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9w1ft · 2 years ago

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thanks 9wing! i fully respect your interpretations of those songs as kaylor anthems - in fact, i'm reconsidering my stance on mastermind now 😅 it always felt like blank space 2.0 to me, but your analysis has helped me to see it in a different way. i am someone who is always open to multiple interpretations of the same song, so i hope our thoughts can co-exist if they're different or even contrary! instead of blown out analyses, let me share what parts of each song made me interpret it as bearding songs.

blank space -

"i can make the bad guys good for the weekend" — image control. taylor can make swifties hate or love anyone with the snap of a finger. her beards are benefitted from being with her by gaining popularity to support their works and/or to hide their own gay rumors too. once they're 'exes,' however, they're back to being the bad guys in swifties' eyes. (exceptions excluded)

the entire "cherry lips, crystal skies" verse, to me, feels as if she's trying to impress the general public with their theatrical relationship, and not quite her beau himself.

the main line "i've got a blank space baby and i'll write your name" itself, coupled with the typewriter beat, provokes imagery of bearding contracts. fun song!

cowboy like me -

her beardin' beau is hustling for the good life with stars in his eyes. "perched in the dark" makes me think that he's pretty much a very underground celebrity if we compare fame to light (another name goes up in lights - i can still make the whole lights shimmer - flashing lights). he doesn't want love, he wants a fancy car - a materialistic perk of being a well known entertainer or celebrity. taylor herself is also ambitious and she's at a point of her life where she wants to be taken seriously, so she really needs to display herself as someone with a stable love life. that's how they show 'forever' as their sweetest con.

"now you hang from my lips like the gardens of babylon" — i can't remember who, but another gaylor pointed out that this lyric provokes the imagery of a literal facial beard.

invisible string -

now this one's a bit sad, i always had a soft spot for this song and i hate to taint its innocence! anyway.

she pretty much shows how different their lives and motivations are in the industry - she wants love, he wants money. she thinks how pretty things could be if the universe aligned them, but really, she knows all too well that's very much not the case. all of this was arranged.

however, i like to interpret the "bad was the blood" verse could be a hint at karlie and their relationship, since karlie was the first person who heard 1989. although i do not know if it would make sense, but hey! that verse actually shows similarities, whereas the first verse did not.

lavender haze -

"staring at the ceiling with you" — business meeting, sitting in those formal black spinny chairs. they're both just kind of bored and staring at the ceiling, since they could technically have that employer-employee relationship.

"you don't ever say too much" — the interviews. they're sooooooo private. he's sooooo magnificently charismatic.

"you don't really read into my melancholia" / "you weren't even listening" — i could get how this could be interpreted positively, but i'm a negative nancy so i predominantly interpreted this as him not giving a shit 😅

"talk your talk and go viral, i just need this love spiral, get it off your chest, get it off my desk" — 'for the love of god, my dude, please say something a little bit more and be more convincing, i need us to be trending and to be seen as the industry titans. got it? cool, now go practise that smiling for photos exercise tree gave you and leave my office, i now need to combat the foot fetish allegations and wipe my desk clean before tree gets here.' i have a very wide imagination as you can see.

"no deal" sounds like her rejecting a (business) proposal. i also get the vibe that her team is shutting down the marriage rumors while his team is trying to boost them? not sure, just a hunch

thanks for this! i appreciate that songs can be interpreted in different ways. i vibe with a lot of what you wrote.

i did a little thinking and in my mind here are the lines i find kaylory about these songs, along with a few additional comments

invisible string

- i just want to add to what you’ve written by saying that to me the song sings like she’s listing up all this trivia that points to joe, some of which (the yogurt shop job) was cleverly planted in an interview of joe not long before folklore was released, and she sings in the chorus “isn’t it pretty to think” that there’s some connection between us that’s actually not there.

- by contrast when the music goes quiet, and she sings in a different pace and cadence, the part that begins with all the run ins, she mentions the dive bar from delicate, past mistakes and chains, changing weather, all of which is imagery that comes up in what we consider kaylor songs. plus, she closes off the line with one single thread of gold tied me to you which i believe is both in contrast to an invisible string, and illustrative of a color very often associated with karlie. this one section of the song feels like the truth hidden within the story.

cowboy like me

- eyes full of stars (this carries over from starry eyes sparking my darkest night, from the song call it what you want, where “call it” sounds like “karlie” a lot)

- the skeletons in both our closets plotted hard to fuck this up (this really feels applicable to taylor and karlie’s situation as we all have a sense of the skeletons in their closets, whereas i don’t really have a read on what skeletons joe could possibly have in his)

- that was all before i locked it down (there is a recurring theme of taylor and karlie putting their public relationship on lockdown starting in fall 2016, the thing with the gold heart locket, the love lock bridge in paris etc)

-idk man, the gardens of babylon line conjures up a… different kind of garden 🙈 in a sort of wear-you-like-a-necklace sorta way, if you catch my drift

lavender haze

- talk your talk and go viral (karlie has had more than a few viral moments in recent years, whereas i cant recall a single time joe has ever said anything memeable)

- i get the bearding interpretation of this song for sure because of lyrics like all they keep asking me is if i’m gonna be your bride which point to the you being who the public assumes taylor will marry. and the points you bring up work with this interpretation well, i think it’s a solid way to listen to the song and i’m not opposed to it,

-what makes it kaylory for me is taylor’s explanation of the song as a part of album promo. how she talks about how it’s been hard for her and her lover dodging weird rumors since 2016, and how lavender haze is about wanting to do anything to protect a love. she also references a mad men episode where john hamm’s character talks about wanting to have a relationship with ‘betty’ — a name kaylors have associated with karlie for some time now (karlie’s middle name is elizabeth). there are other things about the song that fit into a particularly kaylor interpretation i have but i get the feeling it’s my own little silly interpretation so i think i’ll keep to myself.

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forever-rogue · 4 years ago

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Only You (A Good Man)

A/N: Hello my sunshines! I’m back with another little installment of the AGM ‘verse with our favorite Javi and Dulzura! I love them so much and I’m glad y’all do too! This is just some sweetness - enjoy! As always, comments and feedback are welcome, and if you’d like to be tagged let me know! Xx

*can be read as a standalone or part of the ‘verse as a whole*

Pairing: Professor! Javi x Reader

Word Count: 3.3k

Warnings: language, smut (18+ only!)

A GOOD MAN ‘VERSE MASTERLIST

MASTERLIST

JAVIER MASTERLIST

»»————-　♡　————-««

“Dulzura?” Javier’s voice sounded concerned as he walked in the door and was immediately greeted by a large sigh from the dining room. He kicked off his shoes and dropped his briefcase by the door, pausing for a moment to reach down and pet Stevie. A quiet slew of curses met his ears as he padded down the hall to find you.

He paused in the doorway, leaning against it as a small smile crossed his features. You were sitting at the head of the table, papers and fabric samples and flowers all around you. Your hands were threaded in your hair as you stared at everything with an exasperated expression. Even if you hadn’t heard him come in, you easily sensed your fiancé’s presence and looked up to meet his soft brown eyes. Tension seemed to leave your body at the sight of your lover as he strode over and pressed a kiss to the top of your head. Humming slightly, he looked around at everything that appeared to be the bane of your existence as he realized this was all for the wedding.

“Hi Javi,” you relaxed ever so slightly as his large, skilled hands massaged your aching shoulders. Biting your lip, it became a herculean task to hold back your moans as he worked on easing the knots that had been plaguing you, “fuck Javi.”

“Normally you save that for-”

“Shut up!” you jokingly groaned as you put your hands on top of his and gave them a small squeeze, “such a cocky bastard.”

“And yet you’re marrying me,” you turned to face him but before you could do anything else, he captured your lips with his in a soft, saccharine kiss. That was definitely the best, and his favorite, way to get you to relax.

“I’m starting to question that,” you huffed when he pulled back, a confused expression crossing his features. His heart instantly felt like it was about to burst out of his chest as he stared at you; sometimes this still all felt like some sort of fever dream and you weren’t actually real. Like you were a figment of imagination that he used to cope with the reality of everyday life. But then...you were there to welcome him home with open arms every night. You were there, warm, soft, and gentle next to him every morning; sometimes you even woke him with gentle touches and kisses. You were here now, in his hands, literally and metaphorically, the ring on your left hand catching the light perfectly as he grounded himself and forced himself to remember that this was all real.

You noticed the momentarily distressed look on his face and shook your head, “oh, Javier, no! You know I didn’t mean it like that, my love. If there is one thing in this world I am sure about - it’s you. I just...I don’t know about all of these wedding planning. It’s starting to drive me crazy.”

“I feel like I haven’t helped,” he sighed as you slammed the book of cake photos shut and pushed it away and quickly stood up. Javier wasted no time in wrapping you up in his arms as you buried your face into his neck and inhaled his familiar scent; an instant sense of comfort and relaxation washed over you, “I’m sorry for not being more helpful. I’ll make more of an effort - this isn’t all your job.”

“It’s just...who knew that planning a wedding takes this much time and effort,” you groaned as you thought about all the plans you still needed to finalize and settle. It seemed like a task akin to an odyssey and you weren’t sure if it would ever come together, “all this trouble - and for what? One day of celebration for the people in our lives? To prove to them that we love each other?”

“It’s still months and months away,” the ex-DEA tried his best to reassure you as you just huffed with a bout of sarcastic laughter in his shoulder. He’d been through a lot of shit - seen even more - and yet none of that seemed as daunting as planning a wedding. Needless to say, he hadn’t played a big part in planning his first wedding, the one that had never happened thanks to him. It was all for the best, he’d come to realize over, because all of this had led him to you. He kissed your cheek, “we’ll get it all done.”

“I hope so,” you groaned lightly, deciding to push the thought of more planning out of your head; at least for this evening, “come on baby, let’s go out tonight, what do you say? I want a break from all of this, and I’m sure you’re just as tired.”

“Sounds perfect,” he beamed at you, “how about I take my wife to her favorite restaurant and then a movie?”

“How did you know what I was thinking?” you grinned at him before gently kissing his nose, “only one problem…”

“Oh?”

“I’m not your wife - not quite yet,” you reminded him as he just responded with a hearty laugh, “and who knows when it will be at this rate!”

“Relax, Dulzura,” he whispered as he held you close, “it will happen in time, just as it was meant to, I promise.”

»»————-　♡　————-««

“Fuck,” you could barely hold back your moan, biting on your bottom lip so hard you were sure it would bleed any moment as Javier buried himself between your legs. He hummed in content as you reached down and hand a hand through his hair, scratching at his scalp, “Javier, right there - please.”

“Always taste so good,” he whispered as he pulled back for a moment and kissed along your thigh; you were so close, and he knew exactly what he was doing - getting you closer and closer and then drawing out your orgasm. Sometimes you could kill him for doing so, but tonight it felt just right. He licked up your soaked folders, nose nudging your clit as he ate you out like a man starving, “just like fucking candy.”

“Jesus,” your eyes snapped shut as he added in two fingers, curling them just right to find your sweet spot. He moved his free hand to your hips as he tried to keep you still as you writhed under him, “so close, Javi.”

“Then you need to cum for me,” he insisted with a wicked smirk you could feel against your skin, “come on baby.”

“No, no, no,” you tugged lightly on hair, pulling his face away and causing him to look at you in confusion, “want you inside of me - want you to cum in me.”

“Shit,” he made a low, almost visceral sound as he hastily worked to pull off his jeans and threw them into the heap that contained your clothes. You reached for him and brought him up to your lips, kissing him as though your life depended on it, making it a point to leave marks that everyone would see, letting the world know he was yours. He moaned into your mouth as he lined himself up at your entrance before slowly pushing in. His eyes closed as your tight, warmness hugged him perfectly, “fuck, you feel so perfect - always do.”

“I love you,” you whispered softly at him, as he buried his face into your chest, “only you, Javier.”

"I love you, Dulzura," he kissed along your jaw as he set a languid, slow pace, hitting it right with every thrust. You reached up and grabbed his face, pulling him down to your lips and you could practically feel him smiling against you as he worked to pull small moans. And then - it hit him.

"Let's get married tomorrow."

"W-what?" it was somewhere between shock and a moan as Javier rolled his hips in a particularly deep thrust. He pulled back slightly and judging by the look in his soft brown eyes, you could see he meant it. This wasn't just some spur of the moment thing he'd decided on in the throws of passion.

He slowly switched positions so he was lying on his back and you were on top. The newfound angle made your eyes almost roll back as he stared at you in reverence. His large hands found purchase on your hips as you slowly bounced on his cock. His hips moved in time with yours, "I mean it. Let's just get married - fuck. Want to call you my wife already."

"Javier," you looked down at him with searing intensity before leaning down to kiss him. You could feel him start to twitch within you as your velvety walls started to clamp down on him, "I'm gonna-"

But you didn’t get a chance to say anything else as your orgasm washed over you, and nothing but soft mewls and moans spilled from your lips as you kissed him. Javi was close behind, filling you up with his hot cum, as he pulled you down to body and held you tightly.

The two of you stayed like that for some, trying to catch your breath and slow your racing heart as he continued to kiss you silly. It was such a tender thing, but so sweet and intimate that you never wanted it to end.

Once you came down from your high, you pulled back and grinned at him, nuzzling your nose against his before kissing him again.

“Did you mean it?” you asked him gently as a grin spread across his features and he nodded slowly, “you really want to skip the whole wedding and just go and get married at the city hall?”

“Mhmm,” he promised, “planning a wedding...it’s so much stress and time, and for what? Other people? We already know we love each other and we’re not going anywhere, what does it matter? This is for us.”

“Our families will be pissed,” you laughed as he just scoffed and shrugged his shoulders, “but they’ll get over it. I love you, Javier - and nothing would make me happier than being your wife. Let’s do it.”

“You’re sure?” he put his hand on your cheek as you nodded, “I don’t want you to do this and then regret it. If you want a big wedding, I’ll get you the biggest fucking wedding you could want.”

“I just want you,” you beamed at him, running a hand through his dark curls, “just you. Maybe we can have a big barbecue or something later once it’s all said and done. Besides, the whole thing just seems overrated, you know?”

“You’re perfect,” he whispered as you rolled off of him and stood up, nodding towards the bathroom. He wasted no time getting up, knowing exactly where this was going, “you’re going to be the death of me, you know that?”

“Hmm,” you mused thoughtfully before sticking your tongue out at him, “there’s one more thing I want to tell you.”

“Go on…” he quirked an eyebrow before you began pulling him into the bathroom and pointing at the small trash can. He studied it for a moment before realizing what was at the top, “really?”

“Uh huh honey,” you grinned and kissed his cheek as you glanced at the birth control that was placed on top, “we’d talked about it and said after the new year we could...try but not try. And well...I’m ready if you are, Javi.”

“I love you,” he looked back at you with wide, soft brown eyes. The ones you’d loved for what seemed like an eternity now, “fuck...yes. I want this, all of it - with you.”

“Me too,” you grinned back at him, “me too, Javier. You are the best man, and nothing you say or do will ever change that.”

»»————-　♡　————-««

"Baby," Javier poked his head down the hall as he looked at his watch. There wasn't even a time you had to be at city hall or anything but he was...nervous. Gods, he was so nervous. He couldn't even remember the last time he'd ever felt like this before. He hadn't.

"Almost done, Javier," you called back to him as you finished putting your earrings in and turning back to your mirror. You let out a breath as you looked yourself over; your whole body was trembling with anxious energy. But you'd dressed the part and were happy with how you looked - you hoped Javi would like it too, although you could have worn an old potato sack and he would have called you beautiful. A creak from the floorboards caught your attention as you laughed, "no peeking, my love! Its bad luck to see the bride before the wedding!"

"Are you planning on keeping me blindfolded on the drive? Are you going to drive Miss Gets Lost in Our Neighborhood?" you could practically hear the smile in his voice as you sighed dramatically. You finished off your hair before slowly opening the door.

"Close your eyes!" you insisted for just a moment before moving into the hall and stopping in front of him. Reaching over, you slowly grabbed his hand and held it tightly in yours, "alright. You can open!"

And he opened them ever so slowly as soft brown eyes studied you with intense scrutiny.

"Wow," he was almost speechless as a smile tugged on the corners of his mouth.

"Is it too much?" you asked as your cheeks warmed up, suddenly wondering if you'd made some sort of mistake and gone too far. Javi beamed at your with a fervent shake of his head as he pulled your towards him, lips ghosting over yours as he tried not to mess up your lipstick.

"You look absolutely beautiful," he promised, "I must be the luckiest man in the world."

"Now you're just being dramatic. You clean up pretty well yourself, handsome," you laughed at his praise, but relished in it nonetheless. You'd picked this particular green dress on the whim that he might like it. It had been hanging in your closet for some time, and you'd never had the occasion to wear it before. What better day than your wedding day? He just sighed contentedly as you fixed a few stray hairs and straightened his tie. It was a simple black suit, but gods, he looked handsome as ever and it nearly made your hair stop, “ready?”

"Definitely," he promised as he slipped your hand into his and started to tug you towards the door, "you ready?"

"Almost! Hang on," taking a step back, you smiled as you held up your hands in the shape of a camera and pretended to snap a picture when he laughed, "I'm taking a mental picture - of my husband on our wedding day."

“Husband,” his smile was infectious - brighter than you had ever seen and you swore you fell a little more in love then and there, “I like the sound of that. Come on - let’s get married.”

“You know this doesn’t change anything between us, right?” you asked as he held the door open for you, “I’m still going to love you just as much. It’s just a piece of paper.”

“And yet...it feels right,” he shrugged as you made sure the rings were in his coat pocket as he opened the car door for you. On your seat was a beautiful bouquet of vibrant tulips in your favorite colors. A small sound of surprise left your lips as your eyes immediately stung with tears, “w-what? You don’t like them?”

“I love them,” you took them in your arms and clutched them to your chest, “they’re perfect. I love you - you didn’t need to do this, Javier.”

“I wanted to,” he insisted, with a kiss as he went to the driver’s side, “every bride needs some flowers on her wedding day.”

“Who knew you were such a sappy traditionalist?” you snorted as you climbed in, “big softie.”

“Cállate,” he jokingly shushed as he turned on the car and drove towards city hall. This was it - later this afternoon you’d officially be Javi’s wife - Mrs. Peña.

»»————-　♡　————-««

"And do you, Javier Peña, take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?" Javier grinned at you, his single dimple proudly on display. He slipped the simple golden band onto your finger, snugly next to your engagement ring. You chewed on the inside of your cheek as you looked at the matching band on his finger.

"I do," he was confident; in all honesty he had never been this sure about anything else.

"Then I pronounce you man and wife," the officiant nodded at the two of you before Javi leaned over and kissed you gently.

It all felt so surreal - like you were going through everything in a daze. Javier's hand was holding onto yours, fingers laced together as you both signed the marriage certificate and received multiple congratulations from random strangers. It seemed like it all went by so fast, a blur as you became husband and wife.

Before you knew it, you were walking out of city hall and clutching onto his arm and giggling at something he said. Before you could get back in the car, Javier let go out of your hand and took a few steps back. You gave him a confused look before quickly realizing what he was doing; he held up his hands as he pretended to take a photo.

"First picture of my wife," his voice almost cracked as he watched you pose and hold up your flowers. He made a small sound in the back of his throat, "perfect."

"Javier," you threw your arms around him and held him tightly against you, burying your face into his neck, "I love you so much."

"I love you, Dulzura," kissing the side of your head, he picked you up and spun you around, "all mine forever."

"I was already yours forever," you promised him, "always - from the start."

"From the start?" he chuckled warmly as you nodded, grabbing his hand and pressing a kiss to his new wedding band, "even when I was your professor?"

"Mhmm," you reached up and cupped his cheek gently, "even back then. First the first moment when I thought- oh no he's hot to when you got mad at me for coming into your office to when you got me the tea."

"Ahh," his hands found purchase on your face as he leaned into you, "back when I was a complete asshole."

"It only lasted for like fifteen minutes," you smiled against his lips, "and I was a goner. I've loved you for a long time, Javier, when I didn't realize it."

"Shit," closing his eyes, he gently pressed his lips against yours, "and to think I felt guilty about thinking you were beautiful when I first saw you."

"You did?!"

"Uh huh honey," he repeated your favorite phrase softly, "I couldn't get you off my mind for...well since then. Nothing's changed. I loved you then and still do. It was easy I think, to fall in love with you - it just happened."

"I love you," you whispered before pulling him in for a long saccharine kiss, "so much, Javier. You are everything. You have made me the happiest woman in the world."

"I love you," he repeated softly, his hands on both sides of your face as he studied you, "mi alma, mi vida - my wife."

»»————-　♡　————-««

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#Javier peña x reader #javier peña #javier pena x fem!reader #javier pena x reader #javier pena x you #pedro pascal #pedro pascal x reader #narcos #agm #agm universe #a good man

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jeonsjiddies · 5 years ago

Text

Certain Things (m) | myg

original photo by snowmari on picsart

summary- you were in love with min yoongi, because he was a good person. You never thought he’d feel the same. F2l

rating- explicit 18+

word count- 5869

pairing- yoongi x reader

genre- fluff, smut

Warnings - oral (male and female receiving), penetrative sex, daddy kink, slight rough sex

Title inspired by Certain Things by James Arthur. <3

You did not fall in love with Min Yoongi because he was the dreamiest man you’d ever laid eyes on.

You did not fall in love with Min Yoongi because he was skilled in just about everything

You did not fall in love with him because of the way his body moved when he danced, almost like telling a story.

It wasn’t the way he remembered your coffee order or the way he stuck his tongue out when he was concentrating. It wasn’t the look of concern in his eyes when you had a rough day. It wasn’t the way he could (almost) always tell what you were thinking.

No.

You fell in love with Min Yoongi because he was a genuinely good person. The kind of person who made you want to be better too.

The way he’d do good things, the way he’d help people, especially when he thought no one was watching. You couldn’t count on all your fingers and toes how many times you’d sat at your window and watched Min Yoongi help an elderly woman carry her groceries up the stairs, or insisted on taking the single mother's trash to the dumpster as she wrangled her child in the other arm. The times he’d fix things the apartment complex neglected to get around to, not even leaving a note. He never asked for any glory.

The only time Yoongi sought out recognition was with his music.. His kind words and actions often went unnoticed or unappreciated by others. Yoongi didn’t mind that no one noticed, except you did. You noticed everything he did.

The day Yoongi moved in next door a year ago, you noticed his minty green hair and his contagious, gummy smile. You’d smiled back and welcomed him to the neighborhood, offering to help if he needed it. Yoongi had politely refused your offer, telling you he did not wish to bother you. Hours later when you showed up with freshly baked cookies, he did not refuse those. That was the beginning of your friendship with Yoongi.

After that, you two were almost inseparable, you were in his apartment or he was in yours. You talked and laughed and watched movies and got to know each other. The few moments you didn’t spend at each other’s side, you found yourself watching Yoongi every chance you got.

Just last week, you had perched yourself at your window and watched with a fond smile as your neighbor and now best friend comforted a little girl who’d approached him with tearful eyes and scuffed up knees.

Yoongi looked around for her mother, the single mom with too much on her plate, and when he didn’t find her he scooped the small girl into his arms, and gently distracted her with stories of a princess he once knew who fell off her bike too. The little girl snuggled into Yoongi’s chest as he walked around looking for her mother, telling her how the princess got a special band aid that made her booboo stop hurting immediately, like magic.

The mother darted over to Yoongi, spewing out apologies and thank you’s. She’d only turned her back for a moment and her toddler had disappeared. Yoongi shook his head, telling her it was nothing to apologize about and that he always enjoyed the young girls company. Min Yoongi was, in your opinion, a literal angel.

You smiled fondly, walking away from the window and stirring the soup you'd begun cooking earlier in the evening. You often shared your food with Yoongi, knowing that if you didn't, the stubborn idiot would exist on nothing but instant noodles and americano coffee. As you stirred the pot, you let your mind drift off with thoughts of Yoongi. He had texted you late the night before while he was struggling to compose lyrics for his new song.

He sent you voice clips of him rapping verses and asked your opinion on lines for the chorus, and you'd helped him get through his little slump until he was so in the zone he forgot to reply. You'd woken up this morning to an apology text and hugged your phone to your chest, reveling in how sweet he was and thinking it was just as good as a good morning text. You knew it was stupid to pretend these interactions with Yoongi were more than friendly, but sometimes you couldnt help yourself from getting lost in the idea of being his.

You wanted so badly to wake up to good morning texts from him. You wanted the hugs to last longer. You wanted him to hold you. You wanted to kiss those shiny, plump lips. Feel those veiny hands on your skin. You wanted to stay with him always, every time you parted from him a part of you seemed to dim. It was as if Yoongi was the sun and you were the moon, his warmth and energy reflected off of you and fueled your own.

Your entire life didn't revolve around Yoongi, not in the least. You had other interests and friends and hobbies. But it seemed like lately, he had wiggled his way into your heart so deeply, like a budding rose, the roots of your love for him were ingrained inside of you. Lately he had taken up more and more room in your heart, occupied more and more of your thoughts. You sighed, shaking off the empty feeling inside your chest and scooped the soup into two bowls.

You made your way over to Yoongi's apartment and balanced the soup so that you could knock. Yoongi opened the door a few moments later, wearing only grey sweatpants. Your mouth went dry and your grip on the soup wobbled as you stared at his exposed chest. Yoongi reached out to steady your hands and took the bowls from you, setting them down on the coffee table by the couch.

''Sorry I just got out of the shower. Let me go put a shirt on.'' Yoongi blushed, scurrying down the hallway and leaving you speechless at the entry.

You collected yourself, slowly shutting the door behind you and grabbing two spoons from his kitchen before sitting down on the sofa. Yoongi reappeared, fully clothed. You weren't sure if you were thankful or disappointed.

''This smells amazing!'' he praised. ''I was just about to make some instant noodles but this is so much better. Thank you!''

''How many times do I have to tell you that you can't survive on instant noodles and coffee?'' you rolled your eyes.

''I don't know how to cook.'' he shrugged.

''I have offered to teach you a million times.'' you threw back at him.

''But if I learned how to cook you wouldn't cook for me anymore.'' he pouted playfully , knocking his shoulder into yours.

''Big baby.'' you muttered, not bothering to hide the smile on your face. ''What would you do without me?''

''Probably die.'' he laughed. ''You're my best friend, I kind of need you.''

''Awww, Yoongi!'' you hugged him.

''Yeah yeah.'' he laughed, wrapping an arm around you in return. ''Just don't go anywhere, okay?''

''I won't, I promise.'' you grinned. ''Who else is going to feed you?''

''My point exactly.'' he winked, spooning more soup into his mouth and closing his eyes happily. “Ugh. Marry me.” He joked.

“You wish.” You laughed, trying to hide the heat rising in your cheeks.

You wished.

You chucked your coat off and threw it haphazardly on the coat rack then flopped onto the couch with a loud groan. You should have called in. You'd woken up late, your alarm didn't go off. You didn't have time to do your makeup if you wanted to shower, which you really needed to. So you'd gone to work looking like a troll, and things only spiraled downhill from there.

Your boss had called you out in front of everyone at the staff meeting for being late to work, using you as an example for the new attendance point system. Snide remarks were tossed your way from various grumpy people which you attempted to take in stride. Then, in the breakroom you'd spilled coffee all down the front of your peach colored dress.

You had texted Yoongi about your less than stellar morning and asked if he was having a better day. He talked you through your meltdown, trying to convince you that the universe wasn't out to get you and the world wasn't cruel and unjust. He'd been the reason you made it through the work day, albeit by the skin of your teeth. Your whole body dragged on the way home and all you wanted was to see Yoongi's smile but he had promised a friend he'd go drinking with them.

You flung yourself off the couch and changed into a baggy t-shirt and a pair of pajama shorts. You put on your favorite avocado face mask and relaxed with a lavender candle burning on the coffee table. You'd taken about two deep breaths when you heard soft tapping on your front door. You whined out loud and got up, padding over to the door and flinging it open.

The poor teenager standing at your door jumped in surprise, almost dropping the pizza he was holding. Eyes wide, he stepped back a bit. Your brows furrowed in confusion.

“Sorry. Can I help you?” you asked as sweetly as you could, guilt flooding your chest.

“Large pizza for Y/N Y/L/N? ” he questioned nervously.

“But I didn't order any-” you began to explain before you were cut off.

“Sorry! Sorry I thought I'd be back in time!” Yoongi huffed, jogging up to you and the poor delivery kid.

Yoongi took some cash out of his wallet and paid the young man before thanking him as he took the pizza and turned to you with a smile. He was also holding a white paper sack you couldn't identify and you shot him a quizzical look.

“Hey there Shrek.” he laughed at your bright green face mask which you had honestly forgotten about.

You were thankful it hid your blush as you swatted at his arm in protest.

“I thought you had plans.” you stated, ignoring his comment.

“I cancelled them.” he shrugged, moving past you to enter your apartment and set the pizza down on the coffee table.

“Why?” you asked, shutting the door and following him in.

“Sounded like you needed some cheering up.” Yoongi smiled, opening the paper bag and pulling out your favorite wine.

“Ugh, a man after my own heart.” you joked.

Yoongi just chuckled and uncorked the bottle, walking into your kitchen and pulling two wine glasses from the cabinet like he lived there. He poured you both a glass and sat next to you on the couch.

“I am fully aware that I am going to regret this decision, but I have decided that to cheer you up, we can watch whatever movie you want.” he told you.

Your eyes widened in excitement.

“Any movie I want?” you confirmed, “you won't complain?”

“One time only offer. Whatever movie you want.” he grinned at the childlike response.

“Harvard here we come!” you giggled, snatching up the remote and selecting Legally Blonde.

You glanced over at Yoongi, waiting for a snarky comment. He only gave you a pained smile. You snuggled into the couch with your wine in one hand and a slice of pizza in the other, feeling content and happy. Yoongi had turned the worst day into one of the best, simply by being who he was: kind and thoughtful.

“Thank you, Yoongi.” you said softly.

“No need to thank me. That's what friends are for.” he smiled, throwing an arm around your shoulders and leaning in for a quick squeeze.

Yoongi left his arm around your shoulder while you two watched the movie, and you had never been more comfortable than you were snuggled into Yoongi's side with your wine and pizza and strong leading female character centered movie. With Min Yoongi by your side, maybe the world wasn't so bad after all.

Today was Yoongi’s birthday. He’d gone to lunch with his family the day before and had planned to spend the day with you once he got off work. You looked over at your coffee table, grinning at his gift that you’d wrapped perfectly, even put a pretty bow on top. You’d baked him a cake, which was iced and ready for candles. You opened the drawer, but did not find candles.

Cursing under your breath, you checked the time before rushing out the door and running over to the small shopping center across the street from your apartment complex. You gave a friendly wave to the cashier, a college aged girl who worked there three days a week. You grabbed candles and a lighter then made your way over, making small talk with her and asking about classes.

“Thank god finals are almost over. They’re killing me.” She whined as you swiped your card.

“Hang in there, it’s almost over!” You encouraged her and she groaned but laughed.

You made your way back to your apartment complex, thinking about Yoongi and his face when he inevitably saw what you’d bought him. You didn’t notice the clouds turning an angry gray. You did notice however, when the rain immediately started pelting down, drenching you in seconds. You squealed, holding your shopping bag above your head and jogging towards your apartment.

Suddenly, the rain stopped assaulting you, and you looked up to find Min Yoongi laughing as he held an umbrella over both of your heads. Despite his eyes being the darkest color you’d ever seen, they shone with kindness.

“Yoongi.” You grinned in surprise, “you’re home early!”

“Yeah, they let me go early for my birthday.” He wiggled his eyebrows playfully.

“Well let’s party!” You beamed up at him.

The two of you ascended the staircase and made your way into your apartment. You shrugged off your soaked jacket and hung it up. Yoongi cleared his throat uncomfortably, looking anywhere but at you.

“What’s wrong?” You asked.

“I-uh... your shirt.” He mumbled, apples of his cheeks dusted with a light pink flush.

You looked down, cheeks burning as you realized your white t shirt was soaked through, revealing your lacy pink bra. You squeaked, arms darting out to cover your chest. You disappeared into your room, embarrassment flooding your face as you changed. Reappearing in front of Yoongi fully covered, you couldn’t meet his eyes.

“Hey, it’s okay, don’t be embarrassed.” He comforted you with a hand on your shoulder.

The skin there burned. When you didn’t say anything, Yoongi pulled you into a hug, strong arms wrapping around your waist and pulling you into his warm chest. You let the warmth of his embrace comfort you for a moment before pulling away and putting the candles in his cake and lighting them before walking it over to him.

“Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you! Happy birthday dear Yoongi! Happy birthday to you!”

Yoongi’s gummy smile graced his lips before he closed his eyes and blew out the candles.

“What did you wish for?” You asked, leaning in and wiggling your eyebrows.

“If I tell you it won’t come true!” He chuckled.

You sighed dramatically with a smile and cut the cake into slices, handing him the biggest one. Yoongi took one bite and threw his head back with a groan.

“This is delicious, Y/N. Thank you so much.” He praised.

Your heart skipped a beat and you grabbed the neatly wrapped present from beside the couch, holding it out to him.

“I told you not to buy me anything.” He glared jokingly at you.

“Just open it.” You giggled.

Yoongi took his time opening the gift, carefully peeling back the paper in an attempt to keep it whole and make less of a mess for you, thoughtful man that he was. He froze when he saw the box.

“You didn’t.” He gasped.

Your giddy laughter was your only response.

“These are... they... theyre too much, Y/N. I can’t accept them.” He sighed regretfully.

“You can and you will. You deserve something special on your special day! It’s about time someone pays you back for everything you do.” You smiled encouragingly.

“The cake was more than enough.” He argued, but he couldn’t take his eyes off of the box in his lap.

They were the wireless noise cancelling headphones he’d been drooling over for months, ever since the promo came out on Instagram. He’d been salivating when he showed you the ad for them, and you started picking up a few extra shifts here and there to put back money for them. They were a couple hundred dollars but you would’ve saved up thousands just to see the look that adorned Yoongi’s face in that moment.

“Thank you... so much. I’ll pay you back for these. I’ll take you to dinner. I’ll-“ he began but you cut him off.

“Don’t even think about it. Just take them. If you really wanna pay me back, write me a song.” You grinned.

“I will.” Yoongi promised, engulfing you in a tight hug. “Thank you.” Left his lips in a whisper over and over. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”

He pulled back and held you at arms length, eyes trained on your face. His gaze roamed over your features, drinking you in. His eyes searched yours for a moment before his gaze flicked to your lips. You waited with bated breath.

“Y/N?” Yoongi's voice was barely above a whisper.

“Hmm?”

“Can I kiss you?” He questioned quietly, carefully.

“Please.”

His hand came up to gently cup your cheek. He angled his head and closed the distance between you. The moment his lips pressed against yours, it felt like coming home. He held you close, and you’d never felt so safe. Your heart hammered in your chest as your arms wrapped around his neck, fingers gently threading through his hair. Yoongi’s arms found purchase on your hips and he pressed himself closer to you, his tongue sneaking out and gliding along your lips. You parted them, and he deepened the kiss. You weren’t aware that your grip on his hair had tightened until Yoongi pulled back, resting his forehead against your own with labored breathing.

“I’m trying really hard to be respectful and not to push you, but you’re making it kinda hard pulling on my hair like that.” he admitted breathlessly. You could feel the thickness of him pressing into you.

“What if I want you to?” you asked quietly, looking up at him from beneath your lashes.

Yoongi sucked in a surprised breath, his eyes searching yours almost frantically for a sign of doubt. When he found none, he interlaced his fingers into yours.

“Are you sure?” he pondered.

“I’ve never been more sure of anything or anyone.” you admitted, biting down on your lip nervously.

“Is this- Are you- I don’t think I can do this if it’s just a one time thing.” Yoongi sighed remorsefully.

“I don’t want it to be.” you reply, gently running a hand up and down his arm comfortingly. “Yoongi I want you. In every possible way. You’re my best friend. I love you. I’m in love with you. I have been for a while.”

“I’m in love with you too.” he whispered, like a secret he’d been dying to tell you. “Be mine?”

“Oh Yoongi baby, I’ve always been yours.” you giggled, pulling him in for a tender kiss.

Yoongi kissed you back, slowly. He took his time, exploring your mouth, relishing in the taste of you. You tasted a bit like the cake you’d both consumed not long ago, but also just distinctively...you. Yoongi loved the way you tasted, and he wondered idly if other areas of your body tasted just as sweet.

Gripping you by the hips, Yoongi pulled you up against him and you wrapped your legs around his torso as he carried you towards your bedroom. Your hands gripped his biceps and he barely had to look where he was going, so familiar with your apartment since he practically lived there. He hoped to become as familiar with your body and how you ticked as he was with everything else about you. You could feel him pressing up against your core as he carried you, the friction causing arousal to pool.

Yoongi placed you on the mattress gently, his body moving to hover over yours. He gazed down at you with longing in his onyx eyes, but it wasn’t just longing. He yearned for you, needed you, you knew this because you felt it too. The way he looked into your eyes mirrored your own expression. You were so desperately in love with Min Yoongi, and by some miracle, he felt the same way.

“I have dreamt about this moment for so long.” he admitted sheepishly, “I almost can’t believe this is real.”

“Me either. I can’t believe you’re here.” you giggled, letting a hand come up to softly caress his face, then push his hair out of his eyes.

“I’m not going to lie, I thought I was going to have to leave when your shirt was wet and I saw your bra. I didn’t want you to see my hard-on.” he laughed.

You covered your face and giggled in embarrassment, but Yoongi’s hands covered yours and pulled them away from your face, holding them on either side of your head.

“Don’t hide from me. Don’t ever hide any part of yourself from me. You are so beautiful, Y/N. I adore everything about you.” Yoongi cooed, pressing a soft kiss to your cheek.

“Did you know…” he ghosted his lips to the other cheek. “That…” his tender assault moved to your forehead as he placed a kiss to it. “I…” his lips brushed the tip of your nose. “love you.” he smiled, kissing your lips.

“I love you too, so much.” you giggled, kissing him back and moving closer to him, his warm embrace cradling you.

Something shifted, and Yoongi’s kisses got deeper, needier. His body lowered to lay flush against yours, but he was careful not to squish you. His erection pressed firmly into your core as he slowly rutted his hips into yours. A quiet moan left your lips at the swivel of his hips against yours and Yoongi’s kisses began to descend, his lips now working against the skin of your neck, sucking and nipping at the flesh.

His fingers crept up to the hem of your dress, and he tugged gently on it. You lifted yourself, tugging it off and tossing it across the room. Yoongi had seen you in bathing suits that had covered the same amount of skin, but this was different and it had heat flooding your cheeks. You took a deep breath and willed all of your courage and unhooked your bra, letting it slip down your shoulders before tossing it aside as well, leaving you only in your panties.

Yoongi’s jaw went slack as he stared at your breasts. You wanted to cover them, wanted to hide, but this was Yoongi. You trusted him with every part of you.

“You’re so beautiful, Y/N.” he stated in awe.

His head dipped down and his mouth wrapped around your nipple, his tongue flicking over the nub. Your back arched and your whimpers got louder when he began to suck. His large hand reached up to knead and tweak the other breast. Your body responded immediately, hips bucking up into Yoongi’s. You gripped his shirt and tugged, mumbling “off.” Yoongi obliged, tearing the fabric off and tossing it away in one fluid motion.

Your mouth watered, eyes roaming his ivory skin, the smooth planes of his flat stomach, poofing out just a little. He was perfect. Yoongi’s cheeks were dusted pink again and you leaned up, placing soft kisses to his tummy. Yoongi wound his hands gently in your hair, watery eyes watching you as you worshipped his body the way he deserved. Your lips ghosted over his chest and you could feel his heart racing beneath your touch.

“You’re so perfect.” you cooed.

Yoongi covered his mouth to stifle a laugh, and you grinned up at him. His hands came down to cup your face gently, and you leaned into his touch before urging him backwards until he was lying on his back. You made quick work of his belt and zipper, pulling his slacks down and tossing them haphazardly away. You watched his face for a reaction, and he bit his lip to conceal a nervous smile. Your heart fluttered in your chest at how adorable he was.

Despite the fondness filling your chest, you couldn’t help but feel warmth farther down when your eyes roamed over the tent in Yoongi’s boxers. You reached out and cupped your hand over his hardened member, palming him over his boxers. Yoongi let out a low groan at your actions, his hand gripping at the duvet cover. You slowly pulled the boxers off his body,

Yoongi’s length sprung free once his boxers were removed and it rested against his stomach, thick, hard, and leaking. You peppered soft kisses along the vein, bringing a groan out of Yoongi. Your tongue snuck out and cautiously slid across the tip of his penis, and his breath stuttered. You smiled to yourself, then took him in your mouth. Yoongi couldn't tear his eyes away from you, mesmerized by the sight of your lips wrapped around his cock. He'd had a million dreams about this very moment, but none of them compared to the way it felt to have his cock in your mouth.

It was almost too much for Yoongi, the way you were bobbing your head along his length, twirling your tongue around, massaging his balls with the perfect amount of pressure. It wasn't all sensual, he could see the adoration in your eyes. It made his heart swell with joy. Other parts of him were swelling as well as he neared his high. His hips involuntarily jerked, apologies tumbling from his reddened lips but you didn't slow down. You wanted to make him feel good, reward him for all the things he did for everyone else.

“Y/N, I..I'm gonna-” Yoongi warned.

You took the opportunity to take him deeper down your throat, swallowing around him. That sent Yoongi over the edge, echoes of your name falling from his lips, his body twitching as he spilled his seed down your throat. Yoongi took a shaky breath and gazed down at you in awe as you licked your lips clean after swallowing his load.

“Your turn.” He smiled, guiding you to lay on your back while he settled himself between your thighs, placing teasing kisses along the skin there.

He pulled your panties down your legs and licked his lips at the sight of your soaking cunt presented to him. Yoongi didn’t waste any time, bringing his lips to your folds and letting his tongue dart out to lick at your clit. You gasped, spreading your legs further apart, inviting him in. He slowly slipped one finger in your heat, working it and curling to hit that sweet spot that had you drooling.

His lips wrapped around your clit and he sucked before using his tongue to attack the sensitive bundle of nerves. You knew Yoongi could move his tongue quickly based on every rap you’d heard him recite and you’d daydreamed about how that would translate to eating you out but his skills surpassed your imagination and he had you close to cumming in under a minute. He slowly worked more fingers in, stretching your tight hole while he seemed to recite spells on your clit with his tongue.

No sooner than Yoongi added a third finger, you were careening off the edge, pleasure washing over you and Yoongi worked you through it, drinking up all of your juices and leaving a soft peck on your clit as you came down, which had your body jolting. He reached down to his jeans and pulled out a condom.

“Are you still sure about this?” He asked tentatively.

“Yes, I’m sure.” You said with absolute certainty.

Yoongi crawled up your body, leaving sweet kisses as he made his way to hover over you until you were face to face. He bit his plush lip, looking into your eyes with so much longing it almost hurt to return his gaze. He reached up to brush a stray lock of hair from your face, leaving his large hands on your cheek, gently rubbing his thumb back and forth. You leaned up and captured his lips with your own, and he melted into the kiss, immediately deepening it. His hands travelled down your neck, his fingertips tenderly brushing against the skin of your arms until he found your hands, resting beside your head. He interlaced your fingers together as he finally, finally entered you.

You gasped into his mouth, squeezing his hand while you focused on the feeling of finally being filled by the man of your dreams. Yoongi felt perfect inside of you, filling you up perfectly as if he was made for you and you were made for him. He stretched you in all the right ways and feeling him pressed up against your walls had your head spinning.

'' You okay?'' Yoongi asked, stilling inside of you.

''Yes.'' you whispered breathlessly. ''You feel so good, Yoongi. Please.''

Yoongi began to slowly move inside you, taking his time and making sure not to hurt you. His hips met yours as he bottomed out and he let out a shaky breath, watching your eyes for any sign of discomfort. You smiled up at him, pecking his lips quickly. Yoongi was amazed at how brightly your eyes shined when you looked at him. His thrusts started picking up pace, your soft noises spurring him on.

The two of you shared sweet kisses as he thrust in and out of your aching heat. Your noises gradually got louder, the faster his thrusts got. The louder you got, the harder it was for Yoongi to keep his composure. While he'd been picking up the pace, he’d remained fairly gentle, but something in him snapped when you groaned his name, sounding particularly needy as you begged ''more.''

His hips snapped into yours in a harsh thrust , knocking the air from your lungs. Gone was the sweet love making from moments ago, instead Yoongi was plowing into you with everything he had within him. Everything he'd held back this past year seemed to be pouring out, driving him to fuck you harder, faster. If you thought Yoongi's slow passionate strokes were maddening, you were absolutely ruined by his relentless, unforgiving thrusts.

Your soft cries of his name were now loud moans, he had you writhing and screaming as he drove you closer to the edge with every brush of your sweet spot.

''Fuck, you take my cock so well baby. I have dreamed about fucking you like this for so long.'' he growled in your ear, leaving hot, wet kisses along the skin below it.

''Me...me too.'' you whined at a particularly good thrust.

''Hmmm, I bet you have.” he smirked, bringing his hand between your bodies to rub lazy circles on your clit.

“Did you touch yourself here?” he asked, applying more pressure to your sensitive bud. “Did you play with this pretty pussy thinking about my cock?”

You nodded, overwhelmed with pleasure while Yoongi played your body like an instrument he'd practiced all his life. He knew exactly where to touch, how to rub, how to bring you to the brink of oblivion with a single stroke of his thumb. He was a damn sex wizard.

“You're cute, baby girl. But I need you to tell me. Tell me how desperate you were to feel me inside you. How you thought of me while you fingered yourself.” Yoongi coaxed, bringing one nipple into his mouth and making it impossible for you to think as his tongue rolled over it.

“Cat got your tongue?” Yoongi purred, licking a bold stripe across your hardened nipple, then the other. “Who makes you feel this good?”

“You.” you moaned, walls clenching around his cock as you got closer to release. This response did not seem to satisfy Yoongi and he shook his head.

“What's my name?” he prodded.

“Yo...Yoongi!” you cried out as he rolled his hips harshly against your own.

“Close... but you can do better, baby girl. ” his words were muffled by the hickeys he was sucking along your skin.

“Fuck… daddy.” you whimpered.

“What was that princess? Louder.” he commanded.

“Daddy!” you groaned.

“Cum for daddy.” Yoongi demanded.

And you did. Your orgasm crashed over you, the most intense you had ever experienced before. You body arched off the bed into Yoongis and you let out the most pornographic sound Yoongi had ever heard. Your vision went spotty and your head felt light and your face contorted in pleasure. The combined feeling of your pussy clenching around him and the sounds you were making threw Yoongi over the edge and he came shortly after you, spurts of hot cum filling the condom. Yoongi didn't think he had ever cum this much in his life. He tied the condom and threw it in your trash can.

His savage streak gone, the energy drained out of Yoongi and he fell beside you panting. You looked over to meet his gaze and you both burst into giggles. His arms came to wrap around you to pull you into his chest. You sighed contently and nuzzled into his warmth. He stroked your hair softly, leaving soft kisses anywhere he could reach. You pressed chaste kisses to the skin of his chest, too exhausted to aim for anywhere else.

“I can't believe it took us this long to get here. We're pathetic.” you giggled.

“Better late than never, I suppose.” he grinned.

“Always a bright side, that's one of the things I love about you.” you admitted with a shy smile.

“Oh?” Yoongi smiled, kissing your blush filled cheeks.

“There's certain things that I adore about you.” you explained. “Like how kind you are, and how determined and focused. How you always treat people with respect. How you scrunch your nose up. God its adorable.”

Yoongi covered his mouth to stifle a laugh, his own cheeks now turning a shade of red.

“I love you too, baby. I love how you take care of me. How your eyes light up when you smile. I love how passionate you are. You’re perfect to me.” Yoongi's voice was low and soft while he confessed.

You hid your face in his chest, willing your racing heart to calm down, but Yoongi always made your heart race, it seemed to beat only for him. Soon, exhaustion got the better of both of you. You drifted to sleep in Yoongi's warm embrace, listening to your favorite sound in the world, his heart. And it beat only for you.

#min yoongi #yoongi #suga #bts #bts smut #smut #agust d #bts suga #friends to lovers #bts au #min yoongi x reader #yoongi x reader #suga x reader #neighbor au #neighbor!yoongi

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kerwritesthings · 5 years ago

Text

South Of The Equator

Summary: Gestures of love are woven in the fabric of relationships, especially ones built around the priority of your love

Word Count: literally juuuuust shy of 5.8k

Warning: pining, love and fluff

Author Notes: Muse fell in love with this photo last week when Bre threw it out onto my dash, spit out stupid notes at midnight that night for it along with about 350ish words and then didn’t touch it until again yesterday evening where I proceeded to crank out about 5.8k in less than 24 hours. Oops?

This falls well later into the verse, like the latest I’ve taken it thus far. It just felt right to bring this into that part of the timeline with the premise and where the muse was taking this. Can be read as a standalone but diving into the verse and the masterlist would give a little bit more understanding.

It was not in the plans. Whatsoever. A whim. A lot of longing. A lot of missing connections. A lot of feeling that this was a sync you just wouldn’t be able to get. That scares the both of you, more than either of you will let on especially to the other. You both promise that this would be the longest stretch on this very last swing – something like 48 or 50 days depending on travel for both of you, that a somewhere between 12 and 14-hour plane ride at best for a long weekend made no sense. You’re in Bucharest when he starts the swing in Mexico. What was thought to be a few days off for him to come home to see you between the last Mexico show and the venture further south becomes non-existent, with surprise pop up concerts in both Costa Rica and Panama along with hoopla surrounding them on either side that the label drops last minute. You initially think you’d be able to make the last shows, but there was a potential work trip to Hong Kong hanging over your head, so you both agree not book anything.

Well, love makes you do some stupid and irresponsibly crazy things. When the Asia client pushes their timeline back, things change completely. Which is why you find yourself on the phone, trying to make arrangements while juggling 7 open browser tabs on your laptop at nearly 1am. This is what you do for each other. It’s been established. It’s been done for each other on numerous occasions throughout your relationship. But it’s never been something like this. This grand and involved.

“Up for a bit of a challenge?” you start. “What’s the actual schedule like between Buenos and Rio and Santiago?”

“Flip it around. Chile first. Then Buenos then Sao Paulo. Finish off in Rio,” Beatriz laughs. “Don’t book the wrong flight. Cause. This is where it’s going isn’t it? This bugger is so lucky to have you. He best appreciate this. He’s been whiny. More to Cez then me. Andrew too, but he trusts Cez more when it comes to you.”

“He’s not the only one,” you sigh. “Dee’s taken to sending me videos and photos of Tali every day before I call to bitch to her to try to ease my tension. We’ve done longer, when we first got together. This one though. We’re just not taking it well, either of us. It feels off. He can’t come to me, so I have to go to him.”

“There’s doubles now in Santiago, not just in Buenos and Rio. Only the one in Sao Paulo. Days off scattered through, but definitely some between the city jumps. Are you really going to try to do just a weekend down here?” she asks.

“Work remote if I can swing it. Then bank out on some time off. I’m due after the extra hours to lock in the Danish project and the haul to Bucharest for basically a 48-hour lookie loo from them with no commitments. Boss lady is great as long as my work gets done and I don’t pull the ask for ‘but my famous boyfriend’ very often, if at all,” you explain, poking away at the keys of your laptop.

“Ooh Denmark, so you going to get out for that one?” Beatriz questions. “Do you have a lam for this tour? Should we get you another?”

“I think I can, timing looks ok and I may be able to drag Shawn with me for once since it’s after all this hoopla,” you mutter, poking at Kayak and cursing. “I think I do, snag one just in case if it’s not too much trouble. It looks like Air Canada has a direct from Pearson to Santiago at 11 hours of flight time and an overnight red-eye. Bless it. No layovers. Less chance for him to even let on. Y’all can sneak me in on the flights between yeah?”

“Shawn is gonna shit you know this right?” she laughs. “I heard about your surprises you both have pulled on each other before, but this is something else. Duh girl, yes of course. He’d have you sit on his lap the whole flight if he had to, but we definitely have the room. Give me the flight info. I’ll make Cez book it. Do not even think about clicking that buy button that I know you’re hovering over.”

“Bea...” you begin.

“No, not hearing it. Cez blocked out travel budget for him to go home and you know that didn’t happen, so your flight there and then back with him at the end it is instead,” Beatriz interjects. “I’ll loop in C for sure. Maybe Andrew. Less folks who know the better, we need to keep this on lock down.”

“Beatriz, you’re the best. I owe you big time. I’m so glad you’re on this rag tag motley crew,” you thank her. “Let Cez know if he needs anything when he’s booking, if they don’t have it saved to just let me know.”

“Bottle of Bulleit and you finally spill the recipe for those kitchen sink bars the boys are always raving about and inhaling, we’ll call it even,” she deadpans. “But no really, I’m glad to help. As much as I tease that boy of yours, I’ve got a soft spot for him. We need to figure an epic reveal. It’s late. I’ll fire off a text to Cez and we’ll be on it tomorrow. Off with you. Night!”

You have a week between that call and your flight down to get all your things in order luckily. Work is understanding and accommodating, your boss practically sending out the out of office email for you after she hears your plans. He meanwhile has a few shows in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia ahead of him within that same time frame.

“There’s that face I adore,” you smile through FaceTime as you’re tucked in bed, two nights before you’re due to leave. “Hi you. How was the show? Where are you now?”

“Just out of the shower in the hotel and about to fall face first into bed, but I needed a dose of my pretty girl before I do,” he exhales, running a hand though his mess of wet curls. “Good, crowds down here are something else. Beyond the first time I swung through, on the last tour. And them singing back in perfect English still breaks my brain a little. Tired though. Looking forward to the break. Day break here, then like a half one off in Santiago before the last few shows. It’s so crazy to think we’re there already.”

“I can’t believe it’s almost over,” you murmur. “You did it baby, an entire circle of the globe. I’m beyond proud of you.”

“As much as I love this, I’m ready for just me, you and our bed. At least for a week straight, if not a few of them,” he chuckles. “Remind me of how tired I am now when I start to say I’m twitchy or bored, ok?”

“If you say so,” you say sleepily. “Just remember, I get to drag you with me on some my work trips next. Denmark for sure. Hong Kong perhaps since that’s still a moving target. Maybe Prague. Wanna be a silly romantic tourist with you for a bit. Just me and you”

“Always me and you, sweetheart. Go get some sleep. You’ve got work in the morning,” he whispers. “We can talk more tomorrow, promise.”

“You sure?” you fight back a yawn, eyes starting to flutter. “Can you sing to me though? Please? I miss you. Be like you’re here.”

He starts humming at first, the eases into a slowed down, Shawn-esque version of Sam Smith’s Latch. You want to stay awake to hear the whole thing, but he sounds like he’s there singing it right into your ear while he’s got your back against his chest. It’s so pretty, easy and dream like that you drift off in moments. He watches you for a few minutes after he finishes the song, making sure you’re truly asleep. Plus, he just wants to feel like he’s next to you in bed.

“Goodnight and sleep well, baby,” he whispers before disconnecting from FaceTime, a small smile slipping across his lips.

“He still has no clue by the way, so you’ve done a bang-up job,” Cez explains as he rings you while you’re in the car on the way to Pearson. “You’re still running on time from what we checked so you’re good. We’ve got everything square. Bea will come snag you from the airport, you’ll have time to hit the hotel, she’ll have the extra room key for you so you can get some actual rest and then get ready. Figure we’ll grab you while he’s doing Q&A. Do you want to surprise him before the show? After?”

“During?” you laugh, leaning your head back against the headrest as the car makes its way down the 401. “Maximum effect. Con would be on my side too you know, epic footage.”

“Of course, you do,” he retorts. “I should have known. Don’t forget, I’m on your side too. I’m glad this worked. I know it’s been a long stretch. For the both of you. I’ve seen it wear on him, but he’s put up a good front minus a few nights where he ends up with me until he needs to get to sleep, just needing someone who understands to talk to.”

“I’m glad he has you, that we both have you. You are a gift, Cez, really,” you reply as the car slows to ease up to the terminal. “I’m just about to hop out. I’ll text you and Bea when I land in the morning, customs will probably take a bit to get through. Thank you again.”

“Fly safe, dear. Try to get some rest and we’ll see you tomorrow,” he responds.

Check in was easy, of course they went above and beyond on the flight. You text Cez and Bea a photo of a cookie from the lounge with your ticket telling them they did not need to and thanking them. Cez responds first.

Again, you know if he found out we flew you like in row 24 on a flight that long, he would pitch a fit. I’m not up for a Shawn fit this late into the last of the last legs of tour. Enjoy the space and the lay flat. Sunshine and that boy awaits you.

Beatriz chimes in next.

Label owes you and the pain in the arse, so enjoy it! Have one for me. I’ll be there for you tomorrow with bells on and a tea in hand. Cannot wait for this – so epic. You two are nauseatingly adorbs.

The flight wasn’t crowded thankfully and the room to stretch fully is a welcome bonus. You are able to wind down a lot easier than expected and get a decent amount of sleep especially given it was on a flight, lay flat or not. Despite an extra circle, you land only a few minutes past your initial arrival time, make it through customs quickly and thankfully your luggage is waiting for you once you’re done.

“There she is,” Beatriz calls out as you head out to the open concourse. “And in one piece too with all your bits and bobbles. Good, the boss won’t be angry. And as promised, your tea!”

“Which one?” you chuckle, snagging the iced chai before hugging her.

“I can handle Cez, your man though,” she rolls her eyes as you walk out to the sprinter van. “He tried you last night when we were coming back from dinner, couldn’t get through even though we all told him it was late. He got all sad puppy. You were just about taking off, so it made sense. If he only knew what today is bringing him. I’ll drop you at the hotel, sleep, shower, eat, do whatever. I’ll be round to grab you about 4.”

As soon as you step into his room, you are overwhelmed just by the sheer sense of being back in his space again, despite him not even being there at the moment. You drop your suitcase, strip and crawl immediately into his still unmade bed to surround yourself in the smell of him. Setting your alarm before you drift off, you curl yourself around his pillow and exhale. Only a few more hours and you’ll be able to wrap your arms around him instead of a goose down that carries whiffs of his scent. A deep breath, an inhale you hold just for a moment before letting it go carefully and you’re drifting away.

You wake shortly before the alarm and to a couple texts from Shawn.

Miss you pretty girl. Almost there.

FaceTime after the show tonight? Even just for a few, I can tuck you in from here again like the other night.

Saw this on the drive over before, couldn’t help but think of you.

It was a slightly angled photo out the car window, but it was of a park with a fountain surrounded by high bushes littered with flowers.

I wish I could press you into those blooms and kiss you. Would make such a pretty picture. Love you baby.

You will yourself not to cry. That sweet, sentimental boy of yours. You’ll have time, you need to make that happen tomorrow.

I miss you sweetheart, so much. Yes to tonight, I’d love a tuck in from you. We’re so close. Love you <3

A shower, some primping and a good battle with both your blow dryer and your travel steamer later, you’re finally ready to head out.

“He’s a lucky bastard this one,” Beatriz whistles before handing over your new credential as you slide the van door closed behind you. “Don’t you have any sisters you can send my way? Cousins?”

“Sorry Bea, only child,” you laugh, as the van pulls away. “Cousins are stateside and not your type.”

“He was happy to hear from you before. Stopped in the middle of sound check to look at his phone. Got all stupid smiley and googly eyed,” she rolls her eyes. “He’s so gone on you if it wasn’t so bloody sweet to see him so gushy, it would make me ill.”

“Just wait ‘till later. I should apologize now,” you explain.

“Why there’s no plans for post-show, dearie. We knew better,” she giggles. “Shawn’s not going to want to share.”

You can’t help but smile as you pass the park he sent you the photo of earlier, it’s prettier than his shot let on. You definitely have to go there tomorrow. From that point, it’s a windy way through the streets of Santiago to the arena.

“He should just be wrapping up,” Beatriz prattles, looking at her watch as you make your way through the bowels of the building. “Which is good, I can sneak you into Cez’s room without him sniffing about. You, he, Jake and Con still need to hash everything out yeah?”

“Kind of. It’s the fine tuning of details at this point,” you say, flipping the pass around in your hands before slipping it around your neck as you walk, still not fully grasping you’re going to see him as soon as you are. “It’s a matter of where to go in the pit during his walk up to stage where I won’t be spotted too easily, but also not be in the way of everything either. I think it’ll work, totally up to Jake though. Worse case, we’ll do it just before rally or he hits the stage. Better visuals, and Con will agree with me, but it’s Jake and Cez who have final call.”

“It’s brilliant, all of it. However, here is where I leave you for now,” Beatriz nudges you through the door into Cez’s makeshift office for the next two days. “Need to make sure the sound techs have everything. Fridge is stocked, so steal what you need. He should be back in a few. They’re due to be walking your man now. His room isn’t far, so stay put. I’ll let C know you’re here. Toodles!”

Shortly after you settle in on the couch, engrossing yourself in your inbox, you feel someone settle down next to you.

“Thank god you’re here, I cannot do the sad Shawn shit anymore,” Connor sighs, throwing an arm around your shoulder. “I love him like a brother but damn, this go has been a beast when he’s feeling it like that.”

“Hi Connor, I’ve missed you too Connor, it’s good to see you Connor,” you roll your eyes, pushing his arm off you with a poke.

“Yeah yeah, all that too,” he smiles, sliding his arm back into place and kissing your cheek. “It’s good to have you here, all that aside. Despite all that, missed you around these parts.”

“Considering Central America took away our long weekend together, with no warning. It’s just been a hard go this swing. For both of us. May just be the wear and tear of a tour this long finally hitting. Even with as much as we’ve made it a priority to stay more connected and grounded. You guys are lucky it’s the end and it didn’t happen in like the middle of Europe, or the US leg. Though that would have been easier to get to than an almost 11-hour flight,” you fight out.

“You’re too good for him you know?” he teases. “Remember, he has friends if you ever need to bail.”

“Not any of y’all that’s for sure. No way. And, it’s the other way around, Con,” you reply, poking at his knee. “So, you’ve seen the setup, what’s going to make the most sense?”

“We’re going to do whatever you want, missus,” Jake chimes in as the door shuts behind him and Cez. “Only thing I require is a hug.”

“I think that can be arranged,” you say happily, ducking around Connor to get to Jake. “Con, stop being in the way.”

“Thank you,” you murmur to Jake as he pulls you into an embrace.

“We should be thanking you,” he whispers hugging you tightly. “And seriously. We’ll make it all happen. Kid needs this as much as you do.”

You pull away, smiling. “Ok guys so here’s what I’m thinking. Let’s surprise him on the walk out.”

The details come together quickly as well as easily. You’re happy, the team is comfortable with it all. It also helps he’s not expecting a thing. Everyone’s on board.

“So,” Cez begins, rolling a bottle of water around in his hands as everyone else filters out. “Hop a flight on a whim in the states or Canada is one thing. Cross the pond, a little more effort, but doable. This is something else entirely, even for the two of you.”

“I don’t know why this one is so different; I wish I knew; believe me I do. It would have saved me an 11-hour flight,” you utter. “It’s not like we’ve not done it before. We got through this, worse even, when he went out on last leg of the last tour and I had no leverage to take time off to come out other than that last show. We were only together a little bit at that point.”

Cez smiles his all-knowing smile, looking down at your hands playing with your credential. “I think you do, somewhere in there. I think he does too, well I know he does.”

“What are you talking about?” you ask inquisitively. “We’re good, really good. Minus this blip and it’s just us being a little more emotionally wound together. More in the groove than we’ve ever been. It’s been great, actually.”

He smiles yet again, making you wonder even more, and picks up his hand pointing to a certain finger.

“No,” you shake your head.

He nods, still smiling. “You’re practically there already. We were honestly all surprised it didn’t happen before tour, or at break. Especially after Japan. I knew though not the holidays, it’s too cliché and not him, or you. He’s asked me a few things, more recently. Won’t give away more than that, but it kind of all makes sense. At least to me.”

“I just. Like. Shit Cez,” you sigh, looking down at the lam in your hands. “We’ve talked about it before, couple times. We want it, both of us. He’s it for me, and vice versa. He knows I’ll say yes. I’ve told him as much. But I’m also not that girl that needs the pretty on her hand to know where we stand in our relationship. He’s also not that overly possessive man who needs to prove he’s got me like that to the world, even in his crazy whirlwind of a life.”

“I think it’s both of you really ready for what’s next and this just all happens to be in the way right now. But, you’re here now, which not only is he going to be over the moon about, the rest of us are pretty happy as well. Not just because he’ll be in better spirits, it’s because we love you just as much too,” he states plainly. “You’re as much a part of this, a part of the family. I’m personally glad you’re here for these last few. This run’s been special, you should be here for the end of it.”

“Do not make me ruin my makeup, damnit,” you half laugh, half bite back a sob. “I’m so glad he has you, not just on the road, but in general. I know how much he loves you. I do, too.”

His phone pings rapidly.

“Ten-minute warning for fetching him. Let’s go get you out and set. Phil’s on you until Jake walks out with Shawn,” he states, reaching for his headset in one hand, for you with his other.

You carefully walk down the back hallway towards the stage together. Jake and Phil meet you at the back corner of the build out. Jake hands you off a fresh pair of earplugs.

“You’re going to need these,” he reminds you. “It’s his usual walk, so he won’t expect a thing. Especially seeing Phil at that junction of the barricade, once Phil gets the signal from me that we’re going, he’ll shift behind you so Shawn can spot you.”

You throw him a thumbs up as you wedge the plugs into place. Phil takes your arm in his, his other hand patting your forearm.

“Let’s go surprise him,” he says, leading you out to the pit.

For some reason, probably your conversation with Cez if you’re being honest with yourself, has your stomach set off with butterflies. You’ve not been like this since the early days of your relationship. Excited, always. Happy, without a doubt. Nervous though? No. You try to not shift about, instead closing your eyes to take in the moment. The crowd is loud, you can smell the remnants of the smoke machine test earlier lingering in the air.

Phil taps your shoulder, sliding you into place in front of him.

“He’s walking,” he mouths with a wink.

The house lights come down and the stage lights start to just warm. You exhale and lean back onto Phil slightly, whose hands come to rest comfortably on your shoulders. The opening video starts to roll and the lights hit the pit walk so you know you’ve got about 30 seconds at best before he comes into view. Phil pushes you forward just a touch just as you spot Jake and Shawn with Connor shuffling just behind to get the right angle for the surprise.

He’s in his pre-show zone, not taking in much around him. Jake nudges him though and his eyes shoot up. Shawn looks over towards you, taking a moment for things to register, and when it does his smile is as bright as you’ve seen. His eyes grow wide, he turns to Jake, who nods with a grin and then Shawn takes off in a sprint.

“Surprise!” you try to scream, but he’s already got you in his hold lifting you to swing you around.

“Tell me I’m not dreaming, please,” he utters in your ear before pulling you closer, finally getting you back on your feet.

You slide your hands from his shoulders, one to the nape of his neck fingering the wispy curls there, the other to nudge his one in-ear out.

“Not a dream, baby. Very much here, very much real. You got me for the rest of the run, love,” you say directly into his ear. “Go be my Rockstar. I’ll watch side stage, be there waiting for you after the show.”

You pop his in-ear back into place then cup his cheek, watching his eyes roll back slightly.

“I love you so damn much,” he yells before kissing you soundly. “I am so lucky you’re mine.”

Shawn rubs his nose against yours before sneaking in another kiss, then runs up to the stage with Jake on his heels. Jake winks as he passes, throwing a double thumbs up before Phil takes you towards the back staircase so you can set up on the rolling case you know is waiting for you.

The show is electric as always, but he’s got a special energy tonight. You can’t help but feel a bit happy as to probably being the reason why. He’s smiling, sweaty and disheveled, running back towards you in the break before the encore.

“You’re a mess,” you quip with a smile, handing him a bottle of water and a towel.

“Never minded that before,” he retorts back, running a hand through the mess of his hair after wiping his face down with the towel.

“Not the place Shawn Peter,” you say, shooing him away. “Go finish, I’m not going anywhere.”

He drops the water bottle down on the case next to you, stealing another kiss before bopping his way back out.

You hop off the case and head out towards the curtain line to get a better view. His encore covers have been something else this tour. He’s been leaning hard into Tom Petty’s Free Fallin’ and it’s a stunner, especially just him and the piano.

“I had a surprise tonight delivered to me just before the show, a really amazing one actually,” he begins as he settles into playing the piano. “So, if you all don’t mind, I’m going to play something a little special before I get into my last two songs.”

Once he hits the first few chords, your jaw drops immediately.

“You lift my heart up when the rest of me is down. You, you enchant me, even when you're not around. If there are boundaries, I will try to knock them down. I'm latching on babe now I know what I have found,” he sings and you can’t help but inch closer to the edge as far as you can go without being spotted or seen. “I feel we're close enough, I wanna lock in your love. I think we're close enough, could I lock in your love, baby? Now I got you in my space, I won't let go of you. Got you shackled in my embrace; I'm latching on to you.”

You didn’t expect this the other night, so you very much don’t expect it tonight. You can’t do anything but watch him, enamored and amazed. He sounds breathtaking. The whole song just gives you goosebumps, especially in a setting like this. Damn this boy.

“Thanks for indulging me tonight, Santiago,” he says and you can see the flush spreading across his cheeks, even from there. He immediately segues into Free Fallin’ to get his encore moving, before finishing completely with If I Can’t Have You.

He’s got a hold of your hands the moment he’s out of sight of the audience.

“Did you like it?” he asks, dipping his head down to kiss you, feather soft.

“Love it, love you,” you reply, dusting kisses across his knuckles. “Come on, let’s get you back there before they start to think we’re defiling a case on the stage.”

He chuckles, tangling his fingers deeper with yours before leading you towards his dressing room. As you hit the main hallway, most of the band and the crew are waiting there and start whooping and clapping the moment the two of you come into view.

“What the hell?” you question, as he holds your hand tighter trying to make your way down the hall. He shakes his head, cheeks pink as he bites his bottom lip.

“Hold up,” Jake stops you both just before the doorway to his room, arms crossing against his chest and a shit eating grin spread across his face. “Believe you owe this lady a thank you.”

“Hello, the song, on stage, the encore? In front of the whole damn audience,” he retorts, running his free hand through his curls before tugging you towards him and the door without getting you covered in post-show sweat. “Now I’d like to shower, get the heck out of here so I can spend some time with her. Without an audience.”

You can hear the snickers and wolf whistles, it’s your turn to flush. Jake shakes his head no.

“You know what you assholes, fine,” Shawn sighs before rolling his eyes.

“Don’t even with me kid,” Jake smirks.

“I know what you’re…” he trails off but tugs your hand, so you stand closer to him. “Shit. C’mere baby.”

The next thing you know he’s cupping your neck and kissing the breath straight out of you. Your hands fly up, one gripping his shoulder the other tangling in his hair. He pulls away first, just as breathless as you’re feeling.

“You all happy now? Can I please get into my room?” he asks.

Jake moves aside, patting him on the shoulder. He snatches your hand and tugs you into the room, shutting and locking the door behind you both.

“Do I even want to know?” you say, leaning back against the door as he toes off his boots.

“Grander the gesture, bigger the thank you,” he replies, stripping off his button down next, his tank and jeans follow. “They like to tease, you know this. Especially when you and I start getting the way we do. It’s all in good fun, but not when you pull the most epic surprise and I’ve run through a whole damn show. I haven’t seen you in how long and I still haven’t really held you or loved on you the way I want to.”

“Then you best go shower, sweetheart,” you tease. “You know feeling is mutual.”

He darts over to kiss you again, “Be right back.”

He’s quick, which you appreciate, and even more that he’s just in a pair of threadbare, low slung navy sweats when he heads back out to you. He drops the towel in his hand to snag yours, pulling you towards the couch. He flops down first and pulls you immediately down on top of him. He kisses your forehead before scooting you down so your head can rest comfortably on his shoulder. He smells fresh, clean, warm, like him and like home.

“Hi baby,” he murmurs against your lips before kissing you slowly and thoroughly. “Fuck, how I missed you. I can’t believe you’re here. I’m so damn happy that you’re here. You’re amazing you know that? How did you pull this off?”

“Once Hong Kong pushed timeline, I had a little wiggle room, but I wouldn’t be sure until Denmark signed off,” you explain, finger carefully tracing back and forth against his collarbone and shoulder. “I didn’t want to get either of our hopes up, so I didn’t say anything. Then like a week and a half ago? That night we just couldn’t get timing together I think you were in Panama still. I was up and cranky at stupid o’clock, said screw it. I knew I had some comp time due, had a little vacation time left, plus after Bucharest debacle on their part, they kind of owe me to boot. Called Bea, looped in Cez and voila.”

“You’re making it harder to even come remotely close to do for you what you do for me,” he presses his lips against your hair. “I’m so grateful for you.”

“There’s not a tally, sweetheart. We do for each other, you know this,” you remind him. “You and me, always right?”

There’s a knock on the door and jingling of keys, you go to move but Shawn holds you to him.

“Just gonna be C, we’re not doing anything. You stay put,” he wraps his arms around your waist and nuzzles your ear.

“Sorry kids, time to get a move on,” Cez calls out from the doorway. “Can I come in? Are you at least PG?”

“It’s cuddling man, that’s all,” Shawn barks out with a laugh as you bury your head into his neck.

“You’ve got about 10 minutes to get yourselves together before the sprinter gets here,” he reminds you both. “We’ve got a curfew in the building overall, so we can’t be late on this one.”

“I’ll make sure he’s ready,” you reply, trying to wiggle out of his hold. “Let’s go, you. Need to get your stuff together. Can’t be late.”

“Listen to your girl, Shawn,” Cez remarks. “She’s right. Plus, you’ll be free of us and interruptions once you’re back at the hotel. Late call tomorrow since we’re already set here. I’m leaving the door unlocked and open so no funny bunny ok?”

“Thanks, Cez. See you in a few,” you say, trying to nudge at Shawn.

“You know that means we can go to that park in the morning,” you whisper, kissing his chin once Cez is back out in the hallway. “Upsy daisy dear.”

He sighs dramatically, but with a smile, “Only if you promise a little morning love, breakfast in bed and that park in the morning.”

“You drive such a hard bargain,” you giggle. “It’s a deal.”

He kisses you quickly and loudly before sitting up with you still in his hold, “I can’t wait to get you alone alone tonight.”

“Which would be sooner if you got a move on,” you roll your eyes, poking at his chest while his hands palm you ass.

He stops for a moment though, looks at you softly while not taking his eyes off of you.

“Love you pretty girl,” he declares, hand pushing stray strands of your hair away from your cheek, before holding it in his palm.

“Love you too, Shawn.”

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x--daughters-of-darkness--x · 5 years ago

Text

DELAIN: Chillin’ As Doomsday Approaches

In the band’s press release, you state that Apocalypse & Chill will surprise your listeners. What are some of these surprises you have in store for them?

We always write our music pretty organically, so we set out with every album to make it bigger, better, and louder. But it’s not like we’re going to completely change. We just go with whatever inspiration brings us. However, on this album there are some new elements. We’ve got a real choir, we’ve got Timo screaming, and we have full instrumental tracks, which we’ve never done before. There are definitely some parts where we really explored what we could do differently. And then what I mainly think will surprise our listeners is, especially in the first half of the record, the sound is very electronic, without going away from sounding like Delain. They’re all very much from a pop and electronic side of the spectrum. And I think that some of our fans who like us for our previous material, they will kind of be scratching their heads during the first half. But towards the second half of the album, it picks up on the orchestral elements again and becomes more symphonic. There’s plenty of new things on the record, but I definitely think that our fans will be able to appreciate what we’ve done.

How did these electronic influences creep in? Was there something specific you were listening to or interested in that made you want to incorporate it into your music?

I don’t know. I think that within the writing team, Martijn comes up with really 80s synth parts and I often come up with kind of like 90s dance parts. Those two mix well in our music. But it’s not like we said, “We’re going to incorporate this.” When we meet up to write, we all take some ideas with us, like a verse or a chorus or a theme or whatever. We sit down and listen to it and see what we want to work on all together. That’s how those ideas work themselves into the music.

With these ideas, themes, and lyrical inspirations, was there anything going on in your life or the world in general that catapulted these ideas into the songs?

Yeah, I think so. One thing that’s relevant for the way that we’d written this album is the fact that we’ve recorded it very fragmented. Martijn is a producer who really spearheaded this idea of “let’s do everything in several blocks of just a couple of songs” instead of in one go. Because first of all, we didn’t have enough time to have one big block for writing and recording and mixing the entire album because we’ve been touring like crazy. So, this gave us a lot of flexibility, but also the chance to go back on the songs now. All these ideas come from different places as well. But I must say that over the last few years, definitely a lot of it has been inspired by the concerns about the world today. If you open up a newspaper, if you turn on the TV, you see the world quite literally being on fire. And then if you open your socials, you’ll see everyone living their most perfect lives. There is this great contrast between the two where you wonder how can these actually exist at the same time and is this even the same world? And I think that contrast is also visible in the songs on our album.

The visual of the album cover and the promo photos have a 1950s cinematic movie star theme. Is that the concept or theme behind it?

It was really that contrast between the impending doom that you sense when you look at the news these days and then at the same time the complete projections that is very much the majority of things you see on socials. That was very interesting. Since it is so much about zeitgeist, Netflix and chill, it’s a very 2019 thing. So, we felt like the play on words was really fitting for this album. And then when I was playing with the idea of that title…it’s not like I think of a song first and then the title and then the artwork. Usually when you think of a title, there is an image in your head. Or when you think of the music, you see something, like you can imagine it. And for this title right away, I could imagine someone lounging while the world is on fire. I actually put this image together in Photoshop, but I am not a very practiced designer. We really liked that image. We’ve been also looking for images that were more towards the kind of covers that we usually have, like the more art nouveau/romantic/goth imagery, but it just didn’t fit the theme and the title as well as this one. What we eventually did to give it that identity and authenticity that my mockup was lacking, is we gave it to this collage artist. She works really analog. She cuts up images and papers and she reworked the image into what is now the cover and also continued that for the promo photos in the inside. Inside of the booklet you’ll find all of us wearing sunglasses and having different natural disasters reflected in our sunglasses. We put that topic throughout the entire artwork. Not that a lot of people get to see CD booklets these days, but for those who do buy the physical thing, we always try to give it something extra.

How did getting Beast in Black’s Yannis Papadopoulos to sing on “One Second” come about? Did you specifically write his part or realized after the fact that he’d be a good fit?

We realized afterwards that it would be a good fit. We really like working with guest musicians. It’s always a very nice surprise to see what other people, other creatives come up with when they listen to your music. Yannis, we’ve been in touch with him for a while. We met him in Greece. I remember during an after party at a show he taught me a bunch of Greek curse words! We had a few songs where we thought we could really use a guest here, we could really imagine his voice there. Then we were at a festival this summer and they played there as well, and that’s I think when the deal was struck. We gave him a choice. We had three songs where he could imagine it. We always try to give our guests an amount of freedom, so they can really make it their own.

The video for “Burning Bridges” has such cool visuals and beautiful scenery. Where was that shot, and how did the concept and the characters come about?

It was filmed in Snowdonia, which is a gorgeous part of Wales. We filmed it with the company Video Inc., which is a company that we’ve actually worked with for four different videos in one year. In 2019, we did four videos with them, including “Ghost House Heart.” The idea behind “Burning Bridges” for me lyrically was really that the protagonist of the song keeps leaving his surroundings in order to get away from the negative energy there—the negative energies are following him. The real question is, are those negative energies actually coming from your surroundings or are you the one bringing them? And then leaving and burning your bridges behind you will solve absolutely nothing. That was the idea that we wanted to work with for the video as well. What I really like about Video Inc. and how they work is we’ve had in the past where we pitched a song to other video companies and they came up with all these ideas that didn’t fit the song at all. And then we thought, “Oh, we have to give him some more input.” So, any images or ideas that we have with the themes, we send them over, but sometimes then people just say, “Okay, we’ll do that.” And what I really like about Video Inc. is they take the idea and then they go over it. They’re the video makers, that’s their expertise, and they give their own twist to it. “Burning Bridges” is definitely one of the most dramatic ones of the four videos, and I’m really happy with how it turned out.

You’re the frontwoman and the main focal point of the band, but the album closer “Combustion” is a cool instrumental that gives the rest of the band a chance to shine. Was this a song specifically created as an instrumental or music that you had trouble finding words for it?

It wasn’t meant to be a song with lyrics ever. Actually, this song was written by Timo and I’m sure that Joey also had a say in it because his drumming parts are very prominent. They actually started performing this song as a showpiece Joey had at his graduation at music school, and they performed it there. We really loved that song and that performance. Another thing is when we write songs for Delain, we really like pop structured songs. None of us in the band are ego trippers, none of us try to show off what we can do. We just do what the song needs, but on this track, they really get to shine. And I think that it’s really cool to give them that moment to shine because we have some really fantastic musicians in the band and they play very functional parts in the regular songs. So, I think that this is a great opportunity for them to show what they’ve got. Also, this is an egocentric reasoning, but for me, a lot of the songs have become much harder to sing. I really appreciate the two minutes of taking a breath during the shows! I think that on the album Apocalypse & Chill, that song for me, represents the explosion, the combustion, the apocalypse itself, if you will. I think it’s got a very symbolic function on this record.

What’s the music scene like in the Netherlands? You’re a very well known international touring band, but what was your humble beginning like?

Delain is a little bit of an odd example in that case because Martijn had rolled out of Within Temptation, who were at their breakthrough, and he had so many well known guests on this album that he wrote and that took a long time. There was a lot of work that went into that, and he had a whole big business plan that he used to get to the labels as well. But we got into that label straightaway for the first record because of all that hard work that Martijn had already put into it and the planning he did and the whole set up of the project. But, if I look at the scene that I was in before I got involved with that, the Dutch metal scene is a very small scene. Everyone knows each other, everyone is in everybody’s bands. I was I think in four bands at that moment. I was in a band, a guitarist in that band was doing a project, and I was in that project and then Martijn did arrangements for that project. And that’s where he heard me. So, he asked me for his project. I know that’s a very confusing sentence, but that may be a good representation of the Dutch music scene. It’s very interesting because a lot of metal comes from the Netherlands and actually a lot of symphonic metal comes from the Netherlands. But you would never tell if you looked at the Dutch mainstream music media. I don’t know, maybe it’s because it’s not exotic enough for us, or maybe it’s because it’s too exotic. The Dutch popular music is basically just dance and hip-hop. And I have nothing against dance and hip-hop, but sometimes it’s weird to me. I do these Dutch guest things and there will be people from multiple genres, and I will always be the one with the most followers on Instagram and Facebook. And they will be like, “But we don’t know you!” And that’s very typical for Holland, I think. Music that is very well known internationally is not really well known in the Netherlands itself. On the other hand, it also has its benefits because I bet that even if Delain would have a massive hit in the genre that I could still go grocery shopping without people recognizing me!

Delain has been around for 18 years and you have this new album out and upcoming gigs for the next few years. What are you looking forward to the most in the near future?

We have already reached so many things that we wanted to reach with Delain. It’s been really amazing. It’s been an absolute roller coaster. Martijn and I do most of the work behind the scenes, and we’re a really tight team and we both have started talking about how we might want to start doing some things outside of Delain every now and then. I think our biggest goal for now is to really find a balance and do anything in order to keep making beautiful music together. Because if I look at what we’ve done in the past, if I look at the album that we made now, I’m just really, really proud. It is really a product of our team. The sum is more than its parts, so to speak. I just really hope that we can keep doing that and make a lot more beautiful music and hope that people keep enjoying it. Delain has been around for 18 years and you have this new album out and upcoming gigs for the next few years. What are you looking forward to the most in the near future? We have already reached so many things that we wanted to reach with Delain. It’s been really amazing. It’s been an absolute roller coaster. Martijn and I do most of the work behind the scenes, and we’re a really tight team and we both have started talking about how we might want to start doing some things outside of Delain every now and then. I think our biggest goal for now is to really find a balance and do anything in order to keep making beautiful music together. Because if I look at what we’ve done in the past, if I look at the album that we made now, I’m just really, really proud. It is really a product of our team. The sum is more than its parts, so to speak. I just really hope that we can keep doing that and make a lot more beautiful music and hope that people keep enjoying it.

#Charlotte Wessels #Delain #2020 interviews

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taestykooky · 6 years ago

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My Evolution in Stanning Jaebeom / GOT7

Ever since yesterday? Was it yesterday? I’ve lost track of time...I’ve been hugging my body pillow and rolling around in bed squealing and moaning “Jaebeom-ah”. I’ve literally accomplished nothing, the dishes are still in the sink, the cat has been destroying everything and I don’t even care... I’m a fucking mess. Did I even eat anything? Thank god I didn’t have work, tomorrow however is going to be a challenge. How am I suppose to go back into society like this? His oh delicious body, that darn belly button and happy trail with his damn gorgeous face keep replaying in my head. *sigh*

When did I become so fucking thirsty for this man? When did the admiration and love for him turn into this? Like yeah, I’ve always been a huge fan, his smile always brighten my day. Don’t get me started with his eyes... his voice, oh god but like I can still partly function after hours of calming down. But this, I don’t even know what to do with myself. Every time I look at him now, even when he’s acting all cute, I’m lusting for him. Like shit sis, a picture of him just sitting there at a fan sign has me all hot and bothered. Wtf?

A part of me is screaming, “girl, pull yourself together! He ain’t even know you exist.” But like I know and but I just can’t stop. It’s just crazy to think back when I first saw him during the dream high/bounce era, I thought he was cute. It was so innocent. When he debuted again with GOT7, I was excited to see and get to know him & the others. Of course, he became my bias but it was pure admiration of who he is and how talented he was.

Was it during the Just Right era that I found him to be more attractive than usual? I think that sounds about right, that scene with him in the car...And then came MAD’s If You Do, boy did my heart fluttered. I remember replaying Tic Tic Tok over and over just to hear his sexy voice. That song did things to me especially his “내 맘이 너를 원해 나와 같기를 바래, 나에게 너를 맡겨 You know you like it, baby”. Seriously? I replayed that part so many time I felt sorry for the rewind button.

Looking back now, he was the joy of my life, something to look forward to after school. I struggled a lot during that time but GOT7 was my light through it all and still is.

When Fly came out, I was absolutely in love with it. His voice starting it was heaven to my ears and he looked so damn fine...(maybe this was when the thirst slowly started?) I remember singing along so much that even now when it comes on randomly on my iTunes that I just instinctively singalong.

Oh boy and then Hard Carry. The whole Turbulence album is one of my all-time favorites. 니꿈꿔 (Dreamin’) was on repeat for the longest time, like his voice is so clear and delicious. I still squeal when it comes on and singalong like the fangirl I am...

The beginning of DefSoul. This boy was already out to destroy me...I should have seen it coming. His voice is really divine though. I remember being nervous to click on Bad Habit because that little inner voice knew he was going to wreck me. And oh god, he sure delivered. Don’t get me wrong I love everyone in GOT7 but hearing just Jaebeom’s voice is just absolutely heavenly. Holic is still being played every night before I head to bed. I guess 2016 was when the thirst began.

Next was the Arrival album, it’s another of my favorites, just like Turbulence, I can listen to the whole album on repeat and I did lol... Paradise & Go Higher were played back to back A LOT. Never Ever was always playing on my desktop when I was doing things and I’m not gonna lie I always stared at Jaebeom’s parts because I have issues...

Then holy shit, JJ Project made a comeback! Verse 2, dear lord, I remember being so sad because I couldn’t afford the album when it first came out. My paycheck wasn’t gonna be there for another week. I cursed at myself for going out to eat a few days before with some girlfriends... When I finally got it, I was so ecstatic. That album was absolutely the best. Fade Away was played so many time, I really can’t get enough of him.

7 for 7 *sigh* I swear my heart melted for this album. It was so soft. I listened to it a lot at night. Jaebeom’s vocals in You Are is one of my favorites. I’m not even gonna talk about the two mv for You Are & Teenager. It was just all squealing, singing along, and staring. 2017 was my holy grail, being blessed with 4x the Jaebeom was heaven and boy did I needed it that year.

Ah, 2018, it started with DefSoul blessing us with 5 tracks. I still can’t decide which one is my favorite between Think of You, Channel & Don’t Touch Me.

His mullet also made a debut which honestly, at this point, I’m already so whipped for him nothing he does will disappoint me or turn me off. I actually liked it and I’m usually not a fan of mullets *shrugs*

Eyes On You was a nice album, I enjoyed it. I was low-key jealous of Hyolyn...Look’s mv was played too many times, I really missed them. I was so busy in 2018 that this was the first time I saw them since their Teenager mv. I usually watch their V-Live & Web Series but life is cruel lol...

I actually missed a lot in 2018, I still need to catch up on everything I missed. But thanks to me being so busy, I delayed buying Present: You which turned out to be a blessing for my wallet. I ended up buying the repackaged album instead.

Miracle was full of emotions, and all the sub unit’s and solos were awesome~ Not Jaebeom related but King was one of my favorites. Sunrise *sigh* his voice really makes my heart yearn for him, 1:31AM especially. That 2Jae should make a debut already... Think About It made my heart hurt for some reason, idk this whole album had me in a weird headspace.

I realize I didn’t mention the Japanese albums but I do have 2 of them (I Won’t Let You Go & Moriagatteyo) and bought 3 tracks (My Swagger, Turn Up & The New Era). Their Japanese promotions are hard for me to follow and keep track of, not because I don’t like it but I don’t even know they’re promoting it until like it’s over.

And now we’re in 2019! Starting off with more DefSoul because he’s so sweet and amazing. I thought it was hard to pick a favorite before with vol.2 but vol.3 is just too hard. I just love the whole damn thing too much. His voice is so addicting and his English has improved so much it’s driving me crazy.

When I thought it couldn’t get any better, Jus2 makes a debut. Ugh, he’s really doing too much. The whole Focus album is just sinful. Every time I listen to it, all I do is have unholy thoughts. That body roll/wave whatever in Focus on Me had me swooning and his mullet is gone and he’s back with that fuckboi haircut looking so god damn good. I was watching the special for Focus on vLive and I didn’t realize it then but it was one of the times I was truly happy and enjoying myself this year. Just watching him talk about when he wrote the songs and explaining them made me so happy.

SpinningTop: Between Security & Insecurity, it’s been out for 2 months now? And I still don’t own it which makes so sad lol... There’s nothing but dust & lint in my clutch. Eclipse *sigh* I’ve been playing it on repeat and I’m sure my neighbors are sick of it. I feel like I’m burning holes in him when I watch him. Oh god, and the astronaut video, I never loved him more. Is it wrong that I want to be his fingers...not to be nasty or anything...

Lol, anyway, I haven’t listened to the rest of the album yet because I want to hear it together on the cd cause I’m weird like that. It’s killing me, I really wanna hear what Page is like. Their spoiler video was a fucking tease. They literally didn’t give any lmao...I totally wasn’t staring at his legs the whole time. Why am I like this??

The World Tour, the thing that started this whole rant. They are gonna be here in California again and once again I can’t afford the tickets. Looking now, the ones in LA that I want are $805-227, the ones I want in Oakland are sold out but I would settle for the $407-342 ones...but I don’t have that kind of money plus my car is in repairs *cries*.

But I probably would die if I went because look at him... All these fan photos and videos of him are enough to bury me in the ground. The shirtless video and pictures are really what did me in. I didn’t realize I was so fucking thirsty for him. I knew I was thirsty but not this thirsty. I never knew I could feel this way for someone that I know is unobtainable.

It’s been 7 years since he’s debuted, 5 years with GOT7 and it’s been the best 7 years of my life. Watching him continue to improve and become the man he is today has been truly a blessing. Even though, I’m a hot mess over here being a thirsty ass...my feelings did start out pure and innocent. Those feelings are still there and just evolved into something more. He just does things to me but can you blame me? He knows what he’s doing...

But seriously, looking back from the very beginning to now, I am grateful for everything he has done. All the joy and happiness he brought me throughout these years are worth the suffering.

Thank you, Jaebeom-ah for everything, even if your popularity fades one day, you’ll always be my number one.

#got7 #lim jaebeom #jaebeom #super long rant #so thirsty #the apple of my eye

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maltedmilkchocolate · 6 years ago

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......... I just realised the sign on that alien shop is Terra 2. Most of the Voltron wiki and fan sites only list it just named 'Terra' but on the sign is the roman numeral II. So it’s “Terra II” (with a Japanese ‘Ah’). Not only is it a joke because it sells Earth items only, so it's essentially a 2nd earth in space. (Not including the main joke of grey aliens and cows and farmers.) It's also a DC comic book reference: Earth-Two.

Earth-Two was created to explain differences between the original Golden Age and then-current Silver Age versions of characters such as the Flash, and how the current (Earth-One) versions could appear in stories with their counterparts.

Literally, Multiverse/Alternate Realities. This aired in Season 2 episode. And a few episodes later we meet Slav. Whose entire existence revolves around the multi/alternate universe theories. Then in Season 3 they find the Meteor that split a hole in the fabric of space to an alternate universe where the Alteans are the bad guys.

Earth-Two, along with the four other surviving Earths of the DC Multiverse, were merged into one in the 1985 miniseries Crisis on Infinite Earths. However, following the events of Infinite Crisis, the Multiverse was reborn, although the subsequent Earth-Two was not the same as its pre-Crisis equivalent.

Now, bear with me here, because I’m DEFINITELY reading into this. And this is a HUGE REACH. I cannot disclaim this enough. BUT. Here’s my theory. (Cut for length)

Throughout Voltron Legendary Defender, there’s been a reoccurring them of Multiverses/Alternate Realities.

Terra II. Slav's theories. The meteor that ripped a hole in space and meeting the Altean's from another dimension who were the bad guys. The Quintessence Field. (Not to mention Haggar’s cloning experiments. Multiple existences of the same person. Of a living reality.) But also. The most recent Voltron poster that was released, where we saw Honerva.... looking like a Leader and Not A Bad Guy. And these posters do reference some things from the season...

Also the apparently??? There's a theory Allura's going to die??? I haven’t seen that myself??? So idk what’s going on there, but.... Remember those ‘leaks’ that came out a month or so ago? Whilst the dubbing company and watermarks were all fake because that company never worked for the show... No one ever confirmed if the art itself was fake. So based on that, and on the unlikely event the art work is real: Allura happens to have a statue dedicated to her, and she isn’t in any of the images, either. It could be possible that another alternate/multi-verse plot line is going to emerge. Maybe there will be a conflict that will lead to Voltron (and all subsequent dangers of that type of quintessence manipulation) being removed from THIS universe. Because (IF those leaked photos were real) it seemed like everyone was retired?? Everyone was in casual clothes, tired but happy, no uniforms, seeming very much no longer soldiers/paladins. But that wouldn’t make any sense story wise. Unless many existing threats were ultimately Removed. (Coran was there though I think?) So what if Allura takes Voltron and, like how they went through with the meteor tear, and like how they cut through the quintessence field. Maybe she takes every thing, and the remaining Altean’s, and just... leaves? Maybe she takes Honerva too. Allura takes Voltron somewhere safer. Another universe? She saves the world from Haggar (or finds a different solution), and stops the threat from quintessence, from robeasts, and then, with the general knowledge that no one should ever own weapons as powerful and dangerous as Voltron... she leaves. So she saves the universe. And then leaves it for a different universe. Maybe even to Oriande again? To learn how to dismantle and destroy Voltron, and things like it. But cannot return. It’s literally another dimension anyway. She’d be returning it to its place of creation, to uncreate it, and be stuck there in the process. (Unless Haggar actually blew the whole place up.) Following this, she gets a heroes statue. And with no more threat. Everyone is free to rebuild, recover, and move on with their lives in Actual Peace. This theory is probably ENTIRELY WRONG. But like........ Season 1 introduced the Blue Lion, and Voltron, as a /prophecy/. I don’t wanna believe that was an off-hand comment never to be revisited. We never did learn how Alfor sent the Lions away to be hidden. Maybe there’s some weird time and universe shenanigans afoot. Who knows. Either way, what ever the out come is, I’m excited to find out, and finally close the book on this story.

#Voltron #Voltron Spoilers #Voltron Theories #VLD #Voltron Legendary Defender

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bonepranks-a · 6 years ago

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* verses

aight so since i put most interactions into their own verses, i have like a million, and oftentimes certain interactions will sorta create new ones. so i’m going to attempt to list all the verses i have. i will specify if they’re with specific people. (i may use the word timeline instead, they are generally the same thing, but sans will always refer to it as a timeline whereas i will usually call it a verse.) also, as you know, i don’t tag my verses -- but it’s helpful to know.

this is well over 1500 words so i’m gonna just stick it under a cut. i listed the people who have specific verses in the tags so u can read it if you want??? i mean everyone is encouraged to read it but yKNOW. up to you guys <3

GENERIC VERSES

pre-undertale sans and papyrus grow up in hotland with gaster. sans works as his lab assistant/apprentice. gaster falls into the core, “dies”, the boys leave hotland and move to snowdin.

neutral/post-neutral in the flawed pacifist ending (aka the one that allows you to load from your last save and do the pacifist stuff), sans continues living in snowdin, life continues as normal until a reset happens. for all other neutral variants, see this post.

genocide for obvious reasons, stuff in this verse will only take place during the events of a genocide run, as sans dies. however, in a verse where this is not the first genocide run, certain events may change, including but not limited to an aborted genocide where frisk doesn’t come back after sans kills them, and life continues. this will look a lot like any other neutral run where papyrus is dead, but he’s more fucked up probably.

pacifist/post-pacifist the pacifist route goes as it does in canon. afterward, sans goes to the surface with everyone else. however, he makes frequent trips back underground, both to help other people move, and to visit those who decided to stay behind.

abandoned pacifist/deltarune in a pacifist ending that occurs after many different routes and countless resets (many of which sans remembers), sans accepts the futility of seeking a real ending of any sort of happiness. he manages to find a way to leave his timeline. he does not believe that this is the end, and is afraid of what will happen if frisk resets again. he has never tried it before, and his method is purely theoretical, but he manages to take papyrus and escape the timeline before anything bad can happen. he leaves a seemingly peaceful and happy life on the surface, and ends up in the deltarune world. papyrus’ memories of their past life have somehow been erased (perhaps for the best), and sans is torn between relief that they seem to be safe now, and guilt for leaving everyone else behind without a word. he actually fakes his and papyrus’ deaths simply so that no one worries about them or tries to come looking. he’s not particularly happy, but he can’t find a way to go back either. he buys the grocery store and tries to find answers about why he ended up in this specific world that is so unlike the one he knows, and yet eerily familiar at the same time.

CHARACTER-SPECIFIC VERSES

vertebralheights 001 bo and sans meet as children when her father and gaster worked together. they hit it off, but after all the other skeletons leave hotland, she and sans lose contact. it’s only many years later that they reconnect quite by accident, and they don’t even recognize/remember each other until they find old notes and photos that jog their memories. they meet pre-undertale, and their relationship continues long into a positive neutral ending. as sans learns more about resets and their circumstances, he begins to do research, and bo helps him out. if this is a situation where alphys has disappeared, they move back to hotland and continue work there. eventually, pacifist happens or whatever, maybe they go to the surface, we haven’t really gotten that far.

vertebralheights 002 the origin is the same as in 001. however, it diverges into any ending where papyrus is dead. sans runs away to vertebral heights and stays with bo -- they come to the same conclusions about how they used to know each other. sans is determined to find a way to stop the resets - but only once papyrus is back alive. if this is also an ending where alphys is gone, they eventually go to the lab in this verse too.

vertebralheights 003 after bo’s parents die, she contacts sans and comes back to hotland. she stays with the bros and gaster up until gaster’s “death”, and when they do eventually part ways, they slowly lose touch but don’t forget about each other. they probably reconnect again post-pacifist when sans stumbles across VH.

cynicalborne 001 ( paired with mercy-heart 001 ) post-pacifist, sans and papyrus choose not to stay in the town the monsters have set up (though he and papyrus pay frequent visits), and move to nyc. sans buys a closed down bodega and runs it, living in the apartment above. sans also somewhat accidentally befriends a human named os. they somehow hit it off, and when he loses his job and apartment, papyrus invites him to stay with him and sans. as time goes on, sans and os completely fall in love. other than cryptic warnings from gaster that they should not be together and that sans needs to focus on finding a way to prevent further fresets, life is pretty good.

cynicalborne 002 sans and os still know each other - they’re even friends, but their lives are very separate. os is still working more or less as an arson for hire, and he attacks the monster town that’s popped up. sans finds out, and shit goes down.

mercy-heart 001 post-pacifist, sans visits frisk frequently, though he does not live in the monster town on the surface. one day, chara manages to take control of frisk’s body and gives sans a cryptic warning about how this happiness won’t last. he laters finds out through them and through dream messages from gaster that the only way to prevent further resets is to take away the vessel the player is using -- aka destroy frisk beyond saving. make it so that they cannot reset or reload at all, by literally erasing them from existence. sans refuses to do this however, and tries to find a way to simply disconnect the player from frisk’s soul, or removing only the ability to save and reset.

mercy-heart 002 more or less the same, it’s post-pacifist, except sans does stay in the monster town and probably ends up getting together with toriel because his love for her knows no bounds. life is good, there’s no players interfering, they can just be a happy family, and sans can just help frisk cope with their own depression without worrying about everything else.

we-believe-in-you-crew 001 sans meets bonny when she arrives in snowdin -- due to his promise to toriel he decides not to hurt her. instead, he helps her as best he can, encouraging her to stay in snowdin with him and papyrus and not to venture too far away for fear she might be killed. they eventually catch feelings for each other, and while they both know it, they never do much about it. everything is very subtle with them - mainly because sans knows they’re living on borrowed time. when she eventually makes it to new home, sans mercy kills her in the judgement hall because he can’t stand the thought of her being killed by asgore.

primaautomaworld / qvietstcrm 001 (these are just getting lumped together because they happen in the same verse.) sans and mettaton used to be childhood friends, back when alphys worked under gaster and mettaton visited frequently as a lil ghostie. he would often play with sans and papyrus, and he and sans even had lil crushes on each other, not that anything ever came of it. however, once mettaton became corporeal and moved on to becoming a star (and after gaster’s disappearance as well), they completely lost touch. it’s only much later that sans calls up mettaton and invites him to stop by snowdin. the reunion between all three of them is really really good, and mtt and sans start up the flirting hardcore until they finally do just get together. MEANWHILE IN PAPYRUS LAND, he starts going out with a siren from waterfall named storm. sans meets them one day during work, invites them back for dinner, storm and papyrus hit it off really well, and the rest is history. it’s really cute uwu

fluersamour 001 sans and chara.... knew each other before she died. they would play together along with papyrus and asriel when gaster had meetings with asgore and brought the kiddos. they weren’t necessarily close friends, but they were pleasant. good companions. over the course of genocide routes, they’re constantly fighting and she’s killed sans multiple times. it’s a thing. but eventually, it stops. they reach a stalemate. they don’t want to kill each other anymore. and eventually, they start talking again. about the past. about her time in the void, and meeting gaster. it’s not exactly normal friendship but it’s.... something.

#uhh people who have verses in here... bo; os; mettaton; storm; beth's frisk; saturn's chara; bonny #this will be updated and more will be added as i develop more detailed and specific relationships that fall outside a generic verse!!!#* you will determine the future of this world . OUT #verses #* massive anomalies . HEADCANON

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thatclassicalliberal · 7 years ago

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I went to a cult school

So here’s the story of how I was trapped in a borderline cult school from 1st to 8th grade. (It’s kind of long, so I apologize)

When I was a kid both of my parents worked long hours, meaning after kindergarten they no longer had time to homeschool me. They didn’t want to put me in the local public school system, which was overcrowded and literally let kids graduate without knowing how to read. The nearest private school was a little over half an hour away, but the school year was about to begin and my parents were desperate. So they enrolled me into what I remember as hell.

School Uniform

I had to wear a uniform - a blue button down shirt that ended at least 3 inches below my shoulder (girls weren’t aloud to show shoulders), was buttoned all the way up (girls weren’t aloud to show collar bones), and wasn’t too tight. The shirt had to be tucked into a black pleated skirt that was to be at least 3 inches below the knee whether sitting or standing (girls weren’t aloud to show their knees) and that wasn’t tight fitting. Girls were not aloud to wear makeup until high school, and even then they were only aloud the basics. No hair dye, no nail polish other than clear, no logos or characters from “worldly” brands such as Dora (she dressed immodestly) or Barbie (she was “a whore”). No ankle bracelets because they drew attention to the leg. Boys were literally not aloud to wear the color pink. And there were a bunch of other rules I can’t remember.

Indocrination

I don’t have a problem with teaching the Bible to children. It encourages moral behavior. But what we had to endure wasn’t just teaching. Every day our longest class was Bible. At the beginning we were taught simple stuff like Moses or David, but about half way through the teachers would start giving us the church approved additions to the Bible. They would say stuff like, girls are forbidden from wearing pants and boys cannot be saved if they have long hair. Then they would manipulate Scripture verses to back up their point. “The Bible says it’s shameful for a man to look like a woman”. They also liked to say that music with a beat is satanic, men and women are forbidden from making even non-sexual contact with each other outside marriage, and that the Bible says Christians are forbidden from going to the movies and wearing earbuds. My personal favorite was that it was a sin for girls to wear flip flops.

But it got real in 5th grade. That was the age they made us attend weekly chapel. Of course, girls were on one side and boys were on the other. But girls had to pass a very... intense dress code inspection before they were aloud inside. I honestly don’t remember a lot what they told us in chapel. It was basically a more mature version of what we had been taught in Bible class. But there was a lot of yelling, and it scared me. At the end of each chapel service, which was an hour (if we were lucky), the speaker made everyone get out of their seats and kneel at the pulpit. We were supposed to confess our sins, and a lot of kids made themselves cry so the speaker would tell them he knew they were really going to heaven.

They were also very anti-modern medicine. A lot of the kids there had never been vaccinated, and I was treated with animosity by several teachers because I wore an insulin pump.

Invasion of Privacy

Privacy didn’t exist at this school. Anything you had was subject to confiscation for any reason at any time. Students and parents were forced to sign agreement forms that no women in the family would wear pants, gaudy makeup, or cut their hair short. Men were not aloud to take their shirts off, or wear “feminine clothes”. No one in the family was aloud to wear earbuds in public, go to the movies, go to a public pool or beach, or listen to any music that wasn’t in a hymn book. I found out later that the teachers and staff would watch school members when they saw us in public to make sure we were keeping the rules. We also weren’t aloud to have social media. During classes and chapel, certain teachers were authorized to perform searches through backpacks. One girl was almost expelled because she had a pair of jeans at the bottom of her bag. They would also try to compel students to give their phone passwords so they could look through photos and music. There were even students (usually teachers’ kids) whose job was to listen around and report any “ungodly” activity among the students. One time I was reported because I was in a conversation where someone said the word ‘boob’.

Treatment of Girls and Boys

I’ll be honest, this is what I hated most about this school. It gave me a lot of self-esteem issues and made me feel broken.

So don’t get me wrong, I’m not a crazy radfem. I don’t think that gender roles are evil, and I think it’s awesome when men women want these roles in their lives. But this school took gender roles a step further. Then it forced them on us. I don’t know a lot of what the guys had to go through, but here’s a short summary:

boys were not aloud to cry; doing so would bring punishment. They were expected forced to be “manly”. Smaller boys were picked on by teachers. They were taught to be ashamed of their emotions. They were told they were slaves to their impulses. They were taught that women only want big, angry, violent, explosive men. There was a lot of domestic abuse within the staff.

Girls were taught that we are objects. We covered everything but our ankles so our male teachers wouldn’t think about touching us. We were taught to be ashamed of our post-pubescent bodies. Our curves and feminine qualities were distractions to men who were trying to do important things. We weren’t aloud to take certain electives like shop because the classes were too manly for us. We were aloud to take home ec (the boys weren’t aloud to take this class, by the way) We were told time and time again in chapel that it was shameful for a woman to have a career, to be interested in politics or business. It was drilled into our heads that our only purpose was to get married after high school, have as many children possible, then cook and clean for our husband when he got home from his job. The way 40 year old men talked and preached at a group of girls as young as 1st grade was degrading.

We had monthly meetings held by one of the female teachers on staff. She would tell certain girls they had to wear less makeup or buy new clothes because their old skirts were an inch below the knee instead of 3. One time she compared me to a porn star because someone said they had seen me in jeans at Walmart. We were shamed for everything.

The Aftermath

I don’t really know how to end this, but I’ll say this. During my time at this school, I was depressed, angry, and confused. There were some changes in my family’s situation, and my parents were able to pull me out of the school after 8th grade. 9th grade was my most difficult year because I was learning to function in the real world while trying to forget the madness behind me. I learned to forgive my parents and let go of the bitterness inside me. I try not to think of that stage of my life too much, but when I do I remind myself that the experience ultimately made me stronger, and I am who I am today because of it. I’ve even made a couple close friends who were in a similar situation.

I feel sorry for any kids who are in that school today.

#school #religion #cult #misogyny #misandry #sexist

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evenstevensranked · 7 years ago

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#9: Season 3, Episode 22 - “Leavin’ Stevens”

It’s the series finale!! Eileen is projected the winner of a major election for Congress, which means the Stevens family will be moving to Washington D.C. immediately. Pretty big deal. Our beloved characters must say goodbye to each other forever, but Louis can’t bring himself to move across the country without telling Tawny how he really feels about her.

Let’s talk about why this cinematic plotline would’ve made an infinitely better DCOM than The Even Stevens Movie.

This one opens with the Stevens family huddled together in the living room, anxiously awaiting the results of Eileen’s election. Riiiiight as the news reporter is about to announce the winner, Beans appears out of nowhere, grabs the remote and changes the channel to... Toon Disney?! They show a legit clip of Teamo Supremo (remember that show?! LOL) instead of some fake cartoon or something which is kinda cool. Granted, it’s a Disney cartoon, so they had the right to use it no problem -- but still! That show premiered in 2002 so I’m sure they threw that clip in there to promote it somehow. Otherwise, it’s just sorta funny to think Toon Disney and ABC (Disney Channel sister stations) exist in the Even Stevens-verse.

Beans, being the nuisance that he is, throws the remote into a skinny vase thing so Ren is forced to ~magically~ change the channel back manually.

Remember when you could change the channel with buttons on the actual TV? Good times. If you lose the remote these days, you’re pretty much screwed.

Thankfully, they turn back in time to catch the results: EILEEN WON! It cuts to her giving a little press conference outside where she announces that the entire family will be moving to Washington D.C. immediately so that she can get to work right away. This is insane news to Louis since he apparently had no idea that Congress was in Washington or that the whole family would need to move there if Eileen were to win.

It cuts to a very depressed Louis at school cleaning out his locker. Tom and Twitty are with him and Twitty is seemingly in denial about the whole situation, explaining that nothing’s going to change and that a few 14-year-olds can hop a flight to D.C., hang out with Louis and be home by dinner time easy peasy! Tom brings them back to reality by calling them “poor delusional fools” and it’s great. Tawny shows up and it’s time for “Romeo to bid farewell to his Juliet” (Tom’s words.) Oh, man. The rom-com drama kicks in here and I can’t get enough of it.

I’m guessing that this moment is the actual very last time they’re ever going to see each other?!?! So, the two of them are incredibly freaking awkward trying to say their goodbyes. I mean, how do you say goodbye forever to one of your best friends who is also obviously your crush in, like.. 30 seconds? They’re stammering and dancing around the idea of simply saying “I’m gonna miss you!” So, what do they do? They end up completely avoiding the situation by talking about how they’re going to miss the school cafe’s chili fries instead of each other. Clearly, that is not the last thing either of them wanted to say. As frustrating as this scene is, it’s pretty hilarious. Louis is all “I’m really gonna miss... y.......ahh... c..hili.... fries on Wednesday!” and Tawny just awkwardly goes along with it, “Yeah. I love those... They’re great.” HAHAHA. They proceed to engage in what’s gotta be up there as one of the most uncomfortable hugs of all time:

One thing this show consistently nails is middle school awkwardness. Louis & Tawny are lightyears ahead of me and my old crush though. He was moving to Deleware at the end of 8th grade and we didn’t even say goodbye to each other at ALL at graduation, omg. We just avoided each other entirely. The worst part is that we were side-by-side PARTNERS for the graduation march and we didn’t even speak to each other. The level of immaturity and awkwardness is unparalleled....

It cuts to Ren talking with Ruby and Monique who are also getting emotional over Ren’s impending departure. (“What are we gonna do without her?!”) Basically, the two of them are completely incapable of organizing their own lives and need Ren’s constant guidance. One of their biggest concerns is that the three of them previously waited 6 hours in line for Peachbox tickets and now they can’t go to the concert together. First of all.... WHAT OR WHO THE HECK IS PEACHBOX? For some reason, I’ve always imagined a knockoff Matchbox Twenty band simply because of the “box” connection lol. Buuuut, I’m gonna guess that it’s just a music festival or something. It’s not important in the grand scheme of things here.

We see Louis and Twitty walking home from school together and it’s a very somber stroll. Twitty says “I know you’re not the most romantic guy in the world (I BEG TO DIFFER, TWITTY!!!) but, do you really want the last thing you talk about with Tawny to be chili fries?” Obviously, Louis says no, but its too late! There’s nothing he can do at this point! Twitty dramatically says “No, it’s never too late...” and just WALKS AWAY!!!! Did he leave Louis in the dust?! Was that the last thing they said to each other?! What?! Did Louis and Twitty’s epic friendship just... end on a cryptic note for dramatic effect? Why am I just realizing this?

I’m laughing at the idea of this being their final exchange. “It’s never too late. Peace out, cub scout.”

Twitty’s dramatic last words kick Louis into rom-com leading man overdrive. As soon as he gets home, he sits down and starts recording a videotape for Tawny so that he can say everything he wasn’t able to in person. (See cover photo.) Oh, my lord. This is incredible. He starts off by saying that he’ll already be 2,797 miles away (he looked it up) in Washington by the time she sees the tape. “I didn’t want the last thing we talked about to be chili fries. So that’s why I’m doing this -- this tape, ya know? To tell you how I really feel...” And Shia is already hitting it outta the god damn park with his acting. The scene cuts after that, so we don’t get to hear the rest. Gotta keep us on our toes!

Louis meets up with Tom later and gives him the tape, instructing -- or rather, threatening -- him to personally deliver it to Tawny... OR ELSE.

“Tom, I’m entrusting you with this tape. Okay? So, if anybody else -- besides Tawny -- gets their hands on this... I will personally track you down and make you pay. You hear what I’m saying?”

There’s a little subplot with Donnie and Coach Tugnut, as well. Every character’s plot in this episode revolves around the Stevens family moving, which is kinda cool. We get to see how the potential change affects all of them! Coach Tugnut was planning on training Donnie for the Olympics, so he nearly has a heart attack when he finds out he’s moving. Steve decides to call his boss, Mr. Kupchack, and cuss him out because he thinks he’s never going to see him again. (Bad idea.) Louis has the Tawny situation. Ren has her friends. And of course, Eileen’s whole career is being uprooted.

Tugnut ultimately decides to uproot his life as well and drive all the way to Washington to continue Donnie’s training. There’s a pretty great final ~adult joke~ here. Tugnut says he talked it over with his wife, Tammy, and they agreed that a little break could be good. He explains that Tammy is busy with her own life, which includes working the night shift at Romano’s Pizza. But, Donnie’s like.. “Uh, Coach... Romano’s Pizza closed, like... 2 years ago” -- Insinuating that Tammy’s been cheating at night. “I’m sure there’s a logical explanation!” Tugnut concludes. Wow. I like this joke, though. It’s subtle and smart.

Right as Steve is fervently insulting his boss over the phone, Eileen comes running into the living room in a tizzy. She turns on the TV and calls for the entire family to come watch. In a “stunning and dramatic reversal,” a recount snatched victory away from Eileen and gave the congressional seat to some guy Charles Nuck.

Louis: “My tape!” Ren: “My friends!” Steve: “My job!” Donnie: “My coach!” Eileen: “My seeeeat!”

You can always count on Tom Virtue to go overboard with his performance. To be fair, Steve knows that he totally just lost his job. Soo...

So, yeah! We’re only 9 minutes into the episode and The Stevens family is no longer moving! Wexler is so elated to have Ren back, he’s all “I’d be lost without you!” -- Literally no one can live a productive life without Ren Stevens I guess. He does a little happy dance down the hallway but then stops in his tracks in horror when he sees Louis moving back into his locker. “Noooo!” HAHAHA.

“WHYYYYYY?!” -- I just really wanted to include this screenshot. Notice how Louis is unpacking a giant thing of syrup! Leftover from Lumberjack Club, I presume?

Twitty stops by and Louis is in damage control mode. “I have a problem. I did the worst thing I could possibly do.” Twitty says “Dude, everyone gets gas climbing the rope in gym, it’s okay.” HAHA! For some reason I never really noticed that line before. It’s great. Of course, Louis explains that he gave Tawny a tape telling her how he really feels. Twitty asks how bad it is and if he dropped the “L-Bomb.” (“Did ya tell Tawny that you loved her?”) And Louis is officially freaking out. OHHHHHH MYYYY GODDDDDD. Scenes like this make me think that Even Stevens was more of a ~bro show~ kinda. I wonder if guys across the country related to this or not.

Ren’s little ~storyline within the storyline~ could’ve been a lot better. As usual, she got the short end of the stick for her final hurrah in the series. She ends up finding a replacement of herself for Ruby and Monique named Denise who is seriously controlling and super creepy. After they find out the Stevens are no longer moving, Monique and Ruby really don’t want to go to the concert with Denise anymore. So Ren eventually finds replacements for Ruby and Monique as well so the three doppelgangers can go together instead. It’s trippy. And that’s pretty much it.

Louis talks to Tawny later that day and finds out that Tom already delivered the tape. Yikes! Tawny doesn’t know what's on the tape though and doesn’t think much of it either. She’s assuming that it’s probably a nature special or Doris’ 40th birthday. And Louis quickly interjects “Good party! That was a good--” and awkwardly cuts himself off. Shia’s phrasing. It’s so good. I laughed pretty hard. Anyway, Louis is officially on a mission to retrieve the tape before she has a chance to watch it and calls Beans for help. Beans is at school when Louis calls his cell phone, and um... Beans is 8 years old. Why does he have a cell phone in 2002? Also, he should be in 3rd grade. Does this look like 3rd grade to you?!

That teacher is reading a baby storybook to them. This never seemed right to me lol. Also, that super tall kid in the middle is at least 11 years old. Come on now. ALSO they make a point to show that every kid in the class has a cell phone, too. Perhaps this show was simply ahead of its time AGAIN, showing us that soon technology will consume all of our lives at every age. 8 year olds have iPhones nowadays.

To sum it up, Louis has Beans climb into Tawny’s bedroom window to steal the tape back. This is the only episode where we see Tawny’s bedroom and much like the part of her house we saw in Thin Ice, it suits her personality perfectly and I love it.

Louis is relieved to have the tape back, but once he gets home he notices the tape is actually labeled “To: Louis.” OHHHHHHHH BOYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY! HEREEEE WEEEE GOOOOO! I’ll let you watch this truly iconic and emotionally taxing scene play out for yourself:

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Can you say SOULMATES?! What are the odds they’d both decide to confess their feelings via videotape? Well, besides it being an uber romantic plot device lol.

The episode ends with Louis and Tawny at their lockers, smirking knowingly at each other because they know they’re in love now lol. It’s precious. It’s still a little awkward because it’s like “ok, we love each other or whatever... now what?” So, in true Louis & Tawny fashion Louis says “Soooo... I hear they’re having chili fries at lunch today.” And Tawny whispers “Cool. I love chili fries.” The two of them laugh at how well they know each other and walk off hand and hand into the sunset. All is right with the world.

How sweet are they?! Seriously one of the most underrated pairings everrrrr. Tawny’s jeans though. I never understood the 2000s fashion trend that was distressed markings on the BUTTCHEEKS of pants! It looks absolutely terrible.

The final minute bit is Tugnut crying “DonnnieeeeEE!” all alone at the Washington monument lol.

This is probably the most cinematic episode of Even Stevens. This thing plays out like a freaking movie. Honestly, if they fleshed out the plot a little more and added a few twists and turns that I can’t think of because I��m not a screenwriter -- I firmly believe this would've made for a better and more satisfying DCOM than The Even Stevens Movie. They could've ended the series with an episode built around a wacky plot like the vacation, (I mean, the dismal and beyond outlandish In Ren We Trust was the series’ penultimate episode so that wouldn't be a stretch...) and then have an original movie with heart and a story rooted in the characters. Am I alone here, or? Having the series end with Louis and Tawny getting together and then barely interacting in The Even Stevens Movie always pissed me off. The bit with the videotapes could totally compete with any blockbuster romance film, tbh. MOVIES end with characters finally getting together and it's the big, satisfying moment. Ending a SERIES like that, and then not doing anything with it in the big finale film is just frustrating. I wanted to see what became of Louis and Tawny: The Couple.

This 8-second scene of them in the chair is the extent of their interaction in the movie. Along with two “right next to papa” lines from Louis, which Tawny sorta reacts apathetically/sarcastically to. That’s literally it.

I’ve mentioned before that people tend to write-off Even Stevens as nothing but a wacky show to watch if you want to turn your brain off. But, there’s so much heart here and great characters that are overlooked! Having such a crazy movie for the big ending just solidified that Even Stevens = Dumb and wacky TV show, in the memories of many. Which is perhaps the reason why the show isn’t remembered as widely or fondly in comparison to other live action Disney shows of the era. This could also contribute to its underratedness. It’s just not the DCOM we deserved. Even I remember thinking “this looks stupid” when I first saw the promo trailer for the movie as a kid. But this series finale episode felt more like a movie to me than the DCOM ever did! It almost seems like it was intended to be a film but they cut out a bunch of it. It feels really rushed. One minute the Stevens are moving and the next they’re not. There’s so much more tension and emotion that could’ve been built if the idea of them moving lasted longer than 8 minutes, haha. Idk. This just feels like a plot that deserves more than 21 minutes to unfold and breathe.

I kinda adore this episode. To this day it still manages to squeeze a lil’ tear outta me. I really can’t stress enough how sublime Shia’s acting on the tape to Tawny is. If the scene was longer, it could totally rival his romantic monologue in Disturbia (which some people have performed for acting auditions!!!) I wanna see people do a “Louis Stevens monologue” for auditions, man! lol. The day I see a modern Disney kid pull this sort of scene off with the same level of maturity will be the day hell freezes over. I love that Shia gave his all to this role. Even though ES was “just a Disney show” he treated the material with the weight it deserved and I really appreciate that. It’s what helps make Even Stevens more than “just a Disney show” and why it’s still great, if not better, in 2018.

This episode makes my Top 10 because, like I said, it has such a movie feel to it and one of the strongest/most engaging plotlines in the entire series. I might’ve ranked this one even higher if Ren had a better final plot. They could’ve had a double romance dilemma with Ren and Larry getting together as well or at least a cute moment where they finally end their rivalry, but nooooooooo! The pressure of moving forced Louis & Tawny to confront their feelings, they could’ve done the same thing with Ren and Larry. If this episode had a Ren/Larry subplot of any kind it would probably be my #1 lololol. The episode does have a lot going for it and so much potential though. I had to put it in the single-digits.

The Louis/Tawny content here is OBVIOUSLY of the highest quality. Hands down the most romantic thing I’ve ever seen on the Disney Channel at least. The videotape(s) is like a grand gesture, but also small and intimate at the same time. Per-fect. The acting is especially great here, from both Shia and Margo. I mean, these performances could stand up against any "adult” comedy TV show, heck.. they’re probably better honestly. They’re seriously killin’ the game and they’re both 16/17 years old here. So underrated. Even Stevens deserved to be picked up by a major network. Imagine what it might’ve been like on ABC, CBS, or NBC? Dang. It’d be the cult classic it deserves to be today.

Thanks for reading!!

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dipulb3 · 4 years ago

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2021 Chevy Corvette Convertible review: Why waste a trunk?

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/2021-chevy-corvette-convertible-review-why-waste-a-trunk/

2021 Chevy Corvette Convertible review: Why waste a trunk?

Yes, you can still cram golf bags into it.

Andrew Krok/Roadshow

All Chevrolet Corvettes are convertibles, when you think about it. A removable roof panel turns the standard Corvette coupe into something sunnier, but there’s one problem — stowing it renders the rear trunk otherwise useless, so it’s hard to take in the sun and, say, go to the grocery store. Enter the Corvette Convertible, which picks up a whole slew of new tricks in the move to a mid-engine layout, tricks that might make the drop-top an even more appealing car than the coupe.

More sun than T-tops

Same outstanding performance

Neck-snapping looks

Don’t Like

Piss-poor rear visibility

Unoriginal topless joke goes here

Having already spent an inordinate amount of time on the road with the C8 coupe, I feel like I’m in a good position to discuss the addition of a power-folding hardtop and how it makes the Corvette feel different — or, rather, how it doesn’t.

The specs are pretty similar to what you see from other automakers. This electromechanical top takes about 16 seconds to raise or lower, and it’ll work at speeds up to 30 mph. It’s a fun bit of theater to behold: After pushing or pulling the roof switch, which is positioned like a traditional window switch on the door panel, a massive tonneau cover rises from the back half of the car as the multipiece hardtop folds into place. If people weren’t already stopping and staring — a frequent occurrence for all C8 Corvette variants — they will once the body starts splaying itself every which way. It’s smooth and silent, which gives me confidence that it should last longer than previous hydraulic ragtops, too.

2021 Chevrolet Corvette Convertible opens up some trunk space

See all photos

Benefits of the new hardtop are pretty obvious. When the top is up, the ‘Vette is demonstrably quieter in the cabin at speed, perhaps a bit louder than the coupe, but not by much; nowhere near enough to drown out the hulking V8 living a foot behind my head at any rate. With the top down and the windows up, there’s a negligible amount of turbulence on the highway, and moving the rear window up or down can adjust it to your taste. Crank the heat (and the heated seats) and you could rock this baby with the top down for many months to come.

It’s also significantly safer from a theft perspective, because you can’t slice through the top and slide on in, at least not with my knives.

One of the most pronounced benefits of the Corvette Convertible? The trunk is usable again. Storing the coupe’s removable roof panel requires the entire trunk, whereas the convertible is hidden under the tonneau but above the engine, which is now covered so the hardtop doesn’t melt. Better yet, the cargo capacities of both Corvettes are the same, which means no livability is lost in the transition to the ‘vert.

The biggest drawback of the Corvette Convertible’s hardtop is just an amplification of a problem that exists on the coupe. Forward visibility is great, but it’s the absolute pits out back. A quick glance to either side fills my eyeballs with aggressive nacelles instead of cars, and looking through the rearview mirror offers up a whole lot of tonneau cover (if I don’t swap to the camera view, which is available, thank goodness). Changing lanes requires more reliance on the blind-spot monitor than I’d prefer, with a little bit of well-wishing thrown into the mix. Sure, I could lift off my seat and look over the nacelles, but then I’d lose my hat to the wind.

Second verse, same as the first

Roof aside, the Chevy Corvette Convertible experience is about the same as the coupe. The breadwinner is a 6.2-liter V8 that produces 495 horsepower and 470 pound-feet of torque when equipped with the $1,195 performance exhaust, an option that, for a pipe aficionado like me, is a must-have. It also adds 5 hp and 5 lb-ft, to help sweeten the deal. Motive force is available just about anywhere on the tachometer, with the rumble behind my head rising to a roar as the Corvette pushes forth with authority. I don’t know if it’s the mid-engine layout or what, but despite the car being very quick, it never feels overwhelming. It’s an approachable kind of power that you don’t normally get when the engine is mounted midship.

The standard eight-speed dual-clutch automatic is impressive, given Chevrolet’s lack of sports-car experience with this kind of cog-swapper. I wouldn’t even be able to tell it went up a gear if the engine note didn’t change, it’s just that smooth. Even on the way down, there’s more velvety goodness than I remember, with little in the way of annoying head bobs. It’s pretty darn smart when it comes to picking gears, too, so even in the presence of some decent paddle shifters, I find myself letting the computers do the work.

Chevrolet needs some brighter LEDs. The controls along the tunnel are very hard to see during daylight hours.

Andrew Krok/Roadshow

I’m also excited to announce that, while excellent, the optional Magnetic Ride Control magnetorheological shocks are not entirely necessary. Although the suspension has been tweaked to account for the extra 80-ish pounds the convertible top brings to the table, the nonadaptive stock dampers strike an impressive balance between softness (for cushion) and stiffness (for pushin’). There are multiple modes on offer, but I find the best middle ground to be Sport, which has a slightly more excited throttle that doesn’t sacrifice much in the way of minute adjustability. Throw in some nicely weighted steering and properly grabby brakes, and there’s no shortage of fun available at a moment’s notice, even if it’s just a quick blast up to the speed limit.

Inside, my midlevel 2LT-trimmed tester is pretty cushy, with soft leather in many places and hard plastics in very few. The bright red leather isn’t my personal cup of tea, but points are given for boldness. It’s not the most ergonomically sound interior, with a mode dial that’s hard to grasp when there’s something in the cup holder, and a long string of buttons on the tall center console that are difficult to commit to memory, making for quite the distracting experience unless I just ask my passenger to handle it. The heated-seat indicators also lack the brightness to be seen clearly on a sunny day with the top down. My tester rocks supremely supportive GT2 seats ($1,495), but the GT1 seats and their base brethren are both comfortable and sufficiently bolstered, too. Storage remains limited to two small door pockets, an armrest cubby big enough for a couple wallets and a wireless charging cradle up against the rear firewall. It’s definitely on the cozy side.

The Corvette’s tech is the same no matter the roof, which is good, because it’s great. An 8-inch touchscreen runs the Chevrolet Infotainment 3 system; it’s fast, it lets you tailor preferences based on a login, and it packs a bunch of features like Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, satellite radio and a 4G LTE Wi-Fi hotspot. The 14-speaker Bose sound system that comes with the 2LT trim offers plenty of volume and clarity to beat highway wind noise into submission. The 12-inch gauge display offers solid customizability and crisp graphics while managing to display a whole boatload of information about, well, practically anything you could need while driving. While a high-def backup camera is standard, and while the 2LT trim packs blind-spot monitoring and additional cameras, that’s it for safety systems. Want more? Buy an Equinox.

Even without the optional nose lift, the Corvette Convertible did a great job of making it up my steep driveway with nary a scrape.

Andrew Krok/Roadshow

Down to brass tacks

While the Chevrolet Corvette Convertible is more expensive than the coupe, it’s still an absolute performance bargain. Starting at $67,495 including destination, my 2LT tester rocks a few additional goodies that raises its price to a slightly less-exciting $79,075. But look at its competitive set: The Acura NSX costs twice as much (in addition to being coupe-only), and you might need a second mortgage for something with a McLaren badge on it. Hell, even the longtime-rival Porsche 911 Cabriolet can’t be had for anything less than six figures.

Just like the coupe, the 2021 Chevrolet Corvette Convertible is practically in a class all its own. The ‘vert takes the impressive performance of the coupe and lops off the top in exchange for… very little, actually. It’s one of the least compromised drop-tops available today.

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nythroughthelens · 7 years ago

Photo

"Love is so short, forgetting is so long..." I grew up believing everyone around me could die at any moment. My parent's religion was an end times religion and so the childhood books that I used to learn to read featured colorful illustrations of people dying in fires as (their) god killed them during the last days which would presumably be happening at any minute.

I was told that the people in my classes at school who were not the same religion would fatefully end up just like the people in those illustrations. My inner voice knew this seemed suspect since I actually really liked most of the people in my classes at school (much to the distress of my parents). But that early insistence that the world would burn along with my 'worldly' friends and first crushes informed how I felt about everyone around me. If my parents went away for a weekend, I was convinced they would never come back and I would immediately grieve as they were halfway out the door.

If I left my teenage friends as I did when I was taken (not at will) to live in New Mexico for a year in High School to forget them once and for all, I grieved for the loss of them as if I would have never seen them again (I did of course. The year long trip - a last ditch attempt to get me to keep on going with the religion - didn't work at all).

While my parents used that fear that the current world would end to constantly try to convert and save people, I translated that fear into an almost nihilistic embrace of life in my late teens and early twenties after they disowned me and I moved out on my own. Long after my parents and that religion was out of my life, I carried that feeling with me: the one that hinted to me persistently that every day could be my last (since I was now 'worldly') and every person I cared about could perish at any second. It was like a locket I had been wearing around my neck for so long that it burned into my chest searing its impact deep into in my soul. Every moment felt like it could be the final one.

All conversations, even the silliest ones, felt as if they had a profound shadow edging its way over every joke. Shared experiences had a bittersweet impact.

I never said goodnight to a friend or lover without wondering if I told them how much they meant to me or if I properly resolved any issues out of a subconscious feeling that I could potentially wake up with them gone. Regret was something I feared more than loss. I worded that last paragraph in past tense but the truth is I still carry that fatalism with me as if it is woven into the fabric of my existence.

It's one of the reasons I initially went into pre-med when I finally decided to go to college. Death, which always seemed imminent, just felt like another experience on the spectrum of life and figuring out how our strange outward structures kept us waking up every day was an ongoing fascination. "My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing..." I instinctively said yes to Brooke Shaden when she asked me at the last minute if I wanted to come speak at a creative retreat she was having this past weekend. Another speaker had to bow out due to a circumstance of loss and I was apparently on the list of speakers for next year so she messaged me asking if I could come speak and attend the retreat.

It was a reflex reaction to say yes to that request. That deeply embedded fatalism that runs rampant in my bloodstream sent shivers up my arm when I thought of missing something profound. This happens to me often. It's a paradoxical reflex I carry with me alongside anxiety. Imagine saying yes to jumping out of a plane while also being mortally afraid of heights and a loss of control.

In some ways this weird fatalistic reflex reaction has worked out to my advantage in the past few years as I have literally found myself saying yes to getting into a helicopter while also feeling like my heart would unceremoniously hurl itself up my throat and out of my mouth (for example).

"Tonight I can write the saddest lines. Write, for example,'The night is shattered and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'" It was in Western Greenland nearly a year ago on an icebreaker that I remember standing on the deck outside at midnight thinking about the weirdness of time as a concept.

Earlier that day I had seen a documentary about how time flows differently in the Arctic where there are seasons of darkness and seasons of light.

In a place where darkness and light dictate life and where death tip toes on the perimeters of reality teetering on the thinning ice, time is simultaneously more profound and less profound. That night, I watched ice float across the vast sea as the snow covered mountains jutted up from the water like heartbeats until the dark blue whisper of night fell onto the sea like a blanket and the impermanence of Earth and humanity was tangible in that moment as if I could touch the ephemerality with my frozen fingertips.

"Reality is a permeable membrane that time slips in and out of, and time is malleable, bent by the wings of a plane or the cracking of ice sheets."

The above sentence is one that I wrote down that night that has haunted me every since.

Until this past weekend. I spent a year thinking about the above encounter. When I had to write about my book during this year of pondering all of this, I wrote about how fascinated and appalled I was by mortality, about how time simultaneously feels like a thief and an absurd imagined concept. "Love is so short, forgetting is so long..." I cried and laughed with so many other creative spirits this past weekend, maybe more than I ever have. While I initially went as a speaker, I relished meeting everyone and sharing in their own mini and major moments of catharsis.

A light switched on in my soul though when I was introduced to another of the speakers. We shared stories about a mutual friend (ironically the Astronaut Commander Hadfield who I was with during the Arctic encounter described above) and laughed a lot.

I wasn't aware of what he was speaking about or what his story was until he briefly answered what he would be speaking about before we had to go to scheduled morning lecture. His name is Jeremie Saunders and he was born with Cystic Fibrosis and he will die at any point in the next 10 years, maybe sooner, maybe later. Who knows? Again, time and mortality are simultaneously absurd.

It wasn't until I heard him give his talk though that everything shifted for me. His talk wasn't about how he has perceived his life as carrying out a death sentence but rather how he views his knowledge of his own shifting expiration date as a gift because it has let him live in a way that has caused him to embrace the life and breaths he is living and breathing now. (please check him out: he has a podcast called Sickboy that “focuses on the absurd, inspirational, educational, and often times, hilarious stories of everyday people who are living with serious, chronic & terminal illnesses.” It’s brilliant). The thing is, we are all going to die. All of us. I had heard this fact poignantly stated by Commander Hadfield in the Arctic in the context of explaining his own philosophy on life.

This isn't the first time I have thought about this. In fact, I have thought about it for decades. It has peppered every fatalistic thought I have had.

At that time, I remember looking around the room when Commander Hadfield stated that truth. I heard the audible gasps and witnessed the uncomfortable shifting in chairs. We avoid thinking of the fragility of our own mortality at the expense of enjoying it to its full extent because we think somehow that not thinking of it will render us immortal. If we never think about it maybe we can cheat the life cycle and transcend this mortal existence.

It's the weightiness of how we perceive time along with the lightness of our perception that alters our vision of life. In truth, we are carrying the DNA of an almost overwhelming amount of people who have all lived and died lives, some short and some long in a relative sense, and those lives have had an impact in some way. So when I listened to Jeremie's perspective, I felt as if I finally heard someone channeling the absurdity of existence in a poignant and hilarious way as if to let everyone know that life is meant to be lived to its fullest extent.

And I knew right then and there with almost unwavering certainty what I want to work on that may span the rest of whatever life I have left. "And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture."

I saw the first photo of me in this post in an end of the retreat slideshow. I remember the moment I walked up that path to see what was in the distance. Surrounded by trees, I felt alive. And in an instant I thought of everything I shared in the first parts of this post and how I have never shared any of that to complete strangers. What an either perfectly complementary or divergent set of thoughts to have.

"Love is so short, forgetting is so long..." I met so many people like Kristina and Jeremie this weekend who created a ripple in the fabric of my soul.

I looked into people's eyes and ugly cried with every ounce of my being. I shared deep belly laughter with more people than I can count on two hands and hugged everyone as if I would never see them again (because that is what I do as I have just established in this post.)

I never once went to bed each night wondering if the day was complete enough in thoughts, words, actions.

Brooke, beyond being an incredible artist, is also a connector of souls.

Thank you Brooke.

And thank you to everyone who inspired me and touched me in such an indelible way.

You may have also inadvertently just shaped the rest of my career. --- * all quotes aside from one of mine are from one of my favorite poems by Pablo Neruda - Tonight I Can Write (Poem 20) - if you are unfamiliar - this video below is my favorite way to experience it...

youtube

(it’s part of a playlist I made a long time ago about all the scenes and videos that have made a huge impression on my life and art if you are curious: Scenes that have stuck to my ribs and clung to my heart) The beautiful forest photos in this post were taken by Kim Winey.

#death #life #art #vivienne gucwa #brooke shaden #jeremie saunders

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doorsclosingslowly · 7 years ago

Text

The Opening Act of Spring

Maul’s teacher has always been violence, and it’s never done him any harm. He should have no qualms about treating his apprentice the same way.

3.6k | pt. 3 of Runaways ‘verse | content warning for abuse | read on AO3

“What are you writing about, brother?”

“Mission dossier,” Maul replies. Not that their target deserves it, frankly. Ms Chykynn is a businesswoman from Corellia who sought fortune in an entanglement with the Banking Clan, and also a far-removed and minor former beneficiary and ally of Maul’s old Master. Somehow, she managed to bankrupt a rival family, possibly as a side effect of one of Lord Sidious’ myriad schemes, driving the parents to ruin and their daughter to suicide. Two days ago, the daughter’s widow set an astronomical bounty on the businesswoman’s head—detached only—but this information is unlikely to have filtered through to the target yet. She won’t even have hired security. Despite her tangled ties to Lord Sidious, she should be easy prey.

Maul had set their course for Corellia immediately, and they’ve been in hyperspace for two days now. They’ll drop out in eight hours to change lanes. They’ve slept and consumed their morning protein bars, they’ve meditated and sparred, and when there was nothing of any importance left to do, Maul had decided to begin preparing an in-depth dossier. He hasn’t done so in two years now, and he wants to keep his researching skills sharp.

It’s good that Savage’s brought Maul’s attention to what he’s doing, though. Chykynn is plainly ill-protected and weak. He has already read about Corellia, and even her city. This is superfluous busy-work.

Maul stretches his shoulders, and with the press of a button he saves his dossier attempt on the datapad he’s balancing on his knees, and then he closes the file. In its stead, he calls up the blueprints and notes for the DRK-1 Dark Eye redesign that he found in an office on Castell. Much more stimulating.

“What did you write?” Savage asks, not five minutes later. Currently, he’s sitting cross-legged on his bed, his posture almost a mirror of Maul’s. Almost. He doesn’t have the discipline, even now, to force his feet onto his knees. Also, silent work and rest does not become him. He’s fidgeting periodically. He is much too interested in Maul’s activities.

“Three colon null-seven colon two-five dash dash esk krill usk vev dash leth underscore one,” Maul says.

His apprentice’s face remains blank.

“The file name. Look it up yourself. There is a box of datapads by the door—” a box that hadn’t been there when Savage first abducted him; shockingly there hadn’t even been a single datapad on the Sheathipede then— “and all the Versafunction Eight-Eights are patched into the ship’s comm system, take one of those.”

“It is quicker if you just tell me.”

“Not for me,” Maul replies, and then, with over-exaggerated care, he holds up his datapad so that it blocks out the center of his field of vision. No more annoying brother. Methodically, he skips through the redesign notes: pressure sensors, photo-sensors, auditory sensors, a concept for olfactory sensors—a typically useless v2 idea—balancing software… There. The antennas of the current DRK-1 have an inconvenient tendency to break off at sub-zero temperatures, and Maul is curious how Sienar are planning to address the issue.

He can’t quite concentrate on the diagrams, though.

Out of the corner of his eye, he watches Savage instead. Maul’s brother untangles his legs and then flops down on his bed, evidently bored of fidgeting. Five seconds later, he rolls over, braces himself on his arms and one knee—the bed is too short—and starts doing lazy push-ups. The bed creaks. Despite Maul’s orders and his obvious restlessness and the fact that he asked for the information, the apprentice never even considered getting up and fetching a datapad.

This petty obstreperousness shall not be tolerated.

“Savage, read the dossier,” Maul says.

Another push-up, and Savage pretends not to have heard him.

“Apprentice.”

Creak, creak, creak.

“By now, you would have finished your reading, if you’d retrieved the datapad.”

“By now, you would have finished telling me about whatever it is you wrote,” Savage replies mulishly. “It would have been much more efficient.”

True. Irrelevant.

“I am the Master,” Maul says, because it must be said occasionally. He’s almost certain that Savage has forgotten that fact again, and more than a little worried that he himself might have, too. “You, Savage, are the apprentice. I have been lenient—” He doesn’t want to, can’t, imagine Lord Sidious’ retribution, should Maul ever have wasted his time like this. It would have involved force lightning, possibly, or skinning, if… if not worse. Master might have just left, might have simply discarded him for his lack of respect. Maul shudders. “I have been incredibly lenient, but when I tell you to read the mission dossier, I expect you to obey. With haste and diligence and eagerness. Without question. Being a Sith is a privilege. You are training to become the most powerful being in the galaxy, apprentice, and when your Master gives you an order, you will obey.”

Lord Sidious—his former Master, Maul thinks bitterly, it wasn’t because of his non-existent disobedience but nevertheless he was discarded—he would have laughed at this pitiful attempt at discipline. The obviously unfit and shy approach to training his apprentice.

(Maul had suspected, in small moments he never managed to eradicate entirely from his days, that He viewed his as little more than an attack dog, an assassin and errand-boy but not a successor, and here is the proof that He was right. He discarded Maul, didn’t need him for the Naboo mission or the grand millennial plan after all, and he was right.)

Maul is no Master. This is not training, this is…

This is a lazy, relaxed day.

This is wrong.

Some threat in Maul’s posture—he would be unduly flattering Savage’s mental capacity or commitment if he attributed it to the words—something that Savage can see in him now makes him stand up, quickly, and walk over to the datapad box.

DRK-1 schematics completely forgotten and trying to quench the anger at his own failure, Maul watches his unwieldy apprentice pick up the uppermost pad. It’s an Eight-Eight—pure luck, he’ll realize later—held together by spacer’s tape and chance ever since an unfortunate incident with a hilt prototype.

Savage shuffles back to his bed and then, with his back buckled and avid concentration, he stares down at the pad, but he’s pressing too many buttons. He’s pressing them seemingly at random. His left leg is beating against the blanket below it, thoughtlessly, restlessly.

“Apprentice, read the first sentence out loud.”

More fidgeting.

“You can’t read,” Maul says.

“I—”

“You can’t read. You should have alerted me, apprentice.” First the utter naïveté with money and the superfluous religious offerings and the propensity towards making unpalatable raw food, and now this. Maul will not fail, and he will not tolerate an uncivilised apprentice. “You should have told me that you can’t read. You used voice commands and holomaps to steer the ship, to hide your deficiencies from me, didn’t you, but we,” Maul snarls, feeling his patience fray, “are Sith. We are not barbarous outer rim yokels.” Or shall soon cease to be ones, at least, in Savage’s case. “We may be zabraks, but that will not limit us. There are certain standards I expect you to abide by, apprentice, and this is one of them. Everything important has been written down, and a true Sith shall not remain ignorant. You will become literate. You will start now.”

Savage is still sitting on the bed, clutching the datapad. He’s looking at Maul, eyes wide, but apart from that, his hurt—hovering in the aura around them, tingling at the borders of Maul’s mind—is hidden well in his posture. He’s learned something from Maul’s customary disapproving frown at emotional displays, at least. From the training sessions that are always harsher if he cries out at an injury. He can be taught.

(The reason had been minor, and that was the worst of it. Loneliness, maybe, since his nanny droid had just been decommissioned, or a broken finger or mockery, he couldn’t even remember why he’d started crying in the first place. He couldn’t remember anything through the pain. There was only one fact left in the world: Maul had started crying and his Master had seen, and the punishment wouldn’t stop until the tears did. Knowing this did not make stopping easier. It was a very long day.)

“Kneel down on the floor.”

The apprentice obeys quickly.

“Switch on your datapad. Search Sheathipede’s database for the Little Aurebesh.” Maul doesn’t know why he still remembers that title or that it was apparently often used as a test datafile and therefore might be accessible. He shouldn’t remember. It was so long ago, and he hadn’t even enjoyed Dirk forcing him to read it over and over and over because it was the only children’s book installed on his memory chips.

Savage is slower this time, pressing a button and then looking up at Maul and then pressing it again, and…

Alright, Maul can see the issue now. “Give it to me.”

The holobook isn’t there, only then he remembers to use reg expressions and change the directory and—Puddle Aurek-Besh by Kel-Shuuura. That’s it. Sheathipede is obviously ancient and yet, she has never been data-scrubbed and her memory banks still contain test files. The passphrases are probably still factory-set. An amateur oversight on Maul’s part, after the complete mechanical overhaul—he should take care of that security nightmare—but nevertheless serendipitous.

Lord Sidious never taught Maul how to read, that was Dirk the trusty rewired (or not) spy droid, and he adopts the methods he remembers the machine had used. It’s probably better this way. It’s easier to look at datapads when you’re not being thrown across the floor. (His Master laughs at his pitiful justification. Maul is unfit to train an apprentice.)

Kneeling next to Savage, he gives back the datapad and points at the scrawly illustration on the screen, the heads of two akk dogs meeting snout-first with thick red lines around their mouths forming the general shape of the letter aurek. “Look at those creatures. What do you see? What are they?”

“Maul, I am… forgive me.”

“Those are akk dogs.” Maul stretches out the sound. A necessary clue, perhaps, since his brother’s probably never even been to their wretched native planet. He stretches out the sound, and the seconds until he’ll have to… “That is the principle behind this book: there will be a well-known creature, and its visible body will be in the shape of the first letter of its name. If you know the animal’s name, you can deduce the letter. If you know the order of the letters, you can gain clues regarding its species. Two akk dogs. From Anoat. In the shape of an…”

Savage hums, low and anxious.

“Aurek,” Maul snaps. “See those slanting semi-circles. Aurek. You will try again and answer me promptly, apprentice.”

He is no droid and there is no electric prod, and Maul has never learnt Sith lightning, so he’ll conduct the lesson with what he has. His apprentice is not obeying fast enough, is not taking this seriously. With the flick of his wrist he calls his lightsaber close, and he tries not to feel cold. He knows what’s coming—whatever being will appear, Savage won’t know it. Savage will fail his order. He will be punished. This is the way lessons work: the desire to obey your Master, a harsh task, and the pain, the wish for survival, driving you to succeed. Savage will fail, at first, and he will suffer. It’s almost unfair.

It’s inevitable. Maul is Master, Savage his apprentice. Their roles were cut into stone and whispered and handed down long before either of them existed. Savage has—more or less voluntarily, if not intentionally—entrusted Maul with the sacred responsibility of teaching the ways of the Sith, of shaping him into the most powerful version of himself. He does not deserve Maul’s clammy hands; he deserves resolution. Help. He deserves to be taught. (Master looks down and laughs and laughs.)

With a deep breath and the press of a button, the next picture appears.

“Bruth!” Savage exclaims.

Something unwraps from around Maul’s hearts. He’s too happy to correct his brother for the fact that he should have recognized letter, not species. “Very good, apprentice. Now, the next one.”

Their luck runs out.

“Veeka-bird?” Savage guesses.

Maul’s fumbling hand only finds the lightsaber’s ignition button on the third try, but it does. In the space between them, the blade burns read.

“Palm-bird? No, please, brother… Give me more time. The Great Blind One? Moon-driver? No, just wait. Maul, you don’t have to do this, you don’t—Maul, no, wait, please…” Savage begs, but there is nowhere for him to go once he’s scrambled backwards against his bed. Nothing but Maul and Savage, Master and apprentice, and the ship and the saberstaff and the inevitable stream of wrong answers. There is nothing either of them can do to end this.

“The correct answer is cresh,” Maul says, and it tastes stale and empty inside his mouth.

Slowly, carefully, he brings the blade down.

(“Your timing has improved,” the droid said, and still it gave Maul a harsh shock that he couldn’t yet dodge. Not a disabling shock, although the exertion alone was enough to make him lie down for days. He stood up again and launched himself against the wall and backflipped. Another improvement. Another shock.)

The blade stops, still more than a decimeter above Savage’s arm.

“That’s good, Maul,” Savage says. There’s a tremor in his voice, and his eyes are fixed on the weapon that should, by now, have burned him. He’s very still. “That’s good. You don’t want to do this.”

And Maul doesn’t. He should, Master would, but—the ‘saber is so heavy in his hand.

“Let’s just… try this again, with the next letter? Can you do that?” Savage asks. “I promise I will get it right next time, brother.”

Maul can’t think of a better option—the blade will not move—and so he acquiesces.

Despite his promise, Savage doesn’t manage to name the next letter or animal, either, even though he talks for minutes and runs through a bewildering array of strange animal names, animals that Maul has never heard of, as if he could stop the lightsaber by inventing creatures, only interrupting the fantastical names to occasionally say Maul’s name.

It’s… whatever it is that Savage’s doing to defend himself, it’s working. The lightsaber is wavering too badly, now, and Maul switches the blade off. He is supposed to punish his apprentice, not accidentally decapitate him.

“That’s good, Maul,” Savage says, interrupting his litany for a moment to run his fingers across the scars on Maul’s hand, the hand that still clutches the saberstaff, and pulling it down towards the floor. Then he launches back into it, growing more erratic in his answers, not even bothering to match the type of animal—insect, bird, fish—to the clues in the illustration anymore.

It’s rhythmic. Meaningless. Soothing.

It’s utterly alien. The threats aren’t a motivation for self-improvement, the way Maul remembers them being, and Savage is just moving further and further away from any viable answers. It doesn’t make any sense: Maul had often loved his teacher and wished for his approval, and Savage does, too. Maul had wished to end his pain, and Savage is terrified. The situations are equivalent. There should be no reason why punishment doesn’t work now.

Savage should be learning.

There is no difference between now and all those times when it worked for Lord Sidous. No difference but two.

Savage.

Maul.

Master and apprentice, but not. Brothers. The lesson of lesson of strangulation, of near-death and terror, of dipping into the dark side to ensure your survival if there is nothing else left but your body and the hand of your Master cutting off your air supply—that lesson, just weeks ago, had been aborted as well because of Maul’s weakness. His inability to teach the way Lord Sidious does. He’d been terrified at the idea of accidentally ending his brother’s life, of losing whatever this new life is, and he had cried. He’d allowed himself to be held. Maul had been too weak to teach in the old ways then, and he is still too weak now. Will always be too weak. He doesn’t want to hurt Savage.

This failure, in hindsight, is entirely predictable. He took an apprentice too early, left and chose to challenge his own Master years before he was ready, and now he cannot even instruct Savage in the aurebesh, let alone the dark side of the force. He’d had no choice in leaving, at first, because Savage had abducted him, but—he chose to stay with Savage. Maul chose to make that mistake.

Naïveté and youth and the deep heavy knowledge that if Maul had returned to his Master, Savage would be dead now. It was the wrong choice, but it’s too late to go back now. It was wrong, but still, it feels…

He can hear Master laughing somewhere deep inside his mind (Maul is no Master—) and it only makes him grateful that his brother is still holding down his ‘saber hand.

Maul is no—

Abruptly, Savage’s voice cuts through the revelation. “Brother. I’ve taught before, showed children how to walk, how to sew and make weapons and fight. I know how to do it. Teaching’s not that difficult, really, if you care.” Something flashes across his force presence, unflinching white hatred, and then it’s swallowed again by love and anxiety and regret. “If you feel it is important that I learn how to read, I can show you how.”

If his would-be Sith Master can’t even execute a simple lesson, he may as well try. Maul is tired. He nods.

“Let go of the lightsaber, brother.”

A slow shuddering breath, and then Maul obeys.

“It’s alright to ask me for help when you don’t know what you’re doing, brother.”

This is—

Savage keeps his warm right hand wrapped around Maul’s, but he pulls it up slightly, away from the weapon, and Maul acquiesces. With his other hand, Savage gently rolls away the saberstaff, and then he instructs, “Show me the shape of the letter. The first one. Aurek? Trace it on the floor.”

Maul does, hesitantly and then over and over, pulling Savage’s hand along. This isn’t teaching, he thinks. It shouldn’t be this easy. This is wrong, but he doesn’t let go, even when he feels the ghost of electricity lashing across his skin.

(Maul misunderstood the point of lessons, in fact. Of punishment. Even though Lord Sidious wasn’t as invested in developing Maul’s mind himself and left the task to his servants, he wasn’t in the habit of him to do something as flat-out impossible as naming animals that Maul had never seen. He wanted his weapon to progress, after all. Moreover, the desperation for approval was usually enough.

He asked for things that could be accomplished, at least most of the time, unless he wanted to punish Maul.

It’s just that the pain doesn’t feel any different.)

“What do your datapads say of Wrath, brother?” Savage asks, later. The lights inside the cargo hold where they always sleep and where, mere hours ago, Maul almost hurt… Where Maul received yet another proof of his own failure. The lights are shut off and dark, now, except for the one lamp that always flashes its comforting green through the open door.

Maul’s wrapped up and warm inside the blanket that Savage insists he use, and he’s almost asleep. Blearily and angry and still uncertain, he blinks open his eyes again, and finds Savage’s irises shining at him through the gloom. “What,” he grumbles.

“Wrath. The first nightbrother. What do they say?”

“Learn to read and look it up yourself.” Maul pulls the blanket over his head. Slowly, the air grows damp and hot and stale around him, and it’s a sufficient rejection to make the room blissfully quiet.

It’s enough, for almost a minute.

“They say nothing, don’t they.”

Savage is entirely correct. Maul had looked for information, years ago when he was small and his droid caretaker had revealed Maul’s birth species. When, for a few hours, he’d failed to understand that the answer as to what he was was Sith, and that was sufficient. He’d read what little research there had been about the nightbrothers, but nothing had ever mentioned this ‘Wrath’ or anything else that Savage likes telling Maul about, not even the strange animals he spoke of today. (Nothing had ever mentioned that someone like Savage was waiting for Maul.)

“Nobody ever wrote about him,” Maul agrees. “I said that everything important has been written down, I never talked about this ‘Wrath’. I do not care about your backwater myths. It’s night. Shut up.”

Blessed silence.

Five minutes later—

“Who was Wrath, brother?” Maul whispers. It’s not quite an apology for today and as close as he’ll ever manage. Entirely by accident, those are also the words that are always used, the child’s call for the Elder’s recital.

Maul doesn’t understand why there’s a hitch in his brother’s heartbeats. He’ll never find out, but still he falls asleep with the soft age-worn cadences of strength and worship and ownership, of terror, of a man and a witch and a child and the long journey to bring that child back home entering his ears for the first time—for the thousandth time—for the first time he can remember.

Tonight, despite everything, he will not dream.

#a day in the life of two people who are only partially competent at being people #darth maul #savage opress #runaways 'verse #dimtraces makes things

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gaudeixcc · 5 years ago

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Peloton News – Germany calling

Last weekend I rode with 2 English riders who speak German. It’s not their natural language, but since they are both taking coin out of Merkel’s economy, I guess it made sense to put some effort in and learn.

JT has been firing employees in Germany for a couple of years now and is getting more and more comfortable despatching the walking dead with a Bavarian lilt. Neil, who has a proper job it turns out, has been there a similar amount of time.

Unlike the usual peloton career, Neil’s job is making real things. On deeper discussion, turns out he’s made the engine for one of the early hot hatches, the good old Ford focus ST170. He’s actually designed and made the thing. With his team of people. This is indeed useful and pretty impressive. James just yells at people. Dripping wanders the country with his health and safety clipboard and pencil round his neck, Macca drives a bus (albeit in the sky), RTA is in Insurance marketing so no doubt spends his days imagineering. The rest of us, well, it’s non-too impressive is it fellas..? I mean, me being able to navigate post-it notes and a flip chart stacks up pretty poorly against a man who makes engines for Henry’s firm.

Anyway, Neil was very modest about the whole thing, so I just sat there quietly hoping he was going to be shit at cycling so it would make me feel better.

He wasn’t. Bollocks.

Anyway, more of that shortly.

In numerous cafés and restaurants my 2 faux-Germans baffled me with what looked like pretty good conversational German deployed to numerous waiting staff. The waiting staff responded in kind and clearly communication was occurring which everyone understood.

Everyone that is, except me.

I sat there feeling like somebody’s Granny. Listening to the waiter, then turning to James and half shouting ‘what did he say?’

I don’t understand James at the best of times. I understand him even less when he is barking his shouty orders to menials in verse I don’t follow.

Still, German and indeed Germany suits JT. There is a ruthless efficiency to the country that perfectly apes our diminutive chums’ approach to life and work.

On the last night after 2 days of amazing/horrific bicycling, JT took me to the local German pub. We marched into the gaff… through the gaff… and out the other side into the Garden. There must have been half a thousand people in the Garden, all sat at benches drinking massive glasses of lager and eating food.

‘See the blue table clothes?’ squeaks JT ‘That’s where you can buy beer from here but bring your own food’.

A-huh.

‘See those table over there’ Sayeth James with a pointy finger that has dispatched many a quivering underling from his office on the 20th floor of Sky towers. ‘Table service’.

Er…ok.

‘and this section is self-service. Follow me’.

The next 90 seconds were a bit of a blur. But here goes an accurate (for once) account of what happened next.

James orders me a plate of Pork knuckle from a large German man who looks like he’s lived on nothing else. Within seconds it’s on my plate with a dumpling and gravy.

‘Veg James?’…… The place went quiet….James’ eyes narrowed and also spoke (a first for eyes). ‘Oh do fuck off’ they said.

No veg then.

5 seconds later we were at another counter. Behind this one another large German stood with his back to us. He was drawing lager from a cask which could have easily accommodated a cow. It looked like this was wasn’t just his job, it wasn’t his vocation, it wasn’t even his dream. It was his utter and complete meaning. Without even turning he placed a pulled litre of lager firmly onto the counter. James took it and put it on my tray. 5 seconds later he’d done it again, another lager on the counter. No looking. No talking. No contact. Just lager. James nabbed the next one up and the hurried me off the counter number 3.

Payment.

James paid for both within seconds (a first) and noted down in his little leather-bound accounting ledger the transaction and proposed apportionment (muscle memory).

We sat down.

90 seconds. Seriously. Breath-taking efficiency which has been giving JT wet dreams since the moment he landed in Munich central.

The food and beer were sensational. I had been dreaming of both during the 2 cycling days. Meat on a big bone accompanied by lager. Don’t over complicate perfection with greenery and other such fripperies.

We both sat there and reflected on the preceding coupla days.

‘Well, I’m getting an electric bike. That’s all there is to it’.

JT in one of the peloton’s strongest riders. Surely a couple of German/Austrian hills can’t do this to a man? I know he’s not done much training, but how hard can riding a bicycle up a hill be for pities sake?

Pretty hard is the answer to that one.

Near the town of Zell am See, nestled in the Austrian alps, lies a mountain. Großglockner. This is the highest peak in the Austrian alps and has been a pass for human traffic for over 3,500 years. The road probably wasn’t tarmacked back then and they definitely didn’t charge 35 Euros to haul your car up and down the mountain like they do now. Still, with around 2,000 meters of climbing for nearly 20k, 8% as an average was always going to be tough.

Interesting fact number 1. James has done next to no training. Interesting fact number 2. I have done quite a bit of training. Fact 3. I have also been consistent with shovelling Haribo and Dolly mixture down my greedy gullet of recent. This could all be very interesting indeed.

Obligatory photos are taken at the foot of the hill before we set off.

Now I am in no hurry to bust a gut on this one. We have the Pyrenees beckoning and for JT and I, this is very much ‘getting your eye in’ type of stuff.

Still, it doesn’t stop me putting an initial sprint in after 15 seconds on the hill. I’m in the lead. I’m already regretting having done that. Normal order resumes as Neil and JT gently pedal past, James shaking his head slowly.

We all settle in to a rhythm. Neil has a fast-paced cadence which is I suspect measurably accurate and consistent to within 0.05 rpm. He looks professional with his 95 revolutions every minute. I have a cadence of similar accuracy, the only difference being I occasionally mash the pedals, more often than not vary the speed of rotation between about 5-15 rpm, sometimes I kick over the top, sometimes I drag back and lift, sometimes I go for the fluid movement (but for never more than 8 pedal strokes in a row). Other than that, in comparing form we could literally be cycling brothers…

The hill is hard. The 8% climb is unrelenting. And the weather is starting to degrade. Gentle drizzle spits in and out of existence and whilst warm, clothes are starting to cloy to skin.

Unusually for a ride with JT, he doesn’t fuck right off into the future to leave me to my own mental demons. He’s up the road from me, but not that far. Probably about 100 meters or so.

We climb. The scenery is stunning, despite cloud significantly obscuring the best views.

Within half an hour we are high high up. 8% of climbing has seen us well into the sky. Trouble is, inside my head I can hear the voices complaining loudly about the effort…the drudge… the slog. It is hard going. You forget what proper hill work is like. We remember all too easily the tea and slice of cake at the crest of previous efforts, followed by the flowing downhill of ribboned tarmac folded across alpine pastures. Today is stark and real. This stuff is tough. I project forward to the Pyrenees. I know James is ahead of me doing exactly the same thing.

Training wise neither of us are in the ‘too little, too late’ category and the Pyrenees may be steadier in gradient. Still, a resolve is being independently crafted by both of us to put some real effort into quality training in the remaining weeks.

Of course, I’m now in Turkey caning the ‘all you can eat’ buffet and drinking the resort out of pina coladas and Baileys. Other than that, quality training is my mantra. (There is no Haribo at this hotel. I have written to governor of the local province to ask him what the flaming heck is going on under his watch. I’ve had to resort to eating iced buns for goodness sake. I’m battling through the obvious discomfort this whole situation is causing me).

It’s an hour into the climb. JT and I are now cycling together. For a period of time I’ve actually been ahead. This is a most unusual experience. It’s like a different universe where I am the one with cycling talent. JT is the one who is frustrated and annoyed. I think if provoked, there may even be a little wheelie in the locker too…. But I’m too tired to irk him with this sort of behaviour. Instead, we both push on.

Neil is ahead and is looking comfortable (well, as comfortable as you can be on an increasingly cold and wet mountain).

We pass a sign showing the 1,900 meter mark. As a group we commit to go to 2,000 meters. It’s a good mental stimulus. Something to focus on. The signs come and go and the metric altitude counter seems to only inch up (I thought about that sentence for too long!).

We round a corner, JT in front, expecting to see the 2,000 meter sign. It’s not there! I can literally see the man deflate in front of me. He stops. Arms folded across bars. Head hanging. He’s in a tough spot. We’ve all been there. Ready to hurl your bike off the side of a mountain and just sit your arse down. It’s brutal. It’s miserable. It’s cycling.

We cross the road into a lay-by and call Neil back. As we discuss options, a cloud literally comes down the road toward us. A cloud. Actually, on the road. This is all JT and I need. I reach into JT’s imaginary rucksack and haul out the white towel and hurl it up the road. That’s it. We are done. Wheels about and off we coast.

The next 15 minutes are technically quite challenging. Slick roads, winds and drizzle combined with increasing cold. I’ve got the brakes applied for nearly the whole duration of the decent. My new wheels are great, but I’ve not ridden these tyres before. My old Conti 4,000’s gave ultra-confidence and I’m just getting my eye in with these Bontragers.

I over-cook one or two turns, but other than that, we were down a lot quicker than we were up.

We now have a flat 15 or so K before we get back to the hotel.

There is a tiredness in the team. Weariness. Like post-lunch toddlers, nap time is upon us. We have no choice. We look at the stats and the numbers don’t quite tell the story of the ride. That consistent gradient was the real killer. Combine that with JT’s lack of prep (my ok prep, ok-ish weight and less than ok age these days) and reality bites. We talk about comparative difficulty. This is probably up there with a Stelvio/Croix de Fer… that sort of thing.

That evening at drinks, a funny thing became apparent. Zell am See is a small town in the Austrian state of Slatzberg. Nothing funny there you would have thought. We were munching down on a burger post-pint and I slowly became aware of the general population mix and ethnicity. There seemed to be a fair few Gulf state rich folk and their families milling about the place. When I say a fair few, I would estimate that the general tourist population was 75% Gulf state. I’d definitely not noticed this proportional representation anywhere else whilst in Austria/Germany. So what gives?

JT is hardwired to the Internet and quickly found an answer.

Apparently back in the day, some smart bod on the town council thought that their picturesque town, crystal clear lakes and mountainous back-drop was an absolute shoo-in for the description of paradise laid out in the Quran. And so off started a spectacularly successful marketing campaign directed Emirates way. And so, every summer, thousands upon thousands of well-shod Arabs head toward this little town to get out of the desert heat and spend some of their hard earned on Austrian trinkets and general tourist junk. They even had a shop there selling hookah pipes. Although I’m not sure which foolish gulf resident is going to rock-up back in Qatar with his genuine Austrian Hookar pipe and show it off to his mates…. Wouldn’t that be akin to going to the Galapagos to pick up some Kendal mint cake?

Next day saw some more gentle weather. The cycling with picturesque and generally less battering than 24 hour earlier.

There was however one notable exception.

One section stood out. 20% of solid climbing for what turned out to be perhaps a third of a mile.

I don’t think I’ve ever bicycled slower. Out of the saddle and still I reckon I’m doing 3mph.

James is behind me (repeat, James is behind me). It’s funny how such a simple statement can give me such warm comfort.

Anyway, I’m struggling… unbeknownst to me James has been doing my old Alpine skiing trick of traversing. Cheeky fucker. Still, when I threw in my own towel (might be a first that… beaten by a hill) I looked back down the road and was pleased to see that JT had also had enough.

When I re-tell this particular story, James was 700 yards back. When he retells it, he was literally nibbling my rear wheel. Either way, we were both shamed into walking up a steep hill, bike being led up like some tethered goat.

At the top we again pondered the upcoming Pyrenees trip.

There is a little less than 4-weeks before 9 riders of varying levels of fitness attack a Grande Tour and this year there is a definite hint of nervousness.

Some have trained really hard. Some of have trained fairly hard. Some of just trained and some have just thought about training.

Whichever camp you sit in (and you all know exactly which one that will be), remember that riding in scenery like this is a privilege and we are all lucky to be able to be there, whatever level of training. Memories for life are booked in for 11th September.

Will we have another ‘Moley walking through the saloon doors with tears in his eyes’ moment?

Will we see Macca snatching defeat from the jaws of victory as Damo hunts him, down to the line?

Will ColMac shout ‘Buongiorno’ directly in the face of any local who has the foolishness to catch his gaze?

Who knows. For the first time in years thought the form book is well and truly wide open.

Whilst HRH and RTA will no doubt be dancing near the top of the pack, will Damo’s recent hard-yards see him flirting with the podium?

After those three, the remaining 6 look like a complete and utter shambles of a team. I think I’m going to take a photo of the ‘calamity six’ and make one of those motivational posters out of it.

There is one I’ve seen which shows a silhouette of a guy on a race bike at sunset. The slogan is ‘Effort and determination are the key to going the extra mile’.

The calamity six poster will be ‘Effort. This lot should have fucking put some in’.

So here we go again. Tour upcoming. Nerves a janglin’. Damo’s tuck shop is being stocked as we speak.

Let’s all keep everything crossed for Dripping, his new hip and his knackered back to make it there. If he can do it, the rest of you can pipe down and suffer in silence…!

G19….. this is most definitely going to be a tour to remember.

Hoppo

#PelotonNews

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