#also a little allusion to a man called hawk

[star-trekster]

Have you ever danced with the devil

In the pale moonlight?

[effieandtim]

ok now let's speculate on what other sex and or kinky stuff they'll have in the future eps 😈 since many articles and reviews emphasize how they didn't want to repeat stuff and had to get creative by the end. spoilerish but i think one review/article mentions a threesome, which could be between anyone, not necessarily tim, hawk plus a third man (so i wouldn't call it a spoiler exactly but whatever). i think rimming is a sure bet, how are they not gonna have that. they're for sure going to reverse power dynamics between tim and hawk, i think they'd want to explore that, since they also talked a lot about it. they already had foot stuff and armpit licking in the very first ep, I'm a little apprehensive how they outdo that lol 👀

this doesnt seem like a spoiler so i will leave it as it is

omg nonnie not you betting on rimming😭 well its def possible but after reading the reviews and watching the first episode, i am sure it will be well done

like the armpit and foot scenes sounded weird when the reviews came out but tbh they were very, very well done and got the point about power dynamics across. like THATS how you shoot a good erotic scene and utilise the chemistry of your actors

i did see the allusions to a threesome yeah, not sure which ep its in but possibly the 70s.

yeah i read early on in i think the variety article that came out in june that tim and hawk will switch positions to show how their dynamic has evolved, and to show their character development. i am honestly v eager to see after watching the first ep bc i am sure its gonna be masterfully handled

i would also like to see small moments of intimacy that aren’t explicit but like small gestures, i dont know if they would fit in the narrative but we’ll see i guess. but of course, since the explicit scenes are well handled, i am eager to see what more they have done with those

[honeybeezx]

Armor - Oberyn Martell x Reader x Ellaria Sand - Part 1

Author’s Note: Hey everyone! So this is the first fic I’ve ever posted on tumblr, low key kinda scary😄 But this man and his paramour have been on my mind for the longest. This is a self insert fic, but I don’t really use “Y/N”. Hope you enjoy and any feedback would be great!

Summary: You are an assassin hired by Tyrion to act as extra security alongside Bronn. He brings you back to King’s Landing just as the boy king Jeoffry Baratheon plans to marry the cunning Margaery Tyrell. But with all the guests roaming around, you begin to wonder who is a friend and who is a foe. No one makes you wonder more than the famed prince from Dorne and his captivating paramour.

Word Count: 2.6k

Warnings: mentions of murder, allusions to sex

—————

You never knew anything in the seven kingdoms could make you feel so small. It wasn’t as if you’d ever let it show. You held your head high, walking alongside Tyrion as both of you entered the great hall of the throne room, Bronn on the opposite side of your employer. The Red Keep was even bigger than you had imagined it to be. The throne room was the tallest room you had ever seen. Against the dark ceiling the columns looked as if they stretched up into the night sky.

Every eye in the palace was on the three of you, and you felt no one’s eyes more than Cersei’s. You held her gaze. A woman who lived in luxury her whole life did not frighten you. She may have influence, but you had experience, strength, freedom, and skill with your bow that you were now acutely aware was strapped to your back. Having the protection of Tyrion’s influence and connections and Bronn’s strength and skill with a sword brought a sense of comfort, allowing you to remain calm under such scrutinizing gaze.

“Brother.” Cersei greeted with a soft smile that failed to hide all the vileness in her heart. “You come with friends.”

“Oh no, more like bodyguards. We have so many enemies now a days sister, I like to know I’m protected.” Tyrion smirked, leaving Bronn chuckling. You, on the other hand, would not let your intimidating demeanor fade, remaining as stoic and unyielding as the stone columns that held up the palace you wished to see fall. “May I introduce Bronn, Lord of Highgarden and-“

“Yes, I know all about the Silver Hawk from the North. I wonder if you are half as good as they say you are.” She mocked, her tone anything but genuinely curious. “I am told that you can hit your target 200 meters away and steal their breath before they even know what hit them.” If you didn’t know any better you’d think she was impressed, even if she did look at you as if you were the lowest creature she ever beheld.

“Perhaps I will have an opportunity to display my skills while I am here, your grace.” You’ll see first hand when my arrow is aimed just above your crooked neck.

“Perhaps.” She replied, feigning as much sweetness as a ferrel cat.

The both of you narrowed your eyes at each other. There was no outright exchange of harsh words or petty language, but the furious tension between the two of you was enough to fill the entire hall with uncomfortable silence. You hoped your unyielding gaze scared her. You wondered how many people actually defied her, you wondered how long it would take to get under her skin.

“Yes, well.” Tyrion interrupted, knowing you were bubbling with anger. Cersei was too, and although you allowed her to see your own emotions, it please you a bit to know you could anger her just as easy. You hated Lannisters almost more than anything, but you also knew Cersei’s time would come. She would pay for her crimes, fate would decide her end. You knew that fate had not brought you here to slay the queen regent, as much as you despised her. “As much as I love chatting with you sister, I simply wanted our arrival to be known. We have much unpacking to do and much to discuss.”

“Be careful, little brother.” She warned. “Your guard has little reserve and it seems your little silver hawk has a silver tongue as well. You would be wise to remember that people have been killed for that and less.”

“I’ll be sure to keep very close watch over them.” Tyrion retorted sarcastically before turning on his heal and exiting the great hall. You and Bronn followed, the later unable to contain his amusement.

“I’d say that went well!” He quipped, smiling at both you and your employer.

“She didn’t call to chop off our heads, that is some relief.” Tyrion noted. “But you both must be careful, especially you.” His scrutinizing gaze met yours.

“What? You expected me to just let her try and hold some dominate power over me? Just because she is draped in finest jewels in the seven realms and hides behind the her father’s influence does not mean I will tremble like a child before her.”

Tyrion sighed. “You must, for now, hold your tongue. Your wit does you credit, that’s why I like you, but you must check yourself. My sister is more dangerous than you can imagine. Don’t tremble, but don’t overstep either.” You remembered that Tyrion had been playing the game his whole life, he was basically born into it. He knew his sister better than anyone, and that meant he knew how to get around her better than anyone. You made a note to observe exactly what made Cersei tick, what made her preen under her usually reserved demeanor.

Despite the warm tones of the palace, you felt as though you were walking on ice. One wrong step and you were dead under a frozen tundra. You didn’t like this at all. Tyrion promised your freedom would not be at risk, yet you felt the freedom to speak your mind, the freedom to do as you pleased slip from you more and more. You were being watched here, you weren’t stupid. Every move had to be calculated, every word like honey laced with poison. The faster the boy king could marry, the less people there were for you to worry about. It made you uncomfortable not knowing who was an ally and who was a foe. The one thing you could appreciate about Cersei was that you always knew where you stood with her.

“I will try to remain civil if she approaches me, otherwise I will avoid your sister to the best of my abilities. But she would be wise not to challenge my reserve.” I huffed, earning a laugh from Bronn.

“Your reserve, little hawk, will be undone, whether it be from your words or your arrows.” He teased. You gave him a shove and he stumbled a bit, but not much. The last thing you needed was the oaf calling you “little”.

“The sooner we are out of this horrid place the better.” You huffed.

“I agree,” Tyrion agreed, nodding in understanding, “but don’t hold your breath. There is so much to be done before my nephew’s wedding and I will be relying on both of you to help me. While I am arranging more intimate details with my family, you two will be protecting me, but also doing some side tasks that I will not have time for. Bronn, for the most part you will be either at my side or Shae’s. If the palace discovers her they will use her against me. She can’t be found.”

Shae, Tyrion’s lover of sorts. You had grown close to her on your travels. You were wary at first. Your job was to protect Tyrion, naturally, you were cautious of anyone who might try to hurt him, to get close to him only for information or power. But it was a tough business, out spying a spy, and all your instincts told you to trust Shae. She had not left any of you astray thus far, and though the couple had not named their relationship, you could tell Tyrion and Shae cared immensely for each other. But Tyrion was right, she could be used as a pawn against him, especially if Cersei found out.

There was a sort of kinship between you and Shae. You were both strong, clever women, and she had tended to the few wounds you found yourself with on your travels. She seemed like a sister, and you were grateful for the company and friendship she provided.

“As for our favorite archer, you will be assisting some guests, getting information. I want to know the people attending this wedding, I want to ensure that this wedding goes smoothly. The Tyrell’s are a powerful ally, we cannot lose them.”

You nodded in understanding. Tyrion hired you to protect him, yes, but archery was not your only strength. You could be quiet, and you could listen as well as you could speak. You knew he would ask that of you with all the guests roaming around. You were curious to know what King’s Landing was really like, and even more interested in knowing the people who came here. “Ask it of me and it will be done.”

“Aye.” Bronn agreed.

“You are the most trusted of friends.” Tyrion gave the smallest of smiles. You were hesitant to even be in his service when the lord found you and offered you a job, afraid of losing your freedom. You knew the Lannisters, you knew their foul and power-hungry disposition. Being in their service seemed to you signing your life away. You were surprised to find he did not wish to take such things from you. He hired both you and Bronn to protect him, yes, but he would do the same for you both. You were an odd sort of family, but a family nonetheless. “Get settled and rested for the evening, we’ve had a long journey. We will reconvene later to discuss further plans.”

You nodded and left to your new chamber, one just across from Bronn and down the hall from Tyrion.

The trio was still not aware of the Red Viper slithering about the halls.

——————

Days passed with little to do. You hadn’t seen much of Tyrion. Since your arrival at King’s Landing your employer had become hand to his nephew king and married the pretty Stark girl you later learned was named Sansa. Still, you found ways to spend your time, keeping eyes and ears open for any useful information. You were particularly interested in Joffrey. It was astounding how a little boy could hold so much power, so much evil. You figured he inherited his terror from his mother.

Sansa was an interesting girl as well. Your heart broke for her. She was nothing if not resilient, staying loyal to her betrothed if only to keep herself alive. She was smart, you learned, but not useful when attempting to gather information. She did not deny her loyalty to Joffrey, even to those she liked. You were grateful that Tyrion stepped in to propose to the poor girl, if only to save her from the tyrant king. Both you and Shae kept close eyes on her. She was as smart and clever as Shae and yourself. You had a sneaking suspicion that she could be a close ally, if only your little family could get her away from the palace.

But today was different. Today you left your quarters to explore the palace a bit. You wanted to know what sort of battleground you were working with. It seemed surprising that a palace that was so heavily targeted was so...open. It seemed like light could illuminate any room. Even the gloomy and foreboding throne room could not escape a few beams of sunlight. If you didn’t despise every Lannister crawling about the palace, you had a mind to stay. The palace was only under the allusion of being warm and charming, the people who inhabited it ruined any chance of it being a lovely place. You noticed that the open windows and balconies made perfect outlooks should you need to eliminate a threat with one of your silver arrows.

But for now, the open windows became your place of peace as you ate a bowl of berries, just watching the rest of the sunrise. You saw the sun just barely grace the city with its light before you were called into Tyrion’s chambers. You arrived promptly, Bronn stumbling in a few minutes after you. You rolled your eyes at his lack of punctuality, which only earned you a playful nudge from the Lord of Highgarden.

“Behave you two. I swear I am dealing with children.” Shae huffed, but you could tell behind her sharp features was an air of mischief. Still, you straightened up and diverted your full attention to Tyrion.

“Well, much has happened. Prince Oberyn has arrived in The Capital. I visited him yesterday morning and he made it very clear that he wants to kill any Lannister that he sets his sights on. My father apparently ordered the death of his sister and her children. Our goal, for now, is to keep him happy, to keep him entertained. Bronn, your job will be to appear inconspicuous as you keep a watchful eye over my quarters, make sure no one goes in or out.” He ordered.

Shae huffed. “I’m perfectly capable of handling myself thank you.” She huffed.

“No one disputes that my dear.” Tyrion chuckled. You remember watching Shae stab a man she did not want for laying a finger on her. “I’m not worried about you. But my sister and my king nephew are very powerful. They will know how to use you against me.” He explained. Shae still was not pleased with the idea, but she relented.

“As for our hawk,” he turned to you and gave you a list with names you did not recognize, “you will present these girls to Prince Oberyn in my place. You will tell him that royal duties as the king’s new hand have prevented me from revisiting him, but you hope he enjoys the whores as a welcoming gift to King’s Landing.”

“Excuse me?!” You snapped your eyes narrowing in on your employer. “I am not a squire whose job is to bring in girls for spoiled princes!”

“Do not think of it as that.” Tyrion poured himself a glass of wine, knowing that he should chose his next words very carefully. He could feel your eyes burning into him. “Consider it a diplomatic mission. Besides, the prince wishes to meet you. The legends of the Silver Hawk have reached so far as Dorne and he is eager to make your acquaintance. This is the perfect opportunity for the both of you.”

You still weren’t pleased. “So I am now to serve as entertainment for the prince of Dorne.” You sighed and shook your head. “I am only staying long enough to bring him the girls, then I’m leaving.”

“Fine,” Tyrion relented. “But you will be cordial to the prince. Don’t be deceived by his charming words, he stabbed one of my cousins for a few unkind, brutish remarks. I don’t want to know what he’ll do when he hears your fire-laced words.” If it weren’t such a serious situation, Tyrion might have been amused to hear you use your wit against a prince, but the prince’s history with the Lannisters was anything but a joke.

“I’m sure she can handle herself. Hawks have talons after all.” Shae teased, but squeezed your arm affectionately. You offered a kind smile, but you still loathed this plan.

“That’s what I’m afraid of.” Tyrion rubbed his temple like the very thought of you getting into trouble was enough to send him over the edge.

You relented and chuckled a little before placing a hand on your friend’s shoulder. “I will be on my best behavior, but only because you will worry yourself ill.” You teased. “It can’t be too bad if I just deliver your message and leave. I better get going though. Can’t leave a prince waiting.” You snorted. As if you cared what a prince thought.

————————

Oberyn Martell lied in his temporary bed at the brothel, Ellaria Sand at his right, a blond haired boy on his left. He was the picture of lustful bliss, his golden chest glistened as the small rays of light entered the sinful den. But the prince was quiet deep in thought as he started out into the empty space before them. All the pleasure the brothel had to offer could not break his focus.

“Your thoughts are too loud, my prince.” Ellaria chided as she placed a kiss to his chest. “Tell me.”

Even then, Oberyn still could not break his thoughts of you, but he ran a hand through his paramour’s raven curls in acknowledgment. “I think I found our third partner.”

Next Chapter

[perlen-gold]

Twenty-Four Hours

@14daysdalovers

Prompt: Day 9 - Breathless Kisses

Pairing: M!Hawke x Fenris

Fenris bristled at the hunt, then slew the creature with accurate efficiency. As Hawke approaches him his viridian eyes detach themselves from the shadows like pair of bright emeralds, even before the sheen of silver of his man-high greatsword reveals him in a deluge of darkness as a stranger and not just another shadow, no, less than a shadow and so much more than one.

“I am unable to fathom why we, you agreed to this.”

Hawke knows, of course.

He feels his vibrating self gravitating towards those eyes, hypnotized by their intensity, a fleck of dark color within a mass of charcoal blackness.

Under the shade of the hedgerow – trimmed with a masterful and punctilious, hence preposterous hand – Hawke joins him. The chateau courtyard is lit by a handful of adroit golden lamps. The warm spring air filled and skittered with the sprinkling of a white marble fountain in the center, light bathing every lane in the Orlesian garden. But this corner is swathed in utter darkness. Fenris has chosen wisely; his grafted spirit hide melts into the shadows, obsidian scales blending with the gloom.

A wild smile, a grin, Hawke feels it lifting the edges of his mouth, stretching his lips, causing his beard to prickle pleasantly.

“I do love to dress up,” Hawke tugs at the Orlesian silk stretching down his chest, light lilacs and an inkling of pink and folds of fabric billowing around his thighs, his arms swollen by creases like puffed up clouds, “Why, you cannot deny Orlesians their sense of style. I have always wanted to look like an immensely important fool.”

Fenris retorts with a grind of his teeth, however, Hawke can sense it like a sunbaked fragrance in the very air, he is also trying to hide something beyond the gentler corner of his lip.

“It takes a fool to trust this elf woman.”

Fenris averts his gaze, lours at the rarefied conglomeration of Orlesian and Ferelden nobles the Duke has wheedled into clustering in the outskirts of his pompous chateau. Fenris’ eyes are alert. Unlike Hawke he has assumed a watchful stance, that habit of his to peer around while looking behind his back repeatedly even more pronounced than usual.

“Why steal a jewel?” The dun hedge swallows Fenris’ deep voice that is fretting from his lips and askant head, roughing out the edges, the low, rich, rasping sound seeping away in the blackness until no more than a deep rich rumble remains. Of course, Hawke knows.

Then Fenris voices it. “You flirted with her.”

Neither offended nor thunderous. A statement. Fenris’ words pause over the blackness of his armor, void of allegation. A mere statement of the facts. The obvious. An question and none.

Everything in him floating and excited, on his lips Hawke’s smile has settled into a more arch and softer one. Eventually, when Fenris tears his eyes away from the festivities it is to see that, on silent feet, Hawke has stepped closer in a way that, indubitably, could never fool Fenris and his straight and frank eyes in the perseverant mass of blackness. Indelible. Indissoluble.

“Just a bit of teasing,” there is an amber laugh in Hawke’s eyes along with a wink on his lips.

A softer spark ignites within the darkness.   “I wonder who it is you tease.” The crease above Fenris’ nose deepens and multiplies while lending, maybe for the first time, an edge to the gravity of his voice … or is it just Hawke imagining things?

Fenris looks away again, eyes drawn out of the guarding shade’s darkness. A faint glow from the ascending crescent moon above them trails the arch of his brows and jawline with silver-stained fingers, a light more shade than anything, a smidgen of darkened silver trembling on his cheekbone. Closer still, hands almost touching, Hawke finally follows his gaze. To Duke Prosper, grandiloquent in his teal and golden costume complete with a snow white creature’s fur and scarlet feathered helmet (living up to his name well enough), to the ladies sumptuously gossiping away their stark lipsticks, who have by now flung unambiguous allusions at him with hungry eyelashes, and eventually to the auburn-haired elf woman waiting anxiously for him.

Underneath the vibrant armor and sable tunic in Fenris’ chest an apprehensive breath is caught in is lungs, it fills them to bursting, and then storms out again. Hawke draws closer to the hedge.

In his own chest Hawke’s breath is even, air flowing and streaming in and out with ease and leisure. Well does Hawke know it, he knows it now, this polarity of breaths; tranquility and agitation, unwound and vigorous. Familiar now. Already familiar within so short a time.

So little time and so much life, a life’s worth of breathing in it.

“How is it,” he suddenly whispers into the black shadow of the high hedge, “that the Duke guffaws even at the most boring words of mine whereas I cannot win you over to crack the tiniest smile for me today?”

At his whisper Fenris’ head snaps around, moves away again while Hawke watches his emerald eyes dart to the other side through the shadows, and Hawke’s heart warmly swells as if flooded.

It has been a delicate twenty-four hours since.

As early as now Varric is eyeing them – perceptive as ever – shooting them side-way glances with the air of someone who will not have anything hidden from him (even though this is the one sole thing Hawke never tells him) – and Hawke is eying his dwarfen friend in turn, waiting for him to give in to his itching fingers, pen and imagination running wild.

Twenty-four hours …

An evening of bitterness. A day of betrayal. A year of hope. A life of obedience. A moment of fear.

And an hour, sixty minutes, three thousand and six hundred seconds of kisses, of embracing, of muted pain, solace, avowal and bravery, of wild hearts, of a desperate, defenseless thing called love.

 No sooner, after waiting, so much waiting and hoping for him to find his way back to Hawke, no sooner had Fenris arms and lips come away from him than Hawke breathlessly gripped his trembling hand in a haze, to drag him with him onto the nocturnal streets of Hightown, to meet a waiting and disgruntled Varric at the appointed place. Pretending nothing had happened – heart ripe with explosion, madly grinning, almost giddy with joy and overcome by an adventurous recklessness.

That was when Tallis appeared. Hawke can see her thin face contorted with impatience and the same bravado which fills him. From a roof she sprang and fought and killed and smiled, telling stories of jewels and burglary.

When Fenris does not answer immediately, Hawke leans closer to his face, his voice rough and daring. “Maybe I should practice with other elves first.”

Then Hawke produces a small bronzen key from the ridiculously tiny pocket of his lustrous jacket, cocking his head. “You do not want to know what I had to do to gain this.”

His eyes twinkling with the reflections of amber lamps Hawke moves out of the dark shade of the evergreen hedge. “You and Varric keep an eye on our impressionable Duke and” – his fruity voice assumes the throaty Orlesian accent with gusto – “ ’is deer pet.”

Just before Hawke leaves, just before Varric’s prying eyes finally detect them from the other end of the garden and just before Tallis hisses “Hawke! What are we waiting for?”, Hawke’s fingers brush and linger for a brief moment on Fenris palm.

The redolent odor of some magnificent flower swims in the warm evening air.

Fenris, by contrast, still smells of the hunt. Of steel and blood, of apprehension, of wood leaf and tree bark, untarnished by the revelries and pretentious silk.

And then, all of a sudden, Fenris hand shoots forward and lungs for him. Behind the gloom-swathed hedgerow in the melting obsidian shade Hawke feels himself pulled, his mouth met by hard lips, terse teeth. The kiss is hard and short-lived, the whisper following in its wake a gnarling grunt. “You do look even more ludicrous than you sound.”

Before he can pull away again, Hawke takes Fenris’ hand and impulsively puts his wrist to his mouth for a kiss. Under the charcoal-dark armor, Hawke can feel Fenris’ heart almost give way at the touch. His laughter, rich and low, vaporizes against Fenris’ skin.

And then Fenris hands are all over his face, as though led by a desperate need to feel Hawke’s skin, fingers touching the curve of his cheekbone, the arch of his abundant brows, following the lines of his hairline. Whilst Hawke knees buckle at this, he kisses the patches of night shadows and inklings of silvered light upon Fenris’ face.

“This is stupid,” Fenris mutters softly, his delightfully low voice almost an evaporating whisper, “not stupid in the sense of silly but the most unwise and imprudent thing you have ever agreed to, Hawke.” Hawke, however, kisses each word, breathless and elated, until his name dissolves into a indissoluble smile of dark and silver.

Hawke’s answer is immediate: “Na via lerno Victoria.”

Incredulous, Fenris’ eyes widen. This Hawke observes with studied scrutiny, enjoying the effect his self-taught Tevene produces immensely. To his own amazement, then, he feels Fenris rising on his bare feet. His lips trace around his jaw with their breath, down Hawke’s chin and up the other way to his cheekbone, not kissing, plainly touching, tactually, sensing. With a soft groan Hawke captures Fenris’ hand in his. He presses first one to his mouth, then another, with exquisite tenderness, first palm, then the inside of his wrist. Tasting, desperately, underneath his skin, Fenris’ pulse which flutters and throbs.

Anew, all at once, Fenris pulls his hands out of Hawke’s grasp and pushes him out from under the shade of the hedge.

“Do not get caught, Hawke.” he growls hoarsely, note quite capable of banishing that tender, delicious gentleness out of his rumbling voice.

Hawke thereupon gives a wild laughter, replete with bliss and joy, sending a flutter of nightingales skittering into the warm, velvet night.

His lips streak with a pulsating grin. “Come and find me when I do.”

As Hawke turns back he fetches Fenris’ gaze, their eyes lock. Fenris is feeling suspicious. So is Hawke.

Fenris will not abandon his irritation and disagreement, not even for Hawke, neither his bristling at what he thinks is utter foolishness and venture. Hawke would not have it otherwise.

But.

But that daring, foolhardy, audacious, temerarious, roguish recklessness has not quite worn off yet.

Not yet.

Not yet.

____________________________________________________________

A thousand thanks to the amazing @14daysdalovers aka @scharoux for hosting this delightful event and pouring all her efforts, dedication and heart in it! Thank you so very much for your time and commitment, dear!  💗 You’re one awesome girl! 💗

[cheeriecherry]

Birds Of A Feather [5/7]

Hawks x Fem!Reader

Warnings: kissing, allusions to smut but nothing explicit

Part 5/7

The next day, you wake up early. Not so early that you’re inclined to roll over and go back to sleep, but enough that you’ll have time to make and enjoy breakfast.

Keigo is still snoozing beside you, cuddled tightly in a cocoon of soft blankets. You’re glad. After yesterday, he certainly deserves a good rest. You lean over and press a kiss to his forehead, smiling gently at his peaceful face.

After he’d kissed you last night, you’d been worried, as his piercing gaze stared down at you. Worried he didn’t mean it in the way you wanted, worried your feelings would get rejected. But he’d just looked at you with the softest expression you’d ever seen him wear, and reconnected your lips. You’d stayed on the floor for a good ten minutes, holding each other close and making out like a pair of teenagers.

He insisted you share a bed with him afterwards, in the most innocent way possible. He promised he'd sleep better with you nearby, but you knew it was just a thinly veiled excuse to spoon you. You didn’t mind.

Even now as you prepared breakfast, you felt light and airy and happy. All because of him.

“Mornin’.”

You’re frying some eggs when a sleepy voice sounds in the doorway, and you turn towards him. Keigo is there, barely awake and still rumpled from sleeping, with even his minimal feathers resembling some kind of bedhead.

“Awh, look at you, all drowsy,” you coo.

He grumbles halfheartedly, bumbling over to where you stand to kiss your cheek. He wraps his arms around your waist and sets his chin on your shoulder, peering down at the wide array of food you’re making.

“What’s the occasion?” he asks.

You hum a little and shrug. “I dunno. Figured you’d need a good meal after what happened yesterday? It might help your feathers grow back faster.”

You stay like that for a few minutes, until it comes time to flip the eggs. You shoo him to the breakfast table, and follow shortly after with your arms full of plates.

He starts heaping things onto his dish the moment you sit down, and you hide a laugh. Your mother always said that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach.

“So what do you wanna do today?” you ask, shoveling a piece of egg into your mouth.

Keigo shrugs, giving your question little consideration. “I thought movies on the couch sounded okay?”

You wonder when the last time he had a day off was, and even more so when he last did something fun. “You said we’d go out and do stuff together, Kei,” you tell him, “that’s why I agreed to take time off. Remember?”

He smiles at your nickname, his cheeks glowing a soft pink. “Fair enough. What did you have in mind?”

“I dunno...what kind of stuff haven’t you done before?”

“A lot, actually,” he chuckles dryly, “you’d think I would have seen more of the country I grew up in.”

Your heart twists a little, silently mourning for his lost childhood. You hoped he’d open up about that to you sometime in the future, even though you already had a pretty good idea of what he went through. You hoped you could be somewhere safe for him to come home to.

“How about we start with the big things you haven’t done,” you suggest around a mouthful of food, “like, things you always wanted to do?”

He thinks for a moment.

“I’ve never been to the zoo,” he says, matter-of-factly. “Or a butterfly sanctuary. I’ve never had a beach day, either, despite the fact that I have a summer home. Uh...movie theatres. Amusement parks. All that stuff.”

He pulls some pancakes onto his plate and douses them thoroughly in syrup. You smile and shake your head.

“Well, we don’t want to get swarmed by fans, as much as I love them. Maybe we could do something like the beach?”

“Yeah?” you can hear the excitement in his voice.

“Yeah. We could spend a few days in that summer house of yours.”

Keigo finishes his food quickly after that, rushing to make a few phonecalls and arrange for a ride. You remind him to also get someone to come in and stock the place with food, so the two of you won’t have to deal with the grocery store. It would be a nice, relaxing weekend. No fans invited.

----

You start packing your suitcase while he makes his calls. You have most of what you’ll need for the trip; clothes, toiletries, the like. You wonder if you should pack a set of sheets, too, but you decide against it. This was Keigo’s house you were talking about, after all. You’d bet your left arm you’d walk into the place and it would be fully furnished.

Said boyfriend wanders into the room while you’re tossing things into a duffel bag, and leans against the wall to watch you.

“What?” you ask, “do I have something on my face?”

He smiles sweetly at you, shaking his head. “Nah, you’re just really pretty. It’s gonna be nice to have some time for just us.”

You fluster slightly, warmth creeping onto your face. “Y-you can’t just say things like that!” you scold, but it’s half hearted.

“Why not? Am I not allowed to compliment my girlfriend?”

The warmth spreads down your neck, and you think for a moment that he is a smug, smug oversized chicken.

“So I’m your girlfriend, huh?” you tease, zipping your bag up and throwing it over your shoulder.

He meanders towards you and takes your face in his hands. “Yeah, you’re my girlfriend, and I plan on keeping you for a long time.” The kiss he then gives you is gentle and sweet, maybe from the syrup on his pancakes, maybe from the affection he pours into it. You sigh happily against his lips and snake your arms around his waist.

He’s warm and solid, pressed against you, lithe body holding an unexpected amount of strength. His hands travel downwards, slowly, fingertips ghosting over your neck, collarbones, stopping and hesitating at the tops of your breasts.

Ah. Ever the gentleman.

You arch against him and bite his bottom lip, and his hands continue. His grip is gentle on your chest, nimble fingers caressing soft flesh through your shirt. He groans, low in the back of his throat, and squeezes a little harder.

His kisses grow sloppier, until he’s mouthing down your neck to nip and suck at your skin.

“Keigo…” you whine, shivering at his touch, “I...I want-”

He slips a thigh between yours, and pulls you against him by the hips. You have no choice but to grind down on him, delicious friction sending pleasant shocks throughout your body.

You continue like that for a couple minutes, hands grabbing and groping at each other, slipping under shirts for better access and more sensation. You’re in heaven, wet and hot on his thigh, and you can feel that he’s in no better a condition.

But it’s not enough. Enough to drive you crazy, sure, but hardly enough to bring you over the edge. You’re about to beg him for more, for as much as he’s willing to give, when suddenly his phone starts chirping in the distance.

Keigo groans in irritation, his head dropping onto your shoulder. He slows him ministrations, touches regretfully receding from your body, and gives you a final apologetic kiss.

“Sorry, chickadee, but that would be our ride.”

You grumble at the loss of contact, mind foggy and nerves buzzing, muttering about how you’d like a different ‘ride’. “S’okay…” you say, though the disappointment is evident in your tone. “We can try again later though, right?”

He lights up like a christmas tree.

----

The drive is uneventful, peaceful even, and it’s late afternoon by the time you arrive at the beach house.

“You know, when you said ‘summer home’, I don’t know why I thought ‘cottage’.” You stare up at the building in front of you, which has to be at least three times the size of your apartment. It’s two, maybe two and a half, storeys tall, with dozens of huge windows, and an enormous front porch. The garden is meticulously maintained, filled with exotic plants, and palm trees you’re pretty sure have been imported.

It’s very over the top, and you know you should have expected it; Keigo worked hard, flew fast, and earned more money than he knew what to do with.

You wander into the front foyer together, kicking your shoes off before proceeding to the rest of the house.

From the main living area, you had a clear view and access to the backyard, and beyond that a private spit of beach and ocean. You weren’t sure how such a huge property could be as secluded as it was, but it certainly made it happen.

“Kei, why is there a pool?”

He wanders over to you, following your gaze to the aforementioned structure.

“Huh,” he says, “I didn’t know that was there.”

You close your eyes and sigh deeply. It’s fine, you’re fine, and it’s none of your business to question why there was a pool on the property when the ocean was a hundred feet from the back deck.

“You really never stayed here, have you?” you’re exasperated. “Like, did you even look at the place before you bought it?”

He at least has the decency to look sheepish. “I never had time? Even when I lose my feathers, I usually have to stay in the office and do paperwork.”

“Do you not have paperwork this time?”

“Oh, no, I do!” he smiles cheekily, “I’d just rather be here with you.”

“Keigo!”

----

You both unpack quickly, setting your clothes up in the wardrobe in your shared room. He’s packed entirely too much for a three day vacation, but you suppose he doesn’t have much experience with that. You’re also fairly certain you did the same…

Despite your overall reservation about the rich and slightly entitled atmosphere of the house, you were excited to be there. It’s been years since you’d last had a vacation, the last time possibly being your senior graduation event, and you could feel that you desperately needed time off.

Keigo sits on the edge of the bed, clad in comfortable shorts and a T-shirt, watching you sort your things out and set them in drawers.

“So...what now?” he asks.

You hang your final sun dress up, and turn to him. “Now we do whatever we want. Lounge on the beach, or the patio -though it looks like it might rain-, go swimming, decide what to make for dinner…speaking of, did you have someone stock the pantry?”

“Yeah. Fridge, too.”

“Perfect! How about you pick what to make, and help me with it?”

----

Keigo, in his chicken-loving fashion, decides on ‘fancy chicken nuggets’. You’re not exactly sure how to make that, or what would go well with it, but you’re giving it your best shot, mixing fresh spices and herbs into the floury breading.

Your boyfriend sits at the island a few feet away, watching you flit between appliances and bowls and chopping boards. He had tried to help you briefly, but proved himself rather inept at preparing food, so you’d kindly banished him out from under your feet.

“You’re a woman after my own heart,” he sighs, resting his cheek in the palm of his hand.

You peek at him over your shoulder and smile. “I swear, you’re such a dude. A nice plate of food in front of you, and you swoon.”

Mischief sparkles in his eyes. “That’s not true! I like a pretty face, too!”

“Then why the heck did you choose me?” you snicker.

Keigo doesn’t laugh. Quite the opposite, in fact. He grows unusually serious, and slides off the barstool to come stand beside you.

“You’re beautiful. You know that, right?” he asks.

You roll your eyes. “It was just a joke, Kei…”

“Self deprecating jokes have an element of personal truth to them.”

“Keigo seriously-”

“Say you’re beautiful.”

“You’re beautiful.”

“Y/N, you know what I mean. Say you’re beautiful.”

You sigh. “I’m...pretty.”

“Beautiful.”

“Beautiful.”

“Good! Now, all together.”

“I’m...I’m…” you hesitate on the word, fidgeting while you try to say it. You don’t know why a single self compliment is proving so tricky. It might be the way he looks at you, so intense and focused. It’s making you nervous.

You avert your gaze and turn away. “I should check the nuggets-”

But he captures you in his arms, pulling you back against his chest. “We’re not done here yet.”

You squirm a little, but your heart isn’t in it. When you finally still, he speaks again.

“Who made you believe you aren’t beautiful?” he wonders softly, resting his chin on your shoulder. You shiver at his warm breaths on your neck, and let yourself lean back into him.

“Why does it matter?”

“I need to know who to punch.”

You laugh at that, but it’s dry and humourless. “I’m afraid it’s no one in particular,” you tell him, “It’s just kind of a behaviour that everyone picks up over the years, y’know? It’s not a big deal, in my case, it’s not like I hate myself.”

Keigo squeezes you a little. “You just don’t think you’re beautiful.”

“The definition of beauty changes from person to person, anyways. I’m sure there are people I find beautiful that don’t see it, too.”

“Doesn’t that make you sad, though?”

Your shoulders sag in defeat. It does make you sad, when the people you love and cherish would choose to change so much about themselves, if they could. When they don’t see the life and personality and kindness behind their smiles and dimples and blemishes.

“I guess,” you mumble.

Keigo lays a kiss against your shoulder, lips lingering against your bare shoulder. He presses another, closer to your neck this time, and another after that. “I’ll say it every day until you believe it, sweetheart,” he tells you, voice low and silken, “you’re beautiful. Your wings are beautiful, too. So strong and graceful. They give away your feelings sometimes, y’know? They get fluffy when you’re excited, or mad, or scared…”

“Keigo…”

He continues his journey across your shoulder, while his hands roam slowly up your sides. “You smile could light up a room, and your laugh? Don’t even get me started. I’ve never heard something so close to perfection, it makes my stomach twist up in knots.”

You tremble in his arms, the familiar warmth of arousal beginning to course through your veins. Still, he doesn’t stop.

“You work so hard, and you take your job seriously, and you’re good at it, too. Yet you’ve never cared about popularity, even though you’re kind to your fans. You just want to help people, and make a difference where you can. It’s admirable, and noble, and the world needs more heroes like you.”

You squirm in place, turning carefully around in his arms. At this distance, you can see all the freckles and scars on his face, and feel his short breaths fan across your cheeks.

“You...really have feelings for me, don’t you?” you whisper, as though you can’t quite believe it.

“Of course I do,” his tone is low, “I wouldn’t have tried so hard to befriend you if I wasn’t at least a little bit interested. And you turned out to be so much better than I expected.”

You lock your fingers behind his neck, the soft hairs there tickling your skin. His eyes flutter ever so slightly, and his next breath is shaky.

“Y/N, I…”

You lean forward and kiss him.

It’s messy, and heated, and he responds to your touches with soft moans and gasps. He pulls you as close as he can, your bodies flush together, and you can feel him hard against your thigh. He’s certainly easy to rile up, but you don’t particularly mind.

His hands roam your form, grabbing and squeezing wherever you let him venture. He breaks your kiss to start sucking a bruise onto your neck, biting down on your skin when his actions earn a gentle whine from you.

“The things you do to me,” he sighs, stilling his hands from a brief second. “I wanted you the moment I laid my eyes on you.”

Your press your foreheads together, staring into his golden eyes.

“Would you let me have you, chickadee?” he asks, begs, “would you let me keep you?”

“Yes,” you whisper without a second thought, reconnecting your lips.

[rushingheadlong]

It’s (Not) So Easy - A Freddie x m!Reader fic

Summary: Five times you and Freddie hid your relationship, and one time you didn’t.

Wordcount: ~2.6k

Tags: H/C, some angst but a happy ending, allusions to sex but nothing explicit. Apart from a quick read-through this is also entirely unedited.

Notes: So @liliah39​ wrote that amazing Freddie x m!Reader fic as my Halloqueen gift (which you absolutely need to read if you haven’t already!) and then my brain latched onto “Reader and Freddie having a secret relationship and coming out... but make it hurt.” And then I wrote like a man possessed and this happened.

Freddie kisses you outside the second pub of the evening, while you wait for the others to come out so you can all move on to the third. It’s quick and a little secretive, but the press of Freddie’s lips and body against yours is familiar even with the comforting buzz of alcohol clouding your mind.

The two of you aren’t boyfriends yet, not technically, but you’re falling closer to that point with every passing day. You’ve been hooking up with Freddie for months but lately you’ve stopped going home with anyone else, and you don’t think Freddie has had any other partners recently either. You kiss him for fun, not as a prelude to something more, and the many afternoons you’ve spent walking through art galleries or parks might as well be dates, even if you’ve never called them that.

You like Freddie, so much that it scares you sometimes. You think you might even love him a little, or maybe that’s just the alcohol talking. Either way, you lean in to kiss him again, because he’s there and you can, and your whole brain lights up in happiness when Freddie makes a pleased little noise against your mouth.

Roger is the first to come stumbling out, loud enough and drunk enough that you can put some distance between yourself and Freddie without drawing suspicion. “God, you take forever,” you say to him, as Freddie pinches a cigarette off of Roger and steals his lighter. “Brian and John planning on joining us at all?”

“They’re coming, they’re coming,” Roger says with an easy laugh, lighting his own cigarette off Freddie’s before stealing his lighter back.

You almost wished you smoked, just to give your hands something to do that isn’t reaching out for Freddie again, but you stick them in your pockets instead and keep up an easy conversation with Roger until Brian and John finally come outside.

You keep pace with Freddie as your little group sets off for the next pub, and if you walk close enough that your arm brushes against his at least the others are too drunk to notice.

---------------------------

Brian knows you’re gay. You’ve known each other since you were kids, and you still live together even though you’ve finished your degree and Brian isn’t quite sure if he’s continuing his doctorate. Coming out to Brian was as natural as breathing to you, and he accepted you as easily as you knew he would. Any spats that arise after you bring a partner home are always strictly noise complaints, rather than disapproval about your sex life.

Freddie lives with Roger, who “has to know by now, darling, I haven’t exactly been subtle about it.” You’re less sure about that, but you know you don’t have room to talk. You haven’t come out to Roger either, or John for that matter. You know it’s not as simple as it may sound, and you’d never push Freddie to do more than he’s comfortable with.

Still, by the time Freddie first calls you his “boyfriend” and you both agree that “partner” sounds better, it makes things a little awkward. When this was still casual it was easy to keep it secret, on the pretext that it was none of their business or you just didn’t want them worrying that adding benefits would ruin your existing friendship.

It’s a little harder now that things are serious because you find yourself wanting to share things with Brian like you always have, but you can’t. You’re becoming acutely attuned to the sound of Brian’s keys in the lock, and you’re starting to hate the press of Freddie’s shoulder against yours as he settles next to you on the couch instead of straddling your lap.

You tell yourself to be grateful that you at least get that much. Platonic cuddling isn’t unusual for either you or the members of Queen, and Brian’s surprise is merely due to Freddie’s presence and not your close positions.

“Roger’s down at the stall and I was simply dying of boredom, dear, so I popped over to bother Y/N for a bit,” Freddie says breezily.

It’s not quite a lie, and you’re not the one telling it, but something uncomfortably similar to guilt settles in the pit of your stomach even as Brian easily accepts the story.

---------------------------

Finding time to be alone with Freddie is hard. If Brian is out then Freddie is bound to be at the stall and can’t get away, and if Roger is gone for the day then you’re usually at work. It’s more likely that Roger will spend an evening elsewhere than Brian, but there’s only so many times Freddie can call you to come over before you start to worry that Brian will get suspicious.

You steal kisses behind pubs or in empty corners of the studio, trade quick handjobs in bathrooms or abandoned dressing rooms after the others have already gotten changed. It’s frustrating for the both of you, but it’s a small price to pay to have Freddie in your life like this.

“When I’m properly rich, darling, I’m booking us a room at the Ritz for a week so we can have all the wild sex we want,” Freddie tells you, as the two of you lie half-naked in the back of the van after a gig. He’s lying with his head on your chest, fingers dancing along your skin until you lace your fingers with his to stop him.

You chuckle a little, but know that Freddie is deadly serious about this promise no matter how flippant he sounds about it now. “We could aim for something a little less lavish in the meantime. Go down to Brighton for a weekend when the weather gets nice.”

“Oh, yes, that sounds absolutely lovely, let’s do it!” Freddie says, as if it really would be that easy. As if Queen wouldn’t have a dozen gigs lined up every weekend by then, or as if either of you could even afford a weekend by the seaside anyway.

But the daydream is nice, for the moment anyway, before you both need to make yourselves presentable and put in an appearance inside where the others are celebrating a successful show. You push Freddie against the van one last time, kissing him until his lips are bruised, and let him stagger back into the club first.

By the time you make it inside yourself, Roger is teasing Freddie about clearly “getting some”. You can see the small tells of Freddie’s discomfort, even as he laughs and jokes along and preemptively apologizes for the state of the van. You wonder if you’re a coward for offering to get the next round of drinks to avoid the rest of that particular conversation, but you decide that you don’t particularly care and beat a hasty retreat to the bar.

---------------------------

Every touch you share with Freddie is carefully considered, every gesture weighed for intimacy before it’s carried through. When you press Freddie against a wall his eyes keep watch over your shoulder as you kiss, and you track the movements of your friends like a rabbit watching a hawk circling overhead. You bring an extra coffee when you stop by the stall, just in case Roger is there as well, and if Freddie drapes himself over you in the studio he’s quick to show the same closeness to one of the others next.

But it’s not just those you know that you have to be cautious of. When you and Freddie spend an afternoon wandering the city, holding hands feels like painting a target on your back and dates are engineered to give you plausible deniability should anyone look at you with too much suspicion. Homosexuality may not be illegal anymore but that doesn’t mean that all attitudes have changed.

Neither you nor Freddie want to take on the world, but you think it would be easier to bear the charade in public if you could at least be yourself in private. But the longer your relationship with Freddie continues, the more impossible it feels to ever come clean about it. A few weeks of secrecy would be understandable to anyone, but as the months pass and the white lies build up you know that there will be a point where your friends’ happiness will be overshadowed by hurt.

The thought of confronting that on top of coming out makes you panic but staying quiet isn’t an easy choice to make, not when you’re so on-edge that the sound of doors opening unexpectedly sends your heart skyrocketing even when you’re alone.

“Something has to give,” you whisper against Freddie’s neck, the two of you clinging to each other for the too-short minutes before Roger comes back to the stall. “We can’t keep going on like this.”

“I know, love. I know,” Freddie says. You kiss him and it’s hot and desperate and hurts, and when Roger finally returns it’s not long before you make an excuse to leave rather than staying a polite and friendly distance apart from Freddie.

---------------------------

You’re drunk. You’re all drunk, you and the band, the five of you lounging in Freddie and Roger’s living room, empty bottles and the plates from dinner spread around you. Roger has claimed John as a pillow, who in turn has slumped against Brian, which means it’s safe for Freddie to snuggle close to you no matter that there’s an empty chair on the other side of the room.

It’s late and the lull in the conversation keeps stretching out, comfortable silence reigning as the liquor and the long day hits everyone at once. Freddie is more than half-asleep on your lap, and even though sleeping arrangements haven’t officially been decided yet, you decide that you’re too drunk and too tired to care what the others do anymore.

“‘m gonna get Fred to bed,” you mumble, standing up on wobbly legs. Freddie whines as he’s dislodged and reaches up for you with grabby hands. When you pull him to his feet you both nearly topple over, before you manage to right yourself and take a staggering step towards the bedroom.

“Y’need help?” Brian asks, though he doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to move.

You shake your head, and immediately decide that was a bad idea when the room spins even worse than it was before. “Nah, ‘s fine. I’ve got ‘im,” you say, and Roger mutters something that you don’t catch but that causes John to snicker.

Freddie’s bedroom is warm, his bed soft and inviting, and you’re thankful that you’re both wearing lounge clothes and not jeans so you don’t have to try getting undressed. You join Freddie under the covers and press close to him, and he gently cups your face as you kiss him. You take your time with it, making out slow and lazily, like you never get a chance to do anymore, your hips rocking against his even though you’re both too drunk to have any chance to staying quiet enough to actually get off.

Footsteps outside the door are the only warning you get before someone opens it, letting the hall light spill into the room. You and Freddie feign sleep, still cuddled close together, because they can’t judge your unconscious actions and moving away from Freddie is an absolute impossibility. The door closes again, and you can hears the soft murmur of voices on the other side but you don’t try to decipher what’s being said, because Freddie is kissing you again and nothing else matters but that.

“I love you,” you breathe against Freddie’s mouth. It’s the first time you’ve said it, and in the morning you’ll regret that it happened when you were drunk, but right now you just need Freddie to know how you feel.

His breath hitches and he doesn’t return the words but his soft, “We should tell them,” is enough of a promise of his devotion anyway.

---------------------------

You want to tell Brian first, because at least you’re out to him already, and Freddie wants to tell Roger, and neither of you know when you’re going to tell John but you know that needs to happen as well.  And somewhere between conversations about who to tell when and how to say everything that needs to be said, you and Freddie end up in a proper fight.

It’s strange, because you’ve never really fought with Freddie before, not like this at least, with slammed doors and you storming out to leave Freddie alone in his flat, but maybe it shouldn’t be surprising. There’s been a tension building in your relationship the longer you kept this secret, and the pressure needed to be released eventually.

You still tag along with Brian to the studio the next day even though you’re out of sorts about it all, and it’s clear that Freddie’s not doing much better. He’s distracted and it’s so painfully obvious that his heart isn’t in his singing that hardly any progress gets made before the session is called for the day.

“Hey, Fred, let’s go for drinks, yeah?” Roger calls across the room as the band puts their gear away. “Maybe get you laid to pull you out of whatever this funk is?”

And you thought you had reached your boiling point last night, when you were so angry that fighting with Freddie didn’t even take the edge off, but it’s nothing compared to how you feel as you watch Freddie look up and steel himself to play along with Roger’s suggestion. You snap, like a rubber band stretched so far that it finally breaks, and you cross the room and grab the front of Freddie’s shirt to pull him into a kiss.

Freddie doesn’t freeze, doesn’t push you away, just grabs you back and deepens the kiss until you’re both making out in front of your friends and you don’t even care anymore.

“Right,” Roger says when you two break apart, breathing heavily but not moving away from each other. Not now, not after that, not when everything in your lives is riding on the next words out of Roger’s mouth. “So, clearly you don’t need help with the sex, then.”

Freddie’s head snaps up and he gives Roger an incredulous look. “Is that all you have to say?”

Roger shrugs. “What more do you want?”

“We might have suspected you two were together,” John pipes up as Freddie continues to gape at Roger. “But neither of you were saying anything so we weren’t exactly sure, and we didn’t want to push the issue if you weren’t.”

You catch Brian’s eye, afraid despite yourself that he’ll be betrayed by your long silence, but he smiles easily and says, “We’re happy for you two, honestly. And we’re glad you finally told us.”

“Yeah, but if you have sex while I’m at home I will kill you,” Roger says, the threat light-hearted and teasing. “It’s bad enough to hear one mate going at it, let alone two of you…”

“Oh, you’re one to talk, Blondie!” Freddie says. “As if I haven’t had to listen to you more times than I can count!”

The banter continues as your group files out of the studio, the tension gone in the wake of how easy they’ve accepted this, and the normalcy of the entire situation is almost disorienting. You reach out and take Freddie’s hand, and he stops mid-sentence to smile at you, wide and brilliant, and you kiss him again in front of the others as if you’ve done this a thousand times before.

You haven’t, of course, but you have to start making up for lost time somewhere.

[mst3kproject]

The Cyclops

 If you asked me why this movie was never on MST3K, I would guess that it was simply too obvious.  I mean, we’ve got Bert I. Gordon.  We’ve got Lon Chaney Jr from The Indestructible Man, we’ve got Gloria Talbott from The Leech Woman, we’ve got Dean Parkin from War of the Colossal Beast, we’ve got superimposed bugs trying to look big, we’ve even got a giant radioactive guy with only one eye!  There’s nothing here we haven’t seen before - except for Bert I.’s attempt at a really cheap sci-fit adaptation of The Odyssey.

Yes, you read that correctly.

In Guayjorm, Mexico (Guayjorm?), Susan Winter is looking for her fiancé Bruce Barton, a pilot who went missing three years ago.  Along with her are Lee, another pilot; Russ, an old friend of Bruce’s; and Marty, a shady prospector who’s funding the expedition.  The Mexican government thinks they’re up to no good and deny them permission to enter the area, but of course they go in anyway, and land in a valley which Marty declares to be full of uranium.  Maybe that’s why all the wildlife there is twenty times the normal size… and wait until you see what’s become of Bruce!

I’ve seen enough of these movies that I was honestly surprised the plane didn’t crash. It was certainly set up to crash: a voice on the radio warns of dangerous downdrafts, and there’s the laughable bit where Marty freaks out and punches the pilot.  The characters need the plane to escape again and Bert I. Gordon couldn’t afford to destroy even a model of one, and yet this sequence is shoved in to make it look like we’re going there, apparently just because movies are supposed to have plane crashes in them.

The effects here span Gordon’s usual range, from surprisingly convincing to absolutely risible.  The first giant animal in the movie is a big skink that crawls through a gap in the rocks, and the shot in which we see Russ staring at it is very nice.  The eyelines match up well, and things like the actions of the giant hawk we see a little later are timed perfectly with the actors reacting to them.  Then mere minutes later, we’re treated to a transparent iguana straight out of King Dinosaur.  The skink and the iguana then fight, in a scene that’s shot like it’s the T-Rex vs Spinosaurus fight from Jurassic Park III but is actually just two lizards rolling around.

The makeup that transforms Dean Parkin into a one-eyed monster is awful… I’m not even sure what’s supposed to have happened to the right side of his face.  Did the radiation actually melt it or what?  The prosthetic the same actor wore as Glenn Manning in War of the Colossal Beast was infinitely better.  The giant’s roaring is just somebody yelling “rawr!” and the bits where he’s supposed to be touching and picking up the smaller humans are absolutely dreadful.  On the other hand, the part where he fights a giant snake is clearly an actual boa constrictor wrapped around the actor’s body, and I’m glad the opening credits listed a ‘Snake Fight Supervisor’ who kept either party from getting hurt.

Performances run a similar gamut.  Most aren’t great.  Lon Chaney Jr. is full of enthusiasm, cradling his scintillator as if it’s the One Ring, but comes across as a man with no idea what he’s doing.  I don’t think this is the way Marty’s character was written – he was meant to be a criminal mastermind, rather than a buffoon – but it does work.  The characters of Lee and Russ are too bland for the actors to do much with them, but Gloria Talbott does her best with what she’s given and makes Susan’s obsession both touching and a little creepy.

Poor Susan gets belittled by just about everybody in this movie.  The Mexican official we meet in the opening scene straight-up tells her to her face that she’s crazy and that her companions will betray her.  The men talk about her in similar terms behind her back, and make snide comments about women’s intuition.  At best they feel pity for this poor soul, clinging to lost hope.  Even Russ, who knows her best and understands her need for closure, talks down to her about her quest, calls her hysterical, and treats her as something that really ought to belong to him if only she could understand that Bruce is dead!  The idea that she might not be interested in him is never suggested and I do wonder what this love triangle was like when Bruce was present.

At the same time, the movie treats Susan with a surprising amount of respect.  She’s very much the same sort of ‘helplessly watching woman’ narrator as Audrey Aimes or Joyce Manning and she does a lot of screaming and running, but she wears practical clothing and we’re clearly expected to sympathize with her desperate hope even as we, too, suspect it’s a lost cause.  After being told over and over that she’s borderline delusional, the end of the movie vindicates her faith in Bruce: he is alive, just not in the form she expected.  At the end she finally gets the closure she needs, able at last to grieve and move on.

If I’m talking about -isms I should mention that Lee keeps bragging that he’s good at tracking because he’s ‘one sixteenth Indian’, later upping this to a half when he manages to sneak by the giant unseen and finally to ‘full-blooded Indian’ when he finds the way back to the plane after they get lost.  ‘Primitive’ peoples don’t have skills or knowledge, they’re good at these things by instinct, because they’re basically animals, right? ‘Native American’ isn’t a set of diverse cultures, it’s just being good at finding your way in the woods!

You guys don’t care about any of that, though. You want me to get back to the Greek Mythology stuff.

Gordon’s script takes a number of things from The Odyssey.  First of all, we have the premise of venturing into an unknown wilderness in search of one’s way home to a lost love.  On the way our heroes encounter storms, madmen, and monsters, and end up as prisoners in the cave of a one-eyed, wilderness-dwelling giant who blocks the way out with a giant stone.  Before escaping, they must blind the giant with a fire-tipped spear.  This is certainly the best-known part of the Odyssey, and people who haven’t come near reading the poem are still familiar with it from sources as diverse as The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad to Ducktales.  The allusions to it are obvious and intentional.

But it doesn’t stop there.  Gordon also seems to have visited another ancient poem that discusses Polyphemus the Cyclops – Ovid’s Metamorphoses.  This contains a sequence (Book XIII, lines 738-897) in which the monster falls in love with a beautiful woman, the sea-nymph Galatea.  She rejects him because of his ugliness, choosing instead to run off with the handsome river god Acis.  This story presents the Cyclops in a much more human, even tender, light – his romantic advances towards Galatea are awkward, but they are sincere. What makes him a monster is how he responds to her rejection by killing her chosen lover.

Several parts of The Cyclops seem to reflect this legend.  The giant Bruce is certainly as gentle as he can be towards Susan, while hostile to his romantic rival, Russ.  There’s also the fact that when Susan sees the giant she immediately rejects him.  She must know that the giant disfigured man living among the wreckage of Bruce’s plane and hanging on to objects like his watch can only be Bruce himself, but she refuses to accept it, even when she sees how he responds to her.  She needs Russ to tell her what happened before she can finally bring herself to face it.

Which brings us to the fact that in another way, this is of course a remake of The Amazing Colossal Man.  We have the fiancée searching for her lover whom she knows has come to harm but not what form that harm has taken, only to find he’s been irradiated and grown huge because his cells won’t stop dividing. Unfortunately, it’s not nearly as thoughtful a movie as Colossal Man or War of the Colossal Beast. Both those films tried to make Glenn Manning’s plight a metaphor, the first for cancer and the second for social problems. Neither fully succeeded, but they did give you things to think about.  The Cyclops uses the same premise to put a twist on some well-known mythology, but unfortunately it doesn’t do anything with that.

The Metamorphoses was something of a comment on The Odyssey.  It suggests that the reason Polyphemus was in such a foul mood the day Odysseus showed up was because Galatea had just rejected him, thus giving the monster feelings, motivations, and a story of his own.  Bruce in The Cyclops is just a big, ugly, angry guy, and without seeing his descent into monsterhood he’s not the tragic figure Glenn Manning was trying so hard to be.  Susan’s denial and her need to have somebody else tell her what she’s encountered are touching, but don’t say much about the mythological motifs they’re tacked onto.  The idea of Penelope going out to search for Odysseus rather than quietly weaving a shroud and waiting for him could be interesting, but again, it’s not really used.  Gordon had some great ideas but all he really wants to show us is superimposed lizards.

The ending also leaves a couple of important questions unresolved.  I think we’re supposed to believe that everybody got back to Texas okay and Russ and Susan lived happily ever after… but part of me worries they all got thrown into prison in Mexico for flying over restricted airspace, and after all that radiation they may not grow huge but I bet their tumors did.  How sweet.

[pandajames59-blog]

Cynical Satire and Civic Optimism Across the American Heartland

NOVEMBER 19, 2018

THE ONLY TIME I’ve ridden on a Greyhound bus was in 2012, en route to New Hampshire to watch the primaries unfold. The trip itself was uneventful, and in electoral time it feels as if it happened eons ago. I may believe you if you tell me that the Republicans’ choice of Mitt Romney as their presidential nominee occurred in an age before air travel. I may even agree to take buses exclusively from now on if it means there will be a saner politics waiting at the end of the road.

Gary Shteyngart’s Lake Success is a novel centered on Americans’ nostalgia for the Greyhound bus. But it’s also a novel that skewers us for that nostalgia. Long-haul bus rides may seem the perfect vehicle for post-partisan populism. The Greyhound, we may imagine, combines beatnik fantasies with Middle America geography as it transports those too poor to buy a plane ticket and too down on their luck to be politically correct. But anyone who gets aboard the Greyhound to live out a sociological experiment rather than to simply secure an affordable ride from point A to point B is probably carrying some baggage of his own. This is certainly the case with Barry Cohen in Lake Success.

Barry is a hedge-fund manager who, like Martin Shkreli, has gotten fantastically rich off of corrupt Big Pharma deals. He’s running from the law, though he doesn’t admit that’s what he’s up to. His more immediate reason for buying a bus ticket and tossing his black Amex card is that his wife, Seema, and his nanny have just gouged his face after a fight with the neighbors in their Central Park West penthouse. Neither Barry nor Seema is ready to confront the fact that no amount of money can buy off their son’s autism diagnosis. Instead Barry cursed out the neighbors for having the sort of “neurotypical” three-year-old who can perform all the verses of “I’m a Little Bumblebee” at a dinner party. Now he’s fleeing through Baltimore; Richmond, Virginia; Atlanta; and El Paso, Texas, on an impromptu search for his college girlfriend.

Shteyngart’s allusions are aggressive. While traveling, Barry contemplates writing about his journey in the style of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (1957), “but in thoughtful middle-aged prose.” Instead of President Donald Trump’s “small hands,” Barry has small wrists, and he obsessively collects designer watches to compensate. Barry’s fund is named This Side of Capital, and after that fails, he starts another called Last Tycoon Capital. Lest we miss the references, Shteyngart reveals that F. Scott Fitzgerald is Barry’s favorite author.

At the same time, it’s easy to imagine a man of Barry’s narcissism making it clear that he graduated from Princeton University by cornering someone at a high-status party to tell tales of acquaintances who once performed with the Triangle Club. Barry realizes he can’t brag to the Greyhound passengers in quite the same way, but he finds other outlets for his ego-driven ambitions. He dreams up schemes for an “Urban Watch Fund” to teach kids the mechanics of Rolexes and turn the youth of Baltimore into “stakeholders.” He mulls launching a hedge fund in Mississippi (“Absalom Investments”) and posing under a magnolia tree for a photo op as part of a Wall Street Journal story.

As satire, Lake Success is brilliant, yet Shteyngart seems to be reaching for something more. The book plays out in two parts broken around Trump’s election. The first half, which begins with a drunken Barry stumbling into the Port Authority Bus Terminal “at the start of the First Summer of Trump,” is a more entertaining read. Barry encounters various strangers, such as the Baltimore drug dealer he thinks may make a decent business partner; the beautiful Marriott employee in Jackson, Mississippi, who becomes the first black woman he’s ever slept with; and Barry’s personal favorite, the “one-eyed Mexican man [who] fell asleep on my shoulder!” But they are merely props on Barry’s personal stage rather than people who offer real insight about life outside Manhattan. The travails of the Greyhound ride get tedious and, predictably, Barry’s marriage comes to an end.

The latter half of the book is then tinged with guilt that we could ever find a man like Barry funny. Shteyngart emphasizes that Barry and his fellow plutocrats are responsible for our present political mess and that no road trip through the heartland can assuage that. Not only is Barry not as funny as we’d hoped, he lacks the modicum of self-reflection needed to pull off a narrative arc. Narcissists make for lousy presidents and off-putting protagonists — 350 pages is a long time to spend with such self-centered New Yorkers.

Barry’s wife is a deeply conflicted woman who is well aware that she traded in her Yale Law degree to become a trophy wife. Seema contemplates joining the Hillary campaign or working part time at Planned Parenthood, yet she enjoys the ease of Barry’s wealth, if only because it pays for her daytime trysts with a semi-famous Guatemalan novelist at the Gramercy Park Hotel. But Shteyngart’s message is less about the contradictions of feminist one-percenters than about the sort of men they marry. It’s high-powered men, Shteyngart maintains, who can’t have it all. Barry wants to live as a rich Manhattanite who can nevertheless take solace in having once completed a creative-writing minor at Princeton. He wants us to know that, at bottom, he’s a sensitive guy who’s read some Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway.

In one of Shteyngart’s best scenes (perhaps inspired by his own experience teaching creative writing at Columbia University), young Barry tries to wow his college girlfriend with a story about a misunderstood banker who stumbles out of his Mercedes-Benz into a Vermont pasture to confess his mistakes to a beautiful shepherdess (i.e., his girlfriend). Barry’s professor is having none of it. About Barry and his Goldman Sachs–bound classmates, he says, “Even the volatility of their emotions is a financialized asset which can be traded between them at will.” This feedback is lost on Barry. What sends him reeling on his road trip these many years later is Seema’s accusation that he has “no imagination.” As Barry tirelessly reminds us, he strives to be a man with both “a vocation and an avocation.” But with the Feds on his tail for fraud and his wife unimpressed by his reading habits, Barry seems to have neither.

While Lake Success seethes with cynicism, Our Towns, by James and Deborah Fallows, is doggedly upbeat. And whereas Barry’s cross-country adventure ends in an expensive divorce, Our Towns is a travelogue co-authored by a husband and wife who alternate chapters. The book, now slated to become an HBO documentary, expands upon a series of articles and blog posts James wrote as a correspondent for The Atlantic. The couple makes a deliberate effort to see “flyover country” by way of their single-engine Cirrus SR22, and the many flights they record between 2012 and 2017 put a new spin on the Kerouac conceit: steering their small propeller plane toward out-of-the-way landing strips allows them to see much more of the country than would be accessible by car (or, for that matter, by bus).

So the Fallowses crisscross from Burlington, Vermont, to St. Marys, Georgia, from Guymon, Oklahoma, to Dodge City, Kansas. Some of their tales from the field are genuinely interesting: we learn why most credit card payments are processed in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and how engineers at Texas A&M University are mass-breeding a species of weevil that will eat up the invasive plant threatening Caddo Lake. But the book as a whole starts to read like a lengthy chamber of commerce brochure. The founder of the Ocean Renewable Power Company in Eastport, Maine, boasts that it’s the “Kitty Hawk of hydrokinetic power.” Holland, Michigan, is home to the world’s largest pickle-processing plant. The kids at Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science know how to construct 3-D printers. All the civic boosterism begins to run together.

The Fallowses are big fans of “public-private partnerships,” street art, and minor-league baseball teams — in other words, very visible signs of regional activity. They explain that, when they arrive in a new place, one of their first questions is, “Who makes this town go?” This method inevitably points them in the direction of mayors and local developers, and, naturally, these are the types most likely to emphasize sports stadiums, river walks, and the new magnet schools.

Attractive downtowns are all well and good, but it’s strange that the Fallowses don’t feature clergy, social workers, or nurses, who may have offered a more nuanced glimpse of daily life when citizens aren’t dining out by the waterfront. Surely there are success stories to be told about rehab centers or local parishes defying the national odds. Maybe these conversations would have been too moralistic or ambivalent for a book that is so relentlessly sunny.

Whereas Lake Success is saturated with Trump allusions, the Fallowses work hard in Our Towns to eschew national politics even as the 2016 election haunts their travels. James admits that Fox News is often blaring in the background but insists that Washington, DC, just doesn’t come up that often. Somehow, however, residents know about James’s career as a speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter. How do they learn this unless the conversation occasionally veers toward Washington?

The Fallowses conclude that “[t]he more often national politics came into local discussions, the worse shape the town was likely to be in.” This is likely true, but the Fallowses hold so firm to this maxim that the reader gets the sense they’re afraid to broach both national politics and deep-seated local problems. James mentions that a nurse in Bend, Oregon, seems wary of giving him codeine for his flu because of the region’s opioid epidemic. But we’re left wondering what would have happened if James had followed up with her about how the city is faring with the crisis. Instead, the chapter pivots to a bullet-point list of all the opportunities available at Central Oregon Community College.

Likewise, when Deborah investigates rural healthcare in Ajo, Arizona, she gives a quick nod to drug- and depression-related issues and the challenges of operating a clinic so isolated that pregnant women can’t receive prenatal care. But then we receive a cheerful description of how gardens and farmers markets are answering nutrition needs in the desert. The story of Ajo ends with the Fallowses purchasing “jars of local citrus marmalade.”

In their preface, the Fallowses concede that two of the businesses they profile in Our Towns have since failed and that not all the places they visited are on the mend. We’re left to wonder which businesses these are and whether, in retrospect, the Fallowses see why they didn’t make it. Such reporting, however, would have required more skepticism toward their hosts’ sales pitches, an approach that clearly didn’t fit their book’s message of civic optimism.

So if the Fallowses come across too earnest and Shteyngart too stinging, what’s the contemporary writer to do? As puritanical as it sounds, some sincerity may help. In Lionel Trilling’s famous formulation, the rise of the novel coincided with the decline of sincerity as a serious moral virtue. At some point in the 18th century, Trilling suggests, the commitment to do and say what we mean — usually in conformity with religious principles — came to seem wooden and odd.

American sincerity probably lingered a little longer, given our rates of religiosity and the fact that we are so geographically dispersed. But there’s no question that plainspokenness gave way to an obsession with “authenticity.” The earlier strain of honesty had less to do with the individual: we spoke sincerely as a mark of faithfulness or, relatedly, to uphold the community’s virtue. Whatever primness was present at Plymouth Rock has long since yielded to romanticism, Freudianism, and the free-spirited urge to be true to oneself, not to some preening external authority. Authenticity remains a crucial part of the stories Americans tell themselves, but the self-conscious, self-centered strain of recent decades has flattered libertarians, hippies, Southerners, start-up executives, and, of course, wandering tourists.

Maybe, though, Americans are so angry because what they’ve been sold no longer seems authentic and they’ve lost the moral vocabulary to be sincere. In this absence of plainspokenness, Lake Success and Our Towns quest after what they want to be true. Barry tries to honor the love interests of his 19-year-old self, while the Fallowses look for the perfect microbrewery to fight urban blight. Yet they invite our suspicion: Barry doesn’t have an avocation, not all American towns are healthy, and our president isn’t a self-made man. We can only hope that, as citizens take to the streets, the authors who meet them there will truly tell it like it is.

¤

Danielle Charette is a PhD candidate with the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought. Her work has appeared in The Point, The Chronicle Review, The Hedgehog Review, and Tocqueville 21.

Source: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/cynical-satire-and-civic-optimism-across-the-american-heartland/

[hello-vampire-kitty]

Literary references and character abilities (chapter 62)

While I got the gist of what everyone in this chapter talked about, I have yet to take my time and look up all the words and translate properly, but I just found something so interesting and I wanted to share with you and it’s about the names of the abilities used by Shuuhei and Shamrock, because I did not know about the things that were used as reference. I just love how Servamp is filled with so many things from literature and the amazing names for the character abilities that have dual readings that have a connection with one another. I wrote down the observations I made in regards to the literary works that have served as inspiration. Hope they will make sense! I’m gonna put these under the cut, as they can be spoilerish and also because it is quite long, I’m surprised that I was able to write this much,  for I ramble a lot about the things that I think about during translations and things that I found out during research. It would be nice to hear your opinions in regards to the things I wrote :)

And a shout-out to @xchibikai​ for providing the RAWS. Thank you so much!

Alright, so the new chapter begins with Shuuhei chanting the words of a spell that is connected to his previous ability that we were introduced in the last chapter called “Hayabusa no me” which I had translated as “Hawkeye” and it’s a good thing that I did not went with “falcon” (the Japanese readings differed in regards to some readings of the kanji and “falcon” and “hawk” were present as I made some light research).

Now, Shuuhei is portrayed to stand in a field, more precisely a rye field which is also mentioned in his spell, which I will loosely translate, because it’s not a surprise anymore to encounter ambiguous things while translating and I’m saying this because I feel like if I had some certain words there, I could have understood better, so if things are vague in Japanese, might as well make it as vague in translation. Ok so here goes, this is the rough translation:

“...I am the law, thou art demon

It’s clear which one is crooked

Fall from the rye field’s cliff

Where no one can find you

Even holding on to the sixpence you gave me

I cannot come back

Four and twenty blackbirds  "Nobody in the rye"

(***notes: In the first line, he uses an archaic version of “you”. Second line: crooked as in “crooked ways/mind”, having distorted views.　I think that's the meaning, based on context)

At first glance I thought that it would be a reference to “Catcher in the Rye”, but no, it’s actually from an old nursery rhyme called “Sing a Song of Sixpence” that I even found translated in Japanese here.

Ok, know I’ll talk about something that I was reluctant at first to write because I thought I would make things way too boring, but then I decided to write in hopes that it would be useful for you writers and artists out there, to present with more details that might be helpful when you want to portray something in regards to Shuuhei. So yeah, let’s talk about birds :))

Once again I want to remind in regards to what I said above pertaining to my choice for using the word “hawk”.  While in Japanese, the word タカ (taka)　with this kanji 「鷹」 is used to refer to that bird, in our case here we have Shuuhei’s ability written in katakana as ハヤブサ (Hayabusa). Consider katakana as a visual way that shows that it has special meaning and to put emphasis on a word. When I looked up the words, the reading of “hayabusa” had the translation falcon and this kanji  「 隼 」  but, I looked into a it a bit and found another kanji, which might be rarely used, which also the reading of “hayabusa” and it denoted “hawk”. So you see, by having just this reading in katakana, without knowing to which version of “hayabusa” it might be referring to exactly, we are mostly left with just the visual that it is about a bird of prey, something that both birds have in common. In my case, as you might have guessed, I went with “hawk” because of the idiom to have eyes like a hawk, which totally fits with Shuuhei’s ability. I don’t think I have heard the use of “falcon eyes”, but if some of you know, then I guess, it’s up to you to choose what sounds best. :)

On to the next bird. In Japanese the word ツグミ (tsugumi) was used which refers to the bird  Turdus merula,   known more as the common blackbird. In the dictionary, it gave me " thrush” (also, be careful if you for some reason want to google it, add “bird” in the sentence, or else you will get a totally different result, which doesn’t have anything to do with birds...). I’m no position to explain things such as genus or family of these species as it’s not my field of expertise, but I just chose to go with the term blackbird because it adds more ambiguity/mystery to the verse that Shuuhei uses in the spell, because, at least in my opinion, when I heard blackbird I could think of crows or ravens and just like in the rhyme “Sing a Song of Sixpence”,  it says blackbirds, not directly “ thrushes ” and thus, if you somehow want to write or draw a scene with Shuuhei performing his spell, you can choose from more terms.

While normally it should have been written as twenty-four blackbirds, I went with the way it was from the rhyme as “ Four and twenty“ in order to keep as much from the referenced piece. This part was in kanji while the furigana beside them is the actual pronunciation that is used when calling out the spells/abilities and in this case it is “Nobody in the rye”.

Oh man, these verses were quite hard to understand because that’s how it goes with poems/songs..so many things can be left out in order to be kept short, thus becoming ambiguous and I just can’t figure out some stuff. I had to imagine the intonation, like where is he pausing...does the next line have anything to do with the previous one or just moves on to a new idea/imagery because that’s how it seemed to me... I mean there is even a change in perspective there,  it’s like he was referring to himself towards the end rather than the person he was directing the spell towards. It’s because of this line  あなたがくれた６ペンス　(Anata ga kureta 6 pensu) which translates as  “the sixpence given to me by you/ that you had given me” There are more ways to say “give” in Japanese, and it depends on the points of view of the speakers, that’s why I bolded you (the second person) but I won’t go any further, cuz i’m not gonna hold a Japanese grammar class here, although sometimes it feels like I do and I apologize for that. Even now I still have problems with those verbs. That’s why I was quite perplexed with the last verses... (for once please, I just want to translate a chapter from the get-go but nooo...) Not sure how much sense his spell makes, we can just see that it’s made using a lot of the imagery in the nursery rhyme.

Alright, while leaving out the small headache I had with figuring out the wording, all in all,  Shuuhei’s ability is awesome. Also keep in mind that his theme is that of birds. Apparently, his power allows him to have an unobstructed bird’s eye view that spans tens of kilometers, being able to accurately determine the positions and movements of things.

Onto Shamrock now.

This little story here  called “The Nighthawk Star” is the reference for Shamrock’s ability that bears the same name  [ よだかの星] and it won’t take you much to read it, because, you will see that it has a connection. In short, it’s about the Nighthawk bird who was looked down upon other animals and especially by a true hawk because he didn’t like that the former bird had “hawk” in it’s name. You see where I’m getting at? For one, we have yet again the allusion to the bird theme and also, remember in the last chapter that we had the notion of imposters/ fakes? Just like in the story, it tells of a true hawk and a fake one, because the Nighthawk itself  is not a species of hawk. Honestly, when I made this connection, that hopefully makes sense to you guys as well I found it so awesome how well they fitted. And now let’s get to the other reading of the ability, which is actually the one used when the characters call it out.

Shamrock is actually German for those who did not know and his ability name is "Die Verwandlung” known as “The Metamorphosis” in English, a novella written by Franz Kafka, where the main character turns into an insect (or vermin as I have seen written. Google it if you guys want to). I read the summary of it to get the general idea of it and to find a connection and we can see that Shamrock as well transforms into a spider-like creature. Now, we had two literary pieces referenced for him. Up until now, I would say that “The Nighthawk” story reflects Shuuhei more and subsequently Yoshimasa as well, given the whole bird theme. This is just my theory, but maybe Shamrock was appointed that name for his ability because he is connected with them (Yoshimasa and Shuuhei), like they were tied by fate, y’know. It’s a bit difficult to put into words, thus I would be glad to know your opinions as well, dear readers. Oh, and did you notice that only half of his body, the right side took the shape of that spider form? I think this is just an extra detail, because we know that his right eye was injured. Can he transform entirely? That remains to be seen. In “The Metamorphosis”, if the theme in this one was "transformation”, well guess what, it is also reflected in the aforementioned story. I guess it’s a spoiler if you haven’t read it, but in the end, the Nighthawk dies and becomes a star, thus he changed into something else.

Could this be an allusion to Shamrock who was human and now became a vampire? Also, Shuuhei also went trough a change, hasn’t he? If we recall, when he had entered C3, he was not accepted in the combat unit, being regarded as weak and not able to use his magic well. I wonder, did he train since then to become stronger or was he hiding the ability we have seen, wanting to use it just when he would confront Shamrock to avenge his dad?

Alright, it’s about time to end this post and I just want to say that this chapter was so intense, so many things were revealed and Tanaka-sensei hasn’t disappointed us, the references and allusions in this one chapter were great and I would love to know if anything I wrote made sense to you guys. I hope I can hear some of your opinions ^_^ Thank you so much for reading!

[redherringquotes]

Ebenezer Cobham Brewer, Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1895

Page 135: Billingsgate Pheasant (A). A red herring. Page 213: Capon: Called ‘a fish out of the coop’ by those friars who wished to evade the Friday fast by eating chickens instead of fish. (See Yarmouth.) Capon (A): A castrated cock; A Crail’s capon: A dried haddock; A Severn capon: A sole; A Yarmouth capon: A red herring. We also sometimes hear of a Glasgow capon, a salt herring. Capon (A): A love letter. In French, poulet means not only a chicken but also a love letter, or a sheet of note paper. Thus Henry IV, consulting with Sully about his marriage, says: “My niece of Guise would please me best, though report says maliciously that she loves poulets in paper better than in a fricasee.” Page 288: Cooking: …. ii. Connected with foods and drinks. A conceited man does not think all beer (or small potatoes) of himself, and our mouth is called a potato-trap. A simpleton is a cake, a gudgeon, and a pigeon. Some are cool as a cucumber, others hot as a quail. A chubby child is a little dumpling. A man or woman my be a cheese or duck. A courtesan is called a mutton, and a large coarse hand is a mutton fist. A greedy person is a pig, a fat one is a sausage, and a shy one, if not a sheep, is certainly sheepish; while a Lubin casts sheep’s eyes at his lady-love. A coward is chicken-hearted, a fat person is crummy, and a cross one is crusty, while an aristocrat belongs to the upper crust of society. A yeoman of the guards is a beef-eater, a soldier a red herring, a policeman a lobster, and a stingy, ill-tempered old man is a crab. A walking advertiser between two boards is a sandwich. An alderman in his chair is a turkey hung with sausages. Two persons resembling each other are like as ‘two peas.’ A chit is a mere ‘sprat,’ a delicate maiden a ‘tit-bit,’ and a colorless countenance is called a ‘whey-face.’ “How now? … Where got ye that whey-face?” Page 465: Fish. ‘It is neither fish, flesh, nor fowl;’ or ‘Neither fish, flesh, nor good red herring.’ Not fish (food for the monk), not flesh (food for the people generally), nor yet red herring (food for paupers). Suitable to no class of people; fit for neither one thing nor another. Fish comes first because in the Middle Ages the clergy took precedence of the laity. Page 588: Hawk nor Buzzard (Neither). Of doubtful social position — too good for the kitchen, and not good enough for the family. Private governesses and pauperised gentlefolk often hold this unhappy position. They are not hawks to be fondled and petted — the “tasseled gentlemen” of the days of falconry — nor yet buzzards — a dull kind of falcon synonymous with dunce or plebeian. In French, “N’être ni chair ni poisson,” “Neither flesh, fowl, nor good red herring.” Page 1045: Red Hat (The). The cardinalate. … Red Heads. (See Schites.): (Page 1132: Shiites: This Mahometans who do not consider the Sunna, or oral law, of any authority, but look upon it as apocryphal. They were red turbans, and are sometimes called “Red Heads.” The Persians are Shiites. (Arabic, shah, a sect.) (See Sunnites.) Red Herring (The) of a novel is a hint or statement in the early part of the story to put the reader on the wrong scent. In all detective stories a red herring is trailed across the scent. The allusion is to trailing a red herring on the ground to destroy the scent and set the dogs at fault. A “red herring” is a herring dried and smoked. Red Herring. ‘Drawing a red herring across the path.’ Trying to divert attention from the main question by some side-issue. A red herring drawn across a fox’s path destroys the scent and sets the dogs at fault. Page 1046: ’Neither fish, flesh, nor good red herring.’ Something insipid and not good eating. Neither one thing nor another. Page 1317: Yarmouth Bloater: A red herring, for which Yarmouth is very famous. (Lex Balatronicum.)