#I mean it already made sense but the contrast is even more important if the decline was that recent

[luffington]

fur & feathers ♡

✧.* art credit!

➤ summary: You tried your hardest to stay out of their way this time. Unsurprisingly, you ended up sandwiched between them instead. (18+)

➤ pairing: sir crocodile x afab!reader x donquixote doflamingo, crocodile x doflamingo

➤ word count: 4.2k

➤ warnings: sub!reader, mean dom!croc & meaner dom!doffy, double penetration, anal sex, size kink, belly bulge, oral (m receiving), creampie, breeding kink, degradation, objectification, power play, she/her & 'girl' used

➤ notes: purely self-indulgent filth..... i am not seeing heaven's gates

NSFW under the break! minors dni thank uuu

Being Sir Crocodile’s personal secretary obviously had its benefits. Traveling to all sorts of conferences alongside him, meeting important and influential people, and always feeling protected. You lived a more lavish life than the vast majority of Alabastans, and all it took was looking the other way when documents with a winged Jolly Roger appeared on his desk. But it had some major downfalls, too, like putting up with whatever the hell was going on between your boss and that blonde feathery freak. 

You tried your hardest to stay out of their way this time. Unsurprisingly, you ended up sandwiched between them instead. 

Fragrant and flashy perfume clashed with the thick and heady scent of an expensive cigar, overwhelming your senses and making you dizzy. Crocodile’s lengthy cock was buried deep in your throat. You choked and sputtered around it, trying your hardest to use your mouth well and please your boss. Doflamingo’s harsh thrusts into your pussy from behind were making it difficult.

Your wrists had long lost their strength to support you, so you were positioned on your knees and elbows. The dark-haired man comfortably reclined on a stack of plush pillows, his ring-covered hand resting on the crown of your head. Doflamingo gripped your hips hard and repeatedly slammed his enormous dick inside you, practically penetrating your womb. You didn’t have to see him to know that he was maniacally grinning. 

You were fully naked and on display for the two men (to be fair, the blonde was already half-naked when he entered the room). Their perfectly sculpted and scarred bodies were also completely bare, but somehow they both still had their coats on. You would have laughed at the absurdity if it didn’t remind you of their high status and how far below them you were. Or maybe it just was an unspoken challenge between them – first one to take theirs off loses.

They had already made you cum three times before they even got their dicks out. Under the guise of being a gracious host, Crocodile had allowed Doflamingo the honor of your first orgasm of the night. He had made you straddle his thigh and get yourself off by rubbing your bare cunt on his leather pants, bouncing his leg up and down and cackling sadistically at your humiliated expression. Then Crocodile had eaten you out as the other man fondled your tits, and then Doflamingo had strung you up until you couldn’t move an inch while they worked together to torture your pussy. They were each menaces on their own, but somehow sharing your body like this didn’t make their egos clash – they cooperated. It was only a matter of time until they figured out something kinky to do with Crocodile’s sand powers, and then you’d be truly fucked.

You were losing yourself in the salty taste of Crocodile’s cock, the thickness of it stretching your mouth almost painfully while your nose repeatedly brushed against his neatly groomed pubes. Slowly forcing your head up and down, never giving you more than a second to breathe. He was barely sweating, looking down at you with cold eyes as he puffed at the cigar hanging from his lips. A direct contrast to Doflamingo bullying your poor cunt and shoving your body forwards onto the other man’s lap with every thrust. 

A dry finger suddenly prodded at your asshole, causing you to choke around your boss’s cock. Crocodile clicked his tongue. “Two holes at once? You’re being greedy, Doffy.” His words were teasing, a wicked smirk on his scarred face while he continued ignoring your obvious protests. 

“You get to use her whenever you want. I think that’s pretty greedy.” The blonde frowned, continuing to insistently circle his fingertip around your rim. “Besides, I’m trying to do something nice for you. You can have her pussy, so I’ll take her ass.”

The dark-haired man exhaled a cloud of smoke. Without his hand holding you down, you pulled off of his dick with a lewd wet noise and spun your head to face Doflamingo. “W-wait… both… at the, ahh, same ti-ime…?” Your muddled mind tried to express your fear, knowing full well that neither of them would care. “C-can’t fit…”

“You don’t know that until you try,” Doflamingo replied with a twisted grin. Actually, he wasn’t sure why the three of you hadn’t tried it yet. Perhaps it had something to do with your size difference. Both men were unnaturally tall – the blonde often made fun of Crocodile for only being 8’4 – and their cocks were more than proportional. Each was longer than your forearm and practically matched the thickness. Your stomach felt close to bursting from just one. 

Looking to your boss for help, you silently pleaded for some hint of kindness inside the man. His cold glare and cruel smile granted you none.

At first, you had assumed Crocodile was the nicer of the two, that he felt some kind of sympathy and held regard for human life. You quickly realized in horror that they were two sides of the same sadistic coin. The same need for dominance, longing for powerful positions, and lack of hesitation to step on anyone below them for their own benefit. Sure, Doflamingo used his strings very inappropriately in the bedroom. But Crocodile had never taken off his hook during sex, resulting in a few ‘accidental’ fading cuts on your back and thighs. Doflamingo was very open about his madness, while the other kept it neatly buttoned up under silk dress shirts.

“Don’t worry,” Crocodile rubbed your cheek, feigning gentleness, before saying, “We’ll make them fit.”

You gulped, feeling very much like prey caught in a fatal trap.

Doflamingo stopped his thrusts with his cock deep inside you and sucked his pointer and middle fingers in his mouth, coating them with enough spit to not rip your hole. He would never be generous enough to use actual lube. 

He snickered when he caught Crocodile watching his movements and swirled his tongue teasingly around his digits. “Enjoying the view, baby?”

“I’m enjoying a break from that ridiculous smile of yours.” The other man replied smoothly. “Maybe I’ll use my fingers to shut you up the next time you say something irritating.”

“Your fingers are too rough,” the blonde pouted and shoved a long finger inside your asshole in one go, making you cry out and clench your fists. Neither man acknowledged your pained reaction, though you felt Doflamingo’s cock twitch excitedly inside you. “My mouth feels all sandy afterwards.”

Crocodile smirked to himself — he controlled every grain of sand in his body, so any bits left behind in Doflamingo’s mouth (or in his clothes, or the crevices of his body) was intentional. His gaze flickered down to you, grasping the base of his cock and timidly licking at his tip. “You can do better than that, slut.” You instantly swallowed it halfway, not daring to upset your boss.

The dark haired man let out a content sigh as he watched the beautiful scene in front of him. Your back glistened with a thin sheen of sweat and a giant red Doffy-shaped handprint still burned on your ass. The blonde’s pace had slowed down slightly so he could focus on preparing your asshole with no gentleness whatsoever. He used two digits to spread your hole wide, then spat directly inside it. You whimpered at the filthy feeling, sending pleasant vibrations through Crocodile’s cock. 

“Fuck, that’s hot.” Doflamingo swore, watching his saliva disappear inside you. “What a good little whore.” You unconsciously wiggled your hips at his praise. 

The more he pushed and prodded deep inside you, the harder it was to focus on pleasuring the cock in your mouth. Wordlessly, Crocodile placed his hook on the back of your neck, the sharp edge dangerously close to your throat. The message was clear – you immediately got to work, cheeks hollowing and sloppily drooling around his dick. 

Doflamingo nodded his chin at the heavy gold object. “You ever finger anyone with that glorified fish hook?” 

Your entire body went cold. Hopefully that wasn’t a suggestion.

“No, but you can be the first to try it out.” 

“Aww, Croc, you’re making me blush.” He didn’t seem even a tiny bit flustered.

Ignoring you was part of their sick game. Making you feel so incredibly small and unimportant. Nothing but a fleshlight for two of the most powerful men in the world to share while they bickered among themselves. 

Trying to regain their focus, you clenched your holes and moaned loudly. “Shh, darling,” Crocodile cooed mockingly. “The adults are talking.”

You hated how much that humiliation turned you on and made your core ache with need. 

“Well, she seems about ready.” Doflamingo chuckled, unceremoniously pulling out of your swollen pussy, his cock angry and red and shining with your juices. You fought to keep your lower half from collapsing to the bed. “How do you wanna do this?”

You looked up at Crocodile questioningly, not daring to take his dick out of your mouth yet. Your boss gently tugged at your hair and you raised your head, coughing and sputtering for air. You suddenly felt a shameful sense of emptiness – you missed having your holes stuffed full.

He stroked the back of your head as if you were his pet. “Any ideas, doll?”

It was the first time all night that they asked for your opinion, that you weren’t passively taking every bit of pleasure and pain that they graciously gave you. You gulped nervously, looking between both men. Doflamingo seemed especially excited to hear you pick your poison. 

“M-maybe… I could… sit in your laps?” You replied timidly, unsure if your input even mattered. 

“Is that a question or an answer?” Crocodile raised an eyebrow.

As calm and collected as both men seemed, you could tell they were growing impatient. Their cocks dripped precum and subtly twitched with need. You were desperate for stimulation, too, so you steeled your hazy mind and nodded resolutely. “I want to sit in your laps. Feel you both so deep inside me. I… I might go crazy if you don’t fuck me.” You turned to Doflamingo, batted your eyes innocently, and added, “I’ll be good for you, I promise.”

The blonde threw his head back and moaned exaggeratedly. “Fuck, baby, you’re straight out of my wet dreams. Why don’t you visit Dressrosa sometime?”

“Don’t get any ideas,” Crocodile gave the man a hard glare, helping your shaky body into a sitting position. “She’s mine. The best secretary I’ve had in years.”

Doflamingo cackled. “I forgot she’s your fucking employee! There’s no way you two actually get any work done. I bet I can open any file cabinet in your office and find cum stains on those papers.”

“Open anything in my office and I’ll throw you in my Sea Prism Stone cell.”

You rolled your eyes as you maneuvered yourself into Crocodile’s lap, using his shoulders for support as you straddled his slightly spread thighs. Their twisted flirting was seemingly endless. Couldn’t they have picked a better time?

“Don’t get bratty, darling,” he snickered and quickly slapped your breast, making you yelp in surprise. “Unless you can’t survive another minute without our dicks inside you.”

You nodded and bit your lip, feeling your juices trickle out of your hole and drop down your leg. “Please, sir, I need you. Need you both.” Crocodile hummed in satisfaction – he had trained you so well. He pressed an intoxicating open-mouthed kiss to your jaw and simultaneously twisted your nipple. 

“Starting without me isn’t fair.” Doflamingo grumbled petulantly as he shuffled into place behind you. It took a few tries until he found a way to comfortably tangle his hairy legs around Crocodile’s, their pelvises almost pressed together and his massive cock smacking against your spine. The blonde bit your earlobe and laughed when you flinched.

Your fists clenched onto Crocodile’s smooth fur jacket, breasts flush against his muscular pecs, while soft and wispy feathers grazed your back and sent ticklish shivers down your spine. The air felt electric with anticipation and excitement and pure unadulterated lust. Your body might hate you the next morning for this — no, you’d feel the aftermath of their desire for at least a few days. But at that moment, you needed your holes stuffed full more than you needed oxygen. 

With a shaky breath, you stood on your knees, their long cocks still barely fitting underneath you. Doflamingo tapped the crown of his dick against your rim before holding it steady. They waited with bated breath for you to sink down.

Two Warlords were inside you.

You felt like your body was ripping in half. And yet the pain made you even wetter, a debauched moan spilling from your lips and eyes rolling back into your skull. Both men simultaneously groaned in satisfaction, an angelic choir of devils singing your praise. Being on top gave you a refreshing sense of control… one that didn’t last very long.

Crocodile’s hand settled on your hip to gently coax you down, while Doflamingo pressed hard on your shoulders. When it was finally too much and your body refused to take any more – not even halfway down their massive lengths – tight strings wound around your thighs and forced you down the rest of the way. You cried out in anguish, speared on their massive cocks.

Thankfully, the two men let you adjust once you had their entire lengths inside you and rested in their laps. You shuddered in their hold, trying your best to calm your rapid heartbeat. Perhaps there was a hint of kindness in their decision, but it was more likely for their own benefit. A broken toy was no fun to play with and they weren’t even close to being done with you. 

Crocodile reclined against the bed’s headboard and let out a low whistle. “Fuck,” he swore in a gravelly voice, eyes half-lidded and seemingly hypnotized. “You are so fucking full.” 

You looked down in perverted fascination to see your stomach bulging unnaturally, almost making you appear pregnant. He ran his hand over the well-defined outline of his cock and you felt it twitch inside you excitedly.

“What? No fair, you’re hogging the view. Let me see.” Doflamingo pouted, leaning over your shoulder. He giggled ferociously at the sight. “Oh, that’s sexy as hell.” The hand that wasn’t manipulating his strings joined Crocodile’s to rub over your bulging belly, applying pressure to your womb and making you keen. “That feels good, huh? You like when we force our way inside your tight little holes and rearrange your guts?”

Your face burned red at his filthy words but you nodded rapidly. Your boss frowned and pinched your clit, causing wetness to pool in your eyes. “I thought I taught you to use your words.”

“Y-Yes, sir, I love it.” Doflamingo’s long tongue snaked out to lap away the single teardrop running down your cheek. 

“So obedient.” He nuzzled into your neck almost affectionately. “So good for us.”

Moments like this made you question what your relationship with them was. Sure, you were definitely more of a prized possession than a romantic partner, but maybe you possessed them in a different way. You would never voice that thought aloud, but it’s what prevented you from quitting your job, getting the hell out of Alabasta, and finding an actual partner and decent life somewhere else. They could have anyone in the world they desired, but Crocodile hadn’t been with anyone besides Doflamingo and you since the first time he fucked you on his office desk, much too horny to try to seduce you back to his bedroom.

And while you didn’t know what the other Warlord got up to in his own kingdom, at the very least, he always came back for more. Doflamingo could tell vicious lies dripping with sugar like no one else, but part of you hoped there was some truth in calling you gorgeous and perfect and his good little whore. 

You knew you were probably deluding yourself, but Doflamingo’s warm mouth sucking marks into your throat and Crocodile’s palm rubbing over your stomach soothingly made your heart ache and veins burn.

“Alright, enough. Let’s get started.” The blonde used his powers to raise your body slowly, revealing their cocks glistening with your juices. 

“No strings,” Crocodile interrupted, but added with a smirk, “Yet. Let her do it herself for now.”

Doflamingo licked his lips and leaned back on his hands leisurely. His strings loosened but didn’t disappear. “Show me what you’ve got, puppet.” 

This was a test. There would be hell to pay if you failed, though you weren’t sure if passing was humanly possible. You continued to rise up at the pace Doflamingo’s strings had set, inch by delicious inch rubbing against your walls until only the tips were inside you. “You’re both so big,” you bit your lip seductively. “I feel so empty without your dicks.”

Then you quickly sank back down to the base, knocking the air out of your lungs. Head flying back to rest on the blonde man’s feather-coated shoulder. Crocodile’s cock kissed your cervix as Doflamingo’s bullied its way inside your asshole deeper than anything was meant to go. 

You repeated the motion again and again, doing your best to clench your holes tight and take their entire lengths every time. 

“This is getting boring,” the blonde rolled his eyes impatiently. A subtle twitch of his fingers forced you onto your knees then slammed you back down to their laps, their balls slapping against your sensitive skin. You were too overwhelmed to even comprehend what happened, but the man continued to manipulate your body at a brutal pace. 

“Much better.” Crocodile agreed, taking in your blank expression and glazed-over eyes. Your mind completely shut off, focused on receiving every bit of carnal pleasure that the two Warlords graciously gave you. You were completely under their control and at their mercy. Your boss cooed at you mockingly. “Poor girl. There’s not a thought in that pretty little head of yours, huh, doll?”

Your silence answered his question so perfectly that he didn’t even punish you for not responding. 

“She fucking loves it. Look at her drool.” Doflamingo grabbed your chin and forced you to face him. He delighted in your debauched expression, tongue lolling out of your mouth, before leaning back and slapping your ass. Your body spasmed around their cocks. 

The blonde used his strings to hold you down as far as possible, admiring the bulge in your stomach again with a sick grin. You hardly noticed it — you hardly noticed anything at this point. Then he ripped Crocodile’s lit cigar from the corner of his mouth and haphazardly threw it across the room. Miraculously, nothing caught on fire. 

“That was expensive.” Crocodile snarled. 

“I don’t care about your fucking tobacco.” Doflamingo grabbed the other man’s slicked-back hair and slammed their lips together in a hungry kiss that was all teeth and tongue. You watched dazedly as they licked at each other’s mouths like feral animals. Matching each other’s intensity and fighting to maintain their dominance. With his free hand, the blonde groped your breast, squeezing it in his large palm before rolling your nipple between his fingers. 

The men pulled away, panting heavily from the intense kiss. A thick string of saliva kept their lips connected. Doflamingo broke it by swiping his tongue across Crocodile’s reddened bottom lip. 

“Let’s get her pregnant, Croc. I want her tits swollen with milk so I can suck them dry.” You felt a shiver run through your entire body. What a terrifying, deranged, yet tempting thought. You didn’t dare voice your thoughts, but the blonde still felt your ass clench around his cock. He cackled and roughly tugged at your nipple. “I think our little girl likes that idea.”

Crocodile’s dark eyes turned to you. “Consider yourself lucky that he’s not in your pussy.” As if he was wearing a condom himself. As if he even owned condoms. 

Doflamingo suddenly leaned forward and knocked you down with his weight, causing you and Crocodile to fall like dominos. The dark-haired man was almost flat on his back and you were crushed between their bodies, breasts uncomfortably squished against your boss’s fleshy chest. A cloud of pink feathers suddenly encompassed you, hanging loosely from the blonde’s shoulders and fully caging you in. Now that he was on top, he released the strings from around your thighs. Doflamingo gave a particularly harsh thrust forward and you yelped, the change in angle hitting an extra sensitive part of you. Crocodile’s cock insistently pressed against your g-spot.

The blonde placed his hand softly on Crocodile’s cheek, caressing the sharp line of his jaw. Very out of place, very unlike Doffy. But when he pulled away, a single thin thread followed his fingertip like a spider weaving a web. 

“Get this fucking thing off of me.” The dark-haired man growled, grabbing at where it attached to his jaw in vain. Panic raced through your mind — you didn’t want to literally be in the middle of their fight. But Crocodile didn’t seem truly angry, more annoyed that this happened again. 

“I’ll be nice,” he chuckled menacingly. He slowly moved his pointer finger in a come-hither motion and Crocodile’s hips followed the same upwards path, pushing his cock even further inside you. “See? Just wanted to take the lead.”

Doflamingo immediately resumed his inhuman pace, pistoning in and out and making your ass cheeks jiggle from the impact. One hand mimicked marionette motions as he manipulated Crocodile into mirroring his speed and ferocity, and the other held your hip firmly in place. He perfectly timed their thrusts so they pulled out and pushed in at the same exact time, knocking the air out of your lungs and setting your core on fire.

As godly as both men appeared, they were still very much human and rapidly approaching their orgasms. Your boss’s chest heaved underneath you, eyelids fluttering shut and pink dusting his cheeks. Doflamingo panted like a wild beast, letting out breathy, excited giggles at the sight of his two pretty puppets. A few stray feathers had fallen off his coat which landed in Crocodile’s messy hair and clung to your sticky skin. The overwhelming need to possess and consume both of you made the blonde’s head spin. 

You raised your head from where it was buried in your Crocodile’s chest, now covered in a puddle of your drool. “Please, s-sirs, I need-“ You were interrupted by Doflamingo deftly rubbing your neglected clit in tight circles. You choked on your words, looking at your boss pleadingly. 

“You may cum, darling.” Crocodile offered you a merciful smile. 

Stars flashed before your eyes and you swore you ascended to heaven, every nerve in your body tingling and toes curling tightly as you cried out the names of your saviors, before you came crashing down to earth with an unabashed and sinful drawn-out moan. Moments after that bright white light washed over you, thick white cum exploded in both of your holes as the Warlords cried out simultaneously. Doflamingo kept Crocodile’s hips flush against your body as his heavy balls stuffed you full and only lowered them when he had let out his final spurts. 

“Fuck.” The blonde’s breath caught in his throat as he watched his cum spill out around his length, dripping out of your ass onto Crocodile’s dick underneath. You had never felt so used, so filthy, and fuck did it feel incredible. 

The dark-haired man felt your heart beating rapidly against him and noticed you slowly slip into darkness, your consciousness fading. “Stay with us, doll.” He stroked your hair and ran his rough thumb over your cheek. 

You smiled, dazed and dopey. “Th… thank you…”

“Taking everything we give you and thanking us after… absolutely fucking perfect.” Doflamingo breathed heavily. You wailed from sensitivity as he pulled his cock out of your abused hole and the man beneath you followed suit. More globs of cum dripped out of your pussy and ass and spilled onto Crocodile’s fur coat sprawled out beneath him. Doflamingo giggled in delight. “Better wash that for him tomorrow, little girl.”

“She’s a secretary, not a servant.” Crocodile rolled his eyes, knowing that anyone in a position lower than Doffy’s was interchangeable to him. He swiped two fingers down the cleft of your ass, collecting sticky strings of cum and making your oversensitive body jolt. “But good girls clean up their messes, right?”

You obediently sucked his fingers clean, swirling your tongue around his digits and moaning like a whore at the salty taste of their mixed semen. 

Doflamingo untangled his body from yours and reclined back with a satisfied sigh. “When’s round two?”

Your eyes nearly popped out of your skull, but Crocodile spoke before you could protest — his words held more weight than yours, after all. “That was round four for her. It’s a miracle that your dick hasn’t killed someone yet.”

“Fine, I’ll wait.” He pouted like a spoiled child. “But don’t go soft on me, Croc. You’re the only one who’s fun enough to share toys with.”

Crocodile rolled you off of his chest none too gently, but thankfully, you had a plush blanket and padded mattress to land upon. “If we’re both ready to go, why not do a round without her?” His predatory gaze met yours. “I’m sure she would love to watch.”

[nostalgebraist]

the light, and the glass

So there's this particular quality I have, as a fiction writer, and I have very little sense of how common or rare it is.

The quality is closely related to that famous Michaelangelo quip, about his sculptures being "already complete within the marble block":

The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.

This is how I feel, too, about my works of fiction. They feel like "real things" that "already exist," in some important sense, before I write them down -- or, indeed, before I even fully know what they contain.

So, for instance, if I haven't yet thought of an ending for a story I'm playing with in my mind, I nonetheless have a vivid sense that this particular story has an ending, and that this ending already is whatever it happens to be. It's only that I haven't managed to "see" it yet.

To clarify the point, consider the contrast between this thing, and two relatively familiar ways of thinking about how fiction gets made:

Conscious, goal-directed craft/artifice. Intending to write a Satisfying Plot in which each character has an Arc, the Story Beats follow logically from one another and are arranged with what is called Good Pacing, the proverbial Cat is Saved, etc., and "solving for" these desiderata in a conscious manner. Or, intending to create something much more outré and unsettling than all that -- but having some specific set of (outre, unsettling) intentions in mind, at the outset, and concocting/arranging the elements of your work in a conscious way guided by these intentions.

Free-wheeling, self-expressive "creativity." Just do whatever, man! Follow your bliss. The canvas is blank and anything is possible. Whatever you feel like putting into that empty space, go ahead and put it there. (The key thing being that, after "putting something there," you'll look and recognize something with origins in you, and your own whims and feelings at a particular moment.)

For me, though, the process of writing, and even of "ideating" (plotting, etc.), feels like a kind of transcription or channeling, as opposed to either of the above.

When I say "channeling," here, I don't mean that I have some actual, mystical belief in a supernatural object revealing itself through me. Not in the woo-woo sense anyway; whatever is really going on here, I am sure it "merely" involves the mechanics of the human mind, as implemented in the physical human brain and body.

But I do mean that it feels a lot like that. Like the story -- and not just the story part of the stories, but the whole thing, the "art object" -- has some real prior existence outside of me, first.

Like I am merely doing my best to "get it right," to be a perfect transmitter for the radio signal. To "do justice" to the "real thing," in the secondary act of writing words onto a page.

To be a courier who transports a valuable object from some originary otherworld into a place which happens to be called "existence" -- and to ensure, as much as possible, that it suffers no disfiguring scrapes during the journey.

----

I should say, though, that there's a lot of the "#1" above in my process too, the conscious-artifice thing.

Except... when I do that kind of thing, the intentions all come from the "real object," and my goal is to fill in whatever I can't see of that object so that everything I can see is preserved.

So: I will come to know, surely and indefeasibly, that the story must have some particular feature. (An event, a little moment, a character feeling a certain way at a certain time, even a specific turn of phrase.) Better to say: I know the story does have this feature. I see it in the marble.

But I can't see everything that's there, already, in the marble. And sometimes these glimpses-from-the-beyond are strange, inconvenient, difficult to "fit" into the current story (or perhaps into any story) in a natural-seeming manner.

And that's my task, when I'm doing the conscious-artifice thing: to take this collection of axiomatically-present glimpses, and build a structure around them into which they can "fit," naturally and even logically, just as if they were ordinary story-building-blocks like their neighbors, being placed here and there for ordinary story-reasons.

----

This has various implications. For one, it determines which kinds of writerly anxieties I suffer from, and which types leave me alone.

Like, I have virtually no self-doubt about my "ideas." About the overall, large-scale goodness-or-badness of the thing I'm creating. At least, not when considered "in principle," in an idealized sense that abstracts away from my actual capabilities as a guy who puts words on pages.

"Was this story, as a whole, a good idea?" is a question I find difficult to ask myself. Even when applied to smaller units, like specific plot points, this kind of question simply goes nowhere when I attempt to think about it. Insofar as my mind can cough up any answer, that answer looks like:

Yes

(after a moment, with mounting bewilderment) Yes, obviously -- how strange even to ask!

(after another moment, and as an afterthought) ...but if it weren't any good, is that really my business? It's not like I came up with it. I was asked to keep it safe and bring it into reality, and I take that duty seriously, but once it has reached its destination I wipe my hands of the matter. Don't shoot the messenger!

It's not, just, that I feel like the "real thing" "already exists." I also feel, always, that the real thing is... really good.

I deeply, thoroughly trust the Muse / Higher Power responsible for originally "making" this stuff. (To speak in relatively woo-woo terms, for ease and clarity.)

The Muse / Higher Power is a seriously skilled artist, much more so than little-old-me; if She makes any errors at all, they are not really mistakes, but "are volitional and are the portals of discovery."

And what's more, there is a sacred, unearthly gleam to the artifacts She makes, perhaps having something to do with that Fairyland, that place-other-than-"existence," in which they are originally made.

It feels like an honor to be designated as a courier for these enchanted things. Perhaps not a deserved honor -- on which more below -- but it's never the nature and value of the transported goods that I doubt.

(There is a definite sense of ritual to the thing that I do, here; a sense of connecting with some other place, definitively apart from our mundane here-and-now, and likewise more important/primary/etc. than the latter. Hence, perhaps, my tendency to not-write for long stretches, and then write in long sustained bursts for many hours at a time, which need a good deal of preliminary building-up-steam before they fully get going; it takes time to pierce, and then fully cross, the veil between worlds. And the various imprints of this stuff on the works themselves are not hard to see, once you're looking for them; they are of course especially transparent in TNC.)

All that being said, I do suffer persistently from a different anxiety.

When Michaelangelo said the thing about the sculpture "already complete within the marble block," he said it as... Michaelangelo.

As a famous, incontrovertibly masterful craftsman. Not a guy likely to suffer from doubts about his ability to put the chisel to the marble block, and reveal precisely that shape which was already there, inside.

But I'm not Michaelangelo. I'm not even sure I'm a good craftsman, much less a great one.

Certainly I've never conceived of myself in this way, even aspirationally. (Well, maybe I did in childhood and adolescence, but that was a very different thing from what I'm talking about now.)

I don't do what a person would do, if they wanted to be a Writer, and strove to be the best one they could. I don't, for the most part, practice my craft. I write because there's a Real Thing that only I can see, and it's not going to make into Existence any other way.

And since I don't write by habit or as practice -- since I only write at times when a Real Thing is in need of some incarnating-work, and I'm the only one around to do it -- I'm not exactly an ideal candidate for the job.

I am like a man who never especially wanted to be a sculptor, never practiced the trade, and was never more-than-ordinarily good with his hands, even... who is then, suddenly, struck with a very literal version of the experience Michaelangelo described.

Who, suddenly and inexplicably, begins to actually see a sculptural masterpiece lurking inside, whenever he looks at a faceless marble block.

What is our protagonist to do? Naturally, he will find a chisel, and begin chipping away. He will feel that these things need to be freed from their prisons, released and revealed to all the world, so that all the world can delight in them as he already does.

But he will be very aware of the unfamiliar way the chisel sits in his hand; of the way that hand trembles, and fails to meet the mark, and sometimes shaves off precious bits of what was really and originally a beautifully formed hand -- so that the hand, in the realized artwork, forever bears some oddity of shape which was not a part of what he saw inside the block, but only a consequence of his own shameful incompetence.

He will feel that his works, such as they are, are an odd mixture of amateurish craft and direct, divine inspiration. Insofar as he is Great, it will be because he has had Greatness thrust upon him, from without. He will feel, sometimes, that his successes have been obtained through a kind of cheating, not won fair-and-square.

And he will feel, always, a particular kind of (justified) impostor syndrome: an awareness that what he is doing, when he sits down before the marble block with the chisel in hand, is a very different sort of thing than what is usually called "sculpting," and what is being practiced by careful, hard-working aspirants just down the road, at the local workshop. The students there call themselves "sculptors," and our protagonist supposes he must call himself a "sculptor" too -- but he knows that behind this coincidence of language, a vast and strange chasm is hidden.

(I worry that this metaphor sounds flattering to me -- I am divinely inspired, they are merely toiling away and following the rules -- when I don't mean it that way at all.

In particular, note that there is nothing in our story to rule out some of the "real" sculptors down the road from also being visionaries who see the finished work in the block. Indeed, I got the metaphor from Michaelangelo, who was precisely this way.

I am only saying that all the conceivable configurations of craft/inspiration are in fact possible: just as it is possible to be skilled but uninspired, it's possible for inspiration to strike someone who lacks the capacity to fully realize its content. And that is how I feel, about my own attempts to create.)

----

When I was getting near the end of Almost Nowhere, and struggling with this kind of feeling, Esther would often reassure me by saying: "you are the light, and you are the glass it shines through."

In other words: you are a transmitter, and you are the source of the transmitted signal. Remember that in actual fact, the "real thing in the marble" came from your own little brain, just as much as the rest of it did. In actual fact, if there is a Muse and a Higher Power, it is really just an additional part of the same creature that holds the chisel, and worries over its trembling hand.

I did, indeed, find this very reassuring. And that's a funny thought, in a way! I imagine that for some people -- and indeed for me, in many other endeavours -- the same sentiment could easily have the opposite effect.

"It's all on you. It's all your responsibility. If any of it is bad, there's no one else to blame. If there is any 'Higher Power' at all, it is only the one inside you at all times, and not able to save you through unexpected intervention, from some true outside."

But I already believed, thoroughly, in the magical potency of the goods I was charged with transporting. If I was (somehow!) their maker, too, then (somehow!) the root of that glimpsed, alien magic was in me.

And so, perhaps, I could trust myself to ferry them into Existence without ruining, without even much dimming, the fairy-gleam from elsewhere that made them what they were.

[ahli-stuff]

POTENTIAL SPOILERS FOR ARCANE SEASON 2 ACT III:

League released a new Jayce skin called Arcane Survivor; I’m going to be categorizing his voice lines by how insane each batch of them makes me and doing some short thoughts and analysis

There is a LOT of reoccurring motifs over Jayce’s 8 minutes of voice lines. At least 60% of them thematically contrast, parallel, and/or directly reference Viktor, whether it’s referring to humanity, flaws, science work, and/or promises. Especially heavy on the promises.

Directly Referencing Viktor:

Pretty par of the course voice lines!! It’s nice to get a confirmation that Jayce doesn’t necessarily hate Viktor even after what he's seen, and if he does it’s tinged with a significant edge of bitter sweetness. This also confirms Viktor’s complete loss of humanity in the third act; people say that Viktor already lost his humanity the moment he stepped out of the hex core slime but. I’d argue that he simply lost the cruel side of humanity; he still had his conscience, all things considered. His development in the third act will be the loss of that too.

Jayce’s Dream Motif “Our Hextech Dream”:

I don’t actually need to go through and explain every one of these but. I want to, so, touché. Even after all the likely terrible things Jayce experienced, it’s horribly soft that he still remembers that special moment him and Viktor shared more than a decade ago. It’s still important to him.

Jayce and Viktor’s Scientific Zeal:

AGAIN. Ruminating over his work with Viktor.

Jayce’s Flaws/Humanity Motif:

These lines are in direct contrast to Viktor’s eventual ideology—to Viktor, hextech means perfecting existence, to Jayce, it will be making existence flawed. To Viktor, humanity leads to flaws but to Jayce, flaws lead to humanity.

Jayce’s Promises Motif:

Do I even need to explain this one? I think it’s so. Deeply notable that during the greatest thing you could do during a league match (kill the entire other enemy team) and arguably the worst thing you could do (dying), Jayce has the same thing on his mind. That promise. It remains to be seen if he made another important one while in the anomaly, but I heavily predict it’s his promise with viktor.

Conclusion:

There were like six voice lines each which contributes to the motifs I mentioned here that I couldn’t add, but they are all almost as equally meaningful and gut wrenching to Jayce’s character. I heavily recommend you check the skin showcase on YouTube out—I am so much softer on Jayce now because of some of his very sad lines. Not only because he’s being extremely gay for Viktor, but because this is a man standing alone burdened by knowledge, self-hatred, despair, desperation, and also… hope. He’s the protector of tomorrow, but in the most afraid sense of the title. Love this guy.

It’s shocking to me just how many lines they are refer to viktor in some sort of way. They are. They make me ill. Whether it’s romantic, platonic, something more, something in between, it’s heartening to know their relationship has the gut wrenching connection/estrangement that has the weight to stand next to silco-vander and vi-jinx.

[thatonegenshinsimp]

Binding and Blinding (Alhaitham x fem!reader NSFW)

Notes: You guys thought you were getting some wholesome shit, but you were wrong, it’s all angst. I swear it’s like the first time I’ve ever written half of this stuff on this intense of a level and actually put any sort of effort into it so it’s probably not all that great, but I hope you enjoy!

Masterlist

Warnings: NSFW, unprotected sex, fem!reader, sub!reader, riding, bondage (Shibari), doggy style, spanking, sensory deprivation (blindfold), overstimulation, edging, dacryphilia, use of safeword (kinda??? Reader can’t say it because of how overwhelmed she is), rough sex, sappy feelings n’ shit, Alhaitham being the mean dom we all know he is but then being a big softie toward the end

NSFW, minors DNI, by scrolling further past this point, you have chosen to read the content below of your own accord!

You were a very bubbly and chatty individual, always willing to talk with people whenever you had the chance, and a stark contrast to your boyfriend. However, what truly drew Alhaitham to you at first was the way you handled things. You always took great care to plan ahead when doing things, and rarely cowered away in fear from any sort of intimidating situation because of said planning. However, when he got into a relationship with you, and more specifically, started getting intimate with you, he found that the one thing that truly terrified you was not having any way of knowing how to plan for things ahead of time.

You had been talking to Kaveh almost the entire evening at the bar, not paying Alhaitham any attention whatsoever. Since his roommate was spending the night in Ghandarvaville, he had you all to himself, and there was something he’d been wanting to try for a while now. In your eyes, sex was the ultimate show of love that anyone could give their significant other. However, there were times when your dear lover saw it as a stress reliever. That was what scared you, him seeing something so important to you as another tool to use to make his life easier and less stressful. You’d never told him how much it meant to you, but he had a small inkling that you liked more vanilla things in the bedroom than him. However, you agreed to try everything he suggested at least once, and unfortunately, tonight was another experimental night in the sheets. It didn’t help that he was annoyed at his roommate for taking all of your attention tonight, which also made him annoyed with you, which in turn added to his foul mood and therefore his stress and anger. The walk home was silent, with him tightly holding your hand the entire way back to his place. You gave his hand a gentle squeeze, trying to reassure him that you had eyes for him only, but instead of squeezing it back, he started walking faster.

You knew that tonight was going to be a long one when he told you to go up to his room. The moment you’d disappeared upstairs and closed the door, he grabbed the bag he’d gotten earlier that month when he’d traveled to Inazuma. He took out the teal silk rope and the matching silk blindfold from the bag, looking at the stairs. Shibari, which originated in Inazuma, was an activity that was a type of bondage, but could also serve as art, depending on the mood of the situation it was used in. Alhaitham had extensively researched it once the silk ropes had arrived from Liyue. As for the blindfold, he’d be using that on you as well tonight. He had memorized how to tie the knots using the rope, and he certainly knew how to tie a blindfold to where it wouldn’t fall off. He’d always wanted to try sensory deprivation on your sight, since he’d already done so with your hearing using his headphones. Since it had been so well received, and had left you panting and begging for more even when your legs were shaking, he wanted to try taking one of your other senses, which was, of course, sight.

He walked upstairs and opened the door to his bedroom, noticing how you turned shy under his gaze when you looked at him. “We’re trying something new tonight, two things, in fact. I’ve been researching the art of Shibari over the past few weeks, so I know how to tie the ropes, and I’ll be able to tie the blindfold easily. However, I’m still going to teach you a lesson tonight about paying too much attention to other men like you did at dinner. Get on the bed.” he said, watching as you nervously nodded and got on the bed. He focused on tying the ropes, making sure you couldn’t move when he tied your wrists together. He then gave you one last annoyed look before tying the blindfold over your eyes, knotting it at the back of your head. “Are you uncomfortable anywhere?” he asked, watching as you shook your head. You were much more flinchy now, but in all honesty, it gave him some sort of sick satisfaction that you were nervous. Whenever you were nervous, you didn’t like showing it, so to see you like this was truly a treat in his eyes. He needed to relieve himself of the stress from tonight, and this was the perfect way to do it. Alhaitham leaned in close to you and gently kissed your neck, watching as you shivered. You were speechless, almost as if he’d taken your ability to speak. He chuckled softly, the noise serving to make you shudder as a chill traveled up your spine. He didn’t waste any time on preparing you to take him, you didn’t deserve his touch, tonight. He slowly pulled back the covers and let you get under them, watching as you pressed your legs together and rubbed your thighs together to get some sort of friction. He slowly undressed and let his clothes drop to the floor, before getting in the bed under you. “Tonight, you’re going to be on top, and you’re going to ride me until I tell you that you can stop, understood?” he asked, watching as you nodded. “Lift your hips.” he demanded, watching as you did so. He grabbed his leaking cock and slowly lined it up with your slit, pushing himself inside. You couldn’t help but whine softly as he held you there, with only the tip inside. You were about to ask him to move, but cried out loudly when he fully sheathed himself inside of you with one harsh thrust, squirming on his lap. “I think I like you like this. You keep that mouth of yours mostly shut. It’s nice to get a break from your constant remarks every so often. We should do this more frequently.” he sneered, too busy mocking you to notice the fact that there were slightly damp spots where your eyes were on the blindfold. You couldn’t handle the intensity of it all very well, or the fact that you couldn’t move all that much. Sure, depriving you of the ability to hear like last time was a new and exhilarating experience, and left you both breathless by the time that evening was over, but being deprived of the ability to see wasn’t. It felt wrong, vicious, and much crueler than jealous sex with him usually felt. Your sense of touch was enhanced to an overwhelming degree, and you couldn’t help but occasionally shy away from his touch when he tried to give it.

He noticed that you didn’t want his hands on you, and smirked up at you. It was as if you felt his gaze on you, because when you tried to get him to hold your hips still, he didn’t, and put his hands behind his head. “You don’t want me to touch you? Fine, but I’m not helping you ride me if you’re gonna be a brat, sweetheart.” he said, watching as you kept pathetically trying to get him off. He thrust his hips up against yours every so often, watching you make those pretty little moans he loved hearing. Eventually, you mustered up enough courage to speak. “Haitham, m’close, m’so close. Please, m’gonna-” You didn’t have time to finish speaking as he grabbed your chin roughly and leaned in close to your ear. “You don’t cum until I say you can, this is what you get for talking so much all the time.” he hissed, roughly letting go of you. He kept thrusting, knowing that you wouldn’t last much longer. He wanted you to cum first, just so that he could punish you further. “Ngh~ Haitham, please, lemme cum! Please just lemme- AhHng~!” you didn’t even get to finish begging when your orgasm hit you full force, pleasure wracking your body as you squirted all over his lap. The moment you realized what you did, you were too late to apologize, as he pulled out and flipped you over, before sliding right back into you. You gasped softly, before yelping against the sheets as his palm made contact with your bare ass. You tried to ride out your high, but he pulled out completely, ruining your orgasm. It was getting to be too much, but you once again felt like you couldn’t speak, and could only lay there and take it until he was done.

When he came inside of you for the second time as he took you from behind, Alhaitham looked down at you and smirked, leaning in close to your ear as he spoke. “See? I told you not to cum without permission. Perhaps if you’d listened, I wouldn’t have had to punish you like this.” he hissed, before forcing you to ride him again. You were too sensitive, it was too much, but he didn’t see that. He didn’t see the trembling of your lip, or the way you flinched a little when his hands made contact with your hips. He also didn’t see what you were thinking as he kept bouncing you on his lap. You could only barely hold back your sobs as he continued fucking you roughly.

Does he really not like it when I talk?

Do I talk too much?

Should I just stop talking whenever he’s around?

It was those thoughts that kept you quiet, kept you from doing anything other than panting heavily. The moment you started holding back your moans, Alhaitham looked up at you. “What’s the matter, can’t speak? What happened to your bite, hmm?” he mocked. “Go ahead, make as much noise as you want.” he taunted. However, the moment you removed your hands from your mouth, a loud, desperate sob escaped your lips, causing you to cover your mouth again. That made him do a double take, and that was when he noticed all of those little things. You trembled as another orgasm hit, the damp spots on the blindfold being hit with fresh tears as you tried to keep quiet on his lap. You were about to try stuttering out an apology, but stopped midway through that attempt, and settled for collapsing against his chest in a whimpering, sobbing heap. You tried to get up, but he held you down against his chest as your orgasm washed over you in waves. You could only tremble against his chest as he quickly untied the ropes, getting them off of your body. He was hesitant to remove the blindfold, but when he did, you slowly opened your eyes and wrapped your arms tightly around him. He could tell that you were feeling overwhelmed, and slowly rocked his hips against yours to get you through your high. The sensations had been too much for you, and he could tell now. He mentally slapped himself for not being more attentive, and now focused on bringing you back down from the intense high you were going through.

His eyes were wide as panic rose in his chest, and he couldn’t help but try to whisper sweet nothings in your ears as he brought you back down. “Shh, relax, just relax, sweetheart, I’ve got you.” he whispered, his tone a much gentler contrast to the harsh one he used when he was speaking to you earlier. You slowly nodded along to what he was saying, not really catching any of the words coming out of his mouth. The slight rasp of his baritone voice soothed your mind, and calmed your racing thoughts. His soft, soothing voice made you feel every pleasant emotion you could feel in that moment, but above all else, it made you feel safe. Once you’d come down from your high, you looked up at him and focused as hard as you could on what he was saying. “Do you want me to pull out?” he asked, watching as you nodded slowly. He withdrew his hips slowly, letting you lay down against his chest. He didn’t care right now that you’d made a mess of the sheets, the only thing that he was paying attention to at the moment was how you were feeling. He gave you a few more minutes to make sure you were, at the very least, somewhat lucid, before he started speaking, cupping your face in his hands. He knew you were still feeling very overwhelmed, so he asked simple questions first.

“Are you ok?” he asked, watching as you shook your head. “Was it too much?” he asked, causing you to nod. You laid your head against his chest. “Do you want me to clean you up?” he asked softly, pressing his forehead against yours. “Mhmm~” you hummed, sighing when he picked you up and carried you to the bathroom. He handled you like glass, almost as if you’d shatter from being set down on the edge of the bath. He still set you down, and turned on the faucet to the bathtub. The sound of the water was enough to make you cover your ears, your senses still kicked into overdrive thanks to the blindfold. Alhaitham noticed this, and ran back into the bedroom, where he grabbed his soundproof ear pieces, letting you wear them when he came back. Your shoulders slouched and you relaxed, slowly calming down again. Once the bathtub was full, he slowly removed the ear pieces from your ears and put them back in the bedroom. He then slowly picked you up and set you down in the bath, looking at you from the rim of the bath. “Do you want some water? Something to eat, maybe?” he asked, keeping his voice low so as not to overload your senses again. You looked up at him and nodded. “Both?” he asked, watching as you nodded again. “Does Tachin sound good?” he asked. “Yeah.” you muttered, not quite meeting his gaze. The fact that you were still reeling from everything didn’t surprise him, which is why he was taking care of you. “Alright, I’ll let you have some space for now while I go make the food, alright? If you need anything else, shout for me, and I’ll be here, ok?” he asked, taking your hands into his as he spoke, kneeling beside the bathtub. You nodded, reluctantly letting go of his hands and leaning back in the bath. “Don’t fall asleep in here, ok? It’s bad for your back and you might slip under the water by accident.” he said, causing you to nod.

Alhaitham exited the bathroom and looked back at the door, before throwing on a shirt and his underwear and walking downstairs. He quickly grabbed the ingredients and made some Tachin for the two of you. He knew you liked it because of how sweet it tasted, and he’d been marinating the meat he was using for about a day, so he knew it was going to be good once he was done. He cooked it slowly, before walking back upstairs with the plates of Tachin. He saw that you were still awake, and gently tapped your shoulder. “Hmm?” you looked at him. “Do you want me to get in with you for a bit? The food’s still a bit too hot to eat.” he asked, watching as you nodded softly. He took the shirt and his underwear off, throwing them in a quickly forgotten corner of the bathroom. You moved over a bit so that he could get in the water with you, sighing softly as he pulled you backwards into his arms. You looked up at him and saw the worry in his gaze, before reaching up to gently cup his face in your hands. “I’m sorry I didn’t pay more attention to what was going on, it was my idea to use the blindfold and the ropes on you, and I wasn’t thinking things through when I did that. I should have introduced them in moderation.” he muttered, resting his head on your shoulder as he spoke. “I tried to say the safeword, but it was almost like I couldn’t… like I couldn’t…” You were trying to find the right words to describe how you felt. “Couldn’t breathe?” he finished, watching as you nodded. “Can I ask you something, if you don’t mind?” you questioned, looking back up at him. “Anything at all, I’ll try my best to answer,” he replied. “Do you… really not like it when I talk a lot?” you asked, looking to the side. He turned you around and cupped your face in his hands, pressing his forehead against yours. “I love hearing you talk, don’t ever forget that. I don’t know why I said that earlier, I shouldn’t have,” he said. “Can we not use the blindfold and the ropes at the same time again? I didn’t like that at all, and I hated how it made every noise around me sound so… loud. It felt like every noise I heard was inside of my ears when I had that blindfold on, and it stayed that way for several minutes after you took it off.” you said. Alhaitham nodded softly. “Was there anything else that bothered you about tonight?” he asked. “I- yeah, but can we get out of the bath and eat, first? I’d prefer to tell you when we get in the bed, and the water’s starting to get cold. Plus, I’m pretty sure that cold Tachin isn’t really all that tasty.” you said, giggling softly.

He nodded, grabbing the spare set of sheets in the towel closet and making sure that they were on the bed properly before getting some towels and lifting you out of the bath. Alhaitham dried you off and carried you to the bed, setting you down under the covers before drying himself off. He got in bed with you and set a plate of Tachin on your lap, making sure that you had some water first. The sweet taste of the meat and rice, combined with the Padisarah petals he had carefully added, tasted wonderful, and each bite practically melted in your mouth. You hummed softly, turning to your lover and giving him a thumbs up. Once you’d finished the plate of Tachin and downed the glass of water, you leaned back and sighed deeply, looking back over at him. “So, what was the other thing that you didn’t like?” he asked. You gave him a nervous look, and took a deep breath before you started to speak. “You know how I usually only initiate these things when we don’t have anything to do and when we both need to be closer to each other than usual, right?” you asked, causing him to nod. “You know how I told you that I don’t really like super intense sessions like these because of how long we go at it and how rough you get, right?” you asked. Again, he nodded. “That’s because of how much those nights mean to me, you know? I try not to go to you and ask for things like that too often because it feels like it loses meaning if I do go to you too often. I do these things with you because I want to remind you that I love you, and no one else. Whenever you tell me you want to do these things with me, it mostly has to do with relieving stress, and that kinda takes away from why we do it in the first place, in my eyes, you know? I know you get really stressed sometimes, but…” you trailed off, causing him to cup your face in his hands. When you looked up at him again, he saw that you were crying. “I thought you just liked taking things slow, I didn’t know that you felt that way about all of this.” he said, resting your head in the crook of his neck. He held you there for a while, letting you calm down a bit. “But I just… I don’t want to be seen as just a source of stress relief and nothing else, because it hurts, it really hurts.” you whispered, laying down against him. He wrapped his arms around you as the tears fell, thumbing them away gently as he held you there. “I know, sometimes being rough is just what I need, and I know I sound selfish as I’m saying these things, but-” “Don’t… don’t say that, you’re not being selfish by telling me how you feel. If you catch me doing that again, please tell me. There are so many options for alleviating stress, and it’s not like I never had to deal with stress before I started dating you.” he said, giving a small smile before he pressed his lips against yours. You nodded, giving him a smile of your own in return. You yawned as the exhaustion finally caught up with you, and you laid down against Alhaitham’s chest. “I’m exhausted, goodnight, ‘Haitham.” you sleepily mumbled, closing your eyes. Within minutes, you were fast asleep against his chest. He looked down at you for a minute, before pressing his lips against your temple. “Goodnight, (name).” he whispered, closing his eyes and holding you close as he fell asleep as well.

[huaidanta]

Observations about Fuuta's clothing choices

Some loose thoughts I had about Fuuta and what his clothing says about him. This was originally a twitter thread I made in November 2023 so it may be a bit jank since it was made to fit that format.

So we already know that it's quite odd that Fuuta is the only one out of the guilty prisoners to have a clothing change for the 2nd trial. However, I find it especially interesting how his mask got swapped out for a hoodie.

Obviously, the point of a face mask is to cover part of your face. We see him wearing this mask in Bring It On and during Trial 1. While there's benefits of it protecting his identity, I personally believe he may be using it to conceal his insecurities.

In comparison to the other characters, Fuuta has short and messy eyebrows, deep eyebags, and unconventional teeth. He's literally masking these, which is fitting with how he exudes a tough bravado to hide his inner cowardice.

Also, isn't it interesting that his older sister is a beautician?

He also tends to wear baggy clothing or clothing that completely covers him up. The most skin we've ever seen from Fuuta is the birthday art (which still has him wearing the mask).

There could also be something significant with him pushing his hair back and revealing more of his face than usual. As he's also wearing golden shoes, evocative of the European Golden Shoe awarded to top scoring football players, maybe this is Fuuta with fulfilled dreams and a greater sense of confidence.

A reply I got on the original twitter thread pointed out that one of the first things we see in Bring It On is Fuuta getting ready for the day, putting on his hoodie and mask, and fixing his hair. Being shown this, we can infer that Fuuta does care about the way he presents (and conceals) himself.

It should also be noted that Fuuta's armour changes throughout the song. He initially only wears a turtleneck, but starts wearing a black hood over it during the last chorus. His mask and hoodie are also items in his RPG inventory! It shows that these aren't just clothing items, but important pieces of "equipment" to him that boost his attack and/or defense.

(Note that fantasy Fuuta's outfit has double white lines on it which feels out of place in a fantasy setting. It of course ties to real life Fuuta's sporty clothing choices, including the hoodie. In this fantasy there are still elements of reality.)

In Bring It On there's an emphasis on Fuuta properly wearing the mask but pulling it down when he's participating in the Dark Triad's activities.

If we go with my previous thinking that Fuuta uses the mask to hide his insecurities, it could mean that he feels most comfortable and secure when acting with the Dark Triad. Fuuta is someone that relies on the validation of others, so it would make sense that he feels most confident in himself when he's with a group of similar-minded people.

(I'm also interested in these shots where we don't see the mask at all... The right image is especially intriguing as his mouth is covered despite not wearing the mask. It's a stark contrast to the nasty smirk he usually does when he's maskless.)

Anyways, he stops wearing the black mask in Trial 2, probably due to his injuries. He instead wears a black hoodie, distinct from the navy shirt he wore in Trial 1. He has essentially traded one concealing item for another concealing item.

On his Trial 2 album cover, Fuuta has his hood up and is shielding himself with his hand. He's trying to hide away, to protect himself from the terror of persecution and the consequences of his actions. I find it eerily similar to the ending of Bring It On where he's doing the same thing but with an entire blanket as his hood.

This denial and hiding away from his sin is something even stated in Undercover.

TLDR: Fuuta uses clothing, especially masks and hoods, to hide his insecurities and protect himself.

[writing-for-life]

To Be Human Means to Die (Even for Morpheus)

I know one of the biggest points of contention in the Sandman fandom (especially between show-only and graphic novel fans) is the end:

On the regular, we all hear the wish that the ending should have been more hopeful, that Morpheus dying is soul-crushing and devastating and sends the wrong message. And while I agree that it is incredibly sad upon first read (I actually cried my eyes out many moons ago when I first read World’s End, because that’s when I knew, without a doubt, what was going to happen), I would like to expand a bit on why I think we are actually getting the most hopeful message of them all…

It’s a Tragedy: Yes, but That’s Also Simplifying It

Let me briefly talk about tragedies first, because many people, myself included, often bring up the purpose of a tragedy first when we are talking about why realistically, there can be no other ending to The Sandman than the one we already have. That purpose is that we, as the audience/reader, are supposed to do better, and that we are supposed to learn from our hero’s fatal flaw(s).

And while all of this is true, it is also too simple.

Yes, Morpheus has fatal flaws, his inherent rigidity being the most prominent of them (on that rigidity, everything else hinges: his occasional cruelty, his sense of responsibility even if it destroys him, his inability to hold down relationships because he won’t communicate and compromise…).

But it would be too easy to say: “This is what we are supposed to learn from it, let’s not do that and instead be capable of change. Lesson learned, the end”.

For me, the most important personal truth of The Sandman goes far beyond that, and it is connected to the through-line:

Gods Can Die and Humans Can Be Immortal

When we first meet Morpheus, he is Endless in the truest sense of the word—although captured, it is very clear that he is not mortal, not human, and one step further: That he also doesn’t always understand what it means to be human. We get to know him as aloof, arrogant, proud, often devoid of empathy, and even cruel. And we all know that this changes throughout his arc. That the being who always asserted he is incapable of change finally has to admit, to himself and others, that he has changed, most poignantly in The Kindly Ones (e.g. when he tells Nuala that he lied to Ishtar when he denied he had changed).

And that change was initially a slow one--perhaps that is why he denied it for so long. But by the time we arrive at the end of Brief Lives, his change and, yes, his humanity, are already so clear to the reader that most of us probably went: “You really are slow on the uptake sometimes.”

Even Frank McConnell writes in his intro to The Kindly Ones: “And with [killing Orpheus], Dream has entered time, choice, guilt and regret—has entered the sphere of the human.” And Nuala is right when she asks him: “You want them to punish you, don’t you? You want them to punish you for Orpheus’ death.” Guilt, regret, and a choice. And his reply is silence, and it’s deafening.

On Becoming Human

By the end of The Kindly Ones, Morpheus basically is human in the metaphorical sense: He feels like a human, and even his body (or at least his relationship to his body) has changed. The most important indication for the latter is when we put in contrast that the Corinthian stabbing him in Collectors doesn’t draw a single drop of blood, but the scorpion whip of the Fates in The Kindly Ones does, and that scar remains. We can of course argue about who can hurt him and who can’t, but in either case, we see a Morpheus now who is more flesh and blood than he has ever been, and he feels a sense of mortality not only mentally/emotionally, but also physically.

(I have to throw in here that the change they made in the show at this point greatly confused me, and I think it is significant, as are a lot of other changes that have been made. And I personally hope they only use them to hint at a more human side to him from the outset to make us relate more, but not as a change to the whole arc. I will admit that I would have preferred if he didn’t bleed at this point because to me, it would have had more impact when we finally do see him bleed at the end. And we got foreshadowing for the scar in the show, when the earthquakes crack one of the windows and he looks through it for the second time. Yeah, I’m really that obsessive when I rewatch it, it’s embarrassing).

To Be Human Means to Die

And before we all collectively go into our evolutionarily ingrained wish to pretend that’s not true (because most of us fear death):

It is our mortality that gives our lives meaning. Without an end, life has no meaning bar feeling empty responsibility (or endless hedonism that gets boring at some point). And after 10 billion years, maybe the burden of that responsibility simply becomes too heavy (“But even the freedom of the Dreaming can be a cage, of a kind, my sister,” he says to Death in #69. And that he is “very tired”). It can’t make up for what truly makes our lives worth living:

The Impermanence of it.

Destruction got it right when he said that the illusion of permanence basically depends on our vantage point. That we can pretend if we so wish, and that there is comfort to be found in that, but that things simply don’t last. And that the Endless are truly no exception to that rule (“…even our existences are brief and bounded. None of us will last longer than this version of the universe.”)

And yet, we look at Morpheus choosing death and think: ”But that’s it then, he can't go back on that, but he deserved happiness because he has changed, he deserved (insert preference/head-canon of choice) and will never get a chance to have it now.”

And I get it. Psychologically speaking, we often fight the idea of death tooth and nail. We fear our own, and we have to deal with the loss of loved ones. So the denial is real—it’s not one of the stages of grief for nothing. But staying in that stage of denial is stagnation—the very antithesis of change. Death and change are linked—in the Sandman, they are not truly presented as alternatives, even if we might think so. They are two sides to the same coin. Death says to her mortal form in The High Cost of Living that the fact that life ends is what gives it meaning. That’s why it always ends. And that message has already been given to us in The Wake: “(Death) gives you peace. She gives you meaning. And she bids her brother goodbye.”

It’s Not Just About Dying, It’s Also About Coping With Grief

It tells us something about our own mortality, but also about mourning our loved ones. That’s why The Sandman doesn’t end with Morpheus’ death/The Kindly Ones, but we get a whole story arc after he is gone/The Wake. Because mortality isn’t just about us. It is also about the ones we love, the ones we need to let go while keeping on living, but we also hold on to them in certain ways (“humans can be immortal” because we make them so). All the mourners are us, and in the case of grieving Morpheus, many of us are probably a bit like Matthew:

In the throes of grief, we don’t care that there might be someone else who might even be more kind and loving (poor Daniel)—we don’t want a “replacement”, we want back what we have lost. And we are not ready to move on, until we somehow are/do. And that path is painful and long, as everyone who ever lost a loved one will be able to attest to. The pain never truly goes away, but it changes, from something so raw and painful that it knocks the air out of your lungs, to something that shows up here and there unexpectedly, still painful, but a little less so. Until it only hurts around the edges of memories that make us smile, miss and love someone, all at once. That love is permanent, even if life is not. It doesn’t really die with us either, because we can pass it on.

And it is somewhat fitting that the idea of “to be human means to die”, and that death is what gives life meaning, also extends to storytelling:

Without an end, a story has no true meaning. Our lives are stories, and every story has a beginning, a middle and an end. Morpheus’ story is meaningful because it has an end (I already wrote about this before in “Why the order of the last three issues of The Sandman matters” and have attached a long reblog chain)—not because it plods on endlessly (no pun intended). And that end is exactly what makes it last, what makes people feel, reflect, understand, learn, pass it on.

We, a whole fandom. continuously talk about how upset we are that he died, what we learned from it, what we would do differently (be that in our own lives or in a retelling of the story), and I’ll just leave it at that, because it drives the message home so much more than any further exploration could….

[batsplat]

casey if you want the showers-

https://www.tumblr.com/kingofthering/766887733130084352/sounds-fantastic

random thought: maybe being a part of a structure like the academy might have fixed teenage casey stoner……

(x) he's getting in the shower, he's enjoying the sausage, he's having it all

and oh hm this is SUCH an interesting idea that had never occurred to me. with the academy, I often think about how valentino himself never ever would have joined it... just this implicitly subservient position to another rider, any restraints placed on individualism, losing the ability to define himself to the same extent... I do actually think valentino would be pretty good at team sports, like it's not a loner mentality that would be the dealbreaker - it's just that specifically the academy vibe would not have been for him

with casey... I mean, yeah, maybe? yeah, I reckon you're right. that could have worked miracles for casey. the closest he got was being one of alberto puig's kids for a while (hence the 27 to dani's 26), but obviously that was a very different vibe. this is how puig is being described in 2006 (x):

Puig is a very powerful figure in the paddock, running teams in the lower classes, as well as the MotoGP Academy, widely acknowledged as the best route into premier class racing for young riders. His influence is hard to exaggerate, and when you add in his forceful personality, known for attempting to silence those who criticize his riders, this makes him a potentially disruptive figure in any team. He is, like so many people involved at the very highest levels of professional sport, utterly driven, and people who are so driven often find it difficult to keep a sense of perspective. Alberto Puig is concerned with only one thing: that the riders he coaches should win. Nothing else matters. In a sense, this is totally understandable: He is paid to nurture young talent to produce winning riders, and he is remarkably good at his job. But his focus and his drive rubs off on his protégés, and can turn them into single-minded, dour automatons, concerned only with their own performance, and little else.

not very valentino, is it. like you do probably want an actual academy-esque structure where the kids within it actually get the chance to... y'know. bond. care about each other. no puig

and while puig did play a critical role in casey's career, that's still a connection that had more or less fizzled out by the time casey gets to motogp. so obviously no real equivalent in casey's career. and... I mean, yeah, surely it would have changed a lot. it always comes back to the same few things with casey, doesn't it. casey, who was bullied at school, who was frequently made an outsider even in the australian motorcycling community until he was eventually pushed out of the country entirely... the impact of this hypothetical academy structure does depend a bit on when it would GET to casey - because by the age vr46 typically steps in, a lot of casey's formative experiences have already happened to him. he doesn't get a racing licence from the AJRRA (the australian road racing association controlled mainly by parents of kids casey had been beating most of his life). he has to leave the country. they leave his sister behind. they depend on the charity of others in england. his family is 100% financially dependent on his racing success. every opportunity feels like it could be his last. like... this is stuff that's kind of set by the time he's 14-15. the contrast between his childhood and valentino's is discussed in this post:

and yeah, obviously a lot of that stuff would have already happened. then again, having somebody step in when he was... what, maybe 16-17-ish? and give him some job + financial security... I mean in blunt terms, I know this ask was probably more thinking about the community aspect - but you cannot understate the importance that these practical elements would have had for casey. and yes, there's the more emotional element of... finally being let into a club, of having someone fight your corner, of knowing you've got this structure looking out for you. of handling your contract negotiations - casey also talks about how he and his father frequently just felt like they didn't GET the paddock politics; the insider/outsider dynamic is so foundational to his experience in the sport. all these unspoken rules casey just didn't know... having someone there who DOES know and is looking out for you and can take care of everything bar the riding would have made such a difference

and my god, yeah, there's the community aspect. so much of casey's time in the sport is defined by how deeply, deeply lonely he was. the childhood friendships he'd had either get left behind or are eroded by competitive tensions. he never gets close to another premier class rider, doesn't get particularly close to his team either. in 2009, he said his only friend in the paddock was his wife. and... y'know, while I have no doubt the paddock could feel like a pretty hostile place, I also reckon it would've been a good thing for someone to force casey out of his shell a little bit. like, I get not getting close to your direct competitors, I doubt I'd be massively different, but maintaining that level of distance from basically everyone you travel with most of the year feels... not ideal. at least befriend some of the mechanics my man. looking at some of the canonical vr46 academy riders - naming no names, but I can also easily imagine them in the loner category if the academy hadn't picked them up. and at least THEY could still fall back on childhood friends and acquaintances if they hadn't had the academy, more so than a bloke who moved to a different continent aged fourteen. casey needed some friends!! and maybe just an occasional reminder that not the whole world is out to get him

so YEAH I do agree an academy-esque structure would've made a MASSIVE difference... to the extent that it's almost tough to imagine that version of casey. it does make you realise just how foundational all of this angst feels to casey, in a sad way. what does he even look like without his isolation... you might wonder whether that change would take a bit of his edge away - it's just undeniable that he got a lot of motivation and drive out of his oppositional dynamic with the rest of the world. he wanted to show everyone that they were wrong about him... the rejection by the club back home in australia made him angry, the rejection of teams in motogp made him angry... and well, his circumstances did make him desperate. they made him hungry. it's what he talks about here, isn't it, the feeling that some young riders just aren't taking their riding seriously enough, contrasting it to how he knew he had to take every single opportunity he was given. valentino vs casey about young riders (2009//2013):

(remember that the question valentino got explicitly referred back to an earlier answer about casey - "serious and sad" is kinda his characterisation of casey specifically)

then again. saying this pain was necessary to casey's success would be needlessly myopic, casey has plenty of drive even without piling on the horrors when he was 16-20, give the kid some friends y'know. you can still be plenty neurotic within an academy, you can still cultivate a persecution complex, look at pecco. also, y'know, obviously sports success isn't worth miserable children and never will be. and I suspect casey himself has softened a bit from the stance expressed in his autobiography - I've been thinking again about that podcast interview he gave earlier this year that takes a more explicitly critical view on how his parents forced their dream on him

speaking of, another big benefit of the academy is in outsourcing the role of enforcing discipline so that it's no longer the parents doing it, which again just feels considerably healthier. casey basically says as much in his autobiography:

though, again, I wouldn't call puig a particularly helpful influence either, and jorge's experience with amatriain should be enough evidence that it doesn't take a parent to establish an unhealthy (and even abusive) dynamic. obviously, the assumption here is that you drop casey in a vr46-esque academy - for all his sins, the academy valentino set up in no way resembles how these other 'talent spotters' manage their charges. it's just... it's a safety net, isn't it, in every sense. financially, job security-wise, socially... obviously it's always going to be performance-dependent, yes, but that bit's never going to be an issue for any version of casey

so, yeah. maybe not 'fix' casey exactly, but it would've changed so much for him... it does feel like it would've been an unambiguously positive presence in his life. no, it wouldn't just erase all his issues with the sport - but if he could've found a place within an academy structure like that, he would've been a lot happier for it. probably could've loved the sport more than he did. certainly would've felt a lot less alone

[starbylers]

Wait I just had multiple epiphanies about Mike’s POV in the airport. So I made a post yesterday saying how the sudden disappearance of extras crowding the frame when Will shows up in the background of Mike & El’s reunion suggests that Mike was hyper-aware of Will’s presence…

…But there’s something else in the cinematography to back that up, and it’s that they switch to an over the shoulder shot!

This is generally what they’re used for, basically to represent POV.

Before Will shows up in the shot, these are the camera angles we’ve got of Mleven:

A shot from over El’s shoulder aka her POV. And a shot from the side, like an on-looker—very non-intimate. Absolutely no over-shoulder shot from Mike’s perspective. Not until…

And look who’s suddenly in frame as soon as we switch to a Mike over-shoulder aka Mike’s POV shot? Will Byers. At the same moment that all the extras constantly running past the camera abruptly pauses, allowing us to focus on what’s actually going on as if to say this is the important bit, pay attention because this is what Mike’s paying attention to.

Mike really was panicking here lmfao I mean we already knew it but the angles stuff just solidified it for me.

And also, the fact we don’t have a single Mike POV shot of El on her own, and that they use a sort of on-looker POV as their second conversation angle instead is so revealing:

More about the use of OTS shots

Now I sort of lied before, but not really. We do slightly see Will before when I said, I just wanted to mention it separately. It’s when we are behind Mike as him and El are hugging, and he’s facing directly at Will as they do:

See him at the side? You could draw a straight line from Mike’s eyes to his face.

But because of his freaking glasses 😭 we’re hidden from seeing what he’s actually looking at…i.e. him covertly watching Will. It just makes too much sense with everything else. Also, El looks ecstatic, but Mike? We can’t even see his face. That contrast is so intentional. Not really sure where to end this off but yeah Mike pretending to be cool at the airport when he’s really loosing his mind over Will is so real and deliberate.

[waffleweirdo]

Mayu’s ‘invasion’ of Kitauji

Mayu’s addition to season 3’s cast brings with it an incredible sense of tension. Not only does she feel out of place, but there’s almost a sense of imminent disaster.

The way her character is handled in such a way to promote this emotion in the audience so that it meshes with the character’s feelings in general. I’ll mostly be talking about what her presence means for Kumiko as she is certainly the most affected, but I think there’s some interesting stuff with Reina and Kanade as well (especially Kanade with the extreme contrast between Mayu and Natsuki, but I digress)

Kumiko’s third year is a tumultuous time already, with her having to take up the mantle of president, deal with her plans for the future, and their last chance at the competition. Amidst an already fraught atmosphere Mayu arrives, and she poses a *threat*, to the band as a whole, but especially to Kumiko.

Interpersonal struggles in the band have been a looming threat since before Kumiko even began at Kitauji with the lasting conflict of the previous year haunting many of the members. The conflict stirred up by Reina playing the solo first year, Kanade and Natsuki fighting in the second year, and everything with Nozomi and Mizore… Kumiko was largely at the center of all those conflicts and knows well what they entail. In a sense Mayu is the embodiment of Kumiko’s hypothesis of why Asuka didn’t want Nozomi to rejoin the band. She is too good, her presence is bound to throw everything off.

And she does. Although leading up to the auditions there haven’t been any massive incidents her presence clearly doesn’t fit. For many episodes she wears a separate uniform to everyone else, literally standing out, and her skill is evident. But at the same time she is blasé about the competition. Thinking it’s fine to just take it easy, or offering to forfeit her audition. The determination by Kitauji to play their best and win was something built up specifically by Taki-sensei. It is largely what keeps their band together, and especially in her position as an incredibly skilled player Mayu disregarding that is off putting.

And of course for Kumiko, who stands at the greatest risk of losing her spot in the competition, or the solo (that is a trumpet and euphonium solo which especially important to her) that is even more worrisome. Kumiko is also her most determined, each year learning more and more how much the band means to her, and how much she wants to improve. Playing in nationals and winning gold is the most important to her that it’s ever been, and it’s her last shot. Combined with the dilemma of being the president as well, and in charge of the band’s harmony Kumiko is stuck.

When Mayu finally does switch to a Kitauji uniform it is almost even more unsettling. It comes on the heels of her offering to forfeit her audition, and asking Kumiko to go to the Agatha Festival with her. She is trying to fit in, but in the wrong way (see Kanade trying to throw the audition in Kumiko’s 2nd year). While Mayu has clearly made Kumiko uncomfortable at times in the past this time, Kumiko feels uncomfortable enough to lie (though you could say a part of that is her wanting to attend with Reina, I think her reaction as a whole makes it evident there is a dislike of Mayu involved). This moment is really interesting because it is a momentary step back for Kumiko into a version of herself similar to her position at the start of her first year, still hiding her true feelings and very distant from others (which is only intensified by the conversation in her teacher meeting later in the episode).

This moment especially is Mayu almost ‘invading’ Kumiko’s Kitauji. With the auditions coming up, combined with Mayu’s presence being uncomfortable and threatening to Kumiko when Mayu tries to get closer Kumiko just can’t bring herself to accept it. Mayu is encroaching… She is someone who shouldn’t be here, as evidenced by her isolation throughout her time at the festival even after going with other band members (she’s the one taking the photo that everyone else is in). Her finally wearing Kitauji’s uniform doesn’t feel right, it’s just another step too close.

Even back in the ensemble contest Kumiko worried about what would happen if someone more talented than her came to Kitauji? Now now that person is possibly here. And the auditions are just around the corner.

But I think that’s only one side of looking at the issue! The narrative and Kumiko’s role as the protagonist certainly drive the audience to feel (if likely not this intensity) a similar feeling to Kumiko. But in reality Mayu is just another member of the band, and she is clearly still isolated and alone and just trying to fit in. From her point of view something like dropping out of the auditions just seems like best way to be able to fit in, even if she is brewing potential conflict it’s not like that’s her goal.

The Kitauji that Kumiko envisions is one that has everyone in it, as seen by her efforts to ease the 1st year members and include everyone. She’s certainly a bit clumsy at it, but as president Kumiko wants to create a place in the band for everyone. Looking at the flip side of her experience in all the past dramas is her desire to help people resolve their issues. She has grown so much and is far more active than she ever was in the past. But now that same conflict isn’t just those around her, but heading for her directly. And she’ll need to struggle to uphold her ideals for the band, and that’s not the path that she’s on now.

I guess all that is to ultimately say that this season has been so amazing so far and I can’t wait for episode 6 and the rest of the season!

[tamelee]

Hi, do you think they'll make S and N straight in the live action movie? Like making S nicer to Sakura or not even keeping the kiss or enforcing the idea of S and N being "brothers",... Anyway, I expect nothing but still... it stings.

Hi~ Yeah I feel you.

Oh I have many expectations- 's just that not a single one is any good.

It’s highly possible they’re going to push contrasting narratives. Unfortunately. Though I don't see the point in forcing any of these ideas into a movie, because there's simply no time. It will have no meaning either way unless 'romance' is going to play a significant part in it... which also wouldn't make any sense.

It's a lose-lose for all of us no matter what you ship...

However, they’ve always done it with filler (everything aside the source material and... arguably Kishimoto's add-on's) as well as marketing material. Some is still subtle enough so people can argue about it, but argue they will. (Ah! Isn’t that so very clever?) It isn't for nothing they used to force Naruto on Sakura aggressively and love to make him look like an idiot in filler, or introduce random girl characters as part of a new movie-plot so he can not only be the Hero to save the day, no, he can be their personal Hero. Because, oh, isn’t he actually so handsome now that he saved me? It’s a lame way to check off the romantic elements they for some reason always need to add in and give to Naruto, disguising it under the excuse of “character-arc-stuff” because Naruto can't evolve even a single belief unless the girlies’ minds change about him first. Let alone narratively it destroys Naruto’s character, because a huge "problem" is that he’s people-pleasing his way to being liked and pretty much all filler I’ve come across only strengthens this flaw (I saw ‘flaw’ lovingly btw). Name a single thing that faithfully stayed true to the Manga and wasn’t made by Kishimoto:…

… right. 

Imo, best case scenario? They just leave out everything beneath the surface, pick a single Theme, focus on the Shinobi in a way that still allows for a bit of believable growth in these characters. Something that can still show the current while pushing for some realization and round it out somewhat satisfactory in the end. If they’re going to try anything beyond that, it’ll fail.

Kishimoto created art, but the sole decision for an adaptation means art is now ground through a giant meat-mill of great team-effort and commerce. Every medium functions differently and this decision alone comes with many problems. (Length ’s an important one. Structure too.) You can already see it in the interviews that are held about this project. Too many people are involved that have influential say about the outcome of the creative decisions. There’s also the lovely men in suits that have all the control and yet have zero creative-skill although they’d like to believe otherwise. Studio’s by itself have their own politics. This never bides well for adaptations. Very rarely is it acceptable. Very often it’s disappointing. Almost always it’s a high-budget fantasy. And yet they always know that fans are going to be critical and still not care. 

Stubborn as hell. 

(It’s different when it’s not really an adaptation, but more inspired by an existing story. HTTYD for example is very, very loosely based on a book-series— it has little connection, but there’s obviously still a story idea in there… )

[the-sky-queen]

Introducing! Prince Udando of Tharos!

Character Notes:

14 years old.

Crown Prince of Tharos, a planet dominated by rules, traditions, and symbolic meaning. Udando finds all of it suffocating and wants nothing more than to escape.

His mother, Queen Erikonia, is unyielding and cruel. She constantly pushes Udando to be the best and punishes him when falls short. Udando's late father was similarly critical, constantly disappointed in his son and only interested in people that could be of use to him.

Udando is snarky and rebellious, but he knows there's only so far he can push before he puts his life in his mother's uncaring hands. He stays within the most important boundaries even though it makes his skin crawl.

Despite his distaste for Tharos' very nature, it's all Udando knows. When confronted by objects or gestures with no specific special meaning, he has difficulty wrapping his head around the concept.

Tends to be rude and dismissive. He also struggles with social cues since he wasn't raised around normal people. (Boy has a bad habit of invading people's personal space. XD)

More than anything, he just wants to be a normal kid.

He's a bookworm and loves to research whatever catches his interest into oblivion.

Design + Other Notes:

Udando was honestly very difficult to design! I have this brainstorm paper I've been chipping away at for like a year, but I always struggled to get it to feel right. When doing this iteration of Udando's design, I honestly threw out quite a bit of what I'd initially brainstormed. Stuff like his head shape, the fact that he had ears, the shape of his feet, and him having a cape instead of the scarf he has here.

I've always known that Udando was going to have pitch black eyes. I thought it would be a fun contrast because, fun fact! Tharos is absolutely covered in bioluminescent, glowing plants. I also thought the black eyes would be good for making Udando somewhat mysterious since you can't tell where exactly he's looking. But back on the topic of Tharos' plant life, I realized it would make total sense for Udando and the rest of the Tharians to be very bright and neon in coloring, since way back in the past, those with colors matching the environment would have a better chance at surviving in what I'm thinking was a very hostile landscape.

I debated giving Udando those dragonfly wings, but ultimately decided to let him have them. They made a lot of sense because the eyes and antennae were already giving insect vibes. And speaking of the antennae! Udando can use them to detect vibrations and sense changes in the atmosphere.

Tharos is absolutely riddled with objects of symbolic importance, so I made sure to give Udando a few accessories as part of his royal getup. The crown, the wrist gauntlets, and the ankle rings all have special royal importance. I think the scarf was given to Udando by his dad shortly before he died, so even though they weren't on good terms, the thing has meaning to Udando and he refuses to get rid of it. Erikonia probably wouldn't let him throw it out anyway. As for the necklace . . . that's where things get tricky.

You see, Udando originates from this unposted AU of mine called The Black Prince. There, as part of Tharian tradition, Shadow gave Udando that necklace as a symbol of friendship between the Tharians and the Black Arms. (Shadow has a similar necklace in the AU that identifies him as the crown prince of the Black Arms.) Here's where the problem comes in. I kinda REALLY want to put Udando into my Sonic-verse, but that necklace and his relationship with Shadow is kinda VITAL to his character development. And without the context of The Black Prince, I'm not sure how Udando would meet Shadow and get that necklace. I'll keep working at it. I've got a few vague ideas right now, so we'll see how they go.

But for now, yeah! That's Udando! I love him so much and I hope you all do to!

[izzysillyhandsy]

The more I think about it, the more my Stizzy's Revenge theory makes sense. I'm so excited about it I have to add few addendums:

It mirrors Stede's dream so well

"Stede, Blackbeard, and Izzy are on an arc together. Whether they're in stories together or not, their ultimate arc is together. I think, by the end of this season, the last episode, that first scene [in S2 E1] will be gratifying. I won't say why, but their fates are tied together." (David Jenkins in this interview)

Wouldn't it be totally unexpected but at the same time really gratifying if, instead of being an obstacle to be killed, Izzy was the connecting element between Stede and Ed? If the three of them reached the conclusion together that Stede's and Ed's path are too divergent at the moment - and that each has to do their own self-discovery for a bit?

It also would be incredibly funny to see Stede sailing away with Izzy of all people and leaving Ed behind. I mean who would have thought this was even remotely possible at the start of S2?

(what this would do to the fandom though...)

It would take Ed's needs seriously - taking it slow

I think it would be such a relief for Ed if Stede understood that Ed was (at least for now) finished with piracy and needed time away from everything and everyone to reconnect with himself.

Not a breakup, they're still in love, still together and they'd definitely reconnect later - when they're both ready.

Izzy needs a break too

As of Ep 7, Izzy is doing his best to suppress his heartbreak and trauma - and you could almost believe he's moved on. His performance of best-breakup-ee ever must be exhausting though.

Remove Ed from the picture for a while, let Izzy gather his strength (and he's done so much already, he can do it!) and give him Stede who's maybe not in the same boat, but who's the one person in the world who can at least begin to understand.

And then, after a while, have that talk with Ed.

Stede and Izzy are actually really good together

With Stede, Izzy is patience itself, but he also knows when to tell him what's what. With Izzy, Stede doesn't have to hold back. He can be as childish and bad-tempered as he wants.

From a showrunner standpoint, those two play off each other really well. I could see one or two episodes in S3 with them doing pirate stuff without Ed (before the inevitable reunion).

Also, if Ed and Stede get together again at the end of S2, were do they go from here? Back to pirating? Unsatisfactory - we all know Ed doesn't want this anymore. Open an inn? And what's supposed to happen in S3?

Stede sailing off with Izzy would make for a fascinating storyline and a great starting point for S3.

The symbolism of the flag

I'm obsessed with this flag. I love the ambivalence - it could as easily be Blackbeard (with the spear) and Stede (with Ed's heart). But I prefer the Stede and Izzy version.

First Stede: he's the angry skeleton - baring his teeth and holding Blackbeard's spear (and don't forget the merman scene in Ep3 - Stede's holding a spear like trident there too). This symbolizes Stede finally becoming a real pirate - something, I think, that is very important to him. He would drop everything for Ed, sure, but in my opinion that wouldn't be good for him. Stede needs this.

Secondly, Izzy: I love that they made Izzy smaller (he's even got fewer ribs) and generally softer looking. He's holding either Ed's heart (he's been doing that for a lifetime anyway) or his own, as a sharp contrast to Blackbeard stabbing it.

Both their left (heart) hands form the name "Ed", protected by their arms, tails and whole bodies. They're like yin and yang, darkness and light, feminine and masculine.

They're not touching - without Ed, there would be no connection (and it's really difficult to imagine those two becoming friends otherwise).

Swimming together, complementing each other, protecting each other and their shared love. Isn't that beautiful?

Finally, the last episode is called "Mermen"

Need I say more?

[iridescentscarecrow]

the use of contrast in csm 167

thoughts on how the discomfort & the tension that was almost universally felt were set up by certain narrative techniques that employed a use of contrast: elements in opposition whose clashing yield tonal jarrs that casts suspicion on scene.

1. rain/heat:

CSM 166 ends on it raining, their retreat into the alleyway shows the visible marks of rain on yoru and denji's skin. this contrasts with the scene itself, the aggressive and oppressive heat you feel emanating from its panels.

the retorts, the sequences are short, jerky, emphasising this sense of heat and disconsonance. the raindrops appear like sweat: signifying warmth & passion inherent to the location of an abstract sexual act. (sweat: also a sign of distress). this is a perversion, artificial.

2. city structure & its possible meanings:

here's my inside cover analysis -- more on this.

the texture of the city, especially when made present in part 2 underlines this claustrophobia. here: the scene is set very strongly within the city and its alleyway, the texture of it, its pipes etc. being the background.

what is of the city? what exists within daily life in the city? the residue & paraphernalia of the state, its violent institutions — in schools (teachers), in churches (the cult), in government (public safety, already makima).

this figure of the city with its core of sexual control and exploitation turned against children is central to part 2's stem. the architecture of war around it, normalised into its processes: bodies in the streets & people hurt that denji regards with bafflement appear almost normal, almost natural within the setting of the city as does its inherent sexual violence (a location of control).

none of these scenes disrupt tension.

disruptions are most often exercises of our protagonist in order to disrupt the exploitative city narrative he feels alienated within. these are never entirely successful: his turning into the chainsaw man outside his burning house, his professions last chapter about his sexual urges... the scene around him (see: my 165 analysis) is turned hollow in disapproval.

3. intimacy/aggression:

i recall discussions during the <burning house> chapters when denji was hugging miri & simultaneously tearing into him about how intimacy and violence's often intertwined & experienced (by him/audience in chainsaw man). this extends to writing.

i think a useful metric of comparison is the reze kiss scene where the more sensual (almost cooler) horror of the post-kiss scene there is one of unequivocal violence. the tone here is very different: the aggression is made forefront even in an act overtly sexual. it's rushed movements, back to back, & a host of crowded panels.

4. yoru, framing war, within asa & denji's victimhood:

i kind of also find it interesting how nayuta's control (and its relinquishing of memory) is what triggers the shift in scene.

aside: the two shifts in scene here: (1) from the knife -> hand, physical proximity: potential for the rest of the scene occurs when denji says no.

(2) the memory changing nature of the scene into pseudo romantic. yoru then forces herself upon denji & this SA is simultaneously perpetrated onto asa, whose body she occupies.

understanding yoru as the metaphorical figure of war within the city as settled upon asa here is q. important.

the narratives on sexual violence that permeated all the horsemen (essentially fictitious figures of fears that set you inside city & render you to exploitation) was something i noticed a while back: CONTROL as set by makima, institutional grooming, HUNGER — kiga's affiliation with a cult that feeds into aspiration & marries off children, WAR as sexual conquest in warfare (yoru's introduction to asa about making yoshida her boyfriend).

seeing war as the thing that mediates this act and perverts it makes sense but i find the framing of this offputting (wrong: see the note on rain creating passion) & yoru's odd nervousness), the location of the kiss interesting.

the kiss as removed by control (producer of narrative that informs city's ideological construction) and now reintroduced as trigger creates the dissonance in contrast, in framing between yoru & denji. this reminds me of asa's exercises on romance, her poetry. nestling ideals of romance (asa's want of a boyfriend when she dies) within the CITY is important because this is how denji approaches it too re: sex. asa dies as a casualty of an event situated in sexual violence and war resurrects her. her whole self is now unowned in sexual encounter around a metaphorical skin (calling itself war but also functionally engaging with asa's protagonism, their names complementing each other — day/night), whose powers deal with, in some effect, consent.

bringing back what i was talking about in re: the rupture of tension that's been evading us, i think this lean into intimacy/aggression is framed in a manner where the crowded panels create this feeling of fastness, finally ends in being spaced out more and more... the last two panels, perhaps the only ones which are less active, more static in the figures that occupy them: there's a chilling break of tension as she looks at her hand post war's departure. these panels are more unhurried, they horrify and distort, occupying the page.

[jeonstellate]

love is: a compass

you’ve witnessed firsthand how one’s love can manifest into multiple — sometimes contrasting — things, yet you still didn’t expect kihyun’s love to be just like yours.

✇༄ yoo kihyun x afab!reader

✇༄ mafia!au, arranged marriage!au — angst, fluff(?)

✇༄ paragraph format — 4.5K words

masterlist | love is · · · masterlist

[gif’s full credit belongs solely to its owner]

✇༄ thank you so much for all the support you’ve given for love is ♡ i’ve read every single feedback and they all mean so much, this part wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for all of those. i appreciate every single one of you, fr ♡

chapter sixteen: the storm of the night before

You had never slept alone in your room ever since you gave birth. Partly because you weren’t well off enough to give Kian her own room just yet, but mostly because it puts you at ease hearing your daughter breathe as she slept.

Even when you two started living in the MX house, you still shared a room — although that was a product of another reason. Yes, the mansion has more than enough rooms to choose from, but Kian was still getting used to all the changes that happened — something in her old routine had to be kept the same. And it wasn’t like you support the idea of leaving your four-year old alone at night, either — especially in a location that might be swarmed by enemies as you slept. Of course, you knew she had to learn to become independent in that sense soon, but you were in no rush to have her grow up as soon as possible.

Thus, in the night before your wedding, when your cousin Seungcheol took Kian for the night to make the preparations the following morning easier, you felt uneasy sleeping by yourself.

Kian was picked up by her SVT uncles a few hours after lunch. As such, you didn’t even have the toddler to tire you out enough. You didn’t have work, either, since your vacation leave had already started. You had already cleaned and rearranged anything that you could, but you were still unfortunately wide awake. Watching anything to pass time was proven to be futile as well, since all the presented recommendations catered to your daughter and consequently just made you miss her even more.

You were told to sleep early, to prevent bags under your eyes. Unfortunately, even if you were trying your best to do exactly that, the silence in your room was deafening — suffocating you, too, almost. Even when you tried to put on some white noise to drown it out, sleep still couldn’t claim you.

Sadly, you couldn’t just grab a drink to help you knockout, either. After all, as much as sleeping early was important, waking up without a hangover was even more preferable.

"Ryuki?" You never imagined that you would’ve to resort to this. Your relationship with Ryuki had gotten even colder in the past weeks, right after your outing with I.M and Player. You weren’t sure why so — and you felt like you were in no position to ask, so you just let it be.

Unfortunately for him, he was the closest thing you had in your daughter’s absence.

"Can I help you?" Ryuki soon cracked his door open, just creating a small enough gap to peek at whoever dared to knock.

You hesitated for a moment as a bit of your sanity came back. Still, you couldn’t stop words from escaping your lips. "I miss Kian."

There was silence first, then— "And? Do you want to make another one?"

Had you been drinking anything, you would’ve surely spat it out. You knew providing an heir was in the contract between MX and SVT, but you hadn’t really talked to Ryuki long enough to ask if Kian already counted. And even if you now had the time to talk, you weren’t really in the mood to venture in that topic.

You snapped your mouth close, after involuntarily opening it due to shock. You immediately turned to leave, "I should’ve just went to Hyungwon."

Yet, before you could take another step, a hand encircled your wrist. "What did you really come here for?"

"I already told you . . . I miss my daughter."

"Our daughter," Ryuki corrected as he let go of your wrist. You then heard him let out a deep breath before he spoke up again, "Just go to sleep, we’ll see her tomorrow."

"I can’t—" You stopped suddenly, as if you thought better about your next words. "I’ve tried and I’m not so sure I can sleep without her."

Something shifted in the air suddenly, although you were unsure why it did. All you did know was it couldn’t be for of a good reason — especially since the temperature felt like it dropped a few degrees.

"It’s not easy sleeping alone when you’ve been so used to having someone next to you, isn’t it?" It wasn’t a question — nor was it still about your present dilemma. It was, for its complications, a long overdue topic — one that bloomed long before Kian was even born.

You sighed, this is going to be a long night.

Slowly, without another word, you turned back towards his direction and sat down in front of his door. Your back was pressed on the oak, your legs crossed and tucked under you. You looked up to meet his questioning eyes, your expression neutral.

"I’m sorry, Yoo Kihyun." You forced yourself to not break the eye contact as you finally referred to him by his civilian name. You needed him to see your sincerity and feel it resonate as much as possible, even if your apologies would only turn out to be futile later. "There are a lot of things I’m sorry for, but there is nothing I regret."

You heard him let out a dry chuckle. "Do you really hate me that much? Did— did I make your life that miserable? To the point that you don’t even feel an ounce of regret for leaving me?"

You hardened the expression you wore. "Don’t put words into my mouth. I never—"

"—But that’s what you meant, isn’t it?" Kihyun cut you off before you could even finish. "You even came up with a scheme—"

"—That’s not—"

"—To leave, involving the leaders of SVT and Hyungwon! How is it that you had no problem telling them the truth, but you didn’t tell me? I was—"

"—I couldn’t—"

Albeit you both initially tried to control your volume, your voices just kept on raising an octave with each argument — as both of you tried to be heard over the other. Thankfully, the whole floor wing was designated for Kihyun, so no one else was around to hear your screaming match.

Unspoken as it was, you were both glad that your daughter wasn’t round to overhear. Whether it was a blessing that Kian was over at Seungcheol’s in the first place was debatable, though. After all, was it really a good idea to address the elephant in the room the night before the wedding — when talking it out wouldn’t guarantee resolution?

By how everything was going, it wouldn’t be too surprising if addressing the past only created a greater divide between you and Kihyun.

It was a miracle one of you eventually managed to collect your mind and calm down. However, for what it was worth, it wasn’t at all surprising that it was you who did.

"Can you just listen to me?" You dropped your voice back down after you realized how ridiculous you two were being by trying to out-scream each other. "Just for a second, just listen. Please."

Your plead seemed to have shocked him, if you were going by the indication given by his suddenly wide eyes. However, just before you could conclude that he finally gave in, he spoke once more. "No.

"No," Kihyun’s voice held an unyielding finality in them, "because the last time I listened to you, you took Kian away from me."

chapter seventeen: the calmness after the storm

Despite Kihyun’s blatant refusal to hear you explain yourself, you still ended up doing so, anyway. Although, admittedly, that feat wasn’t achievable without a compromise.

You recognized you had left him with years worth of hatred and a multitude of unanswered questions, so you didn’t do anything that might potentially invalidate his feelings. Instead, you chose to let him have the microphone until he ran out of things to say — or until he ran out of energy to continue.

Then, once the hoarseness made it impossible to say anything else, you did your best to answer all his questions in order.

You never hated him. No matter how hateful and cruel your actions to him were, you had nothing but love for him.

You were in no way, shape, nor form miserable during your life together. In fact, you were extremely thankful that he went out of his way to separate and protect you from the dark side of MX. Not to mention he allowed you to continue living your civilian life as it was, without restrictions.

He was the main source of your happiness, the sole owner of your heart. At least back then.

Still, despite all of those, you didn’t feel an ounce of regret for ruining what you had then. Because, as you told him before you left, as much as you loved him, you just didn’t love him enough — enough to jeopardize Kian’s chance at a normal and safe life, that was.

"I can protect her. Both of you." Kihyun had long lost his energy to stand, so he had been sitting on the floor early into your spiel. You couldn’t see him clearly since it was quite dark in his room, but you could tell he was leaning against the wall — seating close to his bedroom door and to you, but facing the opposite way. "You didn’t have to leave."

You knew he was going to say that. You also knew he meant it with all his heart. You trust him to do nothing less, which admittedly part of the reason why you strengthened your resolve to leave. You liked how unrestricted you were, with just a tracker locating where you were. With the existence of a child, however, you knew you were bound to lose that freedom and instead be under constant surveillance — especially after what happened to Hayeon. Despite being well aware of his good intentions, you also knew you would end up hating him because of it.

You didn’t want to hate him. And you most certainly didn’t want him to face a situation where he would’ve had to choose between you and Kian or MX — nor, even worse, you or Kian.

"I couldn’t think of any other way that would give our child a chance at a normal life and also eliminate the possibility of you having to choose, so I made the call," you explained further. As brave as you were earlier, you no longer found the strength to look at him as you revealed everything. "I could never bear the thought of hating you; but I figured I could probably live with knowing you hated me, so I— I made you hate me. I made sure you blamed me for every reason why our relationship went down to flames."

"If you wanted to leave, you could’ve just said so," you heard him say. "You didn’t have to do all of that."

"Without the dramatics, would have you really let me go?" You challenged. "Without offering to fix whatever it was that made me want to leave? Without assigning people to trail me and keep me safe? Without checking in on me whenever you thought of me?" You paused to hear his response, but the silence only stretched the more you waited. Albeit he didn’t say anything, the loud silence that followed your prompt was enough. "I didn’t think so, either."

Everything you did back then was necessary. Most of them broke your own heart, but you had to soldier on — especially since your mission’s success guaranteed your removal from Kihyun’s radar. Without such thing monitoring you behind your back, you weren’t burdened with the possibility of him ever finding out. That way, you felt more at ease about raising Kian away from him.

SVT was involved because you needed someone who had similar capabilities as MX. You needed someone who could help you cover your tracks — not just from MX, but also from anyone who might use you against either MX or SVT. You didn’t plan on involving anyone from MX in your escape, partly because it was too risky to do so, but mostly because you didn’t want any of them to break his trust. After all, as much as you didn’t agree that MX’s business was safe enough for Kian’s wellbeing, you value the brotherhood that formed because of it — and, thus, would rather not be the cause of a rift.

Silence followed after you finished answering his questions and follow-ups. However, just before Kihyun could comprehend that you were actually done and not merely taking a pause, you uttered something under your breath. "I needed you to hate me, so you can forget about me; so you can move on.

"I had hoped that you’d find someone else, in my absence. Someone more deserving of your affection. Someone who would love you without reservations, like I did. But, alas." A timid smile suddenly graced your features. Rather than happiness, though, it was an act paired with a tint of sadness in your eyes. You turned towards him, "I’m sorry fate has bound us, Yoo Kihyun."

chapter eighteen: the quietness after the storm

The Yoo Kihyun you knew as his significant other was different from the Yoo Kihyun you had to come back to. He was colder. Meaner. Harder to read.

Not that you were counting his personality change against him. After all, you — of all people — knew what prompted him to be more closed off. Plus, it wasn’t like you two were still comfortable enough with each other to treat one another the same way as before.

Sure, between snide remarks and verbal quarrels, you two were still courteous to one another. Sometimes, the actions were from conscious decisions. Most of the time, though, they were out of instinct — a habit even the passage of time couldn’t erase.

Truthfully, you never really cared if his courtesy was consciously or unconsciously made — just like he does whenever you do the same.

However, for his newest display of courtesy, you somehow found yourself wondering which root it was from. "W— what?"

"Come to bed," Kihyun, without any specifications to guide him, took your reply differently. "Don’t make me repeat it again."

"Why—?"

"Don’t read too much into it," he dismissed your inquiry before you could even finish. "I just need to make sure you don’t run."

You didn’t buy his excuse. Unfortunately, even if you tired yourself hoarse from giving Kihyun his long-overdue closure, you still didn’t think you could sleep alone. Which, ultimately, left you with no other choice.

When morning came, the distance you put before you closed your eyes appeared to have melted with the moon.

Kihyun’s arm, which was nowhere near you when you slept, somehow found its way to wrap around you. Sometime between the transition from night to day, you had somehow gravitated toward him — if he didn’t unconsciously pull you closer in his sleep, that was.

Perhaps it was part of the whole ‘preventing you from running’ ruse. Or perhaps it was just another one of your unerased habit from long ago. Either way, whatever the case might be, his sleeping figure was unarguably the very first thing you saw when you fluttered your eyes open.

There were a number of years when you thought waking up next to him was the only way to properly start your day. When you agreed to be his betrothed for your second gamble, you ultimately decided that continuing to put your life at risk by staying by his side was worth it if it meant you got to start your days with him; if it meant you always had him to give you strength for any awaiting obstacles. You used to believe, albeit quite naively, that everything would be alright, as long as you had him.

And, really, it was . . . until it wasn’t.

You flinched away and attempted to create more distance, immediately realizing that Kihyun probably wouldn’t appreciate your proximity once he regained consciousness. However, much to your surprise, his arm instantly tugged you back — almost on instinct. Perhaps, you could easily blame the sleepiness in your system, but you could swear his hold on you tightened.

You had somewhat mastered escaping a hold, without waking up the person that was holding onto you, thanks to both Kihyun and Kian over the years. However, it wasn’t always effective — especially if the latter was in a sensitive state of sleep.

Considering how Kihyun reacted when you flinched, you could only assume he was partially aware of his surroundings. Thus, if you move one more time, you would definitely wake him up. And as much as you didn’t want to disturb his sleep, you needed him to let you get ready.

After all, neither of you could be late for your own wedding.

Rather than having him wake up abruptly, you chose to ease him into it — just like you used to do back then. "Kihyun," you called softly with your voice hoarse with sleep.

You took a moment to admire him when your first tactic didn’t seem to work, no matter how much you called him. With his eyes closed and sleep cradling him, there was nothing intimidating about him. He was just Kihyun, the man you used to wake up next to, the man you gambled your life for. And, somehow, seeing him in this state reminded you of what it was — and what it could’ve been.

Unconsciously, your hand found its way to his face. Fortunately, before it can make any contact with his cheek, you were able to freeze it mid-air.

Waking Kihyun up by touching his face was a second resort tactic by the old you, the you that loved him with everything that you were. Not the you that left him alone. And certainly not the you that lied and took his child away.

After what you did, you were well-aware that you no longer deserve a lot of things. But, as it seemed, the universe was conspiring to prove you otherwise.

The instant Kihyun’s eyelids fluttered, you retracted your arm back to you. You had half a mind to turn away so he wouldn’t catch you staring, but you already made eye contact with him before you could even shift.

You didn’t know what you expected to happen then, all you knew was you never would’ve guessed the very first thing he uttered after waking up.

"Can you learn to love me again?"

chapter nineteen: the rainbow of the morning after

Your wedding was a small, private affair. That was, if you consider having the entirety of MX and SVT in attendance a short guest list — not to mention the core members of their respective allies.

Considering that your wedding wasn’t really a civilian affair, there were only a handful of civilians present. Even then, all guests — except your daughter — were aware of the true nature of the event. In some form or another, everyone present had ties — personal or otherwise — with a mafia gang.

Although it was undoubtedly your wedding with Kihyun, at its core, it was a mere way for MX and SVT to seal off their alliance. Given that you were only an unofficial member of SVT, you weren’t really consulted with any wedding matters. As such, Kihyun was probably the only one they let privy to its details — and considering how well you two got along, it was no surprise that no information was ever passed on to you.

Really, the only reason you knew the wedding was still happening was due to the days Nari and Hayeon dragged you to get fitted for your wedding attire — once to get your measurements taken and the other to make any necessary adjustments. Absurd as it was, Nari and Hayeon were required by their significant others — Minhyuk and Changkyun, respectively — to not let you see your attire, so even that was still out of your reach.

You absolutely had no idea why you were forbidden to see the only preview you had for your big day. Thankfully, with all the deadlines and other obligations you had, you didn’t really had the time to dwell on it.

When the scheduled day finally arrived, you then immediately understood why MX went through such lengths to keep you from seeing your outfit beforehand.

Your attire was the exact replica of your sketch from five years ago, down to the smallest detail. Albeit you weren’t a fashion designer by any means, you tried your best to sketch your dream wedding attire using your skills as a professional architect. During the eight months of your first engagement, you were also able to sketch Kihyun’s outfit as well, with details added according to his own suggestions and preferences. Furthermore, albeit it wasn’t finalized and mostly just a cloud of brainstormed ideas on paper, you were also able to get started on sketching how you imagined the venue to look like. Of course, just like you did for his suit, you also incorporated Kihyun’s opinions into them. After all, it was supposed to be your wedding.

All your wedding-related sketches were inside a single sketchbook, one you purposely didn’t mix with any other artwork. If you remembered correctly, it also served as a journal to you back then; it also housing a specific portion of your thoughts — starting from the night Kihyun proposed and ending with the day you completed your third gamble. You were fairly certain you were able to take it with you when you left your shared apartment, but misplaced it sometime before you left the country, so you weren’t entirely sure how SVT and/or MX could’ve extracted ideas from it.

One thing was for sure, though: that sketchbook was definitely used during the planning of the wedding.

"Are you ready?" Seungcheol was the one set to walk you down the aisle. According to him, since SVT was the one who extended the olive branch to MX, his party had to be the one walking down to symbolize that. However, in Jihoon’s account of events, you were the one chosen to walk down the aisle simply because Seungcheol lost to Hyunwoo in rock paper scissors.

As such, you were unable to watch Kian walk down as the designated flower girl. Thankfully, Nari and Hayeon — as well as Soonyoung and Mingyu — were more than ecstatic to record that moment for you.

"Ready." As if merely waiting for your confirmation, the double doors opened from the inside — to reveal the path you must walk on with Seungcheol.

Truth be told, you had been contemplating what you were supposed to feel on your wedding day since the people contracted to fix you up started doing their job. Somehow, you managed to convince yourself that you’d be indifferent — after all, your upcoming marriage was contractual. Yes, the person at the end of the aisle was the same as the one in your dreams, but the circumstances were no longer as they were back then.

There was no longer love involved, unlike when you used to dream of the day.

However, when you finally saw how venue was decorated — how the one in charge for the decorations incorporated your ideas from five years ago, despite your lack of direct involvement — you realized otherwise.

After all this time, there was still love — even if it was no longer how it used to be.

"He still loves you, you know," you heard your cousin whisper as you two continued your slow walk down the aisle.

"Wha— what?" You answered in surprise, slightly convinced that he could read your thoughts.

"Kihyun still loves you," Seungcheol repeated. "He never said it out loud, at least not when SVT’s around, but I can tell."

You inevitably made eye contact with Kihyun at the end of the aisle, precisely at the moment you suddenly felt overwhelmed. Although your cousin didn’t say it directly, based on how you noticed him glancing around the venue at the corner of your eye, you connected that he was most likely referring to the wedding itself — somehow implying that Kihyun played a greater role in the preparation than you initially thought. More specifically, it seemed like Seungcheol was implying that Kihyun took charge of the decorations — which hereby also imply that he was the one who deliberately incorporated your ideas into the wedding.

Despite the coldness of your relationship — or lack there of — ever since you crossed paths once more, Kihyun still cared enough about you to make your dream wedding from five years ago a reality. He had no reason to do that, especially since the wedding was merely for an alliance’s sake and he clearly loathed you for the decisions you had made in the past, but he still thought of you as he planned out everything.

Sure, it would be valid to argue that it was merely another display of consideration from his part — or even as a manifestation of an unerased habit from long ago. However, somehow, you knew it was more than just a habit. It was a conscious decision: an act deliberately made — not out of respect, but out of something else entirely.

"Yeah," you replied slowly as memories upon memories of his unerased mannerisms came flashing back. You began to wonder just how frequent his conscious kindness towards you actually showed itself, but you were just too oblivious to take notice of its true nature. "I can tell, too."

You sent a smile on Kihyun’s way, as a silent assurance since you could sense that he was getting worried about your probably-glossed eyes. "You two are the same."

Fortunately for Seungcheol, you had finally reached the end before you could even think about questioning his observation. "What were you guys talking about?" Unfortunately for your cousin, though, it also meant that Kihyun heard his last remark.

"Sea will tell you later, I’m sure." He replied dismissively and cryptically all at once. "For now . . . take care of my cousin for me."

Seungcheol passed your hand to Kihyun, completing his role as the person who extended the olive branch.

With the distance between the two of you now being a mere two steps, you were able to see into his eyes. And, somehow, even if you had looked him right in the eye before, you were barely noticing what his gaze held whenever he looked at you.

Past whatever emotions he was currently feeling, buried beneath time and the clouds, was love. Albeit it wasn’t as it was, with all the scars it picked up along the way, it still exist — more prominent now than it probably would’ve been, especially with the disappearance of the mist obscuring it from view.

You weren’t quite sure how his love survived underneath all hatred and loathing you implanted within its roots, but it did. Somehow.

And maybe, just maybe, you’d let yourself gamble once more.

Can you learn to love me again?

"I can’t love you again," you whispered, only intending for him to hear, "because I never stopped in the first place."

[daughter-of-melpomene]

𝗡𝗔𝗥𝗡𝗜𝗔 𝗣𝗟𝗢𝗧 𝗕𝗨𝗡𝗡𝗜𝗘𝗦

By the request of my darling @ginevrastilinski-ocs and @dancingsunflowers-ocs (as well as @luucypevensie, though she's already been infodumped to about my newest children), I hereby present to you my new OCs for The Chronicles of Narnia! I might not have their official intro posts up for a little bit, but please still fell free to ask me questions about them!

(Before I get any futher into this, there are a few things I should clarify in order for the lore surrounding these OCs to make sense: 1) my OCs' stories are purely based off of the movie canon because the most I've read of the books is the first chapter of The Magician's Nephew, and 2) I have messed with the canon of the movies like, a lot. For starters, the Pevensies never go back into their world at the end TLTWATW, so they remain the kings and queens of Narnia. For another thing I also completely messed up the timeline so that the Telmarines try to invade and take over shortly after they become the rulers after they've heard about the White Witch's death, and Caspian defects and offers help to the Narnian crown, both because he wants to save himself from his uncle and because he never supported the invasion to begin with - basically, I'm just rewriting most of the story after the first movie to my liking. I'm still figuring out the intricacies of what that's going to mean for certain important events in the last two movies, but for now, on to telling you about the OCs!!)

HEMERA:

— Susan ship.

— Hemera comes from a family of Golden Witches - witches that have mastery over light and heat and solar energy depending on their power level. Her family comes from the same coven that the White Witch used to be a part of, and only a few of them, including Hemera's mother, were able to escape and survive when Jadis killed most of the coven and took over Narnia (yes, I have also very much made up my own Narnian witch lore).

— When Hemera is eleven years old, however, Jadis comes looking for the Golden Witches she missed, killing Hemera's mother, grandmother, great-aunt, and even her human father, and she is sent away to hide, becoming the only Witch besides Jadis left alive in Narnia.

— She spends the next several years in hiding, being sheltered by kind animals or sleeping in forests and being kept safe by the trees, until she hears that the prophesied Daughters of Eve and Sons of Adam have actually arrived in Narnia and are teaming up with Aslan to form an army against the White Witches forces, and she decides to volunteer her magic to help in the fight.

— Her magic isn't actually very strong or focused, however, because she's spent so long barely using it to try and stay safe, so she doesn't do much in the fight. But after Jadis is defeated and the Pevensies are crowned rulers of Narnia, Aslan suggests that they appoint Hemera as the Court Witch - a position rulers of Narnia before Jadis would always have a Witch fill, to help in any battles and provide council on magical matters - promising that he will give her lessons to help her connect more to the Deep Magic and her own powers.

— A hopeless little lesbian who takes one look at Susan with her bow and arrows and pretty much immediately falls in love (it takes Susan a little longer, especially considering the era she comes from, but she gets there).

— Definitely just as much a ray of sunshine as her powers suggest, but also not very good at social interaction since she's spent the majority of her time alone since she was eleven, so she's very impulsive and often just says whatever pops into her head (definitely a perfect contrast to Susan's quieter and planning-inclined nature).

— She and Susan are very much sunshine x sunshine protector.

— Becomes another sister to the rest of the Pevensies; she might have lost one family, but she definitely gained another.

ALARIC RYKER:

— Peter ship.

— A teenage crime lord from Thorn Town, a small city far enough away from Narnia's capital to be mostly spared from Jadis's wrath when she took over Narnia, only having to suffer the eternal cold and the general decline in food rather than the White Witch's cruelty.

— Long before Alaric was born, a smuggling ring called the Shadowy Ravens sprung up in Thorn Town as a response to the lack of resources, stealing from Jadis's soliders and shipments going to the royal palace in order to give them back to members of the community. They began resorting to worse means of getting things as time went on, even killing a few of Jadis's guards, but Jadis never payed them enough mind to take action against them, and the few soliders who did try to get revenge for their comrades were not sucessful.

— Alaric was born a street rat, born to a mother who didn't even know who his father was and who abandoned him when he was a few months old, and he was taken in by the second-in-command of the Shadowy Ravens, who raised him like his own son and taught him everything he knew.

— Alaric eventually rose to second-in-command himself (after doing some less-than-ethical tasks to prove himself) and after both the Ravens' leader and his adoptive father were killed in a scuffle with Jadis's soliders, shortly before the Pevensies came to Narnia, he rose to become the youngest leader the gang had ever had.

— About a year after the Pevensies are crowned kings and queens, when the Telmarines start to invade, Peter approaches Alaric and the Shadowy Ravens, asking for Alaric's help and for soliders to boost their army. He's heard about Alaric's gift for strategy, how despite being so young and constantly underestimated he's managed to take down several more gangs who sprung up in the early days of the Pevensies' rule and tried to steal his territory, and Peter knows his men are strong and trained enough to fight the Telmarines, but loyal enough that they will only join the fight if their leader gives them permission.

— Alaric is pretty reluctant at first - he doesn't exactly have a great amount of trust in any Narnian leaders given how he grew up - but he also figures that not only do the four new kings and queens not seem so bad, but that even if they don't turn out very well then the Telmarines would be worse, so he agrees to lend his strategic knowledge and any of his men who are willing to fight to the cause.

— After the Telmarines are defeated, Peter offers him a position as the new head battle strategist of the Narnian military, and Alaric actually decides he's had enough of being a gang leader, of all the violence and worrying about an entire village full of people depending on him, and accepts it, giving control of the Ravens over to his second but also making sure that the Pevensies set up a new system that will provide extra resources to towns and cities farther away from the capital like Thorn Town. (He also accepts the offer only a little bit because he thinks the new High King is cute and brave and compassionate.)

— It still takes him and Peter a while to get together, mainly because Alaric has big-time trust issues and struggles to let down any of his walls, but once they do they're a surprisingly sweet couple, and the other Pevensies are more than happy to accept Alaric as their new future brother-in-law.

KAI HALLOWS:

— Caspian ship.

— A pirate boy!! He was basically born on the sea, to a former captain of the Narnian Navy (Jadis disbanded most of the military when she took over and replaced them with her own soliders) and his wife. Kai was born on his father's ship, but it was difficult since no one on board really knew how to help a woman giving birth, and his mother died shortly after.

— After his wife's death, Kai's father retreated into the delusion that he was still a respected member of the Narnian military (despite the fact that most of the sea around Narnia was half-frozen and everyone in the surrounding countries were too scared of Jadis to allow his ship to dock in their cities) and ran his ship like a dictator, barely ever giving his crew a break and ignoring his son unless Kai had done something he didn't like, in which case he was yelling at him loud enough for the whole ship to hear. He treated Kai more like an insubordinate member of the crew than his son, and his actual crew did more of a job raising Kai than he did, taking it upon themselves to take care of the boy and raise him right.

— Kai was definitely a troublemaker and a bit of a rogue, always getting into trouble whenever the crew was actually allowed to dock somewhere, whether that was from pickpocketing or pulling some kind of prank on a local solider. Eventually, when he was fourteen, his father became fed up with him and left him, abandoning his son at a market in a city far away from Narnia and setting sail again, despite the protests of everyone on his crew.

— But rather than let that do anything to stop him, Kai located a large abandoned ship in the local harbor, claimed it as his own, and worked odd jobs until he had enough coin to fix it up properly. A few friends he had made in the city decided to sail off with him as the first crew members of the Golden Fish - the chosen name for his new ship - and as they sailed around more and more, getting used to thieving and being pirates in general, they picked up more and more souls looking for adventure, until Kai had himself a proper pirate crew.

— And a few years later, when the White Witch was defeated and ships started coming out of Narnia again, they were able to ramp up their exploits even more, until the Golden Fish and her crew were one of the most notorious names on the high seas.

— They're so well-known, in fact, that when Caspian wants to set sail to try and find seven Telmarine lords that he thinks will have the answer to stopping the green mist that has started to overtake parts of Narnia, High King Peter decides that it would be a good idea to contact the captain of the Golden Fish and offer him a large payment for taking the prince, his two youngest siblings, and their chosen crew along for extra protection.

— Kai agrees, of course - not only will he never say no to adventure or any amount of coin, but he suspects it might be good for his reputation to do business with the High King and not wind up in prison because of it - and he and his crew take the the prince, king, and queen, along with their chosen companions, aboard their ship to set sail on this voyage.

— He and Caspian bond over their father issues at first, but they get closer and closer over the course of the adventure, with Kai bringing Caspian out of the shell he was forced to live in when he was with the Telmarines even more than the Pevensies have over the year he's been with them, and eventually, of course, they fall in love!

— Kai also develops friendships with Lucy and Edmund - he and Edmund bond over being proud bisexuals with no time for hetero bullshit, and he and Lucy are very much badass WLW/MLM solidarity - and even when the voyage is over and they return to Narnia, Peter and Susan take an immediate liking to this boy who's stolen their friend's heart and managed to make him so happy (even if he does get the shovel talk of a lifetime from both of them).

Aaaaand that's it for info on my new Narnia babies!! It might take me a bit to get some proper intro posts for them, but you can still feel free to ask me whatever questions about them you want to!!

(I know I said Grace and @oneirataxia-girl have already been infodumped to about this, but I'm tagging them both because there's new info here, and I'm also tagging @endless-oc-creations because she loves Narnia as well!!)

[where-theres-smoak-2]

What I loved about the cathartic Alina & Baghra conversation was Alina admitting that Aleks was the first person that ever made her feel seen and powerful. That means that despite being childhood friends, Mal never made her feel like she could be "More than just a wet stick from Keraminzan." It also got to the root of Alina's anger towards Aleks: He made her feel like someone special and then he put the Stag Collar on her and made her his puppet. Just to be clear, that's how SHE saw, and tbf, she was partly right. Jessie said given Alina's hard life, it was not surprising she'd reach for power/merzost. I think her big fear is being made to feel powerless, and it felt like the ultimate betrayal when the man who had been her main support took her power/independence away even for a little while. She also never got the chance to work through her hurt because everything happened so quickly from s1-s2.

I loved that convo too for the same reason. Honestly it does make sense why Alina is so angry at Aleks. He lifted her up, he made her feel special and he made her believe that she could be important that she could make a difference, which is a complete contrast to what she had been told everyday before she met him, that she was no one, that this was the way things were and it couldn't be changed so accept your lot, that she was expendable. And Mal never made her feel like she could be anything more because he was in the same boat as her, they both were made to believe they were nothing more than orphans or grunts in an army, useful for cannon fodder and not much else. They were nothing but they were nothing together and that's what bonded them, neither one of them ever thought to raise the other up and tell them they could be meant for more.

But then Alina meets Aleks and right from the start he was telling her how special she was, that she was someone, someone powerful. But not only that he tells her she's not alone, which I think was the first time she really did feel that way because whilst yes she did have Mal, I think despite that she still very much felt like an outsider, I think she could sense that she was different and when she met Aleks it was like she met a kindred spirit, from that first meeting in the tent it was like a connection opened between them. I also think having experienced this new status and power its understandable that her big fear now is that she'll end up going back to how it was before, that she would be powerless again. Which is why Aleks putting the collar on her felt like such a betrayal for her because she saw that as him rendering her powerless again, making her nothing more than a tool at his disposal.

As you said she hasn't really had time to properly process all her feelings of hurt and betrayal since the collar scene and I do think alot of Alina's anger this season is her defence mechanism, she needs to stay angry with him because she is afraid that he will make her feel special again and then that rug will be pulled out from under her again like it was when he put the collar on her and she will once again be left feeling powerless. Its easier for her to hide behind that anger and keep her defences up then leave herself open to potentially being hurt again. Essentially she has already done what both Aleks and Neyar did in the past, she has hardened her heart, she is guarding against pain.