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dingdonghyvck · 4 years ago

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The Only Exception || Lee Haechan x Reader

Summary: You finally realize that Haechan’s the only exception to the one rule you gave yourself.

Genre: Angst and a little bit of Fluff

Pairing/s: Drummer!Haechan x Lead Vocalist!Reader, Minor College Student!Mark x Reader

Warnings: Explicit content, mentions of suicide, suicidal thoughts, implications of sex, sex jokes, use of drugs, cigarettes and alcohol, verbal and physical abuse, divorce, and a few others I probably forgot to mention

Word Count: 5.4k words

So this is part two of the Drummer!Haechan AU I wrote: Still Into You

Please do give feedback, it’s greatly appreciated! Thank you and enjoy :)

"When I was younger I saw my daddy cry and curse at the wind.

He broke his own heart and I watched as he tried to reassemble it.

And my momma swore that she would never let herself forget”

It all started with hushed arguments, hidden whispers of disappointment behind closed doors, afraid of breaking the perfect image your family had, afraid of the neighbors to talk. From hushed arguments to daily endeavors of avoiding each other everyday, it was like a ticking bomb inside your home. A ticking bomb you had tip-toed over each morning past your parents' bedroom, hearing the muffled crying. You knew it was only a matter of time before the bomb would finally explode, imploding your house from inside-out.

You hoped and you prayed to any god willing to listen that the rumors were not true. The neighbors started talking and the news had somehow got out. And that was when everything started breaking down. The hushed arguments turned to wars of screaming and crying, sharp words that cut through you like a knife. That was when the walls of your home began to talk, they spoke to you too, they echoed the hatred your parents had for each other. They made you feel unwanted, unloved and useless, since of course the sole foundation of your life was crumbling. You were the scars, bruises, and pain they brought into the world, you were once proof of their love that turned into a ghost wandering the halls, desperately clawing against the wallpaper to make it all stop.

It didn't end with words, it seemed as if words weren't hurtful enough. You were caught in the crossfire, desperately trying to raise the white flag between the two, but you ended up becoming their stress ball. They would sometimes drown you, lock you up in the basement or straight up hit you. They kept squeezing you and throwing you around like a stress ball bound to burst, the people at school began noticing the bruises and cuts. In the end they left you alone, vacant and ignored since you began bringing your friends over your house.

And for the first time in a while you felt safe, you felt safe in Jeno's comforting smile when he tried to teach you guitar. You felt safe with Hendery's little pranks and teasing during practices. You felt safe in Donghyuck's presence whenever you two would head out after band practice, in his car with no particular destination in mind. The nights were long, but somehow it always ended too quickly for you. You wished you could stay for an eternity inside Donghyuck's car, it was a place where you didn't bother to be someone else except yourself.

It was a space where you weren't either the whore's daughter or the useless excuse of a student. You were just authentically you and Donghyuck openly accepted you, he didn't say it but you knew he did. He didn't talk whenever you didn't feel like it, he opened the car window when you wanted to watch the stoplights and streetlight wiz by. That's what made those nights perfect, it was Donghyuck's soft humming along the mediocre pop song on the radio. His weirdly specific defensive monologue whenever you brought up his tacky lavender car scent. Donghyuck's presence in general as he would sometimes just hold your hand while you thought to yourself.

One of those nights where you thought to yourself that life should always be like this, you didn't know how, but you knew that Donghyuck has to be apart of it. You decided that the world may go to shit, your parents may end up getting a divorce, you may end up living the rest of your life as a deadbeat. But you no longer cared as long as you had this place, in a worn out car seat next to him; well that was what you thought at least.

"And that was the day that I promised,

I'd never sing of love if it does not exist"

Donghyuck's sudden departure from the band shocked both Jeno and Hendery, they took it considerably well in all honesty. They still wanted to continue on with the band, partly because they needed the money from the gigs and mostly because they worried for you as a friend. You tried your best in trying to continue with your life and look for another drummer, for another Donghyuck in your life. As silly as it sounded since you were the one that pushed him away, you would think of him most days. You were only realizing how important Donghyuck was in your life.

He was always the one who took care of you, reminded you to eat and rest whenever you forgot. He would show up at your dorm to bring you breakfast or make you coffee, remind you that some of the books you borrowed from the library was due tomorrow, or even just chat you to check on how your day was going. Now that you had changed your number and avoided him like a plague you were starting to realize how much you lost.

And you had thought of calling him, or maybe reaching out to ask how his day was going, the same way he used to check on you. You were so tempted that you showed up at his place, a second away from buzzing his doorbell, but you remembered. You remembered how awful you were to him, you were reminded of the pain and misery you've caused him all through out your lives so far. You were being selfish yet again, so you stopped yourself. You immediately turned around that day and called up Hendery and Jeno to tell them that the band was over, you didn't have the guts to face them anymore.

The guilt was eating you alive, they had tried to convince you otherwise but you pushed them away too. The only person who you kept in your life was Mark. You still felt happy to be around him, although you didn't feel comfortable since you felt like you had to keep a facade around him. He seemed glad to see you more often, you'd cling onto him like a flee for days. But there came a time when he finally asked why you were so vacant these days, and where were your other friends; it was an argument caused by Mark's growing irritation for being required to see you everyday and almost having to babysit you like child, all the while trying to keep up with other activities going on his life. You had left him without a single word and returned the next day like nothing happened.

He genuinely did like you, he wished things were different but he couldn't handle the nonstop texts and calls that came from you every minute of the hour, he was beginning to get sick of it. And you immediately notice his distaste, the way he would dryly reply to your messages or not talk to you whenever he did have time to see you. You knew you were becoming a bit too much for him, desperate for company that you became too overbearing, a bit too possessive and selfish when it came to his time.

And for the first time, you felt it. You felt how your heart sunk everytime Mark chose to answer a call from a friend when you were talking to him, the way he would look anywhere else but you whenever you tried to start conversations. You were usually on the other end of the stick, careless of other people’s emotions and too busy living in your own world. You finally knew what it felt when Donghyuck dated you, and what horrible thoughts that came with it. In the end, you knew that Mark was too kind to end it with you, he obviously knew you were having issues in your personal life, but he couldn't be bothered anymore; he's tried talking to you about it, but you'd always change the topic.

So you told yourself that it was better if you would be alone for now, this is the tenfold of misery and hurt you've caused everyone around you, especially Donghyuck, your world was falling apart as more and more people left. You eventually ended things with Mark, and he gave you a simple okay and left. He didn't seem to notice you anymore, he continued to live his university life unscathed, it was as if you two never spoke in the first place.

He would sometimes smile at you or give you a small nod of his head whenever you saw each other around campus, but that was the most you've gotten from him. You didn't blame him, he didn't have time to waste with people like you. Being alone with your thoughts truly was eating you alive, you were beginning to go insane. Everytime you were about to reach out to anyone, either Jeno, Hendery, or Donghyuck, you'd always stop yourself to remind you that you deserved this.

You deserved to be alone, you cannot be loved. You were a heartless monster just as Donghyuck said and you lived most of your days alone while trying to survive with the little funds your new part time provided. You didn't know how, but you somehow lived as days went by. You watched the leaves and flowers bloom from the branches outside of your dorm till they wilted. It was now winter, and you freely wandered the streets. No other human could be seen outside, everyone was probably spending time with loved ones, since of course it was the holidays.

Days you should be spending with the people you cherish and loved the most, you could see the warm lights from within some of the homes, laughter resonates through the walls, probably the lovers and families enjoying their own company. Playing dumb board games and cuddled up by the fire, watching the grinch movies with eggnog and warm cups of hot choco. You never really understood the joys of the holidays, probably because the only other person you had spent it was with Donghyuck, and there you go thinking of him again.

As if thinking of him in everything you do wasn't enough, he began appearing in your dreams. You didn't know if it was pleasant to revisit old memories or did it hurt to reminisce what was lost between you two. And as much as it hurt you chose to remember him as someone you loved, perhaps not romantically, but he was someone you truly cherished. You thought that he'd comment on how cheesy you've become, so melodramatic that you'd give William Shakespear a run for his money when he's already in his grave.

You bitterly laugh at the thought, the cold makes your throat dry and eyes watery but you look up to the moon while standing next to a lamp post near the frozen river. You could almost feel his presence, you truly were going insane that you started imagining things he'd say to you at times like this. The snarky comments and cute pet names he'd give you whenever you dragged him along for whatever adventure you had in mind. You remembered how he'd first complain about it to no end, but he always ends up coming with you. He always does, of course, he's Donghyuck, the person who stuck with you through thick and thin; the person you've hurt the most.

You begin humming a small tune, you didn't recognize it at first, but you ended up humming a paramore song. The song you both listened to during class the first day you two met, the same song that you sang here, with tears streaming down you cheeks. You didn't know you were crying until you felt the cold gust of wind brushing against your cheeks, a chill running down your spine as you sniffled.

"I hope you're happy now Hyuck, wherever you are," it felt weird to speak, you couldn't remember the last time you opened your mouth to say anything. it's been months since you've last said a word to anyone, you throat was dry and you could barely recognize your own voice, it was raspier than you last remembered.

"I'm happy enough to know we're looking at the same moon tonight at least." you laughed, your throat hurts like hell, the laugh came as a croak and you tried to gasp in air to try and stop yourself from breaking down.

It felt weird to listen to your own voice, everything felt unreal. These past few months were like a fever dream to you, you even wondered if you were dead and this was some cruel purgatory you served for the shit you pulled back then. You've thought about jumping into the frozen river, maybe the cold would at least wake you up if this was truly some cruel nightmare. If not it could also finally end all the suffering and pain you know you caused yourself, what hurt most was you cannot blame anyone else for what is happening now. You shakily let out a breath, hands gripping the metal railing. You were about to jump over it when the street's fairy lights were suddenly turned on and it reflected off the thin layer of ice of the lake.

You wake up from your daze, what the hell were you thinking? The pretty lights distracted you for a moment, you pace your breathing with the consistent flicker of the warm glow of the tiny lights, trying to calm down.

"And I've always lived like this,

keeping a comfortable distance"

senior year, prom.

You bit your lip while watching the fairy lights flicker, whose idea was it to have tiny light bulbs as decoration for the photo booth, and god you wanted to give them a kiss now. It was such a hazard that you couldn't stop thinking of the endless possible drama it could cause, the prom queen could end up stepping on it and light her dress on fire, that would at least make the night interesting. You blew the tiny patch of fake snow off the table while you grumpily waited for someone, anyone, to step on one of the fairy lights, but you were dragged out of your reverie when you hear Donghyuck's voice behind you.

"Hey ugly,"

"Hey stupid," you replied, eyes shifting away from the photo booth for a second to look at him. He stuck out like a sore thumb, he wasn't wearing a tuxedo like the rest, or even a tie to at least try and be formal. He was sporting his favorite leather jacket with a green untucked button up underneath, he looked underdressed, the only effort he made to his appearance was the way he styled his hair to showcase his forehead.

"That's not a nice way to speak to your boyfriend" Donghyuck faked a gasp, dragging a chair to sit down beside you, you raised an eyebrow at him. The stupid crease on his jacket annoyed you to no end, so you fixed it for him, it was his turn to raise an eyebrow at you.

"Boyfriend? I thought boyfriends put in extra efforts for prom? You know like in the movies, they give the girl a cute corsage and tell them how pretty they look and end up fucking in the bathroom or something?"

"You're beautiful." He says it blatantly, you stop to look him in the eyes, and it seemed genuine. You pursed your lips while trying to hide your smile, boyfriend Donghyuck was different from best friend Donghyuck, he was a lot... sweeter.

"Let's fuck in the bathroom later?" he added, to which you groaned and slapped his thigh. He only laughed at you while gently fitting his hand into yours, gently kissing your knuckles when you swore you were gonna bite his dick someday, just he wait.

Well you'll give him credit, he at least made an effort to look nice for you. You didn't even bother to blow dry your hair today and you were wearing what you'd usually wear whenever you went out with him, just with a bit more grunge added, like black fishnet stockings. He wasn't complaining at all, he knew that whatever you were wearing tonight would end up ripped anyway, probably somewhere on his bedroom floor. And plus, you two didn't really attend prom, the only reason you bothered to this year was for the battle of the bands.

You were already done with the performance so you were all simply waiting for the announcement of the winner. You knew Jeno was probably out on the dance floor dancing with his date in a proper suit and tie like a gentleman, but you had no idea where Hendery went. One second he said he was going to get you a drink, the next he's disappeared before you into thin air. So you were left with Donghyuck, who was currently playing with your rings. As weird as it felt to have a label between you two, nothing's changed. You thought that you'd feel more awkward towards him, but the only thing that changed was the label, and you were happy in a way.

"Wanna dance?"

You perk up at his question, you finally realize that a slow song was playing. Everyone was paired off in front of you, even some of the teachers were dancing. You almost let out a laugh at the sight of some of couples who were trying their best to keep it in their pants. You thought he was joking until you looked over at him, he was shyly fiddling with his own hands now, not able to look you in the eyes. You would laugh if it weren't for the way he seemed so shy to ask, he looked like he was about to combust.

"I don't dance," you laughed, he looks up at you. You didn't know it was possible but he looked much more embarrassed now, it was cute it in a way.

"Let's get out of here?"

"Now that's more like it" you smirk, taking his hand to lead him outside of the gymnasium and to his car. He didn't bother to fight it, he just simply let you drag him out to the parking lot.

He opens the car door for you and you played along, deciding to not tease him just this once since, of course, he was already red enough. He turns on the engine and you switch through different channels on the radio, finally settling on one when he pulls out of the driveway.

“And up until now I had sworn to myself that I'm content with loneliness.

Because none of it was ever worth the risk.”

The song on the radio hummed in the background as he drove as carefully as he could, the roads were iced and it wasn't very safe to drive right now. He was about to take the turn to his house but you stop him and told him to bring you to the center of town, he was unsure why the sudden request, but he follows your directions anyway. For the moment, you stared at his face. The way the streetlights lit up his skin, you rarely saw his forehead and it did make him look attractive. Well he was already attractive in the first place but you couldn’t help but observe the way he drummed his fingers against the steering wheel to the song’s beat, it looked instinctive and natural to him.

"So are you finally going to murder me and take my intestines to sell on the black market?" he spoke, and you laughed, throwing your head back; he was finally starting to look handsome to you, and he opens that damned mouth of his.

"Kidneys my darling! Your kidneys will be worth a fortune!" you giggled while leaning over the center console to kiss his cheek, he smiled at the sound of your laughter.

He takes you exactly where you asked him, the center of the town. The exact intersection that’s considered as the heart of your buzzing neighborhood. The exact intersection that usually had so many cars, always the cause of traffic and delay, was now completely empty. All the stores near the intersect were closed, no other person in sight but the stoplights continued to operate. The colors red, yellow, and green appearing in an ordered sequence, proportionally timed. Although there wasn't a single car in sight, Donghyuck stopped when the light turned red.

"What are you waiting for?" you asked in confusion, he shrugs.

"Can you tell me why we're here?"

You didn't bother to speak, you simply got out of the car and stood at the center of the intersection. You opened your arms up to him and he watched you curiously, you let out a boisterous laugh, spinning around your heel. You forgot that the road was slippery so you fell flat on your back, still laughing. Donghyuck runs out of his car to kneel beside you, he had a worried look to him but it immediately faded away when you looked at him with joy in your eyes.

He scoffed, not forgetting to comment on how stupid you looked before offering his hand to help you stand up. You take his hand but instead of sitting up, you pull him towards you and he slips, ending up toppled over you. His breathing was uneven as it brushed cooly against your cheek, you close your eyes at the feeling. He gently kissed your cheek after a minute, finally standing up to brush himself off. You were still lying down on the ground, flailing your arms around to try and form a snow angel.

"Are you dumb? Get up before we get run over" Donghyuck tried to sound angry, but he couldn't stop the lilt in his voice, a tiny chuckles escapes his mouth.

"Shut up already and just lie down! Why do you always ruin the moment?” you whined looking up at him, still spread eagle at the center of the intersect, he raised an eyebrow at you, it was becoming a habit to him.

“Don’t you feel it too? The world’s stopped, they’ve finally shut up! So enjoy it and come lie down with me.”

“And if we get run over?”

“Then so be it” You shrugged, Donghyuck lets out a heavy sigh before taking his seat beside you. He doesn’t lie down, so you sit up to lean against his shoulder.

And the world stops, like what you said. For a moment the only thing you two could hear was the sound of your breathing and the beating of your hearts, he held your hand in his while you both watched the stoplight change colors. It felt like you two were the only people on earth, and it was the best. There was nothing but the moon, your thoughts, the stoplight, and him. And as peaceful as it was you couldn’t stop the thought from spilling from your mouth.

“Someday I’ll burn this town to the ground” you comment, and he snorts.

“Gee, it sure sounds like a solid plan” he says it sarcastically, and you turn to look at him.

“I’m serious! You better not get in my way or anything or else I’ll have to set you on fire” you say it with the most serious tone that he’s taken aback, well that was one weird thought he thought.

His face makes you laugh and he wasn’t sure if he was supposed to laugh with you. He shook his head when he realized you were joking, probably. You felt content and happy that you decided to grant him one wish. He once again has the confused face he had earlier, just when he was finally settled you suddenly move. He tries to stand up to follow you, but you told him that you’ll be back.

He watched you open the driver’s side of the car, he thought you were about to drive away and leave him here but he was abruptly stopped mid-thought when the speakers of the radio of his car boomed throughout the empty streets. His eyes widened, he was worried that it might wake the whole street up. Then he remembered that the residential homes were located near the outskirts of town, so it was unlikely that anyone would hear. Most of this area had shops and stores, so the people are probably back at home, you both aren’t technically disturbing anyone hopefully. He relaxes back into his seat to watch you waltz back towards him.

“So?” you asked, the smile on your face was infectious.

“So?” he mimicked dumbly and you rolled your eyes in annoyance, was he always this dumb?

“May I have this dance?” you groaned, turning red yourself. You blamed it on the cold, but he couldn’t help but laugh at you. At first it sounded like he was mocking you, but when you met his eyes to smack him on the head you were only met with eyes filled with so much endearment and affection that you could only pull back your hand.

He takes your hand to stand up, you complain of course, he was heavy. But he hushed you when he placed his fingers to your chapped lips, he smiled so widely that it looked like it hurt. You pursed your lips, wrapping your arms around his neck and he securely holds your waist. Although the atmosphere was supposed to be romantic, your terrible sense of rhythm in dancing ruined it. You would think that you’d be good at following the rhythm when dancing being a couple of musicians, but you both always missed a beat by a second. And he could only laugh while you cursed, finally remembering why you never danced.

You were muttering something under you breath, but your voice hitched when he brushes his fingers against your hair. He placed a sweet kiss to your temple and you freeze, you felt your heart clench at the action. He begins whispering the lyrics to your ear, you swallow thickly. This was one of the rare times he’d sing to you, you tried to tell him countless times that his voice was beautiful, but he had always denied saying yours was better. But hearing him now, whispering softly against your ear while he nuzzled his nose to your neck affectionately made your heart throb. You take in a deep breath, this feeling in your chest, it was your heart clenching. You didn’t know if he was hurting you but you were so overwhelmed that you suddenly pushed him away.

“Did I do something wrong?” his eyes spoke, trying to reach out to you again but you take another step backward.

“This was a stupid idea” You were shocked to hear your voice crack, Donghyuck frowns at your comment.

“What do you mean?”

“Take me home.... now.”

He tried to take a step towards you but you run back towards his car, closing the door to wait for him. You lower the volume of the radio and try to gather your thoughts, what the fuck was that? You watched him walk back towards the car and swore to yourself, whatever the hell you felt earlier, whatever he did to you, he will never be able to do again. It was too much of a risk, and you swore to yourself to never let yourself be that vulnerable again.

He tries to talk to you on the way home, but your replies were dry. You were busy fiddling with your fingers while looking outside the window. He tried his best to make you tell him what he did wrong but he couldn’t get another word out from you the moment he pulled up in front of your house. You were about to leave but you decided to try and turn things around, you tried to get back to what you two were used to.

You kissed him, hauling yourself over the center console to sit on his lap. He tries to pull away but you continued to kiss, hastily lifting his shirt to try and remove it. In the end he was weak to your touch, he could never deny you of anything. He hoped that you two could talk it out in the morning but you were unavailable the next few weeks after that, busy fooling around with Johnny.

“I've got a tight grip on reality but I can't let go of what's in front of me here.

I know you're leaving in the morning when you wake up, leave me with some kind of proof it's not a dream”

Present day.

The next day you decided to visit your home town. Although you didn’t have any family left to visit, you had volunteered to play at an orphanage, it was the least you could do for the holidays. If you couldn’t be happy, you could at least make others feel it. Who knew that Jeno’s stupid guitar lessons would end up becoming an asset to you, you could at least spread a little joy to the children who didn’t have parents, you somehow understood how they felt, in a weird way.

It was a joy to finally sing with a purpose again, hearing them laugh and sing along with you made your heart sore. Well at least you didn’t feel as useless after playing with a few of the kids and chatting with the caretakers and other volunteers. It felt freeing, to finally do something right. You fucked up this year for the most of it but you felt a bit less burdened when the children asked you to braid their hair or took your hand to dance with them. After serving your purpose at the orphanage you find yourself at the intersection. You don’t know what you wanted to accomplish, but your feet ended up taking you here.

And as expected it was filled with bustling life, people going in and out of shops to buy late christmas presents, children building snowmen and riding the tiny slopes made by the snow. The traffic as usual was heavy, the cars were honking and the streets were so noisy that no one could bearly hear themselves think. You sat by a bench near the park, the intersect still in your sight. You were eating a bagel mindlessly when a little kid sat beside you, he was eyeing your guitar.

“You play?” the little kid asked and you nodded, giving him a small smile to not scare him away, you probably looked like a walking corpse; you can’t remember the last time you slept properly.

“A little bit, like five songs?” you smiled and he instantly asks you to play, there was this urgency in his voice that you couldn’t help but immediately do what he was asking.

You bite into the bagel while tuning your guitar, thinking of a song to play, well out of the five you knew how to play. You began strumming the guitar to Paramore’s The Only Exception, humming the tune as best as you could with the bagel in your mouth. You end your humming after the first chorus to be met with a grimace, the little kid laughed at you.

“You’re no good”

“Hey!” you take out the bagel from your mouth to yell jokingly at him, he scrunches his nose up when you ruffle his hair and you laugh at his annoyed face, he somehow looked familiar, was he one of the kids from the orphanage? Wait were they even allowed to leave the orphanage?

“So what’s your name?” You ask, putting the guitar back into its case. The voice that meets your ears wasn’t the little boy’s, it was a voice you haven’t heard in a long time, a voice you thought you’d never hear again.

“Dongsuk,”

This has to be a dream, it couldn’t be real. You blink a few times before pinching yourself, you were probably hallucinating. Because there is no way, not a chance the Lee Donghyuck was now standing in front of you. That shit only happens in movies, this can’t be real. But you could only rub your eyes so much, he looked real, like real enough that he was getting closer to you. And he finally speaks, and you finally realize it really is him in the flesh.

“Where have you been?” he speaks, you first thought that he was talking to you but he grabs the little boy’s arm. He glances at you and you try to speak and he simply turns his nose away from you, you feel your world crack in half.

To his defense you were the one who moved dorms, changed your number, and avoided him like a plague. So his reaction was expected, you don’t know why you were so surprised. He was about to walk away when you finally speak, he stops cold in his steps when he hears your voice.

“Donghyuck...” He turns to look at you, and his eyes were still the same. It still had the same hurt and sadness you’d usually see when he looked at you, but he looked much more angrier than you remembered.

“Let’s... talk”

“You are the only exception, oh and I'm on my way to believing.”

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stxleslyds · 4 years ago

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MY TOUGHTS ON PART TWO OF RED HOOD BY CHIP ZDARSKY :)

A DC BOOK THAT TASTES LIKE MARVEL.

You know when you are reading a book and you feel like the story you are reading seems familiar but not really within the context you are reading it at the moment? If you can’t shake the wrong sense of familiarity you search for what it probably the biggest give away, the author.

Here it’s something like that; I have read other pieces of Chip Zdarsky’s work, namely Daredevil. While I could tell you the familiarity is there, in the subject of guilt after taking the life of another person, the reality is that this book doesn’t taste like Daredevil, it tastes like Marvel.

That can be either an excellent thing (because Marvel has amazing books) or something terrible (because DC isn’t Marvel and they don’t work the same way).

As of now I can’t really tell if this Red Hood story is going to be one or the other, but I can tell you that it feels out of place in the DC universe, or at least that’s how I see it. I will explore this particular thought later, I just thought this was a nice way to open this post.

If you would like to read the first post I made about this book I will leave the link here!

Now…let’s begin.

Part two picks up exactly where part one left off, we see Jason calling Oracle so she can bring the police to the place where Jason killed Andy a.ka. that gigantic piece of shit.

Jason is having some thoughts, ones that I think are important.

“I have taken lives before, a lot of them. I have killed guys knowing nothing about them except that they had guns and murder in their hearts. Those ones are easy; I don’t have to think of their mothers getting the news or of kids being...”

Jason is troubled. He is now in front of a reality that he never truly thought about but to be honest with you I strongly believe that nobody in the DC universe thinks beyond what happens in front of them, that’s just how fictional comic worlds are designed.

Anyway, there is a little something that bothers me in this inner monologue of his, like since when have “murderers” been Jason’s actual target? Like Joker was his target but he didn’t kill him, the base of Jason’s morals when it comes to killing has always been drugs, most importantly if you sell drugs to kids. So unless he is saying “murderers” because they were selling drugs that caused people (especially kids) to overdose then I don’t really get what is going on.

Another thing that I also talked about in the first post is that Jason hasn’t killed in a very long time, this man has been sticking to the Bats rule for so long that it’s actually unreal. Even when he shot the penguin and Batman proceeded to almost beat Jason to death the penguin hadn’t died. So once again I am thinking that Zdarsky has some info that he is not sharing right now or maybe he just didn’t read Lobdell's run (in which case, can you really blame him?)

Now let me talk about the other part of his monologue “…I don’t have to think of their mothers getting the news or of kids being...” This is something that I haven’t seen in DC, direct consequences after a hero/vigilante does something, and let me tell you it feels out of place. Is it a good or bad thing? I don’t really know but I have some thoughts on the subject.

I think it's unfair to put a comic character in that situation or dilemma. Jason has basically three reactions to the same situation and they are all valid, but can this situation be handled by a fictional person in a fictional world? Because to be fair I could also ask about the criminals that are put in hospitals after they are beat up by heroes, what if they die in the hospital? Is the hero a killer or does it fall on the hospital? If a criminal cannot pay for the attention given to them in hospitals and they immediately go back to criminal activity to pay for those things, are heroes a good thing? If the Joker bombs a hospital for the third time in four months and Batman does the same thing (take joker to Arkham) only for Joker to escape and do it again, is Batman as guilty as the Joker for the deaths of innocent people or not?

As I wrote it and as I read it again I see that it is a crazy thought because you can simply add more depth to the characters decisions and the consequences that would ensue because of them, but Gotham is a fictional city created to establish that crime is off the charts and that they need Batman because no amount of resources will be able to fix this city’s problems. So putting Jason in this position is new to me…but only in DC (more of this particular thought below).

Going back to the comic in question, I feel like Jason had the answers and the ideas all in his head. In this issue alone he basically says that if the mother does not pull through the boy will be alone, but alone means going into the system (a horrible system that Jason does not trust and needs improvement), but also, Jason recognizes that if the mother died and the father was left alive then that man would have done horrendous stuff. I just simply wouldn't believe that a man that gave drugs to both his wife and son so they wouldn't bother him is just going to change after realizing that his wife died because of him. Even less believable is him becoming an amazing father.

In the big scheme of things, Jason has killed people who fitted very certain characteristics, never innocents (bye, Morrison). What happens after the killing is done? We don’t know because past stories have never focused on that (criminals in comics are by default one dimensional, villains are not)

But here is the thing, Zdarsky is a Marvel writer and Marvel has gone in depth within those situations (like what happens after heroes commit mistakes or kill someone) mostly with Civil War by Mark Millar and more recently in Daredevil written by Chip Zdarsky, but DC hasn't and DC has been plain for a long time, DC doesn't really explain how batman hurts people severely and nothing happens beyond that.

What I am trying to say is that Zdarsky is going for a different and unique route for Jason here but I think the story is out of place in the DC universe.

I promise I am done with those thoughts, they were really difficult to put on paper and to make them make sense, so I apologize if I only confused you, sorry!

Anyway! After the monologue is done we have a flashback where little Jason is being told by his mother to go buy bread (the only thing they can afford) but she is also making him leave so he doesn’t have to be present when Robby (a friend if you ask Jason’s mom, a drug dealer if you ask Jason) comes to the apartment to help her.

Sadly as Jason is leaving Robby is walking up the stairs, now not to copy little Jason but fuck Robby. Jason’s issues with drugs, drug dealing and overdosing is once again shown here but what is also shown is the violence that comes with it. Jason being terrified for himself (and his mother) as Robby pulls a knife on him broke my heart and as he is left there in the corridor to his apartment all we can see is a defeated little boy and that shit hurts a lot.

After that we jump back to the future with none other than Batgod…I mean Batman. Batman is following a man called Sydney and apparently he disappointed Batman because B told him to stop being a criminal, like come on man if I ask nicely or if I break both of your arms you will surely stop, right? Yeah, no.

I feel like I mentioned something about this while my brain decided that DC never usually explains what happens with criminals after they get caught or killed and now here we are. Consequences. Batman scares a man off of working for Scarecrow but the man still needs to work (does he have a family to provide for? We don’t know. Does he do it because it’s the only job he can get? We don’t know.)

This Batman intermission ends up with Oracle telling him that Jason might be in trouble.

So we find ourselves back with Jason and Tyler in his safe house, Zdarsky does not hesitate and first thing he does is give us a couple of very angsty panels.

I love the way it hurts.

Jason honey, my sweet chonky boy…what are you doing?

Well at least I am not the only one asking that because Jason is having a moment to reflect about what has happened, what is happening and what could happen in the future. In this monologue he says the following:

“Dammit, Jason, what the hell are you doing? You can’t take care of this kid! But you can’t put him in the system either! Just waiting for some obsessed militaristic billionaire to adopt him? Dammit. His dad was scum, he hurt Tyler, he hurt his mom. But if Tyler’s mom doesn’t pull through…I just made this kid an orphan. He is my responsibility, he is too young to really see what he’s gone through, he can still be saved…unlike…”

Yeah that’s some really angsty thoughts, he is really going through it and I understand it. He lost his cool after what that horrible human being said he did and killed him and now he has to face the consequences of his actions, he recognizes that if the boy is left truly alone he will have to step up…but here is the thing, does Jason really want that? It seems to me like Jason is deeply against the idea of children working as heroes, and here he is as an adult that is a vigilante with an impressionable child that sees the Red Hood as his hero, I don’t know, it looks like the perfect recipe for a disaster.

But we don’t get to see what Jason does right away because its flashback time.

Jason only moved from his spot in the corridor of his apartment door to get the bread but as Robby comes out of said door Jason is there waiting. Robby teases that he and Jason’s mom ended up sharing the “medicine” and that she will be sleeping for a long time, and that seems to be it for Jason because next thing you know Robby is falling down the stairs.

Aw, shit.

Jason from the future continues his monologue while he remembers what happened on those stairs.

“I never had a chance, not for one second. But he does, Tyler has a chance. I can help him, help him be okay. This doesn’t…what I did…what his parents did, it doesn’t have to define him.”

So Jason wants to make things right for Tyler so he doesn’t become like Jason. Now I don’t truly know what Zdarsky is going for but I will go for the unconscious route, little Jason pushed Robby (that fucker) down the stairs and he was left unconscious there.

In Jason’s eyes Tyler is still a good kid that deserves only the best (like you Jason, please don’t think so low about yourself) and that can be saved from a life of vengeance, justice and trauma. But whatever Jason was going to actually say to Tyler we don’t know because Tyler informs Jason that through the Red Hood mask there is someone telling him that Batman is coming.

Batman appears out of nowhere as he does and starts talking shit.

Honestly Batman what is with that “not my town” bullshit? Baby this isn’t the medieval times, you are not a king and as far as I know not only is Lucius Fox richer than you but so is Dick so sit your ass down and shut the fuck up.

Luckily Jason is giving the outstanding amount of zero fucks and tells Batman exactly what he needs to be told, sadly Jason’s big brain time doesn’t last long because he absolutely loses his cool and starts a fight. So you know what that means, monologue time!

“This was a mistake, but I can’t help myself, he gets under my skin. His sanctimony, he acts like he’s God, all knowing, all seeing when really…he’s just another failed parent.”

Amen. Jason knows many languages but he chose to speak facts.

As the monologue ends Batman is standing over Jason like he is about to murder him but no such thing happens because Tyler, who was quietly watching them fight, jumps in to protect Jason. Yep, there goes my heart, goodbye.

And this is it. The issue ends with Tyler putting an end to the fight and telling batman that he has to leave the Red Hood alone because he is a good guy. Jason of course is thankful and promises that everything is fine.

I don’t know about you guys but so far I can’t say if I like the book or not. Both parts left me with mixed feelings. I obviously want to see how it ends but I honestly think that there is only one way this story can end with a happy ending, which I think it would be Tyler going back to his mom and Jason somehow working to help her with her drug addiction, maybe even have Dick involved so he can help them economically.

Things that I surely do not want to see are Jason backing down again and limiting himself to the Bats rules. I also absolutely don’t want Zdarsky to go all Geoff Johns on us and make Jason think that he should give up the Red Hood mantle.

Jason really needs to gain his confidence back, he was smart, calculated and strategic and now they have taken those things away to accentuate his “daddy issues” and “inferiority complex”. Why the quotation marks you ask? Oh, because those things are bullshit and there is no room for those things in Jason’s characterization other than to add more angst to the plot.

Let me know how you felt about the issue and my review! Are you excited about what the four next issues are going to bring to the story?

Also if you read Marvel, did this issue taste like Marvel to you too or am I going crazy?

#Jason Todd #red hood #red hood outlaw #batman: urban legends #batman urban legends #infinite frontier #DC comics #robin

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crimsonfluidessence · 3 years ago

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Prompt 8: Adroit

Content Warning: Mentions of Torture School sucked. That was the conclusion Esredes came to for most of his childhood. He was never the biggest fan of many aspects of it, of sitting indoors and listening to lectures when he could be out in the world. Writing in particular was never fun. So many rules had to be drilled into him, on how sentences and grammar worked and what the proper words to use were. So many hours collectively he must have spent, pouring over dictionaries and definitions, scolded and given a bad grade if his writing did not match the expected standards. He never did quite get the hang of it. Even as an adult, he found himself back in the same loop of dictionaries always being out on his desk when he had the brilliant idea to accept a House of Lords members’ offer of being an assistant and look over and write letters and speeches and proposals for the man. Some nobles he knew could write flourishing and beautiful things with ease, but he always had to stop and get fixated on words, if this or that was spelled right or flowed correctly, only for the end result to be something he always felt resembled a noble’s writing, but if one were to observe it more carefully and pick it apart, it would come undone at the seams. At least all those failed drafts were simply put in the trash. His war journal stayed locked away in his home nowadays, not only for the particular out of the ordinary pages like the time he wrote a full page of I’m sorry, but the few times in his life he tried to write poetry lines in it on a whim. It was awful, and he regretted it the moment after he finished trying. The page was almost intelligible with crossed out words, but it read like a madman’s disjointed ramblings trying to sound pretty. How the hell did poetry work? He had no idea, and it was an embarrassment to take to his grave, or else truly no worse fate would await him. He was mediocre at mathematics. No excuse of simply being a child of less artistic disciplines- he found nothing significant for himself in pretty much any part of schooling except history. He liked reading about the past, and it took to his memory much better than equations or the different forms of the same word. Seraphiaux always did better, even when he neglected studies. There he was, the little child prodigy learning alchemy and healing at age seven with all his books, and Esredes was trying to understand semicolons at fifteen. He was going to be a healer, Esredes would be a Temple Knight- and only one of them had any progress towards it at all. His parents did not allow him to play or practice with swords or weapons of any kind. “Not until you enter training,” they said. “It’s too dangerous.”Most noble children would probably be far better off coming from two parents who did not fight in the war, who did not try to push and train them to be soldiers from an early age. Esredes was an exception to that, as he thought. Instead, he was stuck in the increasing realization that he had little talent for anything. It only made sense to him later why- a soldier could not have other talents, or else they would be distracted from their purpose and not want to fight. But he did not know yet he was one, for sure, and all he could do to escape was funnel into his little wish. It wasn’t the easiest journey to finish schooling, but he managed it. Right into training he went… and there came a breakdown soon enough. The shield. That stupid goddamn shield. He hated carrying it and no matter what he did, he could not get the hang of using it. I’m going to fail, he thought for sure. He would have to go back to his parents and accept he had no passion to pursue, and then work extremely hard every day to be good enough to be head of house, when he knew in his heart he was not enough for it. Yet it all passed as he funneled himself solely into the sword at the instruction of a superior, and once more he had something. Combat. He was right all along. Combat was his answer to everything, his shining star of purpose and ability. Day after day after day, he threw his entire body and soul into training. Nothing could match that ecstasy of true purpose and being. The day he was knighted was the best of his life. Superiors took notice of him, sometimes for the bad but more often for the good, especially as time went on. The ecstasy eventually faded as the harsher realities of battle came to be, but still in those moments of promotion and praise from the higher ups, when people spoke of his accomplishments and even, increasingly as time went on, his bouts of strategy in battle, it surged back up in a lesser form. When he was twenty two, an opportunity came to him like no other. A captured heretic who had the blood of dragons in him which his squadron had apprehended. “Let me interrogate him alone before the Inquisitors come,” Esredes asked his superior. He had done just enough questioning people in the past that he was confident an answer for his curse could be found. Alas, as he carved into the captive repeatedly and shouted at him about his affliction, he ended up empty handed. His one shot at answers had been blown in a bout of overconfidence, and questions raged on in his head. It got easier when he returned to the art of interrogation after the law no longer held him down. As he realized how important it was to get into their heads, slithering up through their ear canals with a tongue increasingly coated in silver, and pull it apart from inside. Then came civilization again, and Esredes was left constantly wondering why people kept spilling their lives’ stories and turmoils to him when they barely knew each other. Why did people constantly look at him like he had just trudged up and told them something they never realized about themselves, when he had just stated the obvious anyone could figure out from dealing with people for thirty three years? Why did he seem to calm some people down so easily just by opening his mouth- that half when he wasn’t inciting them to anger as he always did? Well, being the Keeper of Secrets was not easy, but as he left for Dravania to maintain a fragile peace as a diplomat some days, and looked over his list of clients and his near perfect record others, he smiled about it to himself in the comfort of the blue walls. Yet it was never enough. He had climbed to a Temple Commander before he fell, climbed in much less time to the top of the Disciples and then their leader, managed to pull himself out of being a wanted criminal to multiple people offering him jobs in areas he never expected to take, and yet the same internal monologue repeated. I can’t do this, he said as he tried each new job far outside of his perceived, singular combat ability. So many others could do this better than me. There would be a shining and perfectly talented Ishgardian, one who hadn’t fought in the heretic’s side of the war, who was merely open minded and far more likable, and he would finally be fired from his diplomacy job and replaced by them. Ferrant would never replace him, but it didn’t mean he wasn’t still constantly stressing that he was not meant for the work and couldn’t be enough help. And while he was no longer at a risk of firing since going independent on his side job, and he did not expect all his clients to stop showing up, it never eased that anxiety every time that he could mess it up and do everything wrong in a heartbeat, and ruin everything. But if another counselor like him ever showed up in the same circles, and just proved to be so much better than him At least he still had combat, he told himself. As stupid incompetent children fought primals, ended the war, and got all the peoples’ admiration and praise, he still had combat. As he continued to make critical errors here and there in his ventures, and get in trouble with the Inquisition for vigilantism, forced only to stick to the law enforcement of the wilderness and the expeditions his friends would not take to the system, he still had combat. Not every day anymore as he stuck to his civilian tasks, but he had it. What would a talentless soldier be without the purpose of combat? Of dying, of sacrifice, or usefulness? The disgraced Temple Knight who would never officially and legally fight for anything ever again, only forced to emulate ability in areas he was never built for? The answer found itself in bars. Former Dragoons, it was almost always Dragoons. The ones who started fights just to feel anything, screamed at and insulted people because they truly felt they had no purpose in life anymore, and refused to move on to do anything productive. Esredes sighed to himself every time when he saw them. Perhaps he was not a man of talents, but he would continue to blend in and pretend. If not only for being above making an even bigger disgrace of himself. He always hated too much attention. ----- @heartofthefury Seraphiaux/Ferrant

#writing #in action #ffxivwrite2021 #younger esredes #ferrant #Seraphiaux #esrey's office

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namyks · 4 years ago

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Themes in C2, and why Lucien makes for a perfect BBEG.

So, now that we’re coming up on the end of the campaign, I wanted to just talk about some of the themes of campaign 2. The three major themes that I found through out C2 are a group of broken people coming together to fight the whims of fate and becoming a found family, abuse, specifically from family, and fighting back against a corrupt authority. It’s not well written at all, but I’ve been wanting to talk about this stuff for awhile now. Under a read more, ‘cause this is long.

The first point I won’t talk about too much, as it’s literally one of the themes of almost any narrative focused ttrpg game. I will say that while the found family aspect of C2 was handled better than C1, as a result the world of Wildemount doesn’t feel as fleshed out. The MN are a naturally untrusting, and morally ambiguous group and as such, they never really set up roots anywhere. The closest we got was either Nicodranas or the Xorhaus, and those are more places to rest rather than an actual home. This also lead to them having significantly less connections than VM, with their only major allies being Yussa, Pumat, and Essek. They kind of have the respect of the Bright Queen, but that never really went anywhere. Having said all of that, one of the biggest strengths of C2 is that everybody had a well defined and established relationship with one another. Not to take potshots at C1, but some character relations were almost entirely ignored, outside of one quick dialogue between one another.

As far as abuse was concerned, almost every single member of the Nein was abused, with Molly and Cad being the exceptions that prove the rule. I don’t have to talk about Beau or Caleb, as their abuse and trauma was spelled out pretty easily. Yasha’s entire clan ruined her life because she loved the wrong person and forced her to Obann. Veth’s village seemed to see her, and treat her, as an outsider because she liked “weird” things, which lead her to doubting her own abilities and possibly being a root to her alcholism. Fjord had Sabian, the orphanage, and to an extent Vandren. Vandren’s abuse was more of showing toxic leadership to Fjord, which Fjord attempted to copy, up until he realized how shit it was and turned into the leader we saw in those last couple of episodes. And as much as we understand and can empathize with Marion, locking up a child and isolating her from people that weren’t either employees or clients inside of a house, regardless of how gilded it may be, is a horrible thing to do.

I don’t think any of the Nein particularly care for authority, and most are 100% down to topple corrupt regimes if they fuck with them. I remember at least Beau and Jester had specific instructions from the Cobalt Soul and Arty respectively to punish those that used their power for wrong. But even outside of that, Caleb wants to burn the assembly down so it can be remade to be better, Fjord seems to believe in interpersonal hierarchies/chains of command but has no trust in government institutions as shown by his mistrust of the BQ, and complete lack of want to get involved with Dwendalian politics unless they fucked with the Nein first.

As far as Lucien being the BBEG is concerned, I think he represents every one of the themes in a relatively unique way. Of course, they initially found out about him because they wanted to help out Molly, and that’s been one of the main ways they’ve been dealing with his bullshit, both narratively and from the boss fight. It’s also worth noting that he saw the Tomb Takers more as pawns and tools, rather than companions, which spits right in the face of how the Nein treat each other. Lucien’s monologue before he blew up the Somnovem is one of the things that really got me thinking about most of the Nein having abusive parental figures. He mentions wanting to be a parent to the hive-mind, and that just really resonated with me as a horribly shitty thing to do. He also attempts to gaslights the MN, and always pushes the responsibility of his shitty actions against them onto the Nein. The authoritative bit goes with his abusive nature, he’s a narcissist and wants everything else to share in his beliefs and ideals, and will force that on them via Cognoza if they refuse him.

All of this is so completely the opposite of how the Nein operate, that I can’t see anyone else working as a final boss other than the risen form of their old friend, who is pushing for things none of them would want, in a way none of them agree with.

Thanks for listening to me ramble if you got this far.

#Critical role #critical role spoilers

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birlcholtz · 3 years ago

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Fic Questions

tagged by @the-lincyclopedia thank you!! (fun game: watch my writing get progressively less formal as the post continues. by the end it’s like what is capitalization)

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

77!

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

434,378 as of this week but it does go up quite regularly

3. How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

Okay so in terms of what’s on my AO3, I have Check Please, All For the Game, Sharp Zero, HP, and Miraculous Ladybug. I also have The Forbidden LOTR and PJO Fanfiction (as in, I’ve written it, but it’s never seeing the light of day)

(technically there is a PJO fic out there that has seen the light of day but I orphaned it because I was tired of getting comments asking about when it would be updated)

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

and then i met you (and the whole world changed)

for the better

Knew It Was You

come home (to you, to us)

sin bin schematics

All of these are Check Please and all of them except Knew It Was You are part of my Zimbits Airport AU!

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I do! It’s actually a very recent thing that I’ve started not responding to literally every single comment. Mainly I respond because I love talking about my writing so I am going to seize that opportunity when it comes up

6. What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

Oh, DEFINITELY Happy Birthday (HP). Check out that MCD tag ahah. (I say HP but what I really mean is that I write fic about Regulus Black. The Regulus Black-centric tag is my home in the HP fandom)

fun fact: this is a very short fic that I wrote when I was 15 and basically forgot about until recently, and then I reread it recently and went holy shit?? I pulled NO punches????

7. Do you write crossovers? If so, what is the wildest one you’ve written?

Not a ton? I think a lot of the fandoms I write for don’t really mesh that well. That being said, the aforementioned orphaned PJO fic is actually a PJO/ML crossover, so there’s that

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Nope! Sometimes I get comments that are just.... really confusing? And a more common thing is that in my AFTG fic I’ll get comments from people who are so focused on Andreil (or the most common ships in general) to the point that like. they miss the point of what I actually wrote. Those are annoying but they’re not hate, they’re very enthusiastic, they’re just... enthusiastic about a story I’m not writing? So it’s a bit frustrating.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

No sjflskgjhgf I struggle enough to write kissing, I think if I ever tried to write smut my brain would just shut down. I’ve managed some fade-to-blacks (which are mostly in WIPs that haven’t been posted) but they rely HEAVILY on the powers of implication

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of!

11. Have you ever had a fic translated?

No, although I have occasionally made a brief go of it, not to post, more as an exercise for myself in a language that I’m learning. Anyway I never finish them so I’m gonna say no

12. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Not really? I’ve definitely group brainstormed fics and then written them (the best example of this being Q&A (AFTG), which was the product of a truly off-the-walls group chat), but I tend to do all the actual writing myself. I think the way I write would drive a co-writer up the wall since it’s very disorganized and I don’t write stuff down because ~I know what’s gonna happen I don’t need notes~ and it would infuriate me if I was co-writing with me lmao, so I won’t inflict that on someone else

13. What’s your all-time favorite ship?

I regularly move through ships I’m SUPER focused on, like it’s kind of a rotation. I will forever and always ship Percabeth though.

14. What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

Okay so if you follow me at @birlwrites you may know this already, but i have this ‘warmups’ document that is just like, random ideas i get that i don’t necessarily want to finish but i just want to try out for a bit? and i have a rule that once a ‘warmup’ is more than 10 pages long (so 11+) then it has to be moved to its own document, just to make scrolling through the warmups doc easier. but usually, a warmup only passes 10 pages when i’m INTO it. so i have a bazillion wips i will probably never finish. i complain about this a lot. i have so many wips. i don’t need more.

here’s one: it’s titled ‘interrobang doesn’t know they’re dating’, it’s basically a full outline for a chowder/tango fic and it would be SO cool if i could ever like. get around to writing it. but i am constantly swamped with writing projects, so it’s probably not gonna happen. if anyone’s interested in adopting it though i’d be down for that!! i think it’s a fun idea i just almost def won’t write it myself

15. What are your writing strengths?

SNAPPY DIALOGUE AND SNARKY INTERNAL MONOLOGUE. my writing is COMEDIC, 90% of my ideas are based on a funny snippet that popped into my head, a lot of my worldbuilding is based on ‘hey you know what would be hilarious’ (whenever i explain how larai selects a chosen one in the rainfall universe i start laughing, which is a STARK contrast to how it plays out on the page), i love writing funny stuff!!

also i think my writing sounds nice, a lot of the time i pick words/syntax based on sound and flow so there’s that too. and i have lots of ideas! i don’t struggle much with writer’s block because a) i have a lot of strategies to deal with it and b) i have a lot of ideas to help get around it/work with it

16. What are your writing weaknesses?

PHYSICAL INTIMACY LMAO, sometimes in my end notes on shippy fics you can see me complaining ‘it took me literally 4 hours to write that very brief kiss’. also sometimes the humor in my writing gets in the way a bit, i have to very consciously put it away so characters can actually have serious, genuine emotions. also i don’t like outlining and i tend not to get betas for fanfiction so like..... i do my best continuity-wise but having really tightly plotted stories is just not my focus lol. (and i do put more effort into that for original stuff, it’s just fic where i kind of go wild)

17. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

If the reader’s supposed to know what it means, then writing it in another language is iffy for me. (stuff like terms of endearment which come up a lot in fic are fine imo, you can just put a note in to translate them and your reader will prob remember)

If the pov character isn’t supposed to understand it, and it doesn’t matter if the reader understands it, then ig it’s fine? but unless you already speak the other language (and i am NOT confident in my ability to translate english into literally any other language), then i think it’s way easier to just note that a character’s speaking x language and provide tone indicators, body language cues, etc. so the reader understands as much as the pov character.

That being said there are def times when it’s used super effectively--the dialogue in spanish in cemetery boys comes to mind! that’s not fanfic but it’s still creative writing so w/e

so i guess it comes down to: does actually writing out the dialogue in the other language serve a purpose? if it doesn’t, then you’re filling up the screen with words your reader isn’t likely to understand, which i try to avoid doing

18. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

so the first fandom i actually *wrote* for was PJO, but i distinctly remember creating warrior cats OCs when i was little. i never actually did anything w them but i had them and my favorite was a riverclan warrior named shellstream i remember this VIVIDLY

19. What’s your favorite fic you’ve ever written?

oh boy. okay so this is hard because i feel like i’m continuously improving as a writer. like in the sense that my writing is getting closer and closer to really matching my own taste? my favorites tend to always be my current projects as a result. and i do really love set those ghosts alight (HP) but it feels a little like cheating to say a fic i haven’t even finished writing yet. even though it’s def not cheating, that’s just the direction my brain is taking it.

i’m gonna say and then what? (OMGCP) because i’m super proud of the prose (especially ch 2 aka the first actual prose chapter), survived by (HP) for SUCCESSFULLY WRITING AN EMOTION and making readers cry :), and Q&A (AFTG) because i’m literally the one who wrote it and yet it still makes me wheeze. those are all fics i reread occasionally, because i’m big enough to admit i enjoy rereading my old stuff! (just like. to a point. some of my old stuff i can’t look at anymore because all the mistakes stick out to me like they have spotlights shining directly on them)

this was fun!! i’m gonna do an open tag because i just started my fall semester and brain tired. i know sometimes people see open tags and assume the op didn’t really mean it but I MEAN IT, PLEASE DO THIS AND TAG ME!!!!! YES YOU READING THIS

#tag games #long post #birl talks

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dialovers-translations · 4 years ago

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Diabolik Lovers GRAND EDITION for Switch ;; More, Blood ー Yuma Dark [Epilogue]

Monologue

ーー The way to survive in a world which has lost all order.

Is to first and foremost band together as a group.

No matter how strong or how clever you may be,

if your opponent outnumbers you by just the slightest margin,

you have no shot at winning.

That is most likely the reason why,

the more rowdy the city, the larger the number of gangs.

And in this city as well,

the gangs which had been formed by groups of orphansーー

they would call them ‘teams’,

and there were several of them.

Lucks was the Boss who kept together,

one of the top teams of the city,

and also the person who picked me up,

after I was left for dead in a back-alley.

One day, one week, one month.

The more time I spent together with him,

the more I began to realize just how amazing he truly was.

He was obviously skilled in battle,

but also oddly intelligent for someone who lived in the slums,

as well did he excel in leadership and decision-making.

On top of that, he had a strong sense of justice and a caring heart.

It was only obvious that many people gathered,

around such an ideal-seeming leader.

Including myself as well,

Boss therefore had many henchman under his wing.

He would even look out for those henchmen’s followers.

There was simply no way that someone with such principles,

could let a person starve to death.

Thanks to Boss,

we got a serving of bread and fruit once every day.

However, the number of us henchmen,

was by no means small. Regardless,

how did Boss manage to provide,

this much food for us?

The amount was simply too much to achieve through theft.

I found this odd.

ー The scene starts with a flashback in the city

Lucks: Here you go, Bear. This is today’s share.

Bear: ...Say, how do you get your hands on this food?

Lucks: Haah? You’re worried about that sorta stuff?

Bear: I’m glad you’re feeding us. However, I’m worried you might be getting yourself involved with dangerous business...

Lucks: Seems like you still don’t quite understand. Not a single thing is risk-free in this city.

Bear: Thenーー

Lucks: But you know, that is nothing for you to worry about.

That’s my duty as a Boss. All you need to do is sit there and munch on your bread.

Bear: ...

*TIMESKIP*

Bear: ( Sometimes Boss disappears without a word... )

( If I find out how he acquires the food, I might be able to help out as well. )

( I owe Boss big time. So I want to help him in every way I can. )

Lucks: ...Ugh...

*Thud*

Bear: ...! B-Boss!?

Oi, Boss! Hang in there! Why are you this...?

Lucks: ...Bear...Is that you? You found me at the worst possible time...

*Rustle*

Bear: ( There’s chafes all over his body...? )

...! Boss, don’t tell me...

Lucks: ...If possible, I would have liked to keep this a secret from you. Despite your rough personality, you are still innocent after all (1)...

The people who give me money...They all treat me like some kind of slave...However, I don’t plan on selling off my heart or soul.

No matter how much money they offer, or how much they control me...I will never belong to anyone.

Even quasi-livestock like me still has a pride left...

ー The flashback ends as the scene shifts to the infirmary

Yuma: ...

A livestock’s pride, huh...?

Yui: ...Nn...

Yuma: Pretty cheeky of ya to repeat his exact same words, huh? Right, Sow...?

*Rustle*

Reinhart: How is she doing?

Yuma: Aahn? Fuck off. Can’t ya tell? She’s snoozin’.

Reinhart: Oh my, you’re right. That being said, she seemed to be suffering from pretty severe anemia...Do you have any clue what might have happened?

Yuma: Beats me! Why do ya ask me? It’s damn annoyin’.

Reinhart: Why, you ask? ...Aren’t you her boyfriend?

Yuma: Boyfriend? Hah! That’s the best joke I’ve ever heard.

Reinhart: Oh, you’re not? I figured that was the case seeing as you were carrying her in your arms as you brought her in.

Yuma: That’s not her role. She’s just part of a ‘means’. ...One to fulfill my ambition, that is.

Reinhart: Your ambition? Are you talking about your dreams for the future? I’m impressed you’ve already got that figured out at your age! What kind of dream is it?

Yuma: Che, shut up. Didn’t ya hear me when I said you’re damn annoyin’!?

Reinhart: Ah, come on. If you shout like thaーー

*Rustle*

Yui: Nn...

Reinhart: See? You woke her up. Good morning, Komori-san. How are you feeling?

Yui: Sensei and...Yuma-kun...?

( ...Right. I was about to fall over from anemia, when Yuma-kun stepped in and... )

( ...My memory is failing me. I must have lost consciousness at some point after he sucked my blood a second time... )

Uhm, right now it’s...?

Reinhart: Fourth period is almost over. You slept soundly.

Yui: That long...?

Yuma: Ya slept way too long just ‘cause you’re runnin’ a lil’ low on blood!

Yui: S-Sorry...

Reinhart: Watch your mouth, Yuma-kun! That’s not a very nice way to put it? Being kind to women should be the basic rule of any man, no?

Yuma: Kind? Hah, you’ve got to be kidding me. She’s not worth that sorta treatment.

Yui: ( I’m nothing but a toy in Yuma-kun’s eyes after all...There’s no way he would be kind to me. )

( ...But, he did bring me to the infirmary after I had lost consciousness. I should be grateful for that, right? )

( Although he is the reason this happened in the first place though... )

Reinhart: Hmm, your complexion is still a little pale. Are you anemic after all?

Right now you are only showing light symptoms, but if it gets more severe, please go to the hospital.

Well, you kids are still young, so for now focus on eating good, nutritious meals, okay?

Yui: Yes. Thank you very much.

Reinhart: Well then, I’ll be on my way to the staff room but if you still feel unwell, you can rest here. What about you, Yuma-kun?

Yuma: Aah? If she remains here, I obviously will as well.

Reinhart: Fufu, you must be really worried about her.

Yui ( No way he’s worried, he just wants to keep an eye on me... )

Reinhart: I’ll leave you in her care then. Ah, do you remember what I said earlier? You have to be kind toーー

Yuma: Shut yer fuckin’ mouth! Go already!!

Reinhart: Ahaha, good luck then!

Yui: ( Sensei’s amazing, he can just laugh it off when Yuma-kun snaps at him. )

Yuma-kun, are you sure you shouldn’t go? To class.

Yuma: ...Aah?

Yui: ( Uwah, he’s in a foul mood...I probably shouldn’t say anything unnecessary now... )

Yuma: Geez...From havin’ to carry ya ‘round, gettin’ hindered by that damn NEET to dealin’ with that nosy Teacher...Today seriously sucked big time.

It’s all ‘cause ya collapsed on me. Take some responsibility, Sow.

Yui: ...! N-No more blood today, okay!?

( I feel like I’ll be in serious trouble if he sucks me yet another time! )

Yuma: I’ve fed off ya twice and ya already reached yer limit? It’s ‘cause you’re so damn tiny.

...Che, guess it can’t be helped. It won’t be delicious if I suck ya when you’re already all shriveled.

Then just rest up here until school’s over. I get to skip classes as well. Gotta watch ya after all. I won’t have Ruki scold me afterwards.

Yui: The whole time...Until after class? I’ve actually come to school, so I’d like to at least attend final period...

Yuma: Don’t be complainin’! I’m tellin’ ya to rest so get to sleep!!

Yui: F-Fine...! I understand, so please don’t yell like that.

Yuma: ...Che, look at ya twitchin’ in fear. Nn...

Yui: ( Ah, those sugar cubes again...He brings those with him even to school. Just how much does he like them? )

( Well, but...Despite everything he says, he’ll stay here with me the whole time, right? Even if he just wants to skip class. )

( Perhaps Yuma-kun is just the slightest bit worried about me as well. )

( I should probably thank him at least? )

ー Yuma moves closer

Yui: Say, Yuma-kun. Thaーー Nguh!?

*Rustle*

–> If you are playing the Limited V edition or the Grand Edition, little black roses will appear on the screen. If you click on them, you get an extra line of dialogue.

“Don’t make a fuss. Keep still.”

“...Aah? What? You’re curious ‘bout Sugar-chan?”

“Che...! Geez, this bed is too damn small...They should change it to somethin’ a lil’ more fittin’ for someone my size!”

Yui: ...!?

Yuma: Nn...Come on, eat it. Don’t ya dare spit it out.

Yui: ( It’s sweet...Is this sugar he’s forcing inside my mouth...!? )

Yuma: Ya should feel grateful. I’m sharin’ my cute lil’ Sugar-chan with someone like ya after all...

Yui: ...Nn...

Yuma: Come on, I’ll make an exception and add in one more.

Yui: ( My mouth’s full...! How many will he stuff inside...!? )

Nn...Phew...Nn...

Yuma: Hah...Ya swallowed them all, right?

Yui: ( Is it from the...sweetness of the sugar? For some reason, I feel strange... )

Yuma: How’s that? Delicious, right?

Eat some good food like this to get yer blood runnin’ again, then lemme suck it as soon as possible. ...Understood?

If even livestock has a pride, ya shouldn’t throw in the towel over somethin’ like this.

Show me some guts...

Yui: ( I doubt sugar cubes will provide much nutrition though... )

( ...But, he might be worrying about me in his own way. )

( I wonder if he has this side to him because he was once human...? )

ーー TO BE CONTINUED ーー

Translation notes

(1) The term 擦れる or ‘sureru’ usually means something like ‘to become worn out’ or ‘to chafe’, but it can also mean ‘to lose one’s innocence’.

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<- [ Dark 10 ] [ Maniac Prologue ] ->

#diabolik lovers #dialovers #yuma mukami #more blood #diabolik lovers translation #mbyumadarkepilog

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doomarchives · 4 years ago

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David Annandale’s The Harrowing Of Doom: An In-Depth Review

So, I was kindly offered an advance reviewer’s copy of The Harrowing of Doom by David Annandale for the Marvel Untold series, a new prose line revolving around Marvel’s villains. Although I’m not personally familiar, the author’s prior written work and academic scholarship indicated a strong background in fantasy, science fiction, as well as horror film and literature - all essential elements of Doom himself honestly, whether in his character, design, or formative influences. A promising start from the outset!

To no one’s surprise, I was especially excited for this one. Doctor Doom is both my favorite Marvel character and area of nerdy comics expertise, and Annandale sounded like the perfect candidate to tackle him.

The Harrowing of Doom centers around a conflict familiar to those who know the character. Taking place fifteen years after his ascension to the throne, Victor von Doom is still hellbent on rescuing the soul of his mother, Cynthia, trapped in hell by the demon Mephisto. His yearly attempts to save her have been fruitless thus far, but he believes he can really do it this time, enlisting the help of a new character, Maria von Helm, and some of his lesser known subjects (also new characters) to accomplish the task, by building a machine called The Harrower. The noble scheme is further complicated by the reappearance of Prince Rudolfo Fortunov, son of the monarch deposed and murdered by Doom years prior, who is equally determined to take back what he believes is his birthright by any means necessary. The novel is a relatively dense and detailed one, and as a true blue Doom enthusiast, I have a dense and detailed review to match.

The first thing that I personally take note of in any material involving Doom is the author’s perspective on the truth of Latveria’s “benevolent dictatorship.” It immediately speaks volumes about a writer’s perception of Doom’s accountability and sense of morality; it kind of ends up coloring his entire characterization. That being said, I was really pleased by the evenhandedness with which Annandale treats Doom’s Latveria and his influence upon his subjects. It slots in neatly with some of the greats, Lee & Kirby, Jonathan Hickman, Roger Stern, etc with the acknowledgement that Doom is indeed a despot with an iron fist and a will absolute, but one who cares for the wellbeing of his country. Through dialogue from his subjects like the skittish Father Grigori Zargo and diehard loyal Captain Kariana Verlak, the reader gets the sense that Doom’s rule may be the best leadership Latveria has ever known. (A brief aside: another great strength of The Harrowing of Doom that has to be mentioned is the fleshing out of these different original characters. Maria von Helm was a particularly welcome addition, as a close friend of Doom’s mother and a far more empathetic magic user compared to him.)

Verlak is openly married to Dr. Elsa Orloff, a trans woman and neurosurgeon of international renown. Both of them had experienced the Fortunov rule that predated Doom’s, with Orloff even having fled Fortunov’s Latveria when she first come out as transgender, in fear of his tyrannical rule and the dangerously transphobic legislature he enforced called “The Laws of the Person.” It is apparent that Doom exists in obvious juxtaposition to the prior ruler’s bigotry. Beyond the total erasure of all previous discrimination and state-enforced bigotry, he has Verlak appointed in a role of great prominence, gave Orloff the tools she needed to succeed in her field, and even shares an exchange with her where he remarks that he knows her from her publications in the Lancet Neurology and that he appreciates them for their “speculative” approach. In an excellent exchange between Father Zargo and the rebel Prince Fortunov, the priest, who is by far Doom’s number one fan, explains Doom’s mesmerizing hold on the populace and the benefits they reap from his rule, despite it being a despotic one:

“I’ll be explicit, all the same,” said Zargo. “Doom is a sun king, even more fully than Louis XIV ever was. Latveria is a world power. How? Because of Doom and only because of Doom. Latveria’s strength and its wealth come from his inventions. And the beams of his sun touch every citizen. Universal basic income, free healthcare, free schooling, free universities, free training to the highest level of your calling - all of these things flow from Doom.”

“Free?” Fortunov snarled.

“The price is obedience, yes,” said Zargo, “And yes, Doom is feared.” Zargo stopped himself from saying Vladimir was feared and hated. [...] “Even though Doom is feared, he also is Latveria in every sense that matters.”

What I really appreciated was the author’s ability to walk the tightrope of acknowledging how beneficial Doom is for the country and his protectiveness over his domain, whilst also acknowledging Doom’s intense paternalism that ultimately favors his own goals. Doom, as well-read comic fans would know, is heralded as one of Marvel’s master manipulators. It’s a great strength of this novel to see him exerting his willpower and the strength of his personality to manipulate and sometimes, fully overpower that of his subjects. Father Zargo is definitely the most profound victim of this, a man with ties to both the church and the occult. Through the novel, Doom insistently pushes him towards the latter, his priorities made clear in one sentence: “The work was what mattered. Zargo’s soul was not Doom’s concern.” An especially interesting scene occurs later in the novel. Without too much elaboration, Doom performs an experiment where he uses the old Latverian nobility as guinea pigs. This was something I immensely liked, corroborating one of my own personal perceptions of Doom. It’s always made sense to me that Doom would continue to hold a certain amount of disdain for Latverian high society, even after he went from low class Romani boy to monarch himself.

(“The Fantastic Origin of Doctor Doom,” Fantastic Four Annual #2.)

Afterwards his partner, Maria von Helm, muses aloud that she always wondered why Doom let vestiges of the old regime remain, to which Doom responds: “Now you know. The aristocracy has its uses, and the advantages of being disposable.” It’s maybe my favorite example in the book of the exceptions to Doom’s purported benevolence. He does want the country to flourish and for his subjects to prosper, but this intent can be superseded by his innately ambitious nature and his own personal biases. It’s clear at several points in the book that Annandale is obviously well-read on Doom himself, but it was especially in the capturing of this nuance that it really stuck out to me in a big way. (As well as the fun reference to Doom’s brief jaunt in the French Riviera in Supervillain Team-Up!)

Outside of this core aspect of his characterization, I really enjoyed how the novel not only built up Doom’s cult of personality, but emphasized the sheer magnetism of Doom himself, in person. Constantly, characters find themselves buffeted by strength of his will, craving his approval or cowering and scrambling to avoid his displeasure. It’s a great true-to-character depiction of interactions between Doom and Latverian citizens, dynamics that were only touched upon briefly in the periphery of most comics involving Doom. I think, ironically, this is also perhaps the source of one of the novel’s few weaknesses. By keeping the book very Latveria-focused, Annandale does an excellent job of adding world-building on every level, from expounding on Latverian national holidays to the layouts of Doomstadt to the country’s storied history with witches predating Doom and his mother. But the fact that Doom mostly interacts with those beneath him or those who work for him gives the reader a bit of a myopic, overtly flattering perspective of him as almost too certain, too powerful, too unfeeling. I suppose it serves the scope of the novel for Doom to be more an obelisk of a man than fully well-rounded, but I contest that one of the best things about his character is that his indomitable exterior hides a deep well of pain and uncertainty.

(“In The Clutches of Doctor Doom,” Fantastic Four #17.)

(“Oath of Fealty,” Doctor Doom #7.)

The novel obviously perceives Doom as Byronic, there’s even excerpts from Manfred interspersed between chapters that I greatly enjoyed, but I did find the heart of the Byronic character a little lacking here. Where Manfred bares his soul alone in monologue or to others, Doom, for the most part, does not. There are definitely brief allusions to the trials he’s faced, but he seems rarely prone to doubt or vulnerability until the very end. (For example, the central task is the attempt to rescue Cynthia von Doom’s soul, but little time is spent dwelling on this very human connection between mother and son.) Or even self-admitted imperfection! Interestingly, I only ever caught one mention of his scars in the entire novel.

The Harrowing of Doom seems to prescribe to the line of thought that the mask is the only true face of Doom’s that matters, but I think with that philosophy, it stays firmly within the character’s own comfort zone. And his psyche never feels truly challenged, because there’s no worthy challenger. Doom knows without a doubt that he is Fortunov’s superior, so there’s no real interpersonal friction there. It left me keenly interested in seeing how the author would write Doom in the presence of someone like Reed Richards, an opponent who has historically brought out Doom’s baser instincts and invoked his self-doubt, drawing out his flaws and humanity in the process. Hopefully Marvel approves a sequel!

Doubtlessly, it’s still a strong entry into Marvel’s Doom canon and an excellent read for anyone who enjoys the character and is familiar with his history. The novel gives a sprawling, detailed look at Latveria and fleshes out both country and countrymen with aplomb. I took real delight at the indirect peeks at Doom’s personality through other characters’s observations or simple exposition. Some notable examples include Doom’s occult librarian wondering if he had been appointed out of spite of his witch-hunter ancestry, Zargo noting the west wing of Werner Academy was dedicated to clinical research in a nod to Werner von Doom’s work as a healer, and my favorite: the paintings within Castle Doom being impressionistic depictions of Doom’s ancestors, “people long buried, long forgotten, and in their lifetimes ignored or worse.”

The conflict also moves at an engaging, brisk pace and smartly takes advantage of the widely known fact that Doom is preoccupied every Midsummer Night and turns that into an opening to be exploited by Fortunov, who also is well characterized throughout the novel and even experiences his own personal growth.

(“Though Some Call It Magic!”, Astonishing Tales #8)

Essentially, the product is a great novel about Doctor Doom influenced by strong comic lore knowledge, Gothic and Romance literature, horror cinema (According to the author, Doom’s lab is modeled after the lab from The Bride of Frankenstein!), and fantasy. If that sounds like something up your alley, definitely check it out. It gets a wholehearted recommendation from me.

About Marvel Entertainment

Marvel Entertainment, LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company, is one of the world’s most prominent character-based entertainment companies, built on a proven library of more than 8,000 characters featured in a variety of media for over eighty years. Marvel utilizes its character franchises in entertainment, licensing, publishing, games, and digital media.

#victor von doom #doctor doom #media type: book #Marvel #MarvelEnt #aconyte books #review

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maxwell-grant · 4 years ago

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Downfall of a Dark Avenger Part 2: Shadows of Manhattan

Having finished reading Al Ewing’s El Sombra trilogy and having had enough time to digest it, I’d like to talk about the trajectory of it’s titular protagonist, the character and series’s relationship with it’s influences. Relating to The Shadow and Zorro and general pulp archetypes, and also the way it incorporates Astro Boy’s Pluto into the mix.

This part is focused on Gods of Manhattan and El Sombra’s first appearences in Pax Omega and the ways in which the urban vigilante manifests itself in the books.

In Gods of Manhattan, El Sombra takes a backseat to it’s central players, Doc Thunder and The Blood-Spider. I’ve mentioned how Thunder, while ostensibly a Doc Savage/Superman amalgam, also combines aspects that allow the character to condense the entire history of the superman into a single being, but to a character very much centered on the future and in progressive ideals, described in the book as someone considered both the city’s ultimate savior as well as viewed as "a faggot, a liberal and a miscegenationist”. In that regard, the Blood-Spider becomes his opposite. Perhaps the most comprehensive savaging of the dark detective/The Shadow ever put on paper, that has a larger point behind the questions and criticisms it brings up to what this kind of figure can be.

"You can hardly have a war on crime unless you are the one defining what a crime is. First rule of the war on crime: everyone is guilty or something"

Us am vigilantes! Am us not men? Us use violence to effect social change! Am us not men? Us bring terror to underclass, make streets safer for overclass! Am us not men? Am us not men?

Making them loved rather than feared. Having them fight crime, or the right kind of crime, at least. Created a persona designed to appeal to the worst in people, to bring the citizens of New York around to his cause, his war on crime, which would, of course, then become a war against ‘urban crime’. Or some other little euphemism. ‘Inhuman’, for example. Sounds a lot more relatable than subhuman, doesn’t it? Comes to the same thing, though.

Although The Blood-Spider is an evil take on The Shadow, most of his character traits are taken from characters that followed him. He’s got the moniker, savagery, fright tactics and branded murders of The Spider, he climbs buildings and has a civilian identity akin to Spider-Man’s, with constant name references to characters like Stacey, Jonah and a redhead named Mary Watson, with him sharing a name with Peter Parker as well as Batman villain Jonathan Crane, he’s got Rorschach monologues that are echoed by his associates past his demise in white supremacist organizations dedicated to carrying off Spider’s legacy, predating HBO Watchmen’s take on Rorschach legacy. If Doc Thunder is all about taking the superhero’s past to create a better future with it, Blood-Spider takes the future of the urban vigilante and uses it as a conduit to enact a barbaric and reactionary agenda in service of undoing everything Thunder stands for, even before he’s revealed to be a Nazi agent.

Blood-Spider is what happens when the absolute worst aspects of said characters are brought to the forefront and twisted by a dose of reality. He’s to The Shadow what Plutonian is to Superman, the most sour way said character and legend can be twisted into something horrendous. He’s the Doutrinador in a fedora, everything I vehemently argue that The Shadow wasn’t, and yet seems sadly ever closer to as more and more comics dehumanize the character. He’s Howard Chaykin’s Shadow, naked and raw and exposed for what it ultimately is. An insult and a wake-up call, if a necessary one.

In fact, said poisoning of a legend is explicitly a plot point in the book, because the book establishes that, before The Blood-Spider, the city’s main vigilante used to be a man by the name of Blue Ghost, friend of Doc Thunder and, although a mysterious public figure, still firmly on the side of good. Unfortunately, moral victories aside, “good” alone doesn’t cut it in the world of El Sombra.

You took a look at the Blue Ghost - mysterious masked avenger, operatives all over the place, big fan-following with the working classes, and you figured...we need one of those. Just take away the Japanese orphan kid and replace him with a foxy Aryan chick.

Blue Ghost is almost a textbook Spirit analogue, even defined as being beat up a lot as his main asset, except here, he’s placed as Doc’s counterpart that died before the story began and is now replaced by a darker and more horrendous counterpart, and because The Spirit was influenced by The Shadow, it opens a roundabout connection. You can read this as a comparison between the shift from Adam West’s Batman to Frank Miller’s Batman, or a comparison between The Shadow and earlier more straightforward pulp vigilantes like Jimmie Dale, or a comparison between the pulp/radio Shadow and later iterations of him or analogues to his archetype that upped the nastier aspects. Again, nothing in El Sombra is ever quite just one thing.

And at last we come to El Sombra, who spends much of the book caught in between the duels of Doc, Untergang and players in between. And it’s interesting that here, while El Sombra’s final victories over the story’s major conflict lie in his willingness to team up with Doc, despite knowing of his origins as a Nazi weapon, his victories over Blood-Spider instead come from turning tricks of The Shadow against him. First, when he discovers Spider’s true nature, spying on him by pulling a Fritz the Janitor. And then in the finale, when he schools Spider on what a real shadowy avenger looks like.

"Amigo...that's my sword"

The voice came from the darkness above them, where the gaslight did not reach. The Spider's blood ran cold for a long moment, and then he grabbed hold of his other gun, tearing it from its holster and raising it to fire a volley of bullets into the darkness. "Where are you? Show yourself!" he hissed, turning in place, the gun raised to fire at the slightest sound or movement.

"You're not the only one who can hide in the shadows, my friend. I've got very good at it, over the years."

"Show yourself!" Another volley of shots, with no result. Was he throwing his voice? Was he everywhere at once? Was he a shadow himself? A ghost?

The voice echoed from another place now, continuing his speech exactly where he had left off. And still that mocking voice echoed from the shadows above.

"See, I didn't know if you were a good guy or a bad guy. I mean, sure, you killed people, and you were kind of a dick about it, you know? But I didn't know if you were one of the bastards. I didn't know if you needed to die or not, amigo."

The gun clicked empty. He was out of bullets. He turned again, and there was the man in the red mask. Just standing there, in the middle of the concourse. His smile didn't look human. And his eyes. Oh, his terrible eyes...

"Stay back." The Spider whispered, and his voice sounded in his ears like a frightened, animal thing, waiting to curl up and die in its hole.

The man in the red mask only laughed. A rich, deep, joyous laugh, a laugh that echoed and filled the whole station, bouncing from pillar to pillar, careening through the great vaulted arches. Such a laugh!

Then the laughter stopped, and he fixed the Blood-Spider with a look that would freeze the fires of Hell.

And suddenly - quite suddenly - there was no Blood-Spider. There was only Parker Crane, the Nazi. Parker Crane, the traitor. Who thought he could destroy America, and only managed to destroy himself. Parker Crane. Just a man wearing a mask. He ran, and left the sword behind him.

"Nice trick," Doc murmured, turning to the masked man. "Throwing your sword from up on the balcony - good aim, by the way - then throwing your voice and a little mental suggestion to make him think you were up in the arches where he'd been. Where did you learn that?"

The masked man shrugged, lifting up his weapon. "In the desert. You can learn a lot in the desert, if you put your mind to it."

By the story’s end, once Lars Lomax, Thunder’s arch-enemy and Lex Luthor, takes center stage as it’s ultimate threat, Parker Crane is left a traumatized, broken shell unable to even move, utterly stripped of any mystique or power that his mask and guns may have brought him. And in the end, El Sombra finds him, neutralized and no longer a threat to anyone. And he makes his choice.

El Sombra knew what it was to hate, to hate so hard and so long that you knew nothing else, to hate so strongly that it crossed that line into something beyond reason.

He lifted his sword, resting the blade in his palm for a moment, considering. Crane only stared, weeping and making his soft, mad noises. El Sombra sighed, shaking his head. "You know, I don't know if I can kill a guy who's already dead. Even if he is one of the bastards."

"Don't let him in here." Murmured Crane, his eyes wide.

"Shhh, I won't let him in," smiled El Sombra in response, trying to be reassuring. "You'll never have to face him again. I promise. It's okay, amigo. It's okay."

It was strange. He knew he should feel hate for Parker Crane. It was Djego's job to bear things like pity and doubt, to feel sorrow and shame. That was Djego's role in their team of one. El Sombra was there to take never-ending revenge and to laugh and to never look back. But to know that his murder of Heinrich Donner - his righteous kill - had resulted in so much harm coming to so many... and now to see the leader of Undergang, the man he'd come to New York to kill, just an empty, broken madman, a shell of a person... El Sombra wondered if he was changing.

"Don't," whispered Crane, a tear rolling down his cheek. "Don't let him back in."

El Sombra smiled, placing a hand on his shoulder. "It's okay, amigo. I'm going to go and make sure nobody ever needs to see him again. And I couldn't have done it without you." He squeezed lightly. "You didn't mean to, but you did some good. Remember that."

Then, gently, he pushed the tip of the sword through the front of Crane's skull and into his brain.

He was not incapable of pity. But he was who he was, and he did what he did.

And broken or not, the bastards had to die.

We’ve seen El Sombra struggle and be faced with choices, choices between Djego and El Sombra, choices between kindness and violence, between peace and conflict. We’ve seen the conflict in his soul between things that he knows are right, because Djego is a good man with a good soul who wants good things for himself and others, and things he knows he must do, because he is El Sombra and El Sombra was created to kill the bastards that brought his world to ruin and therefore it’s what he must always do. And in the end, El Sombra is simply stronger. He has to be. But strength and violence and hatred can only get one so far.

Gods of Manhattan is the trilogy’s moral compass, the book that most clearly defines the morality the series operates on. And in between the spectrums of justice embodied by Doc and Crane’s approach, between the two urban avengers in The Blue Ghost and Blood-Spider, El Sombra made his choice. And it’s the first choice that dooms him.

Enter Pax Omega, and we learn that, 4 years since the previous book's events, El Sombra joined a squad of agents called Yankee Bravo Seven, who work for an organization named STEAM, who enact missions against Nazis to turn the tides of war. He is joined by several other types of characters, including The Blood Widow, Crane’s former assistant Marlene Lang now having taken up the moniker (just as Nita van Sloan did for The Spider, even with the “Widow” prefix). We see that El Sombra has joined a team of bantering heroes and even formed a friendly rivalry with a man named Savate, modeled after Batroc the Leaper.

But we see that the hunger for vengeance still burns, still burns beyond reason, restless because it’s been 4 years and the war still isn’t over and Hitler still isn’t dead by his sword. And it’s that restlessness that again dooms him, when he once again makes the wrong choice and betrays leader Jack Scorpio, Scorpio who had personally brought him on board and gave him the best shot he ever had at getting to Hitler.

El Sombra frowned. "We need to make our move now."

Scorpio shook his head. "Not yet."

"What?" El Sombra looked incredulous.

"Wait for my signal, I said! Damn it, I need you to trust me!" Jack Scorpio reached up to brush the back of his finger across his forehead, and realised he was sweating.

Through his special glasses, El Sombra's aura was glowing an angry, pulsing red, like a throbbing vein. "Just...trust me. I'm asking you to hold back for just five minutes. There's more going on here than you know."

El Sombra just stared at him, his lips pulling back from his teeth in a cold snarl.

"Trust me. That's all I ask." Jack Scorpio looked into the blazing eyes behind the bloodstained mask, and spoke softly, soothingly, almost desperately. "Can you just hold back for one minute?"

The eyes behind the mask narrowed.

"Can you?"

PERSONNEL FILE: DJEGO "EL SOMBRA". TO EYES ONLY: THIS INDIVIDUAL IS HIGHLY DANGEROUS. IT IS STRONGLY RECOMMENDED HE NOT BE INCLUDED IN ANY OPERATIONS CLASSIFIED ABOVE TOP SECRET OR HIGHER. (I'll take the risk - J.S)

El Sombra spat in Scorpio's face.

"Chinga tu madre."

Then he drew his sword and leaped down into the fray.

After the mission is over, with the base destroyed and a major victory secured, although with Jack Scorpio having been killed, the team disbands. El Sombra continues to wander the forests near the Luftwaffe base for about two weeks, killing as many Nazis as he can, until an explosion blast hits near him, knocking away his mask and portions of his leg and arm, and rendering him unconscious for 8 months. By the time he wakes up, the war has ended, and so has El Sombra for the past 7 years.

Djego was afforded the best of medical care at the hospital in Venice. El Sombra was nowhere to be found.

His mask had been torn off in the explosion, along with some of the meat of his leg and arm. He walked stiffly, now, with a pronounced limp, and his left arm was all but useless, hanging limply at his side. The Wildcat crew had salvaged his sword, but Djego had little interest in using it.

Gradually, he regained his mobility. The back of his head itched constantly, and he suffered from horrendous mood swings, when he would rage against the Fuhrer and the bastards, or weep helplessly, like a child. But gradually, he found his personality stabilising in the gentle, antiseptic atmosphere of the hospital. He found that Djego - so long despised as a weakling, a coward and a fool - was capable of a kind of gentle, melancholic wit that made him popular.

Djego healed and grew, and the itch in the back of his skull began to subside, as El Sombra relinquished his grip.

Djego felt his heart seize in his chest. The cloth was missing a scrap at the end, and there was mud ground into the fabric along with the old bloodstains; but it had two evenly-spaced holes in it, and was unmistakably a mask. It seemed to be looking at him.

He takes up gardening and establishes himself in the city of Brandenberg, he becomes a fixture of the city and a friend of it, he enters a relationship, and El Sombra never appears again.

Until a mysterious stranger named Leonard Lorraine, walks through his door one day, saying he’s got a mission to fulfill, and hands him his mask. And, once again, El Sombra is simply stronger, and he makes the wrong choice again.

Djego shook his head and tried to step back from it, but his legs wouldn't move.

"No," he whispered. "No. Please"

"I was happy," pleaded Djego. "Doesn't that matter to you?" He picked up the cloth in trembling fingers, looking into the empty eyeholds. "Doesn't that mean anything?"

There was no answer. The patrons of the bierkeller did not even notice anything was happening.

"I was happy," Djego choked, and then, in one spasmodic motion, he pulled the mask onto his face, and secured it tightly, so that the knot once again rested in the back of his head, where it belonged: so tightly that it might never come off again.

El Sombra looked at his hands.

He prodded his belly, amused at the rounded shape of it, and took a couple of steps back from the bar. The limp was gone.

He laughed, very softly, so as not to disturb the patrons.

Djego and Lorraine walk through the desolate streets of Berlin, which in the years since has completely sealed itself from the outside world through an impossibly thick dome, and Djego discovers the city completely bereft of life, with only a few lobotomized robotic citizens aimlessly wandering and chewing on the mountains of corpses in the city, as their Nazi ideology reached it’s inevitable outcome of total annihilation of any and all that the party could find an excuse to slaughter in the name of purity, which eventually included it’s few remaining members. In this world, Hitler has been a brain inside a robotic contraption ever since 1945, and it’s amidst this scenario that El Sombra, while thinking about how his final confrontation with Hitler would play out, eventually finds what’s left of Hitler.

All around them, there were the sounds of machinery, but the Mecha-Fuhrer was completely silent, utterly motionless. In the centre of its chest rested a tank of toxic green fluid, and on the surface of the fluid, a human brain floated, like the corpse of a goldfish.

It was quite dead.

El Sombra stared at the Fuhrer for a long moment. Eventually, he spoke, and his voice was cracked and raw, and choked with rage. "Is...is this a joke?"

De Lareine smiled his terrible smile. "The Fuhrer's body needed a great deal of maintenance and repair, you know. After two years, one of the processes delivering oxygen to his brain failed...and there was nobody left to repair it. He died, slowly." There would have been some pain, at the end".

El Sombra slammed his fist into the great iron throne on which the massive body sat, shattering his knuckles and tearing the skin from them. He didn't seem to notice. "Some pain," he choked, through gritted teeth."

El Sombra was still staring into the empty, dead eyes of the Fuhrer.

El Sombra again chooses poorly. It’s this moment, above all else, that truly damns him to his fate, as we come to see what is it exactly that a persona created for the purpose of vengeance has, when said vengeance is robbed from it. Like Parker Crane, his persona crumbles completely to expose the petty, ugly little feelings that drove it to such grandstanding antics in the first place, and the allmighty El Sombra is exposed for the all-too human failings that damned him once and for all.

"This isn't right," he said, eventually, in a strangled voice. "How...how can it end like this?"

"Why shouldn't it?" De Lareine shrugged. "Here's a thought. Maybe, despite his twenty-year tantrum and all his dressing up, spoilt little Djego is not the centre of the universe -"

El Sombra turned, face red, tears streaming from his eyes, and charged at De Lareine, slashing his sword. El Sombra crashed down onto the floor, into the soot scattered about, as De Lareine walked around him.

"Did you really believe Adolf Hitler would wait around for your sword? Did you not imagine that it might be better for him to seal himself off in a hole to die, instead of murdering and enslaving continents until you finally got around to him? Did you think you were the hero of your own little story, El Sombra, with your mask and your laugh and your-"

"Shut up!" El Sombra cried out, scrambling to his feet, the sword shaking in his hand, tears and snot running down his face. "He was mine! He was mine to kill!" He lifted the sword, the tip trembling. "Bring him back," he screamed, "do you hear me? Bring him back to life!"

De Lareine had to laugh at that.

And in the end, El Sombra is crushed, spiritually and physically as his spine is shattered by Lareine, who begins to experiment on him as he lays dying, ready to fulfill fate’s greater purpose for El Sombra. Ready to become not just the perfect machine Pasito’s conquerors intended, but a superior design. Ready to abandon his former life, ready to abandon everything that defined him, ready to shed any and all traces of Zorro and Shadow and pulp hero in his system, because the age of pulp heroes and superheroes has passed.

The metal man emerged from his hole, dragging the corpse of the Fuhrer behind him.

The brain in the metal man's chest would, perhaps, live for thousands of years. He wondered how he would spend the time.

He remembered little of his former life; he had been a man named El Sombra, or perhaps Djego. He had been stupid - he realised that now - but that was something he would never be again.

Apart from that, there was only a succession of faces, the memory of laughter and of a final, awful betrayal that had destroyed him. But there was also the sense that a great and terrible mission had ended at last, and it was time for a new life to begin.

The metal man took a last look back at the great dome of Fortress Berlin. Somewhere in there, the Leopard Man was hunting, freed from his own mission. And in the Fuhrer's old office, the empty, lifeless clay of El Sombra - or was it Djego? - lay, discarded, like a butterfly's cocoon.

The metal man thought on this, as the Fuhrer rusted at his feet and the tanks began to approach from over the hills ahead.

He would need a new name.

It’s now the age of Pluto.

#replies tag #pulp heroes #al ewing #el sombra #pluto

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brindaneer · 4 years ago

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Film-making, like almost every other creative endeavour, requires not just an incredible level of talent and hard work but also immense fortitude. Naturally, good films are hard to come by. Masterpieces, however, are rare. A movie is most often just a source of entertainment for viewers; at times, it is a medium of abstract communication with actors they admire. However, cinema truly becomes art only when it is able to stimulate the emotions as well as the artistic sensibilities of its audience. And Jodha Akbar does exactly that. It is without an iota of doubt, a masterpiece of the modern era that ought to be watched by art lovers across the world.

The words ‘Akbar’, ‘Jodha’ and ‘Mughal Empire’, whenever uttered in the context of Indian cinema, have been primarily associated with the all time classic ‘Mughal-e-Azam’. K. Asif’s epic directorial venture of 1960 has remained the benchmark of historical costume dramas in India since its release, not without any reason. Created on a budget of rupees 1.5 crore, considered mammoth six decades ago, Mughal-e-Azam continues to be the greatest Indian blockbuster of all time even today. It amassed roughly 11 crore rupees after its run at the box-office then, which is equivalent to about a massive 2000 crores now. Such is the film’s aura that substantial interest was generated among cine-lovers during the release of its coloured version even as late as in 2004 and 2009. Hence, those were enormous shoes that Ashutosh Gowarikar had to fit in; there was no way of escaping the comparison since the subject matters of both films were too closely related. And because it was Ashutosh Gowarikar, he succeeded.

Not only did he find the perfect story (courtesy of Haider Ali) and draft a soulful script with Haider Ali and K.P. Saxena, he also roped in musical maestro A.R. Rahman and poetic genius Javed Akhtar to take care of the ‘music and lyrics’, two attributes that were required to be absolutely flawless in a period film such as this. While Neeta Lulla’s costumes and accessories made every actor look the part, ace set designer Nitin Desai recreated the Agra and Amer forts at shooting locations with faultless precision. However, all of this could have gone to waste had Ashutosh not been able to get the perfect cast on board. Having Hrithik Roshan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan as Mughal emperor Akbar and feisty Rajput princess Jodha respectively was nothing short of achieving an ultimate casting coup. And these two were going to be indispensable for the grand success of this colossal project, probably more so than anyone else, except the director himself.

Hrithik Roshan might have already established himself as a terrific nuanced actor in the industry by the time he signed Jodha Akbar but taking on a role which would draw comparisons with the iconic Prithviraj Kapur and the legendary Dilip Kumar himself was a challenge he was yet to undertake. Likewise, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, despite being the undisputed claimant to the title of the ‘most beautiful woman in the world’ during that time (which she still probably is) had never had her talent and beauty measured against the ethereal Madhubala before. Naturally, the burden of expectations lay as much on their shoulders as their director’s. The task at hand was going to be difficult for both but even more for Hrithik since he would be setting foot into the world of period films for the first time. His co-star had had previous experience from Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Devdaas and Doug Lefler’s The Last Legion. The Last Legion in particular, deserves to be mentioned in this context because the sword-fighting training that Aishwarya had received for her role in that film probably helped her in Jodha Akbar too.

Despite not having the advantage of prior experience, Hrithik, like a true artist, owned the character of Akbar, making it seem like he had been playing historical characters all his life. His body-language, attitude, diction, voice modulation and movements were so attuned to someone of Akbar's stature that it took real effort to remember that the latter was a separate person. In a promotional interview before the film’s release, Ashutosh Gowarikar revealed how amazing an experience it was for him to see Hrithik get into the skin of the most famous Mughal of all time with an approach that was a combination of preparedness and spontaneity. Aishwarya too gave everything to the role of Jodha, and made this her career best performance since ‘Provoked’. Anyone who has watched ‘Jodha Akbar’ will agree that it is impossible to even imagine other people playing these two characters. If praise of the common man is not credible enough, let it also be known that Dilip Kumar saab himself was impressed by Hrithik’s versatility as an actor after watching the film at a special screening arranged for him by Ashutosh. He also admitted that the film had rekindled memories of the Magnum Opus ‘Mughal-e- Azam’ for him. Aishwarya too received immense praise for her performance as Jodha from critics, audience and industry colleagues alike.

Although comparisons between Mughal- e- Azam and Jodha Akbar were inevitable, it must be noted that both films dealt with very different aspects of Akbar’s life. While the older classic was about the aged Akbar’s conflicted relationship with his son Salim over the latter’s love affair with Anarkali, a courtesan renowned for her exquisite beauty, Gowarikar’s Jodha Akbar depicted the love story between the young emperor and his first wife, the Rajput princess Jodha. The similarity between both films, apart from Akbar and the Mughals, lay in the fact that the identities of both Anarkali and Jodha had been a matter of contention amongst historians since decades. However, staying true to his meticulous nature, Ashutosh correctly issued a statement explaining that it was not his intention to disrespect any one; Jodha was one among the several historically mentioned names of Akbar’s Rajput wife and it had been chosen in the film over the rest due to its considerable popularity among commoners. Ashutosh was also very clear about the love story between Akbar and Jodha being completely fictional since no such account had ever been documented in history. Basically, the film was a fiction set against a historical backdrop, and as far as that setting was concerned, Ashutosh tried to be as accurate as possible, building a story around events that had been recorded in the Akbarnama.

Now that we have given the prelude, it is time to experience the film all over again, and we hope that prospect excites our readers. ‘Jodha Akbar’ opens with the second battle of Panipat that took place in 1556 A.D. between Mughal forces led by the child Emperor Jalaluddin Mohammad’s regent, Bairam Khan, and King Hemu. After defeating the latter, the Mughals were able to recapture the throne of Delhi. The war scenes are all flawlessly directed, keeping in mind the period and style of warfare adopted during that time, something that is naturally expected from a director whose resume boasts of films like ‘Lagaan’ and ‘Swades’. By the time Hrithik appears on the silver screen in one of the most challenging roles of his life, six years have elapsed and Jalal is an adult. Demonstrating his terrific grasp of the character, Hrithik sweeps the audience off their feet as Jalal finally sends Bairam Khan away to Mecca after stopping him from beheading the unarmed defeated opponent, and effectively takes over the administration of ‘Hindustan’ ('Ab apne faisle hum khud lena chahte hain'). Hrithik’s portrayal of Jalal’s suppressed rage as well as authority in this scene was a delight to watch then, and remains so even after all these years. As Jalal plans to annex the entire Rajputana, we are introduced to the other half of the film’s title, princess Jodha. Adept at sword-fighting, having learnt the skill from her cousin Sujamal (played beautifully by the talented Sonu Sood), Gowarikar’s Jodha is the perfect example of ‘beauty with brains’. Aishwarya is as graceful at sword-fighting as she usually is while dancing and imbibes the exact body language required to play a Rajput princess aptly.

Staying loyal to historical facts, Ashutosh Gowarikar depicts Jodha and Jalal’s marriage just as it actually was- a politically motivated alliance. Troubled by Jalal’s over-ambitious brother-in-law Sharifuddin, Jodha’s father, the King of Amer, requests Jalal to marry his daughter so that Amer could obtain Mughal security (In the film, Raja Bharmal of Amer sees Jalal for the first time as he tames a wild elephant in a superbly executed action sequence. Hrithik obviously did it himself, and in order to ensure his safety, he used to feed the said elephant regularly before the shooting of this particular scene took place). Her father’s decision comes as a rude shock to the young Jodha who does not want to compromise her culture after marriage, and is therefore left devastated. Despite not being completely sure about the proposal initially, Jalal eventually agrees to it in front of the Dargah of Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti as he realizes that this inter-faith marriage may be of assistance in promoting religious harmony throughout the country. In a beautiful monologue, he admits to the Khwaja that religious differences were the reason why previous rulers had not been able to establish their rule over the entire ‘Hindustan’; he believes his marriage with Jodha shall solve that problem.

However, Jodha’s decision is yet to come. She is not a stereotypical submissive sixteenth century female, unable to stand up for her own rights. Instead, she is brave enough to summon the Mughal emperor to her tent and lay two conditions in front of him, the fulfilment of which, is mandatory for her agreement with this new association (the famous ‘Humari do maange hain’ scene). First, she does not want to be forced into giving up her religion and customs; second, she wants a temple to be built inside her room in the Mughal palace for her spiritual guide, Lord Krishna. Aishwarya is enthralling in this scene; her calm yet rigid posture and polite yet bold speech are worth watching. Hrithik is simply magnigficent here; no other adjective is suitable enough to describe his phenomenal performance as Jalal hears Jodha out and later recounts the two demands to her relatives and rest of the entourage. He obviously goes on to accept these demands, his respect for Jodha increasing in leaps and bounds at her fearlessness and simplicity (‘Amer ki Rajkumari ke bekhawf jasbe aur saadgi ko hum salaam karte hain’). Naturally, Jodha has no other option left other than agreeing to the marriage.

Had the director wanted, the wedding could have been an elaborate dramatic affair, but Ashutosh Gowarikar is not just another director looking for success through gimmicks. The grand wedding sequence lasts only for about a few seconds during which Jodha and Jalal wed each other as per both Hindu and Islamic traditions in an exemplary display of socio-religious amalgamation. Any extra time devoted to this would have been unnecessary and detrimental to the pace of the movie. After the wedding, a group of Sufi singers perform the utterly captivating ‘Khwaja mere Khwaja’, one of A.R. Rahman’s all time best compositions, in probably the most poetic Hindi film sequence of recent times. Such was its impact upon Mr. Bachchan that he termed it the ‘most apocalyptic moment’ in cinema since the great Stanley Kubrik’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’. It is not just the song that casts a spell upon the audience during this scene; rather, the direction and acting, in conjunction with the soulful music engender a near hypnotic effect among viewers which last in their minds forever. Hrithik’s expressions as Jalal experiences a spiritual epiphany and joins the Sufis in a trance are simply fascinating. He is a privilege to watch. The scene is an acting masterclass in itself and had he received every existing accolade for this moment alone, it would still not have been unfair.

Jodha and Jalal’s first night together is another instance of the subtlety that this film ceaselessly displays. Jalal, perceptive enough to understand that Jodha’s unyielding attitude towards his romantic gestures is not shyness in disguise, but unwillingness to be with him, has the perfect solution- she is free to leave him if that is what she wants. However, once again giving proof of her simplicity and honesty, Jodha directly confesses that she has no intention whatsoever of walking out of this relationship despite her inhibitions towards it; for her it is an unbreakable bond that shall last unto death. Respecting her wishes, Jalal vows to never be intimate with her against her will. Hrithik and Aishwarya’s acting styles truly compliment Ashutosh’s direction as is evident from this scene among many others in the film; without an ounce of melodrama, they are able to set the stage for an epic love story ridden not just with external impediments but personal inhibitions as well.

The rest of the movie is basically a collection of beautiful moments between the two leads, interspersed with an optimal amount of drama to propel the plot. The first sequence post their marriage that needs to be discussed in detail is the Deewan-E- Aam scene followed by the part wherein Jalal and Jodha see each other's faces without a curtain or ‘ghoonghat’ in between. As Jalal conducts his first hearing at the Deewan-E-Aam after his marriage to the Hindu Jodha, he, quite expectedly, faces opposition from the Ulemas of the court regarding his decision. However, before he is able to solve the problem at hand, the melodious voice of his newly wed bride distracts him, thereby interrupting the court proceedings. The expressions on everyone's face are worth watching as Jalal leaves his throne and begins to walk out of the court, clearly too engrossed to even officially dismiss everyone present. Realization hits him a bit too late, leaving him embarrassed in front of the entire Deewan-E-Aam, but he manages to salvage the situation by uttering an awkward 'Takliya'. This entire scene is once again a brilliant testimony to the skills of the director who expertly incorporates subtle humour in such a serious scene without overdoing any of it or making it seem farcical. Hrithik's performance here is admirable, his comic timing being absolutely flawless. Drawn by Jodha's entrancing voice, Jalal enters her 'Mahal' and they see each other for the first time in what was arguably the most romantic meeting sequence of Bollywood then and has been so since the last two decades. Ashutosh does not provide the actors with any dialogues here, who, therefore, rely completely on facial expressions to convey their feelings towards each other. Hrithik has been a master in expressions since he first entered the industry and in this scene, he is at his nuanced best. But Aishwarya is no less, and that is precisely why their interaction looks so natural and enchanting. With tiny eye gestures and body postures, they express admiration for each other's physical appearance, their eyes speaking a thousand words at once. The part where she wants him to put sindur on her, and he fails to understand initially, is such a wonderful portrayal of his willingness to understand and respect her culture that it strikes a chord with one and all.

For Jalal, it is almost love at first sight. Though completely smitten by her, he knows instinctively that Jodha is going to take more time, no matter how impressed she is with him. In the next few minutes, Ashutosh shows Jalal and Jodha gradually treading the first steps of love with Javed Ali's mellifluous voice ringing in the background. 'Kehne ko jashn-e-bahara hai, ishq ye dekh ke hairaan hai, phool se khushboo khafa khafa hai gulshan mein, chupa hai koi ranj fiza ki chilman mein'. When the inimitable Javed Akhtar is in charge of lyrics, songs get transformed into dialogues and help the story to march forward. Jashn-e-bahara does just that, and does so exquisitely. It challenges the notion that romantic scenes must always entail physical intimacy, and proves that sometimes a look or a smile is worth much more. Most of the credit for this should go to Hrithik and Aishwarya who defy every existing idea about screen chemistry by making heartbeats race even through mundane acts such as walking side by side while glancing furtively at each other, or smiling in embarrassment as they sit miles apart in a garden. Who says old-fashioned romance is always boring? When two individuals are able to set silver-screens ablaze by just standing together in one frame, every trivial action becomes exciting.

Scattered in between their light-hearted romantic moments during this prolonged sequence are two ‘more important’ ones. The first one depicts Jalal in an angry mood as he admonishes Maham Anga’s son Adham Khan when the latter dares to insult Jodha; as his awe-inspiring authoritative ‘Khabardar Adham, Rajkumari ka naam adab se lo. Ye na bhulo ki ab wo Malika- e- Hindustaan hain’ echoes through the silent night and reaches Jodha, she understands the extent of his respect for her and there is an expression of happy pride on her countenance. The second is probably everyone’s guilty pleasure and inspired multiple ‘tele-serial adaptations’ back in the day; while Jalal practices moves with the sword bare-bodied, Jodha suddenly catches sight of his chiselled body and cannot stop staring. In a brilliant directorial move, Ashutosh makes her put the plate of worship down so that she can actually concentrate on the view better 😂😁🤩🤩. Aishwarya is terrific here, portraying Jodha’s attraction to her husband perfectly although in an extremely nuanced manner. Of course when the man in question is Hrithik Roshan, it helps. Jalal is shrewd enough to notice his ‘wifey dearest’ and catches her off guard by turning around suddenly after which the poor girl hastily draws the curtains. Hrithik’s mischievious look is a treat to eyes! But seriously, how mean of him to intrude upon his wife’s private moment of ‘adoring her husband’ that way?🤪🤪

Being one of the best directors in the industry, Ashutosh Gowarikar ensures that his film contains the right mix of romance and drama. The first instance of drama in the movie since the wedding is provided by Maham Anga, Jalal’s ‘Badi Ammi’ (played by the exceptional Ila Urun) a politically shrewd woman, whose possessiveness for her foster son and displeasure at the advent of a strong-willed intelligent Rajput princess into the fort of Agra makes her vindictive towards the said person. When Jodha decides to prepare authentic Rajput food herself after Jalal orders a ‘Rajputi Daawat’ on the day of ‘Peer’ in her honour, Maham Anga spews venom at her through harsh words and accuses her of trying to establish control over the kitchen, and eventually Jalal himself. Jodha, although shocked, gives her befitting replies, and ultimately completes the entire cooking by herself. The scene that follows could easily have been a disaster if it had been handled by an ordinary director; it could have been an excruciatingly slow and boring sequence testing the patience of the audience. The fact that it is one of the most interesting parts of the entire film is a measure of Ashutosh Gowarikar’s genius. Substantial credit must also be given to the actors including supporting ones without whom Ashutosh might not have been able to produce the desired outcome in this scene ultimately. However, this scene belongs to Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. Her shock at being insulted by Maham Anga when she asks her to taste the food before serving it to the emperor, rage as she turns to her husband for support, and suppressed anger as well as sadness when she realizes that there is no way out are nothing short of mesmerizing. Her genuine happiness when Jalal decides to have food from the same plate she has eaten and her sly look towards Maham Anga are a sight to behold. Truly, Aishwarya is probably one of the most underrated actresses in our industry; she is fantastic but does not always get the due credit for it. Most of the time, it is her beauty and personality that gets talked about. Nevertheless, she is a terrific actress too and we sincerely hope people acknowledge that more often. Hrithik supports her fascinatingly throughout the scene, his eyes showing anger, helplessness and embarrassment at his wife’s insult flawlessly. It is the mark of a great actor to allow his co-actors to soar when the scene requires so. In an old interview, while explaining why Aishwarya was his favourite co-star, Hrithik said that they had very similar working styles which made them more compatible with each other; according to him, both of them were more concerned with the larger picture, and did not care if they were being given importance in every frame or not. This particular scene is the perfect example of that working style he was talking about.

The ‘Rajputi Dawat’ sequence changes something between Jodha and Akbar; they have managed to cross that initial threshold of hesitation towards each other. However, just when they are gradually coming closer, circumstances and people pull them apart. When Adham Khan murders one of Jalal’s most trustworthy ministers, Shamsuddin-Muhammad-Atgah-Khan, and intrudes into the emperor’s personal premises with a sword, the latter tackles him and orders royal guards to throw the traitor with his head downwards into the ground below. When he is only half dead after the first fall, Jalal, showing his cruel side, orders his soldiers to bring Adham up to the roof so that they can throw him down again. Future generations will remember Hrithik for this scene among many; he is spectacular here with a stance that is completely majestic and a face that exudes rage and grief in equal measure. He was actually able to generate tangible fear amongst the audience back when the film had released; we still remember the collective gasp at the theatre during this scene. This is also the first time Jodha gets acquainted with Jalal’s darker side. Until this moment, she had known him as a gentle, understanding young man; now she sees him as capable of being cruel to someone. Aishwarya’s portrayal of fear is spot on and subtle with no melodrama whatsoever, for which the director also deserves praise.

The next scene had actually been deleted from the movie to manage its length but we genuinely feel it should have been included due to its significance. Horrified at Jalal’s action, Jodha confronts him in a terrific angsty sequence only to realize that Jalal is mourning the loss of a father figure in Shamsuddin-Muhammad-Atgah-Khan. Hrithik is superlative as Jalal breaks down and confesses to his wife about being orphaned again. This is the most tender moment both have yet experienced, and that realization is clearly etched upon Jodha’s face, who gives her heart-broken husband sound advice. She understands why he killed Adham, but asks him to apologize in front of Maham Anga, despite all the troubles the latter has created for her. We surely would not have minded sitting in the theatre for a few extra minutes to watch this brilliant scene Mr. Gowarikar!

The scene wherein Jalal explains his behaviour to Maham Anga is one of the most important sequences in the film for multiple reasons. Firstly, the acting is phenomenal; emotions have always been Hrithik’s forte and what do we say about Ila Urun? We are probably not qualified enough. So, its better to just bow our heads in respect and keep quiet. Second, this is when Maham Anga is able to instigate Jalal against Jodha by feeding him false information. She shows him a container of poison that her spy had extracted from Jodha’s personal belongings earlier and lies that his wife may be planning to harm him. In reality, Jodha’s mother had given her the poison so that she could kill herself if she feared of being dishonoured by her husband after the marriage. Maham Anga also misleads him by talking about a letter that Jodha has written to Rajkumar Ratan Singh, the Rajput prince, she had been betrothed to since her childhood. This letter had actually been written by Jodha to her cousin Sujamal, who had left Amer after being denied the throne. In the letter, Jodha had requested him to rescue her from being married off to the Mughal emperor. However, she had never sent it. After finding it in Jodha’s room, Maham Anga sends it to Sujamal, to take advantage of the situation and create a rift between Jalal and his wife. Unfortunately, this diabolical ploy works because of Jalal’s blind trust in his ‘Badi Ammi’. Upon receiving the letter, Sujamal believes it to be genuine, and goes to the Agra fort at night without caring about the risk. Jodha comes out to meet him, surprised at this sudden visit, but assures him that she is happy with Jalal. To her misfortune, her husband, who has never seen Sujamal or Ratan Singh before believes the intruder to be the latter and sends soldiers to capture him. Sujamal escapes, but only after thinking that Jodha deliberately called him there to be arrested. Meanwhile, Jalal accuses her of plotting with Ratan Singh behind his back. Outraged and shocked at this humiliation, Jodha tells him that Maham Anga is the one who has caused this entire misunderstanding. When Jalal refuses to believe her, she asks what punishment he has in mind. And, he tells her to go back to her parental house! Jodha naturally feels terribly insulted at his decision, and decides to leave him and protect her self-respect! This is a wonderfully executed sequence with the two leads reacting to each other masterfully, and turning it into one of the best angsty interactions ever. This was also the moment that Ashutosh chose as the point of intermission, a sound decision obviously because to be very honest, by this time the audience was indeed in need of some food and drinks 😄😄. On a serious note, this was a watershed moment in the lives of our two lead characters, and a perfect opportunity to take a break and come back refreshed.

Any analysis of Gowarikar’s Jodha Akbar is bound to be elaborate simply because it is impossible to designate any scene from the film as unimportant or bad. It is not for nothing that we termed this film a masterpiece at the beginning of this blog. Every second of it is still a pleasure to the senses and deserves mention. However, for the purpose of your sanity and ours (not to mention the time constraint), it is vital that we take an ‘interval’ too, and analyse the second part of the movie in a separate blog. Don’t worry, we will not take too long. So au revoir as the French say ; hopefully you will bestow your good wishes upon us once again like you have till now.❤️❤️

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hyperfics-ation · 5 years ago

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(6 Underground fic. idk what to call it. shameless oc insert.) *Police brutality mention*

Films: 6 Underground 2019

Word Count: 1,752

Pairing: billy!four/oc

Description: You were Arianna's first friend in New York City which is why One helped you fake your death when you get into trouble. It's never stated in the story but that's why.

Without anywhere to go, he gives you a home at the base while he assembles his team. Eventually you meet Four and he makes "dying" worth while.

When One cut all ties to his old life it was because he had a mission. A purpose to fulfill. Same goes for the rest of the team. Each member was handpicked.

Except for you.

You were never part of the plan so you didn't get a number.

Obviously this made introductions a little complicated when One introduced you to Two.

The CIA spook, already dubious about One and his motivations, raised one eyebrow and sized you up quickly.

You smiled awkwardly, sensing that a formal handshake was out of the question. "Just call me Zero," you joked halfheartedly, trying not to fidget under Two's critical gaze.

Just as you broke out in a nervous sweat, Two finally looked away and motioned for One to follow her out of the trailer. It didn't take a genius to figure out what she wanted to discuss privately.

Did One seriously believe it was a good idea to involve a civilian on what was most likely going to turn out to be a suicide mission?

What did a nobody like you really bring to the table, skill-wise?

You didn't have a good answer to either of those questions and honestly neither did One.

Anyway, faking your death had been an experience™ and the adjustment period after had been hard. One hadn't been the most sympathetic. Not outwardly. After all, you were never a part of his grand plan. You were the wrench that got thrown in the plan. You felt kinda bad about that sometimes.

···

When One was ready to go recruit Two, he thought it best you stay behind.

"Sure. I'll be fine," you reassured him with a soft smile that didn't quite reach your eyes.

The expression on his face made it very clear that he did not believe you. But he said nothing, already behind schedule.

You woke up the next morning bracing yourself to face the next couple of weeks on your own. Except you weren't alone. A big ass dog sat patiently at your bedside, tongue wagging and panting softly with a note tied to his collar.

Take care of the dog while I'm gone. P.S. Don't let him eat my stuff. -One.

You named the dog Wally.

···

Three's arrival was really something.

He was the complete opposite of Two. His easy going nature actually reminded you a lot of One. They were alike in a lot of ways, but maybe that's why they did not get along very well. Honestly, you could only stand the both of them in the same room for so long.

But he was nice. And he talked to you. Your conversations weren't anything particularly deep. One's rules forbid any of you from revealing personal details about your old lives. Mostly you discussed movies and TV shows.

Regardless, you lived for those benign conversations. They provided a brief intermission to the insane turn your life had taken.

···

One could tell you were struggling.

Wally the dog was only so much company.

You were adrift with nowhere to go, no one to turn to.

Your old life was gone and the only people left in your life was One, Two, and Three. They all had their own issues and it wasn't like you had any shared life experience with the older adults.

So maybe One had an ulterior motive when he recruited Four.

The first day the Skywalker showed up with his still healing bruises and luminous blue eyes, you laughed until your face turned red.

"Skywalker? We're not seriously going to call him that are we?" you wheezed in One's direction, swiping tears from the corner of your eye.

One opened his mouth, the perfect retort poised on his tongue before you swiftly cut him off.

"Is he a fucking Jedi? Are you are Jedi?"

Your raucous laughter had faded into barely stifled giggles as you looked at Four.

He sighed. "Are you done? I need a drink."

He brushed past you as you were still reeling from the spine tingling deep tenor of his voice paired with that accent. Now your face was flushed for a different reason.

"Hey, be easy on him. He just watched his own funeral, which was somehow more depressing than a normal funeral should be," One told you, making you feel like a dick.

···

Five was a godsend. Though, if One ever heard you admit it, you were sure his ego would explode at being compared with a god.

You were just happy to be around the closest thing to a civilian.

“You like him, don’t you? Number Four?” she asked you with a knowing grin.

Almost immediately your face went red. “I don’t know what you mean. Who? Me?”

Wow. Real subtle, you thought, cringing.

Yeah, you weren’t fooling anyone, especially Five. You wondered if any of the other ghosts knew about your crush on Four.

They did. But no one said anything.

···

Six figured it out within hours of meeting you and proceeded to tease you relentlessly.

So much for millennial solidarity.

The longer he was around, though, he became like an older brother to you. You couldn’t imagine what life would be like without him.

···

With One’s team of ghosts finally assembled, Two insisted on a mandatory training exercise to assess how well everyone worked together. You had no fucking idea why she wanted you to attend this exercise. One had already made it very clear that you were not part of the mission. But you suspected she was actually trying to do you a favor.

The self defense pointers were useful, you supposed. Being paired with Four was… embarrassing and definitely Two’s idea of a joke.

On the other hand, you were finally seeing a different side of Four. A more arrogant, carefree side that made you laugh not to mention pine a hundred times harder than you were before.

Just when you were starting to have fun throwing Four around on a mat, Two steered you towards a makeshift gun range.

It had been a while since you held a gun and considering what happened the last time you did…

Needless to say you were pretty shaky afterwards, teetering on the verge of spiralling into a flashback and Four couldn’t help but notice.

···

Later, when you were hunkered down in One’s office mindlessly rewatching Leave It To Beaver episodes Four surprised you by joining you.

He didn’t say anything for a while, content to just sit and watch the little TV as you tried to ignore him.

"So how did you get pulled into all this, really?" he spoke up, finally as the credits started rolling.

You took your time answering. That was the billion dollar question that One had repeatedly forbid any of them from answering. Except, you wanted to tell someone if only to justify being a ghost. If you could get anyone on the team to believe that someone as unremarkable as you wouldn't be here if you had a choice.

You steadfastly avoided looking into his curious green eyes.

"I grew up in a small town. I was fairly popular in school. Got good grades. I was accepted into a good University in a big city..."

Oh boy, you were veering into monologue territory and you could feel the old wounds tearing open.

"There was… this cop. At a protest. He assaulted me and it was... bad. I woke up in the hospital with this guy telling me to keep my mouth shut. He… he threatened me. For weeks. Him and his buddies. Painted me as a criminal even though I didn’t fucking do anything wrong. Finally I just said 'fuck it' and made a whole video about what this asshole did to me. Which turned out to be a mistake. Shocker, I know. He cornered me the next day and he was drunk-"

You bit your lip hard, desperately fighting back tears. Four’s gaze burned where you could feel it on your face. God, what was he thinking right now? You wanted to know. He had been silent so far, listening intently as you told him about the worst moment of your life.

“Fucking pigs,” he muttered under his breath, his lip curling in disgust.

Swallowing the lump of emotion building in your throat, you continued, "I defended myself. And that's how One found me. Over this cop's dead body. I was going to go to jail because who would ever believe I killed a cop in self defense? So, One helped me fake my death and gave me a second chance. To this day, I still have no idea why he was there when I needed him the most. It wasn't even to recruit me. He just helped me because he could. The whole Turgistan thing came later."

At last, you glanced at Four from the corner of your eye to see his reaction.

His brows were knitted together and he had a serious expression on his face you weren’t accustomed to seeing him sport before.

“I’m glad One was there to help you or I might not have ever met you.”

This boy was too good to be true.

“I'd like to get to know you better, if that’s alright.”

You were quietly crying at this point, but you nodded, smiling through the tears. “I’d like that.”

Read Part II here

#6 underground netflix #6 underground movie #6 underground #billy #four #four!billy/oc #four!6underground/oc #ben hardy imagine #ben hardy #ben hardy/oc #ficlet #ben hardy x reader #four x reader #billy x reader #four!6underground x reader #four!billy x reader #posted on a03

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an-angels-blessing · 3 years ago

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Performance of Our Lives

Song🐣🎵- Sit Still Look Pretty,

Artist🤸‍♂️🎤- Barrett Wilbert Weed, Grey Henson

Warnings😳⛔- Fluff, Embarrassed Kageyama

Prompt🥺🔥- N/A

“There will be a five minute intermission between performances.” After hearing that announcement, I continued pacing faster as the nervousness grew. I suddenly felt a hand on my own stopping me from moving. “Come on, you’re going to be great, especially when you look like that. There is no way he won’t be looking at you.” The smaller one wore the biggest smile. It seemed to instantly calm my nerves, I was hot and I knew that I was. A smile started to form on my face and the nervousness casually disappeared. “You wanna talk about me, look at you Shoyo. If only you were straight.” We both sit there for a moment, taking in my previous words before we both bust into a fit of laughter. “I love you Angel.” I heard him say while calming down, his face was now serious, and I knew exactly why. “I love you too Shoyo, now let's show him what it means to be a queen.” He pulls me in for a long hug, one that we both definitely needed. “Okay, today we have the amazing opportunity to introduce, straight out of Mijagi, Angel Ace.”

As soon as I hear that, I let go of Shoyo and walk out on stage, as soon as I do the crowd erupts into cheers making me smile. I grab the microphone from the DJ, looking out to the crowd to see 200 people easily, but of those 200, I spot the Karasuno volleyball team almost instantly. “Hi everyone, I know I just got off tour to focus on school, but you can’t forget where you came from right?” I point the mic towards the crowd to hear dozens of people screaming ‘yes.’ I giggle slightly before holding the microphone back to my lips. “So, I wrote two new songs. And you all are going to be the first to hear it, is that okay with you?” Yet again came dozens of responses from the crowd. “First, can everyone do something for me? I invited a few of my friends, can you all clear a path for them to be in the front?” I point at the team and the spotlight is instantly placed on them. The crowd parted like the red sea, giving them a direct path to the stage. Kageyama was the first to move, with a smug look on his face, if only he knew. The rest of the team followed, and before too long they were directly below me. I bend down slightly to talk to them, Suga was the first to talk. “Do you see Hinata, he said he was here.” I could hear the concern in his voice, it made me laugh internally but I had to play it off. “The tiny one with orange hair? I think he went to the bathroom.” Suga nods his head in satisfaction and I stand back up preparing to start. “This song goes out to my lovely boyfriend.” I send Kageyama a smile and motion for the DJ to start the track.

“Could dress up, to get love, but guess what? I'm never gonna be that girl who's living in a Barbie world. Could wake up, in make up, and play dumb, pretending that I need a boy, who's gonna treat me like a toy” As I start singing I could see the confusing in Tobio’s face start to sink in, “I know the other girls wanna wear expensive things, like diamond rings. But I don't wanna be the puppet that you're playing on a string.” I take off my promise ring that he got for our 2 year anniversary and throw it at him, the rest of the team look at him confused and dazed at my action. I haven’t taken that ring off since he bought it for me, not even when I was overseas on tour.

“This queen don't need a king” I can slightly hear Kei snicker and whisper to Tobio about my use of the word king. “Oh, I don't know what you've been told, but this girl right here's gonna rule the world. Yeah, that's where I'm gonna be because I wanna be. No, I don't wanna sit still, look pretty” I pick up a crown from off the stage and lean down to place it on Tobio’s head before tilting it to make it crooked. “You get off on your 9 to 5, dream of picket fences and trophy wives. But no, I'm never gonna be 'cause I don't wanna be. No, I don't wanna sit still look pretty” I back up and walk towards the curtain, I grab Shoyo’s hand and pull him on stage, he looks at me with confusion. “This wasn’t part of the plan.” I smirk at him as I hear gasps from the crowd, but mostly from the team. “Yes it was, now sing. I know you know the lyrics.” I smirk at him before motioning towards the team and handing him the mic, he seems to stop on Tobio before gaining some confidence and singing. “Mr. Right could be nice, for one night, but then he wanna take control. And I would rather fly solo” He starts off pretty shaky, but when we lock eyes he starts to get the feel of the music.

I start clapping and dancing to the music, the crowd seems to get my flow and follows along with me. The looks on the team’s faces makes me laugh, Shoyo suddenly grabs my hand and dances with me, both of our skirts flying up and down. “That Snow White, she did it right in her life. Had 7 men to do the chores 'cause that's not what a lady's for.” The music starts getting louder and we both start getting a music high, forgetting that anyone was even there. “The only thing that a boy's gonna give a girl for free's captivity. And I might love me some vanilla but I'm not that sugar sweet. Call me HBIC” When he finished that line, the whole crowd went wild, we both shared a mutual glance and decided to finish the song together.

When we finished the song, the whole crowd was yelling and shouting my name. When the music finally stopped all the lights went off and the two of us went behind the curtain. I could hear the groans and complaints from behind the curtain, one of the tech crew took the microphone and put a headset microphone on me and Shoyo. “You thought that was it?” The crowd heard my voice and started going crazy. I started changing with Shoyo into my other outfit, but the crowd shouldn’t be left alone. I learned that after 6 years of touring and entertaining, the crowd should never be bored. “I have one more thing to do, well actually two.” Shoyo and I are almost finished getting dressed, so let’s introduce the next song. “Ok. girls, gay’s, they’s and overall Queens. We don’t need a king to be happy.” We finally are done getting dressed and we are right in front of the curtain. “But, love is a beautiful thing, so if you find the one, hold them close. We don’t need a king, but it never hurts to have one.” I grab Shoyo’s hand and walk out onto the stage. As soon as the crowd sees us, they start screaming thinking that we are dating or something.

I could see the smug look on Tobio’s face when he sees the crown I’m wearing, and of course they match. That was the plan, I pull Shoyo towards me as we take center stage. “This, my adoring fans, is Hinata Shoyo. My best friend, he is a queen yet I can not call him mine because he sadly belongs to someone else.” I fake sadness, turning my head away from him. I can feel him laughing because I’m still holding his hand, this causes me to laugh as well. When I turn back to the crowd I see that Tobio’s smug look is now full of horror. I let go of Shoyo and move towards the front of the stage, I put my hand out to Tobio, he hesitantly takes my hand and I pull him up on stage. I manage to force him to stand center stage between Shoyo and me. “And this is our ex-boyfriend. Kageyama Tobio. Cute, isn’t he?” They seem to be able to sense the sarcasm in my voice and stayed silent. Shoyo speaks next, continuing my little monologue. “By ex, she means that he dated us at the same time, and it almost worked.” Everything goes silent, as they don’t know where we’re going with this. “Yet, what he didn’t know is that we… are twins.” At that very moment, nothing could be heard except screams and gasps. “We don’t look the same, because of course we’re fraternal. And she dyes her hair.” Both of our smiles widen and we turn towards Tobio. “This final song ISN'T dedicated to you, but two very special people in this room.” Shoyo looks at me when I speak first, yet I maintain my innocent smile. “I will be taking this, thank you for holding it Tobio-chan~” His nickname comes out mockingly as I take the crown off of his head. I walk over to Shoyo and take the crown off his head as well before placing a tiara on top, “Perfect, now where are our Prince Charmings.” When I finish my sentence, the music starts playing on que.

“Boys seem to like th e girls who laugh at anything. The ones who get undressed before the second date” I start singing and push Tobio towards the front of the stage but not far enough so he would fall. He quickly gets the hint and gets off the stage and joining the others. “Girls seem to like the boys who don't appreciate, all the money and the time that it takes.” I hear Shoto start singing and I turn around to look him in the face, smiling at his confidence. “To be fly as a mother. Got my both eyes out for Mr. Right. Guessing now I just don't know where to find them. But I hope they all come out tonight” He sees me looking at him and shrugs his shoulders, but as soon as he finishes that last line he smiles wide. “Where do the good boys go to hide away, hide away? I'm a good, good girl who needs a little company. Looking high and low, someone let me know. Where do the good boys go to hide away, hide away?” We decided to sing this part together, he ran up to me and jumped on my back causing me to laugh. We might be twins, but he’s still shorter than me. “Boys seem to like the girls who like to kiss and tell” I put him down and kiss his cheek when he sings this part. “Talking them up about things that do so well” I sing the next part, taking his hand and spinning him. “I'd rather find a boy who is down for the chase. Putting in the time that it takes to be fly as a mother.” I stop him in front of the stage and wink towards his obvious crush, he won’t admit it but the blush on his face says enough. “To supply all of my heart's demands. Suit and tie 'cause undercover, he's gonna save my life like superman” I walk behind Shoyo while he sings this part, I place my hands on his shoulders and point him in the direction of the team. “Where do the good boys go to hide away, hide away? I'm a good, good girl who needs a little company. Looking high and low, someone let me know. Where do the good boys go to hide away, hide away?” I smirk at Shoto as we both sing this together, he raises an eyebrow at me.

I walk over to the end of the stage and reach my hand out once again, but not to Tobio, to Kei. “Tell me where the good boys go. Tell me where the good boys go. Tell me where the good boys go” Shoyo starts singing nervously, but still good nonetheless, Kei takes my hand and I pull him up on stage with us. I start clapping along to the beat and the crowd follows me before I cover my mic and whisper to him, “Go to your princess.” He widens his eyes at me, but I simply motion to Shoyo before smirking at him. “Will somebody tell me, tell me” I hear Shoyo finish the line and I push Kei over to him, I could lightly hear Kei say, “I’m right here.” A light smile appears on my face, but I quickly regain my focus on the crowd. “Tell me where the good boys go. Tell me where the good boys go. Tell me where the good boys go. Tell me where the good boys go” I continue clapping, but I can hear light “oos” from the crowd. I turn around to see Shoyo and Kei kissing. I walk over to them, still singing, and place a crown on Kei’s head. “Where do the good boys go to hide away, hide away. I'm a good, good girl who needs a little company. Looking high and low, someone let me know” Shoyo surprises me and starts singing, I chuckle slightly and sing with him. He catches my attention and motions towards the group, my eyes widen and he smirks at me. “Where do the good boys go to hide away, hide away. Hide away, hide away. Hide away, hide away” I give in and walk towards the end of the stage, touching a few fans' hands as I pass by. Instead of pulling someone up, I jump off the stage into our group of friends. “Looking high and low, someone let me know” I look back up at Shoyo and Kei and he nods at me, I let out a deep sigh and get ready to sing the next line. I grab Asahi’s head and place my lips on his, I can feel him tense for a moment before relaxing. He kisses me back, grabbing my waist and pulling me towards him.

When we finally break for air he places his forehead on mine. “Where do the good boys go to hide away, hide away” My voice fades out as I look him in the eyes, then the whole club goes dark as he turns the lights off. While in this darkness, I manage to place the crown in my hand on his head before kissing him again. This one full of passion and longing, I pull away and grab his hand and pull him on stage with me. The lights turn back on as we walk towards Shoyo and Kei, all I can hear are screams and cheers from the crowd but I let go of Asahi, completely ignoring the crowd at the moment. I grab Shoyo and we hug each other, this one I’ve waited 3 years to do. “If he hurts you, I will kill him. I don’t care that he’s my best friend.” I can feel him chuckle slightly as he hugs me harder as soon as I finish talking. “I could say the same. But it’s Asahi-senpai.” As soon as those words leave his mouth I almost break down into tears but we have a show to finish. We both pull away but grab each other’s hand and walk center stage and take a bow. “Sorry babes, but this is the end of the show.” I hear dozens of groans and ‘no’ come from the crowd, which only makes me smile. “We both have school on Monday, but she has a LOT to catch up on.” Shoyo continues my sentence and pulls me in for a side hug, “But remember, it is never too late to find your king,” “Or queen.” Shoyo finishes my sentence as we both turn around and grab Asahi’s and Kei’s hand. “If you ever want to see us,” Shoyo starts motioning for me to finish. “Look for this dynamic duo playing volleyball at Karasuno,” I wink at the crowd once more before we all turn around to face the curtain. “This was fun, but we have to go. Bye” We say together as we walk off the stage and the club goes dark once again.

Masterlist

#Haikyuu #Asahi x reader #song stories #hinata shoyo #asahi azumane

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movienotesbyzawmer · 4 years ago

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April 12: Rocky III

(previous notes: Rocky II)

Because now that Rocky has done the unthinkable and become The Champ, we want to see him tackle the next challenge… win AGAIN.

I remember seeing this in the theater with my buddy. I don't know if I liked it. I'm pretty sure I found Mr. T to be as charismatic and as terrifying as they wanted. I'm pretty sure when I bought the ticket I hesitated and asked the cashier, "hey, wait, we get to see him do some variation on the triumphant steps jogging moment, right? Otherwise never mind I'll go see Poltergeist again". If I'm paying good money for boxing sequels, I want to be assured that the formula has not been altered.

Okay let's go.

Once again, this is Un Film De Sylvester Stallone.

Slight variation on the fanfare with the title, now there's a close-up of the Important Belt Buckle Of Punchsport.

Then we see the climax of the previous movie, maybe edited slightly for time. But not very noticeably different.

That segues immediately to a montage of Rocky doing many successful beatup games, scored by the enormous pop hit "Eye of the Tiger". I suspect this isn't the last we'll hear of this number.

The montage morphs into a different story, one starring Mr. T! He's watching Rocky win stuff and he is not pleased. He can also fist-game, it seems. But the montage makes it clear that it is our hero Rocky who is the star of commercial endorsements and marriage love.

I mock but this visionary filmmaker has indeed opened this movie with energetically cinematic choices.

0:8:40 - Arcade games! Paulie goes to an arcade and it is like the arcades I went to when this movie was out and I see games that I played! But Paulie doesn't like the Rocky pinball machine. It seems he is a sore brother-in-law.

Rocky is now very dashing. Paulie is drunk and whiny about how Rocky is such a big shot now, but he has a point about how prettied up he has become.

Later that night Rocky and Adrian are in their bed and it has a rich person headboard. The director, also visibly present in front of the camera, clearly instructed the production designer to create a bed that would reflect the elite level of financial flexibility that the protagonist has reached.

So apparently Rocky has gotten himself into the strange situation where he has to do a charity boxing match against a wrestler played by the increasingly famous Hulk Hogan. I had forgotten that Hulk Hogan is in this movie. Mr. T is watching this match and he looks intensely the same way he only ever does.

Whoa Hulk Hogan is way taller than Sylvester Stallone. Is that allowed? The rules have changed! And this whole thing is not boxing it is wrestling and it is that silliness instead of boxing. This is a long scene that is the same as a typical Wrestlemania thing, all manufactured drama made to seem like fighting and true menace, but at the end we see that they are just professional coworkers and we have all learned a valuable lesson haven't we.

At a statue-unveiling, Rocky announces that he is maybe retiring. MAYBE. But then Mr. T shows up talking smack, and ladies and gentlemen we have ourselves an end-of-Act-One.

As Act Two begins, we have a scene that was an A+ homework assignment for the screenwriting teacher of Rocky III's screenwriter, who you will recall is the craftsman Sylvester Stallone. Burgess Meredith is like "I quit! I won't help you with this fight! Mr. T is too hard to beat!" But then they talk it out to advance past that scripted complication. And now Rocky and Mr. T are training for their fight in their separate worlds.

Speaking of worlds, in the World Of Rocky, the famous theme that was introduced in the score of the first movie is actually known to the characters in this movie as Rocky music. They play it for him publicly to celebrate their pride in his violence accomplishments.

Apollo Creed appears to be retired, but he is a commentator at this Rocky/T fight.

0:40:00 - They're about to do the fight, but Mr. T is so The Way He Is that the wants to fight on the way TO the fight. That results in some tumult that makes BM have health problems. It was vague what happened, it seemed like BM was shoved aside by all the mad/scared/fighting people, so then he has a conversation with Rocky in a back room where he's like, don't stop the fight even though I am suddenly vaguely frail. He sort of clutches his chest like maybe there's a heart attack but just one of those everyday ones. I have those every time I click send on a work email. My friends should not be discouraged from championship fisticuffs when that happens.

This is the first Rocky movie to be made after Raging Bull came out, and I detect some influence in the boxing footage, like with close-ups of Mr. T.

Rocky loses that fight pretty quickly, and maybe the problem is that he didn't do a pre-victory steps jog. But the movie is telling us that BM is dying on a table in the back room and that's the real problem.

BM dies and SS has done some pretty ambitious cry-acting. Then the funeral is in one of those indoor above-ground file-cabinet-style cemeteries, which is not the normal cinematic choice so nice job there.

I can already tell that we're going to have another thirty minutes of a bummed-out Rocky to fill out Act Two before it starts to look like the setup for a fulfilling climax can begin. It's what I would have told him to write if he were my student at the third-rate community college where I'm a part-time screenwriting teacher in this scenario.

Apollo Creed has shown up to try to pep-talk Rocky, and he keeps saying "eye of the tiger" because of marketing departments. But also, he is a more mature person than in the first two movies. Even though it's a character shift, I do kind of buy it. It seems like another side of the character we knew slightly.

0:59:00 - Another scene beginning with dialogue that sounds like it was improvised by people who don't know what real life is like. "Come on you're going to be late to the airport!" "Maybe you should have packed another sweater" "no in California it's not too cold". AHA THEY ARE GOING ON A TRIP TO CALIFORNIA I AM ON TO YOU ROCKY III

When they go to Los Angeles and show us people on the street and the people have been told to look and act super different so that the audience will be like, wow California is different, then, well, we are at this part of Rocky III did you know.

Although there was my earlier expectation that we were going to have a prolonged funereal story arc, but what's happened is that Apollo is invested in training Rocky so they're showing us that side of Apollo, and that's interesting. But also it's the template of "Rocky is training and he doesn't look like he's going to get there, but then inspiration will hit and he will look like he is going to get there". S. Stallone, noted filmmaker, is using montages and flashbacks to show how recent bad news moments for Rocky are haunting him. It is working.

Adrian performs a pep talk monologue for Rocky. I don't understand her point. It's like a box of those refrigerator poetry magnets jumbled up together and spoken as movie script lines. I guess the gist is "don't give up" and he starts to think maybe he shouldn't give up. Then it's a new training montage, and it's got the classic "running far now" Rocky theme so we know it's going well. The twist on the classic cheering-atop-stairs cadence is it's Rocky and Apollo on the beach, and Rocky is a little faster than Apollo and that is great news for them both.

Now we're right before the final fight, and we heard Mr. T tell a reporter that he "pity the fool". I didn't hear the rest of what he said, I was just so happy to hear him say "pity the fool".

Oh but shortly after that he is asked what his prediction is, and he looks at the camera, OUR camera, at US, and says "PAIN". Submitted without comment.

That face-to-face moment right before the fight starts, Mr. T says "imma bust you UP" and Rocky says "go for it". Advanced Scripted Dialogue with Professor Stallone.

The final fight happens, and it's mostly the same as how the other ones went except without a montage summarizing a whole bunch of rounds. I think this whole fight ended in three rounds. But it ends with the exact same music that I'm getting sick of….

BUT! There is a follow-up scene this time! It's some other day later on and Apollo and Rocky are just palling around at the gym. And THEN the movie ends. I feel that the producers must have implored Stallone, artisan that he is, to just end the movie on that climactic moment right after the fight ends, just like the other movies, but he said NO. That is not ENOUGH for a SYLVESTER STALLONE FILM. We will have an additional scene with INCONSEQUENTIAL BANTER. It will last OVER ONE MINUTE. And here we are. Rocky III: it's like Raging Bull, but better!!

I think Talia Shire is the only female actor with any lines in this movie.

One thing that's very much worth saying about this movie is that there is WAY more actual boxing in this movie. The other ones had almost no scenes where there were live boxing matches, but this one had lots. Plus that wrestling one! And as I observed, the directing style with this one also had a newfound sense of visual pop. But the story seems like it changed not at all from how it was described in the first studio board room meeting where jackass producers blurted out what Rocky III might be like.

(next: Rocky IV)

#rocky 3

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inspired-by-the-music · 4 years ago

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For You: Stand By Me

Taglist: @jineunwootrash

If you would like to be added to the taglist of any of this blog’s works, please ask!

Recommended Reading: For You: 4 O’Clock; these works have separate, independent, but deeply interwoven timelines.

Chapter 3: The Girl Who Wouldn’t Let Go

Sehun’s POV

In pre-debut days, before we were even grouped together, Junmyeon was determined that trainees should bond, so he wrote these little schedules of nearby events and sent them out in group messages. Owing to his busy university schedule, Junmyeon rarely went anywhere with us himself. He was absent that night in the drive-in too.

Although I was sixteen, I wasn’t especially eager to drive, so I didn’t mind when Minseok claimed the driver’s seat. Because I respected Luhan too much to complain when he bounced into the passenger seat, I quietly squeezed into the backseat where— as the youngest— I was sandwiched between Chanyeol and Kyungsoo.

Objectively, it was unfair that I was forced into the smallest seat because of my age. I get that Kyungsoo was older, and that was why I didn’t demand to trade seats. Still, I think that it only would have been right for him to take the middle seat because he was the shortest. I wasn’t really one to argue against rules, traditions, and societal roles, though, so I just folded my hands in my lap and decided that if ever I were the oldest person in the room, I wouldn’t get a big head. I wouldn’t abuse my power. I would be fair.

My members like to joke that I’m disobedient and border on disrespectful, but that’s not true. To tell you the truth, spending my Friday night in the drive-in with Chanyeol talking loudly in my ear wasn’t my idea of a good time, so my presence alone testified to my respect for Junmyeon before he was even the leader.

I wasn’t trying to be rude or disrespectful when I pushed Chanyeol out of the car as soon as Minseok parked. My legs were just aching from being cramped in the back seat, so I was eager to stretch and climb into the bed of the truck, where I could massage the knots that formed in my muscles. My eyes instinctively rolled at Chanyeol’s dramatized howls of pain as he tripped over gravel; he shouldn’t have taken offense.

As I eased my back against the cool metal wall of the truck, stretching my legs before me, Minseok smiled. His smile was always timid in those days. His voice was so quiet that my ears had to strain to make out his words. “Sehun, do you want something from the concession stand?”

Groaning at the thought of standing, I asked, “Are you going to pay for me?”

Having recovered from his trip, Chanyeol laughed as he sat next to me. “What a cheapskate!”

I didn’t think anything about what I said until I heard Kyungsoo’s faint snort of a laugh while he pushed his glasses further up on the bridge of his nose. Look— I firmly believe that seniors should pay for all expenses, and I still abide by that rule whenever I’m a senior— but I didn’t really know Minseok well enough to expect anything from him. All we had in common was that we knew Junmyeon.

Tugging my wallet out of my pocket, I prepared to hand it over with the explanation that I was too tired to walk with him after the full week of training, but Minseok wouldn’t accept my money. “Of course I’ll pay for you!” He was almost too nice. Sometimes, I don’t trust people like that, or I worry that someone will take advantage of them, but I was never worried about Minseok. “Just tell me what you want.”

I fit my wallet back into my pocket and shrugged. “I’m not picky.” Chanyeol laughed again— roaring right in my ear— and I cut my eyes at him. We were always friends, I guess, but we were very different people, and that’s why he was always on my nerves. “Just get me something sweet, please.”

Minseok nodded and, after listening to requests from Kyungsoo and Chanyeol, he took off with Luhan toward the concession stand.

Although too many hours had passed since the sunset for it to be bright enough to read, Kyungsoo held a book up to his face. He always liked to look smart, even when nobody was paying attention to him. Dropping the book to glance at me over the pages, he remarked, “You don’t seem like you would have a sweet tooth.

I blinked at him, never really caring much for people who speak in metaphors. A part of me wanted to tell him to speak plainly, but he probably wouldn’t have humored me anyway, so I bit my tongue. Besides, it didn’t matter what he meant.

Kyungsoo blinked back at me. It was obvious that he was sizing me up. That didn’t bother me so much; I just didn’t know what he thought he could discover about my character from my vague snack preferences. It’s foolish for people to attach meanings to insignificant things, but that’s something people do best.

I probably wouldn’t have responded to Kyungsoo even if Chanyeol hadn’t interrupted my thoughts to ask, “So, what movie are they playing?”

It wasn’t such a bad question. Because I only went to please Junmyeon, I didn’t know any specifics. Noticing that Chanyeol and I were looking to him, Kyungsoo answered, “Beauty and the Beast,” with a smile. He liked getting to share his knowledge.

“Like, the Disney movie?” I asked.

Kyungsoo nodded sagely, and Chanyeol lowered his head, whining, “I didn’t realize we were here to watch a little girl movie!” He was a little too obsessed with being macho those days. If you ask me, a hyperfixation on manliness is pretty lame.

Kyungsoo glared at Chanyeol. “Animation is not exclusively for children.”

“Dude.” Chanyeol returned his glare— sharpened it. “It’s a princess movie! It’s marketed to little girls!”

“Don’t you think you’re being narrow-minded?” Kyungsoo phrased his criticism as a question, maybe, because Chanyeol was technically his senior. “Beauty and the Beast explores significant themes about sacrifice, superficiality, the nature of love—”

Regretting that I hadn’t pushed through my fatigue to walk with Minseok and Luhan, I tore my eyes away from Kyungsoo and tried to will myself deaf to his monologue as I tinkered with our portable speaker. Upon finding the station broadcasting the audio accompanying the images projected on the towering screen at the front to the lot, I frowned at an obvious problem.

I interrupted the debate to announce, “This is in English.” Even when I squinted, trying to distinguish the finer details on the screen, there were no captions to be found. When nobody responded, I added, “I don’t understand English.”

Chanyeol nudged my ribs and joked, “Does anybody?”

Kyungsoo rolled his eyes. “Just appreciate the art of animation, Sehun.”

I huffed at Kyungsoo’s pretentious attitude, “How am I supposed to appreciate something I don’t understand?”

“Well—” Kyungsoo’s eyebrows knit together, and I knew that he was considering my words too deeply again— “you’ve seen the movie before, right?”

Before I could respond flatly that (obviously) I had, Minseok returned, carrying armfuls of snacks that he dropped in the center of the truck bed along with the bright announcement, “Look who I found!”

I don’t know who I expected to find when I glanced over at him, but judging from the drop of my jaw, I hadn’t expected to find Lei clinging onto Luhan’s arm. I hadn’t expected to see her beaming up at him as if he hung the moon.

When Luhan gestured for her to climb into the truck before him, she gasped, “Where did Heechul go? One second, he was standing next to me, and the next—” Her head turned from side to side as if she couldn’t imagine how she wound up at our truck.

As stupid and irresponsible as it was, I could have forgiven her for losing Heechul in her starry-eyed pursuit of Luhan. After all, she was just a kid. But I couldn’t forgive Heechul for losing her. Who knows what could have happened if Minseok and Luhan hadn’t been there to lead her through the dark? All I knew was that after that night, I wouldn’t be able to look at Heechul without confronting the urge to roll my eyes at his carelessness.

While Chanyeol, who never liked Lei for whatever stupid reason, stiffened at my side, Kyungsoo dropped his book to wave at her. “Hey, Lei!”

My eyebrows twitched. How did Kyungsoo know her? Glancing from Kyungsoo’s joyful wave to Chanyeol’s scowl to Minseok’s small grin to Luhan’s dimpled smile, I realized that Lei wasn’t a stranger to anybody. Except for Chanyeol, she had managed to charm everyone into being her friend despite the age difference.

It would have been weird to be jealous or possessive of a kid’s attention— even Lei’s— but there was something weird about recognizing that I wasn’t the only trainee she knew well enough to greet outside of the agency. It shouldn’t have been such an epiphany. I knew I wasn’t the center of the universe or anything. I knew that before we ever met, she was well acquainted with real idols. She was loved by real idols.

She just always had this way of looking at me that made me feel— I don’t know. I don’t like talking about this kind of thing. I guess that moment was humbling. I guess Lei continued to humble me when she settled into the space next to me only to excitedly chatter to Luhan in rapid-fire Mandarin. Despite my basic understanding of the language, I couldn’t quite keep up with what they said between giggles.

I guess I had always known that Lei wouldn’t cling to her crush on me forever. I guess I knew that I had been hoping for that day to come quickly, but now that I thought it had arrived, I felt weird. It wasn’t that I wanted her to like me or anything. I guess the issue was that if she had outgrown me, time really was passing, and it had done so without my permission. Nobody is ever that comfortable with time.

When Lei and Luhan fell silent just long enough to glance at me before laughing again, it was obvious that they were talking about me. The tips of my ears probably burned.

“Yeah,” I understood Luhan as he nodded at Lei, “he is pretty handsome.”

Oh. So that’s still what she thought of me. Weirdly, I was relieved. Some things would probably never change. Maybe Lei would always think I was handsome. Maybe no matter how many times I told her not to flirt, she would do what she wanted. Maybe people should learn to find comfort in constants.

Probably because she seemed so happy, chewing through a chocolate bar as she talked to Luhan, probably because I was kind of (just a little) flattered, I swallowed the fading urge to lecture her. I instead listened to Chanyeol growl, “Look, Minseok, I don’t care where you found her. I just know that she can’t stay here.”

Although Chanyeol hadn’t said her name, Lei was sensitive to his criticism. Drawing her knees up to her chest, she said in a small voice, “I should probably go. My mom is probably worried about me.”

Kyungsoo was only trying to be helpful when he offered, “We’ll help you find your parents.” He wasn’t trying to knock all the air out of Lei’s chest.

She ceased her efforts to climb down the side of the truck, collapsed at my side, and wheezed. I had seen Lei upset before, but never in my life had I seen somebody look so wounded by mere words— words that weren’t even harsh. Blinking at her, I understood: Lei didn’t have parents.

We never talked about her family. I would never know how to approach that topic— and I didn’t know yet that her mom was the idol who never debuted. I could just tell from her labored breathing that she didn’t have a father. That’s why she followed her mom everywhere. That’s why she sat alone at that table by the vending machine every day. That’s why she claimed Super Junior as her family, and that’s why they protected her: they were filling a void.

Had I believed that an embrace could mend that kind of deep wound, I would have wasted no time in slinging an arm around her shoulders to brace her against everyone’s stares. I didn’t believe that, though, even if I wanted to, so I just laid my arm over the edge of the car, cutting my eyes at Chanyeol (because he was on my nerves, and we were only in this situation because he couldn’t be nice to Lei for five seconds) and Kyungsoo (because, despite his good intentions, he prodded at Lei’s wound and made it impossible for me to ever overlook the scar again).

I said, “I don’t think we should rush to return Lei to whoever abandoned her at the concession stand.” I think I was angry. My hands were balled into fists, and my jaw was so tense that my words were almost unintelligible. I’m not sure, though; I’m not that experienced with anger.

Even before her breathing hitched at the word ‘abandoned,’ I should have known that I said the wrong thing. I wasn’t trying to make matters worse. I didn’t know what to say. I could only grimace at my mistake after the fact— after I couldn’t snatch the words back out of the air.

Luhan playfully tugged on one of Lei’s twin braids and, after earning the faintest grin, he said, “I think we should keep Lei! At least until the movie ends.”

Well. If you put me at that awkward stage— no, even me on my best night— next to Luhan, I guess it’s clear who any kid (or maybe any girl at any age) would prefer. We weren’t even in competition, and I felt like Luhan was winning. How stupid.

Nodding enthusiastically, Minseok agreed with Luhan, Chanyeol groaned, and Kyungsoo insisted (despite the fact that the entire drive-in was a dead zone) that we should call Lei’s parents, but Lei didn’t respond to any of them. She didn’t even seem to hear them. She only looked at me with big eyes.

Did she want me to tell her what to do? I guess that was something I did often enough without being asked, but— for the first time in a while— I didn’t know what to say.

Unsure of what to do with the authority she always entrusted to me, I cast my eyes toward the screen and fidgeted with the speaker. “Hey, Lei.” I didn’t glance at her, but I could still feel her eyes watching me. I know she wasn’t looking for fault. I know that she was just admiring me the way only a kid can. Still, I squirmed. “Can you translate this movie for me?”

Once I looked at her, and she understood that I was encouraging her to stay— resolving within myself to help her find her mom and Heechul once the street lights turned on at the end of the movie— she smiled. Her gap was now replaced by the metallic glint of braces. I guess I was just glad that she could breathe again.

Lei had just started to nod her head when a shriek broke through the quiet night. “Why don’t you shut the hell up? If you’re so invested in how this fairytale ends, I’ll tell you— the girl falls in love with the beast! He falls in love with her! And it’s beautiful! Now, get out of my way! I’m looking for my kid!”

In the moments before I realized that the shriek belonged to her mom, while the guys and I spun our heads in search of the conflict, I clutched Lei’s arm and pulled her behind me so I could shield her. In the event of a real emergency, I don’t know how effective my body would have been as a shield, but I wasn’t really thinking too deeply. At some moments in life, you act purely on instinct. That was one of those moments. My instinct was to protect Lei from the screaming woman.

In hindsight, even now that I know that there was no real threat to our safety, I am proud of my instincts.

Heechul’s voice preceded him. “Kimberly, you have to calm down.”

Recognizing Heechul’s voice, I figured that Kimberly must have been Lei’s mom’s name. My forehead wrinkled as I tried to fit the name with her face. It was weird, I guess, because I had never heard it before, just like I had never heard her yell.

“Calm down?” She laughed one of those hollow laughs. The scary kind. “You leave my child all alone at the concession stand, and you have the nerve to tell me to calm down?”

Heechul must have been stupid to argue with a panicked mother. “I told you, she wasn’t alone! She was with two handsome young men—” Minseok and Luhan, I assumed— “and from how she lit up while talking to them, I assumed that they were friends!”

“So you just left her there?”

“I didn’t mean to!” I don’t know how Lei’s mom resisted the urge to punch Heechul’s face that must have coursed through both of us with comparable intensity. “Besides,” he added, “Lei is, like, a black belt in taekwondo, so if she was in trouble—”

“She is a little girl!” Lei’s mom screamed to drill the rather obvious reminder into Heechul’s thick skull. Some kind of desperation ripped through her voice and caused Lei to tense under my grip.

Something about the frown I found on Lei’s face when I glanced back at her and the fear in her mom’s voice spurred me to action. “Come on, Lei.” I ushered her out of the bed of the truck, offering both of my hands so she wouldn’t trip. “Let’s go find your mom.”

Her small, cold hands trembled in mine, and as I opened my mouth to ask what was wrong, it dawned on me: she was afraid of the dark. She tripped once or twice because her eyes were fixed up on the sky, probably searching for the moon and stars.

Once we found her mom and Heechul after a few minutes that felt like eternities because of the silence and her palpable fear, I thought they would never stop thanking me for being, as Heechul said, a knight in shining armor.

“You’re welcome,” was the only thing to say. I guess I meant it because something like pride spread through my chest and pulled my lips into a smile even though it was dark and nobody could see it.

When I released her hand, Lei mumbled, “Well, I guess you’re leaving now, right?” Although I couldn’t quite make out the features on her face, I imagined from her tone that she must have been pouting. Without even waiting for my reply, she said, “Goodnight, Sehun. Thank you for helping me find Mom and Heechul.”

Mostly because I wanted Lei to be happy— and I realized that somehow, just by being around, I made her happy— I raised an eyebrow at her. “What are you talking about? I told you— I need a translator, and nobody back in that truck knows English. Where you go, I go.”

Hearing my excuse for tagging along, neither her mom nor Heechul objected. Breathing another sigh of relief because Lei was safe and sound, they led us back to their car. As Heechul finally started to apologize for losing Lei in the first place, nobody noticed that Lei was bold enough to reach for my hand again with the whispered excuse, “I don’t want to get lost again, Sehun.”

I gave her a stern stare— the one I tried to reserve for the lectures about acting appropriately around boys— and I know she must have felt it. I know she must have been able to see it even in the darkness when she looked up at me, but she wouldn’t let me go.

I guess because I started it by holding her hand first, I guess because I didn’t want her to get lost again either, I guess because I wanted to be some comfort even if I couldn’t cure her fear of the dark, I guess because I didn’t want to risk driving the smile from her face, I just let her do what she wanted that one time.

That one time would become two times and then three and then a hundred and then a thousand and then a million until I didn’t know how to tell her no anymore, until I didn’t want to tell her no anymore, until I didn’t know what to do when she wasn’t bold anymore, until I didn’t quite know what to feel when she didn’t look at me first anymore. When I walked with her through the night that was too dark to find any stars or even the moon, I swear I never imagined that she would grow into somebody that I love in the heart-fluttering, gut-wrenching, world-changing kind of way.

Then, Lei was just a kid who deserved a protector, and I was just one of many who tried to overfill the place of a father who never should have left her.

As I walked with her, deciding what I would say to Chanyeol when he would inevitably curse me for ditching him (again) for Lei, I told myself that I wouldn’t have been able to find my way back to the truck anyway. And it wasn’t a lie, I swore as Lei’s translation of the movie— complete with unique voices for each character— captivated everyone in her mother’s car.

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moiraineswife · 4 years ago

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To Care - A Stormlight Fic

*clears throat* SPOILERS. RHYTHM OF WAR SPOILERS. HERE. THERE. EVERYWHERE IN THIS POST. BANISH IT FROM YOUR SIGHT.

Okay.

Fic time:

Title: To Care

Summary: Set towards the end of Rhythm of War. Wit’s POV. This is a fic of three parts, really. The first part involves Wit's internal monologue on how fabulous Jasnah is. The second part involves Wit and Ivory's dialogue of how fabulous Jasnah is. The third part involves Wit impressing on Jasnah how fabulous she is. AKA: Jasnah falls asleep for five minutes, Wit gets incredibly soft, Ivory becomes slightly protective, and we all agree Jasnah is the best thing since sliced bread.

Teaser: It surprised him how truly and deeply fond he felt of her, looking down at her now.

It had been quite a few centuries now since he’d allowed himself to enter into such a dalliance. Although this was dallying into a far stronger alliance between the two of them than that.

That may be cause for concern, but looking at her now, it was hard to feel concern for anything.

She was truly wondrous. All people were their own flavour of unique experience, but they were not always a good one. Jasnah Kholin had excelled in this area, as in so many others, and was nothing short of exquisite.

Link: ao3

Commission Link: Have me write other cosmere characters

Jasnah looked younger when she slept. Such was a cliche, and though he knew it was inevitable, as after so much of human history no idea could truly be original any more, he did try to avoid the more frequently used ones.

This was just an idle thought, however, not required to do any real work in thrilling or entertaining. Just for him. In this small, quiet moment, in a war camp in Emul, it was precisely what he needed to hear. How convenient that his thoughts were always there to think the things he needed to.

Gently, he brushed the hair away from her face, admiring the softened lines of it. She was truly a beautiful woman. The Shard that had crafted her ancestors way back when ought to feel proud of themselves. She was a true masterwork.

It surprised him how truly and deeply fond he felt of her, looking down at her now.

Head pillowed on an enormously thick book she had been studying, which felt appropriate. Her fingers flexed slightly, their tips brushing over the lines of text, as if she could still feel them, even in dreams. The spiky lines like heartbeat readouts elsewhere in the Cosmere. The life of its author still extended in these dry pages and thin lines.

It had been quite a few centuries now since he’d allowed himself to enter into such a dalliance. Although this was dallying into a far stronger alliance between the two of them than that. That may be cause for concern, but looking at her now, it was hard to feel concern for anything.

He had a deep love for humanity. It would not have been possible to continue doing as he did had he not. The weight of it all would have torn him down millenia ago had he not always had the good hearts of people like Jasnah Kholin to help buoy him up and support him.

And she did have a good heart. Far too few people saw that in her. They saw only the carefully sculpted mask she had crafted for herself over time. They heard her words, and read her analysis and essays, but they did not see what drove them, what drove her.

Jasnah Kholin was a good woman, and she deserved far better than him.

It was selfish, this thing he had embarked upon with her. It was always selfish, whenever he took partners. There was always somewhere else he needed to be, something else that would have to be more important to him.

Jasnah seemed to understand that, so far. She had asked, naturally, and he had deflected her. That had irritated her, but in a way that only made her eager for more. Secrets were to Jasnah Kholin as flesh and blood were to others. They made her, gave her substance, something to sink the teeth into.

Lately, she had merely requesting that he inform her in advance if he was about to disappear on one of his little trips, so she might set aside time to write out her own insults for the meetings she had the next day.

Truly delightful.

She was captivating, fiercely intelligent, with a wit near as sharp as his own, barely in need of him at all at court. Or in general, really.

She had taken eagerly to the information he had provided on other planets, Realmatic Theory, and other staples of the Cosmere that most took some time to adjust to.

Within a few days, she’d been theorising with him, helping him compose letters to the other Shards, and asking deep, insightful questions that had frankly amazed him. Which was difficult to do at his point.

Spectacular.

She’d talked of accompanying him, if he would permit it. Increasingly he was thinking that he would. He had rarely done so in the past. It complicated the already complicated process of worldhopping. But for her...For her he might just make the exception.

Not now, of course, she’d said firmly, with Roshar in such peril. But afterwards. If this world was saved, and she managed to survive that process. Once Alethkar had a more democratic system of rule in place that meant she was no longer needed, she wanted to go with him.

He had opened up a whole new galaxy of other worlds, cultures, magics, and peoples to her. Instead of being overwhelmed, she had just seen it as another area for her to study and explore and learn about.

The thrill in her eyes when he talked of different worlds, the sheer joy he could see just behind the veil of composure shielding her violet eyes...A man could become addicted to that

His fingers rested gently on her head, watching her in her peace. She deserved these moments of respite. Would that the Cosmere be willing to grant her them more often.

No nightmares for now it seemed. She tried to hide them from him when they happened, not yet trusting him to seek comfort and reassurance from. Ivory did that for her.

He had not let on that her efforts to keep him in the dark had been anything other than successful. It would only serve to upset her further, and he had no wish to do that. She had enough pressure on her as it was.

This woman had been burned, burned nearly away to nothing, by those she had loved and trusted in the past. It would take her time to fully trust him. If she ever could. He would be neither surprised, nor offended, if she was no longer capable of fully trusting him. Or, indeed, anyone.

Save Ivory, of course.

As if summoned by this thought, Ivory changed his form, growing to a visible size, standing on the back of Jasah’s chair, watching him with impenetrable eyes, arms folded.

“I mean her no harm, my friend,” Wit said lightly.

That was true. He did not mean her harm. He never meant anyone harm. But there were times when it was necessary. Terrible, but necessary.

The Cosmere could be a cruel, harsh place, and no-one knew that better than him.

No-one knew better, either, that being prevented from physically hurting someone, had not limited his capacity for causing pain. Even to those he loved. Especially to them.

Wounds to the body would, if given the proper time and motivation, heal themselves. Wounds to the heart, and the soul, though? Well, no force in the Cosmere he knew of had yet found a way to repair that damage.

Jasnah herself was proof of that. She hid her scars well, but he knew they lingered.

“I know that this is,” Ivory said simply, in that odd clipped way of the inkspren, “But she has asked that I watch over her when she sleeps. And I do this for her. Always.”

“You do it very well,” Wit said, with a small bow.

He doubted any understood the depth of the bond Jasnah shared with Ivory. He didn’t think even she realised precisely what it meant to her. And wouldn’t unless it were taken away. He hoped, which he was not often in the business of doing these days, she never found out.

“She fears not what is,” Ivory said brusquely, with an air that implied he felt he had to explain Jasnah, which was oddly endearing, "But what might.”

Wit nodded, fingers carding gently through Jasnah’s soft black hair again, “She is wise,” he said, quietly, “And cautious.”

“She is afraid,” Ivory returned bluntly.

As far as whimsical conversation partners went, even Design was better than an inkspren.

He considered that. A hasty assessment, perhaps. Her own personal design seemed to revolve around vexing him in every way imaginable. At least Ivory made an effort. And wasn’t a monster.

“Does she fear me?” Wit asked, curious.

Ivory studied him for a long moment, expression inscrutable. Even for a spren.

“No,” he said, finally, “Though only recently is this not,” he added, and Wit nodded.

“She’s decided to trust me, then?” he asked quietly, thinking how much harder this answer might make it to pull the pin on the grenade Roshar may yet have to be to protect the rest of the Cosmere.

“No,” Ivory said, “Not this. She has decided to allow you close enough so that she may determine if you are fully worthy of trust.”

Wit nodded again, considering that, “She is a very wise woman,” he said, and Ivory nodded firmly in agreement.

Neither added that her wisdom had come at a terrible price.

Wit cocked his head, struck by a thought, and said, “And you, Ivory? Do you trust me? You are bonded to her, your opinion on this matters almost as much to me as her own.”

Again Ivory studied him with that inscrutable obsidian face of his. In an uncharacteristic move, he allowed his shape to grow to his full size, standing eye to eye with Wit. It was a strangely disconcerting, even threatening gesture. He so rarely even revealed himself to any but Jasnah.

“Your intentions for her, they are,” Ivory said, staring directly into his eyes.

Inkspren often emphasised the last word of a phrase, the certain intonation of which gave all kinds of meaning. Unfortunately humans were not good at recognising these things. Usually.

“They are,” Wit agreed.

“You seek your own bond with her,” Ivory said, crossing his arms, “A human bond. This is not like the Radiant bond. It is less. But still close. Close enough to burn, to hurt, to rip.”

Wit nodded, and the spren stared at him again.

“She is, to me,” he said quietly, and his voice became strangely much more human, much more emotional than Wit had ever heard from one of his kind before.

“Importance. She has much importance to me,” he went on, apparently realising he needed to clarify that last sentiment.

He frowned in his odd way, all sharp lines and harsh gestures.

“It was not supposed to be so,” he said.

His eyes drifted back down to Jasnah, expression softening. As much as it could, on an inkspren.

“The warnings were, from my kind, and many others. Humans were dangerous. Not to be trusted. She would destroy me, it was known. I tried to keep a distance. To not care. To be as spren. No passion. No feeling. These are things of men. If she were to kill me, I would make it hurt less, by not caring.”

“How did that work out for you, Ivory?” Wit asked, the corners of his lips quirking up in a half-smile.

“It did not,” Ivory replied flatly, “She is special,” he said, voice quiet again as he rested his fingers gently on her head, a gesture that was almost affectionate. “Special to me. Special to Roshar. Special.” He looked up at Wit and said, with intensity, “She should be special to you, also.”

“She is,” Wit said, with unreserved sincerity.

Ivory nodded sharply, “This is right,” he said. “She is lonely, I know this,” he continued, words more careful now, “Perhaps I should not tell you. But this is something you know already.”

The words were not a question. Inkspren did not do questions, on the whole. They made statements and if they were incorrect, they expected you to simply adjust your reality to make them correct, rather than point out their potential flaw.

“She wants for someone who can understand her. A companion. A bond. A human bond,” he said. “I am important to her. This is. But I am spren. I cannot do for her as you can. This is well. This is good.”

He met Wit’s eyes again, and there was an almost imperceptible shift in his posture, in his bearing. It became protective, almost offensive, with how he positioned himself between Jasnah and Wit.

“I also cannot hurt her as you can,” he said softly, “And you can. She is like spren, but she is not. I understand now,” he looked up at Wit again, and there was warning in his voice this time as he repeated once more, “She is important. She is.”

Well. Wit had been threatened, warned, chased, yelled at, punched, stabbed, and even shot at by those who sought to impress upon him what they thought of his potential to harm their loved ones which he had taken into his bed and, less frequently, his heart.

This was the first time he’d been warned off by a splinter of the divine powers of creation. It was a rather persuasive argument, all things considered. Definitely top five, in his estimation, and in this case his estimation was the only estimation, so top five it was.

“It happens,” Wit said quietly, stepping over to the easy chair he’d been lounging on and picking up the soft blanket strewn across it, “That I agree with you wholeheartedly, Ivory.”

The spren had shrunk back to his diminutive form again, so when he turned, he was apparently addressing empty air. That was fine. He’d given many a performance to the empty air before, and it had always been a most satisfactory audience. Very low rates of heckling.

“She is very important,” he said, gently draping the blanket around her.

He sighed, watching Jasnah as she shifted slightly in her sleep, face creasing for a moment, before she settled again.

“And I was not supposed to care, either,” he murmured, more to himself than Ivory. “Emotions are not very good at doing as they’re supposed to, however, and they never have been. You’d have thought, after all this time, I’d be able to make them do as I please, but no. They have a will entirely their own. Particularly when it concerns Jasnah Kholin.”

He shook his head, and, though he could no longer see it, imagined Ivory’s stiff nod of affirmation at that.

“I never intended it. Who could have imagined, even I? When I met her stumbling out of her perpendicularity somewhere so far from civilisation or thought the cartographers hadn’t even bothered to name it, I never thought that something like this was in our future." He glanced up at Ivory and smiled slightly, “Especially when she pointed you as a shardblade at my throat.”

Feeling. True feeling. It had been some time since he'd allowed himself to become emotionally tangled with another. And never on a system as on the brink as Roshar. But. Well. Jasnah was Jasnah. They should really make that an official Alethi idiom.

"Much like your good self I found that I did. And I do. What a damnable woman,” he added, fondly, tucking the edges of the blanket around her.

Jasnah stirred as he did so, then flinched and sat up too suddenly, the blanket falling away. He took a step back, to avoid crowding her, and raised his hands,

“Fear not!” he cried, in dramatic tones, “‘Tis only I! Your trusty companion Wit!”

She sighed, rubbing her temples, which was a common response to him.

These people had no sense of theatre on this planet. He’d have to found the appropriate guild. If Roshar survived long enough, that was, it’d be his top priority. The brave new world would need theatre if it were to survive with any level of decency.

“How long was I asleep?” she asked, looking around blearily for the clock Navani had sent her.

Wonderful woman, truly, not least because she had produced Jasnah. And fabulous though her latest fabrials were, giving Jasnah a clock so she could more accurately stress about precisely how many minutes per day she wasted doing things like ‘eating’ and ‘breathing’ had perhaps not been the wisest thing she’d ever done.

Wit had now purposefully lost or broken three of the damn things, but she just wouldn’t take the hint and kept sending them more.

“Not long enough,” he returned, stepping deftly to the side and shoving the clock fabrial off the desk and onto the floor, covering the thump it made with a cough.

Ivory frowned slightly at him, at a visible size again on Jasnah’s desk. Wit shrugged and widened his eyes innocently. Ivory said nothing.

Always knew I liked that spren, he thought, with a smirk.

Jasnah glowered at him. She did have an excellent glower. He’d have to try and encourage her to sit for a portrait of it at some point. Scholars in the future could learn so much by studying it.

“Wit,” she said, as though he was stupid.

Maybe he was. Provoking Jasnah Kholin was probably one of the top five ways to get yourself killed on Roshar. She ranked just behind chasmfiends. Her lack of mandibles really did a number on her statistics in that one.

It truly took a very special kind of person to know his vast wealth and knowledge of the Cosmere and still be able to speak to him with that kind of tone. It was excellent.

He grinned at her.

She just sighed, very heavily this time, and the weight of exhaustion seemed to crumple her as she said, tiredly, “What time is it?”

“Irrelevant,” he said simply, gathering up the blanket she had dropped, so rudely, to the floor in her haste to ensure he wasn’t a dangerous assassin come to murder her while she napped.

“Time is very relevant, Wit,” she said, frowning.

“Relative?” he said, lightly, “Why yes, I believe it is. In theory, at least. Relevant? Far less than you might think.”

“I think that it’s very relevant, Wit,” she said, not even pausing to appreciate his rather fantastic word play.

This situation was more dire than he’d first feared.

“I have meetings. If I don’t turn up on time I don’t think the other monarchs will accept ‘the time wasn’t relevant to me’ as an appropriate reason.”

“Peace, Jasnah,” he said gently, “It’s still late, you were barely asleep an hour.”

She relaxed visibly, then straightened in her seat and reached at once for her pen and notes.

Without looking at him again she said, “Good. Can you fetch me the scout reports of enemy troop movements? I need to consult them to properly formulate a strategy to present later today.”

“Jasnah,” he murmured, gently, laying a hand on her shoulder, “You need to sleep.”

“I believe I just did,” she replied flatly.

“For less than an hour.”

“Which was more than I should have allowed myself. I’m growing sloppy, indeed,” she said smoothly.

Damnable woman. It should not be permissible by law anywhere in the Cosmere to argue so well with him moments after waking up.

“Jasnah,” he said again, more firmly this time, stepping deliberately between her and the desk so she was forced to give him her full attention instead of continuing to make notes.

She glowered at him in a way that told him quite clearly she was strongly considering soulcasting him to smoke just to get him out of her way.

Well. Let her try. He could be just as damnable and frustrating as she could. More so, since he’d made a habit of it for quite a bit longer than she had.

“Who am I, Jasnah?” he asked, lightly.

“You’re Wit,” she replied, with a cold glare that told him she was not in the mood for his games.

“Quite correct!” he replied, in a perky tone he knew would vex her delightfully, “I am your Wit. I exist to provide wit to the throne of Alethkar. And that means that when you are being decidedly witless, it is my sworn duty to step in and help you.”

“I don’t need help, Wit,” she said, firmly.

Somewhere, wherever she happened to be frolicking at the moment, Design hummed in pleasure at that blatant lie.

“You haven’t slept in four days,” he told her, sternly, “The bags under your eyes are becoming quite pronounced, and that’s really hurting my attraction to you, don’t you know.”

“I have Stormlight, Wit,” she said, irritably, “I don’t need to sleep.”

“As a point of fact, my dear,” he replied calmly, steadily resisting her attempts to move him out of her way, “That’s blatantly untrue. And I know that you know this, as I heard you tell Sigzil yourself the other day when he was taking too many shifts on guard.

"Stormlight enhances your body. It allows you to push it beyond the normal limits and sustain that for a time. Eventually, however, no matter how much Stormlight you pour into yourself, you will snap from the pressure, and it will make a rather large mess that you won’t be able to fix by pouring more Investiture into it.”

She sighed, looking older than her years, and yet younger all at once. Lost. Almost helpless. And so, so exhausted.

He crouched down in front of her, putting himself at eye-level, and reached out to gently cup her cheek in his hand.

“You need to rest,” he told her quietly, stroking her cheek with his thumb, “You deserve to rest. You have done enough for now.”

She seemed to melt a little into his touch even as she deflated, all of her arrogant posturing lost to the storms that he knew raged inside her.

“I can’t, Wit,” she murmured, voice cracking slightly from fatigue and fear.

He smiled sadly and arched up to kiss her forehead, “You can,” he said, gently, “You shall. I will take care of anything you ask of me tonight in your stead. Whatever you wish to do with this time, I shall do it for you, while you sleep.”

He raised a finger, as a faint twinkle dared to flicker in her eyes, and he forestalled her protest.

“And if you refuse to sleep, I shall in turn refuse to do anything productive whatsoever. I will simply stand in this corner and recite Scadrian hymns until you are driven past the point of patience and forced to murder me. Which will be a real pest to deal with and mean a lot of extra paperwork. So by not sleeping you will, in fact, accomplish less than you would otherwise.”

She sighed heavily again and said, “You aren’t going to let this drop, are you?”

“Not even for a moment,” he replied, brightly.

She closed her eyes, then glanced down at her shoulder. A moment later, Ivory’s voice spoke, projected loudly enough for Wit to hear as well.

“I am in agreement with your Wit,” he said simply.

He always called him ‘your Wit’ which was oddly endearing.

“Humans need to sleep. This is, Jasnah. You know that this is.”

She groaned, rubbing her eyes, “I can’t argue with both of you, I-”

“Wondrous!” Wit exclaimed, interrupting her.

He sprang up then gently nudged her to rise and began undoing the buttons on her havah. She frowned at him, batting away his attentive fingers.

“I’m tired, Wit,” she said, irritably, “Not incompetent. I don’t need you to undress me.”

“Humour me, dearest one,” he said lightly, “Permit me this one duty so that I may retain illusions of my contributions to this partnership we have embarked upon together.”

“Your contributions amount to far more than your ability to undo buttons, Wit,” she said flatly, “If that was the only thing you’d been able to offer me I would never have put up with you for so long.”

That was strangely sweet. In a very Jasnah sort of way. Which was, of course, the best kind.

He smiled, and continued what he was doing, saying quietly, “I’m trying to teach you a very important lifeskill that you seem, as a byproduct of your own chronic over competence at everything you’ve ever attempted, to have completely missed out on.”

“Which is what?” she asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

“How to relax for one storming minute, you impossible woman,” he said fondly, earning himself another truly magnificent glare.

In return, he kissed the tip of her nose. That only caused her to roll her eyes at him, but she did so with a slight smile, so he considered this a victory on his end.

She stood still, obviously grudgingly, with no expectation that this would work, but she allowed him to minister to her.

He did so, gently easing her from her havah, taking the time to massage her cramped, knotted muscles as he did so, relieving the tension from them, peppering light, affectionate kisses over her as he did so.

She had a great many areas of skill and knowledge, but it was clear she had no idea how to allow other people to take care of her.

She was a swift learner in this, as in most things, however, and within five minutes, she was pliant, and comfortable beneath his touch, her eyes closed, her expression more at peace once again.

He knew better than to suggest she bathe before sleeping. She had a strictly scheduled bath time in the mornings, and deviated from it only after battle or other, similar exertions. Or if he warned her of it in advance and gained her permission to be spontaneously romantic later that evening.

So he merely fetched her night gown from the closet and eased her into it, followed at once by her robe, which she wore each night. He knew it had hidden gems sewn into the hems to provide Stormlight for her in an emergency. Prudent, but a sad insight into what life had forced her to do in order to survive it.

He guided her to the bed and sat her down, then began to undo her braids, gently and expertly removing the pins and twists. As well he should be able to, given that he had put them up for her that morning.

Her shoulders slumped again, but this time in relaxation, rather than exhaustion, and he counted that as a small win. They needed those in these trying times.

“Thank you, Wit,” she murmured, sleepily, as he moved on to brushing out her long black hair. With fifty precise strokes, as it had been a long, tiring day for her.

He pressed a soft, tender kiss to the back of her neck and said nothing. Now as not the time for grandstanding and loud affirmations of his own brilliance. Those would wait until the morning, when she was rested enough to appreciate them.

Finally, he set aside his brush, peeled back the covers, and guided her to lie down. Then he settled in behind her, putting his arms around her and drawing her close.

She looked at him over her shoulder, frowning slightly, “I thought you said you intended to do the work I wanted to get done tonight, so that I could rest while still being prepared?”

“I did say that,” he agreed, “And I shall fulfil my promise to you. Once you’re firmly asleep. Until then, I still fear a relapse of your earlier stubborn behaviour, and must therefore snuggle you into submission.”

She rolled her eyes, but settled back down and didn’t protest further.

She liked cuddling with him. He’d determined that much. Though she wouldn’t allow them both to fall asleep this way. Once they started getting ready to drift off, on the rare occasion she did drift off, she would nudge him away. Apparently he moved in his sleep and this was irksome.

Her little quirks were all rather endearing to him. They made her her, for without them she would not be Jasnah, and he would not be nearly as fond of her.

“Make sure that you do fetch those scout reports,” she said, her voice already becoming thick with tiredness. “And draft a response for Queen Fen regarding the state of the war in Emul as it stands now. And-” she broke off, stifling a yawn, “And be sure to take some notes on the current strategy we’ve been using, I feel there is a way to improve it. And-”

She continued to mumble until sleep finally claimed her and dragged her away from her constant work and worries. He held her for a time afterwards, enjoying her warmth, the peaceful sound of her rhythmic breathing, the softening of her features as she fully relaxed.

Then he gently extracted himself from the embrace and set about doing what she had requested of him.

As he did so, he noticed Ivory settle into place on the headboard above where Jasnah slept, keeping watch over her. She had not asked him to do that. She did not have to. She knew that he would, and that was evidently enough for her.

He doubted she would have slept at all the past six years without the spren to watch over her.

Wit nodded to Ivory, and the spren nodded back, an understanding passing between them. Together, whatever else was happening, they would teach this woman how to let herself be cared for again.

***

#Jasnah Kholin #Hoid #Ivory #Stormlight Archive #Rhythm of War #Rhythm of War Spoilers #RoW Spoilers #stormlight fic #jasnah x wit #jasnah x wit fic #my fic #jasnah x ivory #listen every time i write ivory and jasnah in a fic together i cry SO HARD #HE'S A GOOD SPREN #AND HE /LOVES/ HER DAMMIT #we've had like 2 scenes of ivory in 4 books #and in one of them he's a sword #but i have absolutely extrapolated a whole entire personality and relationship from that #and both of them boil down to: jasnah kholin is wonderful and i'd die for her #which is coincidentally how i feel #honestly this fic could be retitled: taryn projects their intense love of jasnah onto wit and ivory and makes them talk abt it #it was very cathartic #i enjoyed it greatly #these two DESERVE the domestic fluff okay #i'd be lying if i said i wasn't going to post more at some point #and i won't lie to u #bc it will happen #i've already written it #long post

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mortyvongola2-0 · 4 years ago

Text

Proof of Strength

Chapter 1: Whiff

Pairing: Alpha! Kylo Ren x Omega! Reader

Genre: a/b/o fic, slowburn, multichapter, 18+

Word Count: 2.9k

Warnings: language, sexual themes, lying, and a/b/o dynamics.

Read it on AO3

Next Chapter

The First Order offered great opportunities. You were poor and downtrodden when they showed up, claiming to have solutions to your poverty, that they would clothe, bathe, and provide food for all in exchange for hard work. Their propaganda promised a beautiful future, where no one would ever be as poor as you were again. Immediately, you wanted to join but there was one rather large problem. The First Order only hired alphas and betas. And therein lied your problem, as you were neither an alpha nor beta. You were an omega.

Omegas were rare, as the gene mutation required to be an omega was even more recessive than the alpha gene. They were less independent, they required protection and mass amounts of supervision during their heats, and the biggest difference in strength was in their upper bodies, as omegas do not require the upper body strength of an alpha or even a beta. In exchange the lower body strength of an omega was much more prevalent then for either other designation. Being an omega was also a lot harder to hide then being an alpha, the hormones of an omega heavily influence those of other designations, which was most likely the reason why the First Order did not hire or train them.

Nowadays, alphas found omegas to be more of a chore than anything. It used to be that alphas and omegas were fated to bond, that they would thrive well when mated with one another, but as more and more betas arose the less alphas wanted to put in the extra effort to take on an omega. You understood, if you weren’t an omega you wouldn’t want to have to be stuck with what the rumors made you sound like either. But, to you, there would always be something special about the bond between an alpha and omega. Others called you an idealist, or a romanticist, but you had seen that special bond firsthand. Your parents had that bond, so strong and beautiful, and you wished for that same sort of love.

You scratched at the scent gland on the left side of your neck as you stared at the First Order poster on the wall. The wind blew your scarf into your face along with some grains of black sand. I could get away with it, you thought. This shouldn’t be a problem. You clicked your tongue and tugged the poster off the wall. My family needs the money, and everything else they’re offering doesn’t sound too bad. Can’t imagine it being any worse than this. You rubbed a dirty finger under your nose and began to walk back out and into the streets, the poster now shoved into your satchel and a hum on your lips, images of infiltrating the First Order playing continually in your mind’s eye. This’ll be fun.

This is most certainly not fun, you thought as you crawled, much slower than everyone else, along the thick mud. The First Order really knew how to whip its people into shape, that’s for sure. You had passed their physical exam, as the differences between omegas and female betas bodies were very minimal hormone wise, and you made sure you had been suppressing with steroids long enough beforehand to not have to worry about being caught, besides hardly anyone tested for steroids anymore. Most designations didn’t suppress and if they did it was with more herbal remedies, as steroids were seen as archaic and more dangerous than helpful. The biggest differences between omega and beta, however, were all anatomically the same as an alpha. A bonding gland and six scent glands; one on each side of the neck right under the jaw and closer to the ears, one in each wrist, and one at each junction where pelvis met pubic area. But luckily for you, they didn’t do any full body scans and your bonding gland was smaller than average, so it could be easily passed as a simple knot or inflamed muscle on your shoulder.

However, passing the physical labor portions, like crawling, climbing, heavy lifting, pushups, and even shooting, those were the tests where the true difficulty for you was. You were barely scraping by, and it took all your effort to be passable in these areas of strength. Unfortunately, that meant you were at the very bottom of your class, but at this point you were far too invested to give up. Passing was still passing; no matter what place you were. Though your testing scores and stamina more than made up for what you lacked. You were a quick study so your grades placed you above average testing wise, which balanced out with your physical scores, rounded you out to a nice average.

You were very aware of how suspicious your weaknesses could make you seem, so you did your best to tone down the strengths of your lower body as well as worked really hard to increase what you could do with your upper body. And after a little more than a year of training, you were officially inducted as a member of the First Order, smack dab in the middle of your class. You were so proud of yourself and were extra relieved when you learned that your position put you far away from the frontlines.

As time passed your work ethic brought you more and more promotions. Seven years after your graduation saw you as a lead programmer and the promotion after that brought you to your station on the Finalizer. You loved your job. The only downside to it was the amount of exposure to the Commander as well as the General of the First Order. Both of which were very strong alphas, probably the strongest you had ever seen. The stronger the alpha the better they could smell and the more reactive they were to omega hormones and pheromones/scents. You had to avoid them like the plague, as despite your monthly steroid suppressions they would still be able to catch a whiff of your scent. If you got too close your cover would be blown and you’d be removed, or worse killed, for your lies. Just thinking about it had you close to hyperventilating.

“You alright?” Your coworker, Lee a beta, asked you and placed his hand on your shoulder softly. That snapped you out of your trance and you turned toward him calmly. You hadn’t realized that you’d been spacing out. Earlier that morning Kylo Ren had almost gotten close enough to smell you and that had thrown you into a frenzied inner monologue of please don’t take a deep breath, please don’t take a deep breath, please don’t take a deep breath!

“Leave her alone, she literally almost bumped into the Commander this morning,” your other coworker, Avery also a beta, said in response to Lee. She pointed her fork at him and leaned forward on her elbows “Her life is probably still flashing through her eyes. She’s lucky he ignored her.”

“Ah man, that is lucky,” Lee mumbled and put his hand back down beside his plate. He picked up his eating utensils and used them to take a bite of the meat he had chosen from the dinner line. “Kylo Ren has been aboard for quite some time, why do you think that is?”

Avery shrugged then pushed her plate forward, no longer interested in her dinner choices. She used her fork to emphasize her hand motions. “I don’t know, but the General has been really on edge because of it.”

“Heh, he almost exploded this morning after Kylo Ren destroyed one of our consoles. I’d never seen so much color on his face before,” Lee snickered. You snorted in response, remembering the steaming General in all his angered glory. The feud between the ginger and the helmeted knight was no secret, they fought often and loudly. Hux with his sarcasm and snarky attitude and Kylo Ren with his blatant disregard for all of the rules and commands the General had in place. It was quite comical really, like a well-rehearsed routine. You slurped up your soup thoughtfully.

“What I wouldn’t give to sit on that pale face,” Avery said in a playful lilt. You promptly spit out your soup and Lee choked on the water he had started to sip at.

“Kriff, Avery, don’t say crap like that when I’m eating,” you grumbled and started to wipe up the mess you had made. She snickered and crossed her arms over her chest triumphantly, unashamed of her hazardous mindset. You could see it now, the General chuckling as he shoved her out the airlock for embarrassing him. You shivered.

“What? I’m serious,” she said with a smirk. “He is one attractive man. You can’t tell me that you haven’t thought about it.”

I’m too busy thinking about the ways he’d murder me if he got close enough to smell me, you thought and shook your head at her. “Nope, can’t say that I have.”

“You’ve seriously never thought about it? What about for any of the other officers? Is there not an alpha you would pretend to be an omega for?”

“Avery, give it a rest. Not everyone is as crazed as you,” Lee muttered. “Besides, don’t you think they would rather have an actual omega then someone pretending to be one?”

“But there are hardly any left, plus I remember someone talking about how much of a hassle being bonded to an actual omega is.” That irked you. You doubted anyone, let alone any alpha, on this ship had actually met an unsuppressed omega let alone bonded with one.

“Well you could still be a bit more respectful.” You nodded in response to Lee. Respect would be nice, you felt like you were owed at least a little of it due to your success in hiding who you were and proving that omegas were more than capable of caring for themselves. “Leave your weird fetishes for your diary log.”

“How do you pretend to be an omega?” Curiosity had gotten the better of you.

Lee sighed loudly and placed his hand against his forehead. “Why would you encourage her.” Avery, in response, beamed at you and leaned forward; both of her hands pressed against the table and fork long forgotten by her plate. “Pretending to be in heat is of course the main thing. Except, be a bit less needy and it’s not like you can actually last for as long as a real heat. You can also say a bunch of stuff about scent, and bonding, and blah blah blah, pretend to be weaker and in need of protection, it’s a lot of fun if your partner is into it.”

“Gross,” you muttered and took another slurp of your soup. Heats in general were gross. They were long, lasting anywhere from 5 to 14 days. It started with a fever, general sluggishness, difficulty breathing and a foggy mindset, eventually your body would start the reproductive response. Slick would start to pool around your entrance and your glands would swell to the point of discomfort, it hurt quite a bit. An urge to lesson discomfort through orgasm would grow and eventually everything would begin to blend together. Pheromones would be released in order to attract any nearby alpha and force them into a rut. The only things that could lessen the immense discomfort were sex and medications, but those were short term remedies, as their effects would dissipate rather quickly. Unless the sex involved a knot then, and only then, the discomfort would dissolve long enough for an omega to take care of themselves. Part of the reason why they required protection during their heats was because they risked dehydration and malnourishment the longer the heat went on.

You had never had sex, let alone with an alpha, so you weren’t entirely sure how clear minded you became after knotting. Even now it had been many years since your last heat, but you could somewhat remember struggling through them earlier on in your life. “I don’t think so but, whatever. I’ve got to get back to training some new recruits.” Avery yawned and stood. She grabbed her tray and started walking toward the exit. “See you guys later.”

“Bye,” you stated and waved in response, now trying your best to remember what struggling through your heat felt like.

“She needs to keep quiet about stuff like that,” Lee told you quietly. “The First Order is very strict about relations between officers. She could get in real trouble for just saying some of that stuff.”

“Then you need to be careful too.” A smirk crawled onto your face and you wiggled your eyebrows at him. “Did you think you and Miss Vanya were being discreet?” A light blush dusted his tan ears. You chuckled at his embarrassment and shook your head. “I didn’t need to hear the two of you in your office, but I did. You’re more of a screamer than I thought.”

“I um, I just realized I still have a project I need to finish, so I’ll uh- we’ll talk later,” he scrambled to clean his area. “See you!”

After he scurried off you kept your smirk and finished your soup. You checked the time to make sure you still had a bit before you needed to head back and lazily began to clean your space. A yawn escaped your lips as you started your trek back to your office.

Lee and Avery were good people, very smart and hard workers. Avery had been your friend since your initial training, she had helped immensely with trying to get your upper body in shape. The two of you had been separated after initiation and reunited when they assigned you to this ship. Avery was now the trainer assigned to your section, working alongside or sometimes directly under you to help the newer programmers meet First Order standards.

Lee had trained you in your original position when you first arrived on the Finalizer and now, he was directly in charge of the stromtrooper training programs and battle training designs. You were proud of him, even though his position meant you couldn’t see him as often. He was at Captain Phasma’s beck and call, coming up with the ideas that your department would bring to life via code. Again, you snickered thinking about his embarrassment at your discovery. You were determined to never let him live it down.

Once you reached your office, you punched in your code and the doors easily slid open. Your main job was to receive orders and delegate the coding and programming to those under you. The paperwork was immense, and you hardly ever got to do any of the actual programming that you enjoyed, but you enjoyed the raise and respect the position brought you. Besides, if someone else didn’t understand or finish their work, it was up to you to do it so there were occasions when you got to do what you enjoyed, however rare they were. You slid into your desk chair quietly and got to work.

Later in the evening, after your shift had finished, you entered your quarters and immediately knew something was wrong. The hairs on the back of your neck were standing, and your omega instincts were kicking into gear. Predator, your mind supplied. The faint scent of alpha pheromones tickled your nose and you shivered. The suppressants dulled your sense of smell, so you could not identify who it was, but you knew what they were. You took a tentative step forward, hands trembling and body on full alert. Who would have access to your quarters? Higher command had access, generals, captains, commanders. An alpha and a higher up, oh no. They must know. They’re here to kick me out, to kill me, they know!

You took a few more steps forward, right outside the open entrance to your bed. They were in there, in your room, the smell was stronger in that direction. There was no sound, so they weren’t moving, but they were in there. A cold sweat broke out all over your body and you could take a guess as to who it was. It had to be the Commander. He was the only one who had been close enough to you to get a good whiff of your suppressed omega smell. Kylo Ren was absolutely going to murder you, no question. Still trembling, you resigned yourself to your fate, and finally stepped into your measly bedroom.

And there he stood, in all his black and murderous glory. Kylo Ren was standing against the left wall, his visor was turned toward you, effectively intimidating you further. You almost squeaked under his intense scrutinizing and judging by the way his chest rose and fell a bit more deliberately, you knew he was taking in your scent. He took a large step forward; you took a frightened step backward. That cycle continued until you were no longer able to back up. He had you back up against your refresher door, his helmeted head literally pressed into the crook of your neck, one hand at you hip and the other holding your head back to further expose your nape. Your instinctual response was submission and following that instinct you craned your head away and further into his hold, effectively exposing your scent and bonding glands to him. I’m going to die, he’s going to strangle me, and I will die.

And all at once, he pulled away.

#kylo ren x reader #kylo x you #kylo ren #a/b/o dynamics #mortyvongola2-0 fic #the peen does not get touched yet #kylo ren fic #kylo ren fanfiction #armitage hux

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