#but frankly posting it here with the images was a fucking NIGHTMARE as it is so im. not... exactly interested in doing that anymore LOL

[trikkynikki]

I’d like to offer my thoughts as a video editor. I’m finishing my film degree this semester and I’m going into post-production as a career with a focus on picture editing, and though I’m not top of the field or anything I’ve used premiere pro quite a bit. I have not seen this movie, but I want to because I’ve heard it’s brilliant and I’m confident this is true, they totally earned this award. I am also not saying my reactions are a representation of the industry or anything because in the grand scheme of things I have relatively little experience.

That being said, I'm extremely intimidated by this. This looks truly nightmarish to work with to me, if I’m being honest, and I’m not sure if that’s because I’m missing something or if it actually was a nightmare.

First of all, it looks like they edited the whole movie in one sequence??? They could have divided it into multiple sequences by scenes or something and it would be easier to organize and they could quickly pull up a different scene to look at something if they needed to reference it without losing their place in the other scene. But instead they have 37 audio tracks, and I can only hope each is assigned to a particular purpose like 4-6 is dialogue and 7-10 is Foley or something like that. The insane amount of edits in the audio tracks make me think they must have done a large amount of post production audio in premiere instead of a program made specifically for post sound like Pro Tools (pro tools is a pain in the ass anyways). Obviously I don't know precisely what they did, perhaps they put the audio together in premiere and edited it later in another program?

And frankly I’m not sure I wanna even start diving into the clusterfuck that is the video tracks. Track 1 is going through it, lemme tell you. Now, typically the blue blocks are just video files, most people probably know that. The green ones are multicam sequences, you can put multiple video files into one multicam sequence then put it into the main sequence. That way when editing it's way faster and easier to just switch between cameras. So, to be fair, many of the cuts between the green blocks are just switching to a different camera in the same scene. The orange ones... I have no idea, I'm sure industry professionals know all about it but the fact that I don't even have an inkling feels like this movie is T-posing to assert its dominance over me. But as far as I can tell, this is perhaps with an added effect or in a different scene entirely, it could be fucking *anything*.

The pink bars I believe are one of three things: text, image files, or transparent video. Most of these are probably the last one, not just judging by what I can see of the file names, because you can apply an effect to it and all the clips underneath it so you didn't need to change the effect for each individual clip. This is pretty standard. What I find alarming is the volume of how many of these are here, especially in that second screenshot, and the fact that this is likely before taking this through a program like After Effects for more powerful edits and effects. Like good lord, how many effects did this film need???

And of course, there is the frequency of the cuts, and the audio is much scarier in that regard. You see those first three audio tracks, very few parts of those tracks are long enough to even have a visible waveform. This means that the audio there had so many cuts that zooming out makes it so little that you can't see any detail. Granted, it's zoomed out pretty far, but let’s compare it to one of my own projects.

This sequence of mine is zoomed out almost just as much, and yet even the clips that are only 5-6 seconds, just a sentence or two, are long enough to have a visible waveform for the most part. Which means those audio clips must be cut ridiculously short and has been done so throughout basically the whole film.

I could go on about a few other small things, but I think that just about does it for my rant. It's very late at night but I was not going to be able to sleep until I get this out there. Another note that I am not the highest tier expert and I could have gotten something wrong, but also I've gone to four years of college for this and I am still just as baffled as everybody else if not more so.

the premiere pro timeline for Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022) dir. Daniels, edited by Paul Rogers.

[of-birds-and-men]

Kass gave Link a warm smile, the early morning sun dipping him in honey and making his smile glow even more. “Well, this is quite out of the blue. Not even a ‘hello?’ Much less a ‘please?’”

Link’s lips snapped into a flustered frown. “I’m sorry,” he frantically signed. “Please, could you teach me?”

After throwing his head back to bellow a laugh, Kass chuckled, “I am only messing with you, my friend. Do not worry.” He patted the spot next to him on the landing where he sat, signaling Link to sit by him. “I’m curious about what song you want to play. Which is it?”

Accepting the invitation to sit next to Kass, Link kept his head down as he shuffled over. His eyes flicked around and his cheeks started to redden the slightest bit. Why the answer embarrassed him so much, he wasn’t so sure, but it was hard to get his reply out.

“Ah,” Kass said with his smile still prominent on his beak as he set his accordion down next to him. “Do you mean to learn the other Champions’ songs as well?”

Link breathed in through his teeth and shrugged. “Maybe. But I want to learn Revali’s right now if I can...”

Kass looked down at him with raised eyebrows, as if gently urging him to elaborate. 

With that, Link rubbed the back of his neck and shrugged again. “Well...I don’t know. I had some memories come to me, but they’re foggy and I can barely understand them. But, something is telling me today is Revali’s…” His hand dropped and his brow furrowed in thought. He knew the sign for the Hylian term but didn’t know it for the Rito if there even was one for it. Opting to fingerspell, Link spelled it out with his fingers as Kass read it closely.

When he was finished, Kass’s beak hung open a little in interest. “Oh, so today is Champion Revali’s Hatchday? I had no idea.”

“Yeah, I…”

“...I think so.”

“You mean to play his song in his memory today?”

Link’s cheeks burned brighter. “Is that stupid?”

“Oh, no. Not in the slightest,” Kass assured, waving his hand. “In fact, I think it’s a lovely idea.”

“...Thanks. I don’t know what else I would do anyway. If there was something, I don’t remember it,” Link said, his hands moving slowly. His mind drifted; not that there was anywhere for it to go after his century-long sleep practically wiped it clean. 

He brought himself back to where he was with a sigh. “I don’t know. I would do something or leave him a gift, but I remember next to nothing about him. I don’t remember what he liked or even what he hated. Nothing...”

It was true. There were only a couple of clear memories of Revali that Link remembered now. Only a few moments where Link could see his face and hear his voice clearly. And then there were even more blurry, foggy images of him that were slowly trickling in and left Link with more questions than answers. Leaving him feeling like there was so much more that he was missing. Almost like he was missing an important part of himself; of what his life had been before Calamity Ganon struck.

Really, it was the same thing with everyone; with Zelda, Mipha, Urbosa, and Daruk. Brief memories, some clear and some so hazy they were beyond recognition.

But with Revali, it was somehow different. It hurt more. It was severely more painful. It made both his heart and head ache. And he had no idea why it was the case for Revali out of all of them. Why the one who seemed to like him the least, or even hated him, made Link feel this longing...No, this need...to remember and know him like he used to. However it had been.

Still, even though his mind was riddled by all sorts of questions he couldn’t answer after forgetting everything but his own name…

Something within him couldn’t quite let itself completely forget.

“But I know that I have to do something for him and this is all I can think of,” Link finished, taking his time with every hand motion as he stared down at the lake below them; the surface of the water was almost black with the light of the morning sun not having reached it yet.

Noticing the gloom that was beginning to dawn on Link again, Kass leaned over and spoke up in a chipper voice. “It is more than a generous gift. Do not sell yourself short. I’m sure that if he is still there to listen, he will be grateful.” 

Link forced a small smile to give to Kass. “Thank you. I hope you’re right.”

Kass let the corners of his beak curl all the way up to try and settle whatever troubles he thought Link had. “I must say though, I did not take you for the musical type,” he began. “What does a man like you play?”

Letting out a short hum, Link fumbled around in the small bag on his belt to show the instrument in question. Once he fished it out, he held it out for Kass to see.

It was an ocarina he had come across in his travels. His curiosity had driven him to buy it with the extra rupees he had on hand when he saw it amongst Beedle’s wares. Though, it wasn’t until he actually held it and felt the cool ceramic touch on his skin and the shape in his hands, did he realize it was not so much curiosity as it was familiarity. Or something close to it.

And again, it was proven to Link that while his head was clear of what made him himself in the past, there were many things that his body seemed to remember. Muscle memory helped him ride horses like a pro straight away, and instinct along with that allowed him to fight the way he had before without needing to relearn much of anything. It was the same sort of thing for the ocarina; as soon as he brought the mouthpiece to his lips, his fingers knew exactly where to go to play notes he didn’t remember and songs he couldn’t recall. It all came to him naturally as if playing it was once something that was ingrained in him. And he found himself occasionally fiddling with it until now. Too busy to really sit down and learn anything new, but playing what his lips and fingers remembered when he had a moment to himself.

If Link couldn’t leave Revali a proper gift on his Hatchday, then at least he could play his song, one of the last things the world had left to remember him by. Whether it was for Revali himself, if he was still there, or if it was in his memory on his day.

Or, even if it was just for Link; a way to remember Revali with what little he had left.

Hopefully, it would be enough. But it definitely didn’t feel like it, even if it was all he could really do.

“An ocarina certainly does suit you,” Kass said, looking at the instrument in Link’s hands before peering at him and pointing at it. “Ah, may I?”

Link nodded, allowing Kass to take the ocarina in his hands and examine it himself.

“Can you play it, too?” Link asked.

Tittering, Kass replied, “Well, Rito aren’t exactly equipped to play wind instruments, considering our anatomy.” He tapped his beak. “Though, I think once I found a way around it to make it work with this blasted thing on my face. Would you mind if I tried?”

Link’s lips tightly creased together to keep him from smirking as he shook his head and motioned toward the ocarina. He watched as Kass brought it to his beak, which clacked against the ceramic as he tried to find the best position.

Kass’ feathers ruffled; clearly, he was flustered, but he tried his best to get past it by laughing it off. “Well, this is certainly humbling. This proves that no matter how esteemed of a bard I may be, I simply cannot master everything...What with my pesky beak and less than graceful fingers.” He rubbed the mouthpiece of the ocarina on his scarf before handing it back to Link.

With how much spit he saw flying from Kass when he was trying the ocarina, Link decided to rub it again on his clothes for good measure. 

Kass let out another embarrassed chuckle and twisted around to grab his accordion. “I might not be able to give you direction, but I can teach you the notes.”

Link nodded. “That works,” he said, his last words before readying his hands to focus on his ocarina rather than on speaking.

Smiling while he slid his hands through his instrument’s straps, Kass said, “Well, let’s begin then.”

~

Link opened his mouth to say something, finding himself gaping at Vah Medoh, but clamped it shut again. He attached the ocarina to his belt for a moment to speak with his hands.

Whether he was really alone or if there was still someone there to see him, he was not sure at all. After the defeat of Ganon, he was never sure what happened to Revali or the others.

Even so...he had the feeling he wasn’t quite alone.

But maybe that was just him being hopeful. Hopeful that he wasn’t just making a fool of himself. Grasping at straws for nothing.

“Hi.” Instantly, he cringed at himself and hissed through his teeth. Now he really felt stupid. Nonetheless, he made himself go on. “I’m not sure if you’re even here right now or if I’m talking to myself. But, either way-“ Link took a second to swallow and fix his eyes back down to the ground beneath him. “I wish I could say I remember you. There are only little things I remember, but something is telling me there’s so much more to you...to us...that I’m still missing.”

Link licked his lips. He hoped that he was, in fact, alone, so Revali wouldn’t be seeing him rambling on to himself.

“But I know that we were close somehow. I feel that, once, you were the most important thing to me, but that’s all I know. I’m sorry.” He bit his lip that was still wet from when he licked them. “That’s why when I remembered it was your birthday-“ Link froze, then corrected, “Sorry, hatchday...I knew I had to do something for you, because, in a way, you still matter to me now as much as you did before. But you’re still a mystery to me; I know nothing about you further than you being a Champion and being the pride of your people.” He laughed a little to himself. “And that you didn’t like me at all. At first, at least. I’m not sure.”

Finally, he racked up the courage to look back up at Vah Medoh. “I do know your song though, which I’m sure you’d like to know is played by bards to keep your memory alive. I’m not one of those at all, but I can just barely remember how to play this thing and Kass taught me how to play your song. One of the things of yours that’s still here- Even if these are all the memories I can ever have of you, at least I can have this. And your bow, too.”

Nervously, he started to chuckle to himself. “I don’t know what I’m saying. Maybe I never should’ve said anything. Anyway, the point is...I know it’s a crummy present and I don’t know if you’re even still here to listen, but I learned how to play your song for you.”

Done with his monologue, Link anxiously took the ocarina off of his belt. For a moment, he stared at it and focused on the cool touch of it in his hand before slowly bringing it up to his mouth. He took in a deep breath while his fingers went to their places and he played what he learned for Revali.

Dormant, Vah Medoh said nothing in reply, leaving Revali alone to revel in both Link’s appearance and song. That was fine. He honestly hadn’t expected her to reply anyway.

Even when he couldn’t even remember him, Link was still annoyingly sentimental. It brought bittersweet comfort that, even with everything that had happened, it was still the same Link before him. His Link.

He had the same golden hair he used to run his fingers through. The same lustrous, sapphire eyes he used to stare into. The same quiet laugh that warmed Revali’s heart. The same strength that Revali both envied and once fell in love with. The same kindness. The same courage. The same everything. Every little thing Revali loved and even hated about him was still there, down below, playing a song for someone he didn’t even know anymore.

Still, it hurt knowing Link didn’t know him. Seeing no recollection on his face when Link first came to Vah Medoh...Seeing Link looking at him as if he was a stranger…

Well, it nearly broke his heart. To be eventually forgotten by his people was worse enough, but then to have the one he loved come back to him only to forget him, too…

Revali sniffed, resting his hand under his chin to watch Link far down below. 

Link was right. This was a crummy present. His finger clumsily fumbled around and he kept blowing into the ocarina’s mouthpiece too hard or too soft. Even from here, he could see his spit flying. Funny how, even over a hundred years later, he never did get better with that thing.

He really was still his Link. Just how he remembered him. Just how he loved him. How he would, unfortunately, always love him. Even if it meant being unrequited for the rest of time.

~~~

GASPS OUT OF BREATH,,,,,, WOW OKAY,, umm LOL here is le @revalinkexchange gift for @mars-janka ??? I. hm. certainly took some liberties and for some reason with my srs lack of expertise ..I was like “HEY I KNOW HOW TO MAKE THIS INFINITELY HARDER ON MYSELF!!! WRITE AND ALSO DRAW A BILLION PICTURES WHICH IS SOMETHING I BARELY KNOW HOW 2 DO.” 

//sobs// i was so drained of my life juices by the end that the quality DROPPED and im genuinely so sorry pls forgive me wwwwwwwwwwww- i even redrew the last link panels to try and make it better if u can believe it LOL i also was considering making a prose only version of this to make up for it but i honestly don’t know how to translate some bits to that...SO- ah

anyway...yaaaaaaaahhh happy valentine’s day!! hope u still like it despite my clear depletion of life juices dskjghkjag

also teehee ty @udog​ for helping me w vah medoh u smell

[dragons-bones]

Sins of the Savage Stable: SE, What the Fuck Is That?

*pushes glasses up nose* Hello, everyone, DT’s Horse Girl Past got unlocked so y’all are about to get subjected to a rant I have sat upon for four goddamn years about the travesty that is the in-game model for horses in Critically Acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV Etc., Etc., as egged on by my FC and our friends, because we’ve got a lot of Former Horse Girls And/Or Grew Up On A Farm people in our server.

DISCLAIMER: THE OPINIONS CONTAINED HEREIN ARE MY OWN. I am neither a game designer nor a veterinarian. I did, however, possess a great love of horses from a young age, owned (and still own) a shit ton of books about horses, horse breeds, equine anatomy, and related topics, on top of learning to ride and care for horses as a young preteen. I am very familiar with what constitutes a happy, healthy horse in terms of both behavior and appearance. In addition, I am aware that art styles can take short-cuts with precise anatomy, and I am not expecting exact realism from a video game. This is a post intended to be humorous, but also share my exasperation when stylistic choices veer into uncanny valley.

Get your booze, let’s begin!

First and foremost, here is an example of a real world horse and its anatomy:

(Source: “Equine Anatomy,” Wikipedia. This is quite frankly one of the better examples on the internet; isn’t too cluttered, keeps the important bits, and the horse’s head is facing forward so you can get a better sense of proportion.)

And here is the model of horse used in game for the following models: all six mount drops from the ARR primals; Kirin (though it uses a head inspired by Chinese qirin); the horses on the Azim Steppe; Unicorn; Nightmare; Pegasus; Night Pegasus; and Incitatus:

(Source: Me.)

I’ve used the Unicorn here as it doesn’t have any obnoxious glow effects that can district. As a side note: the Sleipnir, Juedi, and Red Hare mounts have a slightly different model but appear to be based off the same frame. Ixion appears to have a custom model. All four have their own issues, but we’ll get to that a little later.

So, what’s wrong? Let’s start from the hindquarters and work our way forward.

THE TAIL

*shudders*

The root of the tail is called the dock, and is where the coccygeal vertebrae extend from out of the horse’s body to create the tail from which all that lovely flowing hair grows. It is just above the anus, and, as we see in our friend in the first image, is located on the downward slope of the hindquarters. In some breeds, the dock can be a little bit higher, but generally nothing extreme.

On the SE model, the tail is directly on top of the croup. The spine has basically exited the body at an abrupt forty-five degree angle UPWARD. It is TOO HIGH. It is TOO FAR BACK. And I have to STARE DIRECTLY AT THIS SIN EVERY TIME MOUNT ROULETTE GIVES ME A PONY. All of the horse models do this. I try not to think about how pooping must suck.

THE HINDQUARTERS

Honestly these aren’t too bad. Proportions are pretty much correct; the gaskin (upper leg) is, to my eye, a little too curved, and the hock too knobbly. That said, I can live with it. The stifle (basically the knee, the articulation point between femur and tibia) could be more defined, croup except for the tail appears the right shape, flanks are okay... The barrel is a little too round, but the hind end and middle could be a lot worse, honestly..

THE FORELEGS

WHAT.

THE.

FUCK.

THIS IS AN ABOMINATION BEFORE THE EYES OF GOD.

The forearm is TOO SHORT. The cannon bone is TOO LONG. The knees are thus in COMPLETELY THE WRONG SPOT. And worse then that:

The knees. Are. BACKWARDS!!!

*slowly rocks back and forth* Friends, I cannot tell you the sound of absolute disgusted horror that left my mouth in Spring 2017 when I did my first pony farm and got Xanthos and summoned it. Oh my god. Ohhhhhh my god. Jesus Christ. Jesus fucking Christ.

Every Horse Person I know who has seen those forelegs just. Screams. Or throws up in their mouth. It ain’t right. It is just. It is SO WRONG.

Just. Just no. If I saw a horse looking like this in real life, I’d be attempting to murder the breeder for animal cruelty. This is appalling.

THE HEAD

*puts head on table and sighs for a year*

So. Chances are you’ve heard of the Arabian; it’s a very, very old breed of horse, and they’re known for their dished faces: a slight concavity to their face. There are a great many Arabian bloodlines and strains these days, each of which promotes a different version of the breed that it’s pretty difficult to define what a “quintessential” Arabian horse should look like.

I am very certain SE modelers were looking at what an FC mate called the Extremely Overbred Arabian: a horse bred solely for its looks, exaggerating the shape of the face into such a narrow wedge that quite frankly it looks uncanny and freakish, no longer like a horse, and while there have been no formal studies I can find, has led some people to be concerned about health and breathing issues. I’m not going to include a picture because quite frankly I find it upsetting to look at. You can Google it.

I hate the shape of the FFXIV horse head so much.

(The ears are also three times the size they should be, and I cannot figure out why.)

CHONKY BOIS

The less we talk about Ixion’s tail, the better. I love you, my ugly giant zappy pony, but goddamn is everything wrong with that tail. I won’t nitpick his anatomy too much because he’s so stylized that it is just a futile effort. And god help me, I’m still fond of the jerk.

Anatomy wise, the Sleipnir-style horses have the same leg and head issues as the “regular” mount; on Sleipnir and Red Hare, the leg issues aren’t immediately noticeable because of the armor on the legs but still, ugh.

The chonky bois also suffer from, uh. Well. The musculature. They look exactly like halter-type American Quarter Horses--quarter horses bred for an inflated-muscle appearance that has resulted in numerous confirmation problems (included the hind legs being completely straight, it’s horrifying) and health ones, such as the massive proliferation of HYPP (hyperkalemic periodic paralysis), a genetic muscle disease wherein the affected horse will have muscle spasms, weakness, and collapses, all of which can lead to death. Halter Horses don’t even look like horses, they look like bulldogs.

(I am also not including a picture of one, it’s a cursed Google image search. *gag*)

Now, I recognize that Sleipnir, Juedi, and Red Hare also bare a very strong resemblance to how horses are depicted in traditional Japanese art in terms of their bulk (horses in Japanese art otherwise possess correct anatomy and tail placement, thank you); it’s probably much more likely their beefiness was inspired by that than a sub-type of an American horse breed. But my initial gut reaction to seeing them was “AQHA Halter Horse” and I’ve never shaken that, so I’m never going to be fond of these guys.

...except Ixion. Why do I love these zappy ugly bastard so much.

Anyway.

But before I sign off on this useless rant:

BY REQUEST, A SPECIAL WORD ON SIDE SADDLE

*opens another bottle of hard cider*

So, female Midlanders and Elezen sit the first model type (except the two Pegasi) side saddle. This is already annoying enough; in Europe, side saddle developed primarily because it was considered unseemly for a women to ride astride. Eorzea is not Earth or Europe, it doesn’t have the same gender norms, and quite frankly I don’t want to see real world gender norms applied in a fantastical setting, please and thanks. I also find it less secure, and it makes communication between horse and rider more difficult; quite a lot of riding and cues are done via your legs and heels, and with the way the legs are positioned, your hands (and the reins) generally need to be held at a higher angle which is hella awkward feeling.

But no, it’s not just side saddle. I am but one person, I know there are plenty of riders out there who find it comfortable. Fine. I will live with that.

But in FFXIV it’s side saddle BAREBACK.

Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME.

I could tolerate more if there was, y’know. A saddle. Even just a regular saddle and not a proper side saddle (though the later would be better, since it’s specifically built to keep a rider’s legs secured and help them stay balanced). No, it’s BAREBACK.

Side saddle bareback is asking to fall off your horse and break your neck.

Hilariously, I would actually be fine with it if it happened on one of the chonky bois, or even specifically Ixion. As someone who once rode a Clydesdale when she was barely five feet tall, riding astride on a horse with a wide back is hard and it hurts. Sidesaddle in that case is much easier, and with a big enough horse even preferable, because you are basically sitting on a table. Like, Jaysus, Synnove is a max height Highlander, but riding Ixion sure as fuck doesn’t look all that comfortable.

One of the dainty little Arab-esque models, however? Absolutely fucking not. RIDE ASTRIDE.

FINAL WORDS

In conclusion, the horses in this game are a travesty and give me constant psychic damage. SE, where do I send my bribe money to get this fixed already?

Thanks for coming to my TEDtalk, enjoy the Live Letter tonight. I need more booze.

[comfyswitcherblanketfort]

#WifeMeUp

@bounce-a-coin-off-your-witcher has blessed me with the permission to turn this post into a drabble and istg yall this just wrote itself. I went a different route with the whole ‘foreign exchange student’ part, I hope you don’ mind 😘

Pairing: Geraskier

Warnings: talk of shitty classes, mentions of ISIS, talk of triggering materials in classes, so much cursing I am worse than the old men i used to bar-tend for

__________

“This class was fuckin weird. Who the ever loving fuck puts “Middle Eastern History and English 203 Combined” on the roster then does a miserable current events class with a heavy, and frankly depressing, background on ISIS? Like? Cool, I get it, teach what you’re interested in, but give us some warning?! Maybe write in the description that it’s predominantly covering some fucked up shit? Not way-back-when like one assumes?!” Jaskier had launched into the rant he was planning all day when his coworker asked how the first day of the semester was going. 

Essie just nodded at the appropriate times, raising her eyebrows when necessary as she ran cleaning tablets through the espresso machine. 

“My day is already weird enough working here. Plus! Where’s the trigger warning?! Some kids have trauma! How the fuck are they gonna know the first day is a slideshow full of horrific images?! Fucking irresponsible.”

Essie started tamping down some coffee to test the shots, “So are you gonna try to switch into something else?”

Jaskier grinned, his eyes lighting up, “Not a chance.”

She sighed, rolling her eyes and tinkering with the settings on the machine, “Tell me about him.”

“Oh Ess, he’s gorgeous. He’s definitely not from the states, but I only caught a few words from him so I can’t place his accent-”

“Ah, yes. The accents always get you.”

“They do.” He sighed like a middle schooler in the school play as a car pulled up to their little stand, “There’s more, I promise.”

“Oh I’m sure.” Essie sighed.

Jaskier handed the customer the card reader as he started pulling the shots on the other machine, “He’s so pretty. Holy shit Ess. All jawbone and eyebrows. And his hair. I wanna know who does it because it is pure white and it still looks healthy? He’s probly my height but he looks like he could break a linebacker in half. Oof. He’s one whole lotta man, and you know me, I’m a sucker for a good set of shoulders. He doesn’t strike me as the athletic type though, ripped jeans, wallet chain, Soundgarden t shirt, flannel in his belt. Mm. Tall grunge drink of water.” he paused to hand off the customer’s beverage and take the card reader back, “And his eyes are fucking gold, I shit you not.”

Essie gave him a skeptical look, “Gold? You mean light brown?”

He shook his head aggressively, “I. Mean. Gold. Straight up sunflower eyes.”

She still didn’t look like she believed him, “He must actually be hot if you’re this excited.”

It was Jaskier’s turn to roll his eyes, “I’m not that much of a ho.”

“Not a ho, you never follow through.” She teases.

_

Before they head out to their classes, Jaskier makes them each the most ridiculously caffeinated and sugar loaded drink he can think of, as is tradition. 

He takes a picture of his latte art and posts it straight to twitter with the caption “Quad caramel, toffee, burnt marshmallow, and hazelnut breve (with a penis heart) #wifemeup” then tops the drink with as much whipped cream as possible.

His first class is statistics, and honestly fuck stats. He struggles through it, remembers nearly nothing, then moves on to the combo class of his nightmares. 

This boy better be gay or bi or pan or something other than straight. 

He sat roughly in the middle of the amphitheater-like classroom and kept an eye on the door by holding his phone up with his elbows resting on the desk and slouching like a child. True to his nature, he got lost in his phone and failed to notice when Hot Babe walked in and plopped into the seat to his left.

Jaskier squeaked, clutching his pearls and immediately trying to suppress his giggles, “Holy shit.”

“Sorry, you alright?”

Jaskier stared up at him, dumbstruck for a moment.

Oooooo, English.

“Yeah! Yeah, good.Hi!”

Hot Brit grinned, setting up his laptop, “Hi.” 

Jaskier took another deep breath to calm his heart, but he couldn’t decide if the jump scare or Hot Brit’s collar bones were making it beat like this. 

“You don’t have a heart condition do you?” Hot Brit was smirking now, only looking at him out of the corner of his eye as he pulled up his notes from last class. 

Jaskier tilted his head, oh shit, he’s clever too, “No, thank fuck.” he laughed.

Hot Brit gave him an amused huff as the prof walked in and started shouting housekeeping announcements to the hall.

As the man was droning on about things that truly didn't matter, Hot Brit leaned over, eyes still on the prof, and whispered, “Oh yeah, I meant to ask you, will you marry me?”

Jaskier’s eyes bulged out of his head, frozen focusing on the whiteboard, “Uh, yo- what?” He whips his head around to look at Hot Brit, still looking forward, but openly smiling now. He set his phone on Jaskier’s desk, open to his tweet from this morning.

“I’m not stalking you, honest. You were on my Suggested page.”

Jaskier let the breath he was holding go, “Ooooohhh. Oh! Oh’ho’ho. Cute.” he chuckled. 

Goddamn he’s funny and smooth?

Hot Brit just wiggled his eyebrows, looking at Jaskier with an almost perfect mask of confidence.

Jaskier took the phone and entered his number in the messenger app, “How about dinner?”

Hot Brit nodded, a hint of relief in his eyes, “I’m Geralt, by the way.”

Jaskier texted himself before handing the phone back, “Geralt. Sounds very knightly.”

Geralt snorted, earning a couple glares, as the lecture had started, “Hardly.”

Jaskier settled in with his laptop, clicking the ‘audio to text’ button, “I guessed. With all the flannel and holes.”

The two grinned at each other before Geralt focused back on their lecture. Jaskier bit his lip to keep from smiling like the Cheshire Cat. 

Essie is gonna shit herself.

[bunkernine]

i forgot 2 ask in the last ask 2 ☹ who drew ur pfp 👀

it's from the readriordan website, here's the link to the spotlight article about drew tanaka. since I've only been using official art lately, im counting the website as official 🤔 if it wasn't official I'd put the artist in my bio

but anyway long answer short, I'm going to fucking murder you rn for bringing this up 🤣 because i can't find out on the website nor wikia so i needed to search.

here's my thoughts and my journey😭🕵️:

at first i looked at cover artists of rrp books

Vivienne To did the art for Dragon Pearl and The Last Fallen Star so the art style feels familiar and she is clearly tied to the Riordan label, but it didn't feel right.

Vanessa Morales also did art for Paolo Santiago and the Forest of Nightmares, which was also kind of similar but her work was like, too dynamic to feel right for this profile. the colors she uses are so vibrant!!!

....then i got lazy and only did those 2 😭 the rest felt too off anyway

The problem with those two is that it seems they only draw for things related to their culture (which is a neat move on riordan's side i think) but the pjo artist all seem to be the same for the pjo articles.

🕵️🕵️🕵️

so i went to insta (@readriordan) 😭😭😭 and this motherfucker doesnt tag nobody and doesn't say shit in captions 😭😭😭

i went thru a couple of posts of the pjo art to find an artist. i realized that there seems to be at least 2 artists but neither have been named. someone on insta also felt this way but no response 😭😭😭

i tried not to cry when i go thru so many posts . there's this one about Zoe nightshade with #warriorcrushwednesday that someone commented their WCW was Leo Valdez and others say Nico Di Angelo. i try not to think about this too much.

🕵️🕵️🕵️

→ anyway insta tells me nothing. Twitter tells me nothing or at least not that i can search too much as i don't have an account.

→ Facebook. i just fucking know the answer is probably there because it's fucking facebook but i don't have an account and it won't let me keep scrolling. so fucked up 😭😭 the @readriordan about page never fucking loads

all the fucking links at the bottom of the page lead to Disney, like DISNEY DISNEY. i skimmed thier terms of use for no reason.

finally i straight up Google search the images... nothing shows 😭 the first one i did was the hyacinthus image which was a mistake because it kept bringing up tsoa. so i didn't the pic of jo and emmie which only brought 5 or 6 Google pages. nothing.

🕵️🕵️🕵️

i look up many variations of "who draws the character art for read Riordan?" nothing but the old artists we already know show up, but this is not their style!!!! sobbing

🕵️🕵️🕵️

my last resort: email this man. i head to the rickriordan website, which is different from readriordan. his contact info says something along the lines off "fuck off!!!!! i took down my email 🤣 and u gotta contact me on twitter insta or Facebook to get a hold of this rich guy 🤑��🤣🤣 even tho i don't run that shit!!!!! gl fans 💓"

🛐 can not wait for the purge, i thought

🕵️🕵️🕵️

my final option: i expect to mail a letter to the publisher. i am not to expect an answer.

so i do not actually mail him.

🕵️🕵️🕵️

anyway i do not have a conclusive answer. i can only say this is official art and perhaps one day Riordan will answer the people. tbh some of the art is real iffy and kinda gross but LOL no clue who did it 😭 i hope this pain satisfies you but there is no answer here from me. hopefully someone can find them out there 💓

frankly imo, it's really irresponsible to not say who ur artist is! but i am not millionaire nor am I the artist not getting the clout so where does that put me. just a blogger with a drew pfp and hopeful asker who gets nothing 💕 stay cute bro

[watching-pictures-move]

Put On Your Raincoats #17 | The Erotic Reveries of Rinse Dream

Cafe Flesh opens with a title card orienting us to its post-apocalyptic setting. After a calamitous apocalyptic event known as the "Nuclear Kiss", the world is made up of 99% "Sex Negatives", and 1% "Sex Positives". The Sex Negatives can't have sex and can only watch. The Sex Positives escaped such a fate, but are instead forced to perform for an audience of Positives for their vicarious enjoyment. There are many such venues but the one we spend the movie in is the Cafe Flesh of the title, a nightclub where the decor and patronage evoke a cross between punk rock and retro-futurist aesthetics and a hint of Rat Pack era cool. A smarmy comedian in a white tuxedo introduces the sex acts, which are elaborately staged performances that play almost as genre parody with their tongue-in-cheek choreography (plenty of costumed grinding, as with a performer in a rat costume early on, and mimed thrusting, as with another performer in a pencil costume in a later scene) until the turn into the real thing with the requisite close-ups. Futuristic jazz reminiscent of Angelo Badalamenti's music plays over the proceedings.

This serves as the background to a story about a woman who may or may not secretly be a Positive (played by scream queen Michelle Bauer and, in certain scenes, a body double) and the impending arrival of a legendary Positive performer known for his virility (a towering, square-jawed Kevin James, introduced in black sunglasses and an oversized blue suit). We also get a sense of the tensions in this nightclub ecosystem, particularly between the heroine and her boyfriend, a new performer, the comedian, the owner (who puts the comedian in his place in one scene by having him cruelly recite "the rhyme"). (The comedian is played by Andy Nichols and the owner by Tantala Ray, both of whom played interview subjects in Gregory Dark's Devil in Miss Jones two-parter, which leads me to believe the latter was influenced by this movie, as Nichols in particular doesn't have many screen credits.)

This movie apparently was a bit of a success in the midnight movie circuit, and it's not hard to see why, based on the strength of the mise en scene and the performances. The cool, smoky backgrounds of the reaction shots provide a nice counterpoint to the avant garde looking performances and give the highly stylized setting a nice evocative quality. There's also a level of genre commentary here, as the story ultimately is about the heroine's agency over her pleasure and the roles sex performers are forced into by greater society, ultimately imprisoned by their own abilities. Truth be told I found the performances got a little less enjoyable when they got down to business with the penetration and whatnot (it gets harder to pull off inspired choreography when one of your appendages is stuck in another person, or vice versa), but I also think it's necessary for those themes to resonate.

Cafe Flesh was directed by Stephen Sayadian, credited as Rinse Dream, and he'd previously used that pseudonym on Nightdreams, for which he co-wrote the screenplay. (The director was Francis Delia, who went on to a career of directing mostly music videos and television, while the other writer was Jerry Stahl, known for his memoir Permanent Midnight, as well as writing for shows such as ALF and movies such as Bad Boys II.) This movie similarly concerns agency over female pleasure and is about two doctors (Andy Nichols and Jennifer West) conducting experiments on a mentally ill young woman by inducing erotic dreams and monitoring her brainwaves. There's a dream involving a giant, monstrous jack-in-the-box. There's one with a pair of cowgirls and something other than a gun stored in a holster, with the cowgirls spouting stilted dialogues in robotic monotones, a Sayadian trademark of sorts. Wall of Voodoo's cover of "Ring of Fire" plays over the action (I'm not sure if they paid for the rights, but Delia and Sayadian did direct videos for the band). There's one with a group of bedouins sharing a hookah and then her. There's a giallo-esque scene involving a masked assailant, but this happens after an aborted nightmare about a shrieking man with a hollow chest from his pants emerges a shrivelled up, monstrous baby. Did David Lynch jack off to this? I wouldn't rule it out, folks.

There's a scene where she blows an anthropomorphic box of Cream of Wheat, while a jaunty cover of "Old Man River" plays on the soundtrack and a man dressed as giant piece of toast dances and plays saxopohone. An IMDb user review cites this scene for its cutting racial commentary, but I found this tonally jarring with the rest of the movie. After this, there's a trip to hell where a demon and his minions subject her to such horrific tortures as prodding her with a giant claw and then an even more fearsome double-pronged contraption. The scientists argue over fears that they gave her too much stimulation. ("This woman's on the brink of an orgasm. Let her enjoy it. She doesn't need interruption from a man." "You call it orgasm. I call it breakdown.") The movie then makes way to its final set piece, involving fog, a background of blue sky and pillars and soft piano music. The cinematography in this scene is in stark contrast to the mostly shadowy, intimate imagery of the previous scenes, with the camera pulled up to admire both their bodies and the scene continuing for some time after the climax. It almost brings to mind a certain scene in Jerry Lewis' The Ladies Man that I found disarming in its stylistic and tonal break from the rest of the movie. Without revealing too much, the film's coda sets the record straight.

It probably doesn't say anything flattering about me that I found most of this pretty hot. The movie has a tinge of horror running through it, giving many of the sex scenes (especially the one in hell) a real tension, while the scientific framing device gives it a cold, calculating quality reminiscent of David Cronenberg. (Alas, this doesn't predate some of his most influential films, but for all we know, David Cronenberg jacked off to it as well.) A few of the character names (Mrs. Van Houten, Mrs. Chalmers) make me suspect that Matt Groening might have seen (and jacked off to) it as well. This is pure speculation on my part, but as far as I'm aware, none of them have denied it either. The movie's distinct tone is grounded in an impressive lead performance by Dorothy LeMay. I wasn't all too impressed with her work in Taboo II, but here I think she skillfully evokes the heroine's derangement and "erotic trauma", in the words of the scientists.

Sayadian and Stahl collaborated again for Dr. Caligari, a relatively mainstream effort that also found some success as a midnight movie. I say "relatively" because it's still pretty fucking weird. The movie positions itself as a loose sequel to Robert Wiene's classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, this time about the granddaughter of the original Caligari conducting illegal experiments in an insane asylum. From the earlier film it pulls a German expressionist influence, but combines it with a campy, MTV-inflected style to present the asylum as a warped funhouse. The dimensions of the architecture are distorted and full of odd angles, decorated in a mixture of pitch black and gaudy day-glo colours (lots of yellow and pink costumes). This is not a pornographic movie, yet it's hardly less obsessed with sex, as the villain's plan concerns the weaponization of female pleasure. There's also the occasional grotesque sexually-charged image to spice things up, like the sight of a woman with giant, phallic-shaped breasts. Some of the imagery also gives it potency as horror, like an oozing sore or a cake full of intestines. There's a lot of strange, stilted dialogue, as in this exchange:

"Describe your life in three words or less."

"Un-ending torment."

"Elaborate, please."

"Blankety blank blank."

"Thank you for being specific."

This is matched by the angular body language of the villain, played by Madeline Reynal in a deadpan yet very physical performance. This movie also brings into focus a voyeuristic theme, which was present in those earlier movies but didn't seem quite as confrontational in its presentation. A character utters, basically to the audience: "I know you're watching me. I feel your eyes like wet fingers touching me in special places." (This is a line of dialogue that appeared in the next few films I'll talk about.) Truth be told, I was a little exhausted by the sensory overload of Sayadian's style here, and in retrospect appreciate the way the sex scenes act as a counterpoint to his more aggressive tendencies in his more explicit films. But at the same time, this is full of memorable imagery and has a weirdly compelling lead performance. I don't know if there's much else quite like it (or at least operating at this force), so it gets a recommendation.

Sayadian followed up Nightdreams with a few shot-on-video sequels. I skipped Nightdreams 2 as I could only find it in a heavily degraded transfer, but I did make time for Nightdreams 3, which has a self contained story that's essentially a more explicit if relaxed version of Dr. Caligari, once again concerning a doctor conducting sinister experiments at an insane asylum. (This time her experiments mostly involve just fucking her patients and other staff.) There's more of the stilted dialogue, even closer to non sequiturs than they were in the earlier film, with the music by Double Vision providing an off-kilter soundscape to match the weirdness of the dialogue. (Highlights include "My pussy's like an erotic assassin" and "I happen to know she has a thing for longshoremen. Just mention On the Waterfront and she gets randy pants.") The video imagery quite frankly is pretty ugly, with the green carpet and purple drapes that decorate the set looking especially ungainly, yet Sayadian seems aware of this, as when he uses video's flattening effect to create a crude facsimile of a split diopter shot. The video collage style he adopts meshes uneasily with the plot, as if to call out its meaninglessness, giving the whole thing a slight MST3K vibe, especially as characters speak directly to the camera.

Some of these tendencies are honed to a more pleasing form in the two-part Party Doll A Go-Go!, where we spend time with a number of attractive, shapely women in bright coloured lingerie as they spout '60s-inspired dialogue at the viewer in between scenes of copulation. (Not all the dialogue is '60s-tinged, however: "They're overcome with retro wordplay...Us modern girls prefer synthetic future".) Like many pornographic films, this is a collection of loosely related sex scenes, but Sayadian's construction turns those genre requirements into parody, having his characters offer colour commentary (albeit channeled through his campy prose) on their own scenes and even getting interrupted by the stars of subsequent and preceding scenes. The number of quotable lines is even greater than those earlier films, and I admit I was scrambling to write down the choicest ones as there were so many. The best lines go to Jeanna Fine, who also has the huskiest voice and the most penetrating stare, so she was easily my favourite. I certainly was not unmoved when she insisted that she's "never run around buck naked and bubbling for man-winky" or "never wrapped[her] lips around a throbbing johnny". (She does not, however, deny having ever interacted with beef bologna.) Or when she asked the audience "Was I a bad girl?" (said three times in rapid succession) or if we've "ever seen a double orgasm on videotape?" (She adds "Watch, pornhound" and "Calling all porndogs, watch me work, uh-huh.") And I definitely wasn't unmoved when she demonstrated her talents on a dildo dangled in front of her (which she refers to as an "artificial man-thing", a "chubby rubber fella" and a "flying princeton"). No, definitely not unmoved.

There isn't much of plot here, except in the latter half when one of the girls can't stop "the wiggle" and needs to be rescued with an emergency injection of "boy jerky". Sayadian, once again bringing voyeuristic concerns into focus (the characters all talk to the camera), seems to be satirizing the very idea of porn having premises and certain their lazy execution. Even the production design is transparent in its chintz (the movie is shot entirely on the same set, with the bare minimum in alterations to the set dressing to make it look even slightly different), while the video images, which feature lots of Dutch angles, zooms and whip pans, match the campiness of the whole affair. This is probably a little long at a combined 2+ hours, but at the same time, it settles into a nice groove and is full of really attractive and reasonably charismatic actresses delivering amusing dialogue and indulging in "girl homo" (sometimes "big time girl homo") or getting "boy jerky". I don't have much interest in delving into '90s pornography and shot-on-video productions strain the dignity one can feel while trying to watch pornographic films as actual movies, but I'm not gonna pretend I didn't have a good time with this.

[mcfiddlestan]

I’m relatively new to marvel and I was wondering why you don’t like Hemsworth? I absolutely understand and agree with not liking Waititi (in terms of how he progressed the plot in Ragnarok and how he treated Loki and other characters)... but if there’s something either or both Hemsworth or Waititi did that made you/the fandom not like them, what is it?

Hi, Nonnie.

Ok, so strap in. Cuz this will probably get long.

First off, it’s not so much that I don’t like Hemsworth. It’s more I’m disappointed in his progression as an actor and celebrity in Hollywood. Frankly, when I first saw Thor no one in the cast really stuck with me except Kat Dennings bc I knew her already and loved her work. (Yeah I knew who Natalie Portman was but I’ve had issues with her since Star Wars — long story). It wasn’t until Avengers that I really caught on to the Hiddlesmania. In those days, 2012 and up through The Dark World, there was a very sweet, very genuine bromance going on between Hemzy and Hiddles. They really were “brothers from another mother.” They were adorable together. I remember in one press event with the entire cast Hemzy and Hiddles were making faces at each other across the table and when a reporter asked Hiddles who his fave Avenger was, before he could answer, Hemzy shouted, “Your brother!” There was a very beautiful connection between them. What happened to that? It’s anyone’s guess, but here’s what happened for me.

Leading up to the release of TDW, I might have found it weird that the, like, fourth-billed actor, and the previous film’s “villain,” was chosen to basically lead the global promotion. It was Hiddles, by his lonesome, in Mexico, Australia, China, etc. And he killed it. And it started pretty much with his appearance at Comic-Con that July. We ALL remember that. Why wasn’t Hemzy participating in any of this promo? Idk. I’m pretty sure he was filming Snow White & the Huntsman, or something. Still, it was interesting and telling that Marvel chose to utilize Hiddles’ very apparent popularity. Hell, they chose not to kill Loki because of his popularity.

So it would be about three years before Hemzy and Hiddles came back together again to film Ragnarok. And between that time, Hemzy filmed six movies and Hiddles filmed eight. During that time, also, Hiddles pulled a 180° on everybody and participated in what was the most ridiculous, career-destroying antic he could ever participate in. If you don’t know what I mean, just Google Tom and the Summer of 2016. It’s my opinion that that whole event had a damaging affect on not only Tom’s image in the industry, but I think it made his colleagues and friends question how well they really knew him. And I think it hindered his bankability for filmmakers. Basically it wasn’t a good move for him. The moment I first noticed a change in Hemzy’s behavior with Hiddles was at a Wizard World convention in the middle of the PR nightmare and the beginning of filming Ragnarok in 2016.

During their panel onstage, Hemzy seemed oddly quiet and tense even. He didn’t seem all that interested in being there or answering questions. And Hiddles was like an anxious puppy, overcompensating for Hemzy’s lackluster demeanor. I’m not the only one who’s noticed it, but no one can really pinpoint why. Was Hemzy upset that Tom was “dating” that chick? Was he upset at how obviously out of character it was? I’m guessing there was more to it because the filming of Ragnarok, and it’s result, speak volumes about what Hemzy was apparently feeling.

There are clips and interviews from the set of Raganarok and during promo with Waitidiot and Hemzy where they are very vocal about making sure Hemzy was the star of the movie “because it’s called Thor.” Waitidiot even referred to Loki as a goth orphan or something. Overall they were very critical of and condescending toward Tom and Loki. In the few interviews Hemzy and Hiddles did together, that old spark between them wasn’t there. There’s a lot about Ragnarok I don’t like. Hela was underused, Valkyrie was underused, Skurge deserved better. But, of course, what I hate most about it is the awful way they treat Loki through the whole thing. The way Thor became a bigger bully than he already was. The way he just wanted to wash his hands of Loki — which continued with the fucking Russo brothers who couldn’t put their stupid heads together long enough to realize Loki deserved to have his revenge on Thanos just like Nebula and even Wanda did. Loki deserved to be on that field fighting next to his brother, dammit.

Anyway….since Ragnarok promo i was kind of side-eyeing Hemzy. He literally behaved like a spoiled brat who found a friend who believed his bullshit (feeling overshadowed by Loki; which I think extended to feeling inferior in some way to Tom, a very gifted, educated actor compared to Hemzy who kind of fell into acting. There’s nothing wrong with where Hemzy started; but his choices in the last few years speak for themselves. 🤷🏽‍♀️) and they teamed up to bully the brainy guy. So then Infinity War promo came around and Hiddles was paired with Sebastian Stan and Letitia Wright and Paul Bettany, I think. I loved him with Sebastian (I ship WinterFrost), but it was weird that he wouldn’t be paired up at some point with Hemzy. But then Hemzy wasn’t doing any promo — wait what?? Yeah. Hemzy skipped out on Shanghai I believe. Then he said he couldn’t be at another place bc he got in an accident and injured his elbow ??? Then the next day he posted an IG live where he’s driving?? And his elbow is loosely wrapped in an ACE bandage??? That actually falls off during the video?? And then he was supposed to be somewhere for another promo, said he couldn’t make it, and was spotted camping off the coast of Australia with Matt Damon’s family??? It was all very suspish.

Speaking of Damon, don’t get me started on the bullshit scene in the last Jay & Silent Bob movie where he literally trashed Tom and his portrayal of Loki. Fuck off, Damon. Go suck Ben Affleck’s dick already.

Anyway. All the Ragnarok stuff and his behavior during IW promo and his seeming dismissal of Hiddles completely has just rubbed me the wrong way. Added to that, it just feels like Hemzy isn’t really in the business to hone his craft. It feels like he’s in it for the money. And yeah that’s a great benefit of acting in Hollywood. But he doesn’t seem to choose quality roles anymore. I liked him in Blackhat. I liked Rush. He was really good in Bad Times at the Royale, but it feels like all he wants to do now are formula action movies with no depth, no growth, where he just has to flex his muscles and give a charming smile. Which is fine but that gets tired after awhile (just ask Dolph Lundgren and Jean-Claude VanDamme). So right now, I want nothing to do with Love and Thunder — which is one of the stupidest movie names I’ve heard in awhile. And frankly I just don’t want to watch Hemzy not try to be his best. If I want mindless action with no real plot, I’ve got the Fast and Furious franchise. 🤷🏽‍♀️

Hope this answers your question, Nonnie. Thanks for asking. Let me know, if I can clarify anything for you.

xoxo, La

[komahinasecretexchange]

Title: Visions

Author: @nadisabug

For: @cellophanerose

Pairing: Hinata x Komaeda

Warnings: mild language, other than that none

Prompt: I used two of the three prompts: Hinata being ‘haunted’ by Komaeda, who is still in a coma post sdr2 (whether the hauntings are real or not is up to you) AND Komaeda tracing Hinata’s “Kamukura project” scars when Hinata is overwhelmed with self-identity issues

Author’s notes: I really enjoyed writing this, I hope you like it! I will also be posting this to my AO3 so look out for that link later!

“Hinata-kun.” Gorgeous green eyes smiled at Hajime, arms open wide in an invatation that made Hajime’s heart ache.

Hajime was tired. That had to be it. He had just been relieved from duty by Fuyuhiko from watching over the program because he “was no use to anyone sleep deprived.”

It was a twenty hour shift he had just taken, marked only by the fact that Fuyuhiko worked four hours each day at the same time like clockwork. Everyone gave into the structure Fuyuhiko demanded, knowing that it was more for his wellbeing than anything. Nevermind, Kazuichi, Owari, and Fuyuhiko each watched over the simulation for four hours in rotating shifts, the last eight hours of the day designated as Hajime’s watch. Hajime usually did not abide by the rules, staying past his shift, and only Fuyuhiko had enough strength and little sympathy to tear Hajime from the monitors.

They knew once their peers began to wake up from the simulation - if they would wake up, Kazuchi was always wont to mention - their shifts would become shorter and shorter. However, they all knew Hajime’s would get longer and longer until he woke up. Hajime was obsessed with waking them up, using all of his talents and skills to manipulate the system into releasing them. He worked with the AI he met inside the simulation, Alter Ego, unlocking firewalls that barricaded them from previously accessing certain areas. He knew that they were so close. So close to waking them up. To waking him up.

So Hajime wasn’t sure if it was because he hadn’t slept in the past twenty-eight hours, or if it was because he was actually going crazy, but Komaeda was standing in front of him.

Crazy as it may seem, this was not a rare occurrence by any means. He had been seeing Komaeda everywhere, his eyes chasing his silhouette in peripherals, a flash of cream coloured hair when he opened his eyes in the morning, honeyed greens smirking at him in reflections.

But this, this was the first time the apparition had spoken.

Maybe Fuyuhiko is right, I am overworking myself, Hajime thought to himself. He squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head quickly, then opened them back up, expecting his vision to be gone.

But it wasn’t.

Komaeda was still standing there.

Arms open.

Hajime couldn’t help but imagine himself running into them. He had much clarity since he woke up from the simulation. He had regained his memories, and with that, clarity on his feelings, on how he always felt, about Komaeda. The moments they shared in the simulation were some of his most treasured memories now, seeing as they did not interact much before the simulation. He knew that Nevermind still clung to her… what was it called, boat? No, a ship. Her “ship” of Hajime and Chiaki, but everyone else was aware of how Hajime felt. It was hard not to - Hajime was on his last thread of sanity, so keeping his mouth shut was hard. Not like he cared either. They could know or not for all he cared. He just knew that they knew and they knew that he knew they knew and no one really spoke about it. Well, except for Kazuichi’s occasional lighthearted jabs. They never quite landed right though.

But, despite the fact that everything was so peaceful and no one cared about anything here, Hajime felt himself growing angry. He had been working his ass off all day and all night to bring everyone back, to bring him back, and he had the gall to show his stupid sexy face all smiling and offering something that Hajime wanted so fucking bad but knew he could never have. It was just so…. so… infuriatingly Komaeda.

So he did what an overworked, stressed, tired, angry, and quite frankly horny person would do.

He briskly walked past Komaeda, flipping him off on his way.

After the initial acknowledgement, Komaeda became more talkative. He would chatter while Hajime worked, while he ate, while he pretended to sleep. Komaeda would just follow Hajime around, talking to him, and Hajime would ignore him. He figured out that only he could see him - not that it had been confirmed or denied at this point - and as a result wrote it off as a hallucination from being over worked. Playing into it would only make it worse, he reasoned.

���You should take a nap,” Komaeda murmured, reaching out to stroke Hajime’s hair. Hajime didn’t so much as flinch at the action. He knew Komaeda wouldn’t touch him. He hadn’t yet. And Hajime couldn’t let him know that he wanted it. Even if it was fake Komaeda. At least it would be good practice for when real Komaeda woke up, pretending not to crave his touch. If he woke up. “Or just rest even a little. Just because no one has woken up yet means you are a failure.”

Hajime continued to type on the keyboard.

“Such… such hope…” Ah, here he went again. “You could have left them. You could have left us all but you haven’t. There is nothing saying that we will wake up. Honestly, everything is pointing towards us not waking up. And yet still you persist, you push on, you have such hope that we will wake up. Quiet foolishly actually. Idiotic really. Sacrificing everything for just your bizarre hope that something-”

Hajime was glad Komaeda abruptly stopped talking. He wasn’t sure he would be able to keep up his regimen of ignoring him if he hadn’t stopped speaking. However, he was concerned about why Komaeda stopped talking. He looked over at Komaeda and saw his eyes fixated on a single monitor, his mouth slightly ajar. Hajime stared at Komaeda a second longer than necessary before turning to the monitor he was observing. The displays for the still eleven occupied pods held a steady green light-active. Well, all except for one. Pod four was blinking orange. Deactivating.

Hajime ran to the pod room as fast as he could, completely forgetting on his way to notify the others.

He ended up not having to tell the others, as they ended up walking into the cafeteria where he was catching up the Ultimate Imposter to their situation. They were not happy they were left out of the beginning of the celebration, but they seemed to understand because of Hajime’s mental state at the moment.

During the celebration, Komaeda made only a short appearance. He strolled up to Hajime while he was alone at one point, leaning up against a wall next to him. Hajime gave him a smug look, then turned to the Ultimate Imposter. I told you so. I fucking told you so.

Komaeda just laughed. “Your hope was always stronger than any reality.”

Hajime wasn’t sure what it meant, but it made him feel warm for some reason. It wasn’t a normal compliment, not by any means, but it was a compliment by Komaeda’s standards. And for some ungodly reason, that was enough for Hajime. The vague but positive comments on Hajime’s hope still made Hajime feel happy, just as if Komaeda were telling him his hair looked nice, or his face was attractive or something.

…Maybe it was Hajime’s inexperience in dating. That definitely had to play a part, but it still took a certain kind of person to actually listen to Komaeda’s comments and hear them for what they actually are.

You were always strong. Stronger than anyone and anything.

That’s what he really meant. And it made Hajime feel good, even if it was just Hajime’s delirious hallucination of Komaeda.

And with the awakening of the first classmate, everyone else’s hope began to burn brighter. While they had been skipping out early on shifts before the Ultimate Imposter woke up, now they stayed late and even doubled up. They did make comments every once in a while that because they were six now Hajime could take four hour shifts as well, but those comments flew in one ear and out the other. As more peers began to wake up, Hajime began to work more and rest less. The World Destroyer Program he created was working, it was waking up classmates, but it still wasn’t waking up him. It wasn’t working enough. With each passing day he worried that somehow Komaeda was different, that maybe he wouldn’t wake up like the rest. And with each passing day, his theory only seemed stronger. Koizumi woke up, and Hiyoko, and Nidai, Teruteru, Pekoyama- and the rest. Next thing Hajime knew everyone except Komaeda was awake.

It stayed that way for a few days, which was not too abnormal. After the Ultimate Imposter woke up, it took a week for Teruteru to wake up. Yet, every single day that Hajime was awake and Komaeda wasn’t was one too many for Hajime. It was pain. Not to mention that when he did sleep he had terrible nightmares of the simulation. Visions of Chiaki being crushed all over again. Scenarios of Junko surviving despite all that everyone had done to prevent it. Images of Komaeda dead, blood everywhere. In every one, Hajime was just helpless. Useless.

Though those were the best dreams compared to the other nightmares Hajime suffered from. The ones about… the project. The worst part about leaving the simulation was regaining his memories of what happened at Hope’s Peak. And what happened when Kamakura was in control.

It was during one of these dreams when Hajime woke up screaming. He shot up in his bed, clutching at the sheets that were soaked with his sweat.

“What’s wrong?” A worried Komaeda fluttered to Hajime’s side. But he did not soothe Hajime.

Anger boiled in Hajime’s veins. Anger at Hope’s Peak. Anger at the ones who created the simulation. Anger at the people who created the Kamakura project.

Anger at himself.

So much anger towards him and only him. None of this ever would have happened. The biggest, most awful, most tragic event in human history would have never happened. Nothing would have happened if Hajime just wasn’t so weak. So unhappy with his pathetic, talentless self. Kamakura wouldn’t have taken those lives. Junko would have never gotten the firepower Kamakura provided. The uprising would have never happened. Nothing would have happened.

It was all his fault.

He let out a strangled scream and stood up, kicking the sheets off of him, and stormed to his bedside table. Then, in one fell swoop, he threw the bedside lamp onto the floor. It shattered into a million satisfying pieces, the lightbulb letting out a little pop. He stared at the broken mess for a second. Then, suddenly and all together, all the rage that he had been seething drained from his body. He felt like an empty shell. A ghost.

He collapsed back onto the bed, elbows on his knees, back in a tired hunch. His scars hurt. He hurt.

He felt the bed shift next to him.

Hajime cleared his voice, hoarse from screaming, and spoke. “I hate how weak I was. How weak I am still-”

“Bullshit.”

Hajime looked to Komaeda. His eyes were hard and his face stern.

“I didn’t know you were that deluded to be honest. To think that Hajime Hinata is weak- hah! You are anything but weak. At the last trial, you were given two choices. What did you pick? Neither. You made your own choice. When you woke up from the simulation, Makoto told you to leave, Byakuya told you to leave, Kirigiri told you to leave. Did you leave? No. You stayed and created a program to wake us up. You are strong Hinata, you just don’t believe you are."

"But the mistakes I made-”

“Everyone makes mistakes! And I know everyone says that but its true. We are imperfect creatures. We speed, we cheat, we lie - everyone does wrong in their life. Just because you think your wrong that you did is the worst possible one out there doesn’t mean that you should hate yourself for it. Someone else has probably made the same mistake before. Its how life works. We make mistakes. We stumble. We fall. And when we do, we don’t hate ourselves for it, we push through and become better. Because we have hope for an even better future. We have hope for a future that is perfect because it is imperfect.”

“I don’t want to have hope for a better future, I want my life to be better. I want to not have made these mistakes. I want to not hate myself.”

“Well, no one can take back what has been done,” Komaeda reached out and stroked the scars on Hajime’s head. “We can only make the best of it.”

Hajime leaned into the touch, forgetting for a moment that this was a hallucination.

“How can I do that when I don’t even know who I am? I am not Hajime Hinata, and I am not Kamakura. I am some sort of freak in-between and I hate it.”

“Does it matter who you are?” Hajime didn’t know how to respond. But he did know what he wanted Komaeda to say. I still love you, either way, whoever you may be.

“And just for the record, I don’t hate you, whoever you may be.”

Hajime smiled. That was enough for him, for now.

“Thank you, Komaeda,” he murmured. And he meant it.

“Even the strongest have their moments,” Komaeda agreed. “And you are strong,” Komaeda asserted.

Hajime smiled and turned to face Komaeda. In the dim lights his eyes shone like beacons of hope, of acceptance, of… love. Before Hajime could even think he was leaning toward Komaeda his eyes closing his heart beating his mind swirling his-

“Hinata-kun!” Fuyuhiko burst into the room snapping Hajime out of his trance. He was still sitting on his bed, leaning towards an empty space.

“What?” Hajime responded to Fuyuhiko’s curious gaze. “I couldn’t sleep. Now what is it?”

Fuyuhiko seemed to shake his confusion off. “Get dressed. You’re gonna wanna see this for yourself.”

Hope burst in Hajime’s chest. He couldn’t wait to know. “Is he…?”

Fuyuhiko nodded.

Hajime never got dressed faster in his life.

When Hajime made it to the pod room, he was breathless. He ran up to Komaeda’s now-open pod and leaned towards it. Komaeda was still asleep, eyes firmly closed, which allowed Hajime a moment to catch his breath. About once he did, he saw Komaeda’s eyes begin to flutter.

“Hey! Can you hear me?” Hajime called out to his peer.

It took a moment, but then Komaeda responded. “Ahh… Izuru Kamakura?” Komaeda held out his hand towards Hajime. “No, you’re, uh, Hajime Hinata, right?”

Fueled by his earlier revelation, Hajime responded confidently. “They’re both me.”

“I suppose I should thank you for waking me up? I knew you’d make it to the lowest stratum- I believed in you." Komaeda lifted his head, seeming to remember something. "How are the others?”

Hajime just smiled as the door behind him opened, revealing the rest of their peers waiting outside the pod room. “You’re the last one out.”

Komaeda smiled. Then, he looked pointedly into Hajime’s eyes, a small smirk present on his face. “You’re hope was always stronger than any reality.”

[aenariasbookshelf]

The untitled EndGame Fix-it Fic

So, as people have expressed interest in the EndGame fix-it story, here’s the first chapter of it.  I know that this story probably won’t be for everyone, especially if you liked the way EndGame played out, but it was downright cathartic for me to write it.  This first chapter does have a couple of hard conversations in there, but nothing worse than what we saw in the movie.  I think what I’m trying to do was hit some similar notes to EndGame, but in a way that felt more genuine and true to the characters in the way that I experience them.

(And yes, as the writer I can totally recycle a few concepts from other stories I’ve written, so there. ;)

Many thanks to everyone who’s taken a look at this story so far.  I love all of you. <3

Okay, here we go.  No title yet, but I have an idea...

Part One

The idea, time travel, to get the stones and bring them to the future, is set.  It’s a good plan, Steve says, out loud at least, because hope is in short supply these days.

It’s their only plan, he says to himself at night, tossing and turning in bed and wondering what the hell they were thinking with this cockamamie idea.  It’s not that he doesn’t trust Scott, he absolutely does, but time and dimensional travel?  At least when they traveled across the galaxy to kill Thanos, that was in a linear fashion.  Still, there’s that one little niggling doubt in his head, that he just can’t shake off.

That little lingering doubt is what causes him to sneak into Natasha’s office late at night, and use the heavy, long-range equipment in there to flag down Carol Danvers.  She may not be experienced with time travel (hell, none of them are - who could be an expert in time travel if they’ve only just managed to come up with it?), but her interstellar perspective on things may help him see through a different lens.

“And that’s where we stand.”

Steve spreads his hands out across the desk expansively as Carol’s holographic image looks on, mouth pursed and arms crossed.  “It’s...the plan that we’ve got.  It’s the only plan everyone can agree on.”

Carol nods, and Steve can tell her mind is working at top speeds.  Faster than his, at least, which isn’t hard to do at this time of night after days of not sleeping well.  “Can I ask the tough question?”

“Please.”

“You have a time machine, and you will have all the Infinity Stones.  Why not just turn the clock back and kick Thanos’ ass in 2018, with all the new knowledge you’ve gained?”

The billion dollar question, indeed.

Steve heaves a sigh, sitting back in the chair as he nearly chews a hole through the inside of his cheek.  “We don’t trade lives.  I’ve said it more times than I can think.  One singular life is just as worthwhile as everyone else’s.  The world didn’t stop spinning these last five years.  People are still growing up, getting married, having babies...having lives.  Who are we to take that away from them?”

Carol’s shrewd, however, and can see right through the fancy, inspirational speech that people would expect Cap to make to lead the masses.  “Yeah, how old is she?”

“Hmm?”

“Tony’s daughter.  How old is she?”

Steve just nods, looking down at the desktop.  “Four.”

“And, suddenly, so many things become clear.  He refused to help unless his daughter was safe, didn’t he?”

A set of arched eyebrows is the only answer Steve can give.

“I get wanting to protect her.  I do,” Carol says, eyes distant even through the shimmer of the holographic interface, and whatever she’s thinking of, Steve can see the pain on her face.  “But if I was her parent I wouldn’t want to let her grow up in a world that seems like it came from one of Stephen King’s worst nightmares.”  She snaps her gaze back to Steve’s.  “So basically, if there’s an alternate plan, we can’t expect Tony to be involved.”

“That’s probably a safe assumption.”  Keeping secrets has already done so much damage in their relationship, what’s one more to add on top of it?  But when the universe is at stake?

“Still, if you know her birthday, do the math.  There’s every chance that kid was conceived before the Snap and, if so, she’ll get to grow up in an even better world than the one she’s in now, with parents who are a lot less broken because of it.”  Her hologram looks steadfast and strong, a lot stronger than Steve feels at that moment.  “I’m going to do some research on what the Stones can do, in the meantime.  Power’s great, but only if you know how to use it properly.”

Steve nods.  What else can he do at this point?  Instead of clarity, all he has are more questions that neither one of them will be able to answer easily.  “I’ll let you know how our time travel adventures go.”

Carol nods, and her hologram blinks out of existence, leaving a fading trail of faint blue sparkles behind.  Steve slumps back in the desk chair, scrubbing his hands hard over his face, because fuck if he knows what he’s going to do now.

**********

Natasha and Clint take off for Vormir.

Only Clint returns, and it feels like the heart and soul of the team is shredded in an instant.

**********

Carol’s not the type of person to let just anyone see her cry, and yet her eyes go glassy and watery when Steve tells her about what happened on Vormir.  “Oh, god,” she all but whimpers.

He stands behind the desk, where Nat should have been sitting, fists clenched, trying not to give into the rage and sadness that he knows is brewing inside of him.  “Did you find anything?”

Carol sniffles, inhaling sharply and refocusing herself.  “Nothing good.  Long story short, from a cosmic perspective, the universe is beyond off balance.  Right down to the molecular level, and from a more metaphysical angle, at a magical level also.  The universe shouldn’t exist in this current state.  It can’t, frankly.”

“You spoke to the Living Tribunal, then?” a new voice breaks in, low and haggard and yet strong enough to resonate around the office.  Standing in the doorway is Thor, looking about as worn down as Steve feels right then, ragged and tired, like he’s only being held together by the merest of threads.

“And what’s the Living Tribunal when it’s at home?” Steve asks, because now they’re going well past his wheelhouse into the goddamn Marianas Trench, and the last thing he wants to do is drown in it.

“The judge, jury, and executioner of universal balance.”  Thor shuffles over to one of the chairs nearby the holographic image generators and kicks back, slumping down.  “What did he say to you?”

“That this universe, as it exists now, post decimation?” she shakes her head, “is unsustainable.  The balance has been wrecked so badly by what Thanos has done that within a generation, maybe two at the most, everything in existence is going to be reduced to space dust.  Something to be absorbed and dispersed around the universe that will come after this one.”

“Unless we turn it back?”

“Unless we turn it back,” Carol echoes, nodding.  “The Tribunal’s in agreement, to the point where it’s saying that some futures, meaning this one, shouldn’t exist.”

“The Tribunal is known for being a bit cryptic, at times,” Thor says, his head turning to look directly at Steve.  “The only times it gets truly clear, is when the sentence is handed down.”

Carol points a finger directly at Thor.  “That’s an understatement, in my experience.  The fact that the Tribunal pointed me in the direction of obtaining a little extra power to defeat Thanos back in 2018 as needed is telling enough.  I get the feeling that the Tribunal, and the powers - whatever they are - above it aren’t exactly thrilled with the idea of starting a new universe just now either.  It’s not the right time.”

Thor finds Steve’s gaze yet again, and there’s something dark and dangerous brewing behind his eyes, something that Steve knows is echoed in his own.  “So, instead of buying Morgan a lifetime, he gives her twenty years?  Maybe fifty, at the outside?”

“Not just Morgan,” Carol says quietly.  “The entirety of the universe.  The countless species and planets and galaxies in that space beyond measure.  Fifty years.  And that’s if humanity doesn’t hasten their own end, as they’ve been known to do.”

As painful as it is to think, it’s the moment of clarity, of certainty, that Steve’s been needing.  “We have to turn it back,” Steve breaths out, the words falling from his lips with unimaginable gravity.  “We use the Stones, go back to the battle in Wakanda, and take Thanos out there.”  He turns his eyes to Carol.  “The Stones together can do just about anything, yeah?”

“Correct.”

He nods, trying to collect his thoughts together.  He needs to be sure that he phrases this just right, because if there’s only one chance to say it they all need to be sure they’re working with the same ideas.  “So if we do turn back the clock to that moment, there won’t be two versions of us around, just the one version that existed at the time.  Yeah?”

She nods.

“Okay.  We get the stones, and we turn the clock back to that exact moment.  It’s a small time frame, even more so with you being out in the galaxy, but we can make it work.”  He bites the inside of his cheek, hard enough to cut through the skin and leave the lingering metallic taste of blood in his mouth.  “One more thing.  When we turn the clock back to that exact moment, we need to make it that only the three of us remember this future, so we can ensure we do what we need to in the past.  This is our plan, our mission.  We need to see it through.”

It’ll also be a bit of a kindness, Steve supposes.  It’s hard to mourn what you’ve lost, if you don’t know you’ve lost it.  It feels uncomfortably like playing God, deciding if people will or won’t live with the memories, but it’s the choice that will spare people, including those closest to them, the most pain.  And will give them a chance for a real future, not just some farcical pretense of one.

“Can you live with that option?” Carol asks, solemnly.

Steve’s stomach roils and the blood on his tongue just seems to get even sharper, leaving him feeling like he’s about to sign the warrant for his own execution.  “What other choice do we have?” is all that he says in return.

“It’s a rare thing, to get a second chance,” Thor says.  His voice is quiet and low, yet it cuts through the night like a strident call, a rallying cry that they’ve been desperately needing.  “Who are we to waste that opportunity?”

[aijee]

is this a life update or a novel?

Hi all, long time no post! Nice to meet you new followers, and nice to talk to you again for those who’ve stuck around. Just as a reminder, my blog is as much of a fic blog as it is a journal for me to sort my thoughts.

In that vein, here’s a personal update. CW for mental health/anxiety, physical pain, big life changes. There’s lighter stuff at the end!

It’s been both a long and short summer for me, after deciding to quit work and focus on my mental health. I’m a millennial twenty-something whose mind, like many, is tragically crippled with the capitalistic and individualistic values America has brainwashed me with, so I’ve had a hard time coming to terms with being unemployed and depending on my parents. I’m extremely privileged and humbled to be in a family that still maintains income during unprecedented times. I’ve been trying not to let my internalized struggles turn into this self-imposed shame for partaking in pleasures (I remember second-thinking buying a digital comic book for hours). My parents often say, “We worked hard and struggled because we didn’t want our kids to do the same. Don’t feel guilty for enjoying yourself.” Nowadays, they add that I’ve worked hard during college and my post-college job; in their eyes, I’ve more than “earned” a break, especially after losing my graduation, summers, and trips.

I constantly wonder why I impose so many limitations of myself even more during a pandemic. While being aware of global struggle is important for not becoming out-of-touch, I need to remind myself that people don’t have to earn the right to play or be happy or enjoyment. Obvious lack of nuance aside, it’s crazy to think how much capitalism—largely the idea worth is contingent (work) productivity—has deformed my sense of what’s a basic human right versus what should be earned. I think I’ve mentioned in a previous post that I struggle with thinking in extremes; it’s either starvation or hedonism, and the latter earns far more societal vitriol. I think my Asian upbringing has made me hyperaware of what others could be thinking of me, regardless of how accurate those projections are. I’d fact, I rarely assumed positive opinions. Outside of external validation, I realized how poor my self-image really was. Tearing myself down before anyone else could rarely, if ever, softened the blow.

For the first time, I’ve begun to think that my life is my own and no one else’s. It sounds logical on paper, but so much harder in practice in real life, I’ve realized. This isn’t a constant or ingrained thought yet, often peaking in between longer and more familiar strings of anxiety. But it feels like an important realization during a time full of sadness and uncertainty, let alone in my lifetime at all.

And then I injured my spine.

It happened towards the end of the summer, when I was starting to feel more put-together internally. I felt so creatively productive (in avenues I don’t care to share online) and even closer to family. I had a ball revisiting old shows. I ate food I hadn’t eaten in years. And this was suddenly interrupted when, while showering, I was wracked with unimaginable, nonstop pain. I nearly passed out alone in the shower and barely managed to crawl to my bedside to call my parents; I was lucky they came home early. I couldn’t stop crying for almost twelve hours. I was terrified at the possibility that I may be paralyzed or my legs would be affected. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case, but I was bedridden and wracked with nausea. I could barely stomach anything, not even water. I couldn’t sleep. I was never brought to a hospital, either on the fear of COVID transmission. The whole time, it was so, so debilitating on a physical and mental front. My head was a nightmare.

Like a bad habit, some of my worst thoughts centered around productivity. I worried about the work I couldn’t do. I felt shameful about canceling plans with friends. I hated being helpless and not being able to take care of myself, and felt guilty for wasting other people’s time taking care of me. And yet, if I was someone else, even a stranger let alone a friend/loved one, I’d be scratching my head over why that person would think these things. Fuck work and other life plans, getting better is the most important thing because you can’t do any of those compromised activities if you’re not at capacity! Duh. Anxiety can really a number on you sometimes and it’s awful just how irrationality fuels the spiral.

I’m grateful to be back on my feet. I’m trying to hold on tightly to that victory, to this positive point that I have worked towards. It’s going to be a challenge to do my recovery exercises daily for my 2-3 month recovery period when I barely remember to floss. Moreover, I’ll be in the middle of moving and working full-time again in the next month, alongside the ridiculous anxiety over some applications and maybe interviews for a different part of my life. But I’m doing my best to take each day at a time and celebrate the good things when they come, however small. I don’t have to ace a final exam or burn my retinas studying for them to deserve victories because, hey, again, happiness is a right and I need to stop gatekeeping myself from it.

Frankly, the injury is largely why I haven’t posted sooner. I don’t think anyone should ever feel obligated to use social media when they aren't up to it. But I actually wanted to ease back into writing before I was injured, starting with this blog.

Some other positive things:

God, I missed the Avatar (Aang and Korra) series so much. What a damn good franchise, what a damn good magic system and world. IT’S. SO. GOOD, GOD. Revisiting it all and reading the comics while I was sick was the single biggest joy that kept me going. I hope the magic lingers for as long as possible.

Even in my inactivity, I’ve received some really lovely comments on my AO3. I read the emails primarily. It really warms my hear to see them. I revisited old comments recently, too, and they’ve helped keep me going and reminded me that I am capable of putting joy into the world.

I’ve taken a liking to Youtube playlist-videos and Spotify playlists that encompass a very specific story scenario, like “dancing with the villain in a masquerade ball” or “driving around the French countryside”, etc. Japanese 80′s urban pop is SO GOOD.

Smosh has been putting out such great content y’all. I was BIG on old Youtube (Nigahiga, Smosh, Michelle Phan, Jenna Marbles, etc.) and it warms my heart to see their renaissance. Amazingly entertaining and down-to-earth content. I don’t fall squarely into their demographic anymore, but the periphery is still fun.

Food is great. I love food still. I’ve eaten a lot of good food during this break. It almost pains me to go back to living by myself and eating healthier. :’(

I didn’t realize how expensive moving was. But, after living in the same apartment from sophomore uni to post-uni work, I’m moving into a bigger “adult” apartment with appropriately sized appliances instead of the mini student kind. The possibility of treating myself to a king-sized mattress and decorations is also very exciting.

It warms my heart to see people in my vague social circles indulging in home art projects, like paint by numbers and “diamond” painting. As a kid I thought “not real art” was a waste, but by god as an adult do I not give a shit about what “real art” is anymore. If it’s fun, it’s fun. That’s that!

That’s all I can think about for now.

[haus-of-wu]

Super Junior - “One More Chance” MV Rewatch

I was streaming a queue of different SJ MVs in the background (come on, let’s get No Other to 100M), and switched back to the tab in the middle of Yesung’s bridge during One More Chance.

I watched starting from

and was suddenly hit by the SuJu Feels™. legit was tearing up for what i thought was no reason (bc i’ve seen this MV a bunch of times as it is), but i’m really proud of how far they’ve come as a team. donghae had been iterating on this absolute gem of a song all throughout his military service, and we ELF are just so fortunate to be able to be on this journey with them.

So then naturally my next thought was to make a re-reaction/analysis post about it. This MV is objectively really pretty (the colors, the sets, the scenery), but I also feel like there’s a good amt of intentional symbolism and design in it that helps them tell the story of a breakup their journey together as a group (which as a result makes me cry).

(On another note, I’m still miffed that we didn’t get an emotional ballad in Timeslip/line/less.)

The usage of color is literally so pretty in this MV - and it’s obvious right from this opening shot of donghae in the turquoise bedroom with the golden yellow and light green accents

The sets for this MV were just so good at portraying the various feelings one might have after a breakup.

Donghae’s set has a very cool color scheme, giving it an almost numb feeling. The icy hollow feeling. You’re running on autopilot. He walks through it with his eyes cast to the floor, as though he doesn’t know how to think or feel about the end of the relationship.

Leeteuk’s set is quite frankly a beautiful sad mess. The dark purple lighting, the sparking lights (he’s broken), the incoming roll of (sadness) fog. He’s distraught, looking around at all the memories he made with someone who will no longer be with him.

Yesung’s set very much gave me the impression of “trying to hold it all together and act like it’s all okay when it’s definitely not okay”. The set-ception happening here is probably an indication of how the days all blur together and seem meaningless without the other person. The picture frames are empty because nothing after the breakup feels particularly special.

Siwon’s set is pretty clear cut: it’s that nightmare scene where you’re trying to catch up to someone but you never can. They’re gone to you, and you can’t do anything about it.

The cameras flashing around him are maybe a jab at how being famous and constantly being under the scrutiny of the media means that they have to let go of things (romance).

(I can’t unsee the “bbq pig coming out of the oven” image that shindong himself has painted in my head)

Shindong’s set is pretty dim, with the only strong light coming in from the windows. Some people just shut down and retreat when they’re hurt, and this scene seems to embody that. Maybe the light from the window represents a friend trying to help get you out of your funk, but you’re not ready to move on yet, so you decline. (Or in Shindong’s case, you look at the light to acknowledge it, and continue walking by.)

Heechul’s reused Donghae’s set, but the lighting is dimmer, and there’s TVs and video cassettes littered about. You obsess over what you were. You replay the good, the bad, and the ugly, over and over in your head.

Throughout the MV, Heechul’s set actually blinks between brightly and dimly lit - you’re happy when you’re distracted (note that the TV on the left is off), and then you’re not okay.

Eunhyuk is very much walking through a fire sprinkler system indoors. It’s meant to give you the same feeling of “it’s raining, the sky’s crying bc you’re sad”, but there’s a little more to it.

There’s a huge ray of sunshine outside, and the “rain” is indoors. You’re allowed to be sad, but understand that staying sad is your decision. It has to rain (and you have to cry) before the sky will clear again (and you can begin anew).

Alternatively, maybe you have to burn your bridges to move on. Maybe that person wasn’t actually good for you and you shouldn’t cling to what you had.

But let’s talk about the DOORS. Each door represents a new day. You keep walking because you have to. You keep living without that someone because that’s the way life goes.

Eventually, you walk through enough doors (or maybe you find it in yourself to sprint for the last chunk) and find yourself back outside (contentment), free and unburdened.

god the MV is so fucking pretty but also the design is so intentional and i LOVE it

[qqueenofhades]

Just read your post on explaining end-stage capitalism, and "Nobody wants to be the actual generation that lives through the fall of capitalism, because it’s going to be cataclysmic on every level," - do you have thoughts on how much longer its going to be until this happens? I'm mostly just curious if our generation is going to be the one it hits

...aha. A cheery question (if a totally understandable one). 

To be honest, I would say the odds are....good. People have noticed some rather pointed similarities between the first few decades of the twenty-first century, and the first few decades of the twentieth century. Fascism on the rise, surrealist art, a focus on personal pleasure, Europe in turmoil, an ongoing war (the War on Terror in our case), etc etc. It goes without saying that something major in the economics department happened in 1929, and the country only recovered because of World War II and the need to stimulate wartime production. In the meantime, the Great Depression wiped out the savings and net worth of most of the country, and while the iconic images are the Dust Bowl of the Midwest and the popular myth of stockbrokers jumping out of windows on Wall Street, it was a serious and worldwide event that, as noted, only ended because of an even worse calamity. That is...not something to aspire to.

2029 would be just under ten years from now, though we hope history isn’t THAT on the nose (also, we fucking never learn. Anything. Ever.) That matches rather well with the outer limit of the time we have to save the planet from runaway climate change, and frankly, it all depends. If Trump gets re-elected in 2020, I... honestly think we’re fucked. We’re already fucked as it is now, but I just don’t see a way in which the present system could cope with another five years of this (shudders, throws salt over shoulder, spins in a circle). We’re already well down the Nazi checklist as it is. The prospect of allowing that to go on for another half a decade is.... let’s just say I don’t think there’d be much of anything recognizable as America at the end. Not that there’s much now.

I also think that as is always the case, middle-class and marginally middle class people (especially white ones) will probably miss out on the worst of it. It’s already the case that climate change and global poverty and this kind of thing most affects the people who are safely “out of sight, out of mind” for the complacent West. After all, WE aren’t the Bangladeshis getting flooded because of climate change, WE aren’t the kids in Chinese factories forced to spend 18 hours a day, 7 days a week making iPhones, WE aren’t the immigrants from Central American countries getting caged at the border and being thrown into concentration camps, so on and so forth. These things are already happening, but American/European/etc people with a certain amount of privilege are still able to remain insulated from that. If there was to be a comprehensive collapse, then even people who have been able to minimise the effects on themselves until now would be caught up in it. The world has changed to such a degree that if there was another Great Depression, it wouldn’t happen in the same way, but we already saw what the financial crash of 2008 did (and it in fact came very close to wrecking the global economy permanently). Plus, think of how much of our possessions/money/etc are now virtual. Most of us don’t get a physical paycheck anymore (it’s all direct deposit) and rarely carry cash. Our savings are just some numbers in a database in a bank’s computer system. There’s no such thing as privacy, corporations own all our data and personal information, and you can’t opt out of this system or boycott Amazon because they literally own too much of the infrastructure to make that realistically possible. It would basically take one good crash of the internet to leave a lot of people destitute, and our current civilization is a very fragile thing.

I.... really don’t know. I’m not sure I have anything necessarily optimistic to say, and that’s a struggle. You have to live in a state of hopeful nihilism, because if you focus on the big picture and how chaotic and nightmarish things are on the macro level, you’ll go crazy. You can’t control that, you will give yourself anxiety over it, and you will miss out on what you can do on a day-to-day level. As one person, you can’t fix this by yourself. But you can still make choices about what you do and how you interact with people and what you value and how you behave even in this comprehensively flawed system. We don’t know if we’re all going to die, it’s true. But nobody in the history of time has ever known that, and the human race has gotten through some pretty tough scrapes before. We don’t know. We really don’t. And despite /waves hand/ ALL THIS, we’re... still here, for now. Many of us have things that make us happy. And those mean something. It’s not all chaos and nightmare. As Samwise Gamgee would say, there’s good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.

In short: yes, the world is very probably fucked, and I can’t rule out the possibility that a major collapse affecting even the privileged groups/people who have the luxury of avoiding the worst of it happens in our lifetime, or even within another ten years. I worry constantly about not having enough time to have a real life, as I think a lot of people of my generation do. But I have also had that stare-into-the-abyss-and-decide-what-I’m-going-to-do-about-it many times, and I don’t think it’s worth just giving up and deciding that nothing matters and etc etc. I think it’s worth going on with your life in the day to day, small-thing moments. I think it’s worth having things you enjoy and things you dream about and those seemingly wildly impossible dreams about what you’ll do when you’re old and the idea that any of us will in fact get to live a real life. There is still goodness, and kindness, and beauty in the world. Because we’re plugged into the constant bad-news-from-everywhere power hour in terms of the internet, we miss that.

Anyway. This has turned into a ramble, and it explains the weird state we live in of trying to be personally optimistic even when we know things are shit, and how hard that is, but is still the only thing we can do. And honestly: the future isn’t set. Our destruction is not inevitable. We’re in the darkest timeline now and we seem to have been in it for a while, but even that can end. Enough people just have to decide that we’re not putting up with it anymore, and act accordingly.

We are many. They are few. It’s always been the case. They have a lot more than we do, materially speaking, but it’s still possible. It always is.

So yes.

[questionablygourmet]

I Like This Show A Normal Amount: Will Graham As Autistic Representation

In a previous meta post about Will, I briefly alluded to my appreciation for Will as good autistic representation, and for Free-For-All Friday, @tin-can-paladin prompted me to do as I’d said I might and write a Thing about that.  (Hopefully today is the day I actually get this post finished and up!)  So here we go.

First of all, this post will be starting from the premise that Will is an autistic character.  I don’t particularly care if Hugh’s said he’s not; whether or not he meant to, he and Bryan gave us an autistic-coded character and I reserve the right to be delighted about it!  (Actually, that’s not quite true - I do care, in the sense that I wish he hadn’t said that, because acknowledging portrayals of characters on the spectrum that aren’t a walking fucking stereotype played for lulz *cough BBT COUGH* or as a tragedy inflicted upon their neurotypical family members as being on the spectrum is Important.  But whatever.)

This post will address aspects of Will as a character, but also to an extent how he’s handled in the wider context of the show, and why that matters.

Agency

This was my primary focus on that previous Will meta post, but in context of autistic representation, I think it’s an important thing to highlight in this post as well: Will Graham is a whole-ass adult in control of his actions even when other characters don’t think so (see: Alana, Jack, et al in late season 1) or are actively trying to subvert that (see: Hannibal, You Asshole).

Autistic characters in various media are all-too-frequently infantilized and handled as though their environment/circumstances completely dictate their behavior.  Will both implicitly and explicitly (“You can’t reduce me to a set of influences” - ironically for a later part of this post, the next thing he says mentions behaviorism), resoundingly rejects this, and I love that as part of his narrative in general but also as an autistic character in particular.  

Empathy

This one’s gonna be a doozy.  There’s a lot to talk about here that all generally falls under the heading of “autism and empathy,” so I’ll do my best to stay organized.

First, the simplest: He cares!  So!  Deeply!  And complexly!  And we know that throughout the show!

Frankly, this in particular massively exacerbates my irritated wish that the creators would explicitly acknowledge him as autistic because holy shit the stereotypes he combats with this.  Autistic people in the real world have widely varied, diverse relationships with empathy and compassion (which are different things, and I have some beefs with the way the show uses the word “empathy,” but that’s a digression and this is already going to be a long post), but media largely erases this, conflating difficulties with normative, neurotypical-passing social behavior with inability to empathize, and/or display compassion, and/or even feel emotions (FFS).  

There’s a related point about “normative-passing social behavior” that I want to expand on a bit, here: we see a lot of profound differences in demeanor for Will over the course of the show, and that’s something I’ve seen interpreted as manipulation sometimes when it really isn’t.  (Not to say Will is not manipulative/capable of being manipulative, because he is, very!  But not everything calculated is necessarily manipulative, and I see the two conflated a lot and that annoys me.)  Will has, to my eyes, four basic social “modes.”  

I’m Dealing With Most People With Whom I Have No Particular Antipathy Or Affection - Aloof, and either standoffish or polite depending on how his boundaries are being treated.  He’s not particularly interested in making people comfortable when they’re making him uncomfortable (and being a white dude generally enables him to take this attitude without big repercussions), and people frequently make him uncomfortable.

I’m Dealing With Someone I Perceive As Vulnerable - Exaggeratedly calm, kind, careful.  He’s trying to connect and provide comfort and support.  He’s minding his every move and word because he doesn’t want to cause harm incidentally.  (Abigail, Peter, Walter, etc. and to some extent, Margot, though with her it’s mixed with other attitudes.)

I’m Dealing With An Enemy - This is where the manipulativeness (and even, particularly in the cases of Bedelia and Hannibal, cruelty) comes in.  He’s minding his every move and word because he wants to elicit a specific response from the person he’s interacting with.  (This comes into play with Jack and Alana at various points even though they are rarely full enemies.)

I’m Dealing With A Trusted Friend - Has neither the deliberation of 2-3 nor quite the standoffishness of 1.  He’s neither projecting an image appropriate to a specific kind of fraught social situation, nor actively trying to deflect attention and interaction.  In my opinion we really only see this with Hannibal (in season 1 and then with flashes of it in 2 and 3) and Molly, though he gets close in a handful of moments with Alana, Beverly, and Jack.  

All these modes deal with a) to what extent he is acting, and b) why he’s acting.  And I love that we get to see this breadth of social interaction modes from him, because that is an accurate and sensitive portrayal of an autistic adult, reflecting the often-dramatic differences in “difficulty setting” of an interaction - how and to what extent are we expected to (or otherwise have a need to) mimic neurotypical mannerisms?  What are the stakes of the situation?  These are explicit considerations for a lot of autistic people, and Will demonstrates that vividly throughout the series.

Another way in which empathy and social interaction come into play in terms of autistic representation is that Will can and does form strong social bonds - not very often, because the way most other adults treat him isn’t conducive to it, but with people who display acceptance/a lack of judgment for his non-neurotypical reactions and behaviors, and importantly, who don’t treat him as Other for the way he can reconstruct crime scenes, we see that can form very strong bonds.  Hannibal is obviously the prime example of this, but also Molly, and to a much lesser extent, Alana and Margot.  (Though Jack refers to him as a friend and they have some friendly interactions, their bond is not a strong one and not at all marked by the kind of humanizing acceptance it takes to get truly close to Will.)  People who accept who he is, and who are neither threatened by his skills nor dependent on them.

Finally, in this section, let’s look at the crime scene reconstructions and “getting inside killers’ heads” bit.  

I have complex feelings about this aspect of the show, or more precisely, how other characters talk about his reconstructions and serial killer profiling - they (even Hannibal, to an extent) talk about it in mystifying terms, and I thoroughly dislike the term “empathy disorder” that gets thrown around so much in seasons 1-2 to explain what he does.  Will is apt to testily correct people that he just interprets the evidence, and that is exactly what he is doing.  His vivid imagination coupled with years of active study of criminal psychology allow him to take that interpretation a lot farther than anyone else would, and sometimes make intuitive leaps that the other characters can’t follow.  But it’s clear that this intuition is founded in concrete evidence, as we frequently see him stymied when he doesn’t quite have enough of it, much to the frustration of Jack, who is particularly shitty about treating him like an oracle.  

I like that Will gets to stick up for himself and correct people on several occasions, but I wish the ableism and the Othering was less pervasive amongst the other characters because it makes me want to slap them.  I find that I really appreciate how most of the fic I’ve read since entering the fandom thoroughly and often explicitly rejects the pseudo-magical divination and/or Crazy Person With Magic Brain angle.

Perspective

There was something I was reaching at that was eluding me in my first attempt at this draft, and then I ran into an excellent article about writing autistic characters that suddenly and thoroughly solidified it for me.  It’s really brilliant; it discusses and illustrates the strong difference between a behavioristic (see previous reference) approach to characterization and a humanizing one.  Behavioristic analyses divorce themselves from the actual mindset and experience of the subject, whereas humanizing portrayals display the subjective experience of the person who is perhaps behaving in a way other people may find confusing.  

Since Will is the main point of view character in the show, we get front-row seats to his subjective experience and can therefore more properly empathize with him.  An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.  The behavior that Jack and various other characters are exasperated, impatient, and/or unnerved over all looks pretty reasonable when we know how Will is experiencing the crime scene, or are seeing his nightmares and hallucinations along with him!  And while the nightmares and hallucinations in season 1 are a matter of encephalitis and trauma rather than neurotype, it still matters that we’re led to understand something of what he goes through, from his own perspective rather than an outside one.  

It’s incredibly necessary emotional context moving forward in the show, giving us an autistic character who is flawed but deeply human and whose darkness we can understand.

[theprodigypenguin]

yo dude so like what do you think regulus’ profession would be in a nobody dies and everybody’s happy au

I wrote out a whole answer but Tumblr wouldn’t let me post it so here we go again VERSION 2.0!

Okay, so I’m super glad you asked this because frankly I think about Regulus Black about 80 times a day and that’s like way too much, but I have a super thought out version of the Regulus Lives AU concept because it’s one of my favorite things ever. So lemme just try and write this whole fucking thing out AGAIN fuck you tumblr. We know so little about his character aside from the tiny pieces we learn between Sirius, Kreacher, and the tiny minuscule bit we learn from Slughorn, so be aware the majority of this is my personal opinion that I’ve come up with based on my own headcanons and you in NO WAY have to agree with me at all! This is just one headcanon, and if you have a different idea then you are SUPER FUCKING VALID OKAY?!?! I just wanted to make that clear. This is my opinion on Regulus and it is completely okay if you have a different one!

So in the beginning I think Regulus would want to go into Professional Quidditch after Hogwarts. I like to imagine that he was part of his House Team for a reason, that he was really, really fucking good at playing the Seeker position. AT first I think he must have joined his house team because maybe that’s what was expected of him, but when he first started flying he got the same rush of adrenaline we see in Harry, this burst of freedom and possibility and pure raw talent. When he got up in the air there was no Black family, there was no expectation or blood purity, no abusive negligent parents or a brother who hated him, there was just air and sky and him. In general I firmly maintain the belief that the Black family, while lunatics, were just born talented. They were good at pretty much everything they tried. Is it a family trait? Who fucking knows? Not me that’s for sure. The Black family were insane, that’s canon, but all of them were brutally talented. I mean, Walburga charmed her portrait onto the wall of her home and NO ONE can break it? Like, damn. So when Regulus gets on a broom, he’s a fucking natural, and it’s the ONE thing that makes him feel free, that makes him feel like he has a CHOICE in his life. Back when he was just a kid, he didn’t know any better: Sirius could become the head of the Black house and Regulus could go do whatever he wanted, and he wanted to be a Quidditch player. Going into the professional league would give him his own steady income, his own name and popularity, he’d be entirely financially independent and old enough to completely cut ties with his parents, just do what he LOVED.

But, fate had other plans. Sirius ran away at sixteen and suddenly Regulus was next in line as the Black heir, a title he never wanted in the first place. In addition to that, I really believe he was forced into taking the Dark Mark. I have this image in my head that Bellatrix, Rabastian, and Rodolphus held him in place while it was done while he struggled against them. He really had no choice. Then later on he defies Voldemort and drinks the Emerald Potion in order to swap the Horcruxes.

Now, we don’t really have any actual canon evidence of WHAT happens to the people who consume the Drink of Despair. We can’t exactly take Kreacher for a good example since he’s not a human, he’s a House Elf, his body is entirely different compared to a human’s because he’s basically another species. Both wizards who canonly drank the Drink of Despair died before we could see if there were any long lasting side effects, but personally I headcanon that seeing as it was a POISON that was created by one of the most powerful and dangerous dark wizards of all time? Yeah, there were some side effects.

Nothing huge, most notably having respiratory problems, easily getting dehydrated and not retaining water properly, common fatigue and exhaustion, probably migraines and a constant lingering sense of fear or terror. The brain chemistry is tweaked, insomnia, nightmares, etc. Because of this, Regulus can’t exactly go into the professional leagues. He physically cannot handle the strain, his health is too fragile now.

So after escaping the cave, being a Black, Regulus would be too stubborn to just lie down on this fact. He’d start to look immediately for a cure. There is none of course, because Voldemort created the Emerald Potion, it’s a completely unknown potion. So Regulus starts researching, potions and medicine and anything that might be able to cure him or at least alleviate the side effects of the poison. It’s already canon that Slughorn thought fondly of Regulus, so we may as well assume he was a decent student in Potions Class right? After a couple years of hard research (after Voldemort first “dies”), Regulus would make a name for himself as one of the best potioneers around, regularly compared to Slughorn and even Fleamont Potter (Sirius and James have absolutely no idea how to respond when people say this, should they be offended, should they be proud, wtf is that little shit doing making potions????). He’s fucking GOOD. He never manages to find a cure for whatever it is he has now (I’ll give it a cool name one of these days, like the Emerald Plague or something idfk), but he creates other potions and becomes a regularly sought after potioneer. Regulus normally always helps when people come to him because honestly he really likes helping people.

During those 14 years between Voldemort’s disappearance and reappearance I imagine Regulus goes out for coffee with Slughorn sometimes, Snape will send HIM letters asking for advice cuz Regulus is just that good, he’s probably the kind of guy who’d make Wolfsbane Potion for free (takes him some time to get rid of those prejudices, but he manages to shake them eventually).

In the end, after the second war ends with the Battle of Hogwarts, I headcanon that Regulus takes over Snape and Slughorn’s old job as the Potions Professor at Hogwarts. Dumbledore offered him the position in the past but he turned him down because Regulus does NOT fucking like him. He can’t say no to McGonogall though, after she takes over as Headmistress and offers the job to him. So he’s the Potion Master in my mind!

Sorry that was so long, as you can tell, I really love this little bitch, I hope you enjoyed my rant!

[ajoraverse]

I should probably post things I’ve been working on, so here: an excerpt from Rhapsody (teens and up, FF5, Faris and Alexander, Ghost Festival fic). It’s a follow-up to The Island and will have a cover illustration.

It's for Lenna, and for her own soul, that she's here to summon the dead. Faris needs advice that she refuses to go to anyone else for; if she has to get her hands dirty, she'd rather no one know about it so as to better shield Lenna from any backlash.

He turns up around midnight. The spirit of her father looks old, worn-out the way he did just before his death. It takes him a moment to get his bearings and figure out that he's in the family mausoleum. When the recognition finally strikes, Faris raises her glass.

"Mornin', Dad."

Her father's eyebrows go up at what she's sure is an unusual tableau: a couple of chairs hauled from the castle, a table between them with a bottle of wine and two glasses, lit candles and incense that some Istorian shaman assured her would help her raise the dead, her cello propped between her knees and its bow unceremoniously stuck in the bass-side f-hole, and his final resting place right behind her. And she's in her king's garb. That always makes people look twice.

With a grin, she stands and steps out from behind her cello to make a sweeping bow. The white trousers aren't so different from what she used to wear as a captain, though the silk certainly feels nicer against her skin than the wool ever did. She still favors boots to the shoes that are in fashion; these are just nicer than her old pair. The waistcoat works as just as well as the binder did to hold her breasts in, and embroidered silver sea dragons swim up and down the edges and stand out brightly against the pale blue-grey, wave-patterned damask fabric. The ivory and gold brocade coat is probably her favorite part of the ensemble: the brocade is in a subtle dragonscale pattern with stylized wings in the back, the gold satin lining flashes when she strides through the castle and the long skirt-like tail in the back flares out like the one on her captain's greatcoat, red stitches decorate along the seams as an acknowledgment of her role as the Light Warrior of Fire. The white satin sash with its embroidered gold band and gold sky dragon brooch might have been purloined from a portrait of her father at her age, though the white lace cravat and its Syldra-shaped pin is all her.

"You've appointed yourself king?" The tone of his voice is mild curiosity, but the crinkling at the corners of his eyes betray his amusement at her gall.

"'Twas a concession, I'm afraid. I'll not wear a dress and the minister refused to let me attend official functions in my preferred attire. Lenna's still the ruling queen. She can keep her throne." Frankly, the very notion of undertaking Lenna's workload and responsibilities drives Faris up the wall. Anyone who would want to be a ruler of a nation has no idea what it takes to be a good one.

At her gesture of invitation, he joins her on the other chair; she sits back down shortly after he does, sets aside her glass, and drapes herself over her cello like some dragon sunning on a warm rock.

Fine, so maybe she did want to reconnect. This silence of theirs is comfortable; she has her own death to thank for that. She knows now, in a way she didn't before, that he accepts her as she is. For some reason he's never explained, he even seems proud of her. It's not something she needed--she came to terms with not having a proper family long ago--but both acceptance and pride from her father are nice to have.

"When did you take up the cello?" he asks at last, once his form fully shifts from transparent shade to solid and almost alive.

"Oh, well, funny story, that." Faris pulls her bow out of the sound hole and tucks it frog-end into her palm so she can get to it quickly when she needs to. She plucks out a simple tune that goes up and down scales, altering the beginning note each time. It's meant to evoke the thought of the Crystals spinning idly over their daises, light catching and reflecting off their facets. "We lost most of the skills the Crystal shards taught us when they put themselves back together. The ones we kept were those from the Crystals that chose us. Butz still makes a good fighter, with sword or without. Lenna's still our best mage. Krile's a nightmare with her katana and a wizard with potions. Me, I sneak around better than ever, I've still got a good ear and a knack with timing, and," her eyes might sparkle when she says it and her fingers pause for the moment, "any dragon I talk to talks back."

Her father perks up and his eyes sparkle just as much as hers. "Wild ones, too?"

"Aye. Wild and domesticated. Any variety of dragon. Mind, some of that I got from you. Fire Crystal just... enhanced it, I reckon." And that was an exciting discovery, being hit with a wave of malice just before some demon dragon leapt out at them from a treasure chest. Her head still aches sometimes from Shinryuu's mental assault.

"You were always sensitive to them," her father says slowly as he works through some memory or other. "Notos said he heard you when you were born. It's why I wanted you to ride him as soon as your mother allowed it."

Admittedly, she doesn't recall much of that time. At most she has snatches of half-remembered feelings and maybe some images. She does remember her father's dragon introducing himself for the first time and running, screaming, to the nearest watchtower because his voice sounded in her head and not from outside her like human voices.

Sometimes Faris suspects that this sensitivity is why she heard Syldra in that whirlpool he kicked up when she was fifteen, just before she dived in and they bonded. Nowadays it's just a matter of course, especially once Krile helped her hone her ability, and the dragons she encounters just mentally curl up in her head until she shoo's them out. Something about them recognizing her as kin.

She sets the bow on the D string and close enough to the G string for it to resonate and starts--the notes short and spirited and low-voiced, the bow strokes short, strong, and made down-bow. It's her, strutting around her ship. Or, rather, wishing she could strut around her ship--she ties the notes together under longer bow-strokes and rounds out the sharp notes, adding a bit of wistfulness to the composition. "Turns out I can't go back to piracy. Everyone knows my face as both Sarisa and the captain."

"The price of being a public figure," her father says dryly, though he's not unsympathetic.

With a nod, the composition changes. She shifts to the A string and starts on Lenna's theme: open, clear notes and long, measured bow-strokes. Elegant but unpretentious. "I can visit my crew and offer advice to my replacement. Can't do a thing elsewise that might endanger Lenna or her political standing." Her theme joins with Lenna's for the moment and her motif turns almost martial, an acknowledgement of her protectiveness towards her little sister, before she breaks away from Lenna's notes and goes back to her own.

Her motif grows sharper, louder, quicker, the notes disconnecting as the bow bounces along the string and almost growling as she runs the bow over both D and G strings at the same time. It sounds like she was growing unhinged. Which she was. "So I'm stuck most of the time at Tycoon with the ministers hounding me about being a proper princess. Drives me up the fucking wall."

Her father, to his credit, says nothing. She shifts over to second position on the G string for Butz's theme: light, quick notes and long bow-strokes. "Butz comes along to the rescue and hauls me out for an expedition to rout out the bandits camping in Kuza Castle." Okay, maybe he didn't haul her out; she was practically out the door the moment he said "expedition". Her motif brightens as it joins him on the way to Kuza. "Found shielddragons, didn't find bandits." With that, she introduces a slow, shambling bowing along the C and G strings with languid notes in a minor key. "Undead dragons, difficult to defeat but easy to control. And since we'd already gone all that way, why not have some fun?"

This part gets tricky, the joining of her motif with the shielddragons; she has to shift her finger placement further up on the G string to avoid awkward bowing. The tune grows playful--the shielddragons liked her, and she suspects that half the reason for that is that she'd been dead once. They were mostly mindless, but what little mind they did have left propelled them to listen to her. They responded well to simple commands, and she and Butz weren't above exploiting that. "So we played with them and headed back."

Her father's face goes peculiar; likely he's trying and failing to picture frolicking undead horrors. Faris tries not to grin as she plays her and Butz returning to Tycoon and running into Lenna. Sure they'd left a message, but Lenna prefers to be personally informed and her motif grows a bit snippy for being left behind again. "Lenna gets Butz to snitch about playing fetch with the undead, because she's magic that way."  

That does it. A fond smile splits his face, likely at the thought of Lenna getting into a larger man's face to glare him down until he caves. She'd probably done it to dear old Father plenty of times. Heavens knew Faris got that particular glare often enough, and frankly she prefers it to the disappointment.

"Now, my dear little sister knows me better than I know myself. The minx." It's said with all the love in the world, of course. She expands on Lenna's theme, turning it into a full song. "Knows I need to keep busy and knows to keep me separate from the nobles. Gave me this to better manage me."

It was framed as a birthday gift and gesture of appreciation from a master craftsman for helping to save the world, but Faris has no illusions. Lenna is a canny manipulator when she sets her mind to it and the gift has her fingerprints all over it: the painting on the cello's back of her lost ship and Syldra near the bluffs of her former hide-away is too intimate a detail for a stranger to just come up with on his own. Lenna denies all knowledge of masterminding its commission, but there's always a twinkle in her eye that betrays her whenever Faris brings up the issue. She did well and she knows it.

To be fair to Lenna, it was a clever scheme. Anyone Faris practices swordplay with will let her win on account of her being the queen's feral sister. The only ones who won't are the other Light Warriors, who came away from the whole save-the-world quest with enough skill to present Faris with a challenge. Problem with that is that the queen can't always make the time for Faris and her restlessness, Krile heads the excavation of Lonkan ruins and spends all her time studying them, and who the hell knows where Butz disappears to half the time. After a few lessons in playing it right, the cello got to be an outlet. It takes well to the fast pace and high energies of scherzos, she finds its range more pleasing and more like her than other instruments, and she usually manages to burn herself out enough to not be completely unbearable at supper.

"I'm surprised you let her," her father admits.

"Oh, there's no 'let her' with Lenna. She'll get her way, and she's so sweet about it that it's impossible to say no." It's difficult not to laugh before she gets out what she wants to say, and the insistent tugging at the corners of her lips are probably betraying her. Focus, you idiot. "'Sides, I figure if she gets annoying, I'll...throw a frog down her dress or somethin'."

"Faris." Her father looks like he's torn between wanting to laugh and wanting to scold her.

"Hey, I've been good," she starts off with feigned innocence. "Haven't even started making up for the years of lost pranking opportunities. Only pranked her once in all these years."

His eyes, dragon-green like theirs, widen in growing horror. "Faris--"

"Spiders in her hair," she continues, eyes glinting, and she's sure the broad spread of her grin can be misconstrued as wicked. "You shoulda heard the scream."

His sigh is long-suffering and he looks like he's tempted to plant his face in his hands. Good. He missed out on her shenanigans as a kid and this is as good a hint of what she was like as any. "Faris, you didn't--"

Finally she can't help but laugh. It's short, natural, and she might have tears she'll have to scrub out. "Maybe it wasn't spiders, per se. Just as impossible to get out of everything, though. Glitter and sequins. Lenna still finds shiny bits in her hairbrush sometimes."

[askthedespairkids]

Chapter 1: Your First Lesson in Despair ~Post-Trial~

//And the end to the actual plot of chapter 1! Probably will do FTE after this or maybe I’ll do all of them as a big post at the very end of the story. We’ll see!

//Hope ya’ll enjoy this!

-Chapter 1, Post Trial-

 “Congratulations! Just as you all suspected, the one who trapped and killed Maemi Watanabe was none other than Saori Kibe, the Ultimate Paranormal Investigator!” Monokuma clapped. He says ‘congratulations’, but this doesn’t feel like a victory. Not at all.

 “Kibe…” Shinko-san spoke through gritted teeth. “I want to know. I want to know why the fuck this all went down! Why the hell did you kill Watanabe?! Was your past that fuckin’ bad?!”

 “Th-that’s not it…” Kibe-san tried.

 “Then what?! What the fuck could’ve possibly happened to-“

 “Shinko-sama. Enough. Allow Kibe-sama to speak freely, or this will go nowhere.” Ishikawa-san cut in. Shinko-san grunted and turned away from Kibe-san. She took a breath and looked up at us.

 “I…I had to get out of here. When Monokuma, I knew what my note had to be…my older sister and I had a fight before I entered Hope’s Peak. She said some things, I said some things…and she said she never wanted to see me again…th-the idea that I’m stuck in here and might never get to reconcile with her…” Kibe-san’s eyes seemed to light us as she thought of her sister. “She was really smart, I couldn’t help but admire her. Even if she’d hate me, I can’t help but love my sister…”

 “What a stupid reason.” Shinko-san spat.

 “Shut up, will you?! My god, do you not think before you speak?! I’m so fuckin’ sorry that you have nobody to care about in the outside world, but not everyone else is like you!” Kurohiko-san snapped, surprising everyone. “K…Kibe-san cares about her family above all else, and that’s not something that she should be hated for. The whole point of motives is that if we knew about those notes, we would’ve killed for it. So…it’s not Kibe-san’s fault that she figured out the note before seeing it.”

 “K-Kurohiko-kun…” Kibe-san’s bottom lip trembled. “E-even if you say that, I killed Watanabe-san! I killed someone who was going to work so hard to keep everyone alive and I targeted her because of it! It’s my fault…! Watanabe-san…I’m sorry! I’m s-sorry…!”

 “Watanabe-sama was a very forgiving person…I’m sure that she would forgive your actions from beyond the eternal slumber. Memento Mori…” Ishikawa-san whispered the last part of her statement. I looked at Kibe-san, knowing what she must be going through. The idea of never seeing a family member again, I don’t think I could handle it either…

 “I…I don’t expect anyone here to forgive me. I was ready to sacrifice you all so I could leave…I’m an awful person!”

 “…it’s okay, Kibe-san. I don’t blame you.” We all looked at Ram-san. “Ah, um…! Th-that is to say…we were putting in this kind of situation, so our minds wouldn’t think of many options…” Even though she got suspected because of Kibe-san…Ram-san, you’re a really nice person, aren’t you? But who are you really…?

 “Ram-san…thank you.” Kibe-san smiled weakly.

 “Alright, if we’re done with all that, then it’s time to move onto the main event!” Monokuma jumped up to interrupt us. M…main event…? “It’s time to move onto the punishment!”

 “P-punishment…th-the execution?!” Kibe-san fell to her knees. “W-wait, no, don’t I get a chance to plead a case or something?!”

 “Let’s get this moving, I’ve prepared a very special punishment for the Ultimate Paranormal Investigator, Saori Kibe!” H-he wasn’t even listening to her!

 “You can’t do this, you have to let me outta here now! Someone get me out of here!” Kibe-san began pounding on the walls. I can’t turn away, but I don’t want to watch.

 “Let’s give it everything we’ve got! Iiiiiiit’s PUNISHMENT TIME!!”

 “RETSUKOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!”

 -GAME OVER- -SAORI KIBE HAS BEEN FOUND GUILTY!- -COMMENCING EXECUTION!-

 We all watched with horror a metal chain latched around Kibe-san’s neck and dragged her off to a room behind Monokuma’s throne as a massive TV screen lowered into the room and flashed on. The screen showed Kibe-san in the middle a child’s bedroom, the camera looking like any old camera used for home videos.

 -Saori Kibe’s Execution: What’s in the Shadows?-

 Kibe-san turned on a flashlight and shined it around the room trying to find an exit. In the corner of the room a rocking chair began to move on its own causing Kibe-san to jump and hit her back against the wall. When she touched it, a panel moved away from the wall and a blade stabbed her through the arm she wasn’t holding the flashlight with.

 She stumbled, knocking into the cot and onto the toys scattered on the floor. She yelped again and rolled off them and shined the flashlight again, seeing an exit in front of her. The door swung open and something behind Kibe-san appeared, grabbing her by the ankle and dragging her through the doorway. The camera switched to a staircase and we watched as Kibe-san was thrown down the staircase, hitting her head several times.

 She managed to get up at the bottom though was visibly bleeding from a wound on her head. Then the shadow appeared again behind her. The figured grabbed Kibe-san by the head but before we could all see what happened, the camera footage glitched out for a few moments.

 It came back and the sight left in front of us was Kibe-san sitting on a couch with her neck clearly broken and a spear stabbed through her torso.

 --

 We were in shock. Even Sly-san had been caught off guard by the brutality of the execution. Ram-san had fallen to her knees and was sobbing into her hands, unable to even look up at the TV screen that the rest of us, try as we might, couldn’t tear our gazes away from.

 “Wowee! That was pretty suspenseful, don’t’cha think?! Like that one horror movie! What’s it called? Paranormal Ac-“

 “Wh-what the hell was that…?” Okanaya-san said weakly. “She was gonna die so why make a twisted show of it…?”

 “Huh? She killed someone in such a fancy way, so why shouldn’t she get the same treatment? Get a grip, idiots! I just paid her back for what she did to your precious leader!” Monokuma stuck a paw in the air.

 “Ah…Monokuma’s right. Kibe simply got what she deserved.” Kurosaki-san shrugged. “Such a waste of space, thinking she could get away with killing Mademoiselle Watanabe like that. Frankly, you should’ve prolonged her head. Snapping her neck was far too kind.”

 “Oh, you think so? Got any notes for me next time?” Monokuma produced a notepad.

 “K-Kurosaki-san?! What are you saying?! How can you be okay with what you just saw?!” I couldn’t believe Kurosaki-san would say that. No matter how you look at it, Kibe-san didn’t deserve to die. Especially not like that. Kurosaki-san simply looked at me before his face darkened with a smirk. A smirk I’d never expect to see on someone. It was so full of malice that it made me wince.

 “Huh? Nagata-kyun, I would prefer if you kept that kind of question to yourself! After all…I’ll never forgive Kibe for killing her. Never ever.” Kurosaki-san tipped his hat down. “Mademoiselle Watanabe…she went through so much, and yet…”

 “What was that about Watanabe-san?” Kurohiko-san asked.

 “Nothing. Never mind that. The trial is over, so how about we all go get some rest, m’kay?” Kurosaki-san smiled as gently as he would normally, but I can’t get that image of a few seconds ago out of my head. Kurosaki-san…just what kind of person are you?

 -Chapter 1, Post Trial Ryuu-

 I sat in my room staring blankly at the ceiling, I was trying my best to fall asleep, but…the things I saw today. Watanabe-san’s murder. Kibe-san’s execution. Kurosaki-san’s inner darkness. I’d probably just have a nightmare if I tried to sleep.

 The bell at my door rang. “C-coming!” Though I was hesitant, I went and answered it. And when I opened the door, standing there scratching his neck awkwardly was Okanaya-san.

 “H-hey, um…it’s Nagaru, right…?”

 “Nagata.” I corrected.

 “R-right! Nagata…sorry, um…I’m not really good at this stuff, but…you helped me during the trial today, so I wanted to thank you. You knew I went through that cafeteria, but you lied to save me. Did…you really think I was innocent that much?” If I was honest, a lot of it was down to Kurosaki-san…

 “I guess I just don’t see you as a killer.” I murmured. I was still nervous to talk to him knowing what his temper is like. “You weren’t the killer, so I did what I needed to in order to get everyone else to believe me. I’m just glad that everything turned out as good as it could have…” No, if everything was as good as it could be, I wouldn’t be in a killing game with everyone.

 “Y-yeah…you really don’t see me as a killer?”

 “Should I?”

 “It’s just…” His voice trailed off. Was…Okanaya-san blushing? “…most people assume I’m a serious brute, but I’m not a bad person. I don’t think I am in any case. Sorry about hitting you before, by the way. If I didn’t cause a commotion, Kibe might not have been able to steal those keys for her plan.”

 “You shouldn’t blame yourself. And I’m fine, see?” I smiled. It was forced, but I didn’t want Okanaya-san feeling down. “We’re in such a strange situation, I can’t blame you for being tense. We’re all handling the situation in different ways and to different degrees…but, from now on, if you want people to see you in a better light then you should include yourself in the group. Come to the cafeteria tomorrow.”

 “Th-the cafeteria…” Okanaya-san looked nervous about that idea.

 “I’ll wait for you there, you can sit with me.” I don’t know what was causing me to be so nice to him. Hopefully he’ll come though.

 “Yeah…thanks, Nagata.” He smiled softly…

 …

Okanaya-san’s smile feels…comforting.

 -Chapter 1 Post Trial Yuuki-

 “A rendezvous with you, is this a date or do you plan on trying to kill me?” Yuuki asked.

 “Please don’t suggest either of those things ever again. I just need to talk to you, seeing as you’re the most suspicious one in the group.” Sly crossed his arms.

 “I don’t really like hearing that from the Ultimate Assassin. Couldn’t a killing game be one big convoluted method of killing a bunch of targets at once?” Yuuki smirked. “Of course, you’re not the one behind the killing game.”

 “You’re so sure of that?”

 “I am.”

 “Why?”

 “Are you the mastermind?” Yuuki stepped a little closer.

 “No, I’m not.” Sly took a step back, his expression becoming increasingly more irritated. “Who are you? You introduced yourself as the Ultimate Explorer, but my gut is telling me that was probably a lie.”

 “You think I’d lie to you all? I haven’t told any lies since I got here.” Yuuki lied.

 “Kurosaki let me make one thing clear. As long as you aren’t a threat, I won’t bother you. I won’t tolerate any behaviour like before though.”

 “No need to worry about that. Mademoiselle Watanabe was a special case to me. I won’t become so emotional next time.”

 “Why is that?”

 “Why the interest? You’re an assassin, and you barely know anyone here. Should you care so much about me and my motivations?”

 “I may be an assassin, but I’m still a human. I don’t care about these people, but they still don’t deserve to die in such fashions, that much is obvious to anyone.” Sly said. Yuuki stared at Sly for a while before putting a hand to his chin and nodding thoughtfully.

 “Just as I thought…you’re a special one, Herr Knives.” Yuuki stepped closer and trapped Sly by slamming his hand against the wall behind Sly and using his other hand to tilt Sly’s chin up towards Yuuki’s face. “Please…entertain me sometime.”

 “Gross.” Sly answered, unphased. He pushed Yuuki off him. “Try not to get yourself into any trouble.” And with that, Sly walked off. Yuuki watched as Sly left and smirked once more.

 “So many interesting people here. I wonder how things will proceed from here.”

 -Chapter 1, Your First Lesson in Despair END-

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