it's customary for WISE agents to meet with their handlers in an open environment to avoid suspicion , usually a nice little café just outside of the city. their conversations would appear pleasant as they drink their coffees , but within the words lies a secret code stashed between each verb & noun , allowing for the passage of information to safely cross one another without anyone else knowing any better. while their meetings are work related , twilight would not be able to deny that he does enjoy these moments spent with @satellitewar. in between their secret messages are real conversations about who they are outside of their work , what it was like working with sebastian at treadstone before she became apart of WISE & vice versa. slowly all the pieces of the puzzle that is emily kelso is finally coming together & loid rather likes that she's the one handing the pieces over to him one by one each time they meet. he's a master spy ━━ he could easily retrieve her file & figure out everything about her for himself , but that would be less enjoyable for him. the fact that she herself is telling him these things means there is trust between them ━━ one that goes beyond their work partnership. he covets that trust more than anything right now & he plans to keep it sacred for as long as she decides to keep trusting him.
today they are speaking about their humble beginnings , already having finished going over intel about his latest mission. emily speaks about having been in the field herself once upon a time & loid hides a smile as he drinks his coffee , listening earnestly to her past adventures. ❝ did you think i had it in me ? ❞ emily's coy & teasing lilt is admittedly music to loid's ears. his smile comes easier whenever he's around her & it's becoming harder to keep his stoic persona intact whenever they meet in person. one sentence from her & his walls come crumbling down , but rather than try to hastily build them back up again , he allows her to do this. these feelings are dangerous . . . he shouldn't allow himself to enjoy their meetings , but he hasn't had this sort of happiness in so long. perhaps sebastian is right . . . he should allow himself something. perhaps someone. ❝ oh , i have no doubt you were brilliant in the field , ❞ loid offers politely , his smile gentle & soft ━━ a rare sight to be seen. ❝ i do think you're much better suited at the computer. you have an intelligence that is unmatched by other agents. you see things that i cannot & have saved me countless times. i wouldn't be here with you if not for your guidance , honestly. ❞ another sip of his coffee , surprised by how easily compliments leave his lips whenever he's around her. ❝ is this what you plan to do for the remainder of your career ? please don't see this as me wanting you to leave , i'd never want that . . . ❞ absolutely not. ❝ i only mean that . . . you're so smart , miss ━━ i mean , emily. you seem much better suited for bigger things. better things , if you don't mind me saying. ❞
Based on what the subtle dialog in his backstory implies about what the slave masters used him for...I can't bring myself to imagine Aventurine as being totally normal about intimacy...😩
if aziraphale doesn't grab crowley by his gay little scarf in season 3 then what's the point. why does he even wear it. take that shit off if it's not important to the plot
I think I should say that here Smoker allies with Straw Hats again over some shared enemy. It takes place after months and numerous interactions into Zoro's and Smoker's acquaintance with each other. So at this point they're far from strangers, both have long agreed that outside of instances where Smoker's threatening Luffy's safety, they're no enemies
Smoker knew enough about Zoro to be certain that he won't strike him outside of a fair battle, which is why his guard was lowered enough for his alarm to set off with a delay when Zoro grabbed him, only partially turning to smoke before his thought process is halted
"I have many fears, most of them about Lucrezia."
— Cesare Borgia (The Borgias, 2011-2013) + hints of insecurity
that she adores someone that much / if she will reject his dark nature and act of love and violence as Ursula did / if he truly is not part of her desires / that she easily forgets him
I’ve grown to appreciate the aus where Shen Yuan enters the story as “Shen Yuan” - same name, probably similar face, generally able to interact with PIDW as himself and change the story through his added presence. I like the sense of “if only you’d been here, things might have been better the first time around” of it all.
And I was thinking, it’s a funny coincidence in that scenario that someone named Shen Yuan gets put into… another Shen Yuan. What are the chances? What a weird twist of fate that Airplane would pick out the name that his most dedicated critic could slip into seamlessly.
What about a version where it’s not coincidence at all?
Airplane goes to school with a kid named Shen Yuan. He’s prickly and hard to approach and a little intense, but Airplane is persistent. In fairness, Airplane is relentless - and maybe it’s a good thing that they end up being friends, because they’re a little too much for anyone else to handle. They balance each other out. They’re the “weird kids” in class and they’re okay with that, because even when they don’t have any words for it, they know they’re not like their classmates, not really. That’s okay; they don’t want to be.
Recesses and breaks are consumed with the elaborate stories that Airplane wants to tell, and all the holes Shen Yuan pokes into them. It’s not mean-spirited, though, even though Shen Yuan isn’t the kind to temper his words. It’s passionate. He cares about those stories the way Airplane cares about them, and it can’t be mistaken for anything else when they lean together conspiratorially across the lunchroom table. They’ve both got notebooks filled with details and characters and monsters. Shen Yuan’s practically got a whole bestiary sketched out in wobbly childhood attempts at art, entries fervently scrawled beside them. Airplane prattles out plots nonstop, always with the promise of shining eyes and being asked “what happens next?”
They come up with a whole world together. Airplane’s going to write about it someday. Shen Yuan is going to read every word.
Shen Yuan misses school. Shen Yuan starts missing school a lot.
Airplane goes to the hospital room instead. He doesn’t think to worry, because Shen Yuan is okay - that’s what he says. He looks okay, and he’s a kid, and it doesn’t feel real that anything bad should happen to a kid. He doesn’t think to worry. He doesn’t think to say goodbye.
It’s one of the older Shen brothers who catches him on the way up to the room one day, in the hallway just outside - snaps at him to go the fuck home, and when Airplane hesitates, pushes him into the elevator and tells him not to come back. “Tells” is a generous way to describe the way the words come out - a growl, a hiss, the sound an animal would make when a hand got too close to a wound.
(It’s not fair to name a villain after him, even if the name never really comes up in the story. He wasn’t trying to be mean. He’d lost a brother minutes before, and he was getting his brother’s friend out of the way so he didn’t have to… see. It isn’t fair, but then, none of it is fair.)
Death feels very real after that.
The notebooks get shoved into a closet, and it’s not until Airplane’s moving out and one falls on him from a high shelf that he thinks about it again. He’s written things, lots of things, but nothing as ambitious as this - nothing as important. It could be good, he considers. He’d promised. Shen Yuan wanted to read it.
The problem was that no one else does, not for a long time, not until Airplane has whittled himself and his art into a corner and into such an unfamiliar shape that he has to wonder how it’s still his own face he sees in the mirror. He has to eat. He has to pay rent. Shen Yuan would yell at him, but Shen Yuan isn’t there to yell at him, and who cares. Who cares if it could have been better? The people who actually are here love it, and it’s paying his bills, and sometimes stories don’t go the way they’re supposed to and the world is fucking unfair. It doesn’t matter.
(It does. But he shoves that thought away along with styrofoam cups and soda bottles to the bottom of a garbage bag.)
Authors are not gods and their power is limited, but Airplane exercises just a sliver of what he’s been granted and gifts an inconsequential sort of immortality. He thinks about making him a rogue cultivator, maybe the kind that goes around documenting beasts and compiling his findings. He thinks about making him someone too powerful for death to touch, or too important to threaten, but when Airplane looks at the world he crafted and everything that’s become of it, it feels like the kindest thing he can do for Shen Yuan is a childhood where he’s loved, and a death that’s peaceful. What does it say about that world, that he’d kill off his best friend too early again instead of making him live there?
(The best writing he ever does is the only, shining moment of humanity that his scum villain ever displays: a lament about death that comes too early, about a brother gone too soon. The commenters praise him. The commenters flatter over how real the emotions feel. The commenters don’t get any response from Airplane on that chapter.)
Death is incredibly real when it comes for him too early, too, still hovering over his keyboard with the story technically finished and incredibly incomplete. Airplane could tell himself that’s because the written version can never be the version in the writer’s head, always shifting and with every possibility still on the table, but he knows better than that. The System knows better than that, with its condescending message about “improving” his writing and “closing plot holes” and “achieving his original vision”...
…and he’s a child again. He’s a child in his own story, he’s Shang Qinghua now without the benefit yet of a peak or cultivation or anything, and maybe he’s a little bitter, and a little scared, and…
And Shen Yuan - with longer hair, with robes, with a couple of older kids watching him from across the street, but undeniably the prickly little boy who used to sit down imperiously across from him and tell him everything that was wrong with the chuck of writing that had been handed to him last period, but with that smile that said he was only invested because he knew it could be better and they were going to make it better - marches up to him with a fire in his eyes and a frown that warns of a coming tirade.
“You told it wrong,” is the first thing he says.
Shang Qinghua wants to ask how him how he’s here, how this is possible, or maybe laugh because, yeah - yeah, Shen Yuan has no goddamn idea how wrong he got absolutely everything.
(Shang Qinghua wants to say “I missed you” and “why did you leave so soon” but he’s here now. He’s right here.)
“I know,” he says instead. “I’m sorry. It all kind of… spiraled out of control.”
Shen Yuan frowns, but then it dissipates the way it always does, and his eyes shine with ideas the way they always used to. “That’s okay,” he relents, grabbing for his hand. “We’ll fix it. We’ll make it what it was supposed to be.”
"the strike is gonna kill my favorite shows" babe okay if you don't want to think about the human livelihoods at stake (you should really be thinking about the humans though) like. think about what happens after this. when writing pays you enough to eat; more people get to be writers. more stories. more interesting plots and ideas. think about what gets made when artists aren't starving.
you've been complaining for years that tv is going downhill. part of that is because the writers aren't paid enough - a screenwriter needs to be able to live with a very low paycheck while being virtually anonymous, so as a profession it self-selects for a very slim number of people. part of bad writing is burnout and the absolutely criminal amount of influence corporations have over scripts. writing is actually a craft, despite what people who love chatGPT will tell you - and, as a craft; it takes time, diligence, and support.
and yes, i understand. you have a connection to a piece of media, which is what writers want. but we regret to inform you that your blorbo is as real as the image in the mirror - is your reflection actually you? can the reflection ever show anything but the truth? as writers, our work is the reflection. you can't keep throwing our bodies under buses and then being shocked that our work is bitter, 2d, "needs revision". imagine what gets made when the artist is inspired and has the time, space, energy, and fucking budget to actually make what makes them happy.
i love you so much. but also, really - and for real - before anything else, please remember it's human livelihoods at stake.
Huzzah! It's birthday time! I'm slowly accumulating more and more things I like (latest additions this vest I made and a travel typewriter! Still need to fix the latter one though)
The eye of Uroplatus garamaso, the new gecko species my colleagues and I described yesterday. Check out that weird pupil! Four little diamonds in a chain.
also known as ”local woman is roused to learn editing to deliver everyone this fandom classic” (the video's synced better on desktop)
transcription/video description under the cut:
[video description: a fan video/edit of amc’s ”interview with the vampire” by tumblr user @eternalstateofoctober (me!!) set to a shortened version of lenka’s ”everything at once”. the video clips are cut to the rhythm of the song and its changing lyrics. the song is catchy and upbeat with a light, bouncy rhythm and a whimsical but also slightly melancholic vibe at times. it has a steady beat with repeating piano notes and some xylophone. the video clips are muted so only the song is playing, save for a few voiceover lines and sound effects.
(instrumental intro, repeating piano notes)
the théâtre des vampires orchestra starts playing and another member checks the projector. a watermark with the username @eternalstateofoctober flashes on screen and disappears at the same time as a projector light flickers.
🎵 as sly as a fox 🎵
two clips of daniel after the trial script reveal. first he tosses the script to louis, then he pushes his glasses up and casts a hard look at an off-screen armand.
🎵 as strong as an ox 🎵
armand uses the mind gift to make the coven fall asleep at the dinner table in 2x04, voiceover of him yelling ”enough!” angrily and banging the table. table settings clattering. then lestat using the mind gift at the trial to manipulate louis’ sentence. his left ear starts bleeding. VO lestat: ”banishment...”
🎵 as fast as a hare 🎵
louis sprints at daniel in ’73, making him stumble back.
🎵 as brave as a bear 🎵
clips of young daniel being tortured by armand. first he lifts his gaze, then there’s two clips of him being slammed down by armands powers. last clip is him closing his eyes while armand holds his face. VO of daniel’s grunts and whimpers.
🎵 as free as a bird 🎵
claudia on stage as baby lu mimes opening a window made of projections happily.
🎵 as neat as a word 🎵
claudia writes in her diary in season 1, the clip has a double exposure effect with her pen moving on the page.
🎵 as quiet as a mouse 🎵
a wide shot of the sewers the children of darkness inhabit.
🎵 as big as a house 🎵
establishing shot of the théâtre des vampires building. suddenly the screen flashes black and there’s a quick flickering shot of the talamasca logo on daniel’s laptop screen and a glitching sound effect.
🎵 as mean as a wolf 🎵
close-up of santiago on stage in 2x02, he looks right at the audience seductively.
🎵 as sharp as a tooth 🎵
shots of the vamps baring their fangs. lestat ripping the priests throat out in 1x01, claudia in madeleine’s shop, louis in ’73 showing off to daniel, armand hissing at lestat in 2x03.
🎵 as deep as a bite 🎵
extreme close-up of lestat biting louis at the altar.
🎵 as dark as the night 🎵
madeleine lights a candle that illuminates her face during a power outage. she’s watched from outside her shop window by a curious claudia.
🎵 as sweet as a song 🎵
young daniel embraces armand after armand has manipulated him to accept death. armand strokes his hair and there’s armand’s calm whisper as a voiceover: ”i’ll hold you…”
🎵 as right as a wrong 🎵
claudia’s real turning. lestat looks up from an off-screen louis who’s begging on his knees. in the second clip he’s kneeling next to claudia on the floor and lifting her upper body while louis’ back is still turned to them.
🎵 as long as a road 🎵
louis’ finger taps a spot on a map in the warzone.
🎵 as ugly as a toad 🎵
the vampire bruce cocking his head.
🎵 as pretty as a picture, hanging from a fixture 🎵
lestat’s portrait hangs on the wall in the théâtre’s green room in 2x02, jumpcut to it in flames in 2x08.
🎵 strong like a family 🎵
the de pointe du lac and frenière families pose for a portrait at grace’s wedding. the clip changes to the next with the camera’s flash going off.
🎵 strong as i wanna be 🎵
VO Madeleine: ”mais j'ai survécu.” (”but i survived” in french). shots of madeleine’s past, the trial by mob. extreme close-up of her crying face, the angry crowd surrounding her, her screaming while her hair is shorn. the segment ends with her throwing an iron through her shop window where a group of locals has just painted a swastika. sound effect of glass shattering.
🎵 bright as day, as light as play 🎵
madeleine’s vision of claudia as she’s turned. claudia in a yellow dress in madeleine’s shop, smiling to the camera—at madeleine—and turning to the mirror. the whole scene basks in warm, bright afternoon light.
🎵 as hard as nails 🎵
grace looks up at a slightly off-screen louis in 1x05, a hard, difficult look. they are at louis’ fake grave at night and grace is holding a funeral bouquet.
🎵 as grand as a whale 🎵
two clips after one another. first is louis being buried alive in 2x07, a silent scream as the rocks rush to cover his face. second one is his feet stepping onto the rocks in the penthouse’s sundial room. VO old daniel: ”where’s your coffin?”
(the music quiets and slows down slightly for the next line.)
🎵 as warm as the sun 🎵
close-up of claudia burning in the sun at the trial. she is turning into ash but still looks at an off-screen lestat.
🎵 as silly as fun 🎵
several clips in rapid succession. murder family laughing at a movie theatre, them dancing together—holding hands, claudia cheering riding the sidecar of a motorcycle in paris during the théâtre’s group hunting, armand smirking wearing malek’s glasses, vamp daniel’s tv interview, him laughing at the host.
🎵 as cool as a tree 🎵
real rashid steps slightly forward, hands clasped behind his back with a neutral expression.
🎵 as scary as the sea 🎵
two clips of armand in ’73. first his eyes shake as he slams daniel down with his powers in the background, then him turning slowly—eyes wide—to face daniel that’s sitting in front of him.
🎵 as hot as fire 🎵
three clips showing fire in the show. first: daciana throwing herself into the flames, second: armand’s fire gift, him looking at a flame in his hand, third: the théâtre’s fire starting behind louis as he looks into claudia’s mirror backstage. the mirror reads ”tweedily deedily dead”.
🎵 cold as ice 🎵
louis cuts off santiago’s head, louis smirking, looking down. VO: louis’ satisfied chuckle.
🎵 sweet as sugar and everything nice 🎵
VO louis and old daniel: ”would you like a sample?” ”i’m a savory man most days.” with first a clip of armand-as-rashid’s blissful expression as louis drinks from him at the dinner table in 1x05, then three clips of sweet treats: the strawberry dessert from 1x02 being set in front of daniel, daniel taking a bite of it, then young daniel sipping his grasshopper at mary’s. the clip ends with old daniel’s hand pushing his coffee cup forward, requesting a refill.
🎵 as old as time 🎵
armand stares at a painting depicting him in the louvre, eyes wide, brows slightly furrowed, head slightly turned.
🎵 as straight as a line 🎵
the recording on daniel’s laptop flatlining, him looking at armand, armand smiling warmly at him.
🎵 as royal as a queen 🎵
lestat basks in all his king raj mardi gras costume glory, he smiles widely up at the camera positioned above his head.
🎵 as buzzed as a bee 🎵
lestat on stage in 2x03, wiggling his shoulders, smiling playfully, flipping his coat tails up and bending over for the audience.
🎵 as stealth as a tiger 🎵
estelle and celeste spying on louis and claudia in paris.
🎵 smooth as a glider 🎵
armand floats up the louvre floors as louis and dreamstat take the stairs.
🎵 pure as a melody, pure as i wanna be 🎵
first, a shot of louis and paul dancing at grace’s wedding, smiling at each other. then, a close-up of paul sitting of the roof, turning to look at an off-screen louis as the screen slowly fades to black and another watermark appears. the voiceover is paul and louis’: ”i love you, louis.” ”i love you too, baby brother.”