#had a lot of fun playing around with new angles/perspectives on this one...

[bluegiragi]

just for fun, i thought i'd redraw an old soapbox comic to see how much i've improved! you can read the original from 2 years ago here.

early access + nsfw on patreon soapbox masterpost (scroll to bottom)

[my-darling-boy]

Good morning, I hope you're doing well.

I just wanted to start by saying I deeply admire your work, and have found it beautiful, emotive and inspiring.

From what I know, you do reenactments in the UK and I've been wanting to get into reenactment myself for a looooong time, but I've always chickened out because I'm trans (ftm, pre T/medical transition).

It's super refreshing to find a trans person in this scene. I was wondering if you had any advice? Whether that's how to find safe groups, how to find costumes that fit, how to maybe start projects yourself. Any advice at all would be deeply appreciated.

The ww1/ww2 periods are really close to my heart and I would adore the opportunity to explore reenactments for these periods of history in a safe environment.

All the best,

🪖

Ah that’s awesome you’re interested in getting into reenactment, it’s a really fun hobby! Don’t think I’ve seen any advice posts for world war reenactors specifically in your situation; I think “modern” military reenactment with this in mind comes with special considerations, so I’ll do my best to give a loose Survival Guide below the cut if you’re wanting to start. This will be Long, but I’ve not seen another resource on this sort of thing from the trans angle so might as well be specific! These are just my own observations to hopefully give you a bit more perspective on whether or not it’s something you’re comfortable pursuing. That all being said…

★ In the case of being trans, especially without medical transition, I HIGHLY advise against doing this hobby completely stealth, it’s just not a good idea. For many events, you camp in the same tent/room with lads your age to men 60+ and may have to change in front of them. Even in the event there is space/bathroom to change, it’s sometimes only a single stall crawling with spiders as a lot of re-enactments are in a little village in the middle of nowhere. If it’s not your own group that could cause problems upon circumstantially finding out, it could be another reenactor or member of the public. If you bind or pack, you have to get the things on and off secretly around so many people you don’t know. Some events are in other countries. For a lot of events, there isn’t any cell service so in the off-chance something goes wrong and you have no one to help you…. You’re Cooked.

★ Transparency to some capacity is best. Whether it’s just a couple group members that know or the whole group knows, someone’s support is your greatest safety net. If you find a group you want to trial, I recommend first shooting an email rather than meeting face to face. Ask if they’re looking for new members, if they already are, that you would be interested in a trial. Add that you’re trans and you want to know if this is an issue, there’s really no other way to ask this. It’s complex, but really they’re not allowed to tell you no on grounds of discrimination, however you can gauge how accepting they are by their response. If they’re suddenly not looking for new members or they play email tag over weeks with no clear answer, pass. Being upfront about it if you’re pre-everything will save you wasting time on groups who don’t want to work with you.

★ Research local regiments/groups you want. Searching near your county may mean you won’t have to travel too far for events, but not always. And you don’t have to stay local, I find groups accept members from just about anywhere in the UK, even outside it sometimes! It’s also good to have some research done on the regiment/battalion you want.

★ Next, big, very important: World War re-enactment is a very Actual Military dominated hobby, and you’ll be exposed to all that entails. I say this to give you a heads up as to the social environment you’re entering into which not many trans people may consider. There’s no way to engage with this area of group reenactment that is completely divorced from the genus of the military as it exists today, even for historical education. The groups I’ve met as well as my own are comprised mostly of veterans, people currently serving, or those from military/first-responder families. In my own observation, world war groups feel more like off-shoot capillaries of the military as opposed to doing something like medieval reenactment or a Jacobite. They are run, funded, and supported in full or part by current/ex military members and organisations. Now obviously it’s not the real military, you’re not enlisted, you’re not going to get court-martialed if you do something wrong! However, these groups try to hold themselves to the same professionalism that you would get if you were actually in the forces cos you’re portraying someone in the military—albeit 1916–who would’ve held themselves to the same standards. There’s fun, there’s jokes, but you stand up so straight on inspection that it’s uncomfortable, eyes front, you never fool around with a weapon, you do what you’re told, and you try to help out every member as best you can cos you’re a unit. It’s a balance between being serious and fun. I know I’m silly outside it, but once I’m on site, it’s time for more discretion. You’re first and foremost an educational historical actor, and as such you’re required to conduct yourself in the public eye as a service member—someone’s ancestor—representing a real regiment that more than likely still exists. This is not a Ren Faire environment. A reenactment group does not exist in a vacuum and neither do the world wars. Not every group is as connected with the Real military as others, but this is just a Heads Up in case interacting with these entities contributes to making you feel “unsafe” in your position.

★ There is also that complicated grey area of how even the most progressive group still exists within a network of current systems which are traditional and affects the way that group must present itself to the public and their Real Military Counterparts they are inseparable from. World war reenacting is still deeply intertwined with current forces and old tradition because the wars and their decades are still within collective consciousness and still hot topics of discussion. Some people really take issue with trans people in the hobby, we all know this, so even as supportive as a group may be, many choose for safety to be on the DL when engaging with other hobbyists whom you don’t know (outside of your group). I personally don’t know any other trans men active in WW groups, though I know they’re out there. That alone should give you an idea as to how Quiet we keep it for safety, even if, bless them, our cis group mates would gladly tell someone off for being transphobic. Though having to be on the DL to anyone outside your group at events for someone who is pre-everything can be anxiety inducing. It’s why I say it’s for your own benefit that at least someone in your group 100% has your back.

★ Lads love teasing each other and will tease you, with love, but don’t be the doormat for anything transphobic. As is the case with the real military, jokes/teasing is an integral part of the camaraderie and as I said, lots of people doing WW reenacting are current/ex military. Short jokes @ me are common, they’re made with love, it’s not transphobic or malicious. While someone messing with you is common cis male bonding, don’t hesitate to tell someone steady on if they go over the line or they’re genuinely being malicious before you go to the sergeant with a formal complaint. It’s usually an immediate apology and then never doing it again. And as said, don’t let transphobic teasing slide. If there is any phobic joke that could fly under the radar to someone not privy, it would be jokes equating you with someone called “Bob” so if you ever hear that one—if you don’t already know what that means—definitely bring that up to someone!

★ A tip for cis male dominated spaces: self-confidence, optimism, and a general good nature will get you far. Being extremely, constantly awkward or aloof from dysphoria or fearing cis men will tend to get you “othered”. It can be hard to be more vocal or confident if you’re anxious not having had many dealings with cis male social groups, but my advice is to try to be as casual as possible, shaking hands with eye contact, going about your business, and Being Normal about guys walking around half naked in the mornings or accidentally catching sight of your mate’s bits. Generally, if you’re not Weird about them, no one’s Weird about you!

★ It’s also a mutual respect-based environment. As long as you’re mature, level, putting in the effort, are quick to learn, friendly, and doing your bit in the group, chances are you will get along with everyone fine and they will get along with you regardless of anyone’s politics or beliefs, which I think is most trans people’s fear for this hobby. Everyone is aware infighting and heated debates over anything can destroy a group or bring harm against yourself or your mates, which is why I’ve found if you simply say you don’t feel comfortable talking about something, people back off cos they respect that. Trans or not, if you’re abrasive or egotistical, just like any social situation, respect for you goes down.

★ People are more than happy to impart knowledge, there are lads who could easily talk for hours about one thing if you get them going so don’t be afraid to ask questions! If you’re nervous about asking someone for help with drill, kit, etc it’s less “How do you not know this?” and more “I’m SO glad you asked!” It’s sort of like having a group of brothers for the weekend, always teaching you something. I find reenactors can never pass up an opportunity to thoroughly explain something (myself included) and sometimes even unprompted will just point to something you’ve got and start telling a story about it. Everyone, even elder members, learn something new every event

★ In terms of clothing sizing, I’ve got stereotypical male proportions (bar my height) so I can’t speak much from personal struggle on this one. Most modern-made reenactment gear is quite amply sized, which is fine if you’re larger but is a pain if you’re smaller. Most groups will have spare kit in diff sizes you can borrow on trialling them, and there are good videos on YouTube to familiarise yourself with all the parts and how to care for them, and of course you can ask me here as well. If you want something yourself, everyone and their mums starts out with Soldier of Fortune these days, and owning your own trousers/tunic of course means you can tailor it if need be. You’re also looking at around at least £600 for a relatively complete kit, but tbh it’s easily over £1000 weapons and extras included.

★ On clothing, maybe it’s cos I’m short, but your grey flannel is your best friend if you have to get changed in front of someone and don’t want them to see your Downstairs. The greybacks are quite long I find, so as long as it’s on, you can change trousers and sometimes even undergarments without flashing anyone.

★ On getting changed: always try to be the first to get ready, it doesn’t look weird, you just look on top of things! Do a bit of recon when you can about changing spaces and the toilet situation cos you might be able to get creative where you change, including in your sleeping bag. It’s good to try to get at least an undershirt and bottom half on before the group wakes up, you easily put on tunic and boots and the rest alongside everyone else. You might even find you just end up sleeping in kit, sometimes we do that. Getting to the toilet first also means you not only avoid being late for inspection trying to sort yourself, but you’re not after the lad with the Least Desirable morning routine (and believe me, there will be at least one, if not more).

★ Though sleeping in the same space and getting ready around each other is usually expected, it’s not mandatory. For some multi-day events, it may be possible to go home and come back the next morning so you don’t have to sleep/change with the rest of the boys. It’s possible to show up to events already kitted and leave kitted so you don’t need to change at all. If you’re all staying in a hotel, you can get a separate room or if everyone is staying at camp, you can stay in a local inn if there is one. If you’re under canvas, you can always bring a separate tent and sleep by yourself. HOWEVER, because sleeping together (and drinking till 3 AM) and getting ready polishing brass or making breakfast is a Group Bonding Experience just be aware you’ll miss out on that bonding if you go off alone a lot or cut events short to go home/come back, if having more bonding is particularly important to you!

★ If you’re binding, it’s worth noting depending on what exactly you’re doing you carry anywhere between 20-50 extra pounds on your person. There is decent physical activity, you are with equipment on your feet for most of the day, and hobnail boots are not the most comfortable. Being in an entirely wool uniform on a baking, humid day in a binder would be absolutely bloody miserable. You would have to take the binder off after all that lest you hurt yourself. Also, if you join a Highland Regiment, it is not a good idea to pack. And I’m not talking about your kit bag. If your Swagger Stick falls out on a demo in front of hundreds of families, there is no coming back from that, there really is no room for Oopsy in that scenario, it’s not worth the embarrassment!

★ As for starting projects yourself… that’s a tricky one. If it’s like a little reenactment group, that’s a massive undertaking, I could write a novel about that alone and the money and insurance and complex social things that would involve. There are ways you can do solo reenactment for educational purposes, though this requires having a relationship with whatever venue is hiring you such as a museum. While doing a scout or medic would be easy enough, doing a fully kitted infantryman would be a bit harder. If you have weapons like a rifle or bayonet, you need a permit to carry them. Solo reenacting also requires you to know A TON of information, not just about the war, but the surrounding time period give or take 20 years, your entire kit, gear, and loads of other things.

★ In conclusion, as intimidating as this can seem to navigate around cis men as a trans man for (potentially) the first time in a very military, traditionally masc environment…. I think as long as you come into it with the same attitude as any young man would at the time, you’ve got pals to back you up, and you try to be cheery and do your bit, you’re likely to do just fine and have fun! I know reenactment can seem like the straight white old male phobic hardcore conservative hobby, but it is a really rewarding experience as long as you take some precautions, there are some genuinely lovely people in it, eager to pass on their knowledge. If you feel a group is not a good fit, you can always leave, and there will be other groups who will be more than happy to have you. While I can’t say I’ve met any trans men in my time doing it, I’ve at least met some other LGB reenactors who are really lovely and very supportive.

Hope something here puts your anxiety at ease, or at least doesn’t make anything worse! If it’s of any comfort, I think groups as a whole are becoming much more supportive of LGBT+ members. I think the coming generations that are starting to have more active involvement in this area of reenactment look to be making it better for LGBT+ people to participate in historical education and overall hobby engagement.

Cheers! x

[crowdusk]

One Piece Chapter 1132: Adventure in Elbaph (thoughts & predictions for the arc)

Part 2 here.

[These are the feverish autism-fuelled thoughts I wrote out after reading chapter 1132 because I was overtaken by the urge to connect some dots (I did edit a bit to hopefully be more coherent). I didn't engage with any other reviews or theories on Elbaph apart from quite general ones before reading this, so it'll be cool to see if other people have similar ones. Wasn't sure whether to post this but I wanted to put it somewhere before chapter 1133 came out and next week's break so it doesn't just sit on my laptop for me to forget about, and more importantly so I can refer back to it and see if anything I said was even vaguely correct. It's a monster and I don't have time to do a proper editing process so please kindly look away from any mistakes and poor structuring. One of the really fun aspects of serialised storytelling for me is theorising and analysis, even if it makes a fool of me more often than not. I'm not expecting to be right but it's fun when that happens!]

This also ended up being, uh, Very Long. There is a chapter review part with some thoughts on the arc, and then there are thematic sections where I got more into detail about what I think Elbaph will explore. This whole thing will be split into multiple posts because of Tumblr's limit, but there will be links to the different sections/posts. Ok, end of intro.

Overall thoughts on the chapter

Firstly, this chapter was so fun. It had all the familiar thrill and excitement of a new island and adventure, with some wonderful panels (rainbow-sailing, Bonney and Robin, the Elbaph village). We had ‘Adventure in the Land of Mystery’, and the suspense was interesting, but I’m sure I wasn’t the only one extremely confused (especially because of the mistakes). From what I saw the whole fandom was essentially the when ur whole crew doesn’t know a damn thing meme. But I’m glad Oda had his fun with the fake introduction to Elbaph, which also helped set up Luffy meeting Loki and the delay in receiving Vivi’s message amongst other things. 

1132 really feels like quintessential early One Piece where we’re off to a running start now that we’re finally sure we’re where we want to be. Love to see the Strawhats get somewhere, play around, and immediately cause chaos. It’s somehow packed with new information and fast-paced, while feeling like we get a bit of a breather from plot-intensity after Egghead. 

I’m also, of course, incredibly happy we’re finally getting to see Elbaph in all its much-anticipated glory. The natural features of the island – especially the landscape, the scale, elements like the rainbows and the giant tree as a living support–  make it feel extra fantastical and wondrous beyond what I, at least, had imagined. Hats off to Oda and especially his assistants for the gorgeous Rivendell-Zelda-Skyrim vibes in the village introduction spread. I love a fantasy-style nature-based environment, and I don’t think we’ve had that in a while. Wano and Egghead had some incredible settings too, of course, but the story felt a lot more people-centric once they got to the islands. Here, the landscape really becomes a character of its own in the same way it did in say, Zou (quite literally). In fact, Yggdrasil is both alive and ancient, just like Zunesha. I’m looking forward to seeing how that feeds into the story. 

I'm also very glad that Oda is leaning into that and giving us those wide-angle shots. He doesn’t always get perspective and scale exactly right, but I personally don’t mind – the man knows how to draw an impactful double-spread. I can’t un-know the fact that the Sunny is supposed to be more than twice the height of Goldberg, who’s carrying it, but it doesn’t ruin anything for me. I’m used to Oda just doing shit like that because he wants/needs the Sunny to be carried around like a toy. It would be such a shame if we got to Elbaph and we only got smaller views or workarounds in order to avoid the challenges of scale and perspective. 

On top of that, one of my favourite parts of the One Piece experience is finally having puzzle pieces and references fall into place after arcs and years – like the architecture and landscape we recognise from Big Mom’s flashback. We've been waiting for this for over 20 years! More than 1000 chapters! I love this manga. I love it here. The sequence of the rainbow bridge leading into finally getting to see the village was lovely, and as a huge Skypiea lover, I am having a great time. Seeing our experience reflected in Luffy and especially Usopp’s reactions was also beautifully moving. I’m glad they were highlighted and we had the flashback to Little Garden to really drive it home.  

On the plot side,  we’re slowly building a picture of the variation in how different giants feel about humans. We have Gerd and Rodo, who both have strong feelings in completely opposing ways. Where Gerd infantilises humans in her fascination with them, Loki and Rodo clearly seem to think they are inferior. It remains to be seen what other perspectives exist in Elbaph. Is there real resentment or hatred from those like Loki and Rodo, or do they generally just think giants are superior due to their strength and size? Regardless, it feels like Oda is slowly setting us up to understand that there are different groups of giants with different beliefs even within Elbaph (we already know Saul is not from there and considers them ‘barbarians’). Just as in any society there are surely faultlines and disagreements, and their relationship to humans – and maybe even the world at large – might very well be a point of tension within the kingdom. 

Speaking of points of tension, it’s obviously very ominous that Luffy has made a promise to Loki, particularly since we don’t know the specifics of it. Oda has cleverly given us only a glimpse of the very end of that conversation in relation to Luffy’s famous difficulty with lying and we’ll see how long he decides to tease us with it. He could definitely give us that information in dribs and drabs to keep us guessing, but I also think most of us are probably right in guessing that Luffy promised to free Loki, even if we don’t know if he wanted anything in return. Honestly, the first time we even saw Loki in chains I thought oh Luffy’s 100% going to free that man, and I know I’m not the only one. 

Regardless of exactly how and when we see that conversation, I imagine we'll see Luffy’s actions start to confirm and clarify our suspicions. For example, if he did agree to free Loki and needs to retrieve the key, then he might well start making moves to do that soon (although after the feast, of course – nothing comes before a metric ton of meat). I also think it will be very interesting – and comical – to see Luffy try and execute a stealth operation, because as we’ve seen time and time again, that is the opposite of his forte. He’s bad at lying, he’s bad at keeping secrets, and he’s bad at doing things with subtlety. So I’m looking forward to seeing how Luffy deals with that – whether he manages to keep it a secret from everyone or if, as I suspect, he ropes in at least one of the other Strawhats, even if by accident. Take your guesses! There’s a whole range of options ranging from experts (Nami, Robin, Brook) to the sneak mission equivalent of throwing a grenade onto a presidential lawn (...Zoro).

My more specific pet theory when it comes to Luffy’s meeting with Loki is that I would not be surprised if in one of the upcoming chapters up we get a sort of split screen set up with Hajrudin or an equivalent giant on one side, explaining more about Loki’s deeds and why they imprisoned him, and the flashback to Luffy’s conversation with him on the other. We know from DorryBrogy (yes I’m using that now) that Hajrudin wanted to come and retrieve the Strawhats from Egghead himself, but ultimately couldn’t because of “some (Loki-related) trouble back on Elbaph”. It would make sense to me if Hajrudin explains in more detail what happened that prevented him from sailing to Egghead, and tells us more about Loki himself. At the same time that Hajrudin is talking about the terrible things Loki has done, we get the penny-drop of Luffy flashing back to his agreement to free said evil man. 

It’s a perfect storytelling device in this medium, especially when it comes to revealing important (and in this case stomach-dropping) information to us as omniscient readers. We saw something slightly similar most recently during Vegapunk’s speech, which Oda used to clearly signpoint us to characters and their links to mentions of important information in the speech, (e.g. showing Shirahoshi, Vivi and Momo when talking about the ancient weapons). Of course that was very different in tone and intention compared to what the Loki reveal I’m hypothesising would be like, but I’m mainly just trying to highlight the use of the manga medium and how it lends itself to this kind of layering. I’m sure Oda’s done something much closer to what I’m thinking of before, but in all honesty I can’t recall an example right now. Regardless, I could be completely off the mark (I am just a little jester honestly), but we know Oda loves his dramatic reveals and drumbeats so I’m willing to put this out there. 

I am also particularly interested to see how Luffy will react to the information about Loki. Will he dislike Loki but still go through with it? Will he disagree with Hajrudin and the other giants? Will it change nothing for him? I think Luffy won’t go back on his promise no matter what information is revealed, but knowing Luffy, he also might just not really pay attention or care what Loki’s done. It will mainly be for us as readers, and the rest of the Strawhats, to decide how we feel about it. We know that Elbaph has very strong values and rules, especially surrounding their warrior culture – ones like honour, strength, and probably truth/honesty. I’m waiting to see whether what Loki’s done is considered bad specifically within Elbaph culture, or whether they’re just terrible in general. This is why in my opinion Loki won’t be A Classic Villain, because I don’t think the central conflict in Elbaph will be as simple as just Loki vs the rest of the giants and Strawhats. There’s too much ambiguity present.

Plus, we haven’t seen Luffy’s instinct about people go wrong yet. The first time he met Blackbeard they immediately started fighting, even if it was about something as stupid as food preferences. He hated Doflamingo the minute he met him. Even Buggy couldn’t actually betray him, despite wanting to. If Luffy generally trusts someone, we know that means they’re trustworthy or at least even if not at the beginning, he wins them over or is able to deal with the untrustworthiness in a way that makes it irrelevant. 

Of course, Loki could prove the exception to the rule, but we know that part of Luffy’s strength is understanding and seeing through people. It would take a lot for Loki to fully trick or betray him, since Luffy just does what he wants and deals with the consequences as they arise. He’ll be more than happy to fight Loki if he threatens something/someone he cares about. To be clear, I’m not saying Loki is a threat at all – I do think his desire to “destroy the world” means mass violence, but Luffy doesn’t tend to care about larger villainous plans until they directly affect his loved ones. He’s also the first ‘evil’ character so far who’s been shown to have very obvious parallels and similarities with Luffy, so even if he is an antagonist, I expect it to be in a way we haven’t seen before (more on that later). 

Another possibility is that Loki and certain other giants have a strong dislike of humans, and therefore want them off the island as quickly as possible. This would also align with Louis Arnot’s warning about not overstaying your welcome. I imagine not everyone on Elbaph is inclined to be friendly to humans, and there might even be other people (other kinds of giants, or non-giants) living on the island. It feels like Oda has strongly emphasised that Warland is only a kingdom on the island of Elbaph, implying that there might be other groups of people – or even countries – sharing the land mass (perhaps on the Astral level?). To me, it feels like Elbaph is holding some kind of secret that makes it particularly dangerous. Maybe, like in Skypiea, there is a forbidden area in Elbaph that is off-limits to people (prime candidate being the Astral/Celestial realm) whether to maintain that secret or perhaps for spiritual reasons. Trespassing could incur serious danger or punishment, and we can probably predict exactly what will happen if a certain captain hears about it. 

And there are other ways I think Elbaph will parallel Skypiea. The Strawhats first connected with the Skypieans (Conis and her father) and were quickly thrown into conflict with both Enel and his forces (including the White Berets) as well as the Shandians who weren’t too happy about outsiders. They had to work with the different groups against Enel, and as part of that, prove to the Shandians that they were trustworthy. The Shandians, who had the crucial connection to the Ancient Kingdom and the poneglyph. We might see a similar situation in Elbaph where the Strawhats have to prove to a group of people (maybe outsiders to Elbaph’s society, maybe those who distrust humans) that they are trustworthy so that they can all unite to fight against a bigger foe like the World Government. It remains to be seen who that might be, but this would also be an opportunity for Oda to give the Strawhats even more people, groups and allies who believe in Luffy’s power. 

Additionally, both Skypiea and Alabasta were countries in the midst of internal conflict – specifically over natural resources – when the Strawhats arrived, and in both of those cases the actions of the crew helped end the wars. Elbaph might be similar. In both of those arcs the conflicts had roots in the secrets of the Void Century, be it because the Shandians were protecting their ancestral lands and the poneglyph after being persecuted by the World Government, or Crocodile’s desire to gain control of Pluton. The giants of Elbaph seem to be one of the only groups of people who have maintained a consistent sun god worship, probably not for lack of the World Government trying to wipe it out (their strength will certainly have served them in that regard). On top of that, I’m sure there’s other crucial information, not just from the Ohara library, that the giants have managed to protect regarding ancient history. If we think about their lifespans, the Void Century was only a few generations back for them, so there may be important oral histories that have been passed down from elders. It’s clear that this is a culture with strong links to the secrets of the past, like the Shandians and the royal family of Alabasta. Though the wars in those countries were exacerbated by many other factors, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see something similar in Elbaph – some tension that relates to events further back in history, and maybe even the Void Century.

Loki, Luffy, and the power of myth

My current theory on Loki is that he believes he is the new Joyboy, and/or an incarnation of Nika/the sun god from Elbaph’s myths (in the same way that King believed Kaido to be Joyboy). We don’t know yet whether Elbaph is polytheistic – Nika/the sun god might just be one of their deities – but if we use Rodo’s weird RPG cage world as a reference, he did create a bunch of different minor ‘gods’. Elbaph itself might have a similar system, with the Sun God being the most important deity. Regardless, we know that Nika is important in their culture, given Dorry and Brogy’s immediate recognition of Luffy in Gear 5 and the celebration of the Winter Solstice as the return of the sun in Big Mom’s flashback. We’ve also seen the painters being called sunstones, which is reminiscent of Vegapunk’s pursuit of solar technology and the Motherflame, and the giants live on the Sun level of Yggdrasil. On top of that, the Underworld – where people are sent for punishment – is specifically noted to lack sunlight. We already know that the sun in One Piece’s world is associated with Nika (liberation, joy), but in terms of general symbolism the sun is also linked to clarity, truth and perception. 

This is why I think questions of faith, belief and truth will be so important to answering what makes Elbaph’s giants such mighty warriors, what kind of devotion do they have, and how do their beliefs and worship link to collective liberation in the One Piece world, both historically and in the present? 

Oda is also going to get meta in this arc, I believe (even more obviously than he already does). I'll get into this more later, but the Lego kidnapping introduction already served to set up important questions. What is reality, and what is fantasy/illusion? Whose world are we in? Who are the storytellers and what are the different ways stories are lived and told? What is their nature, function and importance? There are going to be many layers in this arc and it's narration, encompassing past present and future, and I think Oda will play with form to achieve this (off the top of my head - the adventurer's log voice of Louis Arnot, to flashbacks, to legends told by the giants, to reading the texts of Ohara...). Contradictory stories, multiple perspectives on one narrative, and different but coexisting truths might well all come into play as important.

Speaking of one type of story, myths and legends are the vessels of belief, and it’s likely the Elbaph culture includes and centres many related to Nika and Joyboy. In fact, this was already mentioned by DorryBrogy (“they tell tales about this god in Elbaph”). I don’t think we’ve had direct confirmation yet, but I’m sure the giants had a connection to the Ancient Kingdom and may very well have preserved information from the Void Century by virtue of their fighting strength, passing stories down across generations, despite the World Government’s best efforts. I also think those stories handed down from the Void Century (maybe even from the first Joyboy, or Roger) may have included some kind of prophecy that Joyboy/the Sun God will destroy the world when he returns (similar to Madam Shyarly’s prophecy about Luffy destroying Fishman Island). If that’s the case, Loki could very well think he’s the chosen one to do so. 

Of course, we know that the final war will likely involve some form of physical destruction (Fishman Island amongst other things) – and there are many theories around that – but to me, the idea is most importantly metaphorical. The world as it is needs to drastically, fundamentally change (including materially), which requires the destruction of things as they are so that the dawn can arrive. Loki’s interpretation, in contrast, could very well be a literal and narrower one involving setting everything on fire Ragnarok-style, hence the other giants imprisoning him to stop him. The way they’ve referred to him as having “a few screws loose” also suggests they think he’s mad or maybe delusional, which makes sense if he’s claiming to be an incarnation of their sun god. His belief may in fact be so pure that it is extreme. As Oda is making clear over and over, you cannot choose to be a god – myths and gods are made by people’s collective belief. I don’t think we’ll ever see Luffy declaring himself to be Nika or even Joyboy for that very reason. 

Luffy is god-like sometimes, but he isn’t one (“Luffy’s not a god, he’s just an idiot!”) nor would he want to be treated as one. Luffy doesn’t even know he’s the new Joyboy, or who Nika is, and what his Gear 5 powers are. If the giants try to project any kind of divine responsibility or title onto him, Luffy will absolutely not care – he refuses to be anything other than himself in all his freedom. However, he does have a great amount of care for friends and is willing to go to any lengths to help them, so we’ll have to see which characters act as those anchors for his desire to fight during this arc. 

I think we’ll see a lot of complex and interweaving traits with Luffy and Loki, as characters who have many similarities but also fundamental differences. Luffy pretty much can't lie, whereas I'm guessing Loki is pretty good at it. Luffy is selfish in his words but his actions help the collective, whereas I could see Loki causing widespread harm but claiming selflessness and doing collective good (e.g. cleansing the world via Ragnarok). Loki claims his godhood fully, demanding respect and imposing obedience, believing fully that he is fit to command others. Luffy doesn’t demand faith, he inspires it.

Indeed, Oda has clearly set up Loki to parallel Luffy in the past few chapters. They had very similar childhoods where they spent a lot of time alone in the wilderness and befriended beasts – in Loki’s case, in the frozen outcast space of Elbaph. This is particularly interesting given he’s a prince – we have to wonder why. Like Luffy, he seems to have humorous and silly traits like getting people’s names wrong, which is an exact copy of what Luffy does. He also has an older brother in Hajrudin, like Luffy with Ace and Sabo, although we don’t know the nature of his relationship with Hajrudin. Were they close growing up and then there was conflict later because of Loki’s actions? Were they always at odds? I wouldn’t be surprised if Loki’s strength wasn’t in his physicality but more so in his cunning and intelligence, which might not have been celebrated or seen favourably as what was expected of an Elbaph prince, in contrast to Hajrudin better fitting the mold. This theory is mostly based on Norse mythology, where both the god Loki and the jötnar Utgarda-Loki are associated with trickery and illusions. It would also mean Loki flaunts the rules of Elbaph warrior culture, making use of strategy, intelligence, language and mischief to win his battles. If Loki was seen as strange or not quite fitting into society and expectations, he may have just chosen to isolate himself and spend time in the Underworld with his animal friends. Alternatively, maybe he was sent down there by his father to get stronger, in the same way Garp threw Luffy into the jungle. 

With all that said, I’m particularly interested to see what his devil fruit is – initially I thought it could be a mythological zoan, which I believe is still very possible, but I could also see it being related to these themes of magic and illusion. The one thing I’m unsure of in this regard is Loki referring to himself as the strongest in Elbaph. Is it because of his devil fruit? Does he mean something different to strength in combat? Was he just lying? That remains to be seen. 

We also don't know what Loki did yet, but I think a lot of the themes of this arc are going to be about the values of Elbaph and how different people come up against them. I’m particularly interested in our dear captain Luffy, of course, and how he relates to those rules, because Luffy’s whole character is about pure freedom regardless of what’s happening around him. The only form of bond that Luffy accepts is those of love, friendship and connection with people (often conveyed through food, as we know). Of course, it could be that Luffy doesn’t particularly come up against Elbaph’s rules (we didn’t really see him in tension with the samurai code in Wano) but I have a feeling that the challenges of this arc will be a complex set of tensions – buried information, the overarching evil of the World Government, the consequences of history, the values of a war-based society, and how those have shaped the people of the island they’re on. 

Even Luffy’s embodiment of something Nika-like in Gear 5 goes against stereotypical expectations of a ‘warrior’. He is a warrior, but the epithet isn’t complete without the liberation aspect. He doesn’t follow any rules but his own when he fights – in his freest form he can literally bend the rules of space and material (maybe even time). He is so strong not just because he can smash things, but because he is completely unpredictable, silly and joyful – only limited by his own imagination. I also think it will be really interesting to see what Elbaph’s version of Nika is like, because people and societies shape gods, and they can evolve over time. It would be fascinating if Elbaph’s version of Nika is more of a stereotypical kind of war(rior) god. We’ve had mentions of their warrior god before, with the belief that the winner of a duel is the one chosen by that deity, so fighting itself – and the glory of victory – is clearly sacred to them. It may well be that their warrior god is a separate being to Nika, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out to be a version of Nika that has been shaped by their society’s dominant values. And maybe that is also the version that Loki thinks he is or has warped to fit his desire for violence and destruction.

Part 2 here (ft. strength???, summoning a princess, gay technology and shadow the hedgehog)

[guppyfish77]

Another year Another summary of Art! An Entire Year of Submas lets gooooooooooo!!!! This year I feel like I really pushed myself when it comes to illustrations and I feel like I've learned a lot! But at the same time I feel a little tired, next year I think I wanna relax and experiment a bit more, I gotta learn to loosen up! Might get more art out if I do :p

I also feel the Submas grip ever so lightly relaxing (unless they decide to do Unova remakes haha XD), so I might introduce some of my numerous ocs in 2024! I'll probably start with the conductor oc ;]

Thank you for all your support! (you are all very nice! ToT), I still have a good amount of submas stuff planned in the works so look forward to that (๑•̀ㅂ•́)و✧

If you are interested, I also have some commentary and behind the scenes for some of my submas illustrations! I wanna talk about it and now seems like a good time to do so now that the year is over! (Beware! its going to be long!)

All titles are linked to the original post

Lunch Break

hoho! This one is the sort of AU thing in which the only thing that changes is that I give Emmet a Victini friend (not a part of his team, I dubbed them the "victory duo" because Emmet likes winning and Victini is the Victory Pokemon), I planned out a few wordless comics regarding the idea, they were all very lighthearted slice of life kind of stuff, usually Victini causing some mischief and the brothers having to deal with it

and here's the thumbnails for this piece! I played around with various angles but decided to keep it simple and choose a straight on angle. It was originally a snack break and Emmet sharing a granola bar with Victini, but as I was planning it, submas unexpectedly showed up in the Pokemon Anime where they were serving ekiben, after learning about it it quickly turned into a lunch break! (how fun when new information lines up with an art piece you are working on hoho! ^ ^) After studying what foods Ekiben usually have in them (there was quite a variety!) I took what I learned and try to make the food look like the gear station logo :D

In the background there are children drawings because in the battle subway one of the trainer classes you can face off against are preschoolers, and I thought at least one of them would share their drawings with the subway bosses (and of course why wouldn't they hang it up?), there is also a trophy in which you can get in the players room if you beat the subway bosses on the super trains (one day, battling competitively is not my forte), I did my best to make Emmet's office feel lived in by adding a little bit of clutter (like adding a note) but overall very organized

(hey hey that joltik mug looks familiar in the corner there, its the same one Rei is holding in the christmas drawing)

Bonus Emmet and Victini Drawings

aw come on dude, not on the trains!

ah this one, it gave me quite a bit of frustration! This piece I used to challenge myself on perspective, and challenge me it did! The version you see now is I believe the 6th iteration of this drawing! The reason for restarting so many times is because I originally wanted it to be in 3 point perspective, but I couldn't get it to look right so its now in 2 point... Haha Some valuable lessons learned there!

This illustration was inspired by the history of New York Subway Trains and Graffiti! I read about it when I got to visit the New York Transit Museum and found it super interesting!! Then I went I gotta do something with this! Since Unova is based in New York after all!

I got so many subway surfer comments, they don’t know I forgot subway surfers existed while making this and that I am a huge nerd lmao

I had a lot of fun designing the graffiti on the train (yes it says among us) stylizing the fictional letters was so fun! I studied some graffiti to see how they do it, I could've pushed the graffiti style more but then it would be illegible! I also mixed in elements of Grafaiai graffiti, and trainer that is running away is the artist trainer class in SCVL because they are graffiti artists! And the train that got graffitied is the Wifi Train, due to BW (and the DS) servers being shut down, I doubt that train gets used much anymore, which makes it a perfect target!

Derailed!

hohoho! This was a fun one! I'm not sure how many of you guys read my tags, but in there I did state that this piece was based off the fact that model trains are powered by electrifying the rail it runs on (very low watts mind you) and the fact that Joltik eats electricity, but thats not the only inspiration, it was also inspired by those videos of cats laying on the layout and derailing the train!

Theres quite a variety of thumbnails for this idea (including a comic!), and the idea was there in 2022, but this year I decided to fully commit to it! I started rendering the top right one and almost finished it, but it felt really boring to me, so I switched it up and made some thumbnails in a new perspective and viola! thats what ended up being finished!

The train that is being derailed are Sanriku Railway Type 36s, based off a model train I have in my collection! (While sharing this fact on the original post Haiku Bot detected it as a Haiku?! and this art went out of my target audience, that certainly was a day (⊙□⊙;))

Also I straight up put a picture of Thomas the Tank Engine in the background, I'm not sure if people noticed cuz its quite blurry, the fact that nobody said anything means I probably would’ve gotten away with it before sharing this fact, so hehe :3c

Unexplained Melancholy

eyy! this one! It started out wholly different

It was originally me dropping Warden Ingo in various natural landscapes around Hisui as I didn't feel like drawing anymore linear perspective (ah, but heres the thing, all environments require a little bit of perspective lol), and it was just going to be Warden Ingo hanging out in a lush forest, specifically by the train rock that was shown in his concept art! but after sitting on it, I realized I could do something more with it! by making it a snowy environment I could make callbacks to Emmet's coat being white! hence the "SNOWY!!!" being scribbled there, that was added like weeks afterwards, Then I realized I could push it even more by making the whole environment about Emmet's colors! So the new thumbnail is in color because thats whats its about!

The moon smile thing was stumbled on by complete accident, while working on it it felt empty there and I added Emmet's smile to fill the space before going "moon!!!"

The piece is also a sort of a parallel to last years piece “I am Emmet, I wish for Ingo and I to be a two-car train once more” composition wise, sort of, I tried to at least 👍

Black Tower and Whitetree Hollow

Ah! I was quite proud of this one! Black City and White Forest are some of my favorite places in Unova mainly because the parallels are so very cool!

As the thumbnails suggest it was all going to be in complete black and white, as I was working on it though I could not help but add some values in there so yup! I quite like both compositions but the perspective won me out, plus that one focuses more on the characters than the other one (as much as I love backgrounds, it really is supposed to be about Emmet and Ingo U_U)

Being places of duality and having a battle challenge in there, it really fit them!

Emmet drops the hottest single of all time 🔥🔥🔥

Not really much to say about this one since it was very much done on a whim, but

its not the first time I drew Emmet with his hat backwards, I did this little doodle around the same time I did the train graffiti piece, been wanting to do something with this silly idea, and when I heard that audio, I went :o

Following Some Rumors of a Time Machine

the finale! I decided to choose Area Zero because its a very cool place! I am inspired by cool places! and I decided to give it my all for this one!

The thumbnail I made was more for jotting down the idea, and the landscape was going to be more eyelevel? Later I decided to make it so you were looking down into the crater and you get to see the fog blocking the crystal caverns, to show that Emmet was going deeper into Area Zero and the Deepest part is his destination (the time machine, not the underdepths, I didn't know about that yet haha!) I was always going to make Emmet encounter a Slither Wing, with it being based off Volcarona, a gen 5 pokemon :]

Anyways, That's all I have to say! I hope you found it interesting! (and enjoyed my varying quality in sketches and thumbnails XD) Thanks for listening! see you in 2024! ✌

[sepublic]

Again, what frustrates me about Federation Force's mech gimmick is that it's rendered useless by scaling up every enemy as well. What's the point of saying you're using a mech, if you don't feel like you're using one; You're still the same size as enemies. Hell, even the environment is scaled up, and I'm talking about manmade structures! The doors are conveniently your size, as are railings, various devices, etc.

It just utterly breaks the illusion of being in a giant mech; You can only really tell because of the cutscenes where the mechs are actually contrasted with the pilots, and that one level where you're forced to leave your mech and sneak around those giant pirates as a normal-sized human. That IS good, but it's just one level!

And again, why is every door sized up??? Like from an in-universe perspective, the amplification beam made an entire army of pirates gigantic, so they probably needed tech and architecture to accommodate this new size. But from an artistic perspective, it just makes the whole mech angle even more pointless, especially when the mechs look like regular humans in armor; Their proportions match the human pilots, so for most people who only know Federation Force by a glance and osmosis, they probably don't even realize it's a mech game! I was one of those people for a while!!!

Even the Metroids, one of the series' most iconic and recurring enemies, the titular mascot, for whom we DO have a consistent understanding of relative scale... is also sized up, instead of being used as a reference point. It's one thing to have a new alien enemy be conveniently gigantic from the start, but the pre-existing Metroids being made that way just feels like you couldn't be bothered to consider how being in a big mech would change the way you interact with the Metroid universe, compared to how Samus would; Especially when your arsenal and gameplay mimics Samus'.

There's no art direction, is what I'm saying; The environments, the enemies, they aren't designed around the idea that you're in a giant robot. It's just another regular environment. One of the things I remember learning about VFX is that adding more details can help create the illusion of something being bigger, because it has more space for more detail, that sort of thing. But this is a game on the 3DS, plus it's a simplified chibi art style that throws off the proportions in general.

It'd have been cool if there were a lot of small doors and hallways that you couldn't access because you're too big; Imagine levels in buildings being designed around the idea that you're navigating giant hangars and all that. The immersion is lost if every room is conveniently enormous for these mechs. The doors themselves could’ve been different from the typical ones in Metroid, for example they’re clearly gateways, to differentiate them from smaller barrier-operated doors. Sometimes you just create doors by smashing through walls because you're a giant mech!!!

It's lazy. It's half-assed. There's no thought put into it; It’s generic. The mech aspect of the game feels tacked on, last-second, like the mechs were supposed to be regular-sized humans in special armor, but someone felt like there needed to be some gimmick to make the game seem more interesting. So they threw in some cutscenes with smaller human models, and one level where you have to sneak around the bigger pirates. But everything else fails to reflect the idea. Why.

The art direction could've been so fun, the gameplay could've revolved around your titanic size, and maybe synergize mech gameplay with gameplay as just a regular pilot who can get out and back in whenever you please. And that could play into the larger teamwork aspect, you could make puzzles based on your pilot having to leave the mech! But noooooooooooo! I was ambivalent towards Federation Force until I found out the player characters are supposed to be mechs, and now I'm pissed. You could've had a really fun concept to mix up the Metroid formula and stand out from other games, make this spin-off take advantage of and embrace that it's so unusual. BUT YA DIDN'T. Metroid Prime Pinball is unironically more creative and thought out around its core gimmick than this.

[mizziix]

Yknow what I can use this blog for whatever I want so I'm gonna ramble about my WoD oc's

So I got two big ones rn. That's a lie I actually have like half a dozen owod mages and equal that number awakening mages with a smattering of others but yknow these two are new.

Both of these characters were made in a free form server that allows for high power characters, so that's how I got away with any of this if you're wondering. DM me if you want an invite, it's public

The first one I got is Andrei Nichols, a 7th gen Lasombra. His backstory is that he was embraced some time around the last turn of the millennium in Scandinavia. He did a bunch of shit in the following 600 years like secure the Sabbat's hold on Scandinavia and become an Abyss Mystic but none of that really matters because in the 1600's he was captured and sealed inside a pillar of jet black granite and obsidian glass. It had a habit of bleeding.

This pillar of bleeding obsidian was passed around various Tremere chantries in Western Europe for a couple of centuries, until a mishap in the 1800's sent the thing sinking to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

Andrei Nichols, for his part, is aware of precisely none of that. As far as he is aware, the seawater rotted away the stake in his heart granting him consciousness again, he drifted onto the shore of Jewel city in 1982, and that's where his life began. With no memory, no connections, limited ability to speak english (read: none), and no resources for himself, Andrei's introduction to Jewel City unlife was rather uneventful. Andrei spent a good number of years just fucking hiding, feeding from people in back alleys and picking up scraps of language from stalking people. Sticking to back alleys and shadowy underbellies, he learned the language fairly quickly and made limited contact with some of the kindred of the area. Knowing what he was but not where he came from, he was introduced to the culture of the area and allowed to fend for himself. So, he took a job as a waiter to get by, renting an apartment next to an abandoned construction site. In recent time, he's taken a liking to the place, wandering its abandoned halls in his off time and exploring the basement. The fact that things have gotten ever darker there so far hasn't set off any alarm bells.

He's so fun to play because he's just A Guy. He's uninvolved with politics, works odd jobs as a night shift waiter, and is by most accounts normal, but at the same time is a supremely powerful abyss mystic Lasombra on the fucking Road of Kings, but still none of that registers to him, he is only himself. If you pointed out all the eldritch horror that surrounds him, like the fact that nobody else lives in the empty burnt out apartment building he lives in, or the fact that the shadows near him constantly writhe and his eyes foretell doom and decay... he'd be confused. Like, all of it just doesn't register to him because That's Just Normal. He *could* go for a power play and get power, but... he's got rent to pay. So, who cares?

The other fun angle is, being an entirely self indulgent character, he's friends with a number of mages. The main place he works at is essentially a magical femboy hooters run by a Euthanatos Archmaster. This leads to a lot of fun philosophical talks and some very interesting developments in his own Abyss Mystic practice. Namely, I wanted to have some fun approaching the idea of Mage from another splat's perspective. Mages deal with the idea of consensus fairly regularly, the idea that the world isn't actually what it seems to be is part and parcel. But for a *vampire,* the idea that the world doesn't actually exist as people think it does, and that the forces of the universe are just chaotic figments of imagination that can and do change.... is terrifying! It's a slow, creeping existential dread that he doesn't know how to deal with! It rocks.

My other guy in really excited about is Vincent Heikkilä, Void Engineer, Pan Dimensional Corps, Archmaster.

Vincent is actually native to the void, not earth. Vincent was born on a colony orbiting the Orion Nebula deep in the heart of space. Growing up in this environment gave him from a young age an instinct for space travel and navigation, when your first spacewalk was at seven learning to pilot shuttlecraft is kinda like getting a drivers license. He started his career as a teenager, starting as an unenlightened tech/data analyst in a work study position. However he enlightened (aka awakened) abs started making unprecedentedly fast progress, earning a position as a junior officer by 19.

Befitting a Void Engineer, he saw a lot of strange things and wolf action throughout the long years spent in the depths of space; dragons, alternate timelines, black holes, spatial anomalies, eldritch horrors that would make a vampire (read: Andrei) cry, actual literal Gods, he saw and dealt with it all. Eventually his career, published works on Dimensional Science, and experience with logistics and command earned him the position of rear admiral of one of the admittedly smaller fleets of VE battleships, working with the ETD on a number of expeditions against various threats to the Union. It was in these years that he saw and did some heinous things. There's really no good way to justify glassing a planet's surface to yourself, even if you knew it had to be done. After a long career, he made one hell of a persuasive argument in favor of shore leave and petitioned to go somewhere that he had never managed to travel to before, something stranger than he had ever seen, full of sights that even an Archmaster like himself had never experienced.

He took a vacation to earth.

Vincent is fun to play because he's this hyper competent space cowboy gunslinger with enough knowledge to justify my unhinged ramblings about the nature of the universe, but he also just doesn't know what a Gamecube is. He's a hardened soldier but... that's behind him. He's possessed by a joie de vivre and this deep enjoyment of the mundane that was strong enough to give him Fae Affinity (note, that's typically impossible for Technocrats but idc). He's not interested in participating in the Ascension war, even if he could beat nearly anyone in a quick draw duel he's too busy discovering what a crepe tastes like when it hasn't been 3d printed. He's piloted fighter craft and warships, but this is the first time he's been on a roller coaster. He's just such this fun, troublemaking rogue, it's great.

His current plans are very simple right now, just make friends. Experience the city not like a reality shifting demigod of technology but just as a dude. He might show off a bit, he might take one or two of his friends up into space for a joyride, but really I'm keeping all the incredibly powerful magic (or, ahem, enlightened science) just for prop comedy and shits and giggles. Also to drive off some of the annoying vampire elders in town, but that's neither here nor there.

Please feel free to ask more questions about either of them, or for stuff about other characters. Thank you for reading this long lmao

[sirfrogsworth]

Oh boy, I love a good gear journey.

If I can make one suggestion, ultra wide angle lenses are the most fun out of all the focal lengths. They aren't the most useful. And there aren't always a lot of opportunities to use them. But I never had as much joy shooting with any other lens.

The ball is no more than a foot away.

Ultra wide angle lenses exaggerate distance. So near things will look very big and far things will look tiny. And it is fun to play with those perspectives by having foreground and mid-ground elements competing in the frame.

Otherwise, I think you have a lot of the bases covered. And the D600 is such a classic camera that always punched above its price point.

Part of why I love photography so much is there is a spectrum of artistry and technology and you can lean either way and still be a great photographer.

If you like to get nerdy and play with all of the fun gadgets, you have that option.

And if you just want to keep the gear simple and only concern yourself with the art, that's cool too.

You can even do both if you want.

I've been a tech geek since I was 14. I used to build my own computers for fun and have been hooked on technology ever since. So, obviously, I love all of the gear. And not just because it is fun to play with. It allows me to push my photography in new and interesting ways. Especially when it comes to things like high end lighting and macro photography.

I'm actually hoping I can get into artistic microscopy at some point. Most macro photography is taken at 1x magnification, but there are objective lenses you can attach that go to 25x and even 50x. But it is possibly the most challenging type of photography and it has a very expensive barrier to entry.

Allan Walls has some microscopy content on his YouTube. And he has to 3D print parts and build special platforms and cages to keep the lenses stable enough. Sometimes just being in the room, shifting your weight in your seat, or just breathing is enough to shake the image at that magnification.

But some of the shots he is able to achieve are just mind boggling. These are scientific levels of magnification while using artistic lighting.

Some day.

Maybe.

My personal gear journey was always fairly humble. But I definitely had some cool stuff. I also started with regular flashes/speedlights. I would get the manual ones because they were only $60.

There is one gadget that I felt pretty silly about getting.

This allowed me to fire 3 flashes at the same modifier. And I thought "more is better" ya know? But in reality, it just created 3 hotspots. So instead of one large, soft light source, I created 3 small and harsh light sources. It ended up making people look quite bad and it was like shining a 3 spotlights on blemishes and acne.

You never stop learning!

Eventually I built a little studio in my basement. But it was small and light reflected off the walls, so my friends helped me paint it black. Even the ceiling.

And I got my first studio strobes. Which are just much more powerful flashes with attachment points on the front. They were called "AlienBees" and it really took my photography to a new level. Mostly because it allowed me to use professional light modifiers like beauty dishes and softboxes.

Studio accessories for regular flashes are a bit hit-and-miss, but they do make them. And they are a great way to learn and see if studio strobes may be something to upgrade to. Otherwise I think flashes are better for event-style use—bouncing off walls and ceilings.

Sadly, around 2017 my parents started getting very sick. I just did not have the energy to pursue photography and take care of them at the same time. And we really needed the money, so I sold a great deal of my studio gear. And while I was still educating myself about photography during that entire time, I rarely took a photo until shortly after my father died in 2023.

But I am happy to say I am currently building a brand new studio upstairs.

And it is big enough that I don't have to make it a depressing black box. I've started acquiring equipment. People were generous on my recent birthday and I was able to get some new studio lights.

Once I get a beauty dish and some strip softboxes, I'll pretty much be back in business with my studio photography. My friends are going to come over in the next couple of weeks to help me set everything up.

And with my heart seemingly back to normal, I'm really excited to see what photos I may take going forward.

All of this is to say... enjoy your gear journey.

You're going to buy some strange things that probably don't help. And you'll get some gear that you didn't know how you lived without. Just remember the gear doesn't take the photos. And more knowledge always trumps any photo gadget in existence.

I'm always thankful when you tag me and let me know how you're progressing.

Take care and keep shooting!

How I do what I do

The Nikon D600 DSLR and family. From left, SB-900 flash, 28-70mm f/2.8D, 28mm f/2.8D, 50mm f/1.8D, 105mm f/2.8D macro, and 80-200mm f/2.8D. Thanks to KEH for not destroying my wallet as I acquire gear.

Boop to @sirfrogsworth, and hope this finds you feeling better.

[andmaybegayer]

Last Monday of the Week 2023-01-09

Back at it again at the [DATA EXPUNGED]

Listening: Vienna Teng, who I encountered in a fancam for industrial society set to Landsailor someone posted on here. Here it is:

Landsailor is good, Hymn to Breaking Strain vibes but from a more civilian perspective, it also has some great names for shit, my favourite being "lawbreaker" for heat pumps. Absolutely incredible.

Reading: Halfway through Fugitive Telemetry, I forgot I had it after I finished Network Effect and anyway, Network Effect was good but kinda too long to spend with Murderbot, the short story format definitely fits it better. I do like how it opens with a Murder(bot) Mystery.

Watching: Watched Scott Pilgrim vs. The World for the first time. It's fun to watch something that is so very of its time. A lot like Clerks in that I watched it way later but I can imagine that had my friends and I seen it back in high school we'd all have been insufferably quoting it at each other the way we did Pirates of the Caribbean. Being vegan just makes you better than other people.

The material is. Fine, I knew it was a Manic Pixie Dreamgirl-focussed movie but I had somehow not realized it had the whole evil exes thing. The parts are greater than the whole.

Making: Marathon cooking session for my dad's birthday, preparing a large set of meals with the added bonus of not having electricity for two hours in the middle of the day. Turned out fine. Ovens are great for preparing large quantities of food quickly, you can do a lot of prep up front and the oven is pretty predictable.

Playing: Started but have not finished An Airport for Aliens Currently Run By Dogs, a comedy fetch quest game by Xalavier Nelson Jr. et al, which is about maintaining your long distance relationship with your fiance while being the last two humans in the universe by meeting up in various airports (for aliens (currently run by dogs)).

The basic game loop is that you have A Place you need to get to to meet your fiance or a specific dog, and you can do that by getting a ticket and finding your way to the appropriate terminal. But the airport is entirely written in a made up substitution cipher so until you learn that you're trying to get around from context clues in increasingly bizarre airports. You often have to get Things for different dogs to get them to help you and eventually get your flight, so you have to figure out the right chain of stores to go to to get your flight on time.

It's fun, it's not that long as far as I'm aware, and it is a nice little thing to have to do. I've been playing it in the mornings before work pretty often.

Tools and Equipment: Slowly setting up Linux on my new laptop, as previously mentioned AMD hasn't put out sensor fusion hub drivers for these Renoir CPU's so while I am pursuing that, I have to have some way to do tablet things in the meantime. Enter lisgd(1).

lisgd(1) is a gesture recognition daemon that works with touchscreens. You can configure (through a config.def.h or through command line flags) a set of gestures and commands for them to execute. I've now set up gestures to control volume and screen brightness as well as to enable and disable the keyboard and rotate the screen for tablet mode stuff. Between that you can replicate all the things the sensor fusion hub is meant to be doing.

There are other ways to do gesture recognition but this one has good tuning options and is pretty platform agnostic. You can do things like very carefully adjust how long a gesture has to be to be recognized or what deviation from the ideal angle will still be picked up.

I'll probably end up writing or finding a little panel utility that will make brightness and volume control simpler, maybe even include the rotation settings there too, but for now this works well enough. That panel will still get triggered by a gesture, so lisgd(1) is going to be load bearing.

[dongzhou3kingdoms]

Yellow Sky Revolt Review

Tipped off by @sunfin3k this might be worth a try, grabbed kindle edition (for less then £3 so thanks for that price).

Baptiste Pinson Wu (who can be found on twitter and 3k communities) has taken a concept people often discuss for a game or other media. Life via the eyes of Liao Hua, Turban who lives to see the fall of Shu-Han, but actually did it. Being book one, this covers the beginning (the title may be a bit of a clue) but from a farmer's boy rather then a yet grand figure.

Wu has drawn upon a mix of sources, history, novel (with a leaning towards the novel), TV shows for his characters (he explains this well in his author notes) and managed to keep it cohesive. So you will get nods to both historical characters and novel figure (also a lot of Turbans), including new figures for Liao Hua's circle while reflecting them from a young Liao Hua's view. When making a choice of how one would write a character, such choices won't please everybody all the time but we all have different angles of how we portray someone and there are certainly fun nods for those who know the era.

I had fun and I do look forward to reading the next book. Deeper thoughts below (no spoilers)

The writing style is easy to read and he aims to be accessible, smoothly inserting explanations, but, perhaps in a bid to touch upon the culture of his wife, the use of the odd little Chinese (pinyin) word is possibly not a great idea for first timers? Not without a small glossary for it? He doesn't overdo it and usually (either via a line that follows or context) easy to understand but I do wonder if that might put one or two off.

Each character gets a brief appearance description while avoids the issue some have with the romance of throwing so many names at people. Figures gradually come into Liao Hua's life and only need to focus on a set few at a time, those he focuses on do make an impact as they are built up over their time with Liao Hua.

Humour aims for the boyish humour that people of Liao Hua's age would go for and ones aimed over his head (my fav bit involved Zhang Fei's memorable entrance). Goes for a sometimes harsh world with corporal punishment at the ready but bar one scene, didn't think he overdid it.

Liao Hua in this is both the elderly defeated general, looking back over his life and able to use that to help inform the narration, and Liao Hua the youth who is on a distant farm and is young, with so much to learn. A kid, unaware of so much and treated like one by those around him. Wu manages to knit together that balance well of the old head and the youngster.

I really admire how Liao Hua doesn't have major knowledge of things he shouldn't. No "and he knows the eunuchs are evil" or "woe, the Han court is evil and uncaring", more it is a distant entity most of the time and what he picks up are rumours or talk that may or may not be 100% accurate.

On the balance between "you want Liao Hua to be central enough to the story" (ie seeing events, interacting with figures) vs "avoiding being the special one", I think Wu keeps that balance. One situation I thought might go potentially too much towards the special one avoided that trap.

Book is split into two parts. First part I loved, the farm, the distance, the youthfulness vs the world, why Liao Hua became interested in the Turbans, the people he met, his being drawn into something bigger. I was a big fan of how the issue of magic was handled. It faded for me near the end when it came to a bit close to the novel, the build up to the scene was good but despite playing it from a different perspective, didn't quite land the moment, and the transition to part 2 was not the most exciting.

On paper I wasn't sure what I would feel about phase 2 initially when I saw the direction but soon found my attention fully engaged again. I don't think I can speak about what I enjoyed without spoiling it but felt that it was well pulled off involving figures I'm fond of. Got to see Liao Hua grow both during moments of peace then as danger reasserts (well done sense of the world changing) and an enjoyably teasing way to end.

[thevibraniumveterans]

Tony Leung: “[Wenwu] isn’t a villain at all!”

On September 6, 2021, Tony Leung sat down with Hong Kong actress Carol “Dodo” Cheng for an interview about life, sports, and of course, his latest Hollywood outing as a widower who grieved the death of his beloved wife and a father who “didn’t know how to love [his children]” in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.

=

Interview is originally in Cantonese, and has been translated into English.

FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

-

Today I'm really pleased to interview Tony Leung Chiu-Wai. The last time I really chatted with you in earnest was... Do you remember? In 2013.

I think that time I was with...

We were on a plane together. 

At the mall? On a plane?

We arrived in Hong Kong, and went to some awards ceremony. We were waiting for our luggage, exchanged a few words. That was 2013, and we haven’t met since. Where did we meet up next? I’m sure you won’t remember. It was here in Hong Kong. I was surprised by you. I usually go to the supermarket, very early in the morning. Because there's no-one there. 

Yeah.

I saw you there.

I think that was probably it. Not too crowded in the morning. 

You too. Why so early in the morning?

To... buy food. I usually wake up at 6am. I’d exercise until about 10am-ish, and then I’d…

Go for a walk.

Shower, then shop for food. I usually eat quite simply— it’s either salad, or buckwheat noodles. Salad doesn't stay fresh very well. So I’d get up early in the morning, shop for what I like, and prepare it at home.

Have you been eating healthy all this time?

I’m not doing this particularly for my health. I get an upset stomach easily. I get food poisoning very easily. And it’s miserable having food poisoning! When you’re at work, others don’t know how bad you’re having it. But you can’t tell-- you can’t convey that.

Alright, at this point it’s time for a nostalgia trip. We used to be colleagues, and we’ve shot TV series together. At that time, did you feel that you could eat whenever and not have to sleep… When did you start prioritising your health?

When did it start? I think it would have been… at least 20 years ago. Because it’s miserable being sick while on set. You’ve got to keep working. Even when I had a fever, (producer) Wong Kar-Wai would say, “No, it’s the last day, you’ve got to make it.” So I would work with a fever!

It’s good that everyone's health-conscious now, and wants to avoid falling ill. So when I was preparing for this interview, some friends told me, They’d seen you and me do an interview, from many years ago. I don’t think you’d remember. We’re talking many years ago - decades here! You were really young at the time. At the TV station you were a rising star, a top male lead actor. So I interviewed you. I asked you a question, and I don’t know if you remember how you answered. I asked, “Have you thought about retirement?” You did give me an answer at the time. Do you remember at what age you said you’d retire?

I really don’t remember. I’m sure retirement was always on my mind then.

You were in your 20s then, not quite 30. You told me— “I will definitely retire at 36!”

[laughter]

What changed your mind?

I believe that when I started out as an actor, it was certainly hard work when I was just starting out. But I thought, I wouldn’t get to where I am today without going through tough times. But as I slowly grew as a person, my perspectives and values have changed. I feel more at ease. So I wouldn’t think in extremes like I did before. I think that in the past 10, 20… 10 years? I've become a more relaxed person. I wouldn’t just say, “now I’ll retire.” If I want to keep going, I will.

This is your favourite line of work, isn’t it?

Except sport. 

Could you imagine yourself in any other career? I can’t.

I’d be a sportsperson. 

A sportsperson, playing what?

I play a lot of sports. I like mountain biking, sailing, water skiing, surfing… I’m up for anything. 

You really like water sports, don’t you?

It’s hot in Hong Kong, and summer takes up most of the year. What’s more refreshing than being in the water?

How about in winter?

I’d still be in the water, wearing long sleeves.

You wouldn’t take up running?

I don’t particularly like it… I can’t seem to find much variety in running. I like to interact with nature directly. There’s something new every day. Take sailing, for example. Every day is different, the weather changes.

Your body is in a different condition every day.

You're working with the changing conditions. You end up building up a lot of knowledge. You learn about nature, the weather, changes in conditions. The water, currents, what do you call it... Hot weather warms the ocean and you’ll have gusts of wind. I didn’t know all this. But the more I sailed, the more I thought,“This is great!”

You’ve got a real passion for this.

I do.

What have you been up to during the pandemic? It’s been 1— almost 2 years, hasn't it?

I was filming in 2 movies… And... flying here and there.

Do you need to quarantine? 

Quarantine! Countless times.

We’ve talked for so long, let’s come back to this film, Shang-Chi. I believe Tony has received endless invitations to appear in overseas films. Why did you choose this film?

I didn't really... I believe it’s fate to be involved in certain films. I can’t just want to act in some type of film, then get it. An opportunity comes up, but sometimes the director might not like me, or I might not like the screenplay. Or I might like the director, but I don’t like the character. So you can’t just make this sort of thing happen. I think sometimes the time will be just right and things will happen. The director may like me, and I like the project, or I like the director. Or I might want to try something in particular. It takes a lot, a combination of factors, for something to happen.

It's like a piece of furniture, isn't it? The pieces need to be joined precisely.

Yes.

How were you scouted for this movie? How were you approached?

The director approached me, wanted to have a chat with me. So I...

What's your requirements for taking on a film? Do you need to read through the whole screenplay?

That would be best. It would.

You would've been in many films without a solid screenplay, wouldn't you?

There would still be an idea. 

An overview of sorts.

But this movie... You know Marvel is very secretive. At the beginning, I was in a video conference call with the director. What he could tell me at the time was, "You're going to be the main villain. Your character has many layers." Then I asked, "do I need to fight?" "No, because you have those rings." So I said, "then I'll definitely be fine." That was all.

What about that drew you in? Being the main villain?

That was one of the draws. In the past few years, I wanted to try characters different to those I'd played previously.

Why do all actors who have played male leads want to go off and play villains?

Actually... there's more complexity to them. I feel like there's a different mindset between playing a protagonist and an antagonist. I've acted for 30-something years. It's about time I did something different.

So you're in, you're headed to the shoot, and you're now the main villain! What's the mindset behind this?

Oh, not for this film. I thought I was the villain at first. A month before the shoot, I read the script. I didn't think this character was a villain at all. There was a real human side to this villain. Perhaps Marvel was hoping to portray a villain from a different angle this time around. So I was puzzled. Initially I was expecting, "Ooh, a villain, this will be fun", but when I looked at the script, "no, this isn't a villain at all!"

Very sentimental? 

Yes, and a lot of humanity.

You thought it would be easy playing a villain.

I didn't think it would be easy.

You didn't think there would be so much emotion. 

I didn't think it would be easy. I thought there would be more evil in him. I read the script and thought, "oh no, he's not evil at all", And that's difficult to portray. How would you let the audience... and I thought, "wow it's as if he's a good guy?" I read through the script and couldn't find the evil in this character.

How would you portray this character? Was the director able to help you?

The director...

Or did he put a lot of trust in you? 

I rarely... He put a lot of trust in me, and I don't discuss with the director often. I thought, what's the use of discussing? I could just act it out. You can be really idealistic when you discuss. I would rather do more... When I arrived, Destin would ask me, "Do you want to talk it out?" and I would say no.

Was there a read-through? 

No, no read-through.

You went straight to shooting?

Yes, straight to the shoot.

Then it would be like, "Tony, stand here, in this shot do this and that, and you'd do it?

Yeah. It was kind of like that. We filmed the action scenes first. So there was time to warm up. Then the dramatic parts. I like the drama most. I felt the most excited during these parts. The action scenes were particularly tough, because it was summer in Australia then.

Did you need to train?

I did. At first I was told I didn't need to fight. Then when I got there— wow, there's so many action scenes! So I scrambled and...

But you've got those rings. You can just throw the rings.

Sure, but there's still some action involved. Because I didn't physically prepare beforehand, it was rather tough at first. I got used to it as the shoot went on, but the weather was still hot. And there were period costumes, so it was tough at first.

So there was a sequence, they filmed all the action scenes first, and then scenes with dialogue afterwards, is that right?

I think they deliberately scheduled this so I could warm up a little. So I wouldn't need to dive straight into very intense dialogue.

There are a lot of actors involved, right? Your character has a son, too. Is this the first time you're portraying a dad?

Would it be my first time... 

Or you have, but not for a much older son?

Yes, not for a much older son. I had a child in “The Grandmaster” as well. But not that old, no.

How would you portray the emotions of a father-son relationship? Because your character didn't know his son. 

It was manageable. In this movie, the father-- not that he didn't love his children. He didn't know how to love them. This character doesn't even know how to love himself. The love was from his wife, portrayed by Fala Chen, He found love in this woman. But he doesn't know how to love others. So he was very distant from his children, his sons— his daughters were pretty much ignored. He was a father figure who preferred sons over daughters, a rather... traditional father archetype. Almost the old-fashioned type.

In shooting this movie, what was most difficult for you?

The action scenes. 

Do you do all these scenes yourself?

I try to, but they wouldn't let us do the really dangerous ones. If you're injured, who's going to replace you?

Sure.

But I try to do as much as I'm able.

You'd need to rehearse the scenes with everyone. 

Of course. Once we arrived, they arranged for Fala, my son, played by Simu, and my daughter... like you and I used to, we would all practice in the studio.

How long were the working hours?

It was 10 working hours a day, but we went all the way through that. There was no break in between. 

Really? I thought you would be sitting comfortably in your trailer?

No! We filmed a lot every day! You know how that made me felt? It felt like I was in my TV days again.

Really?

You'll think, "will we get through this much filming today?" And by the end of the day, you would. But it was very intense. Perhaps they didn't want us to have a break, because we'd have to disperse and regroup. So we went all the way through. Once we arrived in the studio, it was full steam ahead. There was no meal break, because there was always...

No meal break?

No.

I've never heard of a Hollywood film shoot without meal breaks.

There's food throughout the day. Catering comes around, and we'd just eat.

But there wouldn't be an hour for a meal break.

No.

How long was shooting in total?

I was involved for about... 4 months.

Was that long or short timeframe, in your experience?

I felt like it was short, because they were very efficient and organised. They planned it really well. So every you'd head in and whoosh,

It flowed well. 

Yes, very professional.

In your opinion, are there particular scenes you're in that the audience should pay attention to?

I think... I wouldn't say particular scenes, but the film as a whole. I don't think you've all seen me in this get-up before.

We could tell from the promos.

Very different to what I've played before.

Did you stay in one place for four months, or did you have to fly around?

We were only in Sydney, because we were in a studio. It was all green screen. There were a lot of special effects, so we only had to construct part of a set, And the rest was green screen, so it was mostly shot in the studio. Only the opening and ending were elsewhere, in a park, and in a village on a set they'd constructed. So I was there for... I was in Sydney the whole time. But because of the pandemic, I left for a few months in the middle, and returned when were were able to shoot again.

How did you feel about your experiences after the shoot? It's a Marvel movie, very different from the dramas and other films you've been in. How would you sum up your experiences?

Very stressed, very frustrated.

Really?

Because I'm the type of person who stays in their comfort zone. I filmed with familiar directors, and familiar crew.

You've really leapt out of your zone there.

I really stepped out of this comfort zone, working with strangers. The only person I could trust in was the director. I didn't know anyone else there. And when I got a copy of the screenplay, like I mentioned, I realised, "Wow, a villain that doesn't feel like a villain, what do I do?" I'd only received the script a month before the shoot. And when I got there, I had to work with the dialect coaches on delivery. I was filming, I was thinking... it was stressful. But we got through in the end.

Where were the costumes done?

In Tokyo. I was there at the time, and our costume designer kindly flew over to dress and fit me. At the time I didn't know what was in the script, I didn't know the story. But the costumes helped me a lot at the time. The movie's costumes were made beautifully. I thought they had good design sense. So when I was dressed for the first time, I was able to feel...

That you were the character.

Yes, roughly. I had an initial feeling for it. And then I would turn up in person, and get a better feel as I played the character.

So the shoot is over, it's about to be released. What plans do you have next, Tony?

Well when I came back to Hong Kong, I took part in a local film. Then I might shoot one in Shanghai, and then a TV series in Vancouver.

So you've done a complete turn-around since I last interviewed you. You were thinking of retiring at 36, do you not plan to retire now?

Not that I haven't thought about it... I'll stop when I feel tired. Then I'll go back to playing sports. If I feel like I've taken too long a break, and go "no, I need to do something," and there's something I'm really interested in, I'll do it. I don't need to come to a complete stop. It's something I like, after all.

So when you film in future, you wouldn't be thinking, "oh, I've been in a Hollywood production, "I will only appear in productions at that tier.” You'll be happy with a good screenplay.

Yes.

You might be asked to shoot drama films again. You would still take that on?

Well, I haven't given myself...

You've already left your comfort zone.

Yes, but I haven't really limited myself to what I think I should film. If there's a good film, I'll shoot in it. If there's something I like, I'll do it.

Well Tony, surely a typical day in Hong Kong for you wouldn't be on the water all day. What's a typical day like for you without shoots?

Well I'd get up, and there would be at least 2 hours of exercise.

Every day?

Yes.

Monday through Sunday?

Maybe one, half day's rest. You've got to let your body recover.

How about when you're shooting in Hollywood?

Not during filming, I'd save up my energy for that. Shooting takes 10 hours a day, but hair and makeup could take 2 hours. That's 12 hours, and it was tiring.

That's true.

I needed the energy for filming. But in Hong Kong, without a shoot, I'd have 2 hours exercise in the morning, make lunch, I might do some sports, like sailing, or water skiing. I'll come home, maybe watch a movie, or read a book. That's it. Maybe I'll have dinner.

I wouldn't exactly call that exciting. [Laughter]

It's pretty exciting!

For you, at least.

If the weather's good and I spend the day out sailing, I'd feel really happy about that. But not every day's a good day. I might capsize, and it would feel wrong. But it's not all that bad.

Why don't you enter competitions?

I have entered competitions.

Have you placed in these competitions?

Well... I have placed before.

What did you place?

I think second.

Oh, that's quite good. If you competed in the Olympics in sailing, there's no age limit there right?

Yes, there's no limit. But you don't necessarily have to compete in the Olympics. I could...

But we would all be happier for it, Tony. Imagine, Tony Leung Chiu-Wai representing Hong Kong and winning a medal! You've seen how happy the medalists have been this year.

It's really hard! It's really hard!

Why is that?

You're not as fit as younger people. It's hard. I play sports purely for enjoyment. I feel like it's an experience.

Fair enough.

It's... I'm not the type to want first place or something.

You're not a competitive person.

Yes. I don't want to experience a sport in that way. I'm there for my own enjoyment, not to win.

Let's say in future... since I last saw you in 2013— that wasn't even an interview, and now I've met you after all this time. Let's say in 5 years. What would you be doing in 5 years' time?

Maybe I...

Back then you said you'd retire at 36. I'll ask you again now, let's not dredge up the past. What do you think you'd be doing?

In 5 years' time, I think I would have more time for sports. [laughter]

Still on the water?

Yeah. Well, not necessarily, but a lot of different sports. I do want to try some—

Try running! I've seen Kar Ling (Carina Lau) run before! 

Yes, she likes running, and hiking too.

Why don't you run with her?

I don't really like running.

Hiking?

Hiking, I'd rather... well when I'm skiing, I'd walk in the back country, in good weather, carrying my skis and wearing my cleats, it's the same thing. I'd hike up and ski down. But not that kind of hiking. Well sometimes... when in summer, in Hokkaido, I can't ski. I would still hike, but I wouldn't really like it. But it would be better with friends.

But you don't like being around too many people. 

I sometimes like being with family. But my family... not everyone can hike. One might cramp up halfway.

Since you like being on the water so much, how many people does it take to do that?

One.

Just you?

Yeah.

Just someone to steer the boat.

Uhh... yeah.

It doesn't matter if there's a boat?

I do a lot of different water sports. I have those... electric boards, the type that shoot up like a magic carpet on the water, I have a stand up paddleboard, I can surf by myself too, that's doable. A lot of the sports I do can be done solo. I don't need a lot of people around.

You've really changed from before. You used to like to... go out at night?

Yeah.

That's all gone?

It has for a while. I haven't been in the nightlife for 20, 30 years. I'd eat out for dinner at most. Then I'd go straight home.

I remember I used to shoot TV dramas with you, you surprised me— We've filmed one or two series together, I would go straight home to bed afterwards, because I've always been a morning person. You could still say, "I'm going to go out for a bit." Yet the next day — our call sheets had us in very early — you were still able to make it in on time. Back then…it was a rite of passage.

Because I was young. Yes, and it was life experience. There are things you should do at that age.

Sure. Well, I hope to see you in another production soon. If this series were really successful, would you continue in any sequels?

[laughter] I really don't know, I can't say.

Why's that?

I feel like... as I've mentioned, there's fate involved in shooting a particular film. We'll see where...

…where fate takes you.

...where fate takes me.

Thank you Tony Leung Chiu-Wai for being with us today.

You're welcome.

[this-is-spn20]

FLUFF ALPHABET! Sam Winchester!

A/N: Here’s Sammy boy! My small adorable baby! Let me know what you guys think about this! 

-Marissa

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

A ctivities- What do they like to do with their s/o? How do they spend their free time with them?

Sam is a pretty laid-back man. When he sees a chance at relaxing with you, he snatches as quickly as possible. Whether it’s just walking or driving around towns, going to the local library (cause God knows the only book they have at the bunker are the Wizard of Oz books, and the men of letters’ books.), to looking up fun recipes to try with you. The man will always keep you occupied!

B eauty- What do they like to do with their s/o? How do they spend their free time with them?

Sam likes that despite you being very soft-spoken, you’re nowhere near dumb. You’re also very confident. Of course, you’ll still ask Sam what he thinks if you piece together a somewhat bold outfit. But you might as well call him Bruno Mars cause- well you know.

 I feel like if you are an artist of some sort, he might decide to pick up your art of choice as a hobby for when he has no research or hunts. Maybe if you draw, he’ll buy both of you sketchbooks and pencils. Or if you use a tablet he might buy you a better one. He’ll try doing simple drawings to start off with a tree or two. An eye here and there. He struggling and he’s probably gonna get a bit upset with himself if his skills don’t pick up like yours. But he’s trying really hard! If you like making music, he might ask you to play guitar. He might even ask you to teach him how to sing! But be patient, he can barely carry a tune but he’s so happy to learn! Might take him almost a year to get the hang of it, but once he does, he is an absolute Beast with some strings!

C omfort- How would they help their s/o when they feel down/have a panic attack etc.?

Sam has anxiety himself so he knows the signs when one is coming on. He’s been around stressful things/people/events all his life. His father was abusive throughout his and Dean’s childhood. When he ran away to go to college, he had to learn to interact with new environments and people. In conclusion, the man KNOWS what anxiety is. And how to handle it. He’ll have you sit down and close your eyes. He won’t touch you just in case it makes you more nervous. He’ll breathe slowly with you, serving as a guide to get your bearings. Once you’ve slowed your breathing he knows you can’t hold anything so he gets you a glass of water with a straw and holds the glass for you. He knows you probably won’t want to eat anything so he just picks you up when you say he can, and brings you to bed, and reads you to sleep while holding you close. 

D reams- How do they picture their future with their s/o?

Sam knows for sure he wants to marry you. He also wants kids with you but the risk of being raised in the life he kept him up at night. Now don’t get him wrong, he knows that whatever happens, family will take care of it. They always do. But he’s not sure if that’s a risk worth taking. He just wants to have the apple pie life. He’d kill every monster with his bare hands just to have that with you. 

E qual- Are they the dominant one in the relationship, or rather passive?

Sam is quite dominant in the relationship. He always takes care of everything for you. He doesn't buy into the stereotype that women should be doing everything for their partners. He tries to help you out with everything and he doesn't take no for an answer. You've known for a while that Sam's love language is Acts of Service. All he's done all his life is help people, so it just seeps into the relationship. Sure he believes that a relationship should be a healthy balance of 50\50, but at the same time, he can't help take over and take care of you. This man is just precious. 

F ight- Would they be easy to forgive their s/o? How are they fighting?

Depending on what the fight was about Sam would be pretty open to forgiving you pretty quickly. However sweet Sam can be, if he believes that he has even a pinky toe to stand on in the fight, he’ll stick to it. It’s only when the shouting has gotten too much for you that you walk away that he may see where you’re coming from. Give him a or two. That way you both had time to cool down. You’ll spend the rest of the day talking it through, seeing each other’s perspectives. Even if you guys can’t agree with each other, you’ll know how to better handle the situation next time. 

G ratitude- How grateful are they in general? Are they aware of what their s/o is doing for them?

Even though he mostly does mundane things for you, you try to help out as much as he’ll let you. For example, if you noticed that he has a lot of research to do, while he’s sleeping or is on a supply run, you’ll continue his research so that he’ll have more time to relax and let loose a bit more. You think he doesn’t notice but he does, and he appreciates it. It makes him feel like he hasn’t been ‘slacking off’, or that he hasn’t wasted too much time doing other things. Sometimes you’ll even finish the research and he’ll have nothing much to do for a while. Except relaxing with you of course!

H onesty- Do they have secrets they hide from their s/o? Or do they share everything?

Sam doesn’t have to hide much from you. You’re a damn good hunter. He would even go as far as to say you were better than him and Dean. He knows damn well you can take care of yourself and that you don’t like being babied often. He knows your secrets as well as you know his. It takes a big weight off his shoulders, knowing he doesn’t have to hide who he is with you. 

I nspiration- Did their s/o change them somehow, or the other way around? Like trying out new things or helped them overcome personal problems?

You were always an adventurous and carefree person. You always had a hard time balancing fun and work. Sometimes it got you into trouble. Sam noticed this when you two first met and as your relationship got more serious and tried to help you with the balence. By all means you aren’t magically better, but you’re learning. Sam on the other hand, had the same issue. The work and fun balance is a tricky one to master. You help Sam have more fun, like you he’s getting better at having more fun. But again it’s not going to happen overnight. Oh and you eat a salad of two once a month now!

J ealousy- Do they get jealous easily? How do they deal with it?

On the rare occasion the Sam gets extremely jealous, it's usually when someone tries to touch. Regardless of whether you let it happen (for fun) or not, he can’t help himself. He wants you all to himself. No Sharing!!

K iss- Are they a good kisser? What was the first kiss like?

Sam is a very good kisser. He always kisses you like he hasn’t seen you in years. Most of the time his kisses are very rough but intimate. The first kiss was after four dates. Yes that’s a long time but you wanted to make sure you did this right with Sam. Plus he reassured you that he’d wait as long as you wanted to. You were sitting next to Sam in the Library doing some light research since most of it had gotten done earlier that week. The tension had been building up all week, you were finally ready to kiss Sam. Despite this not being your first kiss, you hadn’t kissed many people so understandably, you were nervous. You reached your arm over his and gently closed his laptop and angled your body toward his. You leaned over to him slowly, creeping your hand to his shoulder and finally your lips connected. Sam’s hand softly grabbed your hand on his shoulder and you both stayed like that until you both needed air. That was one of, if not, the most intimate moment you’ve had with Sam so far.

L ove Confession- How would they confess to their s/o?

Sam would be a bundle of nerves when he tries to confess. He’s tried to do it at least three times but each time he either got too nervous or something would interrupt him. Eventually settled for being simple, yet intimate. He had invited you to come to the library with him to sit and read for a while. It was about an hour and a half of you both being immersed in your own books that he told you he was going to the coffee shop in the bookstore to get a coffee. He got you your favorite drink. He had the barista give him a sharpie before they made your drink, then he wrote his message to you and bought you the drink when the order was done. You could see Sam was shaking and fidgeting but you couldn’t tell why.You figured you’d let him tell you when he’s ready. If only you know. You were only a few sips into your drink when you noticed some writing on the cup. Curious, you read the message which read; 

(Y/n), I have loved you from the best of times to the worst. Would you do the honor of going on a date with me?

-Sam

You sat up, a bit stunned. You looked at Sam to see him smiling shyly at you. You couldn’t do much but giggle and nod at the giant softie. 

M arriage- Do they want to get married? How do they propose? What would the marriage be like?

Marriage is something Sam and you have talked a lot about it. You two know you definitely want to get married but the question was when. You want to do it sooner rather than later. While Sam agrees, he also feels like that it should be a sign of both of you leaving life for good. Sam is a very nostalgic person, which means he’ll most likely recreate him asking you out and your first date. At the end of the night he’d get down on one knee and before he gets to say one word you burst into tears. When he finishes his speech, you of course say yes and the night continues...elsewhere. 

N icknames- What do they call their s/o?

Sugar is used more often than not. Baby and babygirl are pretty prevalent. Honey Bunch is used less but when he does call you that usually puppy dog eyes are shortly behind. 

O n Cloud Nine- What are they like when they are in love? Is it obvious for others? How do they express their feelings?

When Sam is in love it’s less obvious to everyone, but if they know Sam, they’ll notice the little things. Things like Sam now has permanent smile lines and his shoulders don’t hold so much tension anymore. If you didn’t come on a hunt with him and Dean he always has Dean stop off to get a bouquet of flowers. Of course he gets shit from Dean but he still does it everytime cause he is a good big brother.

P DA- Are they upfront about their relationship? Do they brag with their s/o in front of others? Or are they rather shy to kiss etc. when others are watching?

While Sam will let anyone know that you’re together (if need be), he’s pretty subtle about it. There is the subtle hand on your thigh or around your waist. Maybe a little quick forehead kiss but other than that unless they knew you, someone wouldn’t be able to guess you two are together. 

Q uirk- Some random ability they have that’s beneficial in a relationship.

Sam has this really deep, rich, raspy type of voice. That makes him the BEST narrator ever! He often reads you to sleep when you two spend a lazy night in or if you have a nightmare. He’s there with a book you’ve been reading and he reads you a chapter or two before you’re out like a light. 

R omance- How romantic are they? What would they do to make their s/o happy? Cliché or rather creative?

Sam is the KING of romance. When he plans something for you, he goes all out! When it comes to making you happy, he’ll do whatever it takes. There are almost no limits to his love. He lives by the term “Happy Wife, Happy Life.”. Sam is pretty nostalgic so he’ll be cliche, but he’ll be creative and add his own twist to it! So you could say he’s pretty creative. 

S upport- Are they helping their s/o achieve their goals? Do they believe in them?

Sam loves learning about your goals and helping you achieve them. If you have 5 different goals, he's all there for you, helping you learn ways to achieve them quicker. If you want to. If you feel like those goals are impossible to reach, he’s there to help you see nothing’s impossible.

T hrill- Do they need to try out new things to spice up your relationship? Or do they prefer a certain routine?

While Sam likes to have a solid routine, he tries to keep things *spicy* when it comes to your relationship. Whether it's something mundane or outrageous, you and Sam try your best to keep things fun for the both of you. 

U nderstanding- How good do they know their partner? Are they empathetic?

You and Sam know each other so well it's gotten to the point where if you or him need something, you know what’s needed and how much before the other even opened their mouth. When this happens, Dean just kinda stares at the both of you with a “what the actual fuck?’ look. 

Sam: *sees you walking into the kitchen* Hey babe we-

Y/N: We need to get some milk today. You wanna leave at 11?

Sam: *goes back to drinking his coffee* Yep.

Dean: *freaking the fuck out*

V alue- How important is the relationship to them? What is it’s worth in comparison to other things in their life?

Sam knew from the first date that his life would be in your hands. He trusts you with everything he has. What’s your relationship worth to him? More than any diamonds, jewels, or power. Nothing can ever be worth more than you. 

W ild Card-  A random Fluff Headcanon.

Sam took you to an event at a bar one night for a date. The theme that night was ‘50’s and 60’s dance night!’ He bought you a dress that would be worn in that era and he wore his brand new tux he bought, just for tonight. Just for you. Your feet were screaming in your heels but you and Sam were having too much fun to leave the dance floor. When you guys got home that night Sam gave you the BEST foot rub ever. 

X OXO- Are they very affectionate? Do they love to kiss and cuddle?

In private, Sam will smother you with kisses and cuddles. The man can almost never let you go. The poor touch starved baby.

Y earning- How will they cope when they’re missing their partner?

Sam likes to log in to your Spotify, he knows most likely wherever you are, you’re listening to your music. He likes to listen to your playlists with you. It makes him feel closer to you. 

(He’ll never admit it but you have better taste in music than him.) 

Z eal- Are they willing to go to great lenghts for the relationship? If so, what kind of?

It’ll be a close call but if he had to choose to save Dean or you, he’d choose you. It’d break him for a while, but he knows his brother wants him to have the apple pie life with you. And in the end, he’d always do it. No matter how hard it’d be for him and you every time, he wouldn’t change a thing. 

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

A/N: Thank you guys for reading! I hope you enjoyed it. Requests are always open!

Spread Love!

-Marissa

[macandriley]

5x06 - A Very MacRiley Analysis

Obligatory post to answer the age-old question: What do you see in MacRiley?

I’d like to start this off by saying, like a lot of you, I had very minimal hopes for this episode. I really didn’t expect anything to happen on the MacRiley front—especially not something that would significantly impact that storyline. 

But...I do enjoy being wrong.

Full transparency: this is not an episode review. If it were, I’d have to talk about the glaring plot inconsistencies and strange timeline. And I feel like I’ve already talked myself hoarse over that. 

So, without further adieu, let’s get into the long-winded analysis. 

The Cold Open

Absolutely irrelevant to the overall story and to this analysis. I just really like the way Mac says, “Riley, take the wheel,” and I thought it deserved an honorable mention.

“2020 Is Gonna Be Awesome”

Here, we cut to quarantine shenanigans. It’s cute. Fun. To see Riley and Bozer interacting like siblings again after so long just felt right.

Now, this is the pandemic, so of course conversations of toilet paper shortages arise. So Mac, in true MacGyver fashion, throws out some fun alternatives like newspaper and pine needles. And Riley shoots them all down, as she should. 

Because in the immortal words of Desi in 5x04, “Ew.”

This is when Bozer mentions that they could use the cardboard from Riley’s moving boxes. A seemingly innocent suggestion on the surface. If you don’t pay much attention to it, it goes right by without any fuss. 

However, at this point in canon, here’s what we know:

Bozer knows about Riley’s feelings for Mac

Riley has verbally told him that the reason she’s moving out is because of MacDesi. (Though her exact reasoning might’ve been intentionally misleading on her part)

So what does this mean? Well, to put it simply, Bozer is encouraging her to embrace living with Mac. To unpack her bags and stick around a while. A suggestion that Riley seems to ignore, as she says she’s dead set on getting out of there the second the pandemic allows.

Of course, the second she mentions moving, Mac picks back up with his beautiful Fauci song. Could it be that Himbo Barbie doesn’t like talking about Riley leaving? That’s open for interpretation.

Bonus points: Mac (incorrectly) blames Riley for not doing the dishes and it’s just adorably domestic. 

Getting Fed

Again, this scene is insignificant. The OG trio sit down to dinner, with Desi and Matty on video chat. It’s cute. 

But there is definitely something to be said for the way Riley looked at Mac when he mentioned having a private chat with Desi. My heart really went out to her there, because it must seem to her like she’s constantly being overlooked. 

After dinner, Riley and Bozer share a brief conversation. She expresses a disinterest in discussing her feelings, and reaffirms her choice to move out.

But Bozer reminds her that she’s only moving out so she “doesn’t have to watch Mac and Desi together,” and that “At this moment, it doesn’t seem like they are.”

This scene is important for two reasons: 

Bozer is clearly more supportive of MacRiley, which makes him honorary ship captain (as far as I’m concerned). 

it reaffirms the fact that her feelings are still very real, no matter how hard the lady doth protest.

Kitchen Floor Confessional

You all know this one from promo. After a tense conversation with Bozer, Mac heads inside to do the dishes. Riley, being the helpful person she is, offers to lend a hand. 

One thing leads to another, and the two wind up sitting on the floor by the sink, side by side. Just talking. The conversation comes to an end when Riley, who looks as though she wants to say something else, decides against it. (This “something else”, of course, would have been her confession). 

Cue the somewhat longing, emotionally charged staring from both parties. 

At this point, Mac says he’s going to go for a jog and abruptly leaves Riley alone in the kitchen. It’s clear by the look on her face that she feels, in some way, rejected. And the viewer is, at least for now, left to ponder why Mac seemed to cut the moment off so strangely. 

Though one could hypothesize that, just like Riley’s being packed and ready to go, Mac’s running has a little more to do with the emotional distancing than physical. 

The Parking Lot

Here we see Mac run off to speak to Desi. A scene I will not discuss at length, because the idea of playing footsie makes me cringe in the deepest recesses of my soul.

A little ways away, Bozer asks Riley if she told Mac about her feelings. She tells him she didn’t and that she’s glad, because she doesn’t want to be the thing that comes between them and their “happiness” (happiness is in quotes here because it seems like “anger” and “annoyance” are more common for them).

The dialogue in and of itself is not what I want to focus on here though. It’s the way the scene is framed.

Outside of the close-up shots for MacDesi’s conversation, much of the camera angles are from Riley’s perspective. Distant. Detached. The standpoint of an outsider looking in—of a girl watching the man she cares about being happy with someone else. 

The camerawork here makes this more of a Riley-centric moment than a MacDesi one.

Which is important because, from a narrative standpoint, there is no reason to frame it that way unless her emotions are going to be focal later on. This entire exchange implies that, in some way, Riley’s feelings are, were, and will be important to the plot. 

Yay for directorial story telling. 

A Moment

What to say about this scene? 

Mac has a heart to heart with Bozer and promises to be more present in his life. Bozer thanks him and begs him to finally clean the damn kitchen.

And agreeing, Mac turns away to do just that. Only, he stops himself short and tells Bozer he has one more thing he’d like to discuss.

The quote went as follows: “Kay, so...in the kitchen here a couple nights ago with Riley, there was a, uh...I don’t know, a moment.”

As I’m sure every MacRiley knows, him acknowledging that scene as a legitimate moment between them was incredibly unexpected. They’ve arguably had “moments” before, but only Riley ever seemed to notice them. Mac never mentioned having feelings, or even seemed like he might be aware of them.

This scene is the first time we’ve ever had direct confirmation that he feels—at least, in some capacity—the same way. 

To make it even better, this scene happens directly after MacDesi’s footsie match in the parking lot. Which means that, even when he’s got positive momentum with Desi, he’s still got Riley on his mind. 

Side note: I personally think this explains his behavior in 5x03. He doesn’t see Riley reciprocating, and he’s probably incredibly worried about screwing up all their history—an issue he doesn’t have with Desi, since they didn’t have much of a friendship first. 

So he throws himself back into that in an attempt to smother his feelings. Will it work? Only time will tell.

Ending

After cleaning up the kitchen, Mac picks up the piece of glass he’d left on the floor and, surprise surprise, finally gets an idea for his ventilator. Some fans say this is Riley’s influence, which I can honestly see. 

Especially given the quote Mac says at the end:

“When the world feels like it’s so turned upside down that it’s impossible to fix, it helps to look at things from a different angle. Because no matter how broken something appears—whether its your grumpy neighbor, your terrified best friend, your estranged girlfriend, or a shard of glass—that broken thing could inspire something new...Maybe even something better than before.”

I believe this is a direct foreshadow to MacRiley. Somehow, his fractured relationship with Desi will make him see what he COULD have with Riley. This “new angle” might even help him see that he’s better off as friends with Desi (something new), and that he might be happier in a relationship with Riley (something better).

And if you still don’t buy that, well...the scene transition seems pretty damning. 

There was absolutely no reason the camera couldn’t have faded to Bozer. Or to a shot of all three of them. This feels incredibly intentional, no?

In Conclusion

“Codex Adrenaline” and “Quarantine Cabin Fever” are cop-outs. Riley still likes Mac. Mac now likes Riley. And we are 100% going to see more development on that front. So is this a win?

I think so.

But I wanna hear from y’all. What did you like about this episode? What did you hate? Do you feel like they’re leading up to something bigger for MacRiley?

I’d love to hear y’alls thoughts. 

[kuroopaisen]

cause & effect || chapter 4

➵ your work friend, kuroo, has a tiny favour to ask. to say you’re surprised is an understatement. but, for some stupid reason, you agreed to it. 

warnings: f!reader, alcohol

wc: 2.1k

m.list | ch. 3 ↞ ch. 4 ↠ ch. 5

You sip the hot sake with a grimace. It’s not bad per se, just… different.

For a restaurant whose whole gimmick was hot sake, you’re surprised it clashes so much with your meal. But at least it brought you a little warmth.

Kuroo’s having as strange a time as you are. Each sip of his sake is accommodated with a grimace. Somehow, it makes him look a couple years younger.

Your legs are tucked under the futon attached to your table, but admittedly there’s not much room. Kuroo’s legs are far too long and the kotatsu much too cramped.

“Give me some room, would you?” You grin, nudging him with your knee.

“Oh, sorry,” Kuroo chuckles, adjusting himself.

This isn’t the first fake date you’ve been on with Kuroo. Well, they weren’t dates – not technically. The purpose of them was to get to know each other better; something you’d both agreed was important if you were going to pull this whole thing off.

You’d never really thought about it before, but there’s a lot of mundane information shared in relationships. Things you might not think to mention to other people, or even things you haven’t told anyone else. Not that you were saying any of that to each other – you just need to be convincingly close.

You are going to meet his family, after all.

“So,” you sigh, setting your cup on the kotatsu, “you lived with your dad, your grandmother, and your grandfather?”

“Mhm,” he nods.

“And I need to stay on my toes around them?”

“Oh yeah,” Kuroo grins. “Chances are they’ll tease the hell out of you if they get comfortable enough.”

“Great,” you chuckle.

“You’ll be fine,” he smiles. “I’m sure they’ll love you.”

“You sure?”

“Chances are they’ll tell you you’re too good for me.”

“Maybe I am,” you smirk, taking another sip of sake.

Kuroo scoffs. “Brutal!”

You’re not sure if he can tell you’re lying. He’s handsome, clever, and witty enough to be entertaining. You’d feel lucky to have a guy like him look your way.

Oh well, you think as you place your hands in your lap. You’re quite happy to keep that thought to yourself. There’s no good reason to feed a man’s ego.

He stretches his arms above his head, groaning. You swear you can hear his bones cracking.

“You sound like an old man,” you grin.

“Look, it’s not my fault the human body is badly designed.”

“Ah, so it’s not your fault for not looking after it properly, hm?” Perhaps he has a point. But you have to make your own fun these days.

“I’ll have you know I take very good care of my body, thank you very much.”

You’re not sure if he intended it to sound so flirtatious, but you blush anyway.

“Your bones say otherwise,” you muse.

“I won’t stand for this abuse,” he grins, standing up. “You ready?”

You follow suit, scampering after him as he approaches the cashier.

As always, he pays. No matter how hard you try to protest, he just smiles and says he feels bad for taking up your evenings.

You don’t know a casual way to say that you actually enjoy these outings.

Your solution is just buy him fancier coffees in the morning.

Kuroo deals with the transaction in the same smooth and charming way he always does, and you’re sure he’s definitely made an imprint on the dear cashier’s memory.

It’s only late afternoon, but the sky is already darkening. The trees that line the street are speckled with fairy lights, already glowing like candles in the dim twilight.

You gaze at them with a tiny sense of wonder. You’ve heard the theory that people made winter a time of celebration to give them something to pull through the dark and the cold for. Maybe that’s true – but there’s always such beauty to be find during wintertime, even if it feels like the tip of your nose is about to fall out.

Fairy lights in a tree are so small, so inconsequential, and yet so human.

You shake your head. That’s the sake talking.

You turn to Kuroo to say something.

He’s peering at you intently, eyes roaming your face.

You blush, unsure what to make of that look. Is there something on your face? “Everything okay?”

“The lighting’s good here.”

You frowned. “Huh?”

Kuroo fishes his phone out of his pocket, taking a step towards you and hovering an arm above your shoulders.

“You all good to take a photo?” He asks, and it clicks.

“Oh! Right!” You nod, almost a little too fervently. “Sure.”

He smiles, slinging his arm across your shoulders. You lean into him, tilting your face to what you believe to be your best angle.

Sure, these photos are technically ‘fake’, but that doesn’t mean you can’t look your best.

He snaps a couple of photos of the two of you before opening his gallery. The two of you take a moment to observe the handful of images.

The two of you may not really in a relationship, but you’re sure these photos could fool you.

You point at one of them, nodding. “That one looks good.”

Kuroo chuckles, adding it to his favourites. “Thanks.”

He smiles and slips his phone into his pocket as he steps away from you. You miss his warmth more than you should.

“Have they liked the photos?” You ask.

“Loved them,” he grins.

You know Kuroo’s been sending them to his family – with your permission, of course. It’s partly to satiate their desire to intrude on his love life, and also to make it more believable when you finally meet them. You have half a mind to save them to your own phone with how cute they are.

“Oba-chan’s been joking about putting them on the wall.”

You snort. “That’s a bit much, isn’t it?”

“She’s desperate,” he grins.

“She must be, if she’s considering omiai.”

Kuroo shrugs. “Ah, she’s just worried about me. She doesn’t want me to be ‘married to my work.’”

“Are you?” You ask, one eyebrow raised.

“Oh, God no.”

You laugh as you dig your hands in your pockets.

“I’ve just got a lot going on,” he explains. “I don’t have the time to date.”

“Really?” You tilt your head at him. “You kind of strike me as the kind of guy who’s content to just go home and play dating sims all night.”

Kuroo reels back, a hand on his chest. “You’re joking.”

“I thought you were single because you had some digital waifu or something.”

Kuroo stares at you with an expression of absolute horror. “What have I done to deserve this?”

“I’m just teasing,” you giggle, hopping down the street. “Okay, so if you’re not cuddling up against a body pillow of a scantily clad anime women during those lonely nights, then what do you do with your spare time?”

Kuroo scoffs, shaking his head as he jogs to catch up with you. “Well, I catch up with my friends a fair bit. Oh, and I’m part of a hobby volleyball club.”

“You play?” You look him up and down. Now that he’s said it, it makes perfect sense.

“I wasn’t kidding when I said I take good care of my body,” he grins.

Another glance and you realise – yes, actually, he appears to be taking very good care of his body. Those shoulders look a little broader than you’d first thought.

“Is that why you applied for your job?” You ask. “Personal interest?”

“Mhm,” he nods.

Interesting. “Have you always played?”

“I’ve played for as long as I can remember,” he grins. “Believe it or not, but my high school team actually made it to Nationals. With me as their captain.”

“Wait, really?” You look up at him with wide eyes. Now that was certainly unexpected.

“Sure did.”

“How far did you get?”

Kuroo furrows his brow for a moment. “I think it was something like the top 16?”

“That’s… pretty impressive,” you admit. Your knowledge of sports is perhaps a little lower than might be expected of someone in your position, but you digress. Top 16 in the entire nation is definitely something to be proud of.

“Glad you think so,” he grins.

“If you don’t mind me asking, why didn’t you pursue it professionally?” From your perspective he certainly has the build for it. And if there’s one thing you’re sure of after working next to him for a while now, it’s that he’s clever. A trait that seems to be surprisingly useful on the court.

“There were some real monsters on the teams we faced,” he says, voice languid as ever. “You know about Hinata Shouyou and Kageyama Tobio, right?”

You nod. Even if your understanding of the sport itself wasn’t particularly advanced, you were well-aware of the top players. That, at least, you’d made an effort to stay up to date with. Also, a lot of them were unfairly attractive – making that task a bit easier to stick to than some of your others.

“We faced them at Nationals,” he glances at you, a new glint in his eye. Maybe it’s nostalgia.

You shiver.

“That genuinely sounds terrifying.”

Kuroo grins. “It was. Oh, and you know Bokuto Koutarou, right?”

“Who doesn’t?”

“Well, we were friends in high school,” Kuroo says, as if it’s the most mundane piece of information you could receive. “Our teams often practiced against one another.”

You stare at him, jaw slack. “No way.”

“I have several embarrassing photos of him to prove it,” Kuroo chuckles.

He’s so confident about it that you have no choice but to believe him.

“You have to introduce me to him,” you say, voice a little more desperate than you’d like.

“Why?” Kuroo flashes you a wicked grin. “Got a crush?”

“No,” you roll your eyes, praying your cheeks aren’t turning too red. “He just seems… nice.”

“Nice and… attractive?”

“Shut up!”

“I’m just saying, he’s technically single—”

“Aren’t I supposed to be your fake girlfriend?” You knock him with one of his shoulders to little avail. You stumble back a bit from the impact. He stays completely still.

Kuroo cackles a little louder than usual. “You’re going to have to try harder than that.”

“Who knew you were so annoying?” You scoff.

“That’s on you,” he smirks. “You’re the one agreed to this.”

“It’s a hell of my own creation,” you mumble.

“Should’ve read the fine print,” Kuroo teases.

You have half a mind to glare at him to keep this going, but a question pushes itself to the forefront of your mind.

“Wait, so…” You press your lips together, frowning. “You didn’t pursue professional volleyball because of people like Bokuto?”

Kuroo tilts his head to the side with a pensive expression. “Sort of,” he shrugs. “I guess I just felt like I didn’t have the same passion for the court that guys like him did.”

“Oh,” you murmur. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologise,” he chuckles, shaking his head. “I just realised my talents would be better applied elsewhere.”

“So… in marketing?”

He grins, glancing at you. “I just think that volleyball has the power to really connect people.”

You tilt your head at him.

“When I first moved to Tokyo, I wasn’t great at talking to people,” he sighs, running a hand through his hair. “But, because of volleyball, I found a way to… feel more comfortable opening up to people.”

The thought of Kuroo Tetsurou of all people being shy strikes you for a second. It’s hard to picture – but only for a moment.

“So,” he continues, “I want to make it easier for kids to get into this sort of thing. You never know who it might help.”

You smile to yourself. Once again, he’s being cute. And he doesn’t seem to have any clue.

“What about you?” Kuroo asks. “How’d you end up there?”

“Oh, it was just the first place that took me in,” you shrug.

He snorts. “Really?”

“Yeah. I just sent out my resume to a bunch of places and they got back to me first.”

“Oh, wow,” Kuroo grins.

“Sorry it’s not very romantic,” you blush, glancing at him.

“Nah.” He shakes his head. “It sounds very reasonable.”

“Thanks,” you chuckle.

In all honesty, part of you had expected this whole ‘fake dating’ thing to be a bit of a burden. The thought of pretending to like someone a lot more than you actually do sounds draining.

But it’s not hard to like Kuroo Tetsurou. In fact, you think he’s quite pleasant company. This whole charade shouldn’t be much trouble at all.

You dutifully ignore the thought that, if this were a real date, you’d absolutely ask him if he’d like to go on another.

[phoenixtakaramono]

Hi! :) I was reading your post about SQH in TUT and it got me thinking. Since this version also wrote SVSSS, when he transmigrates does he realize his "dream" was real? Also, you hinted that he recognizes SY as the same person who transmigrated into SQQ, so now I'm wondering if he tells SY that, and how SY would react to learning he's the protagonist of SVSSS in another universe. I just love thinking about how meta this could potentially get, haha.

Can't wait to find out more! Keep up the good work!

(Follow-Up Post to: Part I, Part II)

@the-legend-of-chel 👏👏👏 Luv, good to see you in my Asks! I’m glad to hear that you’re looking forward to finding out more in The Untold Tale! And thanks for your support and encouragement. 💖

(TUT ch1 - Excerpt)

You’re right. There is a lot of meta potential with older!Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky being the MXTX equivalent in this AU—or, rather, I like to imagine him growing up to be the Stephen King equivalent of modern day China with a prolific portfolio of written works (novels and short stories, and extras). In canon, he churned out a great number of words per chapter and in a speedy amount of time! Do you guys know how miraculous that is, as a writer? I envy him so much! To be able to churn out that much content in a short amount of time, and in a scheduled regimen, is amazing! That’s basically my angle having written this into the prologue of TUT. That’s partially the reason why I wrote ch1. I liked the idea of paying homage to SVSSS and saying that it’s an actual book series in TUT universe that Airplane wrote (as funny as the idea would be, I wasn’t about to let SY be the one to write it, lol, for intellectual property reasons since the PIDW characters belong to Airplane, which would necessitate SY changing names and character appearances if he published what we know as irl SVSSS, so the best I can give SY is saying he wrote his own PIDW fanfic which basically launched his novelist career because he’d realized, hey, I actually have a knack for writing and the ever so spiteful I feel like practically every writer has had this thought before: fine, if I don’t see what I want to read, then I’ll write it myself!)

(TUT ch1 - Excerpt)

We’re approaching TUT spoiler territory so skip below if you don’t wish to be spoiled.

TUT (Meta) Spoilers

I personally love meta. If I’m to be writing a lovestory to SVSSS, there will be attempts at meta thrown into TUT. And this is one of them:

Airplane did “dream” about canon SVSSS. He basically “dreamt” about his favorite black powder fan, Peerless Cucumber

changing events of Airplane’s biggest regret Proud Immortal Demon Way. (As a writer, it embarrasses me to read my old writing. So I imagine it could be the same for Airplane.) As an author, Airplane recognized what he dreamt had potential to be a commercial success as a danmei transmigration story so basically every time he woke up, he would write pieces of what he remembers in a dream journal when the memory was fresh in his brain. It also allowed Airplane the opportunity to show his readers through the perspective of SY! Shen Qingqiu what Airplane had originally wanted to write, but integrated in a way that blends seamlessly into the reading experience. He would’ve thought it was a bit weird and strange that his brain dreamt about his past critic—whom he’d considered a small celebrity in the PIDW forums back then—aka his anti-fan-turned-accomplished-novelist in the writing industry, so he felt embarrassed that his unconscious brain must have thought very highly of the man.

So Airplane omitted any mention of Peerless Cucumber from the final draft of SVSSS (if he mentioned both “Shen Yuan” and “Peerless Cucumber,” then even SY would be like, Hey, wait one moment....). This detail will be included in a later chapter, but did you know the name “Shen Yuan” has come up in other works? Let’s ignore the variations on the Chinese written characters for the name “Shen Yuan.” There was the evil older brother character Shen Yuan from The Rebirth of the Malicious Empress of Military Lineage, a side character named Shen Yuan from a C-drama (I think he was an old minister?), and there’s even an irl visual artist named Shen Yuan. Shen Yuan (Shen Garden) is also a famous romantic garden in Shaoxing, known for the love story between Lu You and Tang Wan.

(Shen Yuan Garden - Trip Advisor Review)

Basically “Shen Yuan” in itself is not a particularly uncommon name in China (imo I would not say it’s super popular either). So when SY saw his name mentioned once or twice in Airplane’s SVSSS—aka rebooted PIDW—during his read-through, he was like, Huh, what a strange coincidence. And then dismissed it as circumstantial and thought nothing of seeing his name come up in a cutsleeve novel as the new protagonist, haha. It’s like a book written by Anne Rice; one of the titles coincidentally has the same name as mine. Now, obviously the book and main character is not based or inspired by me; I just coincidentally share the same name. If I see books which have characters with my same first name, generally I like to read them and sometimes even collect them for my bookshelves. Because there’s something just so fun and interesting about seeing your own name in a fictional piece of work.

There’s also meta joke potential about Airplane dreaming of himself being transmigrated into the cannon fodder Shang Qinghua and seeing the romantic miscommunications between the younger version of himself (his self-insert essentially) and the fictional Mobei jūn character. I can certainly say seeing such dreams would make Airplane question his sexuality and awaken something dormant in him, haha. He’d realize he might not be not as straight as he thought he was, if his brain was capable of dreaming of SY!SQQ being crushed on by LBH, and SQH being crushed on by MBJ and essentially following MBJ around calling him “my king” this and “my king” that. He’ll be sweating bullets when he meets this world’s version of MBJ, because Airplane will definitely remember how the younger Self-Insert version of himself acted toward MBJ in the SVSSS world. (It’s the classic “Just because I dreamed about it happening doesn’t mean it’ll happen here, right? ...Right? Cucumber brother, you’re a fortuneteller! Please check our eight characters for me! I have to know my marriage compatibility with Mobei jūn!”)

In a later chapter, there will be the reveal where Airplane tells Shen Yuan that he “dreamt” of a universe where a younger version of Shen Yuan—having choked on mantou (馒头) (paying homage to the donghua) or just being transmigrated in general after raging at a younger ASTTS’s writing (paying homage to the books)—transmigrated into the Shen Qingqiu we know from SVSSS who married Bing mèi. Because I think it will be hilarious when TUT’s SY finds out about the true source of Airplane’s inspiration, and he’ll naturally freak out over the fact that this is the very same Bing gē from Airplane’s Bing-gē vs Bing-mèi extra and that he’s essentially somehow stumbled on the same path as the alternative younger SY!SQQ “from Airplane’s imagination.” I will leave this open to interpretation if this does show up (it’s just an idea I’m playing with) but I might hint that there might be a higher power at play which allowed Airplane a peek into another universe—which manifested as his dreams.

I very much like this dynamic (we might see this exchange, verbatim, in a future chapter in TUT):

SY/ LBH —> He gave him a disdainful gaze.

Airplane cried inwardly at the oppression and the feeling of being wronged.

Haha, none of this is really Airplane’s fault^ though. It’s a fun parallel and if I’m still motivated when we get to the wedding and consummation chapter, we might see an epilogue where SY and Bing gē from TUT meets SY!SQQ and Bing mèi maybe. Because I think it’ll be funny with the two LBHs getting into a shouting/ fighting match about who has the “superior Shen Yuan” while the two SYs just shake their heads at their silly husbands (and potentially TUT’s SY, as the older party, can impart his fortunetelling wisdom and advice to SY!SQQ).

Personally I can’t wait when we get to those chapters, because I know it’ll be entertaining to write, haha. Personally TUT is a fun project because there’s just so much meta potential that can be incorporated and I have a lot of fun imagining the scenarios.

*Note: like always, keep in mind that these are just my current thoughts. Details are subject to change; things aren’t considered official until they show up in the final draft on AO3. :)

The Novelists’ First Impressions

The first impression SY and Airplane will have of each other will be fun. Because in their perspective, written in my notes it’s essentially like:

(Airplane seeing SY):

His first reaction was shock. Shock because the mere mortal he used to be could not conceive so much charisma being emitted by this guy.

This is definitely a man who had put all of his stats into CHARISMA.

(SY seeing Airplane):

He's suspiciously good looking in ways that normal people are not.

Ah, the Cucumberplane friendship in TUT is going to be so much fun. Not only are these two older souls who transmigrated (both are mid-aged in this universe), they’re both accomplished novelists in their own right in the writing industry. Which means with these two being celestial beings, there’s so many clichés we can playfully poke fun at.

It also makes me laugh because imagine being SY, and seeing a guy (mortal!Airplane) who exudes the same energy as these two imperial princes GIFs:

[xerxia31]

the Big Bang - an Everlark ficlet

Inspired by a story I read on CNN, that I couldn’t get out of my head. A warning - there are shades of dub-con here that may be disturbing to some readers. Rated M.

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

Peeta Mellark was fit to be tied.

“I don’t know what you want me to say here, boy,” Haymitch drawled. “You knew where these characters were heading when you signed on.”

“Come on, Haymitch,” Peeta growled. He was standing in Haymitch Abernathy’s office, holding the week’s script while Haymitch, head writer and executive producer of the hit series The Arena, in which Peeta starred, stared at him from under a mop of greasy, overlong hair. Until now, Peeta had loved working on the show, loved the ensemble cast, loved the interesting storylines and well-written scripts.

But not today.

“They’ve been growing together slowly for three damned seasons and now, this week, bam!” Peeta clapped his hands for emphasis, “out of nowhere you have three fucking sex scenes in the script.” For three seasons the show had been teasing a relationship between the character Peeta played, macho FBI agent Barley St James, and his shy, brainy colleague, Allium Winterland. It was a fantastic story, well paced, the dialogue between them always fun. Nearly three years they’d been teasing the audience with it.

And now this week’s script turned everything on it’s head. “You’re just screwing with us.” There was no way the timing was coincidental. Because the actress who played Allium, the actress he’d be stripping down to his skivvies and dry-humping with on national television? She was none other than his now-ex-girlfriend.

Haymitch glanced away. Peeta thought it was in shame until Haymitch spoke.

“You might as well come in, Sweetheart,” Haymitch said, and Peeta spun to look behind him. “We were talking about you.”

Katniss Everdeen was standing just outside Haymitch’s open door. It was the first time Peeta had laid eyes on her in the flesh in two weeks. Two fucking weeks! He hadn’t seen her since the night she walked out of their house.

He knew where she’d gone though, the whole fucking world did. All of the gossip rags, and even the more reputable news sites, were reporting how her on again off again affair with one Gale Hawthorne, star of multiple movie franchises and People magazine’s sexiest man alive 2018, was definitely on again. 

“Story of my life,” Katniss muttered as she walked the rest of the way through the door, schooling her expression into a dispassionate scowl as she did. Peeta had no idea why she went into acting, he could read her every emotion through the impassive mask. He always could. Today was no exception, her mask might be in place, but her eyes were flashing with fury, and something that looked suspiciously like hurt.

She didn’t acknowledge Peeta at all, striding into the room on silent feet and stopping a solid six feet away. Her arms were crossed protectively over her chest, but her copy of the script was clenched in one fist. No doubt she’d been planning on storming in here to blast Haymitch. But Peeta beat her to it.

“Save your breath, Sweetheart,” Haymitch said. “Like I told the boy, you knew this was coming.”

“It’s fine,” she said, shooting a cool look in Peeta’s direction. “I’m a professional.” Then she turned, and strutted back out the door, back straight, long, black braid swinging. He could only watch, jaw clenched.

“Brrr,” Haymitch said. “You two have got a lot of warming up to do before showtime.” He was right, of course, and Peeta knew it. The audience would be expecting a pair of lovebirds. Not two people who could barely look each other in the eye.

“Whatever,” Peeta grunted. She wanted to play it that way? He could be cold too.

o-o-o

The table read went smooth as silk. Katniss sat on one side of the room, chatting lightly with their costar Delly Cartwright between scenes, Peeta sat on the other, joking with Cressida Faulkner, who was directing that week’s episode. Most of the cast had no clue Peeta and Katniss had broken up, because most of them never knew they’d been an item at all. Haymitch had figured it out somehow, clearly, but none of the other cast noticed anything was amiss. 

The following day’s rehearsal, not so much. Rehearsals were always in costume and filmed, so that the production team could splice in any good bits that came out of them. It wasn’t an uncommon occurrence in TV, especially in a weekly series where time was tight. Peeta was used to it.

His first few scenes were fine, his lines came easily, he hit every mark. Then came the first scene he and Katniss shared that week, the one that led up to the first of the three fucking sex scenes. 

She walked onto the set, and Peeta’s heart did a slow tumble in his chest. She was utterly beautiful, her hair loose and flowing, and wearing a dress patterned with autumn leaves. Soft orange, his favourite colour.

The colour of heartbreak.

They both stumbled through their lines, avoiding each other's eyes, interacting stiffing and unnaturally. Cressida halted the scene over and over again. It was a huge drag on the rest of the cast, slowing down everything.

Peeta’s only solace was that Katniss looked as miserable as he felt.

Peeta left as soon as rehearsal ended and headed for the gym. The call sheet had them both in an evening meeting at the studio, and he was going to need to work off some steam before he faced her again.

He should have asked, though, what the meeting was about. Because when he got back to the studio he found Katniss, dressed in leggings and a tiny little tank top, her face bare and so pretty, sitting cross-legged on a gym mat and chatting with a willowy brunette who gave off crunchy granola vibes. “Did I miss the memo about mandatory yoga?” he drawled. 

Katniss scowled, but the brunette smiled beatifically. “Hello Mr. Mellark,” she said softly, her voice like windchimes, musical and irritating. “I’m Annie Cresta, your intimacy coordinator.”

Peeta was too confused to make a joke. “My what now?”

Annie laughed. “Intimacy coordinator,” she repeated. “It’s my job to choreograph simulated sex scenes for actors.”

“I think we know how sex works,” Peeta grumbled, and Katniss flushed, obvious without the stage makeup caked on her skin, then looked down at her lap. But Annie was undeterred.

“Of course,” she said gently. “But it’s about more than just choreography. It’s about helping you both to be comfortable, about navigating respect and consent and keeping the set safe.”

Peeta had heard about this, once before maybe, in the wake of the #metoo movement. But he’d never worked with one before. Katniss must have requested it. Figured she couldn’t even trust him to be a professional on the set. “With all due respect, Ms. Cresta,” Peeta said. “I don’t think we need this. We’ve both filmed scenes like this before.” Not with each other, but that was a minor point.

Katniss, to his surprise, looked inclined to agree. Annie just smiled.

“Not negotiable, I’m afraid,” she said. “All of Panem Entertainment’s productions must have an intimacy coordinator on set.” Peeta frowned, they were in the third season of filming, he’d never seen Annie before. As if reading his mind, she nodded. “I worked with Thresh Watts and Rue Lamonte last year.” That scene had been filmed on a closed set, Peeta had seen the finished product, but not any of the lead-up, and it hadn’t occurred to him at the time to ask about it.

Peeta sighed, and resigned himself to having a stranger teach him how to have fake sex with his real ex-girlfriend.

“Have a seat,” Annie said, indicating the mat beside Katniss. Peeta gritted his teeth, but he sat, his knee brushing hers.

She didn’t react.

“Now,” Annie said. “Communication is key.” Peeta snorted, and Katniss scowled at him. Communication. With the woman who had spoken a single word to him in the past 15 days. Sure. "The most important thing is that the people involved feel safe.”

“Why would we feel unsafe?” Peeta interrupted. There was a Cubs game on TV tonight, he’d rather be watching that.

Annie was unperturbed. “You're revealing a lot in a scene, you're going to places where you're vulnerable, and that requires an awful lot of trust," she said, looking pointedly between Peeta and Katniss. He wondered with some annoyance just how much Katniss had revealed to Annie about their situation before he’d walked in. “I have the script, and an outline of how your director wants it to look. But you two will need to talk with each other and with me and say, 'What are you comfortable with? What are you not comfortable with?'”

“I don’t want kissing,” Katniss blurted, then flushed again. “I mean,” she amended, “I’m not sure I can concentrate on both that and lines and choreography.” Peeta knew that was bullshit, in three seasons he could count on one hand the number of times Katniss had forgotten a line or missed a mark. 

She just didn’t want to kiss him. And it stung. 

Annie nodded. “We can work around that,” she said. “There will need to be some close up shots of you kissing, but they can be filmed separately from the simulated sex.”

Great, Peeta thought. Their characters had kissed a lot over the past three seasons, but that had been easy. They were both professionals, and kissing Katniss for the camera had been no big deal. Fun, even, in a comfortable, familiar way. Never sexual, there was always too much lipstick and stage makeup to worry about for there ever to be more than a peck. But steady, and comforting.

He doubted it’d be like that now. Or ever again.

“Let’s start with directorial expectations,” Annie began. “I’ve been given a timeline for the scenes and an outline of the specific angles that are expected. The most challenging part, from an intimacy perspective, is likely to be the third, which will be shot side angle with you, Peeta, on top of Katniss and no sheets to shield anything. We’ll have to block arms and leg placements carefully, and it’s likely you’ll both feel very vulnerable.”

Peeta didn’t see how that would be difficult, yet when Annie positioned him kneeling between Katniss’s thighs, a ridiculous little brocade cushion between their bodies, it was incredibly awkward. Katniss couldn’t hide in this position, with their faces only inches apart, and he couldn’t ignore, looking into her silver eyes, just how much he’d lost.

Two hours of rolling around on the floor, blocking arm and hand and leg movements sucked any sexy out of the scene. It felt robotic and contrived and awkward as hell. Katniss, for her part, looked fucking miserable. “Well,” Annie said finally. “I’m sensing some discomfort, so I think we should close for the evening.”

Peeta rolled onto his back on the mat and stared at the ceiling. Why was this so fucking hard? He was an actor, for god’s sake. He’d filmed sex scenes before, and none of them felt this shitty.

“I think we could do with a couple more rehearsals,” Annie said. “I’ll ask Cressida to schedule some.” Just fucking great, Peeta thought.

Annie floated away like an ethereal being. Katniss hung back, maybe to talk with him, maybe just to avoid Annie. But he wasn’t in the mood. He’d been subjected to her stony silences for two days, his heart hurt and his pride was dented and he just needed to get out and lick his wounds.

“Peeta,” Katniss said softly. Peeta held up his hand.

“Not now,” was all he said.

She scowled. “You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

Peeta almost leapt to his feet, his exhaustion morphing into rage. “Look, you haven’t said a damned word to me in weeks, you haven’t even come home for your things, and now you want to talk?” Peeta spat, cringing internally at his use of the word home to describe the house where they’d been living together until two weeks ago.

Katniss looked puzzled, under all of that anger. “Jo said you threw everything away.” Johanna Mason was a mutual… well... not quite friend. Peeta had often accompanied her to awards shows, in the early days of her career when she was concerned that if it got out that she preferred women, it would stop her from getting leading lady roles. She didn’t need to worry about that anymore, she was a bonafide A-lister these days, and her relationship with an adorably bubbly talk show host was in every magazine. But Jo generally had her own unknowable agenda and sometimes she liked to stir up shit just for fun. 

“You think I’d do that?” he asked, voice deceptively soft. He might have thought about it, fantasized about it really, when he found out who she was staying with. But he had more dignity than that, and she damned well should know it.

In fact, everything was exactly as she’d left it when she stomped out of their home, out of his life, 15 days ago. Her toothbrush was beside the bathroom sink, her favourite sweater on her favourite chair. A shabby silver-framed picture of her parents nestled between their awards. All of the homey pieces of her life, all of her simple treasures, abandoned. 

Katniss shrugged, like she didn’t care, like his worth, his honour, the life they’d built together, was inconsequential, and it just pissed Peeta off more. He hated her ice princess routine, hated how fucking above it all she was. She’d always been good at freezing him out, at making him chase her, but no more. He didn’t have to put up with her stone cold shit.

“Get you crap or I will toss it,” he seethed, walking away. She didn’t call after him, but then she never did.

o-o-o

Haymitch dropped two of the three sex scenes from the script. Peeta should have been relieved, he was relieved. But he also felt sick about it. Like he was destroying his career.

The tension on set was obvious and palpable now, and he knew it looked like he was the cause. Katniss, always quiet, remained quiet. But Peeta couldn’t fake it, once the cameras stopped. Cold didn’t come naturally to him, and too often he veered into mean and snappish. 

He had to figure out a way to get past this, to get past his anger, his hurt, and work with Katniss again. But he had no idea how.

Peeta leaned back in his favourite club chair, in the cozy den at the back of his house, and allowed himself to relive that day, the day it had all come crashing down. Until then, he’d thought he had it all, had the world in the palm of his hand. A great job, a comfortable home and the most radiant woman in the world in his bed every night. 

Katniss Everdeen had been a child star on a hugely popular sitcom. He knew her only by name when she showed up to screen test with him. He’d been expecting a cute little moppet. Instead, she was a silver-eyed stunner. And right off the bat, he was a goner.

They clicked, in almost every way. Working together was a joy, chatting together between takes a delight. He loved her intelligence and wry sense of humour. They moved from friends to more at breakneck speed, but it never felt too fast.

She was insistent that they keep a lid on their relationship, even when they eventually moved in together. He understood it, her previous relationship, also with a costar, had been documented to death, she’d been hounded and harassed by the paparazzi constantly, even now they followed her everywhere. He didn’t love keeping them a secret, but he loved Katniss, so he acquiesced. 

And that day, the day it all fell apart? It was supposed to be a good day, a great day. The first day of their two-week mid-season filming break. They had grand plans to do nothing but each other. Peeta had run a few errands, then stopped by his agent’s office to sign a couple of endorsement contracts.

That’s when the shit started.

“I figured you’d want to hear it from me first,” Finnick Odair, the best agent in the business, said with a grimace. He handed Peeta a tablet. Loaded up was the National Enquirer, his mother’s smirking face beside a promotional shot of Peeta and Katniss, and the headline, ‘It’s Real’. His fucking mother had struck again. It wasn’t the first time she’d sold Peeta out to the tabloids.

“Shit,” Peeta murmured. Not because the headline wasn’t true, it was. But Katniss guarded her privacy with clenched fists, and for two years, they’d barely let anyone in on their secret. Finn knew, but he was very discreet and like he’d said when Peeta had first hired him, he couldn’t protect Peeta unless he knew all of his secrets.

“She’s going to be pissed, huh?” Finn said sympathetically.

He didn’t know the half of it.

Peeta was in a foul temper and all he wanted was his quiet house and a couple of fingers of scotch before he had to deal with Katniss, who was sure to be furious. But no, he wouldn’t even get that. Because Rye was standing at his front door when he arrived home. Peeta groaned, and parked in front of the house, instead of pulling into the garage, where the door he generally entered by was. They’d chosen this place because the gated community was supposed to offer them more privacy and security. He was going to have to talk with the guard at the gate again. Just because Rye looked like his brother didn’t mean Peeta wanted him here. 

“Peet,” Rye said genially as Peeta unlocked the seldom-used front door. 

“What do you want, Rye?” Peeta really had no time for his brother’s bullshit, not that day of all days, and he hadn’t bothered hiding his annoyance.

“I can’t just pop by to see my little brother?” Rye never came by unless he wanted something. Often it was money. Rye seldom worked, preferring to live off his association with Peeta There were a lot of people in LA who would wine and dine the families of celebrities, looking for an in. Rye had brought him a few abominable scripts over the years from people who’d promised him a big finders fee if he could get Peeta to sign on.

“Cut to the chase, Rye,” Peeta said impatiently. There was a small liquor cabinet in the living room closest to the front door. Not that they ever lived in this room. It was only for show, the place where outsiders were held, away from the parts of the house where they actually did their living.

“Fine,” Rye laughed. “Tell me it isn’t true, little brother,” he said. There was no point pretending Peeta didn’t know what he was talking about. Rye was a terrible gossip hound. Peeta shook his head. “Thank god,” Rye said. “You can do so much better than that. She’s not very big, and definitely not hot.” 

Peeta sighed. Rye’s taste in women only included girls who fawned all over him. Katniss would never make that list. 

“Where did Mom come up with that idea anyway?” Rye asked, eyeing the single glass Peeta poured with interest. Peeta was not going to offer him a drink. He wasn’t going to do anything that suggested Rye was welcome to stay. “It’s pretty fucking crazy, even for her.”

“I don’t know,” Peeta grumbled. He knew exactly where. She must have listened in on one of Peeta’s calls with his father. His dad was his best friend, Peeta just couldn’t keep secrets from him. But the old man wasn’t always careful when he talked to Peeta.

“Katniss Everdeen. As fucking if. You have much better taste than that,” Rye laughed. “Remember that chick you were with a couple of years ago? The one who was in Playboy?”

“Cashmere Solomon,” Peeta muttered half under his breath. He’s gone out with her twice, and she’d been a nightmare, only interested in what he could do for her celebrity.

“She was hot,” Rye nodded. “I hooked up with her, after.” That was more than Peeta needed to know.

“Look,” Peeta started, an attempt to get rid of Rye, to get back to his plans for a few quiet minutes before Katniss got home and he’d have to have another, very different conversation on this topic.

“Mom’s a mental case,” Rye interrupted. “Like you’d ever stoop low enough to fuck that Everdeen chick. Stuck up little bitch like that? You’ve got more pride.”

“Are we done?” Peeta was bone weary, and not at all in the mood to listen to one of his brother’s diatribes. “I’ve got a lot of stuff to do tonight.”

“Right, right,” Rye said. Peeta didn’t give a damn whether his brother believed him or not. He started to guide Rye back to the entryway. “I don’t know how Hawthorne puts up with her, “ Rye said. “Rumour has it she’s completely frigid.”

Peeta laughed, he couldn’t help it. Katniss was the furthest thing in the world from frigid, she was a live wire in bed, far and away the best sex of his life. And she had broken up with Gale Hawthorne some four years earlier, but the media still wrote about them as if they were just taking a break.

“Listen,” Rye said, though Peeta was already shepherding him towards the door. “I know this girl, Glimmer her name is. Tits for miles! She’s working on a pilot.” Working on a pilot was LA code for unemployed. “She’s so hot,” Rye continued, oblivious to Peeta’s irritation, “spend a little time with her, I’ll get my pap friend to follow you. That’ll make the Enquirer story go away. Kill any hint of association with that little piece of work.”

“Bye, Rye, Peeta said, pushing his brother through the door.

“Call me,” Rye said, and Peeta slammed the door in his face, flipping the bolt. Idiot. He exhaled slowly, then turned.

Katniss was standing behind him. Shit. How much of Rye’s crap had she heard?

“How could you let him talk about me that way,” she asked, her voice low and dangerous.

Peeta cringed. Evidently most of it. “What was I supposed to say? You don’t want him to know we’re together.”

“We have to be together for you to defend me?” Katniss asked, incredulous. “Women are only worth defending if you’re fucking them?”

Peeta rolled his eyes. “Don’t give me that bullshit,” he said. “You know I’m not like that.”

“Do I?” Katniss was pacing, little mincing steps that would fit on a pie plate. “Sure as hell didn’t sound like it.”

“What was I supposed to say?” Peeta was yelling. He flung his arms wide, expensive scotch sloshed over the edge of his glass, splashed his watch. Just great.

“How about ‘Katniss isn’t a stuck up little bitch’ for starters?”

“Jesus, Katniss, why do you even care? You know he’s an asshole.”

“He said awful things about me, in my own home, and you just stood there and nodded, like you agreed,” Katniss snapped. “That was a total dick move.”

“Well excuse-fucking-me,” Peeta said, “but it’s not even your house.” She lived there, but the lease was in his name. Her official address was an empty condo in Van Nuys, so that people wouldn’t figure out they were shacked up together. He hated the cloak and dagger bullshit, but she’d insisted.

Katniss froze, face twisted in disgust. “You’re right,” she said quietly. “It’s not.”

Before Peeta even had a chance to respond, the door was slamming behind her.

Peeta knew, even before she’d gotten to her car, that he was wrong. But he was angry, angry with his mother, angry with his brother, and pissed as hell that Katniss insisted on hiding, like he was some dirty secret instead of the man she’d been dating for two years.

She didn’t come home that evening. Peeta wasn’t completely surprised. It wasn’t the first time she’d frozen him out. He’d give her the night, then apologize in the morning.

But when morning came, his phone had blown up with texts. TMZ was running a spread of pictures, grainy and obviously through a long lens. Katniss, standing on a balcony, and not alone. With her was Gale-fucking-Hawthorne, her ex. She was locked in his embrace wearing only a robe, while he was in boxers. The gossip sites were having a field day, former lovers reunited.

Peeta, still in bed, dialed his phone. She answered on the second ring, voice hoarse. “Are you with Gale?” Peeta asked with no preamble.

There was the slightest of pauses. “Yes,” Katniss said.

“You couldn’t fucking wait to go rushing back to his bed?” Peeta yelled. “Or maybe you never really left?”

The line died in his hand. It was the last time they’d spoken, until now.

o-o-o

Katniss made no further attempt to talk to Peeta, outside of what they said on the soundstage. She’d doubled down on the ice princess routine, speaking to him in cold, overly formal tones when the cameras weren’t rolling.

 Working with Annie Cresta hadn’t gotten any better either, but at least they’d managed to memorise a routine—hand here, thigh there, twist this way, arch like that. Annie insisted it would look a lot more natural than it felt. Peeta wasn’t convinced, but he didn’t care. He just wanted the thing done.

The scene was set for late afternoon, after the rest of principal photography was done for the episode and the lion’s share of cast and crew had left. “Saving the best for last,” Cressida chirped, but no one really believed that.

Katniss had a rider in her contract specifying no nudity, Peeta knew that. He hadn’t bothered with one himself, he didn’t care who saw him, but Katniss had always been uncomfortable baring everything. In other scenes, the production sometimes used a body double for Katniss. But this scene, the scene, would be her and him, on a bed, doing choreographed dry humping. It had to be her, there wasn’t any other choice.

Haymitch wasn’t on set, something Peeta suspected was Katniss’s doing, but he appreciated it. The crew was at a bare minimum, to make it easier for the actors, but it was still a lot of people. Cressida was directing, busily setting up the scene. Two female grips he’d never met before were behind the stationary cameras, two of his favourite camera guys—Castor and Pollox—had the handhelds. Two more grips had the boom mics, a gaffer adjusted the lights, and a set designer, Octavia, was fussing over the bedding, rumpling it in an artistic way that Peeta knew from rehearsal would last about twelve seconds before they destroyed it. Annie, strangely, was nowhere to be seen. He’d thought that, as their intimacy coordinator, she’d be there to coach when they actually filmed. Apparently not.

“Let’s get this show on the road,” Cressida called out, affecting a carefree tone. Peeta knew it was an act, an attempt to get all of them to relax. The antagonism and animosity between the two leads wasn’t exactly a secret, not anymore, and the mood on the small soundstage was tense. No one was looking forward to this.

Katniss had seen him naked a thousand times, had touched and stroked and tasted every inch of his body. Still, it was strange, even on a closed set, to be standing in front of her wearing nothing but a sock tied to his dick. She was clutching the edges of her pink silk robe so tightly her knuckles were white, and looking everywhere but at him.

Cinna approached and helped Katniss out of her robe, careful not to disrupt the cascade of windblown curls Peeta knew had likely taken an hour and several cans of product to achieve. Katniss’s hair was naturally pin straight, yet they were always curling it in the show, and she hated it. So focussed was Peeta on her hair that he didn’t notice what she was wearing until Cinna stepped away, leaving Katniss standing beside the bed in a pair of pasties and an adhesive pad that covered her pubic hair and not much else. Peeta couldn’t help but stare. It was far less than he was expecting, Annie had told him Katniss would be wearing a pair of flesh coloured panties and a little tube top over her boobs. “The sides of her underwear showed in the test shots,” Castor muttered in his ear. “Haymitch insisted on that instead.”

For half a minute, Peeta felt really bad for Katniss, knowing her discomfort, knowing what it was costing her to stand under the lights and in front of so many people wearing little more than three bandaids. But then she sighed, and barked, “can we just get this over with?” and any sympathy Peeta felt for her evaporated like spring snow.

The scene opened with them both on the bed. They’d practiced the routine, both on floor mats and on a set bed. But in rehearsal, they’d been clothed, pillows between them to minimise contact.

No longer.

Now, they were essentially naked, skin pressed to skin, staring wide-eyed at each other. She was so soft under him, fit him so perfectly. Her breath—sharp, nervous little pants—caressed his jaw, his throat. Her hands, small but so much stronger than they looked, clutched at this back.

His dick twitched and hardened, he couldn’t fucking help it. They’d fucked a thousand times over the previous two years, he’d always been insanely attracted to her. His dick didn’t know that this time it wasn’t real. He clenched his teeth and kept going. There was no way, positioned as they were, to prevent her from feeling it. 

Katniss smirked at him, just a fleeting little hint of amusement, but coupled with his embarrassment at getting turned on when the ice fucking queen clearly felt nothing it was too much. Rage flooded his veins like venom. He sneered down at Katniss, uncaring if the handycam caught his expression. Then he deliberately rocked against her, rubbing his hard cock against her core, only a little strip of fabric and a glorified sock between them. 

Her breath caught, a choked little sound. 

“Like that, princess?” he spat, lowering his mouth to her ear. “You like knowing that you can still get me hot?”

She moaned softly. It just made him angrier. Was she acting, or actually responding? Was she thinking about Gale while he was grinding against her? Had she always been thinking about him?

The few lines he was supposed to say flew out of his head. “Does your boyfriend get you hot like this?” he groaned instead, anger and lust combining. “Do you moan for him like you did for me?” Her hands, which had been moving through the choreography much more fluidly than in rehearsal suddenly froze. “Does he fill you up as good as I did?”

“Peeta,” Katniss whispered, a hint of warning in her tone. But he was too mad. Mad and heartsick and wildly turned on, it was a potent brew. He couldn’t stop. He ground harder against her, his chest rasping against her breasts, bare but for a pair of stickers. He nipped at her earlobe with sharp teeth, and her gasp was loud over his harsh breaths.

“Do you melt for him, ice princess?” She said nothing, but he didn’t care. He angled his hips and thrust hard, the way he knew she liked. He rocked over and over again, forgetting about the others in the room, lost in Katniss, however fake it might be.

“Do you want to give them a show,” he growled against her throat. “Take off the guard? One last fuck, for old times sake?”

“Stop,” she said, so faintly it was barely a breath. “Please.” Peeta pulled back. Beneath him, Katniss’s eyes were screwed tightly shut, tears leaking from the corners. The anger rushed away, leaving him horrified and utterly ashamed. 

He rolled away and climbed off the bed. “Need a break,” he grunted. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Katniss had curled onto her side, facing away, naked and vulnerable. The need to comfort her battled with the sick feeling in his gut over how cruel he’d been. How completely unlike himself.

Cressida called out to him, but he didn’t want to hear whatever she was going to say. Couldn’t stay another minute on that set.

He pushed past Castor who was staring open-mouthed, the camera on his shoulder still blinking as it ran, and stomped to his dressing room. There, he sank into a chair, the leather sticking to his bare ass. He pulled the modesty bag off his now-deflated cock and dropped his head into his hands.

How had it gotten to this?

How had he gotten to the point where he was tormenting the woman he loved more than life with fake sex on their job site? Bullying her to tears in front of their crew. 

He was disgusted with himself. That wasn’t who he was.

He needed to go to Katniss and apologise, for more than just the scene. 

Fifteen minutes later, he’d calmed down and thrown on sweats. Katniss’s dressing room door was closed, but he knew she wasn’t in there. He walked past the small set and the little office Annie had used, but he knew she wouldn’t be there either.

Down the hall, past craft services stood the door to the electrical room. It was never locked. Peeta pushed inside. Past all of the clutter and detritus of broken light stands and boxes of cables was another door, narrow and unmarked. A steep set of metal stairs lay beyond it, and at the top a door he had to duck to walk through.

Then he was standing on the roof, a soft Burbank breeze ruffling his hair.

It wasn’t anything special, this part of the roof, gravel-topped and housing the building’s HVAC system. But it was their spot, a place no one else ever went. A place they could find some measure of solitude in the midst of a busy studio. No one ever disturbed them up here.

Katniss was sitting on the low ledge that bisected the roof, wrapped in a robe, her pink silk clad back to him. He knew she must have heard his approach, the gravel beneath him crunched with every step. But she didn’t move, didn’t react as he straddled the cement to lower himself beside her.

She didn’t turn towards him, but she didn’t need to. Her profile said everything: smudged makeup, red nose, puffy eyes. The breeze caught loose tendrils of her hair, blowing them around her face but she was still and silent save for her uneven breaths. An island in a tempest. Her eyes remained fixed on the horizon, past the endless parking lots and low studio buildings to where the sun was sinking low, bathing the sky in soft orange. Her silence wasn’t icy tonight. Pain radiated from every line, every curve.

“I’m sorry,” Peeta started. Katniss nodded, her posture otherwise unchanged. “I was a complete dick in there, and you didn’t deserve any of that. It was inexcusable.” He took a deep breath, steeling himself. “I don’t want to go on like this. Making out for the cameras, then ignoring each other when they’re off. I was hoping that if I stopped being so, you know, wounded, we could take a shot at being friends?” It would certainly make their jobs a lot easier.

“I’ve never slept with Gale,” she said softly, and Peeta startled. That wasn’t even possible. She’d run right back to him, was living with him again.

As if reading his mind, Katniss continued. “He’s been a good friend to me, a brother in some ways. But we’ve never had a physical relationship.”

“Bullshit,” Peeta sputtered, conciliatory tone gone. “You were with him for years.”

Katniss glanced at him then, a half smirk twisting her lips. “You were with Johanna for years too,” she said.

“You know that wasn’t real. And Gale isn’t gay.”

Katniss shrugged, and turned back to the horizon. 

Peeta continued to watch her. He knew all of her expressions, her every tell. She wasn’t lying.

“Why,” he started, then stopped. That wasn’t the question he really needed an answer to. “You let me think you were together.”

“Maybe I wanted to hurt you,” she whispered. “Like you hurt me.”

Mission accomplished, he thought. He’d been in fucking agony since he saw the TMZ pictures, and the ones that followed; Katniss and Gale riding in his convertible, Katniss and Gale leaving a trendy LA cafe, Katniss and Gale sipping wine on the balcony of his oceanfront estate. It had been a form of masochism, adding her name to his news alerts and reading the day's gossip about her blossoming relationship with Gale Hawthorne.

Could it really have all been fake?

Katniss and Gale had been on the same sitcom as children, had played cousins. So when, years later, they moved in together, of course everyone assumed they were together. They’d certainly never done anything to contradict it.

“You never mentioned that before,” Peeta said quietly. Not that Gale’s name had come up often in their time together, but they’d talked about past relationships, and she’d never said that Gale had been nothing more than a friend. She’d really never said anything about her years with Gale, and that had always made Peeta insecure, wondering if she’d still harboured feelings for him. If she kept their relationship a secret not from the world, but from Gale Hawthorne. Katniss shrugged.

“I didn’t think it would matter. You’re in the business, you know how often dating is just for show.”

He did. But he’d been upfront with Katniss about Jo, he’d never let her think there was anything there. That she hadn’t given him the same respect, hadn’t trusted him, was gutting.

“He kissed me, once,” Katniss said, and Peeta’s stomach clenched in inappropriate jealousy. “I was seventeen. It was the summer after we’d both finished filming Seam Street, but before he got his big break on that superhero movie. Back when we thought we might still be normal.” She was smiling sadly, lost in the moment. “We both gagged,” she continued, and Peeta’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. Katniss laughed softly, but it wasn’t at Peeta. It was at whatever she was remembering. “All of those childhood friends to lovers tropes, it definitely wasn’t like that for me and Gale. Kissing him was…” Katniss trailed off, shuddering. “I love Gale, he’s mine, I’m his. But not like that.

“But it didn’t matter. Once the media decided we were together, they invented stories. Every time we went anywhere together, they took pictures and manipulated them to fit whatever story they’d decided to write about us that week.” Katniss sighed, and rubbed her eyes. “We couldn’t have a life, outside of each other. Anytime either of us was seen with another person, the tabloids went crazy. I got my own place, tried to put some distance there. But it didn’t stop.

“And after he started dating Claudia, it all got worse,” she said. “The media, and fans who decided that he and I belonged together, they couldn’t let it go. They hounded her incessantly, called her a homewrecker and things far worse. Trolled her on social media, harassed her family, and anything either of us tried to get them to back off only made things worse. When she finally broke things off with him, he blamed me, at least a bit.” She paused, and sniffled. “It’s why we’ve barely talked over the past few years. First because it bothered Claudia, and then because Gale was so pissed off. It came close to destroying our friendship.”

Peeta sat in stunned silence as realisation washed over him. “That’s why you wanted to keep us a secret,” he said. “You were protecting me.” 

“Private,” she said. “Not secret. And that’s what you and I do, protect each other. Or did,” she added softly. 

But he hadn’t protected her. Not on the set, and not from his brother’s vitriol.

“I’m sorry,” Peeta said. “I shouldn’t have let Rye talk shit about you. And I shouldn’t have been all defensive when you rightly called me on it.”

She nodded again, but didn’t turn towards him. And he didn’t know how to bridge the gulf. He’d been wrong, on so many levels. But she hadn’t trusted him, and still didn’t. She could have eased so many of his insecurities just by being honest. But she hadn’t.

He wanted to fix things. He wanted to be with her again, this time with more openness and honesty. To build a better relationship, one they both deserved. He wasn’t sure if it was possible with so much hurt between them. But he wanted to try. He just needed to get Katniss on the same page, and he knew from experience that wasn’t likely to be easy. 

“We should go back,” Peeta said what felt like an hour later. The sun was almost gone, and though the air still held the perpetual California heat, Katniss was shivering in the breeze. “I’m done being a wounded prick, I promise.”

Katniss turned to him, finally. She still looked so sad, with her red eyes and ruined makeup. His heart clenched. “Cressida called shooting for the day,” she said. “Didn’t think either of us was in a good place to continue.” Haymitch would doubtless be pissed, any disruption in the schedule was tens of thousands of dollars wasted. Peeta sighed, but he knew it was the right call. 

“Probably for the best,” Peeta said. “We’re a mess.”

Katniss laughed, just slightly, and Peeta grinned at her. When he extended his hand to help her up, she took it, and it felt so good to feel her fingers entwined with his again, not for show but in actual friendship.

They walked back to the dressing rooms together. “Do you maybe want to get dinner together?” Peeta asked, and he knew he sounded small and uncertain. But to his surprise, Katniss nodded.

“I’d like that,” she said.

They walked out to the lot thirty minutes later, and Peeta led her to his car. She was wearing jeans and a little tank top, her hair pulled back in a no-fuss braid and a pair of sunglasses shielding eyes that still bore traces of the evening’s emotions. She was in every way Katniss, the woman he loved. But he could feel her holding back, feel the stiffness and uncertainty in the way she looked at him, spoke to him. Not intentional, simply reflexive, like she was trying to keep her heart safe. From him. The wall between them loomed large. It was going to take a Herculean effort to break it down.

There was a restaurant, Sae’s, not too far from the house they’d shared. It catered to people like them. The front was nothing so much as a shabby little diner, but in the back were private, windowless rooms where they could have a meal without prying eyes.

Peeta ordered pasta and Katniss got her favourite goat cheese and apple panini. But the way she pushed the food around on her plate spoke to how distressed she still was. Katniss typically ate with gusto, like she was afraid she’d never see food again. 

He left her be, keeping conversation light, trying to ease her back into being comfortable with him. Joking with her, the way he always had. She smiled, but it felt hollow. If anything, she seemed to get more sad as the meal wore on. Peeta’s spirits flagged.

He paid the bill, and they headed out the back door. There, he stopped, and pulled Katniss to stand in front of him. 

“Talk to me,” Peeta said, voice gruff with guilt.

“About what?” She wasn’t being flippant, if anything, she sounded defeated.

“Katniss,” he sighed. She looked up at him, eyes unfathomable, dark pools in the lamplight. He could tell she was trying to psych herself up to talk. So he leaned against the restaurant wall and waited.

“I’m sorry, okay,” she said finally, and it wasn’t what he was expecting. “I’m sorry that keeping us a secret hurt you. It was never my intention to hurt you.”

Peeta opened his mouth, to say he understood better now, but she pushed on.

“And it didn’t mean I loved you any less.”

“Loved?” Her use of past tense gutted him. “Not anymore?”

In the deep shadows of the single street light, he could see her face crumple. She wrapped her arms around her body, as if shielding herself from another blow. “Does it matter?” Her words were choked, he could hear she was fighting tears again. “I know what you think of me.”

“Katniss,” he said, the word regret-soaked. 

“Frigid little ice princess,” she parroted, but there was no anger. Only pain. 

“I didn’t mean it,” Peeta said. “I know that’s not you.” She played at being cold sometimes. But underneath, she was a flame, burning bright.

“Everyone thinks that about me. They always have.”

“I don’t,” Peeta said, and he let the pleading come through in his voice, let her hear his own pain. “I know you’re not cold. You’re the girl on fire.” Katniss’s lips twitched at the old nickname, one she’d gotten as a teenager in an action movie. But her heartbroken expression didn’t change. “I was angry, and wounded, and I lashed out. I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry too,” she said, then she was wrapping her arms tightly around his neck. Peeta pulled her in close and buried his face in her hair. It was the first time he’d felt whole in more than two weeks, like the broken piece of his soul had returned. 

Her little body shook against him, he knew she was crying. “Shhh,” he said, stroking her back. “Shhh. It’s going to be okay.” It was. He’d make sure of it.

“Just missed you so much,” she muttered. His heart soared.

“I love you,” he whispered. “Please come home.” 

She didn’t say anything. But he felt her nod against his chest. And it was enough.

He took her back to his place, to their place. They were both exhausted, emotions raw, and had an early morning call, to redo the evening’s ruined scene. But she climbed into bed beside him, and he held her all night.

They were quiet the next morning, tentative and uncertain around each other, but they were together, and Peeta was committed to making things better, for both of them. He’d be patient. He’d communicate better. He’d lost the love of his life once, he wouldn’t let it happen again. 

They climbed back into his car, since hers was at the studio, but as soon as the garage door opened Peeta saw Rye there, waving his phone. Beside him, Katniss tensed, and shrank down into her seat. He could almost smell her pain. Just fucking great. The moron had to show up now, when they had barely started patching things together. 

“I’ve been calling you all morning,” Rye said as soon as Peeta stepped out of the car. It was just past eight, Rye didn’t typically get up before noon. Peeta suspected he hadn’t yet been to bed.

“Go home, Rye,” Peeta said. “This isn’t the time.”

“They’re saying this is you and that Everdeen chick,” Rye insisted, shaking his phone in Peeta’s face. Sure enough, on the screen was a dark and blurry shot of him, holding Katniss in his arms. Her face wasn’t visible, but her long black braid and sweet little ass were perfectly recognisable. Fuck. He thought they’d be safe at Sae’s. But he’d been wrong. Again. “I already told the Hollywood Reporter it was fake, that you wouldn’t slum with the likes of that—”

“Shut up!” Peeta roared, and for once, Rye stopped talking. “Katniss is the woman I love, and I won’t listen to you disparage her anymore,” Peeta said. “Now get the fuck out of here and stop fucking talking to the media about me.” Peeta was seething. He was going to make sure that security guard was fired. Maybe his boss too. And his boss’s boss.

Rye backed away, hands held up in supplication. “Sure, yeah,” he said quickly. “I’ll just get out of your hair. We’ll talk more later, yeah?”

Peeta didn’t dignify that with an answer. He spun on his heel, to head back to the car. But Katniss was there already, standing just behind him. She must have heard everything they’d said, and worse, Rye would have seen her there. He flinched, but she just smiled at him, then walked straight into his arms.

“Thank you,” she said. 

Fuck. She didn’t need to thank him for defending her, it’s what any decent person would do. “I should have said that last time,” he admitted, tightening his hold on her.

“You said it this time,” she said. Then she stretched up onto her toes, and kissed him.

Relief and disbelief and so much love flooded Peeta. He cupped her ass in his hands and hoisted her into his arms, his lips never leaving hers.

He knew Rye was watching. Knew that some of their neighbours could see them too. “We should go back to the garage,” he whispered between kisses that were growing too hot for the street. “People are watching.”

“Let them,” she gasped. “I don't want to hide how I feel about you. Not anymore.”

He laughed against her lips, and kissed her more.

o-o-o

She was sitting in her favourite chair, a mug of camomile tea forgotten beside her, when Peeta got home. He glanced at the television glowing on the wall and groaned. “Access Hollywood? Really?” Katniss, his Katniss, was watching the creme de la creme of shitty tabloid TV. 

Their relationship had been dissected endlessly by the gossip shows in the four months since they’d been outed, first by his attention-seeking mother, then by a slightly risqué public display of affection in front of their house that had been captured on cellphone video by multiple sources. Peeta understood so much better now why Katniss had tried so hard to avoid unwanted exposure. He was sick to death of the coverage.

But they were handling it together. 

“Shhh,” she said, grinning. “They’re discussing whether we really did the deed while shooting Allium and Barley’s big scene.” Peeta glanced back at the television. The banner read 15 Times 'Love' Scenes On Screen Were Real.

“Oh my god,” Peeta groaned, and sank into the chair beside Katniss’s, covering his face with his hands.

The day after their disastrous first attempt at filming, they’d gone back to the set and found Haymitch waiting for them. The crusty old bastard had actually apologised for putting them in such a shitty position, and told them he’d take the scene out, make it a fade to black.

“No,” Katniss had said, silver eyes brighter than they’d been all week. “The script needs the scene. Our fans need it. And we’re ready this time.”

The second attempt had been so much better. It was still awkward, the choreography still felt strange. One of her pasties came unstuck and ended up caught in his chest hair. Twice they had to cut filming when Katniss started giggling. 

Peeta had been loath to watch it, once it’d been edited. Afraid to reopen the barely healing wounds. But the end result, just as Annie promised, looked real. The cameras caught their very real joy at being reunited, their very real love for one another. And those things made the very fake sex look like something more.

They’d filmed several more sex scenes over the course of finishing the season, each easier than the last. Communication, it turned out, did make the scenes less awkward. And it helped with their real relationship too.

But the first scene, the one that Peeta still cringed thinking about, that episode had aired just days ago.

The television sound cut off abruptly and Katniss burst into laughter. Peeta peeked out from between his fingers. Frozen on the big screen was a shot of Peeta’s ass in all of its hi-def glory, and Mario Lopez was pointing to a spot just between his thighs where apparently a hint of nutsack had been caught by the camera. 

Well that brought unwanted exposure to a whole new level. 

Peeta groaned. “I’m putting a nudity rider in my next contract,” he mumbled.

[twelvemonkeyswere]

very intrigued by hermione/jaime crack 😳😳

thank you both @halfagod​ and @forbiddenfantasies1​ for asking about this! and sorry it's so long okay so - right off the bat, this isn’t anything romantic or anything, but it is crack.

you’ll likely remember there was some fanfic grrm was writing about his own characters fighting other characters. one of the first ones was Jaime Lannister vs Hermione Granger, and since he hates JK Rownling his descriptions of what a showdown between them would be were very uncharitable to the characters to say the fucking least, especially Hermione.

the whole thing is quite a bad read and it sent me thinking that there were a LOT of variables that would play into it if taken seriously, starting with their personalities, ages at the time of the match, reason why they’re fighting in the first place, etc.

and since I like world building and whatnot, I began thinking how to make their showdown realistic and feasable obeying the laws of their respective narratives, and then I decided it would be even more fun (hah) to make as many scenarios with those variables as possible, because that’s the sort of person i am. and then I realized... well. asoiaf began to be published in the 90s.... 1996, to be precise, when hermione was 17, and facing a war against a madman. and the parallels were right there, and thus I made a timeline to see how things would fit, and then some other ideas sprang up from that.

so now the main idea is that it all starts the year after the war, when Hermione comes back to Hogwarts to finish her studies while everyone else goes on with their lives. she’s alone, she has to deal with everything she saw and everything she had to do, and with everyone else in Hogwarts being traumatized too... so she’s depressed, and trying to get better. and in my idea, one of the things she tries is to get back to the things that made her happy before it all went wrong, reading among them.

particularly, reading muggle books. because since she knows real magic now, well, regular fantasy books must lose some of their charm, right? but what if that was what she loved as a kid, and she’s desperate enough to get away from what reality is now, in real-magic world? so maybe she tries new stories, see what she’s missed in the last couple of years.

and maybe she is afraid of being judged for having some of those books or she just wants some peace and quiet, so she sneaks into the room of requirements and foolishly and naively asks for a room where she can “immerse” herself in the book she’s trying to read that night.

and that’s how she meets Jaime, by going into the world of the book. and the idea was then that she would periodically travel into the books and see Jaime at different ages, and as she gets older and processes what happened during the war, her perspective of the events and her life shifts and changes, not unlike Jaime’s story changes through the books.

anyways i wrote some 2k words about grief and healing and it’s been sitting there, looking at me and threatening to become too long.

here’s the bit where she first meets Jaime in case you’re interested

(be warned, I never read HP in English and I haven’t consumed any media about it in YEARS. also i suck at actions scenes)

come ask stuff about my WIPs if you want!

“Who are you?” The white knight demanded.

Hermione frowned and ignored the question, inspecting the trees behind the man, the grass of the meadow under her feet. She had clearly been portkeyed somewhere, where was the artifact? 

“Answer me!” the man demanded. He shifted on his feet, his armor creaking and clinking. “Who sent you?” 

“He said,” a second voice drawled behind her. “Where did you come from?” 

Jumping to one side, Hermione noticed another knight, much closer to her, but also much younger. He was tall, but had a leaner frame even with the white armor, same as his companion. He didn’t have his helm on either, and she spotted it on the ground, likely dropped so the boy could hold his sword with both hands, the point of which was angled at her throat, even at a distance. His curly hair, golden and sticky with sweat, enveloped two emerald green eyes that moved with the murderous intent of a cat. 

Hermione swallowed.

If velas were male, she blinked in confusion, this is what they would look like.

It was stupid to realize that at a moment like this, given the fact her life was being threatened, but no human being was ever that beautiful. It had to be magic. 

She looked around, trying to remember what had been next to her in the Room of Requirements. Where’s the bloody thing?

“Accio portkey,” she swished her wand in a circle above her head, but nothing happened.

“Get her!” the man ordered the boy, and both stepped forward, closing in. Their swords drew up, the man holding it above his head, the boy raising the pommel to his cheek.

“Whoa!” Hermione reached instinctively into her robes and got her wand out. Her mind raced, trying to recall everything she knew about metal charming, but when the knights were upon her, she disapparated with a faint pop. 

She apparated a couple of meters away, shaking her head off the unpleasant feeling of being vaccumed through space. As she opened her eyes, there was a loud clank from the swords that met where she should have been. The boy trembled below the man’s strength, holding his ground with some difficulty.

“Oi, please!” she called to them, holding a hand out in a placating gesture. “Where am I? Who are you?”

As one, the man turned with fury towards her, and the boy frowned in angry confusion. She had a second to recall Professor Gilderoy Lockhart, and, not without failing to see the irony, felt grateful she had learned forgetfulness spells from the best.

“Witchcraft,” the older knight muttered, and the boy only glanced at him for a moment, returning his eyes to her. “Cut her throat!” 

The boy hesitated a second, but when the older man charged towards her, so did he. 

“Wingardium leviosa!” she yelled at the armors, to no effect. “Shit.” She disapparated again, just before they reached her. She apparated by a tree this time, to their right. She aimed at the clothes they hopefully had below their armors and forced herself to speak through the haze. “Wingardium leviosa!” 

Both knights lifted into the air like they weighed less than feathers. 

“Seven hells!” the older knight screamed, anger and fear mixing as he balanced unceremoniously on his spot. 

Iron, Hermione breathed with relief to herself. It was the iron.

She didn’t know what to expect, she had never tried to charm uncharmed metalwork before. Unless you counted locks. Then again maybe that charmed the air around the metal, or maybe there was more magic in this particular iron, she didn’t have the time to--

“What is this?” the young man demanded, as he waved his sword around, testing if he was being held on the spot like a puppet.

Hermione walked towards them with caution. 

“Gentlemen, please!” she called to them through their grunts and curses. “Where am I? Who are you?” 

“Silence, witch!” the older man ordered, trying to stick his sword to the ground in an attempt to descend.

“I’ll let you down as soon as you answer my questions,” she swallowed, reminding herself of the many times she had fought against enemies bigger than her. “I just want to get home.” 

The boy bore his eyes into hers. “Where is that?” 

“None of your bloody business,” she replied instinctively. 

“She’s not from here, ser,” the boy said to the older knight. “She wears odd clothes, speaks strange words.” 

“Shut up, Ser Jaime, get to--”

But Hermione didn’t get to hear what the man wanted the boy to do.

“Ser Jaime?” the name was out of her mouth before she knew it. She squinted at the boy’s armor, saw the seven swords engraved on the plate, and realization hit her. She looked at the boy, then at the man. I’ll be fucking damned. 

“Jaime.” she repeated, bringing the boy’s attention back to her. “Jaime… Lannister?”