness of people. Focus is usually on the individual, rather than societal or structural.

Actions

Behaviour, Attitudes, Impact on Story and other Characters, Internal Struggle (Wants versus Needs): This is why I think you are best to look at three points in her story - Intro Arc, War Games, Batgirl. Focus on her Wants versus Needs - Steph's take a very long time to align, but they finally do in Batgirl.

Character development is usually driven by the conflict between what a character wants. The plot forces them normally to confront the fact that what they want is not gonna work out, and what they needed instead takes priority.

Everything usually goes tits up for Steph when she is in the driver's seat of the narrative because what she wants from a situation is rarely what she actually needs to happen. See every time she seeks Bruce's approval. She wants it. She absolutely does not need it. And only as Batgirl do we get that acknowledgement, which coincides with her being at the healthiest point in her life emotionally. Look at what she wants as Spoiler during her introductory arc, as Robin/Spoiler during War Games, and then as Batgirl. Why is she so unhappy in the former two? Why have her wants finally aligned with her needs with her time as Batgirl?

Character Traits

Personality: Cynical but perky. Sardonic but sincere. Think about how she changes over the time. This can be attributed to her different writers, but - for example - is there a universe reason for why Batgirl Stephanie is so much more socially awkward than Spoiler Stephanie?

Strengths & Weaknesses: Link these two together because Steph is a very good example where her strengths as a character can simultaneously be a weakness. Her determination can lead to her making ill conceived decisions. Her empathy can lead to her putting her trust in the wrong people. Her forgiving nature can lead to her being taken advantage of. Her temper, whilst landing her in hot water, can also just as often get her out of it.

Relationships

How do they interact with others: Focus on which characters pop up in all three arcs – Steph and her parents; Steph and Bruce; Steph and Tim. I am chucking Cass out the window here, sorry Cass, but if you’re focusing on these three arcs, Cass doesn’t really fit in.

How others view them: Conditional love/affection from her father and Bruce. Unconditional love/affection from Tim and her mother (though both are not without serious pitfalls).

How they view others: Stephanie has explicitly never loved her father. She has also never explicitly hated him either. What does that say about her? Look at her changing closeness with her mother. What changed between them, and again, what does that say about Stephanie? Crystal got sober, supported Stephanie through her pregnancy, Arthur was removed from their lives, Stephanie makes a conscious effort to be closer to her after returning ‘from the dead’, though continues to lie consistently to her. Stephanie admires Bruce, whilst also right from the get go insisting she does not answer to him. She never quite lets go of wanting that approval.

How does society view them: Her outsider role within the Batfam. She never quite belongs, and at points her closest relationships are actively discouraged from seeing her. Which Tim specifically never entertains. This outsider nature bites literally everyone in the butt during War Games. Her outsider status is still in place by the time Batgirl concludes, due to its largely self-contained nature as a book, but this is less being an outsider more having earned to right to operate independently. Trust has been given and earned.

Dialogue

What does she say and how: A teenage girl in New Jersey from a working class background has a very distinct voice. She does not mince words, nor does she hide what she is feeling. If she is happy, she will say so. If she is annoyed, she will say so. What she won’t do is ask for help when she needs it, due to her background formulating a need for her ‘to do things on her own’.

Think of famous/important Steph quotes from the three arcs I keep talking about – the excuse me if I don’t jump when you bark, the I really was part of the legend, the only variable you can control is yourself. These show how Steph views others and herself.

When I was writing I Would Have Loved You, I literally made a spreadsheet where I have picked out what I think are pertinent quotes from every New 52 issue featuring Tim or Steph along with a synopsis that explained what they were up to/what the main theme of the issue was. Not saying you should do the same because I’m just that goddamn anal when it comes to this sort of stuff, but the point is – look for quotes by/about Steph which highlight the above things we’ve talked about. You have thirty years to go through!

Author Intention

What purpose does this character serve?: A character that young female readers could get attached to – the every girl/girl next door archetype or a character that young boys could have a crush on – the kind of girl who’s into the same sort of stuff as you, I think Chuck Dixon once said of her, from her initial appearance. Fodder for Bruce and Tim’s man pain in War Games. Batgirl it’s a combination of filling the void for a female lead solo character in the batbooks, but also tonally taking on a much lighter and self-contained book that new readers could jump into very easily, directly compared to the more lore heavy Batman, Detective Comics, and Red Robin books.

What is the author trying to communicate: Steph’s character shows that determination can only get a person so far, a support system and doing things for the right reasons (again remember that want versus need argument) is the only way a person will genuinely succeed.

What is her main theme?: Balancing cynicism and idealism – doing acts for the right reasons, and discovering what these reasons actually are.

...

Is this even usable for anyone but myself? Possibly not!

Still... Go write! And good luck!

#ask and i'll babble #stephanie brown #tim drake #timsteph #dc #anon i am sorry if i misconstrued your intentions #but i hope if nothing else this helps you verbalise why you like steph and timsteph by extension #good luck for your writing!

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luvknow · 5 years ago

Text

anything for you | lee felix

genre: rich kid!felix x reader | rich kid au ; friends-to-lovers au ; food ; swearing warning ; alcohol warning ; drinking and driving warning ; abuse warning summary: felix’s family owns the largest restaurant franchise in the country and your family works under them. you two have spent your entire lives together and somehow you’ve turned into mini versions of your parents with a boss and secretary type relationship. it wasn’t until last year on his birthday when he tells you he loves you while drunk that your friendship dynamic dramatically changes, and it’s not for the better when he pretends it never happened. wc: 11.2k

You and Felix were two peas in a pod.

From the moment you two were born until your last months at university, you were tied in this relationship for life. Were you two dating? No, of course not! Were you two friends? Well…

Your friendship with Felix was complicated because it was kind of… bought. There was no way to put it lightly, that was simply the origin of your relationship. It all started when Felix’s rich ass CEO of a Dad hired your Dad to be his right hand man in all decision-making aspects of the company he ran. You thought of your Dad as a Chancellor to the King, which I mean was still a high position in the company, but your peers around you thought otherwise.

You attended all the same schools as Felix (thanks to his Dad’s connections), attended the same after school activities (also thanks to his Dad), and even attended the same overseas summer camps (thanks to his Dad who owned the plane that flew everyone). Even then, after being on the same level as Felix for over twenty years, everyone saw you as Felix’s Secretary who waited on his every word. As a kid, your Dad was transparent about how all the privileges you had were all because of Felix and his family and that you should always treat them with respect. And as an impressionable kid, of course you took that a little too literal.

Your Secretary title started in Pre-School when Felix was crying because he forgot his toy to take a nap with at home, so you offered yours. Those small, kind gestures turned into getting him drinks and snacks whenever he wanted, to tutoring him in subjects he had trouble with, to completing essays he didn’t want to complete, and you did it all without ever complaining.

So despite receiving all the same opportunities as all the other inheritance-dependent kids, you were the bottom-feeder of your entire grade.

“_____ ~” Felix whined while entering your apartment. “I’m hungry.”

You exited your bedroom fixing the last couple buttons on your dress shirt. You’re not surprised to see him in the least, as you’re used to him coming in whenever he pleased since he owned the other copy of the apartment keys. “I have food in the fridge.”

“I don’t want a huge meal before the shareholders meeting.”

“You know where the snacks are, what are you waiting for?”

“I just wanted to ask just in case.”

The excited boy wasted no time invading your pantry and grabbing a handful of fruit snack packets, some he stuffed in his dress pants pockets and some he immediately tore open. He made himself home by flopping on your couch, also known as his second bed, and scrolled through his rotation of dating apps while waiting for his dear friend to finish getting ready.

“Don’t lie down like that!” you nagged. “Your pants are going to get all wrinkly!”

Rolling his eyes, Felix sat up straight, to which you immediately fixed random strands of hair that strayed away from the rest of his slick-back style.

“What are you, my mom?” he mumbled, swatting away your hands.

“Don’t you know how important this meeting is? We could land our internships today.”

“Do you really think I need to worry about that?”

“I guess not… You don’t even want to try out another company for a semester? Scope out your partners?”

“That’s exactly why I shouldn’t be doing that. I’ll look so shady! You probably shouldn’t be thinking about doing that either.”

A small pout emerges from your lips. As much as you owe the Lees and their company your life, you’d like to think the possibility of freeing yourself from their financial shackles was high, even if it was for just one semester. But Felix was right - in order to avoid any spying controversies, it was probably best to not even think about another company. Basically, you were trapped with this company for life.

“Ready to go?” Felix broke the silence. He was the first to leave your couch and head for the door without even bothering to wait for you to catch up.

When you finished locking your front door, you caught Felix looking at your business casual outfit a little too closely. If you weren’t so quick with your reflexes, you would have bumped right into his oddly bulging chest (has he been working out lately?). Still, his foxy eyes scanned you up and down, slowly and intimately.

“Wh-What are you doing…?” you asked nervously. “Is my outfit too bland? It’s ugly, isn’t it? I can’t really glam up for a business meeting, you know.”

“Chill, why are you being hella defensive right now?” he teased. “No, you look good. Honest. Good enough to stand next to me, at least. I wouldn’t stand next to Father if I were you.”

“Thanks, I think.”

“You kind of fit that secretary stereotype you like so much. Especially since you’ll be following me around all day.”

“I do not!”

“Yeah, ok,” Felix tossed you the keys to his expensive black sports car, to which you were also covered as a driver by his insurance. For someone who owns several expensive cars, he sure hates driving them. “Shotty.”

“There’s only two of us…”

The car ride was mostly silent other than the deafening rap music that blared through the subwoofers. Felix could tell you were nervous depending on how talkative you were. If you were blabbering on about how you looked or something arbitrary for at least fifteen minutes, you were probably nervous about a date or maybe a quiz that was coming up in class. If you were silent, he knew that the matter was much more serious. Silence meant that you believed no matter what you did to change yourself or improve upon past mistakes, there was no hope and that whatever was coming was absolute.

“Don’t worry about today,” he reassured after reading your mind. “It’s not like you’re talking in front of hundreds of people at the meeting.”

“Easy for you to say, you’re used to this type of crowd.”

“Are you not? We have class with those good-for-nothing kids of theirs, it’s like the same thing!”

“It is definitely not the same thing! These people have power and they’re smart! The uni is full of idiots who got in with bribes!”

“And you don’t think our shareholders do their fair share of bribing?”

“Of course they do, and that’s what makes them even more terrifying, Felix! They have that kind of power to either buy my entire life or buy out and make sure I never see anyone’s faces again!”

“You say it like you haven’t been shackled to me for over twenty years.”

“That’s different ok, I was a commodity, I couldn’t change anything as a fetus.”

“And now you think you can?”

“I mean, I’d like to think so. Am I crazy?”

“No, not at all.” Gingerly, Felix patted your head like a little kid. “You’ll be just fine ~ I can even introduce you to the ones you want to talk to if you’d like.”

“That’s ok. I’d like to try on my own.”

He understood completely. How he wished he could have that little bit of freedom… To even think about leaving the company behind to work for someone else was blasphemous.

The shareholders meeting was a social event like no other - like, it might as well be a ball with all the people attending and all the press surrounding and being in the building. You pulled up to the normal valet guy who only chuckled at your shocked expression. Felix, on the other hand, wasn’t all that surprised and was rather annoyed at how something as simple as a meeting was getting this much attention.

After dodging all of the press and making it through several thresholds to reach the conference room, you helped Felix prepare for his opening speech.

“You seem more nervous than me,” Felix teased while you quickly smoothed out the wrinkles in his jacket.

“I'm nervous all the damn time.”

“Well, can you quit it before I start sweating? This outfit was expensive. Do you have my speech?”

Searching through your trusty bottomless bag that held everything from tips from your part-time at the cafe to snacks in case Felix got whiny, you pulled out a medium-sized notepad with his opening speech written on it.

“Really, _____? Hand written?”

“My sentences sound better when I write them down instead of typing it!”

“At least it’s legible.” Felix’s Dad announced over the microphone on stage that the meeting will begin shortly. He saw the both of you standing off to the side and waved happily, to which you both could only wave back. The boy in front of you sighed, and it’s the first time today he seemed only slightly nervous. He turned to you. “How do I look?”

How did the most handsome boy you’ve come to know look this morning? Dressed in navy with a white button-down, ears bejeweled and shining in the bright lights, his eyes and his smile sly and foxy, so of course to you he was the only one in the room who you had your eyes on because no one else could ever compare. That’s how it’s always been.

Gentle fingers startled Felix, only for him to realize you were fixing his monogrammed silver tie clip. “You look just fine.”

“‘Just fine’? Not the sexiest man in the entire world?”

“I’d hardly call you a man…”

“Welcome to the YONGBOK Inc. Shareholders Meeting,” greeted your Father while on stage. Felix noticeably cringed at the sound of his birth name slash company name. “We will begin this meeting with an opening remark from Mr. Lee’s son, Felix.”

“Go get ‘em, Tiger,” you whispered with two thumbs up.

A loud round of applause erupted from the audience filled with press and shareholders. Lee Felix was named one of the most influential people under twenty-five this year and has consistently landed spots on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list so yes, Felix was always highly anticipated as a guest to fashion shows and charity balls and even more so as a speaker for his future company. Though it was only less than a minute ago he was jittery with nerves, the second he stepped on stage in front of the podium, it was as if he was born to be a public speaker.

“Good morning, honored guests,” he began in his deep voice that startled unfamiliar guests..

His speech - your speech - wasn’t that long, since it was a simple welcome to all the rich people who gave the Lee’s their money. Regardless of its length, Felix somehow drifted his gaze towards the right where you stood. You, who always stood by him and was his friend through everything, stood at the sidelines giving him your unwavering support, even through this minor milestone. Despite this huge corporate building being the last place you want to be, still, you were here by his side.

In your eyes though, it looked like maybe his stage fright was worse than you expected, so you gave him two thumbs up again for reassurance. You couldn’t really tell what he was thinking because he seemed totally fine, in fact his execution was quite flawless, it was just… Why wouldn’t he look into the cameras? The stage lights that shined on him showcased the bright grin he gave when he saw how confused you looked.

“We will continue to work hard together so that YONGBOK will continue being the best restaurant franchise in the country,” was the motto of the company and how Felix ended the speech. With a deep bow and a wink for fan service, he exited the stage.

He fell into your arms clutching his heart. “Ugh, that was so scary!”

“You did fine,” you mumbled, quickly pushing him off before any cameras caught you. Still, he swung an arm around your shoulders unapologetically.

“All right, let’s ditch this popsicle stand.”

“You know we can’t do that or our Fathers will kill us.”

“You think I haven’t died and resurrected like a rising phoenix dozens of times?”

“Leave if you want, it’s your suicide.”

“You won’t come with me?” the handsome boy pouted.

“I’m not actually your secretary, you know.”

“I know, but I’ll be so lonely… Did you at least bring a snack?”

Felix decided to stay when he realized you weren’t kidding about wanting to sit through the entire meeting. Your right ear was focused on all the questions shareholders and the press had while your left ear focused on the child you were babysitting playing with the chocolate bar wrapper. Eventually the conflicting sounds merged into one when the lack of caffeine in your veins made it hard to concentrate for long hours.

“Bet you wished you left with me a couple hours ago, huh?” Felix teased once everything was over.

“Whatever. The important thing is that it’s over now.”

“Are you going to go talk with some of the shareholders?”

That was the original plan - to land an internship at a different company and slowly but surely escape the bubble that is the Lees’ world, but what was the use of making life harder on yourself if you’ll just be seen as a spy? What was the use in anything anymore when your life was determined the moment you came out of the womb?

You shook your head tiredly. “Nah, I think I’ll save that for another time.”

Felix linked his arm with yours like you were the gentleman and he was the lady. The warmth of another body so close to yours was only familiar when it was his, and you wished your body was unbiased and rejected anything within a five feet radius. “You wanna hang out with me that much?”

“Who said I’m hanging out with you? I’m driving you home.”

“No come on, let’s hang out today! Neither of us have class and when was the last time it was just the two of us?”

By ‘just the two of you’, he meant when was the last time you and him hung out without any business involved? When was the last time you and him had pizza together after a long week of midterms and studying, or the last time he picked you up from your part time at the cafe to have a cup of coffee, or the last time you talked about anything other than being ordered around by the Prince himself?

The answer to that question was last year on his birthday when he got too wasted and you didn’t have the strength to carry him up his multi-story mansion, so instead you carried him up to your humble apartment and let him crash on your bed the whole weekend (insisted upon staying the whole weekend because all the puking made him ‘weak’ and ‘dehydrated’).

Truth be told, you loved Felix’s company, whether it was business or personal. The hesitation was because you wondered if he truly felt the same way, especially since he never spoke about that night on his birthday. That night, a lot was said, but nothing was ever confirmed, so you were left in limbo while Felix managed to live in ignorant bliss.

It was better this way.

“I guess it’s been a while…” you trailed off.

“It’s been forever, love. Can we go to your cafe? I’m really craving the strawberry milk latte thing.”

“Anything for you, Felix ~”

“That’s what I like to hear.”

“Felix,” the haunting voice of his father echoed from behind. “Come here for a second -”

“That’s our cue!” The wild blond took you by the hand and sprinted out the conference room doors before his dad could catch him.

As if already predicting the time of events for the shareholders meeting, the valet already had the sports call pulled up and tossed you the keys for maximum efficiency.

“Hey, you’re hand-eye coordination is getting better!” Felix teased while hopping in the front seat.

“And your fear for your dad is not.”

“It’s not fear, it’s pure distaste. Completely different.”

The short ride to your cafe was anything but quiet as Felix filled you in on his most recent Tinder match. The story was something along the lines of ‘she was hot, but kind of stupid’, and you weren’t exactly sure what came after that because, well, you didn’t care. Hearing about the guy you were in love with slash your childhood friend slash the guy whose family bought out your family’s current dating app situation wasn’t exactly the most ideal setting, but hey, it beats sitting in that conference room for any longer.

The cafe was surprisingly not as busy around lunch time, even though it was Friday. Other than a few customers, the only other person in the cafe was your coworker Wooyoung who was busy dramatically singing to whatever drama OST was playing over the intercom.

“Are you making it?” Felix asked, referring to his strawberry latte.

“I wasn’t planning on it since I’m not working.”

“... Can you?”

“Are you serious!?”

“The last time someone other than you made my drinks, they tasted watery!”

He wasn’t wrong - a lot of the baristas here were a bit lazy with the job. You and Wooyoung were among the very few who genuinely cared for the cafe, the menu, and its customers. You supposed you could take a moment to step away from Felix - you sort of missed the barista behind the counter, anyways.

“Sit tight,” you told Felix, who obeyed happily at his favorite table.

Wooyoung with his cutesy cheeky grin chucked one of the ugly brown work aprons right at your face, to which you only whipped right back.

“I’m not working and you know that!”

“Can’t a guy dream to have the same shift with his favorite coworker? What are you doing here then?”

“Making a strawberry latte.”

“For yourself or for His Highness over there?”

“Do you even have to ask?”

Wooyoung knew all too well what your relationship was like with Felix and that was because he was also one of the elite, also known as a trust fund son. Wooyoung and Felix were from the same side of a coin, reigning from families whose net worth could buy out entire towns. The circle of the elite had a lot of members, but it was tight-knit, so everyone knew everything about everyone else. You were included in Felix’s dossier.

“You know, _____, you are your own person,” Wooyoung tisked as he hovered over you making the fruity drink. It was as simple as pouring milk over some strawberry compote (Felix liked it when there was extra compote) and shaking vigorously.

“You telling me that whenever I come in with him totally makes it more valid than the last time.”

“You know I’m just looking out for you.” His soft fingers gently pinched your cheeks. “You’re so sour today, I kind of like it.”

“Aren’t you known for liking people who have zero interest in you?”

“Exactly, so you better watch your attitude or I’ll steal you away from Mr. Lee Felix ~”

“You’re so weird!” Even so, Wooyoung stole a kiss on your bruised cheek before helping the customer at the counter. The aftermath left your face burning up, even though you were used to his flirtatiousness by now.

Of course Felix saw the entire interaction. Though he tried to hide behind his phone, he made sure to still have a view of whatever you and that spoiled ‘I-own-a-yacht’ Wooyoung were doing. You were much different around him than you were with that cheeky bastard behind the counter. With Felix, you were strict, quiet, and pouty, but with Wooyoung you were able to smile more and joke around and even laugh when you flicked whipped cream in his hair. In those short five minutes, that was a type of you he hasn’t been able to see since high school.

But now? You were so cold and distant. He could barely hang out with you without it seeming like it was some business meeting. What changed?

Felix watched you walk back to him holding his pink drink with your cheeks to match its color.

“I didn’t know you two were so close,” he said bitterly after you both exited the cafe.

“We work together, of course we’re close. You’re welcome, by the way.”

You’ll take his happy humming as he inhaled the latte as a thank you. “You talk about how much you hate some of your coworkers all the time!”

“I guess I do… but he’s different.”

“Of course he is…”

The handsome and pouty boy beside you did his best to ignore your accusing glare. “Do you have some beef with him, or something.”

“No,” he said simply in between gulps. “I just don’t like him.”

“You don’t like any boy I talk to.”

“Exactly.”

“So what happens when I really like someone? Do they need your ‘Lee Seal of Approval’?”

“Yup.”

You sighed heavily. “Why do you enjoy making my life so hard?”

“Because I love you, that’s why!”

You couldn’t count on all your fingers and toes how many times Felix has said ‘I love you’ since his birthday party. With his special day coming up again, the words hit harder than usual, even when you knew he was joking, but no ‘I love you’ hurt more than the first time he said it last year before he passed out on your bed.

Speaking of which, “Sooo ~ Guess what next week is ~?” Felix sang cheekily after hopping in the car.

“Uh, midterms week?”

“No ~”

“Buy one get one free soju at the karaoke place?”

“No…”

“Oh wait, isn’t it Han’s birthday next week?” He knew you were trying to push his buttons, but it clearly worked by the way he was glaring at you. “Yeah, that must be it.”

“So mean…”

“Are you two throwing a joint party again?”

“Yeah, but I think we’re skipping the club scene and throwing it at his house instead.”

“Wow, the Lee Felix is tired of the club scene?” you scoffed. “Never thought I would see the day.”

“Maybe it’s just my eyesight getting worse - I’d like to see who I’m hitting on for once.” One sharp stab in your heart. “Will you help me plan?”

Did you really have any other choice? “Of course.”

“Yes ~ This’ll totally top last year’s party!”

You sure hoped so, and you hoped you wouldn’t remember a single moment of it.

Planning for the party didn’t start until a couple days before the big date. Since Jisung was hosting, it was Felix’s responsibility to come up with all the decor and the theme and literally all the smaller bits and pieces of the party.

“Honey, I’m home ~” Felix sang as he walked into your apartment. An aroma of fresh spices and cooked meat and roasted vegetables hit his nose upon entering. “Whoa, are you cooking!?”

“We can’t plan on an empty stomach,” you stated the obvious. Immediately, a bowl of rice and the fixings was handed to the grinning boy.

“I love it when you cook. I haven’t eaten your cooking in a while.”

“I didn’t know you liked my cooking,” you blushed. “I haven’t cooked for you that often.”

“It’s because we’re both always so busy or we just eat the restaurant’s food when we’re lazy.” A happy hum came from his lips. “You have a mad talent for this, you know.”

“Do I?”

“Of course! The Boy with the God Tongue himself said so!” Being the future heir of the country’s largest restaurant franchise meant ridiculous chef-related nicknames, to which Felix enjoyed whole-heartedly. “You know this means I’m never going to let you leave YONGBOK.”

“Can you stop, you’re so embarrassing, it’s not that amazing!”

“You stop! Quit undermining your talents.”

“If it’s so good, what do you like about it?”

“For one, there’s tons of balance between the flavors. It’s also not as salty, which is what some of the chefs in some locations are having trouble with lately. But the best part is that it feels like home when I eat your cooking.”

“Like home? Like… as if your in-house chef was cooking it?”

Felix chuckled cutely. “No, I mean it feels like someone who loves me very much made this with lots of care.”

You’re too stunned to say anything right away. It felt as if Felix caught you in his trap and was forcing you to admit something that he knew from the very start. But now was not the time nor was it the place. As a response, you turned away and chugged the rest of your glass of water.

“Right,” you cleared your throat awkwardly. “G-Glad you liked it.”

Felix wondered why you wouldn’t look at him. “S-So, let’s get started?”

You took a bowl of food for yourself and refilled Felix’s before settling down at the table. “Do you have an idea for a theme?”

“Ok, hear me out - casino themed?”

“Isn't that underage gambling? Sounds super illegal to me.”

“Right, right… Ok, how about, uh, a masquerade?”

“Not bad, but a little cliche, no?”

“But it’s so sexy! Classy clothes, bejeweled masks -”

“Choreographed waltzing?”

“Yes! For the first half of course, then we’ll probably bump the real shit after a couple of drinks.”

“Hm, I actually like that.” You entered the theme into your notes. “Cool, we have a theme down. Now for all the decoration…”

That itself took about an hour. Imagine, talking about banners and balloon arches, and personalized masks for a whole hour with the most indecisive human being alive. How he’s expected to make major decisions for a multi-million dollar company one day, you’ll never know.

“Ugh,” you were over it, at least for another hour. You couldn’t take comparing different shades of gold and different grades of champagne anymore. Your couch was supposed to be your safe space away from Felix, but he followed you like a puppy and laid his head on your lap.

“This weekend is going to be so much fun! Did you get me a gift yet ~?”

“Uh, maybe…”

“What is it?”

“It’s a surprise, silly.”

“Can I at least get a hint?”

“Probably the cheapest gift you’ll get.”

“Hey.” Felix silenced any doubt you had about your gift by taking one of your hands in his and holding it over his chest. He closed his eyes, tired from the day, tired by your constant doubts, tired of it all. “You know I don’t care about that kind of stuff when it comes to you.”

“I know, but I do.”

“Well, don’t. My favorite gifts have always been from you.”

“Even more than the diamond chain from Chan?”

“... Your gifts are my favorite after that one.” Your free hand poked his freckled cheek, causing him to laugh and smile brighter than the sun. Lying here with you made him happy. “I miss hanging out with you like this.”

“We hang out all the time!”

“Not like this. We never just chill out together and not worry about anything. We’re always worrying about something, especially since we started uni.”

“Uni sort of defines our future, so of course there’s tons to worry about.”

“Not for me. My life has been predetermined. If you think about it, uni doesn’t define your future, either.”

“I wish you didn’t tell me that,” you groaned. “You’re so right. What’s the point when the two of us are just going to take over our Father’s positions, anyways!?”

“Does our future together sound that miserable to you?” he teased. You wished he didn’t word it that way.

“Not miserable, but doesn’t it suck that we don’t have that sort of freedom? You and I have had our lives predetermined since birth!”

“Perhaps it was fate that you would be my Chancellor and I would be your King,” Felix snickered.

“Call it whatever you want, but where’s the joy we could get from spontaneity and disorder?”

“Good point. But I think you and I will find that joy just fine.”

“You think so?”

“Mhm. Life will always be a joy if I’m with you.” A tired smile spread across his lips. “You and I make a disorderly pair.”

You and him were definitely a disorderly pair. It was like you two were in a modern-day forbidden friendship that was only seen in royal fairy tales. Felix was the Prince, the apple of everyone’s eye, the boy with the highest ranking just below the King. You were the lowly common person who devoted their life to the castle and serving the royal family. Somehow, even with the drastic gap between your social classes, you both found each other and became inseparable.

Through childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood, the time spent together naturally formed your feelings for Felix to nothing less than love. You were the number one witness of seeing him laugh, smile, cry, and scream through all his happiness, sadness, and anger. You were the only one who knew the exact number of freckles that dusted his cheeks. You knew what specific snacks he wanted for certain craving occasions, his favorite orders at every restaurant, how he liked his instant ramen (with egg, American cheese, and green onions), and especially his cafe drink orders. When they say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, you supposed that was especially true for Felix.

After over twenty whole years together, how the fuck were you supposed to avoid falling in love? How were you supposed to look at Felix and feel with your whole chest that you were not madly in love with his beautiful face and his kind heart? When Felix told you he loved you with slurred words on his birthday last year, how were you supposed to let that go and live on like you didn’t cry in the shower for a whole month afterwards?

You put the blame for the disorder in this messed-up friendship all on Felix, but you couldn’t help but clean it up and do your best to keep it together. So when he forgot he said those magic words, you did your best to forget them, too, but the best you could do was bury the memory away and cover it up with work and school. It wasn’t the most ideal way to deal with the issue, you knew that, but the important part was that it was working even if it was just a little bit.

Felix was the first to wake up the next morning. You didn’t move a single muscle and ended up sleeping upright since he used you as a pillow. Still, your hand was in his and the other tangled in his messy blond hair and truly, being here with you was the only place that felt like home.

The day of the party was filled with chaos on your end, as you had to wake up at 6:00 am just to make it to Jisung’s pool house in time to set up the decorations for the joint birthday party. You ended up directing all the crews to where the cocktail tables needed to be set up, where the instagram photobooth should go, and where the Michelin-star chefs were going to set up for dinner. The most important part was the dance floor, which would be clean with nothing but some shoe scuffs for the first couple of hours and probably stained with different colors of liquor by the end of the night.

By noon you were totally wiped out having a stomach full of only coffee and a granola bar. The worst part was that you didn’t get a chance to buy a mask yet and would probably have to settle for some cheap recycled paper with sequins and feathers glued on it from the birthday party store down the block.

But as if the Gods’ translated your feelings telepathically to Felix, your Prince in shining armor came to the rescue with a sandwich, more coffee, and something in a matte black gift bag. The gesture, though small, made your cheeks burn the brightest of pinks. It was your first time seeing and talking with Felix since he left the comfort of your lap a couple of nights ago. Although you were unsure of yourself (as with any situation, am I right?), the Prince didn’t seem so phased.

“I figured you could use a pick-me-up,” he grinned brightly, handing you all the goods.

“You are a blessing,” you sighed, chugging the iced coffee. “What’s in the black bag?”

“It’s a surprise. Open it.”

“I thought today was your birthday?”

“It’s nothing big, I promise!”

You shot him a skeptical look, but opened up the gift regardless. Inside was an intricately bejeweled mask for tonight, colored perfectly to match your outfit.

“I went to your apartment because I thought you’d be there,” Felix began shyly. “I went to your room and saw your entire outfit laid out, but no mask, so I figured you didn’t have one yet. I bought one to match your outfit and to match mine! Mine looks exactly like that, but black.”

“You really didn’t have to,” you pouted, though staring at the shiny jewels adoringly. It was gorgeous and you never thought in your lifetime you could own anything so glamorous. The gesture lifted an extremely loaded weight off your shoulders and you couldn’t help but hug the birthday boy as a thank you. “You’re the best, thank you.”

“Anything for you, love.”

“Also, please stop going into my bedroom.”

“What, afraid I’m going to raid your panties?”

“Yes.”

“That’s fair.”

Felix spent the rest of the day helping you make the pool house perfect since it was also technically his job as the co-host. Holding the ladder while you hung up crystal decor was reminiscent of past Christmas parties that his family hosted. Your two families would come together and prepare the cookies, the eggnog, and the presents for the whole morning before the big party that started around dinner time, and you and Felix were in charge of the Christmas tree. He’s not too big on heights, so he always made you hang the ornaments on the top layer. It was a very adult networking and old people gambling games type of party, so you and Felix would always sneak off into his basement and play video games or watch corny movies with a stolen tray of sugar cookies.

The Christmas before uni was probably the last one where you two felt like kids and didn’t have to worry about what kinds of feelings would get in the way of your beautiful friendship.

“Ugh, my calves are burning,” you whined on your way down from the ladder. Your legs gave out on the second step down and the weight of your tired body pulled you down, causing you to drop to your death from a mere five feet above.

Luckily, your Prince had quick reflexes and caught you bridal style. As kids, it was surprising when Felix could carry anything even half his weight with his twiggy arms, but the fact that he could hold you without struggling or even breaking a sweat was the closest you’ve ever experienced a miracle.

A gentle, handsome smile came from his lips. “You ok?” he asked in his deep voice.

No, you’re definitely not, but lying was ok in this situation. “F-F-Fine! I am fine!”

“Are you sure?”

“Y-Yes! Uh, you can put me down now…!”

“Hm, but I kind of like holding you like this.” You hit his rock-hard chest lightly, to which he recoiled dramatically before placing you down gently. “Is that how you thank your hero!?”

“Thank you, My Hero.”

“That’s more like it.”

It wasn’t until around dinner time when you left Felix alone to be in charge of guiding all the caterers to their cooking spots while you sped home to get ready as fast as you could. You didn’t want to leave Felix in charge for more than an hour, otherwise there would be more room for error.

You must have had such little faith in him because he did as was told without any issues and was done well before the party was going to start. He took the down time to put on his satin black suit and fix his blond hair before putting on the matching mask. While looking in the floor-to-ceiling mirror, of course he admitted to himself that he would be the sexiest one at the party, but something about the view didn’t seem right. He didn’t have you beside him hyping him up like always. The view in the mirror was lonely without you.

“Good job with the chefs!” you called into the dressing room unannounced.

Felix could see you jogging in wearing the full outfit he saw on your bed this morning, now complete with the mask he gifted you in the reflection of the mirror. The view of you was stunning, so much to the point that the Prince himself was too afraid to turn around and look at you with his own eyes. You reminded him of the story of Medusa, who would turn men into stone if they dared to look at you, and Felix thought that he was well past that point, already frozen in place with his jaw dropped and hands fixated on his crooked tie.

Luckily, you didn’t seem to notice as you stepped in between him and the mirror. The feel of your knuckles brushing up against his chest broke him free of his frozen state, causing him to hitch his breath in his throat. It was very un-Felix-like to be this nervous, especially before an event that circled around him, but perhaps it was his sobriety that made him jittery.

“You good?” you reciprocated after a long moment of silence.

Prince Felix cleared his throat before speaking. “Yeah.”

“Nervous?”

“I guess so.”

“What do you have to be nervous about other than being the center of attention in front of hundreds of people?” you teased lightly.

“It’s not like I know everyone, though.”

“What do you mean? You and Han invited all the people you normally party with.”

“Yeah, but it’s not like I’m friends with all of them. I don’t hang out with them before 10:00 pm.”

Even behind the mask, you could tell his nerves were sincere. “Are you having regrets about this party?”

“I wouldn’t say regrets… I don’t know. I’m sorry, I know you put a lot of work into this.”

“Do you not want to go -”

“No! No, I want to go.” To ditch a party you worked on for forty-eight hours would be like slapping you in the face and he knew that. But he also knew if he said yes, you would follow him wherever he’d go in a heartbeat because that’s how much you loved him. He cleared his throat once more. “Will you stay with me?”

You raised a brow, unsure if you heard correctly. “Stay with you?”

“As in, will you stay by my side tonight?”

“You want me by your side the whole night?” Oh, how the tables have turned, in which Felix with his blushing cheeks couldn’t look you in the eyes as he nodded shyly. It was hard to believe what you were seeing with your own eyes and you wondered if you were dreaming. “Ok.”

“Really?”

Softly, you straightened his mask. “Anything for you, birthday boy.”

The anxiety from the claustrophobia of the party was replaced with the thought of being with you the whole night, but this is how he’d rather be. No longer did he want to stay in this room he filled with bad energy, so he took you by the hand and led you back to the main room where guests quickly filled in. Anxiety filled his chest again and you felt it through his hand squeezing yours tightly, as if afraid you would let go and slip away into the crowd where he’d never see you for the rest of the night. You’re not sure what’s gotten into him and you didn’t want to make it worse, so you led him to the tables of food hoping he could fill the emptiness in hopes of loosening up a little.

Even while eating food, Felix refused to let go of your hand, so you had to act as his free hand and feed him gourmet finger foods.

“You’re even more of a baby on your birthday,” you scoffed.

“But you love babying me, right?” he teased.

“I don’t know if ‘love’ is the right answer…”

The beginning of the night was nothing short of energy-draining as every single guest came up to greet Felix on his birthday and greeted you second. It was crazy that even in a room full of hundreds of peers, the crowd was still able to distinguish the birthday boys from everyone else, but you supposed it was easy because who else was blond and this handsome? The same way you looked at Felix, everyone else also had their eyes on him because he was truly that stunning in a crowded room.

It was occasions like these when you felt most out of place. You only ‘belonged’ here because Felix was your ticket in, but you would never become one of the elite. You didn’t have all the luxury of buying a new outfit or new jewels for every occasion like everyone else here. You were a simple person in your humble apartment living your predetermined life and getting by without any conflict, all thanks to him. That was what made you believe for twenty years that you had no right to fall for Felix the way you did - you were nothing more than the King’s hired Chancellor.

Even so, when the whole room was looking at him, he only looked at you.

The next song was a common waltz song that was played at every masquerade party on the planet. With a hop in his step, you found the birthday boy in front of you bowing with his hand still in yours.

“Will you dance with me?” he asked dramatically like he was playing a character.

“Why, of course, Your Highness.”

Waltz dancing was definitely not the first talent you’d think of while wondering what Felix was good at, but to your surprise, it was like he’d been taking classes for years. You knew little-to-nothing about it yourself, but it was easier when your date took the lead and you didn’t have to think, just follow. It was a ride, honestly, and you couldn’t stop yourself from giggling, even when the dance finished with Felix dipping you, faces close and noses barely touching.

You hardly noticed his eyes shift to your lips in the midst of all the giggles. “When did you learn to do that!?”

“Last night,” he admitted sheepishly. “Are you impressed?”

“Very.”

“Then those three hours of Youtube tutorials were worth it.”

Your predicted cycle of food, dancing, alcohol, and back to food was correct. Several rounds lasted several hours to the point where you were at the perfect amount of tipsy, but still able to navigate, although if any more rounds of alcohol were going to happen, you might be in trouble. Keeping up with the birthday boy was so hard!

But you didn’t mind, because the poison made you forget about how much you didn’t belong there and swept any overreaction to Felix’s affection under the rug, though it was getting harder to do the latter, as each shot meant closing the distance between you and him. Somehow, you went from holding his hand to his hand never leaving your waste, with your bodies keeping close contact, a feeling you’ve always been familiar with even when sober, but this time was different.

“So,” he began in the middle of the dance floor. “When do I get my gift?”

“How about after your birthday cake?”

“Birthday cake?”

On cue, the lights dimmed and the music stopped. Jisung found his way next to Felix and all the chefs rolled out a giant tiered cake with candles on it, cueing all the guests to sing happy birthday. You made sure to keep the design simple, but the flavors immaculate and matching the boys’ palates because that was the most important part. Even from afar, you could smell the chocolate.

You tried to step away from him so that he and Jisung could have the spotlight together, but even then he didn’t want you to leave. He squeezed your side a little tighter, a silent gesture that said, ‘please don’t go.’

By now, you were starting to sober up a bit and that was a bad sign because now you were realizing that this whole night would be forgotten tomorrow, just like last year. Still, you stayed by his side because that’s what he wanted.

Why it had to be you, you’ll never know, but the feeling was too right to question it.

At the end of the song, the birthday boys blew out the candles and the cheers deafened your ear drums. What shocked you next was the feeling of soft lips on your cheek.

“Thank you,” Felix whispered with so much adoration. “For everything.”

You’ll never be able to recover from tonight. “Why are you like this all of a sudden? Have you had too much to drink?”

A cute giggle escaped his lips. “No, I’m fine. This day feels extra special, that’s all. You’re the reason.”

Felix was such a smooth honey talker when there was a little something swimming in his bloodstream. You should know better not to take these words to heart, but you can’t help it when they’ve all you’ve ever wanted to hear. A repeat of last year was bound to happen any second.

You did your best to avoid the compliment. “Do you want your gift now?”

“Ooh, yes!”

The gift was hidden in the room you find him in earlier today. You were too embarrassed to set it up next to the gift table that was dressed in bags with brands like Cartier and Gucci, so you stashed it away from the rest. The bouncy and excited boy had the widest grin on his face, impatiently waiting for you to present him with what you had.

“Close your eyes,” you demanded.

Felix held out his hands with his eyes closed and expected something small, like a watch or a cupcake or some plush toy that he could strap on his keychain, but instead nearly stumbled forward holding something as heavy as a textbook.

“Ok, open your eyes.”

He wasn’t too far off, actually. In his hands was a thick, heavy book titled “Felix & _____” that you printed out on an embossed label maker. Inside were infinite pages of pictures, stamps, receipts, travel brochures, foreign currency, movie tickets, anything and everything from most if not all the memories you spent together over the past twenty years. The first few pages were filled with old film pictures and polaroids you had to steal from your parents and the later pages progressively got more crowded with trinkets and things when you two were old enough to hang out on your own.

For a while, Felix was silent as he flipped through all the memories. There wasn’t a smile on his face, no tears streaming down his cheeks, in fact he was emotionless and now you were confused. He told you he didn’t care about money or the cost of gifts when it came to you, but…

“You hate it,” you stated rather than asking.

Felix looked up at you, completely sobered up, with the most incredulous expression. “Of course not,” he reassured softly. “I love it. So much. You saved all of this…?”

“I saved every receipt that wasn’t smudged with barbecue sauce or oil and every movie ticket since the start. I had boxes full of it and I didn’t know what to do, but I knew I didn’t have the heart to throw it away, so I made you a scrapbook. It took forever, but luckily your family’s historian captured a lot of the earlier stuff.” Felix was listening, but his eyes were fixated on the last page, where you pasted a single picture of a selfie you two took just a couple days ago. “Happy birthday, Felix.”

Flipping through the scrapbook made him realize that yes, so much has changed between the two of you. There’s so much growth and care and love in between the pages and the fine lines that isn’t seen unless you look for it. As he looked at you, with your cheeks dusted scarlet and wearing your heart on your sleeve, perhaps him pretending he didn’t tell you he loved you last year was what was slowly drifting you away from him, because how were you going to deny to his face that you didn’t love him, too?

Perhaps it was best you would admit it to him on your own time. For now, he hoped a gentle kiss on your forehead would push you a little bit.

His rose petal lips left your forehead tingling. “You’re the best. Thank you.”

When Felix tried to close the gap in between, you took a large step back. You couldn’t look him in his eyes and now he’s confused and his heart hurts.

“Why do you keep doing that?” you asked.

“Doing what?”

“Holding my hand, holding me, kissing me…”

“Oh, I thought you were ok with all of that.”

You take a deep breath. You can’t let last year repeat itself. “You’re wrong.”

“I’m wrong?”

“You can’t just do that whenever you feel like it.”

“Do what!?”

“Play with my feelings!” You took another breath to calm you down and prevent anymore tears that were about to pool. “I have feelings, Felix. You can’t just use me whenever you feel like it and take it all back like it never happened the next morning!”

“I have feelings, too. How the fuck else was I supposed to deal with the night I told you I love you and you didn’t say it back?”

You’re left stunned and speechless. Felix just admitted to you that he once told you he loved you. He didn’t have to say when for you to know that he was talking about the inebriated self on your bed mumbling those three words as you tucked him in on his birthday last year.

“You didn’t say it back and I thought you didn’t feel the same, so I pretended to forget all about it. But now I know you feel the same,” he begged desperately. “I just know. Tell me I’m wrong, _____. Tell me I’m wrong to think that after all these years together, I think you fell in love with me the same way I fell in love with you.”

You couldn’t say anything. You couldn’t admit that he was right because he was drunk then and he’s still a little intoxicated now. But even if he’s right, even though you both knew how much you loved every cell of Felix, what if all this sweet talk was brewed by the mix of drinks that settled in his core? What if he forgets again tomorrow and you’re left in a worse state than you were last year? What if the alcohol just jogged last year’s memory that was stored deep in his cortex that only tequila was able to unlock?

The more you tried to make an excuse for it, the more ridiculous it sounded...

When you didn’t say anything right away, Felix was sure if he had his ribs broken that it would hurt less than the pain he felt in his chest right now. But that wasn’t your fault - nothing was ever your fault. This was all his doing because that’s what Felix did best - screw everything up.

The blond’s once hurt expression turned to stone before he dropped the scrapbook onto the cushioned chair next to his belongings.

“My mistake then,” he muttered before leaving you alone in the room.

“Felix, wait -” but it was too late, he was already out of the room to do something stupid to forget what just happened.

You ran after him, but the party room was so loud and dark and filled to the brim with guests that you couldn’t find him. In a room full of people, you were always able to find Felix no matter what, but it’s like he changed the makeup of the atmosphere to make sure that wouldn’t happen again for the rest of the night. You tried looking for blond locks from high ground, you tried snaking your way on the dance floor, you even checked the private rooms and men’s bathrooms in the whole house and none of them worked. You were afraid that after all the heartbreak, you wouldn’t see him again for a long while.

You bumped into Jisung in an empty hallway, who seemed out of breath like he was running a marathon just now.

“You have to come with me,” he gasped in urgency.

“What happened?”

“It’s Felix. He’s about to race Wooyoung.”

Those five words sounded like a terrible ad-lib in the newspaper, but when you followed Jisung to the front of the pool house, lo and behold half of the guests were gathered around the two boys who looked like they were about to get into a fist fight. In Felix’s hand, you could see that he was holding the keys to his sports car that was already parked out front.

Wooyoung’s the first to see you run to them from the crowd, with Jisung following behind you. “Hey, _____. Can you tell Prince Charming here that I’m not about to race him and go to jail?”

“That’s because you’re a pus -”

Jisung held Wooyoung back before he could get a swing in and you stepped in between. This was the first time you got a good look at his face, which was tear-stained and flushed red, all because of you.

“What are you doing!?” you muttered harshly.

“Trying to understand what you see in this guy. It’s not his looks, or his brains. Can’t be his car either, but I just wanted to prove my prediction just in case.”

His breath smelled like freshly poured alcohol. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Am I ridiculous, though? I think I might be onto something when I said there’s something that you see in him.”

“There’s nothing, so can you please give me your keys so we can talk inside?”

“I don’t want to talk to you anymore.”

Ouch. “Ok, we won’t talk. Let’s do something else -”

“I don’t want to do something else with you. I want to race and kick his ass.”

“You want to crash and burn that badly?” Wooyoung screamed over Jisung’s shoulders. “Fine, let’s drive!”

The crowd cheering only boosted Felix’s ego more, so he broke free from your wall and walked towards his car.

“Felix, don’t do this!” you cried out desperately, and for a second you could see the hesitation, but it was easily overcome.

“If you don’t want to be here, then go home. I don’t need you.”

The crowd oohed in unison and your left in the middle of the circle humiliated, watching the boy you loved the most get into his car and prepare to race your coworker. There’s a myriad of scenarios that fly through your mind of what could go wrong and you’re not sure if you should stay for the mess of the aftermath. But Felix said it himself that he didn’t need you, so maybe you should follow his advice and go home.

If something were to happen to him and you weren’t there to pick up the pieces and mend them back together, you would never forgive yourself. Your life’s purpose had always been to help Felix mend his pieces together whenever he needed it. But maybe this was his way of telling you that you were no longer needed for that - that you were free of all your duties as his personal fake secretary and since he thought you didn’t love him back that you served no purpose to him anymore.

When Felix said he didn’t need you, he meant that he didn’t need you to be the person you always were. He didn’t need you to be his babysitter trying to stop him from doing something stupid, he needed you as someone who wanted to stop him because you loved him and was afraid that he’d get hurt. And perhaps it was his mistake for saying it so harshly because you didn’t bother to stop him after that. But it hurt him to his core that you believed him when he said he didn’t need you anymore, that after twenty years you so easily believed that he could cut you out of his life, just like that. How many stupid mistakes could Felix make tonight? He was too far into this that he couldn’t back out, so all he had to do was race and make it out alive to see you again.

From the rear view mirror, he saw your distant figure fade away with the night.

It has been a long sixty-eight hours and twenty-four minutes since you arrived home from the birthday party. Hermit crabbing for the first twelves hours was stressful - you couldn’t sleep until 6:00 am, you only slept for a couple hours, you sent mass text messages to multiple people, including Felix, curious about his whereabouts and no one got back to you until twelve hours after that.

han solo [8:43 pm]: sorry darling, i like just woke up. he’s fine i guess.

you [8:44 pm]: what do you mean you ‘guess’!?

han solo [8:44 pm]: i mean they both came out unscathed and his dumbass won so physically he’s fine! but he didn’t seem too happy that he won. i think he’s back home with his parents atm.

That settled your racing heart only a little, but at least you knew he was fine physically, at least. Still, your hundreds of texts sent to him were all left on read, meaning he saw all your desperation and worry and didn’t bother to ease any of it.

You couldn’t eat for those long hours, but now it was getting unbearable and you needed to eat something. You had all the ingredients for Felix’s favorite soup, and as much as you didn’t want to constantly remind yourself of him, you couldn’t help yourself. The process was nice and slow, where you took extra care into washing the vegetables and bringing the broth to a gentle boil before dropping everything in. You could imagine the look on his face if he smelled what you made with your own hands.

Cooking for Felix was a very rare occasion because you were still self conscious about your abilities, especially as someone who was going to work for the country’s largest restaurant franchise. But the times he’s tasted your creations, his reaction was nothing but sincere bliss, cleaning his plate or bowl or several every time. He was the only one who truly believed in your talents and far-off dream when your parents wanted you to follow your Dad’s footsteps. You always cared about what Felix thought about you and your actions and nearly everything, but what he thought about your cooking was one of the most important things and his constant support for your craft was what made you fall for him so much harder than you already did.

The aromas of the soup made you miss him even more. If you didn’t hear back from him today, you were going to take drastic measures and find him yourself.

A quiet, eerie knock came at your door. You hesitated, wondering if you should just pretend you weren’t home, but then a voice spoke up.

“I know you’re home,” Felix said. “I can smell you cooking my favorite soup.”

You dropped your wooden spoon and hurried to open the front door. Behind the door revealed a tired Felix with one bruised up eye and cut up lip. Though the tears quickly fell from your eyes and you covered your gaping mouth, he still gave you a weak smile in hopes of easing any worry you now had.

“I kind of need you,” he admitted softly. “I really need you.”

Speechless, you took Felix by the hand and sat him on your couch before grabbing your massive first aid kit. He’s not surprised that you took him in with open arms without any hesitation because that was the kind of person you were. He loved that about you, but there’s guilt in his heart because he’s the last person who deserves this treatment. He knew you didn’t exactly forgive him yet because you still haven’t said a word, even as you were wetting a cotton swab with isopropyl alcohol.

“Is it going to sting?” he asked. You didn’t bother answering and let him feel the pain for himself. “Motherfucker!”

Through all the cleaning and wincing, though your facial expression didn’t move much, a waterfall of tears fell from your eyes at a constant speed. Since you were kids, Felix’s Dad was big on spanking and physical discipline, but this was a whole different level than you’ve ever seen before - this wasn’t discipline, this was intentional. Even so, Felix still smiled, even through all the stinging.

“Stay still,” you whispered, voice shaking. Your free hand held his face in place by pressing your palm into his nonbruised cheek. The wound still stung, but the wincing at least lessened. When the cotton swab dried up and you weren’t sure what to do, Felix calmed your racing thoughts by placing a hand on top of the one you had on your cheek.

He liked the way your thumb gently brushed across his cheek. Your touch always left tingles in its absence.

“What happened?” you finally asked.

“Dad found out about the racing because it was in the tabloids as ‘Future YONBOK CEO Caught Racing Under the Influence. Is the Future of YONGBOK in Good Hands?’ and, well, you know how that turned out.”

You said nothing while shaking your head. You took your hand back and stood up to get something and the fear of you leaving him again left Felix sweating and tears of his own pooling in his eyes. But you came back with a bag of frozen peas to press against his bruises and swollen lip.

“Are you hungry?” Felix nodded silently. “I made your favorite soup.”

“I know. Did you know that I was coming?”

“No. I guess I’m lucky.”

One of his hands is on top of yours holding the frozen peas and the other grabs hold of your other free hand. Felix wanted to hold you in every way possible, but for now this would have to do until you accepted him.

“You know I love you,” he told you. “And you know I will always need you. I’m sorry I pretended to forget about telling you last year and I’m sorry if that made you think I was insincere the second time. But now you know for sure that I love you. Was I really that wrong to think you felt the same?”

“It seems like you already know my answer.”

“I need to hear you say it.”

You sighed heavily. By now the tears had stopped, but you wouldn’t be surprised if they started up again. This was the first time you would admit aloud that you loved the stupid boy who tried to hide his smile sitting in front of you.

“I love you, Lee Felix. I always have.”

“Knew it ~” he sang. “Tell me when you fell for my handsome looks.”

“Remember Prom night?”

“Prom night!? Seriously?”

“My date standing me up and you offering to dance with me the whole night sounds like the perfect formula to fall in love with you, does it not?”

“I guess! I just thought it’d be longer than that!”

“I’m sure it has been longer than that.”

“Really?”

“Prom night was just the point of no return - that no matter what I did, my feelings were absolute and I couldn’t be in denial anymore. But I didn’t feel any different… And that’s when I assumed I just always loved you.”

“Even when I do stupid shit like this, you still loved me that much, huh?”

“Even with a busted lip, I still think you’re the most handsome.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” he chuckled. “Do you know when I knew?”

“Uh, last year?”

“Nope. On your tenth birthday.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m not. When you shared your birthday cake and gave me the corner slice with the most icing flowers on it, I knew you were the one for me.”

“Can you be serious for once!?”

“Baby, I am dead serious! Look me in the eyes - well, my good eye.”

“I hate you.”

“I know.” Felix pressed a long kiss to your forehead and then rested his own up against it. “I’m sorry for worrying you.”

“And being an ass.”

“Yes, and being the biggest ass.”

You dared to kiss his lips, but just enough for them to touch, too worried about hurting his bruise. Felix didn’t care - this was the only time you’d have your first kiss and he wanted it to be long and slow, putting his all into your very first kiss even if it hurt a little. His lips were hungry for yours and so were his hands, making you drop the frozen peas on the floor so he could pull you into his lap to deepen the kiss. Wandering hands traveled your waist and your own in his hair and all your worries about wondering if love was truly real melted away with every second. Even when you broke free to come up for air, Felix refused to loosen his grip on your waist, holding you so close that he buried his face in the nape of your neck. He short breaths tickled your skin and when you giggled, he peppered kisses all over. Your laugh was music to his ears.

“Do you forgive me?” he said in between kisses.

“Mm,” you hummed. “Just don’t leave my side again.”

“Never again. I promise you.”

“Well… Where do we go from here?”

“Hm… I get to eat my favorite soup with the love of my life?”

“I like the sound of that.”

“And then straight to bed.”

“But it’s only 9:00 pm?” A playful, naughty smirk spread across Felix’s lips. “Lee Felix!”

“What!? I won the race, can’t I get a prize!?”

“Stop.”

Soup was always better with your love and a cup of frozen peas.

#lee felix #felix lee #skz #stray kids #skz felix #stray kids felix #felix scenarios #stray kids scenarios #skz scenarios #i wrote this in less than a week so if it sucks that's why #bleh finally a felix fic......................... it's been like a year LOL #ok lemme know how u like it mwah

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sevenkittensinatrenchcoat · 4 years ago

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Modern Munkustraps and Why 2016 Misto Is Boring (And Also Why Tugger Is Less Good Now)

So, yeah, this is a very long, poorly edited essay that is basically just me writing down a bunch of feelings about the Broadway Revival and why it doesn’t work for me. Of course, it’s not the worst thing out there and everyone can like what they like, but here’s one big reason why I don’t like this particular thing.

So, I’ve mentioned that, having seen the whole thing, I don’t particularly like the 2016 Broadway Revival of Cats. I adore the cast, I appreciate the effort everyone clearly put into it, and some individual numbers work well enough out of context, but it’s a case of strong parts forming a weak whole.

One of the problems I had with it was with the character of Mistoffelees. It should be clear to anyone looking around this blog that Mistoffelees is my favorite character in the show. I hate insulting any Mistoffelees, which is why 2019 Mistoffelees frustrates me so much. The moment I realized I’d become a fan of Cats was when I was genuinely angry when I learned that Tom Hooper cast a non-dancer as Mistoffelees. Basically, problems with Mistoffelees will motivate me to rant.

In 2016, the problem with Mistoffelees isn’t the choreography. I prefer the original to the new stuff, but Misto’s material was fine. Ricky Ubeda completely nailed the dance part of the role. Broadway Revival Misto is still worlds above Tom Hooper’s Misto in every way. Really, the problem with 2016 Misto is that it often feels like he isn’t there. He has very little presence. His dancing is impressive, and his dynamic with Tugger is cute and fun, but he has no real personality outside of it. I don’t know how he feels about any character other than Tugger. There are no moments that center around him other than his dance solos. He doesn’t seem to have much of an arc when it comes to saving the day at the end. Is he already confident in his magical abilities? Is he still unsure of himself? Is he trying to prove himself? How does he feel about anything that happens to or around him?

As a show with a large ensemble cast, it’s impossible for every single character to feel fully developed. But, in shows/stories with large ensemble casts, there are always a few characters who stand out. Instead of a single protagonist with one big arc, you have several main characters with their own small arcs. Munkustrap is the group’s leader who has to fight to defend his tribe. Demeter has survived an abusive relationship and she confronts her abuser and starts to move on, finding a potential partner who she can trust. In the 1998 film, at least, Mungojerrie has an interesting arc. He used to work for Macavity, but he left. When Macavity shows up, Jerrie’s terrified of him. He knows what he’s capable of and probably witnessed some really messed up shit. But, when Munkustrap is wounded and Alonzo is struggling to fight Macavity on his own, Jerrie is the first cat to join the fight. He doesn’t do very well, but this inspires other cats to help out as well, and Macavity is eventually outnumbered and forced to flee.

Mistoffelees is another character with an arc. He’s coming of age, no longer a child but not really an adult either. He’s trying to prove himself and be seen as an adult. He has magical powers, but he still struggles to control them and doesn’t know exactly what he’s capable of. Outside of magic and dancing, he’s awkward and doesn’t fit in socially with neither the kittens nor the adults.

When Old Deuteronomy is kidnapped, and everything seems hopeless, Mistoffelees really isn’t participating in the action. Although he’s publicly done magic before and other cats have noticed, Tugger’s suggestion that Mistoffelees might be able to help is dismissed by most of the group at first. But, Tugger is completely confident in Misto’s abilities. He’s the first cat to believe in him that much. Tugger hypes up Misto and his confidence builds until he’s willing to try using magic to bring Old Deuteronomy back and succeeds. He’s a hero now, and he’s known to have a skill that no one else possesses. He’s respected by the tribe. As someone who can be consulted in emergencies, Mistoffelees can now be seen as an adult.

Now, Mistoffelees didn’t always have this arc. The Originial Broadway Misto comes across as completely confident in his abilities the whole time. Actors who played Misto in the 80s tended to play him as the same age as Munkustrap, already one of the adults and already established in the tribe. But, starting in the early 90s, some actors started to play Misto younger and less secure. By the time the filmed 1998 production was done, that had become the standard way to play Misto. I think the actors cast in the role wanted to make things more interesting, since Misto getting Old Deuteronomy back is a bit of an anticlimax. There’s a problem. It’s solved immediately. On with the show. But this was a big, spectacle-heavy number near the end of the show. It feels like it should mean something, but it just doesn’t. Old Deuteronomy is easily returned to the tribe and then Memory happens and makes everything else seem meaningless.

But, what if Mister Mistoffelees wasn’t about getting Old Deuteronomy back? What if Mister Mistoffelees was actually about Mister Mistoffelees. Having the song be a moment when a young cat comes of age makes it feel like the song means something, even if the stuff with Old Deuteronomy is anticlimactic. Since it happens late in the show, there’s plenty of time to build up to it. Misto is on stage for most of the musical. His character can be established. We can see him trying to prove himself and failing to socially connect with the other cats. So, when he does prove himself and he does gain the approval of the cats who dismissed him as a weirdo, it’s satisfying. The song has a bigger impact when Mistoffelees is portrayed as a young man coming of age.

So, what does any of this have to do with the Broadway Revival? Why does the title of this essay mention Munkustrap when the essay itself is mostly about Mistoffelees?

Well, it’s because Revival Era Munkustraps have stolen Misto’s character arc.

The Broadway Revival isn’t the only version of Cats to do this. Tecklenburg actually constructs the story around it, making Munkustrap the protagonist. It seems like the changes to Munkustrap’s character started to appear when the show started getting revived. When I say Revival Era, I mean every version of Cats put on after the London Revival in 2014, though there are naturally some outliers. This was when Grizabella was redesigned and rewritten. This was when an attempt was made to redesign and rewrite Tugger, which was thankfully abandoned soon after.

Before this era, it wasn’t really confirmed to the general public that Munkustrap and Tugger were Old Deuteronomy’s sons. They were still often portrayed that way, but it wasn’t something anyone thought viewers needed to know. The dynamic between Munkustrap and Tugger began to change now that everyone was expected to view them as siblings. Tugger, instead of messing with every authority figure on stage, now tends to single Munkustrap out. He wants to annoy his older sibling. The Tecklenburg non-replica didn’t even bother showing anyone but Munkustrap being frustrated with Tugger’s antics. The vibe you get in these productions is that Munkustrap is the older sibling who is left in charge while Dad’s not home and he’s trying to be responsible, while Tugger, as the younger sibling, is constantly messing around and annoying him.

Compare how Munkustrap and Tugger interacted during Tugger’s number in 1998 vs. 2016. In both versions, Tugger crashes the party and Munkustrap is not amused. But, in 1998, Munkustrap stands back and waits for Tugger to basically get all that rebellious energy out of his system. If he has a few moments to run wild, he’ll calm down and act up less later on. So, Munkustrap just waits it out. As for Tugger, he never directly targets Munkustrap when he’s messing with the authority figures. He targets Jenny and Jelly, and Skimble by proxy, but he leaves Munkustrap alone. Both brothers have some silent agreement not to get in each other’s way.

In 2016, most of the moments where Tugger messes with an authority figure have Munkustrap as that authority figure. He’s more focused on annoying his brother than anyone else. He and Munkustrap are sort of bickering throughout the song, with Munkustrap being one of the cats who gets the “terrible bore” line. 1998 Munkustrap wouldn’t do this. He doesn’t get the “terrible bore” line because he’s too mature to insult Tugger like that. Instead, Misto, a more immature character does it.

These two different dynamics imply that Munkustrap and Tugger are in different age groups. 1998 Munkustrap tries to take the high road when Tugger crashes the party and Tugger has enough respect for him not avoid targeting him personally. The only exception is with the bagpipes in The Pekes and the Pollicles, and he was mostly doing that to entertain the others. He starts a dance party and then gets disappointed when it doesn’t work a second time. Munkustrap was already being annoyed by everything else that was going on as well, so Tugger’s antics don’t stand out in that regard. The vibe you get is that, though Tugger does like teasing Munkustrap a bit, they have a mutual respect for one another that they both take seriously. They’re both adults, too mature to bicker.

When Tugger targets Munkustrap with his antics and Munkustrap tries to argue back, they come across like two kids bickering. They both seem younger. This means that, in general, 2016 Munkustrap is played younger than 1998 Munkustrap. 2016 Munkustrap’s arc is about him learning to be a good leader, probably hosting the ball for the first time. He wants everything to be perfect so he can prove himself to his father. His defending the tribe and being willing to give Grizabella a chance are moments when Munkustrap begins to come of age.

So, 2016 Munkustrap’s arc is that he’s a young man, just coming of age, trying to prove himself, and eventually doing so. It’s not identical to Misto’s arc, but it’s pretty close.

And this is why 2016 Misto fails to stand out. Munkustrap’s arc makes Misto’s feel redundant, so he doesn’t have it. 2016 Misto already has Tugger supporting him from the very start and never feels like he lacks confidence. But, with Misto’s arc given to Munkustrap, nothing was put in its place, so Misto no longer has an arc. You don’t have scenes of him trying to appear mature and sophisticated around Bustopher, or his awkward attempt to help Old Deuteronomy and Munkustrap defend the tribe when Macavity’s around, or any of those other little moments that give Misto personality, because he no longer has the arc that those scenes are part of. There’d be no pay-off.

Honestly, the biggest problem with this isn’t that Munkustrap is different, but that his character was given this story and the expense of another character’s arc. Munkustrap already had a smaller arc that took a backseat to his role as storyteller and protector. He’s already the perfect leader, with his only flaw being his grudge against Grizabella. The main thing Munkustrap has to learn is the moral of the entire play. Outside of that, he’s the narrator and the straight man in the more comedic numbers.

This change also isn’t very good for Tugger. Tugger is not really a character with an arc. He doesn’t change any more than anyone else does. What changes, is how the audience, and some of the other characters, perceive him. In his own number, he’s fun, but he also comes across as a bit of a jerk. He doesn’t care what other people think of him, but that means he doesn’t seem to care about upsetting them either. His interactions with his fans sometimes demonstrate this. He just casually knocks over Tumblebrutus and Pouncival, briefly uses the latter as a chair, and then knocks them over again. Tumblebrutus and Pouncival both think Tugger is awesome, so they don’t mind, but that’s not a very nice way to treat kids who look up to you, even if they don’t mind.

But, then we get to Old Deuteronomy. Tugger appears again, interrupting Munkustrap, apparently being rude again, but then you hear what he’s actually saying. He’s also narrating about and praising Old Deuteronomy. At first, it’s kind of funny, because he’s just talking about how Old D got around, but then you get this line:

And his numerous progeny prospers and thrives And the village is proud of him in his decline

When he mentions “numerous progeny” he gestures over the crowd, ending on Munkustrap. He’s one of those numerous progeny, but he never gestures to himself. He never references himself as Old Deuteronomy’s son, but he does mention Munkustrap. This is followed by “and the village is proud of him”. After the “numerous progeny” line, it’s an awkward circle back to the main topic. But, Tugger seems to address Munkustrap as he says this. In his own way, he’s telling Munkustrap that he’s doing a good job and that everyone’s proud of him.

And then, when Munkustrap and Tugger duet, Munkustrap looks so happy about it. He didn’t expect Tugger to behave and he’s thankful for it. It’s a heartwarming moment and it shows Tugger in a new light. He was inconsiderate during his own number, but now he’s showing nothing but sincere respect for his family.

But, Old Deuteronomy is the ultimate authority figure of the tribe. Everyone loves him and he outranks Tugger. Having Tugger be so sincere here, in contrast to his attitude before, is mainly to show just how beloved Old Deuteronomy is. Even a cat who delights in pissing off authority figures has nothing but respect for him. The real stand-out moment is Mister Mistoffelees.

So, after the fight with Macavity, the tribe is in pretty bad shape. Their leader has been kidnapped and their protector is wounded. And, the kittens witnessed all of it. They saw Macavity kidnap Old Deuteronomy while they could do nothing to stop it. Macavity actually attacked Etcetera and Electra, who both tried to stand up to him. Jemima was right next to Etcetera when she was hit. Then, their protector, the strength of the tribe, someone they probably saw as invincible, gets beaten up in a fight. Munkustrap, when knocked unconscious, lands right in front of Electra, the kitten who seemed to have the closest relationship to him. Electra and Rumpleteazer try to wake him up, but they can’t. Mungojerrie can’t stand it and goes to take on Macavity himself.

So, there was a lot of violence and the kittens had front row seats. Now they’re all sitting in the dark with no idea what to do.

Then, Tugger speaks up. Right away, he has a solution. Tugger starts up a musical number and you can see the kittens getting into it like they’re at a rock concert. Not only does he have a solution to the big problem the tribe is facing, but he presents it in a way that distracts the kittens from what just happened.

And this is all without mentioning the subject matter. Unlike Old Deuteronomy, Mistoffelees doesn’t outrank Tugger and he doesn’t have the universal respect of the tribe. Tugger just thinks Misto is awesome and he’s singing an entire song about it. Misto was the cat who casually insulted him during his own number, but Tugger’s ego was unaffected. Tugger responds with absolute faith and support.

And Misto needs that faith and support. Throughout the entire ball, Misto has been trying to impress the authority figures of the tribe. Tugger, with how popular he is with the younger cats, has a lot of influence over the tribe. He’s an authority figure, in a sense. But, he was the only one in that category who Misto not only didn’t try to impress, but straight-up rejected. He doesn’t care what Tugger thinks. With everyone else in his generation either wanting Tugger or wanting to be Tugger, he stands out. Tugger respects that. And, Misto gets the approval he was looking for in the one place he didn’t bother to look. Misto finally getting that approval is what builds up his confidence so he can bring back Old Deuteronomy. And then Tugger gives him all the credit.

So, the audience is introduced to a character who seems egotistical and inconsiderate. But, he’s not. He never was. Tugger does things for the lulz sometimes. He likes to make a scene and he likes to make a mess. But, the Rum Tum Tugger is artful and knowing. He pays a lot of attention to the other cats and he cares about them. He loves his family, he looks after the kittens, and he gives support to those who need it. He’s actually not that different from Munkustrap.

But, the younger Tugger who bickers with Munkustrap comes across as more genuinely immature and it makes the more sincere moments feel out of nowhere. It’s hard for someone playing a younger Tugger to remain in character during the more serious moments. It just feels like whiplash.

Tldr: So, yeah, the point of this very long essay is that 2016 Munkustrap’s character arc, which has spread to pretty much every production of Cats done in the last five years, has the side effect of making Mistoffelees boring and Tugger obnoxious. It’s an alright arc for Munkustrap, but it sacrifices the arcs of other major characters in a way that a show with an ensemble cast can’t afford to do.

#cats 2016 #cats 1998 #munkustrap #mr mistoffelees #rum tum tugger #artful and knowing #i did an essay #a very long essay #someday i'll do an essay on how 2016 fails at comedy #especially the pekes and the pollicles

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gryffindors-weasley · 4 years ago

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Finding A Light // Part Two

Ron Weasley x Fem!Reader

Summary: A simple afternoon in Hogsmeade leads to the start of a tradition.

Warnings: fluff, mild angst

Part one

Ron found himself struggling to keep his focus on his portion of teaching throughout the week, and it was beginning to become apparent that his mind was elsewhere.

“Mr. Weasley?” A student had asked for what would be the third time now, and she had started to wave her hand in front of his face.

Startled, he looked up from the parchment he scribbled on with his quill that had long since run out of ink. He offered a smile to the confused girl, cheeks burning as Lupin laughed next to him. He sat up a little straighter, clearing his throat. “My apologies, Alice. Can I—can I help you with something?”

She looks at the blushing redhead quizzically before offering a polite smile. “Will there be extra credit available?”

The question made him smile, the eager young student always looking for ways to better her grade even though it doesn’t seem like it could get any higher than a perfect score. Such a quality had reminded him very much of Hermione.

“I suppose I’ll have to think of something,” he says, though there couldn’t possibly be anything new to think of without spoiling future lessons.

She accepts his answer with a nod, though her shoulders do slump in a bit of disappointment as she walks back to her seat. Lupin is still grinning knowingly at him when he looks over, a sigh leaving his lips.

“You wouldn’t happen to be so distracted over this girl you’ve met, would you?” He asks, and though Ron hasn’t said anything yet, the pale crimson that colors his cheeks almost immediately in response is enough to know he’d hit the nail on the head.

“Who told you that?” Ron asks, plucking at the quill in his hand as he raises his brow. He still tries to play it off even though he knows his cover has been blown.

“I do have a keen sense of hearing, you know,” he laughs, “I heard you at dinner last week. You’re not very discreet with your emotions, Weasley.”

He nods down at his hands, sighing as he bites back his growing smile. “I’m convinced you and McGonagall love to torment me.”

He laughed again, nodding at Ron’s words. “It’s only our job. And it’s one you make very easy for us.”

“It’s absolutely not,” Ron says, trying to remain stoic but he couldn’t find it in him to stifle his own laughter. “I swear you two are making up for my family’s lack of teasing.”

—

Ron found himself wandering the familiar stone pathway to the very shop he’d spent the better part of a week thinking about, though the whole time he’d wondered if this was ridiculous. Had you really hoped to see him again? Or was he blowing it out of proportion by mistaking a friendly gesture for that of an invitation to return. He wasn’t really sure of himself the more he ran that humiliating scenario through his head.

His feet seemed to have given him no choice in the matter as he continued to navigate the familiar village, brushing by clusters of students who argued about where to go next. It wasn’t that big of a deal, he thought. If you didn’t recognize him then he could just leave and put it all behind him. But if you did, he could just say he was buying chocolates to send home, if only to not make it completely obvious that the reasons for his visit entirely were to see you.

When the dark wood trim and pink sign came into view he wasn’t sure if his arrival came too soon or not soon enough as he shook out his hands. He felt ridiculous with the way his heart beat out of his chest, or the nerves swirling around in his stomach. First impressions had already been made, no matter how foolish and flustered, so there was no reason to be so nervous. But his heart and his brain were not quite on the same page.

The sweet air of the small shop hit him in a wave the moment he opened the door, a handful of third years rushing past him which inevitably caused him to stumble back a step. The excitement seems to have not worn off just yet. His eyes immediately went to the front counter where you’d said your goodbyes the week before, but he was rather disappointed when it wasn’t you who was there. He didn’t let it deter him, though, instead stepping further into the shop to have a look at the candies.

Despite such a small stretch of time having gone by since he was last there, it seemed as though their inventory was completely different. They still had their best sellers on brilliant and eye catching displays, still had large glass jars filled to the brim with colorful candy, but there were far more new things than he had remembered there being. Even with that being said, he was still more focused on the fact that he hadn’t seen you yet and it’d been a whole ten minutes of wandering around aimlessly, surely looking a bit out of place.

Three aisles in and he still hadn’t seen you. He was fighting the urge to ask where you were, feeling as though that’d be a ridiculous thing to do. Because what was he to say if asked for a reason? Surely he couldn’t give them the real one, that would be utterly humiliating. He was beginning to think he misread your words as he weaved between students, regret forming in the pit of his stomach. Maybe he’d have better luck another time, though he didn’t like the idea of waiting for when that would be.

Upon passing the counter again, his brain scrambled for a reason not to, fighting between his own curiosity and the side of him telling himself not to do it and just leave. But he’s quickly made up his mind.

“Excuse me,” he says, clearing his throat when his words came out rather timidly. He takes a step closer when he captures the cashiers attention. “Would you happen to know where Y/n is?”

Any trace of hopefulness had left when he heard the mans response. “I’m afraid not, her shift ended sometime within the last hour. Would you like me to leave her a message?”

Ron was quick to shake his head, masking the clear disappointment he felt with a smile. “No…no that’s okay. Thank you.”

He left the shop empty handed and stuffed them in his pockets, releasing the sigh he’d been holding. It shouldn’t have been that big of a deal, really, he’d only met you once. On a busy day at that. But it was something about the way your brief interaction had stopped time for lack of better wording. He knew it was rather silly to feel that way, but it’s what made him come back.

As his mother had always said, if it was meant to happen it would have. With that in mind he tried to brush it off and focus on other matters, like the stack of assignments that needed grading once he returned. It wasn’t something he looked forward to, trying to stall and walk as leisurely as he could through the busy village.

He couldn’t imagine reading dozens of those things being any more fun than it was to write them, and if he gave it any more thought he would completely ruin his mood. He certainly wasn’t as happy as the students around him though he knows he’s probably being a bit dramatic. But this very place wasn’t feeling quite so magical, for lack of a better, less ironic word. Everything seemed to bother him in that moment; the way the wind blew his hair in his eyes, the fact that he kept tripping on the uneven stone streets, the way that—

“Ron?”

He looked up from his gaze at his feet, turning in the direction the voice had come from. His heart skipped a beat upon seeing it belonged to you, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth when you joined him and he quickly forgot those things annoying him.

“Hey,” he nearly beams, and suddenly the thought of his mother’s wise words didn’t make him feel quite so bad anymore.

“I’m sorry to have left you hanging, I finished my shift half an hour ago and decided to stick around here in case maybe you did turn up,” you shrug, nonchalant in your explanation as you walk up to him.

His smile widened as he raised a curious brow at you, his nerves beginning to disappear and be replaced with some confidence. “So you waited for me?”

You flushed a soft pink at his words, looking up at him with a laugh. “Perhaps. Only because you decided to come back.”

It was his turn to blush a shade of crimson at your witty remark, smiling down at his feet as you accentuated your teasing with a nudge of your elbow to his arm. It was true, and though he’d never admit it aloud, it seems as though he didn’t have to.

“Would you like to join me for tea? I always stop by Madam Puddifoot’s after my weekend shifts. She’s quite fond of me so I bet I can get you a free pastry if you’d like.” Your words were followed by the warmest of smiles, and he found himself unable to resist such an offer.

“Yeah…yeah that’d be nice,” he says with a soft laugh, a bit stunned and more so when you grabbed his wrist and tugged him towards the shop.

As a testament to your words, you were greeted warmly by the older woman who recited what he assumed was your order. When she turned to him he was at a loss for words, cheeks reddening once more before you asked for another of what you’d gotten.

“Thanks,” he smiles, taking a seat across from you at a nearby table. “I’ve never been here before, my friend told me it was a bit…sappy.”

“Oh it very much is, but she can make a very good cup of tea.”

He nods with a laugh, any worry that he may have said something too bold about this place you seemed to love now dissipating.

It wasn’t long before you found yourself immersed in conversation, finding it rather easy to talk to him about anything and everything. Any pause in conversation had been very brief and quickly filled with something else, a dull moment never finding its way between the two of you. Tea cups had long since been empty and several students had filtered in and out of the shop while the two of you remained at the same table, blissfully unaware of the fact that you were quickly becoming the only two residing in the place. It didn’t seem to matter all that much, nor did that stack of essays collecting dust on his desk. Those could wait another day.

4 Months Later

Spending every Saturday afternoon at Madam Puddifoot’s Tea Shop was quickly adopted as a tradition between the two of you should your schedules allow it. Over that expanse of time you learned about Ron’s wonderfully large family, and unfortunately the loss of a beloved member of it. You’ve learned he has an affinity for quidditch, well, maybe more than an affinity because he spent a very lengthy amount of time talking about it until he shut himself up. And perhaps your favorite part was experiencing firsthand his ever growing hatred for spiders. It was a memory you never let him forget, the way his voice adopted a higher pitch as he put a good ten feet between himself and the small spider until you had taken care of the problem. You’d made a promise to yourself to never let him live it down.

But in spite of the humor, you found yourself thinking that your time spent with him was quite possibly the most fun you’ve ever had. Not that Ron Weasley had been one to walk on the wild side, but everything that seemed mundane before became much more interesting when he was involved.

Over the course of that time, Ron had learned your hobbies and just as easily the things you don’t like. He learned you can fill up your cup of tea as if it’d never been drank with just a simple motion of your hand which is something you inevitably taught him to do. It lead to him overflowing his mug and spilling his tea on his lap, something you also aim to never let him forget. And he doesn’t know how, but you can change the color of just about anything you please, though you tried it on his hair and it hadn’t quite worked out so well. He felt like Tonks as he stood in the middle of your apartment with purple hair as you laughed hysterically.

However, to get sentimental, he quickly found you to be the one thing to bring out a smile when he finds himself falling back to the memories of his losses. It didn’t take much effort on your end, your presence would always suffice. And above all the countless things he’s learned about you, perhaps this next one was the most prominent. Ron Weasley accepted the fact that he was falling in love with his best friend. It wasn’t unexpected, he felt as though maybe he’d always had some form of feelings since day one. But he found it much more intense than those days, though he’d never admit it, not for a long while.

Currently, you found yourselves tucked away in the cozy little building as the rain poured outside, decorated floor to ceiling in Valentine’s Day related things. Even though it was just about a month before the actual day, there was no stopping Madam Puddifoot from indulging in her favorite holiday. Walls were decorated in enchanted red Cupid’s that shot glitter and confetti from their arrows, frilly heart covered tablecloths and lacy napkins, and even pink and red frosted pastries. Ron was beginning to understand why Harry hadn’t liked this place so much.

But it was weekly tradition, and nothing could deter him from coming here with you, not even the heart shaped cookies or the pink confetti stuck annoyingly in his hair.

“What can I get you today?” Madam asked, her notepad in hand though she really hadn’t used it very much. Not for the two of you at least.

“Peppermint tea with two sugars,” Ron says without hesitation. When he’s met with silence he lifts his head from the dessert menu, finding two sets of eyes on him.

It wasn’t until then that he realized he blurted your order, having known it like the back of his hand by this point. It wasn’t until then that he realized her question was directed at you first. His cheeks redden to what felt like the same shade as the table cloth, and he found himself wishing he could rewind and not have done that very embarrassing thing.

“Sorry,” He says, laughing awkwardly as he gulps. Though he’s only met with your sweet smile and a soft laugh from Madam who shook her head fondly at the two of you.

“And what can I get you, Mr. Weasley?”

“I’ll have a Yorkshire tea with extra sugar, please,” He says, much more timid, “and can I have a slice of cake if you’ve got any left?”

“Of course, my dear,” she smiles warmly. There would always be a slice waiting for him because she always made extra in preparation for the ginger boy’s weekly visit.

“Are you blushing?” You jest, chin in your hand as you squint at him from across the wobbly table when she rushes off.

“It’s just, you know…cold outside,” he defends, doing a terrible job of being convincing.

“We’ve been in here for nearly half an hour, Ronald. I’d hate to say it, but I know you’re lying,” you laugh and he looks to his side with a scoff, biting the inside of his cheek as if to will away any more color attempting to flood his cheeks just at the mere mention of it.

“You’re a pain sometimes, you know that?” He says though he smiles rather fondly at you.

“It happens to be my specialty,” you say, eyes skimming over the various holiday themed drink names on the lavishly printed menu. He steals another glance through his light ginger lashes, not missing the way a soft smile had been gracing your lips at the banter.

He shakes his head, laughing quietly to himself as he picks at his napkin. Was it really that evident how much of a mess you made him? He really hoped not.

Not much was said after that, yet the silence was comfortable. He watched as the rain poured outside, thick droplets trickling down the window panes and puddles forming in the uneven walkway. As much as he didn’t enjoy this kind of weather, it really had added to the ambience of this place. It made it all the more welcoming.

“I think we’ve got to apparate home if it doesn’t slow down out there,” he suggests, turning to you.

A frown immediately worked its way on your face at the thought. You hated apparating and he knew that, you could never quite get used to it’s side effects.

“That might just be your worst idea, Ron,” you say, huffing out at the thought. He laughs though, bringing a smile to your face.

The moment is quickly interrupted when two teas are brought to the table and given to their rightful owners, Ron’s highly anticipated cake set along with his. Triple chocolate cake.

“Will I be using the couples discount for you two?” The jovial woman asks with a smile, tucking her pink pencil behind her ear as she settles her hands on her hips.

“Oh! It’s not a date, well, not like that,” Ron says, cheeks burning as he laughed softly, clearly flustered the more he spoke, “we’re just friends.”

Madam Puddifoot apologizes for her blunder, though she still gives you both the discount regardless because she’s seen the way he looks at you. Over the many weeks she’s served the seemingly inseparable pair, she knew friends don’t look at friends quite the way you two do. It was almost fairytale-like. But neither of you seemed to be privy to the others lingering gazes and she wasn’t one to pry, not too much anyway.

Once she left you turned to him with slightly narrowed eyes and a bit of a frown you tried to conceal, finding yourself feeling the smallest bit of hurt, or something, simmering in your stomach. You didn’t know why it had struck a nerve and you didn’t like it.

“What?” He asks softly.

“I don’t think you could have said that any faster, Ron,” you say, stirring your spoon around in your tea a bit too vigorously, the hot liquid spilling over the meticulously painted edge of the cup and onto the small matching saucer it had been resting on.

He furrows his brows, confused at your change in attitude momentarily before a soft smile began to pull at the corner of his mouth. “You seem a bit upset about that, Y/n.”

He tilts his head in amused curiosity, watching as you rolled your eyes before he took a sip of his drink.

“I don’t believe I seem like anything.”

Your tone was playful as you spoke the words very matter-of-factly, though he didn’t miss the bite lacing around them. He only nods as he laughs quietly down at his own tea, not in mocking but in slight amusement.

Your soft smile shortly returned though Ron wondered if your sudden edge, no matter how subtle, was simply nothing or if it was indicative of something more. Perhaps it really did bother you, more than you let on. But he knows that if he lets his mind go down the road of those possibilities, he will only either get his hopes up or hurt his own feelings with scenarios that haven’t even happened. So, for the time being, he pushes it to the back of his mind and hoped it wouldn’t resurface.

“Have you uh, have you checked if that book store in town is open today? You said you wanted to go,” he says, trying desperately to find his way back to comfortable conversation.

“They’re closed,” you say, and he almost winced at the change in your tone whether you had meant to or not. No smile of yours could’ve hid that. He ignored the fact that you had mentioned earlier that they indeed were open, he knew if he paid it any more mind then he’d ruin his own day with assumptions.

He just nods, internally scolding himself as he regrets what he said moments ago.

Gaps in conversation weren’t easily filled after that, and he found he was the one starting the most of them. They really couldn’t be considered conversations at that point, more so observations and statements that you responded to before he moved on to the next one. You hadn’t particularly been ignoring him, you never would, but he knew your mood had soured even if you wouldn’t admit it.

You still teased him about the chocolate icing on the corners of his mouth because you’d never pass that opportunity up, or the way he dropped some in his lap because he’d been too focused staring, but you hadn’t stolen a bite like you usually had and you politely turned down his offer of some.

Your stay at the shop wasn’t nearly as extensive as it usually was either, your tea barely finished but you were rather joyous as you bid a goodbye to Madam Puddifoot. Of course you did still put up a fuss about apparating as you hooked your arm with Ron’s, and you did still hug him goodbye at your doorstep. It just wasn’t as tight as it usually was.

He wanted to bring it up, and he wanted to tell you he hadn’t meant it because the fact that you weren’t being your usual self was driving him crazy. But if he brought it up he’d have to tell you why exactly he hadn’t meant what he said, and he wasn’t ready for that conversation. He feels he might never be. So he decides against it as he stands just outside your door.

“See you next week?” He asks meekly when you pull away from him, scratching the back of his neck nervously. He was hoping you wouldn’t decide to ditch him after that.

You pretended to ponder the question for a moment, just to get a rise out of him. Maybe you took a few extra seconds because you were still bothered. You still couldn’t pinpoint why it had gotten under your skin so much. “I’ll see you next week, Weasley.”

Despite the bit of relief he had felt from that moment you still weren’t so cheery with him, and he tried to convince himself that maybe you’d just had a headache, you get like that sometimes when you do. Or maybe you just had a bad day to begin with and didn’t feel like hiding it anymore. He was grasping at straws to figure out a proper explanation for it but everything came circling back to his words.

He took your answer with a nod before apparating back to Hogwarts, unsure of how to perceive your tone this time. It left him to stew in his own regret that night and days to come until he saw you again.

—

Tags: @writeroutoftime

#ron weasley #ron weasley one shot #ron weasley fanfiction #ron weasley fluff #ron weasley x you #ron weasley x reader #ron weasley fic #harry potter fic

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ellewords · 4 years ago

Note

you know those posts of people saying to send a wedding invitation to celebrities because sometimes they’ll send gifts congratulating the couple? and you know how sometimes the celebrity will actually show up? this is my head cannon of who would end up showing up just because.

(little bit of a warning: these are very half-baked and mostly just stream of consciousness because my brain is fried and i’m in need of a distraction from writing essays, but the thought hasn’t left my head, so now you have to deal with my brainrot, mwahahaha!)

i think oikawa would show up to a bunch of weddings for he people he doesn’t know. it starts in argentina when a fan sends him an invite, and he’s stupid happy about it and no one really knows why. he just really enjoys weddings, they suppose. it’s in the area, too, so he buys a gift for the happy couple and he shows up. he genuinely tries to be really low key because he doesn’t want to ruin their big day, so he stays in the back for the ceremony and he is the perfect wedding-goer. at the ceremony, though, he has a much harder time remaining out of the spotlight. when the bride and groom notice that there’s a tiny bit of a commotion happening, they lose their minds when they realize that it’s because oikawa actually showed up!!! they thought he was kidding when he accepted the invite, or maybe that he’d send an assistant or something!!! but nope, there he is, looking both enthused at being the center of attention but also kind of uncomfortable. when the couple lose their minds in front of him, though, being utter fanatics and hyping him up, he eases up and finally begins to have fun, dancing on the dance floor with different people, drinking responsibly, talking to people, bashfully signing autographs. he doesn’t lose steam for even a second, and when the party seems to lull just a little bit too long, he goes out of his way to make sure everyone gets back to enjoying themselves to the fullest (which the bride and groom appreciate). nearly everyone in attendance gets his attention for a short portion of time, and if they don’t, he tries to snag a picture with everyone on the way out. at the very end of the night, he records a short video for the couple telling them how lovely they are, thanking them for the invite and the great time, and wishing them the absolute best. it’s the highlight of their lives, besides, y’know, the whole getting married thing.

it’s gets out that oikawa actually went to a wedding he was invited to by strangers when someone posts a picture of the wedding online and he was spotted in the background, so now he gets invites all the time. he doesn’t go to all of them because he’s busy and some of the places he gets invites from are across the world, but if the location intrigues him and he has the time, he’ll usually be there.

kageyama would definitely go, too! but it would be mostly because he can’t remember for the life of him if he knows the couple, and it stresses him the hell out. he’s definitely gotten a lot more confident since he was in school, but at the root of him is still an awkward kid who questions everything about himself if it’s not volleyball. so he panics about it for weeks before the wedding, wondering what they’ll want as a gift, accidentally tricking himself into believing that he does in fact know the couple and buying a gift that he assumes they’ll like based off of thinking it’s one of his old classmates from school and buying something that they’d like. and when he doesn’t recognize either of them at the ceremony, he gets so distracted trying to place anyone’s face as someone he knows and he just can’t for the life of him figure it out. he’s half a beat behind everyone when they start cheering for the couple as the kiss and leave because he’s so deep in thought. it isn’t until the reception that he finds out that he doesn’t actually know anyone and he gets so pouty about having stressed over it for so long that he broods in a corner, trying to avoid everyone. he doesn’t start to enjoy himself until someone recognizes him and rambles for nearly ten minutes about how amazing he is and about this one play that he did that they practiced for weeks after seeing it but they still couldn’t nail and that he was their inspiration. imagine everyone’s surprise when they find them in the hallway of the reception hall with a volleyball kageyama had in his car, kageyama teaching the person how he did it. a small game breaks out in the obnoxiously big hallway with a scrappy set up of chairs precariously piled on top of each other until they were high enough and a bunch of coat jackets tied together along the top and bottom of where a net would be so they can see through. the noise is just barely softer than the music, but they gather a bit of a crowd until the game is over, and as much as kageyama enjoyed it, he apologizes to the bride and groom afterwards for feeling like he took away their spotlight. they laugh and say they don’t mind as long as the groom can play the next match.

a picture of kageyama smiling and cheering as his impromptu teammate makes a good play goes viral days later and kageyama does everything in his power to get the pictures taken at the wedding so he has the memories of that night forever. he even sends an awkward thank you card to the couple after.

ushijima accepts an invite, too; mostly because he feels it would be rude not to accept when they spent the time and money going out of their way to send him one. he spends a lot of money getting them a gift, and he cleans up super nicely, and he’s almost distracting for the entire ceremony. the quiet mysterious type suits him well, and everyone notices as he stays in the back, politely applauding when necessary and offering tissue to anyone crying and helping when it’s needed. at the reception, he mostly stays in his seat, but he stops to have conversations with anyone that comes by. most of them are very to the point, and don’t get longer than a few minutes because ushijima doesn’t beat around the bush much, but as off-putting as it sounds, everyone absolutely adores him. some people are trying to size him up, but he’s just too straightforward about how they are perfectly good on their own without having to compare themselves that they wander off shocked that he was so... nice? no, he is, but that’s not quite it... honest? about it all that they feel validated and off-kilter by the time they walk away. others come over to ask him to dance, which he politely accepts and he’s just so earnest in his attempt that they can’t even be upset that he’s a little stiff and bumbling. if anything, they fall for his charm even more. as he leaves, everyone insists that he take a few plates to-go and that if he ever needed anything, all he had to do was ask. he was very confused by this proclamation as he didn’t know anyone well enough. in his bag of to-go boxes, however, he finds a ton of business cards and stuff that he stores away just in case he does need any of their services.

at his next interview, he gets asked about the entire experience, and as always, he’s super honest: “i had a wonderful time. everyone was very kind. that being said, i felt as if i was intruding on a very personal moment meant to be shared by those you hold dearest, so as much as i appreciate the sentiment, i do not plan to attend anymore weddings if i don’t know someone involved. it should be their big day, after all, and i would hate to distract from it.” if he gets anymore invites, he politely declines and instead sends them a gift and his congratulations.

i’ve been gone for a few days because of school, but i’ve been itching to send something in ever since i saw the wedding prompt. plus, all of the hc coming in from it have been so good! you have so many talented followers, and your additions are great as always, elle!

anyway, i have to get back to school. hope school is going well for you, elle! and make sure you’re taking care of yourself! -🌙

— from elle ! wait, hold on i love this >_< but hello moon anon !! i hope all those essays are working out well for you and i hope you’re able to take breaks in between :) anyways, this definitely made me love and i like that it’s true to the characters (esp. kags). my quick lil scenarios (under the cut as usual) is kind of an amalgamation of what you sent in because i'm just thinking of what would happen if the couple took a shot in the dark and invited all three of them. and they all attend :>> thank you for this and i hope you are having a wonderful day ! <3

᠃ ⚘᠂ ⚘ ˚ ⚘ ᠂ ⚘ ᠃

“yohoo, tobio-chan!” kageyama heard, a figure sliding into the empty seat next to him. the voice is airy, familiar, one that he had heard several times in the past. the ceremony was due to start in five minutes, everyone from the guests to the wedding party already taking their respective place.

he narrows his eyes towards the figure, recognising the man just after a couple of quick beats, “oikawa-san?”

“ah! i'm glad you could still recognise me.” oikawa grinned, squinting his eyes at the vast amounts of sunlight that entered through the windows, “too bright in here, isn’t it?”

“what are you doing back in japan?” he asked, eyes growing wide as he’s unsure if the sight in front of him was actually real.

“visiting family, taking a little vacation.” oikawa replied, leaning back in his seat, “so how do you know the happy couple?”

“i...i'm not sure.” kageyama admitted, looking down at his lap in embarrassment.

“can you keep a secret tobio?” oikawa leaned in to whisper, waiting for him to nod before continuing, “i don’t think i know them either.”

it was about halfway through the ceremony and oikawa was getting just a little bit restless; he loved weddings, truly, but this one was dragging on much longer than the ones he previously attended. his gaze was lingering everywhere — from the loved-up gazes of the couple, the flowers that lined the aisles, to the guests who hung onto every word of the vows. one of the guests in particular was more familiar than most.

“pst, tobio.” he spoke, nudging kageyama’s shoulder, “doesn’t that guy look familiar?”

he tilted his head towards the man who sat at the very back row, trying his best to keep a relatively low profile. kageyama followed with his eyes, attempting to be as discreet as he could. he recognised the man immediately, “that’s ushijima-san!”

maybe kageyama had exclaimed a little too loudly, earning himself a few shhhhs from the people who sat around him. he bows his head slightly as an apology while oikawa bites his lip to hold in his laughter.

the three of them were able to meet up during the reception, opting to sit at the same table — the one farthest away from everyone as to not draw any attention to themselves. well, oikawa insisted that they did and kageyama and ushijima didn’t really know anyone else to be comfortable enough to sit with them.

“what did you both get the bride and groom?” oikawa asked as an attempt to make conversation, taking a sip from the glass in front of them.

ushijima was one to spare no expense when it came to gifts, but he wasn’t one to brag about the cost of it either, “just a simple tea set. nothing much.”

what he failed to mention was that simple tea set cost several thousands of yen. but of course, oikawa took it as a bit of an opportunity to one-up ushijima and brags about his gifts. yes, gifts. plural.

ushijima was in the bathroom and oikawa had gotten the attention of a couple of bridesmaids — flirting with him while he tried his best to subtly deflect their advances — leaving kageyama all alone at the table.

he felt a hand tap on his shoulder, soft and hesitant, “kageyama tobio?”

“yes?” kageyama asked, turning to face the source of the voice. he’s met with a teenage boy, possibly not older than sixteen, looking at him with complete nervousness in his eyes.

“i'm sorry to bother you. but i've just been such a huge fan of yours for the longest time and i wasn’t even sure if i should approach you but i really needed to let you know how much you have inspired me and i still have so much to learn but...uh, yeah.” the boy finished, looking at everything but kageyama at that point.

and a light flush colors kageyama’s cheeks, completely flustered. it was the first time anyone had approached him like that before, and he’s unsure how exactly to take the compliments. but he noticed the way the fan’s hands trembled, and he recalls all the times he’s approached the players he was a fan of when he was his age. “is there anything you need help with?”

needless to say, oikawa and ushijima were surprised when they found their table completely devoid of kageyama’s presence; only to find him in the incredibly large hallways with a makeshift volleyball court with chairs haphazardly stacked on top one another.

“where did you get that?” ushijima asked, pointing towards the volleyball that kageyama held in his hands.

“my car.” he replied like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“well then,” oikawa smirked, eyes lighting up as he looked around the halls, especially at the gathering crowd, “how about a friendly little match?”

kageyama and the fan he was meant to be teaching stood on one side of the makeshift court while oikawa and ushijima stood opposite them, getting into position. most of the guests had their phones out, recording everything and posting it on social media.

“at least i will finally know what it’s like to finally play with you in a team instead of against you.” ushijima commented, briefly glancing at his teammate for the night.

oikawa choked on air, taking a few seconds to compose himself before responding, “should have come to shiratorizawa, huh?”

it was barely even noticeable, barely lasted a few seconds, but ushijima cracked a smile.

the night ends with the newlyweds approaching the three of them, expressing their gratefulness for their invitations but also apologising for stealing their thunder on their wedding, going so far as to offering to pay for their honeymoon.

“as tempting as that may be,” the bride smiled, “it really is no problem. we’re surprised that you even attended in the first place.

the groom nodded in agreement, “we had a lot of fun watching you play tonight, so we feel like we should be thanking you more. you didn’t have to bring gifts too.”

oikawa waved a hand as if to say it’s nothing, while kageyama and ushijima offer tickets to their next match in exchange for photos from the wedding — particularly that of their little volleyball match.

the three of them finally make their way out into the night and into their respective cars, but not before oikawa lets out one more question.

“the three of us should hang out more,” oikawa smiled, not a trace of teasing or malice in his tone, just a genuine offer, “at least once before i get back to argentina.”

years ago, none of them would even consider such a thing, but all three liked to think that they moved past such trivial things.

kageyama gave him a small smile, “alright.”

᠃ ⚘᠂ ⚘ ˚ ⚘ ᠂ ⚘ ᠃

a question: what would the hq characters be like at a wedding? | written on the margins masterlist

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#didn’t think i’d be thinking about timeskip!oikawa-kageyama-ushijima dynamics tonight #but here i am and i loved writing these lil scenarios #written on the margins 🔖#oikawa headcanons #kageyama headcanons #ushijima headcanons #oikawa scenarios #kageyama scenarios #ushijima scenarios #🎐 — 🌙anon! <3

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