#and again!! he’s still terrified of women even AFTER the end of z !! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

shozaii · 4 years

Note

I don’t know if this is the place to request, I’m new to tumblr so I’m really sorry T^T, If I can request, May I have a dazai x reader where dazai is being forced by the agency to have a blind date with a girl thats basically perfect and wants dazai all to herself but then, dazai asks his fem!colleague (who has no ability) to pretend to be his gf, and it basically escalates to friends with benefits and then they fall for each other, lots of angst with a fluffy ending please! Thank you!

(a/n): helloooo anon!💓✨i had to find some really good inspo for this so i really apologize if this took too long :’( but i do hope you enjoy it as this is my first time working for a fic for him!❤️thank you for sending this in ahhh!!!

thank you so so much to @akutagawasbitches for helping me with this fic!! she gave me so much help and i’m so grateful hhh🥺🤍🤍🤍

masterlist.

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

sparks fly.

pairing : dazai x fem! reader.

word count: 2704.

warnings: angst, mentioning of suicide and death!

“Again...?”

It was yet again another whine that brought attention to more of the colleagues from the agency, including your (e/c) eyes.

“A-Again what?”

“We kind of arranged a blind date for him,” Tanizaki said, as he was standing right next to your desk, watching the commotion unfold. “Haven’t you heard?” But how could you, really? When the man of your dreams has been constantly pressurized into having to date women; left and right. And they turn out to be nothing of his choice of sorts. They don’t lack looks, or anything in particular. The spark was never alive within their eyes, and that only seemed to make Dazai grow more impatient. But you see, what was to be highlighted here, was that if he ever found the spark, you were no longer a chance. And if you were to ever let him know of your very own buzz of hope, it would all probably go downhill from there.

“Argh....I’m afraid I would have to pass that opportunity,” he rolled his eyes for what seemed like the hundredth time today, folding his arms in desperation of wanting to head home, and lay on his bed, lightly snoring away.

“I don’t know, Dazai. this girl here was really interested in wanting to meet you. But then again, I’m guessing you have someone else in mind,” Yosano eyed Dazai very carefully, trying to trace his facial features for any discrepancies.

“Atsushi-kun-,” he groaned, looking at him with a face of complete disagreement.

“I tried telling them that you wouldn’t like it, Dazai-san,” he muttered, to which he then slowly eyed you. The only other person who truly knew from a to z about your feelings was Atsushi and only Atsushi. So, every time he hears of these blind dates Dazai was going on, he winced. He winced because he knew not only it was going to be another rejection, but it was going to be another shard of your glass heart, being chipped away, slowly losing strength of holding on to each other.

This time, you could feel a few more being picked on by a sharp needle, leaving the impact on it as slow as possible, for you to take in all the pain second by second. Before you knew it, Dazai was already up on his feet, forcing himself to actually accept the so- called blind date that his friends have already set him up for. with a heavy heart, he has to reject someone. with an ignorant face, he has to show disinterest. with a blunt emotion, he has to say something.

Anything.

“Y/N!”

You occasionally walk behind Dazai if you ever had the chance - sometimes you’d come out a little late just to finish any paperwork lying around, Dazai’s untouched ones, to be more specific. Sometimes he goes missing from the agency - this just meant he had something important to do; let it be in or out of the agency. It’s not weird that you didn’t know his whole schedule. This man always told you stories, reminded you of what he was about to do next, teased you-

“Y/N...? Hello...?” a shadow loomed near you, causing you to stop your train of thought.

“Dazai! H-Hi.” The little – but burning – spark ignited in you once more; causing you to tumble back.

Your tumbling wasn’t the one which would make you fall in an instant; it was definitely one you could hold onto. But when you felt an arm inviting itself around your figure, your eyes went wide open; to whether you were facing reality or not. Never in your wildest dreams did you think that Dazai would be the one to do so, as he pulled himself towards you.

“Good evening.”

“Ah!” You sort of got yourself out of the position, now having your cheeks completely heat up. “Good evening, Dazai. Anything that I could help you with?”

“You do know what is going to happen within the time span of….24 hours, I suppose? This blind date that I have. Terrifying, you know.”

“Well, I did hear about it. you’re heading to it, a-aren’t you?” He raised an eyebrow when you seemed to be nearly choked on your own words.

“Bold of you to assume that I’ll be going! Yes, sweet pea. But no. I just can’t seem to bring myself to these new faces. I may like all kinds of women – but this feeling doesn’t hold me great paths.” That same nickname he decided to call you a long time ago, and it stuck among the both of you like glue. Why were your friends even trying so hard for him to find someone else? Heck, you dropped hints (or so you thought you did); so, what was just so difficult up until now?

She looked so pretty though. Dazai didn’t get a look – it’s called a blind date for a reason. Was he really just meant for you whatsoever?

“Please be my girlfriend, y/n.”

“What?!” You blurted out, slapping your mouth shut right after, your breaths quickening.

“Did I hear you right? Your girlfriend? W-Where is this coming from-,”

“Ah! Well only just for a day, if you will? Pretty please?”

And just like that, when you already have multiple pieces pricked away; twenty more lost grip, flying away without leaving a trace. The spark popped right after, causing even more bits to drop off, merely at the complete edge of slipping away, finally begging you with all their might that they wanted to break their bonds between one another. How did the mechanism work? you never knew.

“Dazai…. I-,”

“It will only take a while, I promise. I know it’s hard, especially when a colleague is asking another, but I’ll leave you be. You can even not talk to me, anything you want!”

“So, it’s even eligible if I decided to say that I have literal feelings for you.”

“What’s that?” Dazai’s eyes were visible with confusion.

“Nothing! I just...”

*****

It all came to plan, whatever he wanted, he got. But something that he definitely didn’t want, happened.

The scheduled location was fine. a beautiful park, now blooming with an endless trail of sakura trees and lovely flowers. The weather was really fine today; not too hot, not too cold. Everyone wished him luck; even though no such luck was retrieved during these dates. He even wanted to wear his usual trench coat for even more ‘contrasting effect to his luscious locks’, but Atsushi and Kunikida dealt with it immediately, now perfectly dressed in a collared shirt, and a jacket hung loose over his shoulders.

Wasn’t that the one you gave him for one of his birthdays? You had to admit, every outfit he ever went with looked so utterly amazing on him.

The timing was perfect as well, though he did whine about being there a few minutes earlier than expected. His blind date arrived shortly after. A small smile painted across her face, her beauty ever so blinding, a sight for sore eyes. The looks that they both had were absolutely downright stunning. If they were ever to be walking into a ballroom, with all the fancy lights and the sparkly dresses, people would immediately turn their attention to the both of them and swoon, for they were the ones that might as well allow anyone to worship for their combined artistry.

This wasn’t just a blind date, it was a reunion, from when these two distant souls met each other once in the agency. It was urgent the other day, since she needed help for something which was actually quite serious. Somehow, they arranged the blind date with the same woman, now fully glimmering with her ethereal beauty.

Dazai was either flattered or displeased with this situation. Displeased not because of the first glimpse that he managed to catch back then, but rather because he didn’t need this to go any further. Flattered? Maybe because she complimented his looks and such, and somehow, he managed to pay them back.

To you, it was really rude to be spying on someone like this. But this was like a mission, in order to conclude whether this was a successful date, or just plain boring. Right now, you could see neither. but if your head were to ever want to prick more needles into your heart, it would tell you the progress went smoothly. And by every growing minute into the date, you could feel the tears welling up in your eyes, coated in the right amount of heat executed from your body.

Of course, Atsushi saw that. How could he not? It was clear that this job was given to you by accident, but you still insisted on coming along anyway.

*****

He expected a lot of things to go wrong, of course -you know, like her slowly losing interest in the date. or maybe she would change her mind with just anything at that point, but to no avail. All Dazai could ever do now was to pray and pray that she was going to forget this whole blind date thingy that absolutely made no sense to him. But then, he didn’t expect the sudden arrival of a beautifully dressed damsel, walking up towards the both of them. From afar, it looked like just another stranger in sight, probably stomping away in anger. Or that’s what he thought.

It was you, finally out of your hiding spot, with Atsushi not being able to find you in the crowd any longer. you assured him for what seemed like the thousandth time before taking off, and he was already shaking in fear when he reminisced the conversation, he had had earlier with you.

*****

“But how are you going to tell him? He did tell you to pretend to be his girlfriend!”

“I know Atsushi! I know!” you let out a sob in between, now sitting on the ground.

“Y/N-san, please think about it. Dazai-san is a person who would be really difficult to get through, but I do have a feeling that you might ace this. We also don’t know much of the girl, so are you sure? I don’t want you to get hurt.”

You wiped your tears away furiously now, eyes bloodshot, your anger emphasizing the red. “Then I might as well get it through his thick skull. go, Atsushi. and don’t come finding for me.”

*****

Thinking that it was actually time for him to call you out as his lovely partner, he straightened his posture in confidence.

“Well, well! look who’s here, my lovely-,”

“Don’t. You. Dare.”

“Y-Y/N?”

“All these years and I honestly expected something out from you, you dumbass. I’m not just someone you could play along with, suddenly teasing the shit out of me, calling me all those silly, adorable nicknames, and then pressure my heart into breaking even further, while I hear that you constantly get blind dates. How exactly do you think I feel? Sure, maybe you don’t know much about my stuff. But how dare you.”

“Look, if you’re only going to come here and start dissing someone for no goddamn reason, I’m going to have to ask you to leave-,” the girl began.

“Like you know what it’s like to be with the most amazing yet wacky person on the planet. thinking that all these blind dates were going to go so well. if they say no, they say no! what part of that word do you not understand?!”

“Let me ask you this. Who do you think you are, you witty brat?”

Without waiting, you answered shakily. “His gir- his girlfriend.”

She took a final glance at Dazai. no response. which was what made her finally leave you and him alone, as he continued to look directly at you. Well, you did get his attention. might as well continue.

“Now. I may be the stupidest person in the world for doing this, but I think I have dropped more hints than I ever have to anyone in my life, ever. My heart aches every moment, thinking of you. When will you get a partner? When will you leave? When would it be the moment where you decide that I’m not good enough? Stupid, stupid questions. I shouldn’t have told Atsushi. I shouldn’t have let everyone observe me. Why and how did I ever fall for you?!” Y/N yelled, her chest heaving. Swallowing, she continued to speak.

“Most importantly, I wish I didn’t barge up here to tell you how I feel. why? Look at her. Look at me. She has got everything I don’t. She is ready to give you her all when she asks for it. She doesn’t need to worry about any flaws. Oh, to be as brave and confident as her. the next thing I know is that we’ll completely forget each other, you leaving me be, vice versa. Us staying this way, because that’s how it is! a complete, hell of a circus!”

Dazai reached for your hand, but you inched away. “I’ve never known what did ‘slowly dying’ meant, but now I see it all.’

You stormed off, hoping to all the gods above that he actually took the hint of what you finally spat out. Stupid spark; lighting up when you decided to cry it all out, while he watches on, genuinely shocked. Stupid tears, making you feel lightheaded when all you wanted to do was talk.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

The day wasn’t quite over yet, when you felt someone grab you hard, and also painfully, by your wrist. You felt your knuckles crack during the process, and you just had no time to turn around and actually suspect who this person really was.

Until you did.

You tried swatting his hand away. You didn’t need this. You didn’t need him. You didn’t need Dazai Osamu pulling you towards the most beautiful, yet empty bridge of Yokohama, where the sun was slowly setting, the harmonious glow beginning to land on the tall buildings.

“Let me go!” you breathed out softly, eyes now tired and high on the tremendous set of tears you have let out. “Please.” But he believed that by walking closer towards you, placing both of his calloused hands on your cheek, and by leaning in closer to you, you would calm down. You would stop. You would feel loved.

You would feel the sparks once more.

“Y/N.”

His eyes were now dim, but not the kind of dim where the look would kill a person on sight. It was dim, dull with anguish and torment. A plead for your eyes to look right into your his, aching with the regrets. With the words he needs to say, but never knowing how to put them together.

“My heart and soul told me that if I wanted you safe, I was only supposed to lock them in. Far, far away, for you to not find them anywhere.”

“But why would you….?”

“Oh, sweet pea. why would anyone want me, really? A man who wants to find a beautiful woman to commit suicide with. Also, someone who could annoy you to the core. Ex-port mafia executive. As a human myself, my flaws are pretty huge.”

“If you think I would ever ditch you for your flaws, that could be another person you’re talking about. I have no ability. I’m nowhere as great as you. don’t you see that I…I have flaws too?”

“Not having an ability doesn’t mean having a flaw. Neither your perfection shall ever beat that silly word.”

You definitely didn’t expect more sparks to ignite the light in you, or the next few seconds as Dazai leaned in, finally closing in the gap that you both shared. His lips were like honey, and yours were like the world’s finest sugar. the first kiss that you shared was definitely a new kind of passion, a sweet release of both your yearnings. It was also the kind where you could never forget. As he let go, his scent still lingered on you. His eyes slowly began to bloom the gorgeous glow, his smile now softer than ever. He reached for your hand and placed it on his chest.

“if you listen closely, you could hear sparks fly.”

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

(a/n): ahhh here it is!! angst and mitra?? hmmm maybe :O jejsjsj

100 notes · View notes

megalodont · 4 years

Text

Mdzs Women Appreciation Week, Day 6: Qin Su and/or Yu Ziyuan

Read it here or on ao3!

It was Qin Su’s first trip to Lanling as an official representation of their sect, and she had spent the entire evening hiding her trembling hands in her wide sleeves. Her father, a good friend of Jin-zongzhu, came to Koi Tower often, but she had not attended since she was a young girl. She was sixteen now, however, and her father had decided it was time for her to accompany him. Her mother had argued that she wasn’t ready—a sentiment Qin Su privately agreed with—but in the end their father had won out, and Qin Su had been dressed in extravagant new robes and brought to Lanling. Koi Tower was a hundred times more formal and a thousand times more opulent than the small court at Laoling where she had grown up, and she felt rural and awkward surrounded by the elegant men and women of the Lanling Jin Sect.

Her father had drifted a short distance away to speak with an old friend, and Qin Su stood by herself awkwardly, her heart fluttering in her chest as though the gentry swirling around her were fierce corpses.

Qin Su nodded deferentially whenever someone passed by close enough for it to be polite, and would then second guess whether that had been the correct move every time. People eyed her, lingering on her robes, and Qin Su fought a blush at the lack of gold embroidery that seemed so ubiquitous here.

She was so hyper aware of everyone that it was easy for her to note when they began looking towards the entrance and whispering.

“Here by herself again,” a nearby man murmured to his companion.

“Well of course, everyone knows…” Qin Su did not manage to hear what ‘everyone knew’ before they drifted away, but soon more whispers reached her.

“...heard she killed forty of them all by herself...”

“...Jin-furen’s best friend…”

“...terrifying…”

“...amazing…”

“...horrible woman…”

Despite herself, Qin Su stretched up on her toes to see who they were all talking about, feeling some of the pressure of people’s stares as they all looked towards the dias.

Yu Ziyuan strode through the gawking crowd as though they were stalks of wheat bending out of her way, their whispering only the wind moving through the field as she brushed past unconcerned. She was as regal as an empress in her sumptuous purple robes, Zidian proudly displayed on her finger, but there crackled a certain feral energy around her, like a sleeping leopard. Her face remained severe as she greeted Jin-furen, but it was as if there was no one else in the room except her friend.

“Excuse me for saying so, guniang, but you seem lonely standing here all by yourself. Did you come with someone?” Qin Su startled like a deer and spun to find a finely-dressed young man, perhaps ten years older, smiling down at her. His eyes had been resting somewhere lower than her face, and when she turned they flicked up to meet hers unwaveringly.

“Oh, um, yes, I came with my father,” she answered hesitatingly, indicating Qin Cangye, and then startled when she realised she hadn’t bowed. Quickly she swept low, but the man caught her arms in an overly-familiar gesture.

“Oh no, no need for that, guniang. I’m sure we’re going to be too close for such formalities soon. My name is Jin Licuo, I’m a senior disciple here.”

“Qin Su, of Laoling Qin,” she offered.

“That sounds familiar,” he said, leaning into her space. “Aren’t you the daughter of Qin-zongzhu? I heard you would be gracing us with your presence today.” He closed the considerable distance between their heights still further. She smiled uncomfortably at him.

“Yes,” she agreed when the silence stretched too long. She chanced a glance at her father, but he had been engaged by Jin-zongzhu himself and could not rescue her.

“You’re not betrothed to anyone yet, are you?” He asked.

“I’m not,” she said trying to make her voice sound repressive without being rude. She avoided eye contact, but it only made him lean closer.

“So if someone wanted to court you, they could?”

Qin Su swallowed, her hands clenching in her sleeves. “They would—they would have to ask my father.”

“Your father the sect leader,” he said, his voice both hungry and performatively nervous. “It’s a lot to ask of a man that he gets a sect leader’s permission to court a pretty girl. Maybe we could start without that and ask him if things got serious, hmm?”

“Um, I don’t think—” Could Qin Su tell him how inappropriate that was? Or was this normal here? She bit the inside of her cheek and tasted copper. “I—”

“I see that pig is raising his disciples to be just as licentious as he is,” came an assertive voice. Qin Su turned to blink up at Yu Ziyuan’s cruel and beautiful face.

“Yu-furen,” Jin Licuo said with a deep bow, not a trace of his oily charm in the obeisant movement.

“Z-Zi Zhizhu,” Qin Su stuttered, awed by the power of the woman’s presence.

“If you can’t tell when a woman doesn’t appreciate your advances then you must be as observant as a rock. Is this the quality of disciple the Jin sect has? If you can’t see what’s in front of your face you’ll be eaten by corpses soon enough.” Though her words were certainly harsh it was her caustic tone which made the Jin disciple twitch, the sound well suited to a battlefield commander.

“I—Qin-guniang and I were merely talking, Yu-furen—”

“Don’t give me that,” she snapped. “I am not a fool, and you are not a genius. If it was not the fault of your poor training then I have to assume you are simply a bullheaded philanderer like your sect head!” Qin Su gasped aloud at Yu Ziyuan’s audacity. Rumours were one thing, but to say it so publicly? How did she dare? Qin Su felt the congregation's stares keenly but the woman did not seem to care, laying into the young man as she saw fit. “If you can’t keep your hands off visiting women I shudder to think how you act with the disciples and serving girls here. Perhaps I should have Lusi watch you. I’m sure her punishment for improper behaviour would be harsh enough to satisfy me,” she threatened, naming the Jin sect leader’s wife..

Jin Licuo flinched at that. “Of—of course, Yu-furen, I would welcome her direction in my conduct.”

“Hmph.” Yu Ziyuan injected enough venom into that syllable to befit her title. Then she turned to Qin Su, making the girl tremble under the weight of her regard. Jin Licuo slunk off, correctly interpreting this dismissal, and Qin Su almost wanted to call him back to take Yu Ziyuan’s terrible focus off her.

“Are you the Qin girl?” She asked, expression severe but tone almost neutral.

“Yes, Zi Zhizhu,” Qin Su said, her voice faded and thready. She rallied. “I am Qin Su of Laoling Qin.”

“Hmph. Can you fight?”

Qin Su flinched. “N-no, Zi Zhizhu. I don’t have any aptitude for it, I’m afraid.” She fought the urge to sink into the gilded tile.

“And what do you do, if you do not cultivate?”

“I...I help my mother and father with sect affairs. Correspondence, economical matters, that… type of thing...” Qin Su trailed off, feeling pathetic under the eye of this warrior queen.

Yu Ziyuan eyed her critically. “So you focus on politics. You spend your time keeping things running instead of haring off to whack things with a sword. You do the important work few else could manage and leave the grunt work to the grunts.”

Qin Su blinked. “I… Yu-furen?”

“Well?” She snapped. “Is that accurate?”

“In… a manner of speaking? It is much too generous a way of describing—”

“No.” Yu Ziyuan’s voice cracked like her whip. “It is not too generous. Do not efface yourself, girl, for others will do that enough for you. Describe yourself as generously as you must to counterbalance their mutterings. Believe what you say, and only what you say. Don’t let upstart little peacocks like that,” she gestured sharply in the direction of the departed Jin Licuo, “walk all over you. You only have as much value as you give yourself, you hear? So straighten up.” The woman chucked Qin Su none-too-gently under the chin, forcing her to stand tall and proud. For a brief second Qin Su recalled she was a mother. “Qin Cangye!” She demanded, strident. Qin Su saw her father startle and turn towards them. “Did you forget your daughter in your haste to lick Jin boots?” The man stiffened in reflexive shock at the woman’s disrespect, but as soon as his eyes fell on Qin Su his face softened in concern. He glanced back at the group of men gathered around him with a hint of shame and began to make his way over. “Not,” Yu Ziyuan said to Qin Su, more quietly than she had anything thus far, “that you need him. You only need one person, Qin Su.” Qin Su blinked up at her, a huge, terrifying feeling opening up in her chest. “And who is it?” She demanded after a moment of silence in which she seemed to have expected a response.

Qin Su smiled at her, Yu Ziyuan’s lightning crackling through her mind. “Myself.”

#qin su #yu ziyuan #mdzs #the untamed #mdzswomen #mdzs fic #paris writes

57 notes · View notes

ranma-rewatch · 4 years

Text

Episode 24: Cool Runnings! The Race of the Snowmen

I cannot believe it’s here. Welcome back to the Ranma Rewatch, and it’s time to finish the Phoenix Pill story arc with this episode. I think. I’m pretty sure. I...do not remember this episode at all, really. Like I said last week, most of what I can recall is from the mockery of a YouTuber I used to follow. But I am unshackled from his opinion! I watch this episode with new eyes! Let us see what sights I shall witness!

...

I should have listened.

I wasn’t prepared for this.

So, here’s the plot. They’re on a snowy mountain. Why? No clue, I guess they just wanted to go skiing. Ranma isn’t skiing, Cologne shows up, they start to fight a little, and she reveals that there’s some competition going on, and the winner gets a date with Shampoo and if Ranma wins he gets the Phoenix Pill.

Everyone gets made because of the date with Shampoo part, even though...like, it’s really obvious that he’s just doing it for the pill. There’s a lot of forced conflict over that, and it ends up being just Cologne vs Ranma. It looks like he’s winning, she offers to make this all about their duel. If he wins, he gets the pill, if she loses, he has to marry Shampoo.

When Ranma accepts those terms, she immediately starts wiping the floor with him, and nothing he does makes a difference. In the end, the only way to win is to get Shampoo’s help. She turns into her cat form, which terrifies Ranma until he starts using Cat-Fu. That is actually able to kick Cologne’s butt, and eventually she gives up and hands over the pill. Ranma turns back to his uncursed state, happy to be cured, but he did it in a women’s bath so he looks like a pervert. THE END.

I’m...going to start by talking about the few things I liked here. I think having Cat-Fu being the way to defeat Cologne is a pretty cool idea, especially since it was that story that began this arc. Little bit of a full-circle thing.

There was a decent smattering of cute Akane stuff, and I like that she once again is the one who can immediately calm down the raging Cat Ranma. Not only that, but the Shampoo stuff wasn’t bad. The episode showed off her more scheming side, as she was happy to use Cologne’s plan as a way to steal Ranma’s affections and get a date from him, but in the end she was also happy to work against that plan just to help Ranma out. Plus, Ranma purposefully playing on her love for him was a pretty classic Ranma thing to do.

That’s all my niceness.

This was, by my estimation, one of the biggest drops in animation quality I’ve ever seen. That episode of Gurren Lagann where everyone is super off model? That looks like that show at its best compared to this episode. There’s just...so little animation, and what we do have is frequently full of errors. It’s an action-heavy episode, too, and none of it looks good.

It was bad-funny at first, but after a while...it just became hard to watch. So much reused animation, so many errors, so much still shots. I am not an animation person! I normally don’t care about any of this! But is actively made watching this more difficult.

It’s also just...an underwhelming way to end the arc. They’re just randomly in the mountains, no reason why. Cologne bets everything on a fight against Ranma, he finds a way to win, here’s the pill. Some of the ideas could have worked, I think, if given proper backing. But there’s just nothing here.

Not only that, but wow the dub was bad here. Not only was this a case where, because I preferred Cologne’s Japanese actress and she was in it a lot it was better, but also because the translation for the dub was terrible. There’s one line change that is so baffling, it turns a kind of okay line into something incomprehensible. I was looking forward to my watch on the sub, if only so I could figure out what had just happened.

Hey, why not, the arc is done, let’s talk about Cologne. Neither of her voice actresses are incredibly well known, but at least her Japanese voice actress, Miyoko Aso, has also been Pinako Rockbell in Fullmetal Alchemist and Shoga from Inuyasha. (She also passed away in 2018, after living quite a long life. Rest in peace.) The english voice actress, Elan Ross Gibson, is also fairly unknown, with her biggest work being as Baba in one of the Dragon Ball Z dubs.

As I mentioned before, they do play the character differently. They’re both going for “wizened old woman”, but Gibson’s Cologne is a lot more...toothless? She mostly sounds tired and bored. Aso gave the character a lot more life, more energy, and it’s that performance that’s working much better for me so far.

As a character, Cologne is...okay. She’s a very old Amazon warrior, the first character to appear who is, flat out, far stronger than Ranma. She serves as both an obstacle, what with the whole pressure point scenario, and a mentor, teaching him his signature move. There’s a sense that as much as she is trying to get one particular thing for him, namely marrying Shampoo, she’s also interested in seeing how he’ll develop, she’s impressed by his potential to grow stronger.

That said, she’s not even close to being among my favorite characters. She’s useful for dispensing exposition or teaching techniques, but her plots to get Ranma to marry Shampoo just...feel kind of boring to me. That’s genuinely all I have to say about her, at least for now. But who knows? Maybe one day my tune will change with this rewatch.

Y’all, I think it’s obvious, but I didn’t like this episode. I have no hesitation saying it was worse that Dr. Tofu’s mom’s episode. But the real question is: is it worse than the clip show? One was basically nothing, the other the active presence of bad. How you weigh one versus the other is a matter of personal preference, but for me, I’m going to say this episode was worse. At the very least, the season 1 finale had the animation from good episodes to show us.

Episode 7: Enter Ryoga, the Eternal ‘Lost Boy’

Episode 12: A Woman's Love is War! The Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics Challenge!

Episode 15: Enter Shampoo, the Gung-Ho Girl! I Put My Life in Your Hands

Episode 9: True Confessions! A Girl's Hair is Her Life!

Episode 2: School is No Place for Horsing Around

Episode 19: Clash of the Delivery Girls! The Martial Arts Takeout Race

Episode 6: Akane's Lost Love... These Things Happen, You Know

Episode 13: A Tear in a Girl-Delinquent's Eye? The End of the Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics Challenge!

Episode 23: Enter Mousse! The Fist of the White Swan

Episode 17: I Love You, Ranma! Please Don’t Say Goodbye

Episode 20: You Really Do Hate Cats!

Episode 16: Shampoo's Revenge! The Shiatsu Technique That Steals Heart and Soul

Episode 8: School is a Battlefield! Ranma vs. Ryoga

Episode 11: Ranma Meets Love Head-On! Enter the Delinquent Juvenile Gymnast!

Episode 4: Ranma and...Ranma? If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Another

Episode 5: Love Me to the Bone! The Compound Fracture of Akane's Heart

Episode 1: Here’s Ranma

Episode 22: Behold! The 'Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire' Technique

Episode 3: A Sudden Storm of Love

Episode 21: This Ol' Gal's the Leader of the Amazon Tribe!

Episode 10: P-P-P-Chan! He's Good For Nothin'

Episode 14: Pelvic Fortune-Telling? Ranma is the No. One Bride in Japan

Episode 18: I Am a Man! Ranma's Going Back to China!?

Episode 24: Cool Runnings! The Race of the Snowmen

But that’s it! The story arc is done, and next week...I can’t believe it. I’m so happy! With next week’s “The Abduction of P-Chan”, we’re starting a little arc I’ve been dying to revisit for ages! If you’re watching it on the Hulu order, then you’ve already seen it, but I’ll talk more about that next time! See you then!

#episode 24 #Cool Runnings! The Race of the Snowmen #ranma 1/2 #ranma saotome #akane tendo #shampoo #Cologne #anime analysis #anime rewatch

2 notes · View notes

talesfromthesnogbox · 4 years

Text

Eddie Needs to Relax (Cloud Nine)

Summary: “What, why are you doing laps? I told you to relax Eds.” He disappeared into the pool house and pulled out a round floatie tube. “Relax.”

Eddie frowned. “What is an innertube going to do to relax me?”

OR Eddie receives a phone call one fateful morning, and luckily Richie is there to help him relax. Inspired by an odd mix of spending an entire weekend floating in a pool and the HGTV show Pool Kings because why the hell not

Rating: T

Word Count: 3523

AO3

---

Richie was never stressed. The man was (almost) always cool as a cucumber, throwing jokes around left, right and center to keep things light. Even after Eddie broke down and left his wife, Richie was there helping him move his stuff from New York to California, not even batting an eye with fear or worry.

Eddie on the other hand… Eddie was always a ball of stress. He stressed about everything from cleaning the house, to what they’d be eating for dinner, to Richie’s habit of online dating.

Eddie knew he was gay, but he had yet to come out to Richie (which is something he stressed about). It was hard for him to see Richie dating around, but the thought of him coming out terrified him. There was clearly no way Richie felt the same way about him, so he’d keep it in as long as he could.

Unfortunately, that all came to a head rather quickly.

“You’re living with WHO?”

“Myra, calm down. This is none of your business anymore, you’ve been served the divorce papers, I’m done with you.” Eddie paced the area between the kitchen and living room in Richie’s ridiculously large home, praying that his friend hadn’t gotten out of bed yet to hear the fight.

“Eddie bear, do you know what he is? Do you understand how dirty he is?”

“Yes, Myra. I know Richie is gay. I knew this before I moved in with him.”

She spluttered over the phone. “You knew and you still moved in with him? Wh-what are you his little boyfriend or something? Do you think this is some little fantasy story Eddie, because it’s not.”

“What the—Richie is not my boyfriend. Where is this even coming from? I was married to you, don’t you think you would have known if I was gay?” Panic bubbled in his throat with every word he spoke.

“I don’t know, do I even know you anymore Eddie? You were my husband! I thought my husband loved me, but apparently he doesn’t. You aren’t yourself. Your so-called ‘friends’ have poisoned you into thinking you’re someone you’re not, so who knows! Maybe you are gay now!”

Eddie groaned. “That’s not how it works Myra, if I’m gay now, then I was gay back then too. But I’m not, I left you because I don’t love you. I’m not dating Richie and I’m not gay. Will you just drop it please? ”

“No! I want the truth Eddie bear! Did he tell you to do this? Was it him that told you to leave me all alone here? It’s Richie isn’t it, feeding you all these lies about being gay.”

“So what if I am!” Eddie yelled. He was shaking, all his stress finally bubbling to the surface. “What if I am gay then Myra? Huh? What are you gonna do about it? I’m divorcing you. I don’t love you, I don’t want to be with you, I’m not even into women. God, fuck, goodbye Myra.” He hung up his phone and tossed it across the room onto the couch.

“Sooooo… do you want to tell me what that was all about?”

Eddie whipped his head around to see Richie at the top of the stairs, staring down at him with wide eyes.

“H-how much did you hear?”

Richie descended the stairs, turning on the coffee pot. “Um… from about ‘I left you because I don’t love you but I’m not dating Richie’ all the way up to… you’re gay?”

Eddie collapsed into Richie’s La-Z-boy, head in his hands, breathing heavily.

“Hey… hey man, it’s okay, look at me, it’s okay.” Richie was in front of Eddie in a moment, rubbing his shoulder softly. “You’re having a panic attack, okay, look at me, I need you to breathe Eds. In and out, in and out.” He guided Eddie through until his breathing slowed. “What do you need buddy, do you need a glass of water?” Eddie shook his head. “Alright, keep breathing, I’m here for you.”

Eventually Eddie’s breathing slowed back to a normal rate. He looked at Richie with tears in his eyes. “T-thank you.”

“Don’t worry about it dude, I used to have panic attacks all the time. Do you want to tell me what happened?”

Eddie shook his head. “I… not right now, Rich.”

“Okay. Whatever it is, Eds, you need to relax. You’ve been so tense since we got to California.”

“I know, I know. I just… I don’t know how to relax. I always just end up stressing myself out more.”

“Have you tried massage?” Richie suggested.

“I’ve been for massages, I’m not a fan.”

“Okay, well I find swimming helps relax me.”

Eddie perked up. “Swimming, yeah I used to swim in college.”

“Great! You haven’t used the pool yet. Go get your suit.”

“Wait, now?”

“Yes now! Come on, this will be good for you.”

The two of them went to their respective rooms to change and met in the backyard. Eddie would never admit it, but Richie’s pool was the coolest thing he’d ever seen in a residential yard. The water was perfect, sparkling blue, the pool was massive. A small wading shelf sat in one back corner with built in lounge chairs, and in the other corner near the deep end, a rock structure had cascading trickles of water. It was serene, it was beautiful, it was extravagant.

Richie didn’t realize it until after their return from Derry, but the reason he’d chosen this particular house with this particular pool was because of the jumping rock. He’d forgotten his friends, but he remembered how much fun they’d had jumping off that ledge into the deep waters of the quarry.

“Rich, this is beautiful, but I don’t think it’s really suited to doing laps.”

Richie scoffed. “What, why are you doing laps? I told you to relax Eds.” He disappeared into the pool house and pulled out a round floatie tube. “Relax.”

Eddie frowned. “What is an innertube going to do to relax me?”

Richie shook his head, pointing towards the mesh barrier in the hole of the tube. “Nah man, this one has a seat. Come on, I promise you’ll love it.” He stepped into the water in the wading ledge and sat on the edge of it, wetting the tube. “Come on in, water is beautiful.”

The water was indeed beautiful. It was warm, but cool enough to be refreshing on a hot day. He was able to submerge himself without shivering, but not feel like he was swimming in soup. He followed the shelf to the edge of the water where Richie was wading, his hand extended ready to help Eddie into the float. He turned, rolling his eyes, feeling a little silly, and dropped into the seat of the tube, floating backwards with the force of it.

“So…?”

“So what?”

Richie laughed. “Are you relaxed?”

“I think it’ll take more than a few seconds to relax me Richard.”

Richie laughed and followed Eddie’s float. “Lean back dude, you aren’t gonna fall backwards. Trust me, this thing has like a pillow in the neck, it’s great.”

Eddie followed suit and leaned his head back, relaxing his shoulders, and closed his eyes. The sounds of the trickling water from the jumping rock and the feeling of the tube rocking with the gentle waves he and Richie made instantly started to calm him down. Richie was right, this was relaxing.

It was serene, all until he felt a wet hand at his temple. “Wha—”

“Dude, chill. Let me help.”

Eddie let out a huff, but leaned his head back and closed his eyes once more. Richie spread his fingers and combed them through Eddie’s dark hair, his blunt nails scratching his scalp ever so slightly. If Eddie was being honest, it was heaven. He was even a little upset that Richie was right about it.

“There ya go, see I told you this would help.”

Richie’s hands were gentle in a way that Eddie could have never possibly imagined. He was such a lanky teenager, but he’d grown into his body, filling out in all the right ways, he was delightful to look at, especially splashing around in the pool. His hands were the perfect amount of rough and soft, worn in all the right ways where they touched his scalp. It all felt so very domestic, and for a few minutes, Eddie could slip away from his real, hellish life, and into one where he was happy. Happy with his life, happy with his job, happy with Richie. He knew Richie wouldn’t respond badly if he told him how he felt, but Eddie wasn’t about to take that chance, not yet.

Richie’s hands slipped lower to rub at the base of his neck, and Eddie hummed happily. A shiver rolled down his spine as Richie’s fingers tickled the edges of his hair, and his body suddenly felt heavy and light at the same time. Then Richie’s fingers traced the shell of his ears, and suddenly, he’d lost control.

Eddie hummed happily at the light touches, biting his lip, but he couldn’t hold back the full-fledged moan he let out when Richie’s fingers rubbed lightly at his earlobes.

“Enjoying yourself Eds?”

“Fuck you, I know you know enough about sex to know the ears are an erogenous zone.” Eddie’s voice was barely even hostile, more soft and scolding than anything. Richie let out a boisterous laugh.

“Why, is it turning you on?”

“A little.”

Richie stopped dead in his tracks, and Eddie’s eyes flew open.

“I-I mean… if that’s okay with… if you want to stop then I…”

Richie continued on tracing the shell of Eddie’s ears.

He closed his eyes, but he was nowhere near as relaxed as he was before. His body felt like jello, but his mind was alert, and his heart thudded loudly in his chest.

“Hey Rich? I’m gay.”

“Yeah?”

Eddie nodded after a moment of thought. “Yeah.”

“Thanks for telling me buddy.”

Eddie nodded. A comfortable silence fell over the two of them again as Richie’s fingers returned to Eddie’s hair. He felt… lighter somehow, like coming out to Richie shed pounds off his body, added years onto his life. He wondered what else he could say that would shed that weight, but not reveal it all…

“That helped, didn’t it?”

“It did. How did you know?”

Richie chuckled. “I’ve known you practically my whole life man, even when I forgot you, I remembered my Eds. I know what you’re like when you have a secret that you need to get off your chest, and it felt like that’s what you needed today.”

“Well that’s not the only secret.” Eddie mumbled.

“Sorry, what was that? I didn’t catch it.”

Eddie chuckled. “It’s nothing.”

Richie shook his head. His hands wandered from Eddie’s scalp back down his neck and jaw, tracing a smooth pattern with his fingertips. “Alright man.” His thumb brushed Eddie’s lip, and neither could tell if it was on purpose. “Your lips are sealed.”

Eddie’s lips puckered slightly under Richie’s touch, shivering at the contact. His lips tingled where he’d touched them, and he instantly craved the feeling of anything of Richie’s on his lips again.

“They’re sealed, but I don’t know for how much longer.” Eddie babbled, hoping for the accidental touch once more.

“Whatever you say, Eds.”

Eddie took a deep breath and continued. “Myra and I were fighting this morning because she thought you and I were together.”

“Yeah dude, that conversation looked tense.”

“It was.” Eddie confirmed. “I-I almost wanted to lie, say that we are together. Just so she’d stop nagging me about coming home to her.”

“Is that so?”

Eddie knew Richie was skeptical of that statement. But he wasn’t brave enough to admit that yet. “Yeah. Maybe it would be easier on her if she thought I’d moved on.”

“And have you? Moved on I mean?”

“From her? Yeah.”

“Mm.” Richie made a noise of agreement in the back of his throat. “From her.” He stroked his thumbs on the apples of Eddie’s cheeks, just under his eyes in soft circles. “The way you said it Eds… is there someone else you’re trying to move on from?”

Eddie’s calm reverie was broken. “Pfft, you wish asshole.”

“Ah, a boy can dream.” Richie chuckled lowly, his heart silently breaking. Maybe he’d read it all wrong, maybe Eddie was just looking for a quick flirt with a trusted friend before trying his hand in the dating world for real.

Eddie’s brow furrowed, tension drawing up into his face again. One of Richie’s hands moved to stroke at his forehead, and soothe the creased lines that appeared. The smaller man’s eyes opened wide, staring up at Richie. “What do you mean by that?”

“By what?”

“A boy can dream. What’s that supposed to mean, Rich?”

Richie’s heartbeat picked up. Was he really ready to lay all his cards out on the table? “It’s nothing Eds. I just… it’s nothing.”

“It’s obviously not nothing.” Eddie felt he suddenly had infinite wisdom in his sudden relaxation.

Their movements around the pool had come full circle, and they were back to where they began. Richie sighed, and jumped back onto the wading shelf, sitting comfortably while Eddie floated in front of him. “It’s not, you’re right. I just… it’s stupid. I had a crush on you when we were kids, and I thought, hm, how funny would it be if the tables were turned, and now instead of me getting over you, you were getting over me. It’s dumb.”

Eddie’s breath hitched. “You… you had a crush on me?”

“Yeah, stupid, right? I had so much fun pushing all your buttons. You were so cute in those little shorts, they starred in like ninety percent of my wet dreams.”

He glanced down at himself in the floatie, the bathing suit he’d chosen was quite reminiscent of those iconic red shorts that made a yearly comeback in his wardrobe in the nineties. Most of his tanned thighs were exposed in the suit he wore now; they were fitted, enough for his body to be clearly defined, but not enough to be considered a speedo, and they slung low on his hips. Eddie had worked hard for his body to look the way it did, he was proud of his flat stomach and strong thighs, and had no qualms about showing it off. He had very little ulterior motive with these shorts… very little, but not none.

“Kinda like the ones I’m wearing now?”

Richie’s face heated up, but he allowed himself to glance down Eddie’s body. “O-oh… would you look at that? Yeah… kinda like those.”

Eddie smirked. The teasing with Richie had always been playful, childlike… he had no idea how fun it could be when it actually bordered on flirtatious. “It’s a good thing you’re over me then.”

Richie didn’t understand how everything flipped so quickly, how suddenly, it was him in the hot seat. “Yeah, good thing. But it sucks for you, being around this nearly naked, dripping wet, six feet of hairy dad bod.”

Eddie let out a laugh, half at Richie’s self-deprecating joke, and half at the fact that he was right, Richie looked good. “Fuck off, you know you’re sexy.” Richie was visibly taken aback by the comment. His face contorted in confusion. “Come on, you can’t tell me you don’t know this.”

“First I’m hearing it. Enlighten me, Eds.”

Biting his lip, Eddie allowed his eyes to roam over Richie’s face. From the upside down angle, he could see the clear definition in his sharp jawline through the scruff he’d been growing out as of late. Richie’s throat bobbed tantalizingly as he swallowed, Eddie wanted to bite it. His rough hands were driving him crazy, still roaming his face. He knew his eyes looked hungrily over Richie, his hands itched to get a hold of him.

“Your jaw, your eyes, your shoulders, I know you’re blind as a bat, but do you ever look at yourself?” The taller man chuckled. “I’m serious Rich! You’re really fucking hot.” Eddie reached up and grabbed at Richie’s forearms, stroking them through the layer of wiry hair. “I’m only going to ask this once, and I want you to answer me truthfully. Did you really get over me?”

Richie’s breath hitched. After a minute of silence, he groaned, slumping over to rest his face on the pillow of the tube by Eddie’s head. “Eds…”

Eddie detangled Richie’s hands from his head, pulling them down his body to his chest, propelling himself backwards, further into the other man. Goosebumps broke out over his skin at the rough feeling of hands sliding over his body, and he turned his head, burying his face in Richie’s hair. “Rich, come on.” He mouthed against his ear.

The only sound that could be heard was the trickle of the water, and their heavy breathing. Richie finally turned his head, his lips catching on the tip of Eddie’s nose. “I think you can figure out the answer to that.” Eddie craned his head upwards and gasped as their lips brushed softly. “Eddie…” He spoke against the other man’s lips. “Eddie get off that thing, I don’t want our first kiss to be a Spiderman kiss.”

Eddie’s face broke into a smile as he broke away from Richie and pulled himself out of the floatie. He hoisted himself up onto the wading shelf, and straddled Richie’s thighs instead, humming when Richie’s hands gripped his hips, his own resting lightly on Richie’s chest. The two stared at each other, bewildered, neither wanting to break the gentle tension first. Slowly, they started coming together, closing the distance between them at a glacial pace. The air around them buzzed deliciously, neither wanted to make a move first knowing this was the death of their friendship, and the start of something bigger; Richie and Eddie merging into one unit as RichieandEddie once and for all. Eddie’s eyes slid shut as their foreheads met; Richie’s hot breath fanned against his lips, and his chest heaved, drinking in as much air as he possibly could. He couldn’t take it anymore… this was driving him mad. His hand slithered from where it rested against Richie’s soft pec, up his neck, to its final resting place, fisted in Richie’s hair. With one final breath, Eddie tugged lightly, pulling Richie’s face towards his, and finally, finally, their lips met.

Nothing could have prepared Eddie for this. Richie’s lips slotted against his gently… gentle in a way he never imagined Trashmouth could be. Richie’s kiss was soft, so soft and loving he could cry. His thumbs traced gentle circles on Eddie’s skin beneath the water, and Eddie was sure he would burst. Eddie pulled away, overwhelmed by the sheer intimacy of it, and Richie’s lips followed, chasing him like they did when they were kids. They still had yet to open their eyes. Neither wanted to break the moment as they sat, breathing heavily against each other, foreheads resting on the other. Finally, Richie caved, and with a soft sigh, their lips met again.

The kiss was still soft, but hungrier than the last. Over and over, the two met in the middle, mouths opening to invite the other in. They melted together, Eddie scrambling to get as close to Richie as he could. Richie let out a heady groan as Eddie took his bottom lip between his teeth, tugging gently.

“Fuck Eds.” Richie panted, lowering his hands to Eddie’s ass.

“Yeah, yeah holy shit.”

Richie breathed out a laugh. “Fuck man, I’ve thought about doing that forever.”

“I know, me too.”

Richie leaned in again and kissed him gently. “Jesus, this is not how I pictured today going when I woke up to you and Myra in a screaming match.”

“You’re telling me.” Eddie leaned down and mouthed at Richie’s throat. “For the record, it was you.”

Richie’s brow furrowed. “Me? What was me Eds?”

Eddie chuckled. “I was trying to get over you. I didn’t think it was ever going to happen.”

“Well… since we’re in the spirit of spilling our guts… I didn’t ever get over you.”

“Thank god for that, considering you’re now under me.”

It was Richie’s turn to let out a laugh. “Eds gets off a good one!” He pulled Eddie up to meet his eyes with his hand under his chin, and leaned in to kiss him gently one more time. “Seriously though, I um… Eddie, I love you.”

Eddie’s smile softened. He felt like a teenager again, a smitten teenager with butterflies in his stomach and love in his heart. “I love you too.”

Richie ran his fingers up and down Eddie’s back lightly, tracing the muscles there. “So… I’m guessing you’re feeling more relaxed now?”

“Yes… no… maybe relaxed isn’t the right word for it. I feel… I feel… I feel like I’m on cloud nine with you right now.”

They kissed softly again. “Good. Come on, let’s go dry off, my work here is done.”

#reddie #reddie fic #Richie x Eddie #it chapter 2 fic #eddie lives #my writing

19 notes · View notes

beardycarrot · 4 years

Text

I decided to finally get up-to-date on the 2011 Hunter x Hunter anime. I started watching it when it first started airing, but was annoyed with how it was handled... they were covering all the same things as the original 1999 adaptation, but with annoying little changes (why did Hisoka and Menchi swap hair colors?), and more significant changes for the worse that really grated on me. I decided to stop watching and create more space before the original and the new one so that I could actually enjoy it (the new anime was announced just a couple months after I binged the original). Nearly a decade later, here I am!

Thankfully, I’ve gotten over my issues, and am fully enjoying all the things they did right... as well as appreciating Togashi’s writing. MAN is this series good. I think I preferred how the original handled Greed Island more (I’d have to rewatch it to confirm), but other than that it’s been great... and finally, I’m at the Chimera Ant arc. I’ve been curious about this for ages, based on the name alone, and have been dying to know what happens after the huge cliffhanger that the original anime ends on. I probably would’ve started reading the manga, if the new anime hadn’t popped up when it did.

Anyway! The Chimera Ant arc is... absolutely terrifying. Chimera Ants are apparently creatures kinda like the xenomorphs from the Alien franchise, with the queen passing on the traits of whatever she eats to her offspring. Injured and stuck in a seaside cave, she’s been eating nothing but fish, bats, and the occasional crab... which obviously don’t make for the best combination of traits for a human-sized ant monster. Unfortunately, she acquires a taste for human flesh, which produces highly intelligent offspring... and that puts all of humanity on the menu. Again, like I said, it’s terrifying.

Even better, it’s really friggin’ clever! One of my most hated tropes in fiction, and it’s especially bad in Japanese media, is the main baddie being more human-like than any of the other monsters it associates with. They do it so that the audience forms more of a connection, I guess... but I hate it. It’s stupid, ridiculous, unrealistic, and straight up bad writing. I will straight up abandon a piece of fiction for doing this without explanation. A good version of this is Magus in Chrono Trigger. He’s the ruler of the monsters, but it turns out that’s a role he assumed because... well, it’s complicated, but he’s not a monster who just so happens to look exactly like a human.

A BAD example of this is Lavos, also from Chrono Trigger. Throughout the game, Lavos is presented as this big spiny... tick, thing, and you later learn that’s basically just a vessel for the REAL Lavos. Which, because Akira Toriyama designed the characters, looks just like Cell from Dragon Ball Z and Estark from Dragon Quest IV and every other big bad alien monster he’s ever drawn. Then, after beating THAT, you fight Lavos’ core... which is even more human. I hate that kind of thing. It’s stupid.

So, that’s what makes Chimera Ants so clever. They’re these terrifying monsters, chimeras made up of various creature traits, set on dragging you back to their queen to be eaten... but the high-ranking ones, the ones that the protagonists will actually talk to and fight against, are significantly more human. With an in-universe explanation for it that not only makes sense, but builds on it in interesting ways. The motivation of the bad guys is unshakable: they’re insects, and they need to bring food (read: people) to their queen. They can’t be reasoned with, and no matter how human-looking they are, they HAVE to be killed or otherwise subdued.

Not only has Togashi turned an annoying pointless trope into something clever, but he’s found a way to create unique-looking characters with whatever abilities he wants. I’ll be really interested to see what happens if a human who can use Nen (the series’ power system) is eaten by the queen...

edit: A few episodes in, and... still pretty good! The one big issue is how female Chimera Ants are handled. Do I even have to explain what I mean by that?

...They’re basically just human women.

#hunter x hunter #chimera ant #spoilers

17 notes · View notes

flintsbroom · 4 years

Text

⧼ charles melton, (cis) male, he - him / ‘no church in the wild’ by jay-z and kanye west + well worn leather jackets smelling of cigarette smoke and broom oil, messy sheets and an unmade bed, half-finished cups of coffee ⧽ ━━ hey, isn’t that MARCUS FLINT? i read a daily prophet article on them, once ; the 28 year old [ pure blood ] WIZARD is a [ SLYTHERIN alumnus who has gone on to be a BROOM MAKER ]. i’ve heard they can be quite HARD-WORKING & PROTECTIVE, but i don’t know… they came off very ABRASIVE & RESENTFUL in that interview. it really is hard to know what to believe these days though, isn’t it?

hello darlings! i’m zelda from somewhere in northern italy and here’s marcus! it’s my first time playing him + i haven’t rped in years but hopefully i’ve still got it !!! i came up with a couple (more like a dozen i’m so sorry) headcanons for my character & there’s a wanted connections page if you’re interested in plotting something out!

childhood - marcus comes from a pureblood middle class family. his parents (especially his mom) always pushed him to befriend wealthier and more powerful people - he got to know a lot of pureblood kids even before attending hogwarts, but he wouldn’t really consider them ‘friends’

hogwarts - once marcus began to play quidditch, his life became all about that. he worked hard to become the best (even skipping classes and not doing homework to get extra time to practice) so when he was appointed slytherin captain he actually cried (when no one was watching, obviously) - fun fact: one of the reasons why marcus was never a model student is because he is dyslexic so reading and learning spells was super hard for him. he has never told this to a living soul (literally the only people who know about this are mcgonagall and his parents) and he doesn’t plan to share this information anytime soon - it’s something that makes him feel really ashamed of himself - he was very good at care of magical creatures though (fun fact numero dos: he loves animals & he treats them a lot more gently than he does fellow humans) war - his parents were both death eaters and because he did not want to disappoint them any further he also ended up taking the mark. pureblood supremacy is all he grew up with and while he does not believe in it as much as his parents do, he def has some prejudices - however, marcus really, really hated the idea of a war. as soon as he realized that actual battles were going to be fought, he tried as hard as he could to avoid them. does he feel like a coward because of it? absolutely. but while he might be aggressive and quick to throw punches, the idea of cursing and killing others made him want to throw up - as for his stance on what bellatrix is trying to do, he is not hiding per se but he is terrified by the idea that she might knock on his door one day and ask him to rejoin the ranks

after hogwarts - he became a professional chaser for the falmouth falcons - he also had a thing with one of this male teammates - cue sexuality crisis because how can he like a guy and still be attracted to women? bisexuality was just not a thing at the flint household so marcus still feels very conflicted over this - then,The Incident happened. a year ago, during one of the last game of the season, he got badly injured by a bludger (and by ‘badly’ i mean you-can-never-play-pro-again badly) marcus of course was devastated. he spent six months completely isolating himself from everybody, family included. he picked up a lot of bad habits like smoking and excessive drinking. he still indulges in them these days - now he’s been working for almost half a year as a broom-maker and general shop assistant at quality quidditch supplies in diagon alley. he’s not the best at dealing with costumers (especially if they are other professional quidditch players), but he’s slowly recovering, both physically and mentally.

& yeah that’s pretty much it! if you have any other questions on marcus or if you’re interested in plotting something for our characters, please let me know!

#nox.intro #( hello everyone !!!)

4 notes · View notes

destinyislandwanderer · 4 years

Text

One Little Spark (Lea/Axel/Roxas)

Fandom: Kingdom Hearts

Genre: Romance/Angst/Fluff

Rating: Mature (adult themes)

Words: 1,587

Summary: Axel reminisces on Lea and Isa’s fraught relationship and meets Roxas for the first time.

—

“We could always kill him,” Saix suggested calmly as though murder were the most natural thing in the world.

“Do you think it’s really necessary?” Axel remarked, trying to adopt the same disinterested tone. It wasn’t easy. Axel was terrified by the ruthlessness of Saix’s new power game, but he was in too deep now to escape. He knew better than anyone that Saix was happy to destroy anyone who got in his way.

The sad part was, he used to like Saix once, back when he was still Isa and Axel was still Lea. In fact, there’d been no one he had cared about more.

Axel’s mind wandered back to a young Lea following Isa around like a shadow. It had taken a long time for him to notice he had a crush on his best friend, and Isa was the one who finally made him realize it.

They were near the Marketplace in Hollow Bastion, overlooking a darkening sky at twilight. The castle windows were just barely starting to glow with warm yellow light. In retrospect, it was quite romantic. At the time, Lea hadn’t noticed such things. He was young, and his world revolved around Isa.

“Lea, have you ever kissed anyone before?”

If he said the wrong thing, Isa would tease him mercilessly. What answer did he expect? He knew he was taking too long to respond, and he expected Isa would call him out on it soon. Even worse, he’d know if Lea was lying. “No!” he blurted, “Have you?” He feared the answer. If Isa said yes, Lea knew he wouldn’t live it down.

“No. Bet you’ve thought about it though.”

Lea nodded slightly, panicking again. “Mmm sure,” he mumbled, not daring to read Isa’s expression.

“I wonder if you’d be any good at it.”

Now Isa was baiting him, and his nervousness was replaced by frustration. “I’m sure I am! Probably better than you are!” It was comforting to return to their naturally adversarial rapport. They were better at fighting than anything else.

“Prove it.”

Lea laughed nervously. What did Isa want from him really? Did he want Lea to say how stupid that would be and walk away? Or did he really want Lea to kiss him? He hazarded a look into Isa’s eyes and recognized his expression. This was a real challenge. Isa was dead serious.

“Er, okay.”

“You’re nervous,” Isa derided him.

“No I’m not.”

“So do it then.”

Lea did, pressing his lips to Isa’s. It didn’t feel like much of anything, and he pulled away to judge Isa’s expression.

“I think you can do better,” Isa challenged.

“Fine,” Lea whispered, trying to take cues from the times he’d seen people kiss in the past. He’d try it slower, and he should probably touch Isa more, but where? They usually only touched when joking or fighting. Isa stared at him impatiently. He closed his eyes and leaned forward. This time he added more force. He managed to part Isa’s lips with his own, and he found he liked the feeling, and he wanted more of it. Lea didn’t have to think of how to touch Isa because his best friend’s arms were soon laced behind his neck, forcing him closer. As his body collided with Isa’s, he gasped slightly and broke the kiss, but Isa’s mouth was back on his in a moment. His arms instinctively wrapped themselves around Isa, and he felt lost and thoughtless, focused only on this glorious moment and every new sensation.

In the sea of bliss, he felt a sharp pain on his bottom lip and a bitter metallic taste. The surprise made him pull himself away. He put a finger to his mouth and discovered a drop of blood.

He looked at Isa, offended, and Isa laughed. “Got you! See you tomorrow,” he yelled as he disappeared down the stairs, taking them two at a time.

Lea stayed there for hours, sitting on the ledge overlooking the castle, wondering if he’d done something wrong.

—-

They didn’t speak of it again.

Two weeks later, Isa asked out a girl three years his senior, and she rejected him. Isa had been furious, believing everyone should want him (a belief which Lea seconded with unquestioned devotion).

“I know you want to kiss me again,” Isa prompted. “Don’t you?”

The answer was yes, and Isa had him pinned against the wall of his bedroom, digging his nails into Lea’s neck in a way that made him feel wanted and wired even as it stung. And this time, there had been no bite at the end. Just a goodnight and goodbye and another night of restlessness and vague desire.

For months after, Lea tried to convince Isa to kiss him again by every means possible except asking. He knew Isa would tear him to pieces if he brought it up. He had to be sly and indirect, but it still never worked. Isa only resorted to him when he was desperate or lonely or wanted to prove a point.

As months turned to years, girlfriends came and went. Isa had sex for the first time, and Lea followed suit finding a girlfriend of his own. Isa often criticized Lea for his preference for men over women (though he honestly liked both), but still Isa taught Lea everything he knew about how to sleep with who he wanted when he wanted. His tactics always worked, but never on Isa - he always treated Lea like a second thought.

By the time they were in too deep with Xehanort, Lea realized he’d been supplanted by Isa’s new idol. All he talked about was Xehanort, and Axel got the feeling the two of them did more than just talk, judging by the little looks and moves of control Xehanort always pulled with him. And the worst part was that Isa seemed glad, happy to be out-mastered at his own game. Lea watched on helplessly, seeing his best friend of 18 years slip through his fingers.

The truth was, he hadn’t really wanted to join Organization XIII in the first place. He’d found Xehanort's ideas distasteful and his methods barbaric. But he always felt pulled, compelled by Isa’s sheer force of will and charisma until he forgot he had a choice in the matter. When Xehanort became Xemnas and demanded they become heartless too, Axel and Saix were born, and Lea’s fate became a mystery to Axel for a very long time.

Axel helped Saix become the pride of the Organization by doing all his dirty work without question. As a Nobody, he was unremorseful and obedient with none of Lea’s previous reservations about morality. He was heartless after all. And still, even though he couldn’t feel as keenly as Lea had about Isa, he was always compelled towards Saix by a force he couldn’t explain. Saix had power over Axel, and they both knew it.

Until one day…

“We have a new member,” Saix sneered, “Sora’s Nobody. He looks weak to me, and he’s definitely stupid. He can barely understand us. He doesn’t even seem to know who he is… but Xemnas insists, and what Xemnas wants…” Saix shrugged. “He needs a name. Can you come up with something?”

“I’d love to,” Axel lied. He was sick of always being assigned the most mundane tasks. He knew Saix did it just to annoy him and punish him for the times he’d acted out, which he was doing more by the day.

He sorted through the possibilities - Saxor, Arsox, Soxra… Roxas quickly became his favorite choice. It had a nice ring to it - Rox for short (if he was cool enough to warrant a nickname).

The fact that Saix didn’t like Roxas was already a point in his favor as far as Axel was concerned.

But he was not prepared, not at all, for the sweet, helpless, blonde, short ball of indescribable cuteness and light that walked through the door.

“Well, introduce yourself ” Saix commanded. “I’ve decided he’s your responsibility,” Saix smirked as though it were a punishment.

Axel tried to suppress the smile that threatened as Roxas looked into his eyes for the first time. He shouldn’t show Saix how happy this made him, but when he saw Roxas smile back, it was hopeless.

At the time, he’d had no idea how much the gleam in Roxas’s eyes and the smile on his face would come to mean to him. They held the promise of warmth and approval he would come to live and die for. He felt the first inklings of destiny vibrate through him. He was charmed, smitten, over the moon with joy.

“Don’t just stand there with that stupid look on your face, Axel!” Saix snapped.

Axel found the bite of Saix’s words no longer touched him, and he thought Saix must sense it because he added, “Remember, you’re responsible for this boy now, and if you fail I shall personally make sure you’re both punished for it, and -“

Axel didn’t hear the rest. He walked towards Roxas who eyed him curiously. He held out a hand, but Roxas didn’t take it.

“Do you… know what a handshake is? Here, just do what I’m doing.” Roxas tentatively extended his arm. When their hands touched, electricity flowed from Axel’s fingertips to his innermost being where all his hopes and dreams had been waiting for one little spark. Something awoke. A flower bloomed.

(If you liked this, please find me on AO3!)

#kingdom hearts fanfiction #kh axel #lea kingdom hearts #isa kingdom hearts #kh roxas #roxas x axel #akuroku #destinyislandwanderer’s writing

2 notes · View notes

cecilspeaks · 5 years

Text

147 - The Protester

Hot singles in your area are staring into the forest and grinning absently.

Welcome to Night Vale.

Astronomers are frantically trying to determine why a chunk of the moon is missing. Ragged and greedy like a slice removed from a pie by hungry hands rather than a civilized serving utensil, the gap in the moon has been baffling professional sky gazers for weeks. Fun fact: did you know a group of astronomers is called a commotion?

Astronomers believe the moon could be eroding, because people have stopped believing in it, like ancient Roman polytheism. Others have theorized that the moon was damaged by enemy ships in the ongoing Blood Space War. But people on the internet have countered that this is part of the mandala effect, and that that piece of the moon has always been missing and we’re collectively misremembering. Like how those beloved picture book bears that we all remember as the Berenstein Bears, have by all physical evidence always actually been spelled “The Dog Pound Boyzzzz”. Boyz with a Z. Because of the 2016 city ordinance that proclaimed that anything can be true if you say it loud enough, astronomers are forced to consider all sides.

I don’t know any astronomers, but I do know a scientist! My husband Carlos has been the leading scientific mind in Night Vale since we started dating, almost six years ago. Carlos says that he has been studying and interesting meteorite he found out in the sand wastes and scrublands beyond Night Vale. He believes this particular rock is a piece of the moon. Standing before a giant wall of blinking lights, flickering screens and intermittent beeps, Carlos determined that this piece of the moon broke off only one month ago. But this is impossible, because no one can remember seeing the moon breaking apart in the sky. Well, maybe we were all asleep when it happened, I told Carlos as I dabbed away a small crumb from a cheese Danish that had gotten stuck in his beard. Oh, fun fact: Carlos grew a beard! And I have never liked beards on men, but now – I do. It’s got two thin silver racing stripes down the chin, and the hair is so soft. We’ve been married over two years and every day, I fall more in love.

Oh right, the moon, OK good God, always with the moon. [mutters] Yeah, yeah… Carlos has been studying an unusual number of empty homes and businesses about town. He noticed that the houses on either side of us are completely empty, but he didn’t remember them being empty before. He remembers us having neighbors, but he couldn’t name a single thing about them. He believes this might be related to the damaged moon. Whatever happened a month ago to the moon immediately caused us all to forget it, because something in our timeline changed. Carlos said: “Perhaps we are not forgetting people and events, perhaps they never existed at all.” His eyes were cloudy with pensive thought, and I touched his furry cheek and said: “You’ll save us, hon. I know you will.” He smiled and asked if I’d be willing to reach out to archeology professor Harrison Kip again. Carlos, uh, had been communicating with Kip about this very issue, but now emails to Harrison keep bouncing back, and his phone number is no longer in the phone company’s database of working numbers. I laughed and said: “Carlos, I don’t know who Harrison Kip is!” Carlos looked worried, and said he wasn’t sure he did either. But he felt like he should.

Protestors have organized a sit in in front of city hall, demanding an end to the Blood Space War. The city council, seeing the crowd of about 150 people gathered around the front entrance of their building, took immediate action. They announced they would be taking a long planned family vacation to the Badlands National Park in South Dakota, until this whole protest thing runs its course. “We don’t believe South Dakota actually exists,” the single-bodied, multi-voiced council said. “When you look at a map, it seems like it exists, like it’s just right there when you look at it and it’s between two other identical states, so it would make more sense for it to be there than not. Anyway, this feels like a great time to take the kids to see Mount Rushmore.” As the city council said this, several small childlike heads emerged from the city council’s singular body and screamed in happy unison. Or terrified unison. Mm, it’s hard to get an emotional reading on screams.

The organizer of the protest is 20-year-old Night Vale community college student, Basimah Bishara, whose father Lieutenant Fakir Bishara returned home from the Blood Space War three years ago. Basimah greeted her father’s return with joy, but that joy has since been replaced by confusion and pain. Let’s hear Basimah’s story in her own words.

Basimah: Time no longer works correctly for my father. I understand time does not work correctly for many people in Night Vale, but it had always worked correctly for him before the war. In December 2015, he returned home after 11 years of serving our city, our country, our planet in a war that still makes no sense to me. I was six when he volunteered for service, he was 30. 11 years later when he returned home, I was 17. My father was 19. He did not remember joining in the war nor having a daughter nor meeting his wife. He is a teenager, like I was. I no longer am a teenager, but my father still is. He has stayed 19 years old. Time no longer works correctly for him.

My mother Tahira raised me. She expressed reticence about the band I started, the music we played. She grounded me when my grades slipped and shouted at me when I told her I had a girlfriend. But she came to love Marina and more, my mother came to understand as both as people, as women. Not as rivers to be damned or levied.

My father’s return has been especially hard on her, because she is 45 and her husband is a 19-year-old stranger. You probably know what it’s like to have a father, to have a man much older than you who changed your diapers or watched your diapers being changed. Who taught you to speak or ride a bike, who helped you develop as a human from an animal from a larva from the simplest, squirming wad of meat into an adult. That father will always be a father, not a friend, not an equal, a father. You probably do not know what it’s like to see a father at your age, to talk with your father when he is also barely an adult. To have your father lonely and inquisitive think of you as his only friend in the world, while you look to him for guidance and love. But he is incapable of both, at least not in the way you need to be guided and loved.

It took two years for Fakir to open up about the war and it still makes no sense to him nor me. The Blood Space War requires constant shifts through time, through worm holes to change lost battles into won battles, to undo what has already been undone thousands, millions of times over. The future does not look like a blank page, it looks like a tattered sheet of paper, grayed and frayed from countless transcriptions and erasures of history. Battles are won and then undone through time travel. We lose our lives and then regain them by traveling backwards and fighting again. We are winning the war by perpetuating the war. Last month, the Polonians attacked our earth, I am sure of it. The only evidence is our broken moon. I believe the general undid this attack with time travel and this has changed our reality, changed who was born, who ever lived in the first place. People are disappearing because they will have never existed.

People think we’re crazy for protesting. I’m 20 and my father is still 19. I’m not crazy. My mother Tahira is not crazy. We are angry.

Our next protest is scheduled this afternoon at the corner of Earl and Somerset by the Dog Park near the Ralphs.

Cecil: Not sure what Basimah was referring to. That’s an empty lot by the Ralphs. There was word for a dog park to be built there many years ago, but it never materialized.

[clears throat] Let’s have a look now at local news. Earth sciences professor Simone Rigideau announced today that she is scrapping all text books and lesson plans at the community college in favor of organized prayer to a god named Huntokar. Several students and parents argued against such an extreme divergence from core curriculum in favor of French religious practices, but college president Sarah Sultan supported her staff member by saying: “Cut Simone some slack. She doesn’t even teach classes. She’s a transient who lived in a storage closet inside the earth sciences building for 20 years. The only reason she has the title of professor is because of antiquated squatter’s rights laws.” Rigideau donned rabbit furs and an old bicycle frame wraught into the shape of antlers, and began spray paintin the Fibonacci sequence on the cars in the college parking lot, all the while singing a ballad about clocks.

The intergalactic military headquarters released their first quarter earnings statmenet this week. Investors were displeased to see that each of the board members of the privately own space defense contractor had purchased a 125-foot yachts and NFL franchises. But those fears were quickly allayed by the announcement of layoffs of more than 5,000 employees. Stock prices for the intergalactic military soared to an all time high this afternoon, at 490 dollars a share. Senior strategic advisor Jameson Archibald said the intergalactic military has no actual earned income. 100 per cent of their gross is from venture capital. Archibald said: “Some investors keep asking how we plan to monetize our military, which is a stupid question, man! I mean, look at this Patek Philippe watch I bought. It’s encrusted with 10 pounds of diamonds, and the watch face was made using an actual piece of the Sistine Chapel. We are doing fine.” Archibald added that the intergalactic military is developing an app and a subscription service that allows people to engage in celestial war fare any time they want for only 12,99 a month.

Alright, listeners, I heard back from Basimah, and she said I was right. There is no dog park. Of course I was right. If I knew there was a dog park being built in this town, I would have reported it immediately. Carlos and I have a dog. His name is Aubergine because he’s purple and European, and Auby is adorable and we love him dearly. I mean, I wasn’t into the idea of having to care for a dog, but Carlos strongly urged this case one morning over breakfast when he said, “I think we should get a dog”, and 20 minutes later, we were leaving the SPCA with our adopted pet. [clears throat]

Basimah said she was positive there was a dog park next to the Ralphs, but when she arrived at the corner of Earl and Somerset, it was all empty lots. To be honest, I don’t remember her mentioning a Ralphs before, because I would have corrected her. There’s never been a Ralphs affiliate in Night Vale. This is what Basimah had to say. Um, hang on, let me just insert the tape I used to record her. And there we go.

Basimah: If a person never exists, did they disappear? If you never knew them, can you miss them? My father spends most of his days playing basketball with friends he made at the rec center. He is 19 years old and trying to escape a decade of inescapable drama from warfare. Asked him who my mother was. I grew up with only my uncle Omar and did not know my parents until my father returned from war. Fakir did not remember my mother. He did not remember his marriage or my birth, because it has not happened yet in his timeline. Asked what if mother didn’t exist at all. What if the general’s time traveling has altered our lives so much that my mother was never born and you can never meet her. My father, the teenager said: “If I never met a woman, I do not know I will not miss her. But I’ll meet another woman.” I asked: “What if I was never born?” My dad said: “Basi?” He hid his tears and then he hugged me, but it was not the hug of a father and daughter. It was the hug of a son and mother. He buried his head into my shoulder and sobbed, repeating: “Basi! Basi!” And I comforted his heaving head with my palm. I said: “Father, Fakir. I think I shall no longer exist soon. [voice fades] I think I-

Oh OK, sorry for the dead air, listeners, I was playing a recording of an interview I did. Wait, nope. I just checked, there’s no tape in the player at all. I thought I had been talking with… Ugh. Aah! Who have I been talking to? Maybe it was my husband Carlos reporting on his findings about the damage done to our moon or, mh, or maybe it was nothing at all. [clears throat] Well, let us forget that we forgot, and go now To the weather.

[Shake” by Wednesday’s Wolves https://www.wednesdayswolves.com]

We have an update on the Blood Space War, Night Vale. John Peters says his brother has returned home again. When he left a month ago, James Peters was 22 years old. But he is now in his seventies, which is the age he should be. John held his brother tightly, crying in gratitude and relief that his own family could return to some kind of normalcy. James at first was heartened to see John again, to see his home again, and to learn that he and the general had thwarted the Polonian attack on our planet. But his tearful smile drifted slowly downward, an evening shadow overtaken by night. Upon James’ face now was the sudden knowledge that he had made a grave error. James looked around Night Vale seeing empty lots and homes, abandoned buildings and sparse streets. According to James, thousands of people have gone missing from Night Vale, because they never existed or never moved here in the first place. The general had leapt in time to successfully stop the Polonians from ever reaching Earth, but the change in the timeline caused Night Vale to change too.

Listeners, this may seem strange, but perhaps there are people you once knew, family you once lived with, places you were in, all of which are gone, and without your knowing. I have tried hard to think of any memory of any experience or person I have lost in the last month, but I can think of none. I told James Peters that perhaps the change in timeline did not matter if no one knew what they had lost, if no one noticed any change. James said: “Cecil, I just don’t know. I don’t know. Maybe if we had a scientific perspective on this, we could better understand how this is affecting us as a community.” And I said I didn’t know any scientists, not personally anyway. There’s the strange woman who lives in the storage closet at the community college, I suppose we could ask her.

The important thing is that we are safe, and that another veteran has returned home, and it is another beautiful day in Night Vale.

Stay tuned next for “Conspiring to Love”, our new relationship advice show, which as a lifelong bachelor sounds like something I should check out.

Good night, Night Vale, Good night.

Today’s proverb: “Nothing lasts forever” is a phrase with two meanings, and they’re both true.

#welcome to night vale #wtnv #welcome to night vale transcripts #episode 147 #the protester

104 notes · View notes

buddaimond · 6 years

Photo

Pattinson's High Life. Actor on challenges and rewards of Claire Denis' space drama

by Amber Wilkinson (Eye for Film UK)

Robert Pattinson was in San Sebastian last week to attend screenings of Claire Denis' latest film High Life, alongside co-stars Juliette Binoche and Mia Goth. The film tells the story of man who finds himself isolated in deep space with only his baby daughter for company, flashing back to consider what happened on this ship full of ex-convicts, including the feisty Boyse (Goth), overseen by a doctor (Binoche) obsessed with inseminating the female members of the crew and with extracting semen from Pattinson's abstemious Monte.

Catching up with Pattinson in a suite at the city's exclusive Marie Cristina Hotel, I ask him about how challenging building a relationship with the baby (Scarlett Lindsey) was, given that the first act of the film is just the two of them alone in space. It turns out it was just as difficult as you might imagine.

"I always thought the character was supposed to be a lot weirder than it ended up becoming," he says. "We'd already cast these identical twins for the babies. I met them the night before and there were two things. They were constantly with their mum and twins. You might have thought identical twins would be good because if one's not working you get another in to do the same thing. But no one figured out that if you split up twins who are constantly with each other, they go crazy.

"The night before, I was trying to bond with these kids for two-and-a-half hours and the only way I could make them even slightly happy was to pretend to be a monster. They weren't even happy, they would just stop crying for one second and scream instead. I was like, 'This is not going to work, unless you want to have an entire movie with a baby that's looking absolutely terrified.' So we cast Scarlett, who's one of my best friend's kids like the night before we started shooting and, so, I didn't want to be horrible to her because she's my friend's kid."

He says he had met the tot previously, when she was very young, adding, "Well, she didn't cry", but it was still a full-on job and not just when it came to acting.

"With this, it was kind of in the morning when she first left her parents she kind of cried for about 30 minutes but then she was fine. But if I gave her back to her parents then there would be the same process again. So it ended up being that I would babysit her the entire day - and it's not even normal babysitting because she could never cry ever, so I was with her for hours, so if there was the slightest hesitation or the tiniest bit of a tear coming on, I was like [Pattinson makes playful baby noises]. It was absolutely exhausting but it definitely ends up adding to their relationship. I really didn't want her to be upset, whereas in the script my character was much more indifferent."

The British actor says that he "prioritised" the film, which was in development for five years. "I was initially going to do The Lost City Of Z with James Gray and they almost overlapped and that shows because it was ages ago when I did that," he adds.

"There are certain directors who I would kind of cancel everything else for. James Gray was kind of one of them too. I don't know how ready I was but I just knew that I wanted to do it."

Pattinson, whose career has taken a much more adventurous trajectory since he found fame as vampire Edward Cullen in the Twilight series, says: "I couldn't really have had a more perfect career. To have that crazy explosion which was great fun. I really liked making all the Twilight movies which were great fun. Then to basically transition as soon as it ended to doing exactly what I wanted to do - I couldn't have asked for more."

The 32-year-old reveals that his experience of working with David Cronenberg on Cosmopolis "changed everything about how I go after different filmmakers".

"He randomly came to me," he says. "I'd never met him. I found the initial email exchange with my agents the other day and I was saying, 'I don't think I should do it, I'm going to mess it up.' I was trying to get out of it. I don't remember that at all, and I got really convinced into doing it.

"But with Clare, I said I wanted to work with her years before I even met her and it took ages for a meeting to happen and years after that for the movie to happen."

The list of directors he's also like to work with includes Catherine Breillat, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Audiard and Leos Carax. Speaking about the way his attitude changed towards the shaping of his career after working with Cronenberg, he adds: "I thought I had to have more control before".

"I would make decisions where I was thinking I had a more direct relationship with the audience rather than the directors. So I did [fiml]Bel Ami[/film]. It was the only time I really thought I'd try to subvert the audience's expectations. Because, at the time I had Twilight which has a very female audience so I thought it would be kind of funny to play a part that was specifically screwing over women and stealing their money. I was thinking I shouldn't rely on myself, I should work with people who are cleverer than me. After working with Cronenberg, I didn't know how to do the movie at all. I was avoiding rbrn talking to him. When I finally talked to him, I said, 'I'm sorry, I've been nervous to talk to you because I don't really know what the movie's about about' and he said, 'Yeah, me neither'. But he said, 'It's kind of juicy, right?' It's a cool thing. As soon as I realised that, whenever I watched a movie that had a big impact on me, I'd immediately go after the person and I still do that now."

Speaking about working with Brady Corbet on Childhood Of A Leader, he adds: "I'm always a little bit wary of working with first-time directors because I don't know how to judge someone at all, I'm really bad. Every director is good in a meeting. But with Brady I'd just know him for such a long time - since I was 14 - and anyone could tell you that he was a savant. I like people who really feel that there's a particular imprint that they put on a movie. With Cronenburg and Clare it just feels like a very specific world they've built - it doesn't just feel like they've recorded some stuff happening and just stuck it together, it feels like a world that's existing and it's contained in the movie."

As for the less mainstream nature of his more recent films, he says: "I don't feel like I'm 'properly' arthouse - these are big names. I don't feel like I'm trying to be super-obscure.

"I think most super-commercial movies, generally the directors have only done TV commercials before or they are random people. With mainstream movies, I feel like I've seen them all before. The amount of scripts you get that are quite formulaic and I don't know what the point is."

With High Life, he says: "I had no idea what to expect. I had no expectations in a really good way. If you see a director who has made Beau Travail - I could look at that and feel so much from that movie without really knowing what it is saying at all. But I just know it's great. So I just very much trusted in whatever Claire wanted to do with it. The first time I saw it, I definitely found it funnier than I expected. Nobody is finding it funny but the first two times I watched it I was crying laughing."

And, like many before him who have worked with the French director, he is full of praise for her.

"She's just a unique person," he says "I'd met up with her tons of times over the years before we started doing it. I just loved hanging out with her, she can be so kind of warm but at the same time, just so weird. She'll pick subjects out of nowhere and I've never met anyone like her. On set, she's just very funny. No one quite knew what the story was about but there was so much faith in her. It was an interesting work environment where no one's trying to sabotage it. Normally, if a director couldn't fully explain exactly how they want things to be done, a lot of the time actors will start going, 'You don't know what you're doing, this is going to be shit.' and then they start protecting themselves and their performance. There wasn't a single day, no matter how strange the subject matter got, it seemed that everyone was very supportive of the movie. That's because of Claire, she inspires that a lot. She's a very sweet person."

He says he wishes that the directors he works with had more of an audience but is self-deprecating when I suggest that he brings fans along with him to his films.

"Like 10 people," he says "I think the majority of people who would go and see this are people who like Claire, adding, "I hope that every movie I do that it starts to create a sort of expectation that I only do stuff that's trying to be interesting."

59 notes · View notes

commodorecliche · 6 years

Note

Gimme all the book recs Please :D

yaaaaaaaaaaaas okay great. i love sharing books i love.

1. The Thief of Always - Clive BarkerGenre: Dark FantasyBig personal favorite of mine. My father read this to me when I was a kid, and it literally has stuck with me since then. Every now and then I go back and reread it just for fun. It’s a wonderfully spooky little story, accompanied by some really lovely and somewhat off-kilter illustrations. Much like Coraline, it’s a novel that is a fable for children, and a tale of terror for adults.

After a mysterious stranger promises to end his boredom with a trip to the magical Holiday House, ten-year-old Harvey learns that his fun has a high price.

2. House of Leaves - Mark Z. DanielewskiGenre: Postmodernism, horrorHands down an absolute favorite. This is a book I literally recommend to everyone. This is a book that made me viscerally uncomfortable, at times I didn’t even sleep in the same room as it. I made it sleep in the living room. There is nothing overtly terrifying about the book, but its format and its unsettlingly immersive nature will lead you down a road unlike any other.

In 1997, Johnny Truant has stumbled upon a chest full of scrap papers that had once belonged to a man named Zampono. The papers aren’t just scraps though, they’re a chaotic but detailed transcription of a series called the Navidson Record. The Navidson Record is a series of videos made by a family who has discovered that their new house appears to change dimensions almost daily, it has hallways that shouldn’t exist, doors that should lead outside but instead lead into nothingness. Johnny attempts to re-order and reconstruct Zampono’s papers, and along the way begins to lose himself as well.

3. The Postmortal - Drew MagaryGenre: Science Fiction, Postmodern DystopiaReally funny, really dark, and full of a surprising amount of morality and humanity in a pre-apocalyptic world.

Imagine a near future where a cure for aging is discovered and-after much political and moral debate-made available to people worldwide. Immortality, however, comes with its own unique problems-including evil green people, government euthanasia programs, a disturbing new religious cult, and other horrors.

4. Horrorstor - Grady HendrixGenre: Comedy, HorrorHonestly this book is just balls to the wall fun. It’s a horror novel that’s laid out like the world’s most messed up IKEA catalog. Spooky at times, ridiculous and funny, at times moving, while also offering great social commentary on consumerism and the the current status of retail workers.

Something strange is happening at the Orsk furniture superstore in Cleveland, Ohio. Every morning, employees arrive to find broken Kjerring bookshelves, shattered Glans water goblets, and smashed Liripip wardrobes. Sales are down, security cameras reveal nothing, and store managers are panicking. To unravel the mystery, three employees volunteer to work a nine-hour dusk-till-dawn shift. In the dead of the night, they’ll patrol the empty showroom floor, investigate strange sights and sounds, and encounter horrors that defy the imagination.

5. Rant - Chuck PalahniukGenre: Science Fiction, Horror, SatireThis is a book I read several years ago and that I still think about from time to time. I haven’t had time to sit down and reread it, but parts of it still resonate with me today. This is a very peculiar story and it is told in a rather peculiar fashion (it is an oral history, and as such is told in a very conversational way by a number of different characters with a wide variety of thoughts and opinions on the titular Rant. It’s hard to properly describe this book, but let’s just say it’s been in my reread list for a while now.

Buster “Rant” Casey just may be the most efficient serial killer of our time. A high school rebel, Rant Casey escapes from his small town home for the big city where he becomes the leader of an urban demolition derby called Party Crashing. Rant Casey will die a spectacular highway death, after which his friends gather the testimony needed to build an oral history of his short, violent life.

6. John Dies at the End - David WongGenre: Comedy, Horror, Dark FantasyHoly god what do I even say about this book? It is just hilariously and marvelously insane. A perfect mix of cosmic fantasy, horror, comedy, and lunacy, and I loved every minute of reading it. I still have the rest of the series lined up to read, too!

The drug is called Soy Sauce and it gives users a window into another dimension. John and I never had the chance to say no. You still do. I’m sorry to have involved you in this, I really am. But as you read about these terrible events and the very dark epoch the world is about to enter as a result, it is crucial you keep one thing in mind: None of this was my fault.

7. Sphere - Michael CrichtonGenre: Science Fiction, Deep Sea HorrorThis is one I actually JUST finished, and I absolutely adored it. I had a couple small complaints about it, but overall, it was a wonderful read and very engrossing. Plus, I’m always a sucker for deep sea horror.

A group of American scientists are rushed to a huge vessel that has been discovered resting on the ocean floor in the middle of the South Pacific. What they find defies their imaginations and mocks their attempts at logical explanation. It is a spaceship of phenomenal dimensions, apparently, undamaged by its fall from the sky. And, most startling, it appears to be at least three hundred years old….

8. I, Lucifer - Glen DuncanGenre: Religious Fantasy, Occult FictionThis book is incredibly well researched, thought out, and characterized, as well as funny and extremely thought-provoking. I’d never expected to see a story that would give me a realistic and modern look into the Devil’s side of the story. I especially never expected to see a story that would make the Devil learn what it is to be human, either. All in all just an A+, fantastical read.

The Prince of Darkness has been given one last shot at redemption, provided he can live out a reasonably blameless life on earth. Highly sceptical, naturally, the Old Dealmaker negotiates a trial period - a summer holiday in a human body, with all the delights of the flesh. The body, however, turns out to be that of Declan Gunn, a depressed writer living in Clerkenwell, interrupted in his bath mid-suicide. Ever the opportunist, and with his main scheme bubbling in the background, Luce takes the chance to tap out a few thoughts - to straighten the biblical record, to celebrate his favourite achievements, to let us know just what it’s like being him. Neither living nor explaining turns out to be as easy as it looks. Beset by distractions, miscalculations and all the natural shocks that flesh is heir to, the Father of Lies slowly begins to learn what it’s like being us.

9. The Wasp Factory - Iain BanksGenre: Psychological HorrorLook, I want to say this right off the bat. This book is… not for everyone. Trust me when I say this is an extremely dark book with a lot of dark content. I would say that if you have any potential triggers, you may want to message me first and I will give you a better rundown of what all this book entails. This is a true piece of horror fiction. But it’s also incredible. I ate this book up in about two days and it is one of my favorite pieces of dark fiction to date. So yeah, chat with me if you have any concerns, but if you enjoy truly dark fiction, then this is up your alley.

Two years after I killed Blyth I murdered my young brother Paul, for quite different and more fundamental reasons than I’d disposed of Blyth, and then a year after that I did for my young cousin Esmerelda, more or less on a whim. That’s my score to date. Three. I haven’t killed anybody for years, and don’t intend to ever again. It was just a stage I was going through.

10. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (the whole series, trust me)Genre: Comedy, Science Fiction, Cosmic FantasyJust trust me when I say this is a series that literally everyone should read at least once in their life. They are unflabbably hilarious in a way that only Douglas Adams could be, and they are just truly unique. This series is (rightfully) a classic and shouldn’t be missed.

Seconds before the Earth is demolished to make way for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is plucked off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised edition of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy who, for the last fifteen years, has been posing as an out-of-work actor. Together this dynamic pair begin a journey through space aided by quotes from The Hitchhiker’s Guide (“A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have”).

11. World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War - Max Brooks Genre: Zombie horror, Faux HistoryI beg you - do not judge this book by the very terrible movie that was made about it. It is an entirely different animal than that mess of a movie, I promise. World War Z is a masterfully crafted book that details the zombie apocalypse in ways never before done in fiction. The Battle of Yonkers scenes and the testimony of Tomonaga Ijiro still stick in my head to this day. This book is a triumph of horror, ‘history’, and humanity, all balled into a distinctly unique experience.

The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years.

12. The Raw Shark Texts - Steven HallGenre: Fantasy/Realism, Meta-fiction, MysteryThis is a tough one to put into words. I read this many years ago, and I remember it more as a series of emotional experiences rather than just as a singular plot. Which I think really speaks to its character as a book. This is a book that deals with dissociation, memory loss, our sense of self, how easily we can lose that sense, and our struggle to hold onto or to rediscover the world we know and the people we believe ourselves to be. This book is just… an experience, much like House of Leaves. It’s immersive, and at times quite unsettling.

Eric Sanderson wakes up in a house he doesn’t recognize, unable to remember anything of his life. All he has left are his diary entries recalling Clio, a perfect love who died under mysterious circumstances, and a house that may contain the secrets to Eric’s prior life. But there may be more to this story, or it may be a different story altogether. With the help of allies found on the fringes of society, Eric embarks on an edge-of-your-seat journey to uncover the truth about himself and to escape the predatory forces that threaten to consume him.

I think 12 should be good for now! I certainly have more though, if you want them!!

Bonus, Currently Reading: The Library at Mount Char - Scott HawkinsGenre: Contemporary Fantasy, Horror, Dark FantasyI don’t have a whole lot to say about this yet since I’m not very far into it, but so far it’s been extremely intriguing, and Hawkins’ writing is truly beautiful.

A missing God. A library with the secrets to the universe. A woman too busy to notice her heart slipping away. Carolyn’s not so different from the other people around her. She likes guacamole and cigarettes and steak. She knows how to use a phone. Clothes are a bit tricky, but everyone says nice things about her outfit with the Christmas sweater over the gold bicycle shorts. After all, she was a normal American herself once. That was a long time ago, of course. Before her parents died. Before she and the others were taken in by the man they called Father.

Bonus 2, Up Next to Read: Dark Matter: A Ghost Story - Michelle PaverGenre: Horror

January 1937. Clouds of war are gathering over a fogbound London. Twenty-eight year old Jack is poor, lonely, and desperate to change his life, so when he’s offered the chance to join an Arctic expedition, he jumps at it. Spirits are high as the ship leaves Norway: five men and eight huskies, crossing the Barents Sea by the light of the midnight sun. At last they reach the remote, uninhabited bay where they will camp for the next year, Gruhuken, but the Arctic summer is brief. As night returns to claim the land, Jack feels a creeping unease. One by one, his companions are forced to leave. He faces a stark choice: stay or go. Soon he will see the last of the sun, as the polar night engulfs the camp in months of darkness. Soon he will reach the point of no return–when the sea will freeze, making escape impossible. Gruhuken is not uninhabited. Jack is not alone. Something walks there in the dark…

(also if any of y’all have read these, i’d love to hear YOUR thoughts on them too)

#books #book recs #science fiction #horror #book recommendations #long post #dogwithblogs

107 notes · View notes

allfandomxreader · 6 years

Text

Familiar Mark

Pairings: Tom x Reader

Request: congrats!!!!! i have a request (sorry if my english sucks) when the reader was little she used to be debbie in billy elliot with tom and she had a big crush on him but he liked this girl megan jossa ?) but anyways she grew up and now she's an incredible singer,dancer and actress for musical theatre and tom went to see a show one day and he saw her and he has this feeling that he knows her so he goes to find her something like that:)

Warnings: I don’t even think I cursed in this? Go me??

Words: 2k

A/N: So I reallllly love this idea and I would totally do a mini series of like tom and the reader being in the theatre and it’d be like an au if you’d like?? Just let me know if you’d read it and I’ll do it!!

Disclaimers: The gif is a Hamilton gif but the musical doesn’t have to be Hamilton, it can be anything. However, I thought of this song for the reader’s balled.

Masterlist // Marvel Masterlist

The auditorium before you is empty as you stand on the familiar mark. Silently, your eyes loom over every seat, knowing that in just a few hours, each one will be filled with a cheering stranger. You take a seat on the dusty stage, still not being swept from whatever performance took place yesterday, no doubt leaving a ring of grey on your black leggings.

You’re not nervous this time, instead, an intense pang of longing nags at your gut, remembering clear as day the event from so many years ago.

As much as you remember the happy faces, the cheers when you finished your first solo, the ‘ooos’ and ‘ahhs’ when you landed stunts. You also remember him. The boy you swore up and down you were in love with even at such a young age, the way his hand felt warm against the clammy palms of your own, and how after that, you never saw him again.

Everything here reminded you of Tom.

Your heart raced as you listen to the murmuring just beyond the thick, red curtain. Automatically, you knew over a thousand people were seated in the audience waiting for the show to begin. You pictured it, strangers of all ages skimming over their playbills waiting anxiously for the lights to dim.

It excited you. It terrified you.

You mumbled line after line, hoping you wouldn’t forget the rehearsed words once you stepped onto the stage. Your fingers fiddled with the hem of your shirt trying to distract your hands from their shaking. Even though you should’ve been used to performing, panic still bubbled within you before shows.

A hand covered your trembling fingers causing the frayed shirt strings to fall from your grasp. When you raised your eyes, Tom stood before you with a friendly smile. “You’re going to do great, Y/N.” He promised, offering the pep talk you needed and replaced your nervousness with butterflies.

Same mark on the stage, same theatre, same curtain. Although the beautiful space around you seemed like it hasn’t changed, you certainly have. Different musical, different costumes, different cast, different you.

You stand beside the two women who have easily become your best friends over the musical’s tour. Your hands grip around theirs, squeezing softly, it was how the three of you say, “Break a leg” without uttering a sound.

“Break a leg, Y/N.” Tom whispered, letting your hand fall from his grasp and back to your side. With a final smile, he raced away from you and to his own designated mark. You couldn’t help but watch as he scurried away, a fond smile tugged at your lips.

Tom shook his arms and torso, ridding his nerves, something you caught onto before every show. It was comforting to know he was nervous, even if he refused to show it. Megan approached him with a cheerful smile and Tom’s face lit up in her presence. You knew that look, that was the look you gave him.

Shaking your head, you clear your mind and ignore the shattering of your heart. You took one last deep breath, plastered your award-winning smile, and awaited your cue.

The crowd cheers when the velvet peels back, finding its rightful place in the wings, refusing to shut until intermission. Your legs gracefully carry you to your second position, singing and smiling. Your voice fills the room through the speakers hidden within the walls, the mic taped to your forehead only irritates your skin for a moment before you become accustomed to the itch.

Your fingers lace with Daniel’s, a fellow performer, waltzing around the stage in your choreographed dance with ease. Excitement pulses through your veins as he lifts you off the grounds, spinning effortlessly through other dancing bodies. Your dress fans around your legs, only focusing on the young man before you.

You twirl out of your friend’s arms, taking your place center stage just as the casts falls silent, the instruments ghostly quiet. Your eyes gaze over the audience, each face smiling as you begin your short solo, one of many throughout the night, already forgetting about the boy whose long forgotten about you.

Screams bounce off the walls as the last few notes are sung and you twirl back into the arms of Daniel, never missing a beat, never missing a step, no matter how much you wanted to bask in the attention strangers are willing to give.

Tom stares at your dancing figure with awe, goosebumps still present on his arms, his toes still recuperating from chills. His mouth hangs agape as he stares at his long-lost friend, mesmerized by your talents. He lazily taps Haz’s shoulder, not daring to remove his eyes from the stage. “Hand me the playbill, will ya mate?” Tom whispers, voice almost lost in the music.

He flips through the neat pages after you floated off the stage and into the wings. His eyes scour over meaningless names until he lands on yours. Y/N Y/L/N. It’s been far too long since he’s last spoken to you, your connection frayed between busy lives and the unexchanged phone numbers.

He grins upon seeing your name at the top of the flimsy paper. Leading Role. Something you most definitely deserved, especially with a voice and moves like that. Tom stuffs the booklet in his jacket pocket, ignoring his friends’ confused stares as he averts his attention once more to the stage where you enter yet again.

Words tumble out of your lips and fill the theatre as you interact with props and friends. The lights overhead warm your skin as you move beneath them, lifting the hem of your dress to maneuver between your marks without toppling over.

The hour and a half mark arrives all too soon. Your veins pulse from either side of your neck as you scream your script to Daniel, who’s broken your heart on paper but never had the chance to hold it in reality.

The audience gasps at plot twist nobody saw coming. A few women in the front row dab their eyes as they switch between you and your costar, awaiting for what happens next. You turn away from the man just as he reaches for your arm, but you wrench your hand away from his gentle grasp sputtering fake sobs left and right as you dart backstage.

The curtains fall shut.

Z, Haz, Jacob, and Laura all stare ahead at the closed curtains, not wanting to wait through intermission to see what happens next. None of them could say anything, too shocked to utter any form of a sentence.

Tom grins ahead, proud to see how far you’ve come from just playing Debbie, a supporting character, to landing your own spotlight. He feels nothing but joy and is humbled by the thought. He always knew you’d go far in whatever you set your mind to, he’s just happy he can see it too.

The next thirty minutes are full of dress changes, makeup fixing, running lines, and voice warmups. Your friends rub the energy stone, a good luck charm and tradition, before heading backstage.

You sit in your dressing room, staring at the reflection. Your skin glows with the light coming from the lightbulbs littering your mirror’s edge, almost blinding you, but you ignore it. You think of the girl who you once were all those years ago, too afraid to audition for a lead or to even admit her feelings to a boy. “This is for you, I hope I made you proud.” With one last fond smile, you rise from the comfortable chair and join your friends, ready for your next number.

The audience is dead silent as the curtains reel open, exposing only you on the stage, seated on a posh looking couch. You stare ahead, character taking over your persona as the piano plays somewhere in the pit.

This is your moment. The moment to bring everyone to tears, your moment to really shine. The stage is yours.

You sing through the first verse of the balled, already seeing fingers quickly sweeping under eyes to rid streams of water. Some people place their hands over their hearts, touched by your singing. You stand slowly, heels clicking against the stage as you walk towards the center, belting out the chorus.

Your arms wave around you, portraying how much agony your character is in. You fall to your knees, as if the pain was too much, even though you feel nothing. Tears freely fall from your eyes as you finish your solo, purposely breathing heavy for the mic to catch.

Through watery eyes, you see people stand one by one, cheering loudly, whistling, screaming. You desperately wish you could show a smile, offer a wave, something to show your gratitude. But you know the Headmaster would have your head on a stick if you break out of character. Instead, you slowly stand, pretending to have shaky legs and wobble off stage.

When the end has finally come, you stand beside your castmates, gripping their hands with a smile stretched wide across your face. Your heart races as the crowd cheers for everyone, cheering for you. Some even throw roses that fall onto the stage, littering the wood with red, white, and pink flower petals.

Tom swears he’s the loudest clapper in the room as he watches from his seat. His friends cheer beside him, Haz and Jacob holler as Z and Laura scream in satisfaction, tears they gave up trying to wipe away inching towards the napes of their necks.

Tom doesn’t follow his friends as they leave the theatre, he stays behind, scouring the sea of faces for you or at least someone who knows where you might be.

After the auditorium is clear of people, you emerge from the back, finally able to breathe being out of the bustier and form-fitting dress. Your face is now bare of makeup, feet free of heels, the auditorium ridden of people. Or so you think. Your sneakers scuff against the dirty floor as you pick up misplaced props and set them in their designated area. You hum your balled to yourself, never being able to get the bloody song out of your mind.

As you move across the stage, you feel eyes piercing holes through your hoodie. Cautiously, you turn, knowing nobody’s supposed to be here after the show has ended.

To your surprise, you’re met with the brown eyes you’d never thought you’d see again. Tom and you stand, frozen in place, both of you unsure where to go from here or even how to start a conversation. Tom moves first, moving through the rows of empty chairs, stepping over discarded popcorn bowls until he reaches you.

Your arms are around his neck within seconds, hugging the friend you’ve longed ages for. You chuckle to yourself pulling away, eyes finding the ground, heat creeping up your neck.

You don’t notice the tattered ‘X’ hidden beneath the toe of your sneaker. The familiar mark where the two of you stood all those years ago, where your crush on the boy in your arms began and ended and is now the same place where all those feelings came rushing back.

Forever Tags: @superfrankie111 @rueinn

212 notes · View notes

chanzicoup · 6 years

Text

A/N: I got this template from tenseoyong and I could not find the original creator to give proper credit to.

A = Announcement.- How do you tell him and the world that you’re expecting?

He and you are quiet at first, hesitant to tell anyone but the members and immediate family. When you did break the news though you were relieved to see that the fans were happy for the both of you and wished you the best of luck.

B = Books.- Did he read the books?

He doesn’t want a book to tell him how to raise a child since he’d believe that there is no “right” way. There are no medical things he really needs to know on his part, being a man and all not having to actually be pregnant, but he’d educate himself on what you have to go through and immediately feel sorry for doing this to you.

C = Cuddles.- Who cuddles the baby more?

You both love the baby but Wonwoo, the normally quiet guy, becomes that dad that cooes really loudly to the baby and makes it a competition on if the baby’s first word is “mama” or “dada”

D = Daddy.- His reaction to being called Daddy and it setting in.)

He’d try to play it off as cool but when no one is looking he is a giggly kid again thinking about the bundle of joy growing inside of you.

E = Empty.- Who goes to the store when you guys run out of supplies?

He would volunteer to go since he likes to help out when he can so he’ll take the child out for a few hours to give you time to catch up on some chores or sleep.

F = Feeding time- Who does feeding time?

It’s a team effort because it turns out the baby is a really picky eater but is also one of those kids who is literally allergic to everything and doesn’t get it yet because they’re so young. Like they’ll want a peanut butter and jelly, won’t eat until they get one, but of course, you and wonwoo aren’t giving the kid who’s allergic to peanuts a PB and J so you try to trick them by giving them a peanut butter substitute of some sorts.

G = Grumpy baby. - Who is better at dealing with a grumpy baby?

Wonwoo thinks he’s good at it because every time the baby cries they laugh when he's playing with them, not knowing your hiding behind him and giving the baby funny faces to make them laugh. What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.

H = How?- how many kids does he want?

He sparks me as a go with the flow kind of guy so he wouldn’t have a set limit or number about how many kids he wants but I would feel like that he’d say “This is the last one Y/N” depending on your financial situation.

J = Jokes.- best dad joke?

“I went to a gig last night and the band's guitarist passed out on stage.

He must have rocked himself to sleep.”

Honestly, it’s a bunch of jokes about sleeping bc he’s sleep deprived and has been since the baby came.

K = Kisses.- His favorite place to kiss the baby.

He likes kissing their cheeks because they’re so much like yours!

L = Little.- How he feels when he holds the baby for the first time.

He’s literally pointing out every little thing about the baby that’s perfect, totally stays up all night and just stares at them, and you, in amazement. His little family.

M = Mommy.- what does he call you?

He’d be extra sweet to you, knowing that women go through not only physical work but mental work as well during pregnancy, and he just wants you to know that you and the baby are the most important people in his life.

N = Nappies.- who deals with the really bad diapers?

Neither one of you want to do it at first but after like three days you guys don’t even smell it anymore and have no issue doing it.

O = Onesies- Who likes to dress the baby in ridiculous outfits?

You two are pretty much broke at this point so no extravagant outfits for now.

P = Pet names- names he calls the baby.

I could 100% see him calling the baby something NORMAL but when they’re older, like high school age, and calling the baby some embarrassing names in front of their friends just to tease them.

Q = Questions.- How many questions does he ask the nurse?

He’s mainly asking questions about your health since that’s a direct correlation to the baby’s health so it’s like killing two birds with one stone.

R = Rely- what is the biggest thing you rely on each other for?

You guys would rely on each other to help one another out in maintaining a healthy lifestyle and not letting the nerves, worries, and stress of being a new parent bring you down.

S = Sleep duty. - who gets up when it’s really late at night?

Wonwoo is a night owl so he’d have an easier time in waking up but he’d have a harder time falling back asleep so you’d have to force him to try to get some rest while you get up.

T = Trepidation.- fears as a new parent.

For some reason, he’s hella worried his kid will eat something they’re allergic to, which is an understandable fear. When children have allergies it’s easy for adults to make sure they don’t eat it but depending on how old they are sometimes the kid eats something without knowing they can get sick.

U = Ultra sounds.- His reactions to the ultrasounds.

You and him weren’t trying to get pregnant but after you were late by a few weeks and had begun getting sick in the mornings you guys had a gut feeling and the ultrasounds only proved it, making you guys ridiculously happy but terrified at the same time.

V = Values.- what is the most important value he wants to teach your child.

NOT TO LET OTHER PEOPLE BRING THEM DOWN! If the things they like are so unique no one else knows about them, and people make fun of them for liking it, he wants them to continue liking whatever that thing is with pride.

W = Water.- Who gives the babe the baths?

Low Key love family baths.

X = X-mas- what do you guys plan for the holidays?

Wonwoo would want his first Christmas as a family to be just for that; family. No work, promotions, etc.

Y = Yelling.- How many fights do the two of you get in?

All fights and arguments try to be avoided, which ends up leading to you both subconsciously bottle up your emotions and you guys get into one big fight in the middle of the night, the baby’s crying causes you to storm out to tend to them. Wonwoo sits on the bed and puts his head in his hands, his and your words wracking his brain. He hears you in the background cooing the baby back to sleep and he remembers your good qualities which most definitely overshadow the bads that everyone has. You come back in, still a bit angry about the fight, but Wonwoo races to you and kisses you passionately, you both spend a long night “making up.”

Z = Zoo- How crazy is the house after the birth?

It’s surprisingly tidy, if not better then it was before. You both put in more effort since the arrival of your newborn so you guys have gotten good at keeping the place clean and making the most of the little spare time you have.

~Blake

#kpop #svt #wonwoo #svt imagine #kpop imagine #svt reaction #kpop reaction #svt scenario #kpop scenario

27 notes · View notes

koganphrancis · 7 years

Photo

Ian Used To Do Better Stuff With Vans OR There’s Another Hour Of My Life I Won’t Get Back

This episode was dumb dumb dumb as fuck-and even more pointless than that. The ONLY redeeming quality in it was that it was completely Terror-free. Read on, if you dare. My recap of Season H8 Episode Dear God Why Isn’t It Over Yet-or 11, if you want to keep it short.

As usual, I’ll get the others out of the way as quickly as I possibly can.

Carl’s still illegally under-aged married, and this week he tells Kasammi, “I don’t think there’s any skin left on my dick.” Yeah, they made that point last year when they had to keep taking it off after his misguided circumcision. Not that the show is referring to THAT, of course. They refuse to acknowledge any plot point that has gone before. He and Kas take a wild tour through his before the show started past and I have no idea what the point is-is it to show us she’s truly insane because none of the horrors of life on the mean streets scare her? Or to show us that Generation Z doesn’t experience reality because their whole lives have been instantly posted on screens of electronic devices? I don’t know and I don’t care-quit trying to be fake deep, Shameless, if you even are. I can’t tell. The only (maybe) pertinent point of Carl’s story this week is he tells Kasammi after her hundredth shit fit on the subject that he won’t go back to military school and in the previews for next week it looks like the family (or at least Frank) will try to help him sneak away to do just that. Yawn.

Debbie loses three toes-Frank chops them off for her. Before that, Debbie is shown signing her 16 year old self out of the hospital-WHAT? She’d need a parent or guardian for that. Anyway, apparently Debbie’s not on any kind of welfare or insurance. And doesn’t know that Ian could’ve gotten the money for her expensive surgery to attempt to save the toes by going down on the old couple just twice. What is it with this show and cutting off toes? They’ve done this before with the body they got to stand in for Aunt Ginger. I’m so sick of the recycled plot points!

Speaking of which-Snore’s old man is out of prison so Lip gets him to fight him to violate his parole and send him back-did this new writer guy not see Yevgeny’s christening episode or is he just really into plagiarism? It was such a fizzle to a going nowhere story to begin with. I think the guy playing Snore’s version of Terry even had some of the same lines but I’m too lazy to rewatch and try to catch them. If we were supposed to hate this guy like we hate Terry, it didn’t work. And Lip was no Mickey showing up to defend people that mean something to him either-it was all a weak as fuck imitation. And it was odd that Lip chose to call the guy out for “beating women” when he lets himself get beaten when he has sex with Eddy. Who the fuck is he to judge? Maybe ten year old Snore didn’t get that her parents were having consensual rough sex that got too violent and ended in death-but the show’s not that deep.

Snore’s telling of her mother’s death once again played like someone complaining about not getting the last bottle of nail polish in their favorite shade at Walgreens or something. If she’s been so traumatized that she can’t put any emotion into the horrific memories that’s fine, but then I would argue that she wouldn’t be terrified of her dad coming after her either. Snore just can’t emote OR imagine what it would be like to be in that setting, I’m sorry.

And here’s what had me super pissed-Snore tells Lip she was 10 when her mom was killed in front of witnesses (Snore and her brother-she specifically says they both testified against him) and her dad’s already out on parole? We don’t know how old Snore is now, but surely no older than 25 (and probably not even that old, but whatever), so the show is saying her dad got out in 15 years max, which is the time Mickey was sentenced to for NOT killing Sammi? Fuck off.

Also, why would the cops not even consider the father’s side of the story that Lip instigated the fight? Lip has Eddy’s niece record the fight on his phone, and after it’s over he goes over to her and asks her how it looks or whatever, and she says Snore’s father threw the first punch. Wouldn’t the cops question why a little girl was filming two men on a porch BEFORE a fight started? Snore’s father must have Mickey’s public defender for a lawyer. Fucking show should’ve shocked us all by having Lip get locked up for premeditated assault.

Fiona meets with a lawyer (Janice from Friends, but she’s not as funny in this, sadly) and as soon as she said Fiona could lose both the apartment building and the Gallagher house I knew that storyline had jumped the shark and somehow next week all will be miraculously fixed-no way will the Gallaghers ever lose the house, that’s another plot point that’s been done to death. At first I was thinking they’ll either come up with some fortuitous traffic camera footage showing that the guy jumped off the roof intentionally, or that Hugh Laurie would show up in a cameo as Dr. House and say that if a man “fell” off a roof that high, he’d have a hell of a lot more damage than one broken ankle, but no, the show isn’t going to even get that clever-they’re just gonna have the family cave and be willing to settle with Fiona if they get custody of her dog that suddenly she’s so worried about in this week’s episode. She’s never shown that level of concern for any of her siblings.

Frank has a tedious, boring couple of scenes about his “retirement plan”-he has a baggie of 3 stolen Social Security cards and anyone can see a mile off that the cards would’ve just been replaced by their original owners-they’re not like a set of fingerprints and you only get one for life and if you lose it someone else has your entire identity. THEN they set up next week’s recycled/stolen plot to have Liam and Frank rip off Liam’s rich friend’s family just like Carl and Frank ripped off Liam and Carl’s gay foster dads-it didn’t work then, it won’t work now (and why didn’t Frank do hard time for that grand theft?).

Svetlana and Vee and Kevin have a scene at a fancy (but not as fancy as the show was trying to tell us it was) bar that was a pathetic echo of both Ian and Mickey’s hotel bar scam AND of how funny the show used to be able to be. Later Svet goes to humble herself to the other hand whore to find out how she snagged a rich fiance and discovers that the dude she’s about to marry is senile as fuck and Svet is going to step in to replace her, which is what I predicted the first time the hand whore showed up. I will give Shameless credit for making me laugh unintentionally-since I’ve been picturing the “old rich dude” Svet was going to wind up with as John Wells’ fantasy version of himself, seeing the old dude in an adult diaper and thinking he’s Wells was very satisfying.

Do I finally get to Ian now? Do I have to talk about his bullshit? There’s a scene of him in bed alone while the newlyweds are having sex in the same room, signalling that he’d rather be there than at Terror’s house, LOL. Then it’s the next morning and he goes down to breakfast with his Bible in hand, but no pills. Is that supposed to be significant? We may never know...

He gets to the “Church Of Gay Jesus” and there’s so many “fans” there it’s like Beatles or One Direction footage. The minister guy gets through the crowd to him with a big young guy and tells Ian the rando is “Bic” and he wants to help (I didn’t know the guy’s name till I saw it in the closing credits, I really thought his name was “Dick” and they were making a “big dick” joke, but no, I guess they were making a “Bic lighter” joke instead). Ian and Bic instantly have more chemistry than Ian and Terror but it’s unintentional I’m sure-the actor playing Bic probably has taken acting classes and knows to look an acting partner in the eye, instantly making him more engaged than Terror’s ever been in a scene.

The minister guy tells Ian, “Your life is no longer your own.” Which first of all, I’m just not buying that all these youths have just been waiting for a messiah to show up and they’ll follow him anywhere, and secondly why was being with Mickey not Ian anymore, but he’ll give away his entire life for strangers? Fuck you, Shameless. (and speaking of his entire life, does he never have to go to work anymore? Also, Fiona turned him down when he asked for a ride to the church-for once she had a good reason, that she had to pick up Debbie-but why is the show acting like Fi does things for him all of the sudden? She DID give him a ride last week, and that was very OOC of her.)

There’s a kid trying to get Ian’s attention-he needs help getting away from his parents who have hired men to get him back. At some point in the proceedings some guys jump out of a van and drag the kid into it. Ian runs to the front of the van before it can pull away and goes all Chris Pratt in Jurassic Park, holding up his arms and not letting it advance. The unintentional humor here amused me no end. Then Ian lays down in front of the van and I actually said aloud to my TV, “Just run him over.” I’m that done with this storyline and this show-just kill Ian off at this point, it’d be a mercy.

Ian’s there on the ground with his arms thrown up over his head (not that the driver could even see him down there, right in front of the van) and we see that this time Shameless didn’t bother covering up Cam’s real life Sailor Moon tattoo. SO LAZY. All the other kids lay down around the van too so it can’t go anywhere The 3 dudes in the van give up and let the kid get out.

The kid is 14 and the minister guy tries to talk sense into Ian, saying the parents have a legal right to their kid and they, more specifically Ian, can’t keep the kid. Ian agrees to talk to the kid’s dad who tells him the parents aren’t bigots, they don’t care that their son’s not heterosexual, but he’s been living on the streets, doing drugs, and prostituting himself. Then the father says, “We believe he may be mentally ill,” and Cameron (and yes, I mean Cameron, not Ian) makes a reaction face to that, but what it means, again, nobody knows.

Ian goes to talk to the kid where they have him hidden away in the Mickey Wedding Venue basement. Ian tells him what the father told him, and the kid says they keep bringing him to a church (is that Ian’s trigger? Churches? and if so, why?), plus they have him see shrinks who have put him on meds that knock him on his ass and he can’t get an erection. He adds, “That’s what they really want-so I can’t have sex with another boy, you know? Ever.” Ian says, “Well you can’t stay here. You have to find someplace where you can be safe, where you can be yourself.” WHAT? I don’t understand. For one thing, isn’t that LITERALLY TERROR’S JOB? To take runaways and provide them with a safe place to stay and a plan to get their lives back on terms that they can live with? I don’t ever want to have to side with Terror, but this episode is basically saying that Terror’s way is right and Ian’s way is oh so wrong and misguided. What the fuck? Secondly, isn’t that what Ian THINKS he’s doing? Why is he telling the kid HE has to find someplace safe? Ian has literally been in this kid’s shoes-he knows there’s no safe places for someone even younger than he was when he got back from the army, living on the streets. Anyway, after Ian’s lines the kid says, “Will you help me?” but Ian doesn’t answer one way or the other.

I totally didn’t get this scene-why the writer had Ian say nothing. I could see if it was to show Ian was getting more and more manic and now is on the downside of that and is becoming too depressed to speak to people-but then where’s his energy for doing anything coming from, plus the story isn’t SAYING he’s manic or depressed, and Cam and John Wells said Ian’s storyline is bold, audacious, great, etc and I don’t think either of them would’ve said those things if the payoff is just going to be that Ian needed his meds adjusted. And why does Ian maybe believe what the kid is saying and not the dad? Again, this IS Ian’s story! Mentally ill, unable to help himself, and unwilling to take his pills! I wondered why Ian didn’t at least give him a version of the Monica “you don’t have to change for them” speech, or his own “you don’t have to fix me because I’m not broken” speech or why in the name of all that’s holy didn’t he tell the kid, “I’ve been exactly where you are-on meds that were supposed to help but made me feel like crap plus I couldn’t get it up-but that’s because they take time-you need to take them to get stable and then you’ll find what works for you and have no problems having sex again (since apparently Ian’s never had an issue since beating Mickey up at the dugouts).” AND the kid’s only 14-does Ian maybe want to advise him that feeling like he needs to be having sex that young to the point where he’s willing to run away and do it with anyone might be part of his symptoms?

Ian COULD be so helpful here, but no. At this point he is literally putting at risk kids at even greater risk.

Later Rando Bic shows Ian that the van’s back behind the church. Ian says, “Get the kid,” like he’s The Penguin and Bic’s his trusty lieutenant. It was so dumb. The kid is used as bait, and when the 3 guys jump out of the van Ian pops up behind the group and starts yelling. “My god’s a faggot! My god’s a dyke! My god is trans, a junkie, a whore!’ Then the van blows up. “We will not be victims!”

What the hell is he on about? That’s a serious question. None of this is making sense. God isn’t human, so Ian giving the Christian god human attributes makes no sense. “We won’t be victims” of WHAT? Gay conversion? This kid’s dad said he isn’t trying to convert his gay son. What is all the yelling and the explosion about? And to get back to the explosion for a moment: That had to be Ian’s brilliant plan, and it just makes me miss Mickey talking him down from stupid shit like that all the more. Bic is the one that actually lights the fire (get it? BIC?) but how did they even know that all 3 guys would get out of the van this time? Based on the first failed attempt to drive off with the kid, wouldn’t it make more sense that one of the guys would stay at the wheel and keep the van running and they’d take off the minute they shoved the kid inside before all of Ian’s disciples could block it again? Before I rewatched the scene this morning I actually wondered if the story is going to be Ian is guilty of killing one of the guys, but then I saw it again and all 3 did get out-but I still don’t think Bic could’ve seen them from where he snuck around to light it up. And I bet we don’t see Bic again-he was randomly thrown in because of course Terror wouldn’t have helped Ian carry out any plan that wasn’t his own. But it’s funny that they couldn’t have him in the episode because everyone, even the shitty writers, know there’s no way Terror could talk Ian out of it like Mickey would be able to.

In the scenes for next week, Terror shows up and asks, “Is Ian around?” and Debbie answers, “He’s not here.” Terror says, “There’s a warrant out for his arrest.” Wouldn’t the cops have gone to Ian’s house FIRST? Where would they have even found Terror to be asking about Ian since Ian doesn’t officially work for the Youth Center or the Church of Gay Jesus. More lazy writing, can’t wait for the whimpering end to this crapfest of a season.

#Spoilers #Recap #Season H8 Episode 11 #Disco isn't dead but that van sure is #Ian had his first Mickey kiss in a van #Ian gave Mickey a Spiderman kiss in a van after a night of fucking fantastic sex #In a van #Ian should know to show a van respect

21 notes · View notes

onceabluemoonwrites · 7 years

Text

KHR girls: Where Canon Went Wrong

Hey guys! As a writer of fanfiction and someone who loves writing female characters, I’ve been trying to narrow down just why even the not-blatantly-sexualised female characters in KHR leave such a bad aftertaste. In canon, mind you, not fanon. I’m shocked by the magnitude of what I found, actually. It’s… So incredibly BIG.

Every time I write a KHR woman for the first time, I… Flounder, and feel lost. And they often have this bad aftertaste when reading canon material, and I wanted to know WHY so I could narrow it down and know EXACTLY what to fix in my fix-canon fics.

The parts in italics are by @i-w-p-chan .

Buckle up, this is a long post!

Fighting

Bianchi & I-Pin both use food (more on the women & the kitchen association under Kitchen). Bianchi is one of the most dangerous assassins in the world, so that’s a pro. Sadly, it’s one of the few pros.

I-Pin has stepped out of the mafia/triads by the time she’s fifteen, as shown by her TYL version. While this is a very sensible choice and obviously what Fon wanted for her, this makes her another female character who technically stopped fighting while all the males around her kept fighting on. Kyoko, Haru, Hana and Nana are the most featured non-mafia characters. All female, decidedly not fighters.

Chrome should be commended for her skills- she was able to impersonate Yamamoto perfectly. That takes an enormous amount of practice and eye for details. More on Chrome: See Kitchen.

M.M. fought and was defeated by the only other girl fighting.

Bluebell. Bluebell DIDN’T participate in choice. Zakuro didn’t either, but Bluebell was the only female funeral wreath.

Yuni only wins from Byakuran by self-sacrifice in the Future Arc.

She was scared of actually dying until Gamma came over to her. so she didn’t even get to do THAT by herself.

On Pantera: She’s obviously deadly, but Longchamp keeps LAUGHING at her assassination attempts like they’re nothing!

Introductions

Kyoko and Hana’s ‘’generic conversation about a guy’’. (Chapter 1) (See me fixing this conversation here)

Nana putting Tsuna down like he has no future? This doesn’t fit with EVERYTHING we later learn about her! (Chapter 1)

Haru ends up saying she wants to MARRY Tsuna by the end of her introductory chapter.

Bianchi’s ‘’Reborn, Reborn, Reborn!’’ and just… Trying to kill Tsuna because he’s just an obstacle between her and her boyfriend? See me when I’m done screaming out of frustration for this abomination of an introduction done to a woman that should, by all means, be one of the most deadly assassins in the world.

Longchamp’s ‘’Ugly girlfriends’’. (More about this under Because All Women Care About Are Men (and Family))

Chapter 227, the first image of the real six funeral wraths! Everybody looks freakin’ terrifying EXCEPT BLUEBELL, SHE’S JUST SLEEPING??!!

Shittopi-chan. Okay. The second female member of the Simon. That’s more women than the other sets of Elements have! I’m happy with that, but I would have been happier if they hadn’t sexualised Adel so much. And while I love Shittopi and her amazing steadfast belief in herself and her great confidence and wouldn’t have her any other way, it stands out to me that well… The first thing that happens after her introduction is Gokudera calling her a U.M.A. A freaking Unidentified Mysterious Animal.

Handled well: Adel (chapter 283), Oregano (Chapter 112, reasonable), Lal Mirch (Chapter 112), Daniela (Chapter 158), Chrome (Chapter 113- Her entrance was fabulous).

The Kitchen

There’s nothing wrong with the kitchen. That’s where the knives are, after all! *grins* But sadly, as a woman, I know more than a thing or two about ‘’women belonging in the kitchen,’’ and ‘’make me a sandwich, woman.’’

This is the shit I’m talking about:

Kyoko & Hana: Cooking class. Only girls. Ew. No.

Also, in the future arc Kyoko, Haru, Bianchi and even CHROME were on kitchen duty. Kyoko and Haru were “doing what they could,” as is said in canon, but with how much time Bianchi spends with them, couldn’t they have learned how to sharpen knives or something? Besides, it was vital for them to know how to protect themselves in order not to be a liability.

Pretty much, I wanted to see Kyoko and Haru do ANYTHING besides cooking and doing the laundry!

And CHROME?! Sure, she was sick, but what a mighty coincidence! The only female guardian ending up in the kitchen while the rest of them trains and powers up!

And what was especially f*** awful about the future arc was that it TRIED TO JUSTIFY it by “we are doing what we can.’’

I love the bonding moments between the girls in the future arc, BUT WHAT WAS BIANCHI DOING THERE? EVERYBODY WAS BUSY! FUUTA WAS ALMOST NEVER THERE! FUUTA IS A TOO-TALL 18-YEAR-OLD BABY WHO NEEDS TO BE PROTECTED, WHY BE YOU OUT THERE WHILE THE EXPERIENCED HITMAN IS IN THE FREAKING KITCHEN?!!

There is another thing about the girls being put on kitchen duty: you realize how many people they’ll be cooking for and cleaning after? And how many of them are growing teenagers constantly training? That’s not something any 14-year-old girl would know how to do just by virtue of being a girl.

Consider: if Kyoko ever cooked meals at home, it would be just for her parents and Ryohei and herself. That’s four. Haru is a lone child, that’s three. The situation just doesn’t make any sense! Why couldn’t they have like, had a rotating schedule for cleaning and cooking shifts alongside training? Or heck, why isn’t there any worker tasked with the kitchen duty?

Kept in the Dark

Excerpt from Bianchi’s wiki page:

’‘Bianchi again comes to the foreground as a tutor right before Choice, but this time to Chrome. They train in hand-to-hand combat, with I-Pin to help out. During the girls’ strike, she supports Haru and Kyoko’s decision to stop doing housework until the boys tell them what’s going on. However, she also tells them what the boys are most likely thinking, and convinces them to call the strike off.”

She was Gokudera’s tutor before. But Bianchi convincing them to put the strike off? That was a slap in my face, lady! They’ve got a RIGHT to be pissed off, they’re far away from home, in the middle of a war, and you keep them in the dark! They don’t know what’s going on at all! AND THIS:

“Bianchi is first briefly seen watching Reborn worriedly when he awoke from his dream, and later seen again observing while Nana is angered at Tsuna for badmouthing Iemitsu, his father. Later, she was seen carrying an unconscious Nana who fainted after being hit by Iemitsu’s blood while wondering why Nana had to go through such an ordeal. She then requests that they make it so that when Nana wakes up, she will think it was a dream.”

Nana- seemingly obvious, has an overseas husband, “airheaded”? My God. No. Not to mention what the freakin’ anime did with her. All expressions GONE like that! Lal’s place as one of the strongest seven in the world was stolen by Colonello, no matter how well-meant it was.

Sexualization

Adel’s ZIPPER.

Iris Hepburn seduced a couple of scientists to do what she wanted- not manipulated, they say she “charmed and seduced”. Ugh.

Also, not truly sexualized, but definitely need to be noted: Bluebell’s nudity (See Young girls, old men, nudity and being creeped on) and that one scene in the anime (I can’t quite recall if it was in the manga too) in which Gamma remembers Aria.

How? Oh, just, you know, him crawling through her open window shirtless, and her sitting up in bed, clutching the bedding to her obviously naked front while aiming a gun at him.

Also, what is it with Chrome and being attacked by tentacles? First Mammon with the tentacle illusion, then Glo Xinia!

Also, the nude shots of the girls in some very pin-up girl poses in the bathroom scene of the Future Arc (chapter 237) were horrible!

Young girls, old men, nudity and being creeped on

The KHR thing with young girls just… *shiver* For a show about fourteen-year-old kids, there are a LOT of creepers.

Chrome is the biggest victim of it, though sadly, not the only one. Glo Xinia made me so f*** uncomfortable- honestly, he was creeping on Chrome too. The Simon arc and Chrome with Daemon sends my skin crawling every time.

Also, the Byakuran hypnotizing Yuni? Yeah. Older guy controlling younger girl, the whole thing giving you the creeps? Chrome and Daemon, anyone?

Also, you remember Bluebell’s introduction? When she was climbing out of the water and one of the other Funeral Wreaths (I don’t remember which one) telling her something about proper lady manners or something along those lines?

On Bluebell: I checked (chapter 239) and not only does Zakuro comment on her flat chest! Bluebell gets angry at him in a rather childish manner, but when she calls out Kikyo to defend her, he goes: “Zakuro’s just lashing out because he’s jealous of how cute you are.”

Zakuro: “Not likely.”

And then KIKYO SAYS: “Now, Bluebell, you are a girl, so how about you stop spreading your legs in that unsightly manner?”

And Bluebell’s only reaction to this is to close her legs (she was naked, but if she’s already naked in their vicinity, then what? It’s obviously normal for her? Not to mention that’s she’s naked during her INTRODUCTION SCENE?

And the weird thing is, while I’m happy they do treat her like a child, she’s fifteen! They make comments about her chest! And the “treating her like a child” thing is mostly not seeing her as a woman from Kikyo’s standpoint- aka, she’s not sexualized entirely.

It just f*** me up because they still make comments that are really sexist and could be seen as sexualization- not to mention that it’s that kind of freaking patriarchy superior bullshit that KEEPS her from growing up! My gosh) and complaining more about Zakuro!

Also, was it just me or were the Gamma and Yuni overtones rather romantic? Because they felt like it. And Yuni’s what? Fourteen? Thirteen? Fifteen if we’re pushing it? That’s ANOTHER young girl and an older man.

Yeeppppp. from A-Z from their ‘I feel about you the same way my mother did’ (which??? is big ?????????) until Yuni sacrifices herself.

Disease and Disability

Sick characters? Injuries, disease and mental illnesses not caused by battle wounds? Here’s a list:

Yamamoto (broken arm, depression)

Gokudera (trauma)

Hibari (though technically Sakura kura was administered by a weapon too)

Tsuna (skull disease- caused, once again, by weapons- the dying will bullets)

Ryohei (ADHD heavily implied)

Byakuran (What’s happening in his head? I don’t know, but it certainly wasn’t good for his mental health)

Chrome (no organs, repeatedly a problem when Mukuro does not come to the rescue)

Bluebell (parental abuse through neglect, paralyzed legs and trauma from seeing the car accident that ended her brother’s life)

Luce, Aria, Yuni (Arcobaleno curse, results in early death)

Lal Mirch (the only Arcobaleno visibly seen suffering the effects of Byakuran’s anti-Arcobaleno gass or whatever it was)

Lavina (fatal disease).

I love representation of disease and disability if done right, but looking at the list and the topic of this post, I’d say my point has been made. Also, an interesting observation: While the men do seem to deal with mental illnesses, the rest seem to be solely resting on the shoulders of the women.

Because All Women Care About Are Men (and Family)

Bianchi’s few star moments were mostly dominated by statements about love and her ex-boyfriend- though the future arc had her being AWESOME!

Akiko Irie- Shoichi’s sister. Wanna know what her wiki article says? This is under “History” :

“Not much is known about her but it is known that she has a boyfriend.”

Because that’s obviously all we need to know! Don’t even get me STARTED on Longchamp’s girlfriends- 'cause that’s their role! Girlfriend only! (Not to mention the “oh he falls for ugly girls,” thing. Like, seriously?)

Elena is near perfect- great ideals, hints at layered character- but even she is in the end almost solely remembered for the fact that she was Daemon’s wife/lover. She was clearly a vital member of the Primo generation, yet no guardian and completely forgotten because nobody recognized her? Tsuna must have been vetted extensively on the past bosses and their family as the Vonogola heir, yet he didn’t recognize her or had any idea about her existence.

Magi- the Simon child in the last Cozart memory in the Simon arc- Cozart stated that he and Giotto believed that Magi’s descendants would someday be able to laugh together with the Vongola descendants. He and Giotto talked about this? Why not their own descendants (besides the fact that Cozart is obviously gay for Giotto, but that’s never confirmed)? Why think about Magi’s descendants? She’s a child! Once again: are you going to start this early with “that’s the only thing we need to know about this female side character”?

Major pet peeve: MM being pitted against female characters. I still loathe the MM-Chrome interaction in the future arc where she slaps Chrome with all of my being.

YES! Like, the only interaction we’ve seen from MM is her swooning over Mukuro, her fighting Bianchi, her threatening and/or slapping Chrome OVER MUKURO and her complaining to Fran about him pronouncing her name wrong.

M.M.’s wiki entry personality summary:

‘’She cares a lot about fashion and money, and prefers to date rich men. M.M. can be blunt and has a short temper. Despite this, she does have a caring side. She clearly has an interest in music.’’

Curse of the Rainbow arc? Oh, she’s there! But what a surprise- Levi’s interested in her and she’s all like: I’ll go on a date with you, but you’ll have to pay me for it!

Levi: The price is too high!

There’s nothing wrong with hookers, it’s an honest profession, but as far as we know M.M. isn’t one!

Adel’s canon relationship with Julie. While Julie’s appearances have been mostly Daemon in disguise and therefore not actually good source material, the way she was reduced to a blushy mess, losing all composure suddenly over him… It felt like they took away a part of her.

Adel should be the one to have people being reduced into blushy messes and composure-losses over her.

Chrome is subject to Mukuro’s whims. For the clearest example: Mukuro’s behaviour in the future arc. However, this eventually does lead to Chrome learning to stand in her own power in the Inheritance Arc. However, on the Inheritance arc: Chrome is the one abducted. Chrome is the one creeped on by Daemon.

There are things that I have a bone to pick with, the first one that pops into my head is how the girls are just there to cook and clean in the future arc. and then the part when the girls are in the bath and they see the wound Chrome has from training, I don’t remember the exact wording of the dialogue at that moment, but I remember that it made me want to punch something.

I found the accompanying scene:

Mochida treating Kyoko like a freaking prize and Kyoko never getting to punch him for it.

The list is endless.

Saviors

Kyoko gets rescued by Tsuna from Mochida. TYL!Kyoko gets rescued by Tsuna!

Haru is saved from drowning by Tsuna!

Chrome is constantly being saved by Mukuro, Ken and Chikusa. Her very life depends on this. Next to her organs, see Glo Xinia and many other instances.

This list would be VERY long if I went after every single instance in the manga.

Character Development

Where is my female character development? 'Cause I’m only seeing it in Bianchi, Chrome, Adel and Shittopi!

Conclusion

The Cervello are one of the few where little is to be said about. Daniela is the only non-villain(like appearance) besides Mami. Mami, who is one of the only female side characters that’s actually handled well. She’s believable, she’s the traumatic nightmare haunting Enma.

Oregano is also handled reasonably well (though I have to say, people, PLEASE stop making her the woman Iemitsu cheats on Nana within fanfiction). Sepira is good!

But the rest? The headlines in this post speak for themselves.

What I need, my friends, is for Operation: KHR Fix It Female to start Right. Now.

If I’m wrong on any of these points, guys, please tell me, because I’d LOVE to be wrong! To quote @i-w-p-chan: I need my fucking war axe.

#khr girls #khr #chrome dokuro #bianchi #suzuki Adelheid #Sasawaga Kyoko #Haru Miura #Bluebell #M.M.#Lal Mirch #Lavina #Shittopi #Oregano #Sawada Nana #I-pin

243 notes · View notes