#MIGHT MARK AS MATURE FOR POSSIBLE IMPLICATIONS LATER JUST TO BE ON THE SAFE SIDE

[eboni-napalm]

He shot up to his full height then, taking me with him- and for a split second, that glint of venomous green shone in his eyes again, and I had to fight with every urge in my body to not inhale sharply in anticipation and shock as I felt his warm breath against my face, his mouth just shy of the corner of my lips. “Do you really want this?”

I was in too much of a state of heightened sense to nod, let alone function properly, even though my brain wanted to scream out, “Yes, you absolutely handsome yet idiotic Toa, I want this so badly, I’ve wanted this since we stopped Makuta together and I had to force myself not to do it first, I don’t give a shit that we’re Hordika and that this is probably the so-called “inner beast” taking over our better judgement, I don’t care, kiss me already, please,” and despite me not answering him immediately, he continued.

“If I do this,” he muttered lowly, the hand that was over my heart slowly, agonizingly slowly, trailed up my chest, to my shoulder, my neck, then back down to graze his fingers over the glowing stone again. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to control myself.” He looked up at me properly again, pupils dilated, gaze so intense and heavy that I could feel it in my bones. His face was an inch away from mine and he raised his other hand up to cup my cheek, fingers pressing into my skin. “I won’t be able to stop.”

My forehead rested against his own. Less than an inch, now, and with one final push, I grazed my fingers against his shoulder, eyes lidded, and lips parted in waiting.

“...Then don’t.”

And with that, my back was slammed harshly against the wall and Vakama crushed his mouth to mine in a passionate, searing kiss, metallic lips stealing away the remaining air that left my lungs as he dug his fingers into my waist and cast aside any last fears or cares he had- he wanted all of me, and I was his to claim, willingly and whole. The grip I had on his shoulders tightened until my knuckles practically turned white and I kissed him back with such ferocity and hunger that I could feel the air around us, heavy and thick with carnal urges and desires, and it threatened to completely consume me and swallow me whole.

But I didn’t give a single damn in the world. -- I may not be a solely/mainly self-ship blog anymore but that doesn't mean for one second that I won't gush nonstop about Bionicle (and by extension Vakama who is still one of the loves of my fucking life). This comic-style page I got commissioned of one of the pivotal moments from Chapter Two of my fanfic, A Distant Spark, is probably one of my favorite things ever- I absolutely screamed when I got the finished thing back. <3 (Art is by @MadProjectArt on Twitter/X!)

[rhiannonkthomas]

Revisiting Rent

When I was a teenager, I was obsessed with Rent. So when the show’s 20th anniversary tour came to my city in the UK, I bought tickets immediately. And then I worried, for several weeks, that I would end up hating it.

Even as a teen, I knew that Rent was a little rough around the edges. It always had some clunky lines – “I hate the fall”?? – and an anticlimactic ending. But now, I was ten years older, with rent of my own to pay, and an awareness of the fact that it might all just seem pretentious now. It’s a musical about New York City artists who refuse to pay rent because that would mean getting Real Jobs. I’d watch it, and I’d side with Benny, and roll my eyes at these supposed bohemian artists.

I was right in one sense. Rent was a very different experience than when I was it as a teenager. But in some ways, it was actually better.

When I was a teen, Rent was an explosion of rebellion and individuality. It was people fighting convention and living the life that they chose. They triumphed over circumstance with the cry of “No Day but Today.”

Now I know that Rent isn’t about triumph, but defiance. The world is bleak, and the characters cannot change their circumstances, no matter how hard they fight. They make terrible choices. Roger is a recovering drug addict who ends up in a relationship with a current drug addict. Mimi declares in Happy New Year that she’s going to have a fresh start, but the song ends on the bleak note that, actually, she can’t leave it behind after all. Almost everyone is dying, and they can’t do anything to stop it.

Partly, this shift is just me having a deeper understand of what Rent is actually supposed to be about. I’m a rural British girl who was 8 years old when Rent came out. I first discovered it in 2005. I can’t say for sure, but it’s highly possible that this musical was the thing that taught me what AIDS even was. And even then, I didn’t really know what the AIDS crisis was, or the implications of it. So coming back to the musical as an older individual made me see more clearly what Rent is about at its heart, and why it was so insanely popular and important when it came out.

My understanding of the musical did shift with my older, more cynical perspective, but again, not in a bad way. When I was a teen, Joanne was boring, and Maureen was vibrant. As an adult, Joanne is the person to emulate, and Maureen is insufferable… but she’s meant to be. The musical isn’t uncritical of its La Vie Boheme, an attitude embodied by the homeless woman who yells at Mark for filming her and pointedly asks if he has a dollar, which, of course, he doesn’t. As a teen, I thought it was possible that the line meant, “You’re not all that much better than me. You don’t HAVE a dollar to spare.” Of course, now I see that the line is, “You’re not that much better than them.” He has a dollar, but he’s not going to give it to her. He wants to feel self-righteous and caring, but is he, really?

And outside that old gung-ho teenage perspective, Rent does feel like a more nuanced show. Benny is still completely unsympathetic, but he also isn’t entirely wrong. The New York City seen in the musical is incredibly dangerous. Twenty years later, and I’ve walked around SoHo at 1am and felt completely safe. That safety is part of what Benny’s arguing for. But, as the musical makes clear, some people were crushed during that transformation. There are multiple sides to the issue. Benny has every right to ask Mark and Roger to pay rent. But is he a decent person, asking them for the past year’s rent that he said they wouldn’t have to pay, while one of his former close friends is so depressed that he hasn’t left the house in seven months?

Sure, Joanne should probably ditch the whole lot of them, or else become besties with Collins, the only other person with maturity and a steady sense of responsibility. But if you see Rent not as a story of how great these characters are in their artistic, non-rent-paying world, but of how lost they all are, in a world that’s cold to their suffering, it remains an emotionally powerful story. Almost every character in the musical needs serious help in some way, but they have to get by with just one another.