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deltaengineering · 1 year ago

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Spring Anime 2023: It builds character

Yuri is my Job!

I really wanted to like this one. As a noted Marimite enjoyer, as much as I like the stilted, abstract and operatic vibe of Class S, I also always felt that it's also a prime avenue for metafiction that takes a closer look at how bizarre that setting really is when looked at from outside. So this show about a bunch of girls that have to act out Class S gayfabe in a themed cafe seemed to have limitless potential.

There's only two problems with Watayuri: The first one is that it's not that show. It does not really engage with its setting much and is mostly interested in just being straightforward heightened yuri drama. This seems to be a case of the Re:Zeros or Mob Psychos: The writer is intimately familiar with the tropes, but isn't really interested in actually engaging with them beyond surface level, so they just wrote essentially Another One Of Those with a few jokes.

So that's a disappointment, but since this genre is so rare in anime I'd still have gladly taken it if it was good. But... it's not. Not only is it not Metamite, it's not even a bad Marimite; It's more like a bad Citrus. Drama like this requires really good characters, and all the characters in Watayuri are gimmicky and shallow: Hime's base characteristic is that she puts up a fake personality, which is treated with all the nuance an isekai writer exhibits when they make their main character OP via giving them a cheat skill, and she has just forgotten than Yano used to be her best friend. All other drama derives from this bad idea, so none of it really works. I could go through the entire cast but this review is already too long, so suffice it to say, if they seem interesting that only lasts as long as it takes for their drama to arrive.

It's really a shame, because even with these simplistic, unlikeable characters you could have made an entertaining, (early) Kaguya-ish comedy — which is why the few instances where they do exactly that save the show from being worthless. But still, having to admit the best episode in the entire thing is the one where the new uniforms make Yano's breasts look too big really points out the problem here. 5/10

Skip and Loafer

Skip and Loafer does raise a profound question: Can a show be so much of a 6/10 that it becomes a 5/10? I'm honestly surprised how little I enjoyed this show, because there's nothing really obviously wrong with it: it's lighthearted, cute, amusing, relatable, etc., and I've enjoyed many a banal Kiraralike in the past. But in the end, I think the reason is that there really isn't anything substantive to Skip and Loafer. It's bland and inoffensive to a fault and devoid of anything even remotely edgy. It's not funny enough to work as a comedy, it's not a romance because it really doesn't commit to that, and we'll get to the "drama".

The only really driving factor (and the show's biggest asset, as it were) is Mitsumi's tryhard but good-natured personality, and that can only get the show so far, especially since all the character development she gets is to become more normal and boring. As an aside that doesn't really fit anywhere else: I also really dislike hearing the clipped, stilted way Kurosawa delivers her lines in this show, which is weird because she's usually a very good actress. Shima is just boring from the start and has no chemistry with Mitsumi, and when he imports some contrived crazy ex drama into the show at the end it's eyerollingly stupid, but hey, that's as close to "something happening" as the show ever gets. Not that it matters with how inconsequential it is. The supporting cast is generally mildly amusing, but they're just sort of there and don't offer anything meaningful besides their presence.

Sure, none of those issues are close to dealbreakers, but what's lacking is a deal in the first place. I can understand why someone would like the show and I would not recommend against it, but it's just way too shallow. Even for me. 5/10

Jigokuraku

If you want to know what's bad about Jigokuraku, here it is: Glacial pacing, an intense amount of jargonbabble, flashbacks in the middle of fights everywhere, running commentary by bystanders on everything that happens, random powerups galore, and no ending.

However, I would assume that nobody saw the first episode and went away thinking "oh boy, sure hope this isn't an extra edgy shounen fighting manga". It most definitely is what it is, but with expectations duly adjusted, Jigokuraku is... fine, actually. It's got cool visuals, good production values, a fantastic OP (if nothing else, the show's a good excuse to listen to that song once a week), and most importantly really good characters for a show like this. None of them are particularly deep, but when they're just there to:

Be mammals,

Fight ALL the time,

Have the purpose to flip out and kill people,

I'm already content if they're more interesting than the ISO standard Shounen Jump (i.e., Dragonball Z) cast. It's just fun seeing Sagiri fret over whether she's really good enough at beheading people, or Gabimaru doing everything for a wife that may or may not exist, or Yuzuriha getting out her... well, let's stop this here. This show is cool; and by cool, I mean totally sweet. 6/10

Otaku Edomae Elf

I was pretty skeptical of this one at the beginning, because self-serving otaku jokes tend to get very old and also because the author uses RPG Elves as a shortcut to "immortal ancient being", which isn't a sign of high ambitions, especially nowadays. And while the elf part doesn't really matter one way or the other, the majority of the show is indeed Elda being a nerd and doing nerd things. It's not a large majority though, and the rest of the show provides an interesting thematic framework to hang the jokes on. The real core of the show is the odd couple relationship between Koito and Elda, with the former desperately wanting to be an adult while the latter has been around for practically forever while still being completely immature. It's very cute and sweet, and it's even better in the occasional moments where it becomes bittersweet because both of them are well aware of the only way this can end up. Skip and Loafer take note: you don't have to have much, but you have to have something.

It of course helps that Edomae Elf (the name that I prefer, for obvious reasons) is well made; It's very expressive and has good comedic timing, which are the key factors for a sitcom like this. I'll also note the OP; it goes unreasonably hard and is possibly even better than Jigokuraku's. And even if otaku jokes are a low-hanging fruit, the show usually does a good job with them. The exactly one (1) legally obligated history lesson per half-episode feels a bit too forced though. And that's pretty much it with this anime, it's not the most ambitious but it's very charming and moderately thoughtful, even if its structure is holding it back somewhat. 7/10

Heavenly Delusion

Very rarely do we get a TV anime where the main artistic impulse just seems to be "we don't give a fuck what you think, lol", but here it is: Heavenly Delusion is mostly just wild. Sure, postapocalyptic roadmovies aren't exactly a new idea, but I usually like them, so that's a good start, and this one in particular comes with an interesting setting and a bunch of great characters. But what really elevates Heavenly Delusion is its command of tone, or in particular, its ability to run circles around tone issues. This show can snap from comedy to drama to mystery to action to horror unpredictably and quickly, and it's a marvel that any of this works at all, but on top of that it has a fondness for exceedingly touchy subjects and each episode could probably come with its own unique set of trigger warnings. It really reminds me of a Fire Force without the shounen bullshit, and that's high praise.

Clearly the writer has a lot of skill, but the anime direction and production takes it to the next level. Heavenly Delusion has great direction and movie-level production values throughout, and then does flexes like getting a bunch of KyoAni guys in to make a mawkish KyoAni episode that's better than anything KoyAni has made in years, and later getting a bunch of TRIGGER guys in to make a wacky TRIGGER episode that's better than anything TRIGGER has done in years. Ya love to see it.

But given all the hairy stuff this show attempts, it can't have a 100% success rate, right? And no, it does not always succeed. It's not even a surprise that it happens, it's rather a surprise it only happens so late, at the ending – where it hurts the most. For starters, it doesn't really have an ending. That's to be expected from an ongoing and long manga, but it's still a bummer. But more critically, said abrupt stoppage happens right after one of the grimmest arcs in the show. This is sadly the one point where the tone falls apart; they didn't want to end on a down note, but it just doesn't work to go from ultra rape o'clock to "our fun adventure continues, bye :D" in one and a half scenes. The show has dealt with heavy material before and it has proven it can pull off the swerve off, but in that instance it just runs out of air time before it can actually do it. So while it's unreasonable to expect the show to be several times as long as it is, it would at least have sorely needed one more episode to uncompress its ending. I guess that if you consistently play with fire, you get burnt eventually, but at least there were pretty lights. A second season would be much appreciated. 8/10

The Witch from Mercury

Back when G-Witch started its break, I said that "all they have to do was not mess with a good thing". Obviously, they messed with a good thing and Sulemio cuteness was replaced with them both suffering alone for the majority of the second half. So now what? The plot in this second half is best described as "messy". Notably, it's lacking in throughline: First it's all about opaque machinations and corporate backstabbing, then lol jk that doesn't matter and everyone pulls a Death Star out of their ass, and then that gets resolved with the Power of Love™ and vague Newtype mysticism. Gundams gonna Gundam, I suppose. Towards the end it also obviously runs out of time, and everything needs to happen very quickly, yet it still keeps on piling on subplots for various reasons — be it corporate franchise mandates like "we made a Schwarzette toy, now deal with it somehow", some thing that was set up ages ago that now has to pay off somehow no matter what (like Notrette's whole deal) or just the pure mechanics of shuffling pieces into place for something that never needed to be this complicated in the first place.

However, despite this large-scale jank G-Witch still ends up a very good show purely based on its writing detail. It doesn't really matter all that much that scenes barely fit together and are jammed against each other without connective tissue when the scenes themselves almost always deliver on their own terms. In particular, G-Witch consistently has great character moments no matter how weird the route to get to them is. That dumb Lauda subplot that's only there to sell HG Schwarzettes? Its true payoff is the best Felsi moment in the show when she just walks in and aborts the misbegotten plot tumor. Was it really worth it making a whole "Guel stumbles into Iron-Blooded Orphans" episode when the show desperately needed more time to wrap up its main plot? Maybe not, but Guel getting told by random ass mercenaries that he needs to man the fuck up before him doing exactly that is just an extremely satisfying moment no matter what.

And while the epilogue is a bit flat on the plot side, it has to be said that while cheesy as hell it takes the time to send every character off properly and gives everyone a happy ending (Sulemio paying off in the end isn't much of a surprise since I don't think that Ookouichi wants to spend the rest of his life in the witness protection program). That is pretty much the show in a nutshell, ultimately it's less well constructed than it sh/c-ould have been and it's held back by being a Gundam show after all, but it's always entertaining, and that is what matters the most. 8/10

Insomniacs After School

While I don't know why I dislike Skip and Loafer, I am also not quite sure why I love this show so much. The concept takes some suspension of dislike right away, because I am extremely skeptical of "sadboi stumbles into magical girlfriend that's prefect but only compatible with him in this one specific random way". But boy, once it gets rolling it nails the whole "first love, also big seishun energy" in a rare form that we haven't seen since Tsuki ga Kirei. It's all in the characters once again, and Ganta in particular is exceptionally well constructed. He seems whiny and self-centered at first, but as it turns out, yeah, he's supposed to be like that (his first big character development milestone is him realizing that other people have problems too and that his woe-is-me attitude isn't helpful), plus he has a very understandable reason. He still has that attitude, but now we know he can't help it. It's the rare case of "relatable" and "backstory drama" done right - the drama is there, but it's in the past, can be established in a tiny amount of time and doesn't suck the enjoyment out of the present. And then you can drag it up and swiftly deal with it when the story calls for it — The point is not to have maximum drama onscreen, but to motivate the characters. Magari has this going too (even if I think she still ends up being a bit too "perfect" for my taste, to be honest), and even Yui, someone we know almost nothing about, ends up feeling unique and well rounded, so I think it's fair to say that Skip and Loafer's lacking characters are just a skill issue. Add to that a more one-note but enjoyable supporting cast, and you have a banger of feelgood, wholesome and yes, monumentally cheesy puppy love about a bunch of cute dorks that you can't help but grin about. The production values don't always quite hold up, but who cares when it knows what it wants to be and goes all in when it needs to, and yes, it does have as satisfying and ending as you can expect from one of these. Grand fromage avec compétence is probably not the palate cleanser for everyone, but it's my blog so skill with it. 9/10

#anime #review #spring2023 #yuri is my job!#skip and loafer #jigokuraku #otaku elf #heavenly delusion #insomniacs after school #gundam the witch from mercury

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nightcrawlerzincorporated · 2 years ago

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I like to think I know my Sunny lore; but I've seen people say that the roller rink ep creates so many plotholes. You're my local most-knowledgeable-seeming tumblr blog so I'm burdening you with this cause a google search does nothing for me:

What are some of the plotholes?

only thing I can think of is Dee being sweet because its confirmed she was also a bitch in high school. I feel like most of the other things can co-exist! Am I missing something?

I'm so glad you see me as knowledgeable about Sunny lore <3 I rewatched Roller Rink before answering this and this is my reading:

Dee's characterization is definitely the part of the episode that people tend to dislike the most. As you said, it feels off that she's consistently described throughout the show has having been awful since high school (making Cricket eat dog poop, acting superior and snippy towards her only female friend, Ingrid, setting her college roommate on fire, just off the top of my head) but then in Roller Rink she's all sunshine and positive energy. I understand it's meant to be meta commentary on how Dee was originally characterized as "the nice one", but even in season 1 she's only marginally kinder and more self-aware than the guys. Exaggeration can be a great tool in comedy, but the exaggeration of Dee's kindness is so over the top in Roller Rink the commentary gets lost. It feels like it's commenting on a version of Dee that never really existed. If they wanted to comment on the sexism that led to the one woman main character initially being written to be nicer than the men, they should have actually had the guys act sexist towards her, imo. Maybe when Mac makes his "Dee's nuts" joke, instead of having Dee respond "I don't like crude humor" and walk away, they could have had her laugh, then had Mac make fun of her for being "unladylike" for laughing, so she shuts down and lies about not liking crude jokes before walking away. I can so easily imagine a version of this episode where Dee is trying so hard to be "the nice one", be the stereotypical girly-girl (maybe as a persona to keep all the new friends she's finally managed to make), but in the end she can't do it and explodes, revealing her true colors as just as much of an asshole as the rest of the gang. Like why does she become mean after hitting her head as if her personality flaws are all caused by a physical brain condition instead of just revealing that it was always a part of her, just a part she used to try and ignore. They could have even still had her smack her head, only instead of turning mean right away, maybe Charlie lets slip that she hurt herself because he loosened her skates and she goes off on him, too angry to keep the persona. The way it's portrayed as the guys being super nice to her before she hits her head also feels so off--as if the sexist way they treat her is her own fault and if she was just nicer to them they'd be nicer to her. Yuck! I understand it's Mac, Dennis, and Charlie telling the story and that they would want to portray themselves as kind, but they could have at least put in a line from Dee when it cuts back to the present about how they were never that nice to her so it isn't so muddled. They could have done the same basic idea while actually making sense with the lore, been more aligned with what actually happened meta-textually, and shown how constantly saying women are inherently kinder and more moral than men is sexist in of itself and forces women into shallow boxes of banality instead of seeing them as human. But it feels like all that the actual episode is saying is, "Isn't it funny that we initially created this character to be nice and now she's mean lol things sure are different now!" It's so toothless and messy. Sorry for the rant, I ended up having a lot of thoughts about Dee while rewatching!

To get back to plotholes, the other big thing I've seen people talk about is the way Dennis acts around Frank. But to me that part makes more sense. Yes, Frank treated Dennis and Dee cruelly in their childhood and was severely neglectful, but that's the exact reason why I think young-Dennis would try so hard to impress him and be kind to him. Dennis wants desperately to have a good relationship with his father, and he sees Frank letting him come work for him as his chance to win his father's love and approval, so he's overcompensating. I think a lot of people take his line, "I'm starting to think my dad's a bad man" very literally and say "How could he have just realized how bad Frank is after a lifetime of mistreatment?" But it's pretty common for abused kids to justify the way their parents treat them as normal, and it makes sense to me that a (probably extremely triggering) event like Frank having sex right in front of Dennis would push Dennis into accepting the harsh truths he's been trying to ignore about how shitty Frank actually is. Him finally allowing himself to accept that Frank is a shitty dad and a bad person because of an extreme event isn't the same as retconning Frank's past abuse and painting it all as this one incident, as I've seen some people argue. I mean, even Mac, who is all about family, is almost immediately like, "Well, you never have to see him again if you don't want to" when Dennis vaguely says something bad happened, which to me makes it seems like the way Frank treats him is something they've talked about before. And the way Dennis instantly agrees that no-contact is a good idea also makes it seem more like a "straw that broke the camel's back" situation than the show trying to say this is the only bad thing Frank has done to Dennis. And I really like the way it ties together Dennis agreeing to buy the bar with him deciding to go no-contact with Frank. He wanted the bar in the first place to be able to gain independence from Frank and move on from his childhood, only to have Frank show up one day in 2006 and buy the bar out from under him anyway. Oof! I do wish they would have involved Dee in some way, since it's implied in season 2 they were both no-contact with Frank by 2006, but I also think Dee is overall more willing to accept how abusive their parents were than Dennis is, so it makes sense she wouldn't need a big final reason like he does.

I don't think people typically have any issues with the Mac and Charlie bits, plothole wise, at least that I've seen. Watching through I didn't notice anything about them that stuck out to me.

I hope that answered your question! If there's anything I missed that people consider a plothole in the episode, let me know! I love discussing sunny episodes in-depth any chance I get and I love hearing other people's thoughts!

#ask #anonymous #the gang buys a roller rink #iasip #⭐️

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noir-ikigai · 2 years ago

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Sigma

A simple reminder that the joke about Sigma being 3 years old will soon chew itself up so much that it will lose its relevance and everyone will understand that a joke told twice is not funny. It's not doubly funny if the joke is said in all seriousness - where are you from?

I think...I think about Sigma in the realities of life more and more.

The first thought was, of course, a comparison with a child, but because of the basic ability to know the world around. And yet it is erroneous to attribute Sigma to this status simply because:

``Sigma is far from being a "three-year-old child" that has just been born.

``It is not only children who experience the world, it is the human factor that sits at the core of our being.

Sigma is an adult that was created according to the plot and plan of someone (?), and he probably either stayed on earth, but his whole past life was erased thanks to the “book”, because he only remembers the last three years, or he was already created an adult with a certain age and a set of necessary characteristics, as if he is a "character" and not a living soul...But I even moved away from the topic.

I want to tug a bit on the headcanon Sigma, as I can't predict Sigma's exact behavior in real life.

I want to romanticize how he gets into ADA, where they begin to envelop him with increased effect with care to replenish his strength and realize that he really deserves to live, that he is not a doll, not a puppet, that he has the right to choose what he should do, what he and only he considers right and necessary. I want to scream into my pillow about it.

I imagine him not as a small, helpless boy who looks around frightenedly all around him simply from the fact that he lost his track and cannot return home. I imagine him as an adult young man who just seemed to have landed on a new planet, where everything defies his logic. He just can't quite understand why people eat colored "clouds" called "cotton candy", or why people shed tears when they're happy, or why he gets completely ecstatic and frightened when he sees a strange, fluffy ball of anger that pompously hisses at the guy, twitches his vibrissae from irritation, moves on four legs and makes an unearthly sound “me-e-eow”.

— It's a kitten, Sigma. Is he really cute?

— Kitty? Is this creature cute in your opinion?! He scolds me.

— He was afraid of you.

— I was afraid of him...

I just think that a child, namely a child at 2-3 years old, would navigate a known area very well, he would understand where to go, in which direction, and Sigma simply does not have this landmark, he does not have a motion vector for the desired roads, and also has no idea, “where to go?”, “why go?”, “why did he get lost?”, “is it necessary?”, “what is there?” etc. Sigma is just like the birth of a new star in the place of the old one - he just appeared without a clue about what his past and future are, as he only realizes his life over the past three years (perhaps that is why it is said that he has amnesia, as a hint of that the option that, nevertheless, in the past Sigma had a life on earth, perhaps he was completely different in character, had some kind of job, acquaintances, and then they rewrote to the ground and endowed with other features the personality of the croupier (?)) Because he probably does not understand people, does not understand himself. Sigma, in terms of physical and psychological parameters, is completely different from a stupid child, but "stupid" in terms of "only born and empty, like a vessel without information." He is an adult who has a number of “that, that, that”, can do "so-and-so, so-and-so, so-and-so", knows “this, this, this”. Naturally, he will not have a banal vision of the world like ordinary people, since he is deprived of this, this is not included on the page, it is not written.

But I like that Sigma's thinking is still plastic, he can be influenced by other people, so I really want Dazai to be next to this young man for as long as possible. Thanks to him, Sigma will hear the echoes of his thoughts about who he is. Sigma will definitely find the meaning of his existence - Osamu will become a guide, but he will only lend a hand for greater certainty of Sigma's actions, and created by the "book", in turn, will do everything on his own, like a real person, and not a doll whose hands were led from above.

#bungou stray dogs #hedcanon #my thoughts #sigma bungou stray dogs #bsd sigma #sigmazai #osamudazai #bsd dazai

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clonerightsagenda · 1 year ago

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Finished Lockwood & Co!

Jonathan Stroud does it again. It was lighter fare than Bartimaeus, but still a lot of fun, and I think it's funny that a series jampacked with corpses, lovingly described, actually had the happier ending of the two. It's clear that Stroud has ideas he likes coming back to (the journey to another world inimicable to human life, snarky trapped spirits, possession, graverobbing, adults thinking sworn rivalries with literal children is fine and normal, etc.)

Some initial thoughts so far:

Will Lucy keep her talents as she gets older? Marissa did but she's obviously a weird case, but Gale did too. Does it have to do with Other Side exposure? Or Gale just happened to be one of the rare people who do, which is mentioned a few times, in which case maybe Lucy will be as well since it's mentioned how rare and strong her talent is. Or she can retire with honor in a few years and will have to find a different job.

I'm wondering if Ezekiel was really a ghost.... the name and its appearance struck me as rather Biblical, and it seemed to know a lot of interesting secrets about messing with the natural order of life and death. (The bolded text and the relationship with Marissa reminded me of both the spirit of the ring and Ammet and Khaba from The Ring of Solomon.) Of course it WAS still tied to a Source so maybe it was just another dead human, perhaps one that fed off other ghosts like Marissa did which made it so strange and powerful. Meanwhile the skull is particularly powerful due to a bad attitude alone. The kind of ghost I would be.

Also wondering how plasm was working in the last book... touching ectoplasm kills, but Marissa was able to possess her descendant's body and touch Ezekiel. Side effects of the plasm drinking, maybe? Or maybe ghosts don't have to kill you with a touch, it's just we've only met asshole ghosts so far? Or it's a Type three Thing. This is a pressing question bc it seems like Lockwood & Co may have a spectral colleague (thrilled about this) and 'I accidentally bumped into my coworker and now I need an adrenaline shot before I puff up and die' is not a great workplace environment even if that's how I feel about encounters with my boss. Also why isn't adrenaline a standard part of agents' kits? Maybe it's expensive, or their rough and tumble jobs would break the vials and needles.

Holly is a lesbian! Good for her and shame she had a crush on a girl who was so unnecessarily mean to her. Sounds like she has a gf now though. Lucy is assembling a very bizarre and mutually hostile polycule over the course of her adventure. A four way dinner date would leave no survivors.

So Marissa flooded the country with ghosts and sacrificed hundreds or thousands of lives for a beauty treatment. A bit more banal than I'd expected but 'lust for immortality' is a very common villain motivation. Especially in kids' books. They put her body in the silver/lead coffin so she shouldn't be able to come back but she could still be out there on the other side....... eating ghosts...

Lmao at the repeated references to Kipp's advanced age of 22 .

These are my immediate pre-work thoughts. I would say I would ponder it more at work but if the week continues as it has been, I will not have time.

#lockwood and co

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nielsbrabants · 1 year ago

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many consumers groping products (excerpt from my novella SLUTMANIA)

I slept bad again. The fear creeps up at night. The sky is and has been grey and will be so for at least six more months. Not even earplugs succeed in completely shutting off my consciousness from the sounds of raging traffic and 140 BPM hardstyle, which emanate from the street four stories down, every night, all night.

The all prevailing same-ness of each homeoffice day attempts to lull me into a state of near automation as the walls of this room seem to close in(to me).

Seeking refuge I Googled for a place of contemplation, meditation, prayer, basically just silence. The church closest to my house is almost four kilometers away.

‘Stalin thoroughly desacralized the East,’ I think.

After work I walk to some buddhist centre to ask if I can meditate here. The German hippie boomers, in their office which consists of binders and organizing cabinets, reminding me more of the burgeramt bureaucrats than temple keepers, say ‘nein.’

Sometimes, such a today, I just go and wander through a mall. People leave you alone (cause you are doing your duty). At least it keeps me away from the feed and the algorithm and the retina screen. It’s nostalgic to wander through the old simulation.

My iPhone died since it’s battery is useless after the latest update and I have been dragging it along through the coldness of autumn. Through the mall-speakers a girl is rapping about how she likes to get fucked raw and that all of us ****** can’t fuck with her.

‘If a bitch walking funny you know daddy did it,’ she proclaims. I can’t believe gayculture went this mainstream. ‘Sex drugs & munny,’ I think. It is astonishing how capitalism has usurped my sexual identity, for as far as that even really is a thing.

Observing the many consumers groping products, satisfying an idea of the self as a rational actor shaping their own world through choice, a deep sense of disgust overtakes my heart. Everyone in this city (culture, world) is such a cliché and it makes me so fucking tired. All trying to be their own little person, a self actualized individual, with their bangs, buzzcuts, Dr. Martens, avocado socks, birkenstocks, reusable coffee cups, toad bags, antifa tattoos, clenching on to their bubble tea or iced latte, identiarian activism to justify their place in the world as if anyone gives the slightest fuck… it’s all so terribly banal, every conversation so fucking redundant.

Does complete silence exist? Sometimes I wonder.

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parismystere · 3 years ago

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seeing adrien be so small and helpless in front of his father, not even thinking about running or transforming to escape, just having a full-on brain freeze, is wrecking me. because adrien might be extraordinarily brave, but he's always been terrified of his father.

what is his crime here? being born? being chat noir and doing his best to save paris and its citizens? being a good, warm-hearted person?

and, honestly, i know that ml has many problems, but i love how they depict abuse and the sheer banality of it. nobody deserves to be treated badly. but the funny thing is that adrien does everything right and he still can't earn unconditional love, or approval, or to be seen as a human being with his own desires, ideas and feelings.

the irony of 'wishmaker' was that adrien succeeded at his childhood dream - he turned into exactly what his parents wanted. and he's still not loved. he's still caught up in their games. he still has to keep himself in check. because it seemed like 'perfect golden child' was the destination, but reaching it only revealed a never-ending road of contempt and hostility. ah, the crime of being exactly what people desire you to be.

he's so small. fuck.

#ml spoilers #miraculous ladybug #adrien agreste #gabriel agreste #ml ephemeral #ephemeral #ml

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bored-storyteller · 2 years ago

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Hiiiiiii, I really love your writing, especially the Uta stories and headcanons! 🖤 Can I please request from the promt word memory with Uta from Tokyo ghoul please? 😊🖤

Thank you for your request! Ah, I'm so glad that Uta is the first of this little experiment. Hope you like it!

Tokyo Ghoul, Uta x Human!Reader

Word: "Memory"

Uta has never had a close relationship with memory. He is someone who lives in the past maybe, but not in memories, on the contrary, if he can he thinks about them as little as possible: too painful, and if they are happy they are painful anyway because they have passed. He has never adapted to changes.

Or at least, so he always thought.

Yet now his eyes fall on a photograph, a photo of you two. It is, indeed, one of the very few photos exhibited in the house and to be honest he had completely forgotten about its existence, even though it’s in the bedroom.

A photo, which banal memory, you too admitted that it was not one of your brightest ideas, especially since he did not particularly like photographs. But he remembers how much you cared at the time, for many reasons.

First of all, fear.

Who knows why, he wondered, you were so terrified by the idea that he would forget you. Then he had looked inside himself, and understood.

You listed all the reasons why you could have disappeared: a trip, an accident, an illness, a robbery in the shop you used to go to (which shop?), attacked by a ghoul… you didn't mention his name.

"By me?" Uta asked you.

You looked at him in silence, and then you smiled: "maybe."

He hadn't added anything else on the subject, but continued: "There are Doves too, they could catch you ... or ..."The ghoul looked at the photo that was shining on your phone screen at that moment: his head was

folded over yours, his cheek against your temple as he tried to figure out what you were doing. He wasn't looking at the camera, but he was looking at you.

"Or I can get caught, who knows." He told you.

Your face was frowning: "You won't get caught."

It was bad of him, but he found it almost funny as it seemed that you had absolutely not considered the possibility of you surviving him: "I hope not, but who can say? I could be captured, killed, eaten by another ghoul… why not? I did it myself, you know? "

The confusion was so clear in your eyes: "You what?" You asked, but he didn't answer, he rather pointed to the photograph.

"Will you remember me?" His question in his mind almost sounded like a challenge, so your firm voice confused him.

"Of course."

You answered right away without hesitation, and he silently looked you in the eye, and then looked at the black screen. You turned it back on to make the two of you reappear.

Memory was a herald of pain for him: he imagined looking at your smile in that image and not being able to see it elsewhere, no longer having you next to him. That smile would have been a pain he would have gladly forgotten.

And you would have remembered him instead.

"Wouldn't that hurt you?" His was a genuine curiosity.

"More than you can believe." You answered him. He had seen a watery layer appear in your eyes and he knew you were imagining too. It was instinctive for him to lean a little more towards you.

"But… I can't give up on you. Not even in that case "

For a moment Uta couldn't get rations. Your words almost seemed to have a real weight that caused a physical reaction in his stomach, filling it with a hot tingle.

He knew what you were saying. Your love for him wouldn't go away with him.

You would have loved him in your memory, tenderly and painfully

Remember me like this, while I look at you.

It is a thought, he doesn’t know if of him for you or if he imagines it on your lips, but in any case that thought is not part of the memory, it exists now and is alive. His lungs expand and he needs to breathe.

As in response your head moves across his chest, sliding lower as you curl up against him.

"We should change it." He tells you, he knows you're awake even if you pretend not, your moan is a confirmation.

"What?" Yow ask after a moment's hesitation.

"That photo." It's not a photo that people would usually exhibit at home, in fact, but you are certainly not conventional.

He feels your weight on him disappear as you lift yourself up a little to see what he's referring to: "Oh." You murmur on a note of surprise. Apparently you didn't even remember.

"Then worry about calling a photographer if my skills are not to your liking," you joke, as you drop again on his chest.

A photographer. Of course. Now it is possible.

"We could do it, but it should be worth, for example for a wedding."

Silence in the night. Then your head rises again: you are looking at him, even if he is not looking at you.

He feels like laughing but he doesn't have to; he knows that now you won't sleep until the wee hours of the morning thinking about it, but in the end it's your fault that you filled his memory of him with beautiful precious dreams.

#tokyo ghoul #uta tokyo ghoul #tokyo ghoul x reader #uta x reader #uta x human reader #reader insert #tokyo ghoul uta #tokyo ghoul fanfiction #anime oneshot #request

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onewomancitadel · 2 years ago

Note

🤡

Because this is the only ask responding to the meme my very first reaction was... is this ask meant to be making fun of me... what does this arcane clown symbol mean... and then I remembered lol

🤡 What's a line, scene, or exchange you've written that made you laugh?

Sadly I think I am the funniest person in the world so there are a few. It also helps that both Jaune and Cinder are two (at times) rather sarcastic and observational characters. There is a lot of intentional humour in The Distance Which Fools the Skimming Eye - sometimes from the absurdity of the emotional scenarios. I'm a bit shy to show lots of direct lines though lol.

One I was thinking about recently was when Cinder finally cracks in Chapter 2 and despite the seriousness of their previous interactions there's a degree of perhaps - banality to her refrain which is sort of funny, which is sort of like two normal people having a normal conversation, which makes it funny to me:

That's the type of thing I find funny, is when you've got serious stakes and a sort of mildly absurd brooding dramatic character (Byronic heroine!) and then a level sweet to the sour. I also get a lot of humour out of the idea of, say, Salem grilling Cinder about her supposed secret boyfriend. Anything that can be described or recontextualised in a mundane fashion is amusing to me when it's a fantastical scenario (I also think it's a great way of figuring out if you know what you're doing).

But on a more serious level, what I really enjoy is that idea that it's the environment/circumstance that is keeping these two people apart who probably would seriously get on really well. So the humour is often a way to realise that, or at least the dryness, or something chafing there that is playful and desperate to get out - so in many ways I think humour serves a very, very functional purpose in a story like this written exactly to my tastes. When you can share a laugh with someone or have a bit of awareness that transcends whatever is pressing on you or have this very, very clear realisation that - oh we actually get on quite well, I wonder what that life would've looked like - it's sort of saddening and bright and fun. It might seem like it's only there to set-up their respective character awareness of other people/other peoples' romantic feelings, but when Jaune and Cinder are gossiping about Emerald and Mercury in Chapter 5, it's also like - fuck you two would so fucking cute in any other circumstance, wouldn't you. What about this life. What about this one.

So the funny asides - she smells like wet dog - are certainly there to amuse ME and only ME because everything is about ME (sarcasm but sort of true for fanfic), it's also working on a humanistic level, particularly relevant for an enemies-to-lovers pairing, and particularly relevant for relieving tension or stress, and I think also particularly relevant because Jaune's much more than comic relief - and I think you can demonstrate that when you've got them being funny together in a non-slapstick way.

Now, for a non-Skimming Eye example - all the aforementioned is still true - I think my favourite would have to be this, and I have to provide the entire passage for context:

which, not to toot mine own horn, is still some of my favourite dialogue I've written altogether. It's from The One Known by Many Names aka Somehow Even More Self-Indulgent Than That Other Fucking Novel-length Fic. (Also if anybody clicks through please keep in mind it's rated Explicit).

It's funny. It makes me laugh. Cinder is allowed to be little a condescending to the heroes but not too cruel, as a treat. Again, you've got that humanistic element here too, and breaking the tension a bit - and also an absurd situation, which makes it funny - and also that element that Cinder can still be Cinder even if she's going through a redemption arc (this motivates a lot of my characterisation for her chiefly in Skimming Eye) and Jaune can still be Jaune (or you can bring out even more of his character in relief) and they can both be interesting and themselves in a romance between them and in new situations.

So I really like humour for a lot of different reasons - I mean, I love my fair share of puns and wordplay and things turning out exactly how you wanted, just not the way you expected, and there is ironic humour there! That's the type of stuff I love forever and ever and ever. The humanistic element is one of the most underestimated points, though. Humour isn't just there for the Whedonesque quips and to spoil emotional moments - it is emotion, it is human, but you don't need to be self-conscious/self-aware, feeling the need to undercut your story with it - it IS character, it IS story, it IS theme, and most of all, if you can't describe a chapter like, 'She steals her stepmother's carkeys to impress her sort of boyfriend with an expensive car and go hooning' then is it even fun? Lololol. That's just me because I'm silly, not everyone needs to do that of course.

Thank you for playing along, I actually ended up really enjoying responding to this. <3 <3 <3 I'd still love to play the ask game if anyone feels like it... 🥺

#seraphina's asks #user: anonymouse #the distance which fools the skimming eye #my silly little stories

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the-art-of-animated-gifs · 4 years ago

Photo

Interview with my friend A.L. Crego

I have not met A.L. Crego. I have not spoken with him on the phone, in fact I do not even know what he looks like. But I can confidently call him my friend. Three years ago when I started this blog he immediately disagreed with me in the comments about things I was writing and I loved it. As a person putting ideas out there, you treasure things like that....because you know someone cares. We have had many back and forth discussions over the years....if we had lived in Paris in 1911 we would be having arguments at La Rotonde (not to compare either of us to Picasso).

A.L. Crego is a motion artist who does a wide variety of things. He has now become a very visible and active figure in the NFT Movement. He recently completed a large and very successful project in which he animated the work of a number of well know street artists on the building themselves, something he has done for years. His Tumblr page is a good place to start to see his work, which is largely surrealist in nature -- another Spanish artist following in the footsteps of other great Spanish surrealist artists.

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How long have you been creating gif art?

In a conscious and intentional way since 2014. Previously I haven't pay too much attention on one hand for its common use that was mostly ads and funny little videos, and on the other hand because it was a 'standard' format we accepted as something part of the web so I never stopped to analyze its potential. The key point for me was about 2010-2011 when the concept of 'Cinemagraph' was brought to life just giving it a name. It's format is .gif but its characteristics are different so I saw there the midpoint between photography and video, which gave born another format of art.

Art mutates when a new format appears. I was using and studying this format since then but it wasn't until 2014 that I decided to publish some of them.

What is your background?

In general terms, bachelor, 2 years of stone sculpting and two attempts of photography and audiovisual mediums. I say attempts because I gave up both of them as I was feeling that I was looking for something else more than studying all the previous history, style and isms, which is nice to understand where everything comes from and to be aware what are the key points on the history to use as reference, as a map. But in some way I felt limited as I was using digital tools since I had my first computer with 14 years, and I was being taught things I learnt by then. Even more in this times we are living where we are 21 century people, been taught by teachers from the 20 with 19 century methods.

A constant line that feeds my background is literature and music overall and later Street Art, next to more temporal interests as everything related with mythology, alchemy, history, psychology, neurology, biology, human condition in general... I don't have studies buy I'm a studying guy!

I always like to highlight that all these years that internet got strong and social networks appeared, I decided voluntary to be out of them. First reason was to keep my privacy safe in a growing world where it seemed that some "curtain" felt and everybody accepted that intimacy was now 'ex-timacy' and correct to show their private life, (this shocked me). Another reason was about the psychological effect that social networks were having on people I had around and everywhere in general. I started to notice patterns and "waves" about series, aesthetics, styles, and I was seeing clearly that if I go there, I will become permeable to all this "Amniotic Culture" I was trying to avoid.

This fact of being far (but study them closely) helped me a lot about researching and developing my own ideas and style, for the mere fact that I was using all this time and attention Social Networks require, on drinking from another sources. The B-side of this is that I was 'out of the radar' of mass people as this social networks are designed to live inside them. My idea of internet and spreading ideas is not in this way.

Where do you live and work?

In the north west of Spain, Galicia. Now due to Covid I travel less but before it, I was working and traveling many places as I only need a camera and a computer. This allows me move to work anywhere.

Do you think that animated gifs are a new art form?

I think so, despite the fact that the format existed since 1987. But as every new format of art it takes its time to be considered as art. The first photographs were not considered art until many years later. Same happened with film, same with CGI. Is nice to have in mind that gif format is the last strictly digital format of the three main ones on the web: picture, video and gif. Photography has about 200 years of history, video about 130, CGI about 60. Finally gif has 33, and used as art itself no more than 10-15. In the same way anybody takes a picture of anything does not convert it into art, is the same with gifs. One thing is the format, another is the 'art'. Everybody can take a picture, record a video or do a gif. The difference is on the how, the why, and from my point of view overall, the what.

Do you think that there is a difference between pure .gif files and the .mp4 files that people post on Instagram?

The first, big and obvious difference is the format. Is not the same a painting as a picture of a painting. Here happens the same. For example, if you treat a gif with Cinemagraph technique, you are converting in picture some parts of the image, so they still remain and with the texture and totally stillness of a picture. If you convert this gif into a mp4 this still parts, despite not having motion, will convert into a video texture (noise, subtle motion in pixels, etc) so the main characteristic, among the perfect loop, is lost. Another point is that you must play a video, a gif is always running. Waterfalls are always running and this characteristic is something that is inside our human nature, we react nice to "bucle" motions as waterfalls, fire, etc. We find pleasure on this. Of course if it's a video the perfect loop is lost and the visual mantra disappear. And another key point here is the soundtrack. In a video you can use sound to enhance or give another meaning to the piece that you can't with gifs. For me this is another characteristic that give meaning to gif. For me gif is silence, the sound is generated by the motion, the melody are the details and the beat the perfect loop. You can "hear" almost every gif.

The difference between a gif and a video is the same that between a waterfall and a hose (if this works).

What do you think are the characteristics of good gif art?

For me first and overall the perfect loop. Not using it is not using the only format that has this characteristics. Of course there can be gif art that is not perfect loop, but from my point of view and in my work is a must. It's a new way not only of creating but also of thinking. Imagine an still scene is easy, imagine an A-B point action is easy. For me the challenge is about thinking an idea that is perfect looped where all the elements interact and eventually come back to its initial point. Succeed doing this is where the perfect loop appears and you are not able to find where is the start point of the action. Like a visual mantra, that it's repetition leads you inside the piece. Gif art is nice to use the power of the hypnotic movements. Another point to have in mind for me is the flow of it, the frame rate I mean. Depending on the idea and the kind of animation this should vary; is not the same fps to achieve something with flow than if you want to achieve a more 'retro' old style. Another thing is about dithering and color palette. This second one is essential to understand as it affects the final file. When we work with photo and video we are using millions of colors but when rendered as gifs all the gradients, lights and even colors will change if there is a previous understood of this point.

As summary: If motion doesn't add, change of enhance the meaning of the piece, is expendable.

I'd would like to add that I'm not really supporter of this kind of gifs generated automatically that just move a still image itself. I understand that this 'technique' is used as a tool for certain motion (I use it) but not to move a whole image. I feel the same as if somebody hold a painting in front of me and moves it randomly. If the work was born still, it must remain still. A good example of 'inner motion', this means that the motion is implicit on the image despite not being in motion, are the photographs of Cartier Bresson for example. Giving motion to this pictures for example, will kill it because it will break the concept of 'perfect instant' .

'Instant' differs etymologically from 'moment' in the motion. So, still image (painting, photo, sculpture, etc) is an instant, videos are stories with a-b point, and gifs are moments, the mid point.

How would you describe your gif art?

I usually condense it as "Visual Mantras", as the technique and the aesthetic vary depending on the idea , but in all of them the perfect loop and the intention of hypnotizing is always present.

In another terms about aesthetics and themes I think ‘Industrial Nature’ can fit nice. I use a lot of industrial elements but I like to mix their mechanics with the biological natural ones.

How long have you been creating and selling NFTs?

I am selling NFTs since mid 2019, but it wasn't until October 2020 that I focused more on it and dug into the ecosystem to find new paths to focus my work.

Do you think that NFTs are a positive for gif artists?

For me, and the main reason I jumped into cryptoart and NFT, is that now I can certify my digital work as original. Even more to gif works as they were always understood as something banal and minor for the context of its born. Gif art was born prostituted, used mostly for ads and to claim our attention on the internet, next to the highest glamour of painting and traditional art, and 3d, photography and video these last decades. Even worst if we realize that gif format was the only visual format born by and for the internet.

NFTs are totally positive for gif artists because despite being a digital/online native format it never had its own ecosystem to live in. I feel that I was creating creatures for an ecosystem I was waiting to drop them there. Now with the blockchain, NFTs and cryptoart, I found the place where they can live, being watched by everybody and have the certify that is my work. Until some months ago my work was "free" on the web and I had no control over it at all. This was a huge problem I was suffering since my first month into gif art as people use it indiscriminately with no credit at all. It's ok, and I always defend that my work is to be seen, to be shared, but I was looking for the way to be able to have this link with my work without losing the option of being available for everybody. NFT totally changes this.

What do you think will happen in the future as NFTs get even more popular?

In general terms I think it will happen the same as when print got more popular. People will use it more, a lot of crazy and useless things will appear, tons more of different uses and useful purposes, (not only on art). This opens a new door a lot of people was waiting so the future is unpredictable but we can feel where things are going. NFT arrived to stay and the concept of decentralization is something that was always present on the internet since first days but born inside a centralized system. NFTs are being a way for people to understand the 'peer to peer' philosophy and this makes people think in different codes, so we can expect a lot of new horizons, in art, music, design...

What do you think of the environmental impact of NFTs?

This question can goes really deep but in general terms I think that is something that is being oversized due to the hype and the boiling point we are, and it's understandable because is not false that it has an environmental impact, as everything does. But on the other hand I have two main areas in mind. The first and the obvious from my point of view is that when something is new and developing is less efficient, in the way that it requires more effort to achieve the result. But at the same time, the more this technology is used the more is developed and all this issues are part of it. The first car was not electric.

The second point that usually reverberates in my mind and that it seems that 'hard critics' omit is that they are not having in mind that this NFTs we mint, give us a profit that can be used offline to do another things that can be useful to solve this problem, for example, investing part of this money on living on our own in a minimal and clean way (not working for huge multinational that their environmental impact is tons times more than NFTs and then being part of an ONG to feel clean) and on using part of this money on looking and researching new ways to mint and to keep this digital ecosystem more efficient and clean. Every development needs time.

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If you have found this content valuable considering getting me a cup of coffee

#gif aesthetic #street art #surrealism

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loyally-unfaithful · 4 years ago

Text

—; it’s beginning to look a lot like christmas.

word count: 3.6k

pairing: razor/gn!reader; razor/traveler

genre: fluff

summary: « i remember… purple mentor say ‘mistletoe’ a big part of weihnachten. »

you looked at the plant in slight bewilderment, not quite sure what to make of this offering. it was cute.

« oh. »

razor stares expectantly at you as you watch him make no further attempt to move. you can’t help the laugh that escapes you, the banality of everything setting into your mind. or maybe you’re getting sleepy. you wonder: « do you know why, razor? »

a/n: secret santa secret santa secret santa anyway, this is my side of the secret santa gift for @absolutely-rational—i chose to write a thing for razor, but i barely play the game and i haven’t met him or own him* or anything so i apologise if it’s a little ooc ,,,, merry christmas and happy holidays ^^

p.s. as the man who’s good at saying very little in way too many words, the length of this fic just exploded and it’s alot longer than what i wanted it to be dskljfsldkja

heads-up

i write dialogues in what i will call the french/european system? anyway, i see that it's not the dialogue formatting that most english readers are accustomed to so i modified it slightly to be easier to understand basically dialogues will be within guillemets (« »), and words that are within the quotation marks but are italicised are actions and/or dialogue verbs.

hope that clears things out a bit and i hope you give me and my fic a chance :)

« weih… nachten…? »

he tilts his head slightly, not unlike a dog. what’s that? razor repeats your words slowly, tentatively, enunciating the foreign word with care. he wonders if the words sound strained coming from him. words are hard.

« that’s right! it’s a large festival in teyvat, and even more so in the city! you elaborated, sensing his confusion. here in mondstadt it’s called weihnachten and it’s supposed to be about, you know, spending time with friends and family, passing around gifts and presents to those you care about. »

you soon felt at ease as you continued: this world had its differences, but it had its similarities. it had its own equivalent of christmas. something that you know about. sure, maybe the origin is different, maybe it had different customs and traditions, but it was a comforting familiarity in the midst of everything that’s so staggeringly foreign. then again, you suppose that’s what drew you closer to the silver-haired boy: neither of you truly fit in, nor fully understood the strange world you happen to be in.

though at the very least, razor had his lupical. as bittersweet as it was, it warmed your heart to know that at least he had family to be around with during christmas, and well, around… in general.

« weihnachten. he says, this time with more conviction. how to celebrate? – well for starters, (where do you even begin?) we’d decorate our homes with all sorts of festive trinkets and we’d fill the streets with all sorts of sparkly things. garlands, lights, flowers, ribbons; decorations that’ll spruce up the place and make the city light up. it always made people cheer up and get in the holiday mood, especially at night when the fairy lights twinkle about! »

razor’s mouth moved in a silent gasp. then does that mean that those bright stars he liked so much were not stars, but rather lights? is that why they seemed to be brighter near the end of the year? the people from the city decorated, he considered. is that why the stars’ reflection, bouncing around in the lake, were an array of dazzling colours, from glittering red and shimmering green to captivating shade’s who’s name he doesn’t know?

« is why… sometimes stars explode? he wondered. – yup! though we don’t usually light up fireworks until new year’s. you wondered for a moment. do you like fireworks, razor? the silver-haired boy frowned, lost in thought, before shaking his head. – loud. scary. me and my lupical, we go hide. we don’t like… firework. »

you hummed in understanding. dogs have never been fond of fireworks and firecrackers either.

« fire is bad. why light firework? isn’t it big hassle? »

it reminded razor of the red, burny girl. fun person, friend! but the toys she uses are loud and dangerous, they create explosions and fire, just like fireworks.

« hmm, i guess… you pursed your lips in thought. good question. i guess that at this point we all just do it out of tradition. new year’s brings a lot of excitement, and people let it out by lighting them up. it’s also really pretty. »

the more he thought about it, and the more he learned about it, the less he understood the celebration. why? it’s loud and distracting. bright colours hurt eyes, doesn’t it? it’s time spent with your family, but razor is with his lupical everyday. do humans… not spend time with their lupical regularly? why is this specific day so special from the rest of the year? he doesn’t get all the funny dates and celebrations humans have to keep track of. seems like a big hassle. sounds complicated.

« no such thing as weihnachten in wolvendom, huh? »

he shook his head.

you tucked your finger under your chin, pondering, in slight puzzlement. back in your world, you would’ve been able to take pictures—maybe that would’ve helped him visualise it better—but you couldn’t here in teyvat. a sigh. anyway, it’s not like you had your camera on your person anymore, so you do your best to describe your happiest sensations, experiences, memories of christmas: the smell of hot cocoa on a cool winter morning, the crackle of firewood from the hearth, and the feeling of soft wool on your skin, hugging you from the biting cold. the merry and jovial carols sung by the star singers, the gleeful chattering between friends out on the street, and the boisterous cheering and partying coming from the many bars and restaurants in mondstadt. the comforting arias and prayers echoing from within the cathedral, the mouth-watering aroma and fragrance of treats from the christmas market, and the grand christmas tree placed at the heart of the city decorated with even more opulent and lavish garlands and baubles, the vivid glimmering lights reflected from your eyes.

describe the different little things that made christmas different and more special from the rest of the year.

somehow this time that you took to pay the wolf boy a visit was consumed by you rambling about the merry holiday, drivel that he listened to attentively and with a pure and honest kind of curiosity (even if he doesn’t always understand you) that you found endearing and made your heart flutter, until the sun dipped below the horizon and the stars adorning the city shined out, rivalling those peppering the night sky. until the howls from his family called him away from you, and until you motivated yourself to begin your trek back to mondstadt after sitting in the woods alone.

being with him was always a welcome distraction, you thought.

december 25th.

paimon was dozing off after stuffing her face full of the dishes from the christmas banquet (good for her!), the cup of tea you had between your hands had gotten cold, and your breath was fogging the frosted window in front of your desk. you mindlessly traced a smiley face on condensation. you can see the ever changing colourful lights blinking through the glass pane. you take another gulp of the unpleasant liquid, unsatisfying as you feel it slowly go down your throat. the calming and comforting scent it brought (it was chamomile) having long dissipated.

sighing, you pulled your fingers off the cold china, deciding it wasn’t worth finishing, and quietly slipped out of your room (which was graciously granted to you by the knights of favonius), taking care to slot the chair back under the desk and gently close the door behind you. you wondered if taking a walk would help you feel better. you tightened your shawl around you and buried your freezing hands into your pockets. head down, you quickened your pace to… wherever your legs were taking you.

another sigh.

you smiled almost bitterly to how much of a grinch you were being. you liked christmas, or rather, you liked what it stood for, and you liked the idea of spending the winter months with your closed ones.

a few hours ago, the knights of favonius had organised a small christmas party at angel’s share, and though they had thoroughly reassured you that you belonged and were included in this celebration, you couldn’t help but keep to yourself and stick to a corner of the bar. you couldn’t bring yourself to join in on the fun, or talk to others. you didn’t feel like it was your place to force yourself into their conversation, into their lives. you were grateful that they thought about you, and you didn’t want to question their kindness, but… you nursed your glass of virgin cocktail, peeling your eyes away from your wonky reflection on the liquid.

you weren’t exactly at home: you looked at jean and barbara, happily exchanging jokes and teases. a relaxed sort of conversation, banter which flowed, almost as if it were rehearsed, in a way that was only possible between sisters. that night, the deaconess wasn’t smiling as if she was holding back tears. the carefree girl was speaking with jean (rather than the acting grand master) who allowed herself some respite from the demanding position.

you look at the uncharacteristic smile on the bartender’s (who happened to be none other than diluc that evening) face, and you doubted that kaeya, sharp-eyed as ever, missed it either. it was subtle. but it was there. you don’t miss the way the cavalry captain held back on his sarcastic remarks or the way diluc wasn’t being “deliberately uncivil” (as kaeya would put it) either; the way the red-head indulges kaeya’s seemingly insatiable thirst for alcohol while the latter makes an effort to maintain a friendly, if curt, chatter.

a particularly loud giggle drew your gaze back at the two sisters: lisa seemed to have joined them. you sipped your beverage, half-hearted. the three seemed to have started a rather animate discussion. you hear them laugh again. it makes you frown, but you shake your head, pushing those angry thoughts out of your mind. just because you’re miserable (even though you shouldn’t be—your friends are with you) doesn’t mean they have to feel down with you.

setting your glass down on the table, you wondered if you would've felt better if you were with someone closer to your age, but amber had gone home early: she dropped by and hung out for a bit before going home to spend time with her family. your glass is empty now. you feel… envious. you wished you could spend this christmas season with your family. it’s not fair. it’s not fair.

your favonian family, and yet you were out of place.

you excused yourself early from the gathering, the other members politely bidding you farewell and a merry christmas (« frohe weichnachten! »), and quickly went up the path leading to the order’s headquarters, wanting to hide away in your room as soon as possible.

now, you stop before the lavish tree: it’s as grand and brilliant as it’s always been. but now it seems much too bright. the colours an eyesore. singing sounds more like knives being dug into your eardrums.

your head hurts.

a humourless chuckle escaped you. you used to take turns with your sibling on who got to slot in the christmas topper.

this year was their turn.

back then, your sibling made a point to hang gingerbread treats on the tree, and you made a point to eat them behind their back come christmas morning.

normally, you’d be sharing gifts with your sibling during this time of the year.

your entire life they’ve always been there by your side, and you by theirs. for better or for worse, you kept each other company. you’ve always spent christmas with them.

this was your first christmas without.

the rest of your thoughts are jumbled, incoherent. something your long term memory didn’t deem worthy of keeping, so they simply fizzled away. everything was a blur as your feet carried you outside the city, away from… it doesn't matter. just away. carried you away. happiest time of the year. but you’re here alone, with no one you know and to call home in a world you don’t recognise. far away from the land you once knew.

panting, you stopped in your tracks when you realised you’ve started sprinting. what were you doing, you chastised yourself. can’t you act a little more mature? finally lifting your gaze, you took in your surroundings; instinctively your feet must’ve taken you to wolvendom. you kicked a stray pebble under your boot. not like that afterthought was going to help much. it’s not like anyone was waiting for you here either, razor was probably with his lupical. hunting or snoozing away.

with little care, you let out an exasperated sigh as you let yourself plop ungracefully to the ground, listless.

you sit there in silence, nothing to accompany you except for the cacophonous ringing of crickets in the forest. you drew your knees closer to you. what were you doing here? it’s cold. you hear thistle crack, and so you defensively draw your sword as you rose to your feet, only to be met with a familiar mop of fluffy silver hair.

« it’s night. dangerous here. »

was his curt greeting. you lowered your sword, shoulders relaxing.

you opened your mouth, ready to apologise, make up some sort of excuse, let him know you’re leaving, when something else caught your eye: « you kept the scarf? »

he blinked. once, twice: « you gave it to me. he said, very matter-of-factly. you are my lupical. it is… treasure… razor paused, correcting himself. treasured, possession. »

having realised that the intruder was not dangerous, the wolf boy came closer and gently pressed his forehead against yours and nuzzled your face. a small laugh escaped you as you returned the affectionate gesture, something you’ve learned was his customary greeting. it was cold out, but his touch was enough to bring feeling back to your cold self and make you warm and fuzzy inside.

still resting your head on his, you asked, timidly: « is it ok if i stay here for a bit? » it came out as a whisper, unsure if you’re any better staying here rather than back in the city. but as he nodded in agreement, your shoulders loosened as you let go of tension you weren’t aware you were building up again. you slumped into him, burying your face into him and held him in a loose hug. razor, as for him, let himself be snuggled to your heart’s content, happy to receive such fondness.

« today is special day, isn’t it? » his blood-red eyes peered inquisitively back at you, arms wrapping around you as he tries to remain as close to you as physically possible.

« mhm. » you mumbled non-commitally into his shoulder, opting to pull yourself closer to him and nuzzle into the crook of his neck.

« not go celebrate in city? » razor asked, perplexed. he thought that you said this was a big celebration to be had around other people? despite his bemusement, he rested his chin on the top of your head. it makes him all warm and soft inside, the thought of you choosing to spend this special day with him of all people. it makes him happy. he hopes you’re happy too. the wold boy gives you a once-over and his brows creased in slight worry: you’re really quiet today. why?

« uh-uh. » you grunted, shaking your head against his shoulder, your hair brushing against his clothes. the chunky scarf you gave him, the one you were convinced he was going to throw out due to its garish colours, tickled your exposed skin. he kept it. you smiled, touched. he kept it. it still smelled faintly of fabric softener, but marked by the smell of pine trees and something sweet, something you associated with brewing thunderstorms. you’ve always found rain and thunder to be comforting.

being with razor comforts you.

he wasn’t much of a talker. you both knew this. silence is ok though. he’s happy to be with you. but razor wonders why you’re so quiet today. concern flashes through his mind and he turns your gaze upwards, making you face him. you can’t possibly imagine what pathetic expression you were pulling and you quickly try to cover your despondence—but it was a fruitless venture.

« you smell sad. he watched you, a worried look on his face. »

you scrambled for some explanation, reassuring him that it’s nothing. that you’re not being a downer. that you’re happy. but he’s decided: « wait here. »

knowing that there was no restraining him once he’s made up his mind, especially when it’s something to do with the ones he considered close to him, you reluctantly let razor peel you off of him. as you watch him scurry away, you find yourself dearly missing his warmth, the comfort and safety of his arms. was staying here a good idea? you wrapped your arms around yourself. maybe you should leave. you’re ruining the mood. you’re disturbing wolvendom’s peace. before you could finish that line of thought, the wolf boy returned, this time carrying a handful of… something with him.

they threatened to tumble out of his grasp, but ultimately stayed put as he returned to his original position and held them out into your general direction, showcasing whatever he had procured. in his hands were multiple plants which bore small scarlet berries and oval, evergreen leaves. a plant you immediately recognised.

« i remember… purple mentor say ‘mistletoe’ a big part of weihnachten. »

you looked at the plant in slight bewilderment, not quite sure what to make of this offering. it was cute.

« oh. »

he blinked, clueless, before looking at the mistletoes in his hand with confusion, coming to the realisation that no, he didn’t actually know why it’s so important. it’s not edible. maybe because it’s pretty? the city has many red lights and white lights. some mistletoes are red and others are white?

he continues to stare at the berry, as if it would cave in and reveal its secrets to him if he sustained his efforts. taking his prolonged silence as his answer (though you had expected for him to not actually know—knowing lisa, she would’ve just offhandedly mentioned them. and when razor would’ve asked her about what they meant, she’d just smile without answering him), you filled him in, your voice filled with mirth: « people usually kiss underneath mistletoes. »

he turned his gaze back to you before voicing the conclusion he had come to: « this mean, i have to kiss you? »

you chuckled. « only if you want to. »

he looks at the plant, giving it a long hard look, then back at you.

it wasn’t much, it wasn’t spectacular. hell, it was more of a ghost of a kiss than anything. but you still smiled as his lips brushed on yours. a peck, which lasted too long yet not long enough. awkward, but endearing. your textbook first kiss, including the warm fluttery feeling of butterflies that so often preached about, if only a little more clumsy.

it’s cute.

he’s so genuine, earnest, in his endeavours. it makes your heart soar. he’s sweet. you don’t deserve this kindness but he gives them away without a second thought.

you don’t deserve to be happy during christmas, especially not when your sibling was still out there, alone and potentially afraid. maybe, no, it definitely is selfish for you to enjoy this day. pretend like everything is alright just for this one moment. that you’re not some traveler stuck in a strange and unknown world, that you’re not desperately trying to find your sibling and a way out. act carefree, and get to be you. but goddammit does he make you so so happy that your heart clenches and that you can’t help but smile from ear to ear. you deserve to be miserable today; you feel like shit, really. but you’re also really happy, and glad, and relieved, and maybe a little tired.

it’s all too much, and you feel so much at once that you just don’t know how to handle this anymore. overwhelmed. you smiled and laughed giddily as the waterworks started (despite your best efforts), and you’re a mess, and definitely a bit sleepy, but you’re stupidly happy today. stupidly happy because of him.

this alarmed the boy, watching you laugh between hiccups, sobbing despite wearing a large smile. for humans, tears are sad. smiles are happy. were you ok? he’s confused. did he do something wrong?

« why crying? » he fretted, slightly panicked. he jumped to fuss over you, wipe away your tears, gently cradling your face with a gentleness that you would’ve never thought he was capable of when you first met.

you laughed as you wiped your face. « these are happy tears. » you try to explain.

he’s your home. your lupical. someone you’re at rest with, and safe with. you love him.

your words get caught in your throat, unable to express everything you want to tell him. so instead, you engulf him in a hug. something he was caught off guard from, stiffening, but quickly relaxed and embraced you back. still a little unsure, he comforts and reassures you the only way he knows how: patting your head. when he’s down head pats makes him feel better. he hopes you’ll feel better.

« thank you. » you said softly, shakily, sniffling. thank you for being here. thank you for being you.

you’re not as alone as you thought, you never really were. together, in your own small corner of the world. your home: razor.

as you cuddled together, passing the time by naming and pointing at the celestial canvas above you, you realised: maybe this year, as unfortunate as it had been, didn’t have to end on a bad note. at some point, razor had shared his ridiculously large scarf with you, wrapping it around the both of you. and slowly, your words slowed, your breaths evened out. you pressed more of your weight against him as you felt your eyes droop. you’re safe. you’re with razor. you’ll fall asleep, and when you wake up he’ll be there. as drowsiness takes you over, you think to yourself ‘yeah, i’m happy.’

you’re happy here. in this one time, one place, with razor, you’re happy.

and you hope that wherever they are, your sibling is happy too. and that they’ll forgive you for being selfish, for being happy despite everything.

you hoped that your mirror image had someone to spend christmas with.

somewhere—someone they felt at rest with.

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#genshin impact #genshin impact x reader #razor x reader #genshin x reader #razor genshin impact #falselywrites #hope you like it ^^#trigger warning for bad use of german lmaoo #op learned about german and suddenly acts like hes an expert #if i knew mondstadt had so many references to german i wouldve paid more attention to duolingo #btw its implied established relationship but its not mentioned lol

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gentlemancrow · 3 years ago

Text

Written in the Stars Will Have to Do

OK so I saw @hey-there-hunter ‘s JMart Wedding Challenge and I pretty much fan ficced immediately?? Like it was an instantaneous plot bunny that stabbed me in the brain and would not let me free until I made it exist. SO HERE YOU GO! Read it here or head on over to AO3 below! And enjoy some unapologetically aggressive fluff with weddings! Also subtitled someday Crow will stop abusing excessive astral imagery and symbolism for extended metaphors, but today is not that day.

Read on AO3 instead!

Written in the Stars Will Have to Do

Jonathan Sims always thought of himself as a man with a deep appreciation for the great literature of the world. A passionate turn of phrase, crystalline motes of clear imagery like snowflakes reflecting light in his mental scape, a devastating contemplation on the nature of good and evil in the hearts of all mankind, everything that could express the beauty and tragedy of the world in ways he never could. Prose was a bright paintbrush on a ragged canvas of the universe he had known from an early age was swathed in shadow and pain and evil, and those words on those pages, for at least a moment, were another world he could hold in his hands, could cradle and protect, could mourn. He liked the power of them as well, of the tinkling brightness of alliteration, the oaky sophistication of a well-aged metaphor, the evocativeness of the idiosyncrasy in a simple simile, laying bare truths in ways he never could have articulated for himself.

There was one thing he could not abide by in language, however, one cardinal sin liable to besmirch any piece of lush and sparkling verse or prose and taint it forever. And that was idioms.

Jon loathed idioms and their dismally quirky cliches dressed in familiarity’s tacky clothing almost as much as he hated spiders. Perhaps it was something about their reliance on common knowledge and repetition. He couldn’t bear reading the same book twice, or even a book that felt too familiar, it only made sense that hearing a hackneyed phrase repeated in that awful singsong sardonic tone of someone who knows full well they’re saying something asinine that has been repeated ad nauseum for millennia would scrape at the back of his skull and down his spine. They were too whimsical and blasé, crutch words for when one’s limited lexicon came up empty, or worse, for ill comedic effect. They reinforced that staunchly English notion of skirting about the true depth and breadth of emotion for clipped niceties and unfeeling banalities. Idioms to him were mere verbal window boxes, colorful and meaningless, dressings for untold disasters behind the shining windows they peacocked before.

He hated them all with vaguely equal rancor, but there was one he could definitely single out as the one he hated the most, and that was the one about hanging the moon. Such and such thinks you hung the moon, to me you hung the moon, and so on. This particular rhetorical felony attracted his wrath only marginally because any moon symbolism never failed to feel outlandish and infantile, a mawkish image of love and care rampant in nursery rhymes and cheap commercialized slogans for t-shirts and wall art. That was the least of it. He hated the idea of hanging the moon mostly because once, another lifetime ago now it seemed, Tim Stoker had lobbed it in his face in a fit of smoldering rage and he had been completely, complacently, ignorant of its magnitude.

Funny thing was, he couldn’t even remember what the actual fight had been about any longer. Though he could remember exactly where he was standing, cornered next to the file cabinet for the year 1985, January through February, and the label had been peeling up on the upper left-hand corner. He remembered he’d discovered a hole in the elbow of his jumper that morning and he had been obsessing over it all day, fussing with the dangling green thread and tugging at the knit as if it might magically close the wound. He’d put his finger clean through it with his arms crossed haughtily over his chest without even realizing he’d been fiddling with it when something flippant about Martin came out of his mouth. It hadn’t even been cruel, he couldn’t even remember how Martin had come up in the argument in the first place, he could only remember Tim’s mouth moving like he wanted to say something else, then him forcibly stopping himself before he snarled.

“Yeah well, god knows why, but he thinks you hung the moon, so you might try treating him at the very least like a human being once in a while.”

It was such a small thing. Small words for a small feeling cloaked in a chintzy veneer of idiomatic dismissal. A trembling little bird cupped in his scarred and battered hands and smothered. Or so he thought. Sometimes trembling little birds turn out to be phoenixes, and those who looked to someone else to hang the comfort of a wise, silvery moon in the sky already have the hammer and the picture wire at the ready.

As far as Jon was concerned, the moon only rose on their Somewhere Else because Martin deigned to pull the strings every night, not him.

It was Martin who brought him tea every morning, set it down on the breakfast table with that little flip of the tag and the deft, one-fingered turn of the handle toward him. It was Martin who scolded him because whites are a separate load, Jon, were you raised in a barn? Martin who talked him through every episode of the Doctor Who reruns that were the only thing their ancient aerial could pick up. Martin who planted flowers in the garden and brought muffins from the sweet old lady at the grocers because they traded baking recipes. Martin who still looked at him with diaphanous pools of ethereal moonlight in his eyes and his smile like he alone hung it in the sky over his head to wash him in its radiance.

Even after everything.

Even after it had been Martin who had to hold the knife buried in his chest as he lay gasping wetly for breath in an alleyway in Another Chelsea to keep the hemorrhaging at bay. Martin who had cupped his face in his bloody hands with tears streaming down his and forced him to focus, furious love blazing in his sea mist eyes as they locked with his, screaming at him and him only, heedless of anything else.

“Look at me. LOOK at me, Jon! Stay with me! Stay with me, DAMN YOU!”

Stay with me had not been a plea, it had been a command. He had never once said please because it was never an option. Shivering, breathing blood through his teeth, the streetlights a fading, star studded halo in Martin’s strawberry blond curls be damned, he was right. Against every tangled thread of fate twisted deep into his flesh, or perhaps because they had been the only thing that held his torn innards together, he made it to the part where he awoke a few fractured times to nothingness, and then to fingers he knew every inch of inextricably bound up in his and a fierce whisper in his ear.

“I’m here, Jon. I’m still here. I’ve got you. I’m going to fix this. I’m going to get us out of here. We’re going to be okay.”

It had been Martin who orchestrated their clandestine escape from the hospital the moment they both agreed he was well enough to survive under his rudimentary medical care and before the authorities got too invested in an urban ghost story of two men who didn’t exist. Not to mention one of which should, by all medical and logical law, be dead. It had been Martin who had stolen the necessary antibiotics, drugs, and wound care supplies, Martin who had picked enough pockets to buy passage on a midnight train to the only place they could think to go, and expressly told Jon not to ask where he learned how, even though he knew full well he would later. Martin who had fought for everything and kept him hidden and safe while he lay in a dingy hotel room somewhere in Scotland, drifting in and out of consciousness between kisses, cold compresses, spoonfuls of whatever he could get him to swallow and keep down, and desperate ‘I love you’s.

Martin had been the one who hung the moon even on the nights Jon couldn’t see it, just so he knew it was there, that the light might finally guide him home. Not him. He could have never done something so selfless and simple and beautiful. No not him. Not The Archivist. How could he have ever known that? Stupid, myopic, pedantic, all-seeing and blind. A blustering, sanctimonious Tiresias in a sweater vest and half-moon glasses. And how important was the moon, anyway that he was expected to hang it too? Would not night still come and the stars still shine? The stupid, vapid saying should have been about the sun anyway. Something that nourished and guided and warmed. Not the moon. Not the thing of night and hungry wolves and quiet loneliness. Not a thing of the darkness they fought and still not won, not exactly, not in a way that mattered. How could he have known the weight of such a thoughtless, frivolous, meaningless phrase and how far and how long Martin had borne it for him to protect he who hung his moon?

He could see the weight of it so clearly now. He could see it especially on the darkest days, which came, in grotesque mockery, the moment they found something like their safehouse and rest at last. Jon had conned his way into a job at the village library with an ancient head librarian who didn’t care much for too many questions, or background or credit checks, and was more than happy to pay in cash. With Martin’s help of course. Martin himself had taken up stocking at the village grocers, and their life had teetered onto something so close to quaint and normal it suddenly laid bare the gravity of the depths of darkness they had escaped.

No longer did they have to run, no longer did they have to fight, they could finally lay down the chase and curl in upon each other to lick their wounds in quiet. But without the driving, primal instinct to live, to survive, that ushered in the days where all the hurt came back to roost and brood and fester. The days where he couldn’t bring himself to get out of bed, or the days Martin couldn’t bear the sound of his voice, or the days they shouted themselves hoarse, stormed apart for hours then came back, silent and broken, red-eyed and exhausted to hold each other and weep into the spaces between neck and shoulder where it still smelled like love and home.

He could see so painfully clearly the toll following him to the ends of the cosmos and back had etched its marks into his goodness, his body and soul, see how often he would walk down the road from their cabin, just a little ways, to stand on the heather spotted hills and gaze out into the frigid infinity of the gray sea. Cold terror would grip him then, incite a desperate want to run after him, to throw his arms around him and bring him home, but also the fear it would only be to have him turn to mist and slip through his fingers forever. He always had a cup of steaming tea waiting for him when he came back, just in case.

But again, and always. It was Martin who would pick up Jon’s hands, kiss every slender, scarred finger through his tears and be the first one to utter ‘I’m sorry.’ Martin who told him with just a single scathing flash of stern blue eyes and not a single word uttered that he was certainly coming to bed and not banishing himself to the couch like an idiot. Martin who wrapped him in his arms and warmth and boundless love and reminded him, “One way or another. Together. That was the deal, right? You don’t get to back out now. No returns, refunds, or exchanges, I’m afraid.”

And even through the deepest sobs he would find the laugh Jon didn’t think was in him. Martin sifted through the mire and the muck and held fast to the tiny, shining things so easy to lose in the darkness. Things Jon was certain were lost forever, only to be reignited and hung in the brightening sky of their story. Even if they weren’t quite the moon yet.

It had also been Martin who, on a perfectly ordinary day, on a simple walk through the local farmers market, stopped to peruse one of the usual unremarkable stalls filled with crystals and oils and trinkets. Jon had wandered off to procure the parsnips and the strawberries, unrelated recipes Martin swore, he had been tasked with finding. When he returned he found him, a radiant monument tall among the faceless locals, rusty curls caressing his face in the salty breeze, carved of marble and rose quartz and gazing down at a pair of hematite rings on a velvet display box. His eyes were distant, but not in the enthralled, disembodied way they were when he looked at the sea, or the broken way when they weren’t speaking, but in the contemplative, regarding of puzzle pieces way when he would look into the fire during their talks and turn his words in his mind over and over again like a rock tumbler until they were polished just right.

“Getting into crystals now, are we?” Jon had joked, “Surely I’m not so dull to be around that that’s becoming an attractive hobby.”

Martin snorted and shook his head.

“Supposed to mean healing, or grounding, or something. Aligning your meridians, I think the lady said? Whatever that means,” he elaborated, reaching out to touch.

They clinked weightily together, thick and glossy and the dark astral gray of a moonless night. Martin turned over the card that went with them and read.

“’A grounding stone that belongs to the planet Mars. It strengthens our connections to the earth and aids the warrior on their journey. It is a stone of invincibility, but also fragility. It balances yin and yang energies with its magnetic properties for the perfect reflection upon one’s own soul, astral, physical, and spiritual.’”

“Hematite, is it?” Jon asked, “Also more commonly called bloodstone. You know if you scratch it, it leaves a red mark. Like it’s bleeding. Watch.”

He picked up one of the rings and firmly ran it down the corner of the card Martin had been reading from. Sure enough, the black stone had left a faint, but starkly crimson mark on the yellowed paper.

“It BLEEDS?” Martin exclaimed in horror.

“It’s just a kind of iron oxide, so, rust, basically,” Jon explained with a chuckle, “Kind of weirdly romantic if you think about it? This intimidating shiny black stone like armor, made of iron to boot, but with a bleeding heart at its core.”

“I just thought it was pretty, I didn’t know it bleeds,” Martin had laughed in that incredulous way he always did when Jon was telling him something he didn’t actually want to know, but appreciated anyway.

“I find that the strongest, prettiest things often do,” Jon had said in reply. He remembered saying that particularly clearly, waxing poetic, feeling a swell of affection for the hugely beautiful man he leaned against and was adorably aghast at bleeding rocks.

“Yeah, I reckon they do,” Martin murmured back.

And then his cheeks had flushed bright red under his freckles and the stone steps of his shoulders crumbled a bit under the crushing ancientness and vastness of what he had originally been pondering.

“So, I mean, before you spoiled it with the blood thing. I was thinking… Well, I was just having a browse and I saw these and I thought they were quite fetching, and then the lady told me they meant grounding and healing and a journey, like on the card. A-And there were two of them, all by themselves, and everything else was so colorful and flashy these were just so… Um. Maybe the blood and rusty iron thing makes it more poetic now, actually? I don’t know. Sorry I- This sounded so much better in my head.”

It wasn’t his fault, Jon remembered thinking. Martin couldn’t find the words because there weren’t any. Not in this universe or any other. Not for what they’d gone through, and especially not for what they meant to each other.

“I guess I was just thinking. If… I bought one. And wore it. Sort of like. Um. You know. Would… Would you-?” he had asked, his voice trembling.

Jon had never said yes, yes of course he would, faster or with more conviction in his life. And there was that look again, rising from the ashes, that flooding of golden, unbound love and light, of eyes turned sky blue, of looking at the man who hung his moon in the sky come back to him. He could still hang Martin’s moon all over again after so many nights of black clouds and darkness, even if it was only paper. They’d paid for the rings in rumpled bills, exchanged them right then and there, and kissed each other as the crowd of oblivious people in a world they did not belong in flowed like a river around them. Jon forgot the bag with the parsnips and strawberries.

But it didn’t matter. It didn’t even matter that Martin’s fit nicely on his ring finger, but Jon had to wear his on his thumb, and even then sometimes on a chain around his neck for fear of losing it. It didn’t matter that it was the closest thing they were ever going to get to a proposal and a wedding, consigned now forever to the shadows in a borrowed reality with only each other. Because it was theirs, and they could begin to figure out how their broken pieces fit back together again.

But like most things that don’t matter, it didn’t until it did.

It began as simple things. Seeing a wedding on some program they weren’t actually paying much attention to and Martin making a flippant, innocuous comment as he combed his fingers lovingly through Jon’s long and silvered chestnut hair in his lap about how he would have loved to have a cake that had a different flavor on every tier at their wedding. Just so everyone could have something they liked. And Jon woke up from his half catlike stupor and looked up at him with such aching regret as those words settled into the pit of his heart alongside ‘he thinks you hung the moon.’

And soon they began to gather a collection of completely innocent remarks that ran the gamut from ‘would they have worn black or white? Or one of each? I don’t know… does it really matter? And were these engagement rings or wedding rings? I don’t know. Neither? both? And do we say husband instead of boyfriend now? Fiancé? Whatever you want, Martin…’ To the heavier, cancerous weights that sank to the bottom of his gut, even below hanging the moon, like ‘I know Tim would have thrown the most amazing bachelor party for both of us, and his mum had always talked about him getting married someday like it was a farfetched pipe dream, but she would be happy for them, he thinks.’

He could never answer those questions. There was too much at stake, too much finality and familiarity in them, a strange weightlessness in a world that weighed far too much. The sun and moon continued their eternal dance of time, ignorant, unbothered, but Jon kept collecting those silent debts of normal life, secreting them away in a hidden singularity in his heart that only grew heavier and metastasized farther the more times Martin walked out at night, not him, beaming starlight from his eyes and his fingertips, to hang the moon again. So soft, so full of wooly cows and pink heather and the smell of tea and sea salt and Martin’s shampoo on the pillow next to him did it become, that it was almost inevitable that one morning Jon awoke absolutely convinced none of it could be real.

The moment he decided that, everything made so much more sense. He could breathe again. There was a reason he could never sit still, never just feel at ease or talk about the future like it was a real thing that could still happen. He knew why the silence made his brain itch and why he still glanced around corners and glowered at anyone who dared let their gaze linger on his Martin too long. Why Martin’s ring fit and his didn’t. There was too much debt to the universe to be paid, too many broken promises, too many corpses in his wake, he had done nothing to deserve this idyllic life of love and peace and smallness and Martin. It had to be Her doing, It’s doing, some carefully woven torture chamber that would lure them to the apex of their joy, the center of the web, where they would just be devoured over and over to empty husks and set up like chess pieces to fill with love and light just to knock down again. He wasn’t free after all.

Jon had been halfway into his coat and halfway out the door to do, he didn’t know, something, anything, to go to the library to use their computer and research something he didn’t know he was looking for when Martin had seized his hand and whirled him around.

“Jon. STOP. It’s over.”

And he’d stopped. He’d looked into those baleful blue eyes, fallen into their depths, landed on the precipice of madness, and broken. It wasn’t over. Not for him. He finally understood. It was still there. The Eye. It always had been. Though not really, he understood slowly as he wept on his knees in their doorway into Martin’s chest, it had indeed closed forever on him, but it lingered as distant static, like a phantom limb, a metaphysical itch that could never be scratched. Martin had cradled him close and listened, listened so patiently as he ripped the jagged black fear from the deepest, ugliest part of his heart, hauled it up bloody and messy from his throat and finally laid it bare for both of them to see. And when it was done and he couldn’t cry anymore Martin had locked eyes with him in a way that made him forget any others could have ever existed outside of crystalline blue and filled with moonlight.

“Listen to me. I know you think you have some cosmic burden to bear. That you’re still wearing some… some fucked up crown and sitting on a throne of skulls and death and eyeballs or whatever image you want to put there, and that you have to sit and hurt and watch over everything so it doesn’t happen again, but... Sorry, Jon, but that’s bullshit. It’s just a scar now. That’s all. Just like the rest of them. Ugly and beautiful and proof that you —Jonathan Sims— are still alive. And you are not The Archivist anymore. You’re just mine. My Jon.”

He’d held his Jon’s stunned face in his hands and peppered kisses over the pock marks in his skin, over the slash on his throat, the burnt fingers that still couldn’t bend quite right, even the one on his chest, the one almost always hidden by fabric but the one he didn’t need to see to find. His heart and fingers would always remember exactly where it was. And he’d kept his lips there a moment, then turned his ear to his chest and wrapped his arms around his waist to listen to his heartbeat like a trembling little bird.

“If I can hear it and feel it. So can you,” he whispered.

Unsteady fingers curled desperately into Martin’s silky locks, hematite loop cool against his scalp, “Thank you…”

Martin stayed for the kiss on top of his head he knew was coming and smiled.

“Okay, so it’s simple to fix if you think about it,” he murmured into Jon’s chest, “We just need that thing, you know? The thing that makes you feel like you’re still doing the thing, but you’re not. What was the word for it again? A placeholder? Like when you quit smoking and you hold a pencil or a straw or something that’s not actually a cigarette so you can wean yourself off the ritual?”

Jon blinked owlishly down at him as he dried his eyes.

“A… placebo? Are you talking about a placebo?”

“Yeah! That’s it! We just need to find you a placebo for Knowing things! That’s all. Like… reality shows, or-or zoo cams or something! We’ll figure it out together. Alright, love? I promise you. It’ll be okay.”

Jon was skeptical, so very skeptical, but if Martin was determined to find a balm to soothe his jagged, ontological scars he would happily play the part of lab rat for him. They’d tried a myriad things to replicate the feeling of Knowing and looking something deep within him still craved. The zoo and animal livestreams were a bust, cute and entertaining as they were, but animals weren’t ever the purview of The Eye and the camera itself was barely a scrap. Reality shows came closer, the more salacious the better, but even that temporary fix wore off when Jon’s disgust with the overall content and participants outweighed any benefit. Martin was just happy to have finally converted him to Bake Off, at least. They tried people watching in the square in the village, but it made Jon far too self-conscious and guilty. He used the binoculars exactly once, and that was to look at the cows in the fields, and the choose-your-own-adventure books Martin had been certain would strike a sagacious chord wound up in the donation bin at the library. But that was when he was struck with a bolt of genius.

Unbeknownst to Jon, which brought him no small measure of glee, Martin ordered, received, and then set up with a literal bow in their back garden the finest telescope he could afford on his meager savings. He’d researched for days, asked on every amateur astronomer forum he could find, and had it delivered to the grocers so he could make it a proper surprise. He’d even gone so far as to attack and blindfold a hapless Jon the moment he made it home from work on the day it was ready, and stood behind him giddily bouncing as he tore the tea towel away from his eyes.

“A… Telescope?” he’d blurted dumbly.

“Yes! It’s perfect, right? I asked around to find the one that had all the best features, and this one has the best overall magnification and the most lenses, but it doesn’t have the little satellite positioning thing? I figured you wouldn’t want that anyway, you always like figuring things out and finding things on your own better.”

Martin had been positively radiant. Jon had just stared at the gawping black tube and chewed the inside of his cheek as he processed what to say.

“I mean… thank you, Martin, really. It was a sweet thought, but if the binoculars didn’t-“

“Screw the binoculars! This is different!” Martin happily insisted, “You can look at so much more! Stars and planets and galaxies and what have you, and it can maybe be sort of like you’re looking for other worlds? Wormholes or whatever? Or signs of The Fears and where they’ve gone? Or even if the stars are the same here as they were back before? Space literally has so many things to LOOK at we can’t even count them! This has got to be it!”

Jon tried to smile and laugh and agree to try it out, at the very least, if only because Martin was beaming so sweetly with pride and hope. Though that first night he didn’t, ushering them back in with promises of tomorrow, Martin, I promise tomorrow. Tomorrow had been a lie. As had been the next night. In fact, it took Jon a full week to even remember they even had a telescope, and that was only after getting the smuggest, Cheshire grin out of Martin after casually mentioning there would be a visible, if partial, lunar eclipse that night. He’d relented, only because he’d entrapped himself, and they’d both bundled up, looked in the manual for the best size lens to view the moon with, poured a few glasses of wine, and turned their eyes to the stars.

Martin had gone first, gripping the eyepiece and adjusting the focus all the while gasping in awe. It was so beautiful he’d burst into poetry with a crooked grin.

“Art thou pale for weariness? Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth, wandering companionless among the stars that have a different birth, and ever changing, like a joyless eye that finds no object worth its constancy? Sounds a little familiar, eh?” he joked, casting a wry look over his shoulder.

Jon rolled his eyes fondly.

“Gross. Keats again?”

“Nope, Shelley this time, and even he thinks you ought to have a look at the moon. I think you’ll find you have a lot in common.”

Jon had sighed obligingly and shuffled to the telescope, fully expecting to look at something bright and round with a bit of a shadow on it that was distinctly unremarkable, have another glass of wine, and then go back inside to snuggle by the fire. What he saw in that tiny pinhole of light pierced straight through the hazel brown of his eye and plunged him into another world entirely.

The sands of the moon glowed the purest white in the refracted light of the distant sun with which it waltzed. He could see in crisp, shadowy relief the innumerable scars she bore, the depth and breadth of Ptolemaeus, the boundless lonely flatness of the maria, named for the oceans they were once thought to be, an insult to the rock plains forged a millennia ago in birth by cataclysmic fire. Every crater remained wrought in perfect, frozen detail with no erosion or foliage to slowly heal them over, and she beamed them proudly, ostentatiously in her heavenly light. A hulking, ancient protectorate, hung by the hands of creation at the dawn of time for a fledgling planet, hundreds of thousands of miles away, and yet so crystal clear and unafraid as he perused her millions of years of cosmic sentinel through a lens. It was dwarfing, humbling, viscerally awe inspiring in a way he dared not voice for fear of snuffing out the fragile glow of wonder and excitement welling in his chest he had been so certain was gone forever.

Astronomy had never been something that had particularly interested Jon, back when his entire reality from the moment his childish hands had touched a single book was spent peering into shadows and watching his own back. There was no point in wondering what lay among the stars when danger and death lurked so close behind with slavering jaws ever poised at his throat on terra firma, but now. Now, he had been living in an alternate world, dimension, reality, somewhere, he couldn’t even say for sure. He’d been hurled potentially through the very stars that twinkled coquettishly above, flashed through their nebulous veils and curtains under their indifferent gaseous gazes, but seen nothing. Here was a vast expanse of complete chaotic indefiniteness inviting him in to see what few had ever seen, to guess and hypothesize and gesture wildly at secrets only the stars could keep. To Know.

Jon had jerked back so suddenly from the telescope to survey the entirety of the astral dome above them that Martin had choked on his wine.

“Jon? Are you quite alright?”

“Yes, I…” he’d murmured, only even half hearing that Martin had said anything at all, stars reflected in his wondering dark eyes, “I’m fine, I just… How… How much more can this see? How deep does it go?”

Jon hadn’t seen the victorious smirk on Martin’s face as he set down his wine glass and picked up the instruction manual and lens guide. They’d watched the rest of the eclipse, of course, marveling through the lens at the inky trickle of shadow over craggy white, but then they’d changed the lens to the strongest one, according to the guide, and spent the rest of the evening triangulating their position beneath their slice of the universe and plotting out the various stars, planets, and constellations above. Jon had even dashed inside to grab a mostly blank notebook and had filled several pages with notes and observations and things to research later, all while Martin held back tears watching him come so alive over a project he didn’t even know he needed. Eventually though, sleepiness and cold claimed him, and he kissed his beloved goodnight and left him, more than gladly, to ride out the intellectual flare up until it burnt both him and itself out.

Martin had no clue what time it was when he finally returned, and it didn’t even matter. All that mattered was at some point, a practically frozen Jon had climbed into bed, snuggled up close behind and wrapped his arms around him to kiss the back of his neck so softly like the wings of a butterfly and whisper.

“Thank you.”

Another victorious smirk and a loving murmur.

“Told you so.”

Where there had been nothing but an Eye shaped hole in him, scarred around the edges and aching in its vacuum, Jon had filled it with the names of nebulas and quasars, of the myth of Andromeda, and Orion, and Castor and Pollux, or Hercules, and why they had all been hung in the stars for eternity. The stories were much the same as he remembered, but he’d found slight eccentricities, tiny irregularities in the sky which fascinated him even more so. Night after night he would look at a different astral body, chart it down in his notebook, then come bounding in with starlight beaming from his eyes and his fingertips with some cry of eureka.

“Martin! Did you know here Polaris is in the south and Sirius is in the north?”

“Martin! Did you know the Andromeda Galaxy is actually a little closer to the Milky Way here?”

“Martin, you have to come see this! Oh, no it’s not weird this time, it’s just I finally got Saturn in the telescope and you can actually see the rings!”

His nightly herald would always be different, but Martin would always rise from the comfort of the couch, put his slippers on, and let Jon talk as long as he needed to about his latest discovery, watching him smile again while he, too, watched the matching smile it never failed to ignite illuminate Martin’s face and they lit each other up in the fused brilliance of a binary star.

Martin no longer hung the moon for Jon, he’d finally just up and quite literally given it to him, and there was no mortal way to repay him for that. Or so he’d thought. It came to him, as most flashes of brilliance do, on a night he hadn’t even been thinking about it at all. All he had been doing was sitting in a lawn chair with his telescope long after Martin had gone to bed, chewing his pencil idly, vaguely missing a cigarette and pondering notes on Vega and Lyra between watching it through his lens. He’d been stuck for days on Vega and its potentiality for another solar system and what that could imply for their new Earth and their new sun, as well as Lyra and the tragic tale of Orpheus and his doomed love. Even in their new reality he still turned back at the end of the story, still could not contain the roiling, effusive adoration to his own downfall.

Bitterness had risen like bile in the back of Jon’s throat as he replayed the myth again in his head, unsure why it was vexing him and rewinding in his brain so torturously. “Stupid, stupid man, if he’d only just…” he’d thought again and again, each time giving the star-crossed musician a different decision, a different choice, urging him down another path somewhere, anywhere along his journey, but in the end, he’d always looped back around to the original. It was the point of the story, after all. Not so much the love itself or even the loss of it, but the power of it over one man and the creation born from his mourning and eventual destruction. Patently Greek. But the chorus would always begin again in Jon’s head. If he’d kept his Eurydice, if his songs had been happy, if he hadn’t spent the rest of his life mourning so intensely he was eventually destroyed for it, would he have become the paragon of healing he was, the oracle, the lynchpin of the fate of the world he had eventually become? Which of them was the stupider man?

Jon was only mortal now, he was no longer all-seeing oracle and dark savior, he had no authority to say, but it was a trifle easier to ponder the hubris of Orpheus instead of his own. He couldn’t help but think, achingly, sometimes the heroes just deserved to pull their beloved from the pit of Tartarus, promise to love them for eternity, and then simply get married, ride off into the sunset, and live happily ever after. A story wasn’t a story if it didn’t write itself upon the very bones and sinews of its heroes, that was the law of the universe, but when the story was done and the cracks and fissures in their tissues had faded to myth and legend, what became of the heroes who did not die a tragic or heroic death and were not hung in the stars? What happened to heroes left behind? Twisting his bloodstone ring on his thumb idly as it caught the shivering fire of those stars in its dark mirrored surface, the musical arrow of the muses pierced his heart, wide-eyed in wonder. He’d asked the universe, but he already knew the answer. He’d always known. He knew, and he knew it with such clarion joy as he had never known anything before.

He could no longer be the man who hung Martin’s moon, he hadn’t been for a long time. That much was clear to him, but he could certainly do something else. Perhaps they had grown past the need for moon hangings in the first place. He knew how their story ended.

It took months of saving, secreting, preparation, and then finally just simply waiting for the perfect, clear night. The moment it came, the moment he knew it was the night, Jon struck without hesitation. Poor Martin wanted nothing more than to collapse onto the couch, into Jon, when he returned from a late shift at the grocers, but found himself instead stuffed right back into his coat with a picnic basket in hand and hauled out into the frigid night in a flurry of Jon with little time to protest. He bounded up the hill behind their little cottage beneath a perfect blanket of stars flaming coldly overhead, trailing Martin’s hand in his behind with his breath coming in silvery puffs of clouds, and paying no heed to the whining.

“Jon, whatever it is, does it have to be NOW?” Martin panted, “I am absolutely knackered and it’s beyond freezing and wouldn’t it be nicer just to curl up with a cuppa and fall asleep in front of Star Wars or something? Doesn’t that have enough stars and space in it?”

Dauntless, Jon only tugged harder.

“There’s tea in the basket, and I’ve seen Star Wars. And yes, it has to be tonight, it’s really important, I promise.”

“Look. I love you. So much. You know this, and please know it is with the utmost love and deepest affection in my heart that I point out that you say that every time, and you’ve still shown me Pluto like, a hundred separate times. While I quite like it, and I still feel sorry for it being bumped out of the solar system and all, it’s just a dot? How many times can you look at a dot?” Martin sighed.

His words finally threw a caltrop into Jon’s warpath, and he paused, turning over his shoulder woundedly.

“What? No, it’s not Pluto, I swear just- Please, Martin? I’ll never ask again if you don’t want to, but just for tonight, please?” he pleaded.

Martin winced, and immediately folded under the onslaught of doleful honeyed brown eyes under a nimbus of stars.

“Oh, lord there you go with the puppy dog eyes. Okay, okay fine, but there better be a nip of whiskey in this,” he chided lovingly with a gesture at the thermos in the basket.

The smile flared back to life brightly on Jon’s face as he turned back up the craggy little footpath to the top of the hill.

“Of course, hot toddy with tea.”

“Ooh, lovely, you do know me.”

The rest of the way was trivially short to the small, flat hilltop surrounded by heather where Jon had already set up a blanket and the telescope over a pristine vista of the dark line where the stars sank into the sea. He ushered Martin to sit down first, then perched on his hip beside him and poured him a generous helping of tea and whiskey from the thermos before pouring his own.

“Thanks, much. Right then, what exactly are we up here to look at that we couldn’t see from our garden?” Martin asked, accepting his cup of potent hot toddy and sipping it gratefully around the lemony steam that billowed up.

Taken aback by the sudden logic lobbed into the center of his romantic posturing, Jon looked momentarily stunned, as if someone had slapped him upside the head.

“Oh! Oh, um, well-! Ahah, that is to say- Uh. There is a reason for all this. It’s not that we couldn’t see it from our garden, we very much could have. B-But it’s so beautiful up here, and you can kind of hear the sea? And it’s nice and peaceful, and the heather is still blooming a bit and um…” he trailed off, cheeks burning.

“Okay…?” Martin probed, frowning a little.

“Er, actually... It’s less about the stars than it is- W-Well it is about the stars. Let’s get that clear. But to be completely honest I mostly just… I-I well. There’s something I need to tell you?”

Jon was ill-prepared for the look of abject horror on Martin’s face as he went paler than the moon overhead.

“Shit, what is it? Did you find something? You saw something? There’s been a sign of The Fears? Oh god it’s not HER is it?” he asked frantically, nearly slopping hot toddy all over his lap.

“What? No! No, none of that!” Jon spluttered, aghast.

Martin regained a modicum of color in his face and breathed in measuredly.

“Okay, so then what is it? Oh god, you’re not… Jon you’re not ill, or something, are you? Please, you can just tell me if-“

“No, I am not ill either, damn it, Martin! If you would just listen to me! I-!” Jon moaned exasperatedly, “I just wanted to do something… nice. Something nice for you. And nicer than I normally would because I am apparently much worse at crafting romantic moments than I thought and-“

“Wait…” Martin cut in, eyes gleaming with realization, “Jonathan Sims… Are you grand gesturing?”

“Well I am certainly trying but you are making it exceedingly difficult!” he retorted, red in the face and breathless.

“Oh my god, you are! I’m so sorry!” Martin laughed brightly, “Oh god Jon you poor thing I’m so sorry, I’m awful, I’m the absolute worst! No please! Don’t let me spoil it. Please go on.”

Grinding the heel of his palm into his forehead, Jon tried to summon the words again, only for Martin’s strong, warm hands to take it from him and tip his chin up to gaze into his eyes.

“Hey. Hey, Jon. Look at me,” he breathed, looking into his eyes idolatrously, “I’m sorry. I love you. You can tell me.”

Taking the steadiness from those clear blue depths he needed, Jon focused on them, on the strawberry blond curls tossing in the icy breeze, of the kiss of chilled pink under his freckles, and that eternal, sunshine smile.

“Okay,” he finally answered, smiling softly.

With a deep, shuddering breath, and a long swig of whiskey laced tea for good measure, Jon drew himself up and fished deep in his soul for the words he had waited a millennium to say.

“Okay… So here it is. Um… I’ve um, I’ve had a lot of time alone lately with my new hobby, as it were. So, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. A lot of it is overly complicated and ridiculous and doesn’t deserve to live outside of my head but… a lot of it has been about you, about us. And I know we don’t need to-to put a label on us or put us into a… a box or anything like that. But every time I look at this ring on my finger, I can’t help but remember we never actually talked about what they meant,” he began, holding out his left hand and fidgeting with the loose band around his thumb.

“Oh Jon, don’t worry about that. It was just me being a big sappy, sentimental dork. And if I recall correctly, we’d had a pretty awful row a night or two before, and I just wanted to feel close to you again, I guess? We both know what they mean to us. It doesn’t matter,” Martin assured him sweetly.

“Except that it does!” Jon insisted passionately, “That’s the point! You are a big sappy, sentimental dork, Martin. I bet you were the kid that had a dream wedding all planned in a notebook with pictures cut out of magazines and everything. I adore that about you, but big sappy sentimental dorks should have big sappy, sentimental moments like huge, expensive seaside weddings with three-flavor cakes and all your friends and family and rose petals and dove releases and whatever else your heart could dream up.”

Martin snickered and shook his head, charmed at least by the mental image of kissing Jon on a seaside cliff at sunset while doves flew in glorious formation around them and everyone they had ever known and loved cheered.

“Pfft, I don’t need a grand wedding and all that, I just need-”

“Me. I know,” Jon finished for him with a smirk, “I knew you’d say that. Maybe not. But you deserve one. And I know I don’t use that word lightly, but it’s necessary in this case. You deserve it. All of it. Me on one knee with a ring in a box, you deserve us picking out flowers and tuxedos and arguing over the font on the invitations. You deserve Tim’s awful bachelor party and laughing at me at the altar because I had to read my vows off a card and they’re still so stiff and awkward and they pale in comparison to the beautiful poem you wrote about me. You deserve smiling so hard your cheeks hurt and crying as we exchange rings. All of it.”

Martin weighed his words carefully on his tongue with a sip of his boozy tea to chase away ghosts of things that never even were.

“I mean, sure, not going to say I never wanted that. And I did have that stupid wedding notebook, by the way. But all that became a pipe dream the minute we wound up here, right? No use being upset about something that can never be.”

“That may be so, but the crux of it is… you also contented yourself with the idea of it never coming true not because we’re here, but because you didn’t think I wanted it,” Jon answered, his unspoken truth hanging heavy in the chill night air between them, “Every time you tried to tell me you wanted to be with me forever, I brushed it off and painted it gray and tucked it away and carried on the way we always were like nothing happened and it didn’t matter. Because it was alright, really, you were just so happy to have what we have, that I didn’t die in your arms that night, that we were still together after everything. That I at least kept that promise after I’d broken so many. You were so grateful just for what you were gifted after we thought we would end with nothing you didn’t dare think to ask the universe for more and I am so, so sorry it took me so long to see that, Martin. I’m so sorry.”

His voice broke. The breath caught in Martin’s chest as he reached out to touch his wrist comfortingly.

“Jon, I-“

“No, please. Please let me finish I… I can’t give you any of those things. I can’t give you our friends back, I can’t give you cake and doves and the sunset and crying through vows in front of the vicar. I can’t even give you an elopement at the register office because we still don’t legally exist. And I guess for a long time I resented myself for that. For all of it. For stealing that from you, for dragging you through literal hell only to give you a shadow of a life stuck here with me because I betrayed you. But- no stop, don’t say anything yet I’m not done. B-But now I finally realize. You’re right, Martin. You were always right. It doesn’t matter. Those things are all just… things. I said to you once, a long time ago, and I’m still not even sure if you really heard me, that I didn’t want to just survive. It was true then, and maybe it wasn’t true for a while, but it’s certainly true again. We did not fight tooth and nail to just survive. We fought to live, and live together. So what I’m saying is… I know now I don’t have to give you tuxedos and white roses as long as I give you something… Something to prove to you that you are my everything, my entire world, something to show you that I love you more than I have loved anything in my entire life. That I want forever with you. S-So I…” he trailed off, sucking in his breath to give his gesture of undying love the ardor and grandeur it deserved, “I bought us a star.”

The proclamation rang out like the toll of a bell, its gravity sonorous and quaking. Martin blinked.

“You… I’m sorry?” he squeaked.

Jon set his empty thermos cup aside, flailed his hands in the air and shook his head frantically

“I-I know, I know it sounds mental just hear me out!” he protested, “Technically I didn’t buy the star, if we want to get picky about it. I mean obviously no one can own a star. Just the rights to name it? It’s a thing you can do online. I was a bit gobsmacked it was real to be honest. I just had this silly idea when I was out looking at the stars. I was looking at Lyra and thinking about you and Orpheus, and I… W-Well I just typed it in, ‘can you name a star?’ and it came right up. Right then and there. It um… comes with… hold on.”

Remembrance placed a gentle bookmark down on Jon’s fluttering thoughts, and he rummaged in the picnic basket for a moment before pulling out a navy-blue manila folder covered in stars and full of the paperwork and certificates that had come with registering theirs. He handed it to Martin, who took it in place of his own empty cup, numb, muscles quivering under his jaw, and opened it to the glittering gold typeface that proclaimed ‘Congratulations!’.

“It comes with paperwork, too! See? So, it’s official, at least? The Jon-Martin star. Not a marriage license I know, but at least our names are together on something legal? Our real names? I figured even if we manage the fake identity thing we’d have to get married as not us. Not really. So… I-It could be like our marriage certificate?” Jon explained, chewing his lower lip.

Martin said nothing as his hand turned the pages of the documentation, his eyes distant in a way Jon had never seen before. Not disembodied and enthralled, not broken, not even regarding puzzle pieces.

“Oh! Um, also I-I got us a binary star. I forgot to mention that bit,” he went on, filling the sudden void, “It’s, ah- What a binary star is- It’s technically two? But they’re caught up in each other’s gravity and they orbit each other so tightly they look like one star together, one that just shines a little brighter. They’re bound together forever by the most powerful cosmic force in the universe. Just like us.”

Only silence answered, punctuated by one last crisp whisper of paper, and then the folder closing with Martin’s spread fingers atop it, bloodstone gleaming in the vivid pale light of the night. Jon’s heart pitched frantically in his chest, and desperate, stranded tears pricked at his eyes.

“I uh… I would have rather gotten us a whole constellation. Heh, you know? But they don’t do that, obviously,” he tried softly, his fingers barely brushing Martin’s knuckles, “They record heroes in constellations, after all. Great deeds, doomed romances, lovers who can be together no other way… That would have been a better way to honor us, I think. Our story. A-And who knows? Maybe back on our world there are a few new stars to remember what we did, to mark the place we left it, so that everyone we left behind can look up and remember us. They don’t know how the story really ended, and they probably never will, but we do. We do, and I want to end it right here, right now. With our star shining above us ‘and they lived happily ever after.’”

Martin still said nothing, but his head bowed, casting a slice of shadow over his eyes, and his shoulders quivered as a thin, bright line of wet silver trickled down his cheek. Jon felt the very sky shatter above and begin to crumble around him.

“Please… M-Make no mistake, Martin. P-Perhaps the gesture is silly and meaningless, but it was all I could think to do to go with everything I’ve said tonight. Martin… Martin, don’t you see? These are my wedding vows to you. This is me saying ‘I do’ and also ‘Martin K. Blackwood would you do me the honor of making me the happiest man in the universe?’ All at once. This is me saying I swear to you I will be yours, through everything, until the end of time. M-Maybe I wasn’t before. Maybe I was still punishing myself, but I’m telling you, I’m ready now to have my happily ever after. With you, Martin. If you’ll have me. If I haven’t-“

He would never finish. In a dizzying blur of blue folder, flashing hematite, and a wreath of golden curls, Martin kissed the words off his lips. He kissed him so hard and so fierce, through wracking sobs with his hands woven so raptly into his long, wavy locks he thought his lips would bruise and his fragile soul would finally shatter to pieces in Martin’s arms. Undone, all Jon could do was surrender and kiss him back with equal passion, thumbing away the hot tears as they spilled freely down his cheeks and anointed them both with their cleansing, hoary heat. Their lips parted and they panted softly against each other in the space between, each afraid to break the sacred, pulsing silence.

“You’re crying,” Jon whispered at length, “I’ve said something wrong. Martin, darling I’m so sorry. I never meant to-”

Martin laughed, raspy with tears, but ethereal, sparkling, like stardust floating on the breeze.

“People are allowed to cry when they’re happy you stupid, silly man,” he murmured in between kissing him again, and again.

“Oh. Oh.”

He kissed him one last time, that idiot man who always burnt the toast and always knew the facts but never knew what to say, who finally figured it out and bought him a star, and threw his arms around him, enveloping his slight, fragile form protectively in his embrace.

“I love you. I love you so much.”

Jon sank into that warm, familiar comfort and buried his face in his shoulder.

“I love you, too, Martin. I want to be yours for the rest of my life. I want to be me, I want to be us.”

“I know. I’ve always known. Oh god, you do know that right? I know that you love me, it’s written in everything you do and say. I have never, ever once doubted you love me with everything you are. Even in the moments I was afraid that… that maybe we just weren’t meant to be together, I still knew it wouldn’t be because you didn’t love me. Never because you didn’t love me. Just maybe that we didn’t fit together anymore,” Martin replied in a small voice through his tears as they spilled down his cheeks.

As much as he wanted to vehemently deny there was ever a chance they might have not fit back together again after they had both been so shattered, to kiss him and tell him not in a million years would there ever have been a future where they weren’t Jon and Martin against the world, Jon knew it to be inescapably true.

“I’m so sorry you ever had to be afraid of that,” he swore, digging his fingers into Martin’s back pointedly, “After everything. After we fought so hard to escape fear itself. That I almost let it truly win in the end. That I couldn’t just let go… Because… Because this was never about The Eye, was it?”

A heave of breath and its shuddering exhale shook Martin’s body free of lifetimes of grief, and fear, of ugliness carried far beyond the borders of their souls. His fingers curled tighter in unspoken reply.

“No Jon, no it wasn’t, but I’m so very glad you finally figured that out.”

“Me, too…” he whispered.

They held each other in the quiet wake of being a moment and let the astral plane wheel calmly overhead. An impatient star twinkled.

“Wait… you never answered me,” Jon finally said as he pulled back, sliding his elegant fingers down Martin’s strong arms.

“Huh?” Martin blurted, scrubbing under his eyes with the sleeve of his coat.

“About marrying me tonight. You never actually said yes, so…”

A twinkle in his eye and a slight mischief to his grin, Jon dove back into the picnic basket and emerged with a velvet ring box. Martin’s hands flew to his mouth.

“You didn’t.”

“Of course I did! Nothing fancy, but I thought it was high time to retire the blood rings,” he explained rising from his former perch on his hip to kneel properly.

The box cracked neatly open, and inside lay a simple, white gold band with a tiny circle of milky moonstone embedded in it on a midnight-blue satin cushion, blindingly bright against the dark. Martin sobbed joyfully all over again.

“So, uh… I suppose if it had just been us, if we’d just been together, without everything, and we’d arrived at this moment. I would have done much the same. I would have brought you somewhere beautiful, somewhere I could teach you some inane fact you didn’t actually care about, but liked because it came from me. Emulsifiers in ice cream and rum raisin…” they both snickered, “And I would have tried my best to make it into some sort of romantic metaphor but completely bunged it up and you would be laughing as I got down on one knee, just like this. And it would have just been simple. To the point. Just… Will you marry me? So…”

Jon assumed the traditional position, on one knee, arms outstretched, his every slender point a star in a perfect constellation of love.

“Will you marry me?”

Their eyes met, across a thousand different realities, across a thousand different worlds, carried on celestial winds to fall hopelessly, inexorably, into each other’s orbit.

“Yes, yes I do believe I will.”

With one last farewell kiss upon it for what it had meant for them both, Jon slipped the bloodstone ring from Martin’s finger and replaced it with the delicate band made of starlight. It took its place radiantly, and shone as Martin drew his hand back to admire it with an equally radiant grin before it dimmed with concern.

“But what about you?” he asked worriedly as he watched the old ring entombed lovingly in the box.

Jon only smirked and produced a second box from the basket, which he offered on his open palm out to Martin.

“Naturally, I got one for myself. Couldn’t pass up a chance to get a wedding ring that actually fits, could I? It’s just… Don’t you think you deserve to give it to me the way you would want?” he urged.

Martin took the box eagerly, biting his lower lip in thought.

“Not sure you want to give me that freedom. I had about five different ways of asking you in my head and all of them you would have hated so, so much. But I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t kind of the point,” he answered wryly.

Jon chortled.

“Sorry I, the unromantic one, sprung this on you, the romantic one. But I did want to surprise you. I-I mean you can still write me a vows poem later? If you want to, of course. I’d love to have it, even if I don’t actually get to hear it at our wedding.”

Martin’s face flushed immediate crimson and his eyes darted coyly away as he toyed with the wedding band box in his lap.

“Oh that? A-Actually I… I have it memorized, i-if you really wanted to hear it.”

“You- WHAT?” gasped Jon, his cheeks flushing in tandem.

“Oh yeah, I wrote my vows poem for you ages ago and I’ve gone over it so many times I know it by heart. It was comforting, okay? I-I’d read it again when times were good and I thought maybe you’d actually- um… a-and when times were not so good, when you were gone, in your own head, when I was afraid we were broken for good, whenever I needed it. I’ve read it over a thousand times and never changed a thing from the first time I penned it. Never needed to. I’m surprised I haven’t recited it in my sleep at this point,” Martin admitted sheepishly.

Jon’s entire body flushed with a solar heat that melted his joints and his heart into a swirling flare of adulation.

“I can think of no better way, then, to receive my ring,” he breathed, reaching out to cup Martin’s cheek in his hand, “I’ve had my turn, now it’s yours.”

In mirror ballets of love exchanges, Martin cradled Jon’s hand against his cheek as he spoke the first lines of the vows etched ever on his being softly into his palm.

“Let he who, shadow dwelling, must In paper, pen, and book be bound Shake off the chains of dark and rust And chart his own bright fate unfound.

Let he with lifelong burdens borne Cut paper wings with thread of gold And hand in hand, the sky forsworn Flit clouds and sun in laughter bold.

Let he whose blood and soldier’s ken The world did shield from dark and fear Heal fast those wounds, be whole again And sleep at last, held close and dear.

Bring him to me with spirit free With stars in eyes and music sung From lips a joyful promise be One soul conjoined, one fate’s thread strung.

Two hearts rejoice in love renowned. We lift our heads, alive, uncrowned.”

He waited until the last couplet to pull the ring from the box and slide it onto Jon’s finger where it too, fit perfectly, like it had always been there, and shone defiantly bright in the moonlight. Jon wept. He had been weeping since the first words of verse left his beloved’s lips, but seeing that ring like a piece of his missing soul returned to him undammed the tears effusively.

“God that was… Martin, I don’t have words. I-It was… so beautiful. You’re so beautiful. Thank you,” he cried fervently, “I wish I could tell you properly how much that meant, but I just-“

“Hey… That’s alright. I’m the words guy. You’re the emulsifiers guy. Making you cry is all I need to see to know how you feel,” Martin assured him warmly, reaching out to brush his tears away as he chuckled.

“Yeah… add this one to the running tally.”

“Oh, I have,” Martin snickered, “Speaking of! Now we’ve done the crying through vows bit. Shouldn’t we say the ‘I do’ bit, as well?”

Jon pursed his lips with a shrug as he reached out with his left hand to take Martin’s left as well, twining their fingers together

“Yes, I suppose we should. I don’t see why not. Well then, Martin, do you?”

“I do. And Jon, do you?”

“I do.”

“You may now soundly snog the groom.”

“Martin…”

The emphatic drawl of his name the way Jon only called it when he was frustratingly enamored of him perished gently against Martin’s velvet lips as they caressed his. They kissed slowly and reverently, sealing a pact ordained by the heavens long before either of them had seen the stars in the other’s eyes, lighting with white flame the torch to guide them for the first time, forward. They broke it only to punctuate it with two more featherlight kisses and a breathless laugh, bowing their foreheads together in deference to the forces of fate and the universe.

“I know this isn’t the wedding either of us ever dreamed of, but as far as I’m concerned, it was perfect,” Jon murmured, nuzzling closer into his husband, swaddling the new, fledgling and beautiful word in his heart.

“Well, hey, what is a wedding really other than just a formal declaration that this is it? This is us, we’re forever, no matter what. We did it. And you did it for me, in the STARS, Jon… Can we just remember that again? You put us in the actual stars. I am so writing a ballad for our constellation later, you do know this.”

“Oh lord. Of course you are. But really, it was the least I could do, after you’ve done so much for me, sacrificed everything for me. Waited for me for so long.”

“And you came back to me,” Martin reminded him passionately, “And I don’t just mean back to life, here, in this world. I mean you came back, Jon, MY Jon, the Jon I was in love with the moment I laid eyes on him. The fidgety and obstinate Jon who can’t make a decent cup of tea to save his life, who puts on two different socks in the morning because his nose is already in the paper or a book, who teaches me about bleeding rocks and binary stars and still reacts to the simplest acts of kindness like a warm cranberry orange scone without asking for one like they’re divine miracles he is undeserving of, who looks at me like I hung the moon or something every time. Even when I thought I was a complete and total waste of a human being, you, Jonathan Sims, the most beautiful, amazing, brilliant man to ever walk the Earth, looked at me like I hung the moon. And that was… Still is… everything to me.”

The heavens shifted, the stars wheeled, the last piece clicked smartly, smugly into place.

“W-What did you say…?” Jon asked with such urgency, grabbing his hands so fiercely, Martin startled.

“Wh-I-I don’t-? Which part? The moon hanging part?” he stuttered, rolling his eyes fondly as he realized mid-sentence, “Oh, right. Ugh, Jon are you seriously going to get after me about your weird vendetta against idioms at our wedding? Because if you are that would be annoyingly adorable and so intensely you and kind of perfect, but also can you not on THIS particular occasion?”

The laugh that tore from Jon’s throat was half mad, half euphoric as the weight of the moon lifted from his shoulders and became naught but an indifferent sentinel disc in the sky once more.

“No no no, it’s just… It’s funny, I had more than a few things very, very wrong for a very, very long time. That’s all. Don’t worry about it,” he explained, leaning in and pressing a delicate kiss to Martin’s forehead, “If you’re the one who hung the moon after all, then I suppose ‘written in the stars’ will have to do for me.”

Martin lit up with literary glee.

“Oh ho! Two space related idioms in one go? What a rare treat! Maybe this is your gateway drug into puns…” he teased impishly.

“Absolutely no chance in hell.”

They both laughed, laughed with the billowing icy breath that reached with victorious fingers up to the heavens. They laughed, messily sniffing back the pesky drip of tears and cold. They laughed with lightness of the encumbrance of hematite armor shed, its bloody protections no longer needed to cage wounded hearts and keep them safe and close. They laughed in breath and also in the dancing points of light in their eyes as they fell into one another free from gravity.

“So uh… Do I get to see my star tonight, or don’t I?” Martin finally remembered, relishing the utterly horrified yelp from Jon.

“Oh god I completely-! Y-Yes! Yes of course, it’s already set up at the proper coordinates!” he had already sprung to his feet, “Oh, though, hang on, it took longer to get to the star viewing part than I anticipated, so I might need to adjust it a bit. Oh! And I have a little strawberries and champagne, if you like?”

“I do like, please and thank you!”

Jon set to readjusting the telescope to the proper ascension and declination while Martin poured them two glasses of crisply bubbling champagne. They twined their arms to drink a toast from each other’s glass, ‘to us’ or ‘to happily ever afters’, or to several other messily rambled toast worthy sentiments. They couldn’t decide and toasted to all of it. They ate plump red strawberries and licked the juice from each other’s fingers as they looked at their star, which was, after everything, just a dot, just like Pluto, but Martin had to admit that he rather liked looking at dots after all. And that one was their dot. The warm intoxication of love and champagne begged for music, and someone fumbled in the cold for a wedding playlist on some app, somewhere, it didn’t matter, just as long as they could join hands, gaze into each other’s eyes and dance inelegantly, stepping on each other’s toes, under the umbrella of stars in a gentle rain of moonlight.

“I don’t see your problem with cliches, idioms and all that, really…” Martin mused at length, laying his head on Jon’s shoulder as they slowly spun to the rhythm of a longing ballad and the song of the sea, “Like this stupid, great song. They’re familiar and cozy and everyone knows them. They’re like… like old friends. Always there to rely on when we can’t come up with the words ourselves, because sometimes we can’t. And if something trite and silly sums up the way you feel, why not just let it be? Sometimes things are said over and over again because some truths are universal, you know? They’re just… human.”

Jon pressed a kiss into the mop of curls that tickled his nose and smelled faintly of toasted sugar and lavender and mused on all of the romantic cliches that had just passed through his mind unbidden. Who was he to deny he was but one star in the sky, a single gear in the grand mortal mechanism of the universe. If he had handed himself over to the humanity of it all instead of rusting, stopping, looking outside where there was never anything to see, perhaps he could have had this dance much sooner. It didn’t matter though, until it did, because that night Martin took his breath away, made his world go round, he was head over heels for his match made in heaven, and better than heaven, they were written in the stars.

“You know what, Martin?” Jon laughed in reply, “Tonight, being what it is, I am willing to concede. You are absolutely right.”

“I’m glad…” came the tender acceptance, followed by a distinctly puckish beat of silence, “Then does this mean I can I start saying love you to the moon and back?”

“Don’t push your luck...”

#The Magnus Archives #TMA #Magnuspod #JonMartin #JMart #jmartweddingchallenge #hey-there-hunter #Jonathan Sims #Martin Blackwood #Fan fiction

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