#he takes the stress out of model drawing so that we can focus on actually improving instead of just fighting for our grades

[dawnthefluffyduck]

Free time has (sort of) arrived

(cat is katsrkole on instagram)

[darkcircles4lyfe]

retrospective & predictions

Since we're on a hiatus week (between 320 and 321) I feel like waxing poetic about the depth and growth of bkdk for a bit. Especially because it seems like we’re right on the edge of their biggest development yet, I’m getting the urge to lay all my perspectives and insights I’ve picked up from others out on the table. This is ultimately only my subjective interpretation of subtextual material in canon, though. If you’ve never quite understood what people see in their dynamic and you’re actually open to hearing me out, maybe from this you can at least see where we’re coming from. And if you don’t like my takes after all, well, we’ll see who’s right in the coming chapters, won’t we? What I have to say can be taken platonically or romantically; I appreciate both. 

putting it under the cut, since it’ll be long:

At the risk of projecting, I want to start by examining a couple things based partly on personal experience.

From many different directions, I often hear people expressing that Deku’s persistent attachment and admiration for Bakugou is baffling at best. Despite the bullying, despite Bakugou’s loud, rude, and uncompromising personality, he still puts effort into their relationship and frequently describes him as amazing. It seems like Deku himself is aware of this as he’s said things along the lines of how he’s difficult, BUT... etc. Although I don’t think it’s exactly that Deku finds Bakugou’s personality hard to be around, but that he’s deliberately expressing patience for Bakugou’s emotional turmoil. 

I have to say I know what this sort of patience is like, as I went through it with someone I love. I only chose to put up with their behavior because I decided the possibility of what our relationship could be was worth it. I wasn’t blind or submissive to how they treated me, and I wasn’t coerced. I simply expressed myself and established my boundaries while still allowing them the opportunity to join me in my world once they got over their own hangups. And guess what? It worked out in the end. That doesn’t mean there aren’t circumstances where it’s better to cut ties, but I want to stress that true reconciliation is possible sometimes. I used to worry that other people around me thought I was delusional for seeking it, but what really helped was my therapist reminding me that I’m smart and strong. So I think Deku deserves to feel the same. In a way this is his whole mission in life, his approach to being a hero as well as his personal relationships.

Let me also be clear though that I don’t mean Deku is only tolerating Bakugou’s personality, his mannerisms, the parts of him that will likely never change. I’m drawing a line between those things and his emotional state (they so rarely align anyway, but I’ll get to that later). In fact, I think Bakugou’s general attitude is part of what Deku admires. This is gonna be hard to explain without inserting personal experience too, sorry. As a writer myself I’ve noticed I’m drawn to writing characters that are brazen and bold and don't mind telling people off. Really it’s because I operate in the world in the polar opposite way. I try not to draw attention to myself, I’m quiet, and I’m a people-pleaser. People who project confidence, especially in an impolite sort of way, fascinate me. It’s good to take cultural context into account, too: I've heard people who’d know better than me that part of the reason Bakugou is the most popular character in the Japanese fandom is likely because he contradicts a lot of their social norms. His disregard is refreshing and cathartic. I can speculate that Deku has a similar point of view based on what he thinks but does not admit about Bakugou being his image of victory and how this sometimes makes him mimic Bakugou’s speech and mannerisms: 

There’s also the bit in this fight where Deku realizes he's the only one able to receive Bakugou’s emotions. This is because he’s the most intimately familiar with him and his situation, but I think there’s another layer. Deku, as we know, has a self-sacrificing tendency, and in the current chapters we’re seeing the worst side of that. But let’s also not forget that to an extent, it can be a positive trait: resilience. When it comes to Bakugou, he has an almost comical ability to dodge the potential fallout of his outbursts. The example we all jump to (and fight about..) is how in ch1, apart from the initial shock of Bakugou suggesting he jump off the roof, the most he reacts is to criticize him for saying such a ridiculous thing. However, I think their interaction post- sludge villain is a lot more interesting:

Note two things: 1, in his head, Deku is practically making fun of how Bakugou’s acting as he stomps away without waiting for a reply. It doesn’t faze him. 2, Deku thinks, optimistically, that he can now focus on a different career choice. This is astonishing really. Up to this point, none of Bakugou’s attempts to put him down have worked; he just kept pursuing his dream. The only reason Deku concedes in this moment it because for the first time, he has been shown that he really couldn't do anything in a fight against a villain. All Might told him he couldn't be a hero (although he’s literally about to take that back in the next few pages lol) and the other heroes at the scene gave him a lecture about it too. It was those experiences, and not Bakugou’s words, that truly affected him. And when All Might tells Deku he can be a hero after all, it’s not thinking of Bakugou’s bullying that makes him sob and fall to his knees, it’s the memory of his own mom never telling him those words he so desperately needed to hear. Having spent most of their lives together, Deku must have been aware all this time that Baukgou was influenced by larger societal forces rather than a core judgement, so he didn’t take it personally. He separated the person from the action, and because he’s resilient and patient, he is thus equipped to handle Bakugou’s emotions. It’s a testament to his maturity and emotional intelligence, really. 

But I can almost hear some of you saying, “that doesn’t mean Deku should have to be the bigger person here!” Correct! Just because Deku is perfectly alright bearing all of that, doesn’t mean atonement-era Bakugou sees it this way. We can track his awareness of Deku’s care and selflessness as follows-

The bridge scene, when they’re little kids: Bakugou conflates Deku’s heroism with pity, and subsequently thinks Deku is looking down on him because Bakugou’s own insecurity makes him defensive.

The Sludge Villain, and also Deku vs. Kacchan Part 1: Bakugou witnesses first-hand how easily Deku jumps to risk his own life, but still thinks he’s being looked down on. 

The Sports Festival: Bakugou fights Uraraka and recognizes her endurance strategy and refusal to give up as very Deku-like. He’s half right. He thinks Deku advised her in the fight, when in reality she just mimicked Deku because she admired him. I want to draw attention to his very sober comment about her not being frail. It’s a great endearment of Uraraka’s character and Bakugou’s respect for her when others didn’t take “fighting a girl” seriously, but it also reflects on his opinion of Deku. Deku isn’t weak either. He never was.

Deku vs. Kacchan Part 2: Deku finally corrects him about the whole looking-down-on-him thing, and Bakugou is informed that Deku’s selflessness is in fact the reason All Might chose him. Since Bakugou had been in search of what he himself was “doing wrong” for All Might to favor Deku over him, he now has to reconcile the fact that selflessness is a heroic trait, and moreover something he lacks. This is also possibly the first time Bakugou is able to see his past actions toward Deku as bullying since he previously thought it was more mutual. Additionally, Bakugou can now link Deku’s selfless behavior to what he perceived as pity/contempt, and realize that Deku has been giving him A LOT of grace. Maybe too much. Maybe more than Bakugou deserves, and definitely more than Deku should have to. Holy heck- now Bakugou has to figure out how to live up to all the faith that’s been placed in him. 

Subtextually, we can see Bakugou’s feelings about atonement reflected in the Todoroki family:

1, Shouto is another example of Deku growing a friendship using his selflessness (since their fight in the sports festival) and their relationship is being acknowledged here where it hasn’t been in Bakugou’s situation. Perhaps Bakugou is wishing it could be so simple for him, to be able to thank him for being his friend like that. Deku saying the pleasure is all his also probably calls to mind how a mere apology from Bakugou would probably be dismissed because that’s just the kind of accommodating person Deku is. Bakugou has to operate more quietly in order to actually make up for their past. I personally don’t interpret this scene as Bakugou being jealous of Deku and Shouto’s friendship, exactly, just the lack of emotional baggage. Side note, Deku and Fuyumi are kinda similar in their desire to repair relationships. I like that she’s the one to give him some credit. 

2, With the common terminology, this can be interpreted as Bakugou receiving a model for atonement, one that is about action, and nothing to do with receiving favor or forgiveness. It’s a sense of duty. 

Many of the above sentiments are repeated in the flashback conversation between All Might and Bakugou right before Bakugou’s sacrifice. 

Bakugou acknowledges his bullying and that it happened because of his own insecurities, but aside from that, it’s interesting he neither confirms nor denies All Might’s suggestion that he’s trying to atone, or that Deku doesn’t see it that way. All Might is a bit of an unreliable mentor sometimes, but I don’t think he’s misreading here. Rather, Bakugou is displaying his tendency to hold back when talking about things that would make him really emotional. Besides, admitting to what he’s doing kind of defeats the purpose. He isn’t seeking acknowledgement. All Might has gotten to the crux of the issue here when pointing out that Deku doesn’t recognize the atonement, likely because Deku doesn't think Bakugou even needs to atone. Am I reading into it too much to say Bakugou looks wistful at this? It’s kinda frustrating sometimes trying to interpret Bakugou’s actions because he’s so paradoxical. Loud and in your face, but also extremely reserved. Sometimes I feel like I’m grasping at thin air, but hey, being hard to figure out is part of his intrigue as a character. The simplest way to look at him is to assume that unless he’s really showing vulnerability, he’s probably deflecting and hiding something.

Speaking of Bakugou’s tendency to to hold back emotional stuff, there’s his apparent lack of issue with Deku calling him Kacchan. Maybe to begin with, in his warped perception of things where he thought they hated each other, Bakugou saw it as Deku’s way of getting back at him for calling him “useless,” and didn't dare give any indication that it actually bothered him. However... consider how betrayed Bakugou has appeared when he was noticeably thinking Deku was looking down on him- the bridge scene, and the beginning of their first year at UA when he thought Deku was hiding a quirk all along. He looks shocked and hurt. That kind of emotion couldn’t be invoked by someone Bakugou didn’t actually care about his relationship with. “Kacchan” comes from a long time ago, before their relationship was strained, so it’s connotations are pure. Maybe somewhere deep down, Bakugou has always been hoping that Deku’s continued use of the nickname was not simply a matter of habit or teasing, but a vestige of friendship they’re both clinging to, and Bakugou himself was too afraid to admit to himself that he felt this way about it, so he mostly ignored it. (These are not original thoughts I am having here lol, this is a common interpretation. I’m just laying everything out like I said.) 

And now we turn to the current situation. Personally, I’ve been looking frantically back and forth between them wondering who’s going to break down first (Deku vs. Kacchan Part 3, this time it’s just a fight to get the other person to cry? ha.) Both have looked like they’re approaching a breaking point for some time. Also, I’ve addressed this before, but I think it’s significant that Bakugou is no longer wearing his mask with his hero costume, in contrast to Deku recently donning his own. It feels symbolic of Bakugou about to be upfront about how he feels.

The question is, what is it going to take to get Deku to accept help? If you ask me, Deku has dug himself so deeply into the I’m-doing-this-for-everyone-else’s-safety-and-smiles hole, no common sense argument can possibly reach him. By the end of 320, Deku’s mask is off, and we can see how desperate he truly is. But he has not cried, yet. I predict we’re going to see a bit more of his defiance, this time on full display on his face as the remaining class members and his other friends take their turns. But then I think Bakugou has to be the one to break down so Deku can witness his actions having the opposite effect he intended. People have been pointing out that Deku is currently ignoring Bakugou, and oof, that’s gotta be intentional. Regardless of what Bakugou says, it’s going to be wrapped up not only in his understanding of Deku’s self-sacrifice, but also the betrayal Bakugou feels at being ignored/left behind that ironically echoes his previous perception of being looked down on, as well as a need to express how much he cares about Deku before it’s too late. He must show that the two of them are inseparable because they both act to save each other without thinking, and both feel like losing the other would be like dying themselves. All Might may have been right when he told them they could learn from each other after Deku vs. Kacchan Part 2, but he didn’t fully realize that idea by making sure they stuck by each other for support and balance. 

I can’t wait to see what it’ll be like when they do finally get to that point, totally in synch and in tune with each other. They’ll be a powerful force no one is quite prepared for. Who knows when that will be, or even which chapter will be their big showdown, but I know the day is coming.

To speculate even further, I think the 2nd user is going to be really important really soon. And no I don’t mean to suggest that the 2nd user is Bakugou. But I do think their resemblance is key. Okay this is gonna be convoluted...

See how 2nd is the only one still standing? I think that’s symbolic of him withholding his quirk. Deku may not even know what it is at this point, let alone have unlocked it. Given that 2nd approves of Deku’s strategy at this point, it seems odd for him to withhold his quirk based on lack of faith. I think if his quirk was something that would help Deku in combat, he would have shown it to him already like the others did. So what if those gauntlets of his are support items that are meant to make up for his lack of a combat-oriented quirk, rather than to augment it? Mind you, I still have no idea what his mysterious power might be, but I’m dead set on it not being explosion-y. Regardless, I think 2nd looking like Bakugou is more about aiding some grand visual parallel, so! You know how 2nd and 3rd were probably intending to do away with Yoichi but 2nd changed his mind as soon as they made eye contact? This is really a long shot, but I wonder if 2nd’s quirk has something to do with that exchange. Maybe it’s something psychological, or some 6th sense about people he meets. So... in that way 2nd’s quirk could play a role in bkdk reaching a deeper understanding? Idk! But it could be significant at least that 2nd left Yoichi’s question about why he reached out to him unanswered. 

One more thing- while I was gathering screenshots I found this. I think “you’re the last one I’m telling” might be foreshadowing for Bakugou revealing his hero name to Deku and it being a Big Deal:

As for other lingering threads in the overall plot right now, such as the UA traitor, Stain, whatever Tsuyu is apparently about to do, All Might’s car maybe in the background of the last page of 320... man I have no idea. All I know is there’s literally 320 chapters’ worth of build-up to this confrontation that can’t be interrupted. 

See you next week <3

[angstsfordays]

Beautiful Pain (2)

Chapter Two- Here I Am

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Enhanced! Reader

Summary: Post-Blip, you started to feel lost when most of the Avengers team are gone. Coping with your loss, you still find hope in the connection with your remaining friends. However, it is not easy as everyone is trying to figure their lives after the Blip.

Having a long history with Bucky ever since you both saved each other from Hydra, you were still glad you had Bucky after all this time. However, as you try to give Bucky space to find himself after being pardoned for his past, you start to wonder if you should ever cross the line of friendship before it’s too late.

That thought might have to be put on hold though, when you, Sam and Bucky find yourselves having to deal with threats that continue to rise in a post-Blip world.

Chapter synopsis: Shocking news brought you and Bucky back together with Sam. You three find out that a new threat arises in a post-Blip world.

Warnings: A bad word or two or three because come on, John Walker is in this chapter.

Word count: 4.5k

Notes: This chapter is nothing too crazy but warming up as it delves into the tv series' storyline. Here you can see how the reader's character plays out in the storyline.

I started a tag list for this series! Let me know if you want to join in with a message or comment in the chapters!

Leave a like, reblog or comment to let me know what you think! 🥰

Previous: Prologue | Chapter One |

Next: Chapter Three

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Bucky promised to make your coffee while you went to take a shower after you came back. Switching off the hairdryer, you placed it back in its place before stepping out of the bathroom.

Perking up at the sound of the television, you made your way to find Bucky sitting on the floor. Seeing he made no sign of acknowledgement at your presence, you looked up to see what he was so entranced at.

Eyes averting to the screen, you saw a man being interviewed at what seemed like a stadium in the background. Scanning over his features, you quickly noticed the familiarity in his suit and how he was supposed to remind you of someone you held dear in your heart.

The caption that appeared on the bottom of the screen only added on to confirm your suspicions. A sudden rush of emotions started to wash over you like a huge tide.

Disbelief. Outrage. The nerve.

You glanced over to Bucky who was sitting still with a disbelieving look when the announcer asked her next question.

“Did you know Steve Rogers?” Before you knew it, you already started to shake your head in disapproval as the man, John Walker started to respond to the question.

He spoke of how he closely followed Steve’s career as an Avenger and drew inspiration in his work from Steve, citing him as a role model. Nodding in satisfaction at John’s answer, the announcer continued. “You’ve always wanted to be a hero?”

John Walker answered that he liked that his job would help to make people feel safe. He added how Steve was someone who was able to accomplish that and gave him hope.

While his answers sounded pleasant enough, you couldn’t help but feel displeased with it. His next sentence only served to make you feel worse.

“Even though I never met him, he feels like a brother.” John Walker could have chosen any other words. Mentor. Role model. The fact that he said brother like as if he wanted to draw some sort of association to Steve felt wrong.

You immediately kneeled down to Bucky’s level and waited for him to look back at you. Bucky shook his head while clenching his jaw tight.

“Buck….” Whispering his name gently, you hoped to get him to open up on what he was feeling.

“This is just wrong. I can’t believe….how could Sam even-” Struggling to put together his emotions properly, you gave him a soothing rub on his shoulders to ease his flustered state.

“I know, I understand.” You went ahead to embrace him in a side hug. Bucky leaned in and rested his head in the crook of your neck, relishing in the comfort you were giving to him.

“We need to talk to Sam.” He gave you an affirmative stare before you nodded in agreement.

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Waiting around absent-mindedly at the hangar, you were brought back to focus when you heard Bucky speak up and already walking towards Sam.

“Shouldn’t have given up the shield.” You could hear how Bucky was trying to hold in his distaste and quickly followed behind him.

“Good to see you, Buck.” Sam acknowledged him in response. You could tell that Sam was trying to avoid the topic of conversation as he continued in his tracks only to stop when his eyes met yours.

“How’ve you been doing?” Sam took a step forward to give you a quick hug and you grinned at the sight of your friend.

“I’ve been good, Sam. How about you?” You asked to which he said he was doing alright.

“You still not tired of him?” Sam made a quip and you bit your lips to prevent a burst of laughter from coming out. You nervously glanced to see Bucky not looking one bit amused by the exchange and averted your eyes away.

“This is wrong.” Bucky tried to bring up the topic again to which Sam tried to put down. He remarked that he was now working and whatever outrage Bucky was having had to wait.

They continued their argument as they bickered back and forth about their views on John Walker becoming the new Captain America. Even saying that in your head left a sour taste.

Sam tried telling Bucky that there was nothing he could do to rectify the situation. He gave the shield away to the government and it was no longer in his hands. Retracting the decision simply cannot be done.

You understood both of their perspectives and you couldn’t take a side entirely. Yes, you all felt the heavy emotions about having Steve’s legacy just handed over to someone who you weren’t even sure was deserving of it. John Walker might be an exemplary soldier but he wasn’t the one that Steve chose to take over him.

Then again, you recalled how Sam was still unsure if he could leave up to Steve’s legacy and even remarked that the shield didn’t feel like it wasn’t his own, but someone else’s. You were sure that it was definitely not an easy decision for Sam to make and he wouldn’t have made it if he knew what the government had decided to do with the shield once they had their hands on it.

You winced at the heated exchange as your friends continued to assert their points. Sam had enough of the conversation and stressed that he now has work that he needed to attend to. Bucky scoffed at how Sam could even disregard the matter but Sam went on to tell you two about an online group called the Flag Smashers that seemed to have connections with rebel organisations across Europe.

He had intel from Redwing about their last known location and that was where he was heading to. Bucky gave a disapproving look and talked about his mistrust of the tech.

Even though Bucky was dear to you, you couldn’t help to sigh at how stubborn he is.

Sam went on to say that he wants to check if this group could be part of the Big Three. Bucky gave a confused look before asking what’s that. Sam looked like he couldn’t believe what Bucky had just said.

The two continued to have another exchange, but one that you now observed to be light-hearted and displaying their child-like tendencies only when they are around each other. You shook your head and just thought, men.

Sam decided he didn’t have time for any more banter and made his way to the plane with Bucky insisting on going with him. Well, guess that’s where you’re heading then.

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Somehow, Bucky managed to get his hands on a tactical jacket and suited up. You looked down to your tailored suit, one that you often wore as a S.H.I.E.L.D agent. It was not the most mission friendly, but it will do.

It had been an hour since you have boarded the plane but Bucky and Sam had not spoken since. You found yourself to be the buffer between the two and couldn’t help but feel a little awkward.

“Hey Y/N.” Your head tilted up from looking at the ground when you heard Sam calling for you.

“Yeah?”

“Sorry, I haven’t been in touch but what’ve you been up to lately?”

“Oh, not much. I recently reached out to Wanda, wanted to see how she was doing.” Sam nodded in understanding before continuing to ask if you had found any work. You weren’t sure where to start because you didn’t know how to.

Given your condition as an enhanced and recalling your last meeting with someone from the state office, you couldn’t find do much without getting on their radar. You were lucky you still had some money left to tide you over but you honestly do not know how you were ever going to get a proper job.

“I’ve been volunteering with a social service centre.” You answered after taking some time. When Sam gave you a surprising look to your answer, you started cracking your knuckles- a habit you had when you got nervous. Sensing your nerves, Sam decided to withhold himself from prying further.

“That’s nice to hear. An unexpected career change but it’s a good job.” He tried to reassure you.

“Yeah, I’m still not sure what I want. You know after everything that has happened.” Sam did not say anything else but just nodded in agreement.

You suddenly felt a hand on yours and looked to see Bucky glancing at you with slight concern. You tried to muster up a smile to show that you were alright.

Looking down to the ground again, you missed the intense staring contest that started between the two men as Torres announced the one-minute mark before drop-off. When you heard the plane door being opened, the two men went forward to get their comms.

Bucky passed you yours before turning to ask Sam on what’s the plan. Sam kept silent and Bucky scoffed at the fact that Sam had none.

“No, you can’t call me that.’” Bucky retorted when Sam called him Buck.

Sam questioned why not and claimed that you and Steve could call him that.

“Steve knew me longer and I actually like Y/N so she can call me that. Steve also always had a plan.” You took a double-take at what Bucky just said and tried not to overthink. He only meant you were tolerable in his eyes compared to Sam.

Sam could not deal with Bucky’s attitude before walking off to the door and countering that he indeed had a plan. When Bucky asked once more about it, Sam just leapt off without a reply.

Rolling his eyes, Bucky asked Torres for the parachute but was told that there wasn’t any. Bucky stalked off towards the door and claimed he didn’t need one anyway. Torres gave him a second glance and asked if he was sure.

Bucky affirmed that he was fine and then proceeded to tear off the sleeve of his jacket. You had to control yourself from laughing out loud at his dramatics and he glanced back at you.

“Buck, you know I can help you down-” You tried to convince him before he jumped off first and you heard the yelling after.

Letting out a groan at your stubborn 106-year-old friend, you rested your hands on your waist as you looked out the door over the landscape.

“Mam?” Torres looked over at you in curiosity.

“I’m not that old, Lieutenant.” You grimaced at how he addressed you even if it was a sign of respect.

Huffing out a sigh, you thought here goes nothing.

Fisting your hands by your side, you took a deep breath and channel your energy towards your palms. Fanning your hands out, Torres was taken aback when energy flames emitted from your palms and you used it to propel yourself off the ground and out of the door.

It has been a while since you flew and you took a moment to steady yourself before trying to look for where Bucky landed.

You could hear Sam talking to Bucky on the comms about his less than graceful fall and couldn’t help but giggle before finding your way to the building with Bucky. You had to stifle your laughter when Bucky tried to swipe Redwing off as his irritation grew.

Once you met up with Sam, he went to note that the people you were after were in the building. Your friends being the ‘friends’ that they were started to clash once more about how to go about this mission.

Bucky went to use his expertise as an assassin to assess the situation and stealthily walked ahead first. Sam was amused at how he came out as a white panther after his time in Wakanda to which Bucky corrected as white wolf.

Sam gave you a confused look to which you shrugged your shoulders in response. It was a story for another time.

The two of you caught up to Bucky faster than he thought. When the two started bickering again about the next course of action and trying to one-up the other, you had enough and placed your hands over both parties mouth to shush them.

“Enough the both of you, I feel like a kindergarten teacher with two children engaging in childish conflict.” You hissed to show your annoyance at the both of them. Seeing you this upset got Sam and Bucky to take a step back and tone it down.

When you let go of your hands, you expected them to behave but they continued to stare at each other. Bucky wanted to quickly proceed while Sam wanted to wait it out. Their bickering caused a slight commotion and you were suddenly wary that you might have alerted the group of your presence.

All three of you stood still before observing that it was all still good. You heard someone instructing the group to get a move on and Sam used Redwing to check that there might be a hostage on board.

Once you heard the vehicles rolling out, all of you sprang into action. You and Sam took to the air while Bucky went full speed ahead on the grounds. Everything happened so fast all at once and before you knew it, Bucky opened the doors of the truck and spotted the hostage. He noted that medicines and vaccines were in the truck.

As you processed the information, you could hear him talking to the hostage before you heard the loud slam next.

You saw Bucky suddenly got shoved back and slammed into the front of the truck that was following behind. You noted a redhead woman who put on a mask and then the other two men who hauled Bucky up to the roof of the truck.

Seeing that both men whom you assumed were incredibly strong to hold Bucky down, you went for those guys first while Sam took care of the woman. You tried throwing a few punches at them but they barely flinched.

You turned your back to see Sam being thrown off to the next truck by the woman and another huge man with shoulder-length hair going for Sam. Who were these guys and how did they have such strength? It was almost like they were….

Your next thoughts were interrupted when you sensed a fist coming your way to which you dodged. You tried to hold your ground by avoiding the attacks. They keep coming relentlessly and you knew you couldn’t hold back. You had to use your powers now.

Channelling your powers to your fist, you sent a blast of energy to knock down the two men that held Bucky down. The woman turned to look at you in surprise at the sight of your abilities.

You wanted to go for the man that was about to attack Sam before you heard the sound of metal clashing. Your head tilted up to see a helicopter with someone peering down. He swooped down onto the truck and you immediately recognised who he was.

Why was he even here? You briefly thought before you turned your focus to the fight. John Walker proceeded to use the shield almost effortlessly to knock down members of the Flag Smashers before introducing himself. His partner followed after. They both claimed to help before everyone started to focus on their own fights.

You used your powers to knock people over and fend yourself. In the midst of all the actions, you noticed that Bucky got knocked down and was holding onto the bottom of the truck, avoiding to fall flat onto the road surface. You wanted to help him but got stopped by the man with shoulder-length hair.

You raised both hands surging with flaming energy and saw how he stood still for a moment. You believed that he was more hesitant knowing you were an enhanced individual.

“Be warned, this might leave a burn.” You were nice enough to give a heads up. Before he could take another step further, his companions took you by a chokehold. You grabbed onto the person’s arms and gave them a slight burn.

The person exclaimed in pain and let go. You saw that Bucky and Sam were nowhere in sight while John Walker’s partner was out. Another person came for you and you let out a burst of energy that blinded everyone in their surroundings with its sheer brightness.

You saw how everyone hunched over and the shoulder-length haired man started backing down and it led to him leaning over to almost fall off the truck.

On instinct, you went over to grab his hand. Even though he was the enemy, you didn’t want to take lives unnecessarily. You felt him grabbing onto your arm tightly and pulled him back up by having your right arm blasting energy to weigh you down on where you stood.

He managed to recover and you left him be. You looked over to see John Walker taking on the redheaded woman but to no avail as he got shoved off the truck and landed on the front of a car below.

Seeing that you were the only one left, you gulped as you realised you were outnumbered. Should you even take the risk? Before you can think of your next actions, someone came up from behind you again and you quickly turned to intercept.

What you lacked in strength, you made sure to utilise your powers. You managed to slam the person down in a chokehold which you learnt from Natasha and aimed a fist that was covered in energy flames.

You heard a loud ‘NO’ and before you realised you were picked up and dragged off to be thrown off the truck. Quickly gathering your energy to soften your blow, you barely floated off the ground as your energy acted as a cushion to lift you off the surface.

Letting yourself stand steady on the ground, you didn’t give John Walker and his partner a second look before you flew off to find your friends.

-------------------------//---------------------------

When you found Bucky and Sam, they were huddled together in a flower field. The two of them looked more irritated than ever. You gave both of them a hand and pulled them up. You gave Bucky a glance over and noticed he had a bruise forming near his eyes.

He shook it off like it was nothing and asked after you. You reassured him that you were alright, just a little worn out. You asked after Sam and was glad to know he did not sustain any major injuries.

The three of you decided to make your way back on foot. The road ahead looked far and Sam started to strike up a light-hearted conversation with Bucky. You quietly listened in as you were too tired to even bother participating.

You smirked at how even though Sam was trying to tick Bucky off, you knew he only had good intentions to check on Bucky’s state of mind.

Bucky ignored whatever Sam said and then noted that there was a need to find out where the group back there got their super serums from. Sam couldn’t fathom how eight super soldiers were on the loose after eighty years.

You chimed in that you thought that the super-soldiers were eliminated in Siberia years ago. As you three were figuring out, you heard a vehicle coming from behind you. You saw it was John Walker and he stopped slightly ahead to open the door for you three.

You were almost slightly tempted to save your aching legs if not for the fact you weren’t so keen on him.

The men were all in a discussion about the group and you could all confirm for a fact that they weren’t part of the Big Three. In fact, they had to be super soldiers. John Walker proposed to work together but Bucky wasn’t having any of it.

“Just because you carry the shield doesn’t mean you’re Captain America.” Bucky shot back harshly. John Walker with that thick skin of his brushed it off and countered that he was more than qualified.

You could not stop yourself from intervening this time.

“Being Captain America is more than about just being a good soldier! There’s a lot more where it comes from.” Sam and Bucky felt the emotions from your statement, knowing that it wasn’t just out of distaste for the new ‘Captain’ but of how you really felt about Steve’s legacy.

Hearing your words, John Walker let out a sigh before continuing to persuade everyone again. He claimed that it was still a long way to the airport and that you should just accept the ride. Asking the driver to stop the vehicle once more, you, Sam and Bucky gave each other another look before you all hopped on.

Sam went in first. Bucky was ahead of you but stopped short before holding your hand to help you up. You took the seat next to Sam and Bucky took his place beside you. Looking across John and his partner who you remembered was Lemar from earlier.

Everyone started discussing about the Flag Smashers and what their purpose was. You listened in until you heard something from John that made you livid. He remarked how the serum doesn’t exactly have a great track record and meant no offence as he glanced at Bucky.

“Offense is already taken! How dare you-” You burst out before being motioned to calm down by Sam. Bucky was moved that you stood up for him.

“Woah easy there.” John tried to look innocent before Sam interjected and continued on the topic of the Flag Smashers. You learnt that John and Lemar managed to track you three by hacking into Redwing. They were acting on behalf of the government to keep things stable while resources were being managed, claiming there were violent revolutionaries happening post-Blip.

John went on to propose that you, Sam and Bucky should team up with them but Bucky flat out refused in a second. Lemar then went on to quip that all of you weren’t really handling it well until they stepped in.

“Y/N.” You scrunched your face in response when John called you like a familiar friend.

“I have only seen you from your profile but I must say I am glad to finally meet you. You look even prettier in person.”

If looks could kill, John would be dead a hundred times over under Bucky’s death stare.

You wanted to blanch at John’s word but controlled your expression. You tried to return a polite smile as he continued on.

“Why didn’t you accept our offer to be recruited to our team?” You gave a bewildered look before realization dawned upon you. The government official from that time wanted you to join Walker?

“What is he talking about, Y/N?” Bucky perked up at the new information and you looked over nervously, unsure what to say.

“When we were first brought together, we wanted to recruit Y/N here to be part of the team. We see her as a great asset given her powers and abilities. It would be amazing if we have her on our side.” You looked over to see Bucky literally looking like he was going to combust.

Bucky really hated the word asset, knowing that was how he was addressed back in the days. The word had a connotation of objectification and he was mad that John actually used it to describe you. You were more than that.

“Yeah, you should join us. We could really use your help. You were literally the last one standing with the Flag Smashers back there!” Lemar egged on.

“When was this?” Bucky asked with a tinge of hurt in his voice. He couldn’t believe you didn’t tell him about it at all.

“It was several months ago Buck, I refused their offer straight out.” You answered him before looking straight at John and Lemar.

“I did not want to give them a chance to exploit me for my powers. I know your type. You claim to appreciate what I can offer but I would never be free of my own will.” Your words were sharp and laid with revulsion.

“They only seek me to control me, they are afraid of what happens if I am left unsupervised.” You added with finality. You spared no sugar-coating and everyone kept silent for a moment.

This was the price to be someone like you in this world. Even when you know you won’t do anything out of turn, the government bodies would never trust you.

John pretended to clear his throat before speaking. “Y/N. I can assure you that I will do my very best to make sure that does not happen if you join me. I will speak up for you.”

No, you won’t. You can’t. You wanted to shoot back.

Bucky placed his hand over yours and held onto it as his way to show his care. He then went to ask again who Lemar was and Sam chimed in that he needed to know more. When Lemar gave his alias, that tipped the iceberg for Bucky before he called for the vehicle to stop.

He then immediately stepped down and started stalking off. John tried to call after Bucky and talk sense into him but of course, Bucky didn’t care for it.

He then went on to try to tell you and Sam that he wasn’t trying to be Steve or replace him and that he just wanted to be the best Captain America he could be.

You scoffed out loud at his words as it only served to rile you up. His next sentence took you off the edge.

“It’ll be a whole lot easier if I have Cap’s wingman by my side.” Disgusting. Does he even know what he was saying? You look over to see Sam in disbelief and you felt angry for him.

“It’s always that last line,” Sam said before you and he proceeded to step down from the vehicle.

“Eat shit, John.” You spat at him before you turned your back. You couldn’t go before you showed your loathing for him. Sam clapped your back and shook his head to tell you that Walker wasn’t worth it.

-------------------------//---------------------------

It was tense on the way back, but it was now for an entirely different reason compared to the first time. Sam checked in on you and Bucky to which you reassured him that you were alright.

“Let’s take the shield, Sam,” Bucky spoke up for the first time since the flight back.

Sam countered that it was not something that could be done simply and reminded him of a past similar event. The shield was technically government property and there was no way we could take it back without starting something.

Sam recapped how Sharon, Steve and he became fugitives and how he never wanted to live that life again. You couldn’t say anything to that knowing you managed to get a free pass in Wakanda alongside Bucky.

You all had no information to start with regarding the super soldiers but Bucky claimed otherwise. There was someone that Sam and you should meet.

-------------------------//---------------------------

That's it for chapter 2! I figured it will get too long if I cover the whole of ep 2 so I stopped here! We continue off on the next chapter! 😆

Tag list:

@tanyaherondale @spookycereal-s

[bipercabeth]

“your hands are shaking” + percabeth !!! 🥺 (ofc I went for the hands)

started this with the intention of writing a lil drabble between roommates ch 9 and 10, but it got away from me. here’s 1.4k of soft idiots and hands

Percy comes home from the last swim practice before states and promptly throws himself onto the couch, tossing an arm over Annabeth’s thighs and pressing his face into the cushion next to them, his skin and breath contrasting the pervasive cold their radiator fights against. Today was the last intense day, so she knows he's hurting even before he hooks his hand under her leg to pull himself closer and groans with the effort. Annabeth sets the notes she scooped up upon his entry down on the coffee table and combs a hand through his damp hair with a frown.

"Did you walk all the way here with wet hair? Perce, it's freezing out."

"Can you let a guy die in peace?"

"We both know it's my life's purpose to make sure you never know peace, so I'm gonna need you to answer the question."

"You know the answer."

She thunks him gently on the back of his cold head but soothes his responding whine by scratching her nails along his scalp. He purrs, a low throaty sound she feels through the couch and his grip on her. Her playlist plays through the TV, a soft instrumental meant to help her focus on school. Instead it zeroes her in on Percy's profile, the edges of him that soften in the light of their apartment and her company. Soft black curls drape over his eyes, and she pushes it back to find them closed in contentment. A finger traces the line of his jaw of its own volition, soft and feather-light against the hard edge. She trails it down his crooked nose, which was broken one too many times to heal straight, and rides the bump over the dusting of freckles. Her fingertip only just traces his lips before he presses the barest of kisses to it, nearly shocking her into recoiling. Of all the sideways attempts at kissing him to express her feelings, he has never once made that move. It's just a whisper against her pointer finger, not her collarbone or cheek or wherever else she's laid her lips on him in a moment of courage, but it's significant all the same.

Instead of telling him that, she says, "If you get sick five days before states because you walked outside with wet hair in February, I'm actually gonna kill you.”

Percy ignores her threat. "Just wanted to get home to you."

"Well that's...incredibly hard to be mad at you over."

"It is, isn't it?" The corner of his mouth lifts just so, hinting at the dimple she knows will press into his cheek at a moment's notice.

"I take it back. I'm mad." She lifts his arm off her legs and attempts to scoot away, but he catches her around her legs again. She lets herself be manhandled, knowing her smile will betray her posturing the moment he looks up at her.

He pulls her closer than last time, now laying his head on her thigh, his cheek smushed against her sweatpants. "How's studying going?"

Annabeth's gaze flickers to the pile of books on the coffee table. "It's...going, I guess."

"You feeling okay?"

"Yeah, just..." She exhales and looks back to Percy, the most peaceful thing in the living room. "Midterms, ya know?"

"Like last time?"

There's an undercurrent of concern to his voice, one Annabeth is used to hearing but can never quite comprehend being directed her way. "No, not like last time. A good, normal amount of exam stress and existential dread." Her hand returns to his hair, which warms under her touch. "Is that why you hurried home?"

He looks up at her then, earnest despite the long day. "I just wanted to spend some time with you before our week explodes. You not going crazy is an added bonus though." His eyes undermine his tone as they search Annabeth's face, checking for eyebags and other signs of stress. Seemingly satisfied with his findings, he tucks his cheek back against her leg.

Resigning herself to being done with school work for the night, Annabeth nudges Percy and asks him to fish for the remote between the cushions. They're mid season six on New Girl, and she's hoping to finish before the week is up. Percy finds the remote and bends awkwardly to pass it to her behind his head.

"Percy, your hands are shaking," she says, taking the remote and his hand into her own.

"Practice was brutal today," he sighs. "Coach gave us this arm exercise where you do this between each stroke"—he flexes his hand before making a fist and opening it again—"for some reason. Threw us off for the beginning of practice, but it made us work harder in the end. That was probably the point, but right now it just sucks."

"Sit up."

"Annabeth, I can't ask you to—"

"You're not asking for anything. I'm telling you to sit up."

Percy heaves himself out of Annabeth's lap and rests against the back of the couch, turning to jelly in his attempt to protest. Paying him no mind, Annabeth throws her legs over his like a seatbelt and takes his far arm into her hands.

"Forearms bad?" she asks.

"It's all bad."

Annabeth rolls her eyes and flips his palm to the ceiling, feeling a slight tremor from the angle once more. She presses her thumbs from his knuckles to his wrist, the soft flesh of his palms malleable beneath her touch. They're the slightest bit clammy too, she notes with a small smile. They weren’t before her legs were in his lap.

Before long she moves to his forearms, anchoring his palm on her knee while she digs into the muscle and pushes out the lactic acid. Just as she reaches his elbow, she realizes she forgot to do anything with the TV.

"You can turn on whatever you like. I'm just gonna focus."

His voice is close. "I like watching you focus." Annabeth doesn't remember scooting almost entirely into his lap, though she's been leaning in the higher she travels up his arm. Doesn't mean she's ready to look up—with her tongue poking out in concentration, no less—and find his face inches away from hers.

Percy clears his throat and offers her his upper arm in the form of an escape. Annabeth takes it, sinking her fingers into his bicep and working out the stiffness.

It's a nice arm. Two of them, actually—he has two very nice arms. Objectively. From an artist's standpoint. It's no wonder Rachel used to use him as a model for anatomy studies in her drawing classes. He has good anatomy. Solid. Streamlined. A true swimmer's build, all broad shoulders and tapered torso.

Annabeth gives the swell of his shoulder one last squeeze and switches arms, scooting away slightly to make room for his wingspan. She starts the same way as last time: with his palm face up in hers. Her hands have memorized this route by now, so she lets her mind wander as she sets about his forearm.

"How's practice been? Besides the obvious, I mean."

"Do we include Sloan being a dick in the obvious?"

She can't help the way her fingers dig in. "No. You tell me about that. Always."

He sets his free hand on her shin for a moment, putting out a bit of her fire. "Nothing serious. Just stupid comments, usually under his breath. He's not going to try anything with Coach watching him the way he has been."

Annabeth focuses her frustration into her work, ignoring Percy's wince. "You promise you'd tell me if it was bad?"

"Do I have a black eye?"

She makes a show of looking. "Nope."

"Then he didn't say anything bad."

Annabeth finishes his arm and frowns. "That just means you didn't get hit." She picks up both of his hands and checks his knuckles. The skin is unbroken and unbruised, and he didn't wince at all when she worked his palms. In a lapse of restraint, she presses her lips there. "Keep 'em that way, okay?"

He chuckles, and she watches his Adam's apple move. "Yes ma'am. You done?"

She releases him with a flourish. "All done. Nothing to do now but wait."

Percy looks at her, his eyes dark. "I know the feeling."

[wisteria-lodge]

lion primary (bird model) + slightly burnt lion secondary

Hi there! I’m a fan of your sorting posts, and of your kind and insightful way of supporting people in finding out more about themselves. So naturally I’d be very interested in your take about my own sorting, if you’re game! :)

I won’t talk much about my Secondary, because now that I’m starting to unburn my Lion seems very clear to me, even when my explosion-prone Badger model still tries to get in the way of that clarity sometimes. The more interesting riddle is my Primary. So far I’m operating under the working theory that I am a Lion with a very strong Bird model - or is it the other way ‘round?

The supposed dichotomy between “thinking” and “feeling” in many of the more binary personality models has always bugged me, so it’s no wonder this is the area where whenever I feel like I’ve decided on who I am (for now) a new question mark pops up (so much fun!).

If ‘thinking’ and ‘feeling’ doesn’t work for you as terminology, it might help to think of Lion as leading with subconscious reasoning, and Bird as leading with conscious reasoning.

Instead of trying to formulate a cohesive text, which would have gotten even longer, I’m putting together an associative list of thoughts and stories that kept turning up while I was trying to figure out my Primary.

A very Lion primary way to solve a problem, not gonna lie ;)

- I think I got my Bird model from my father, who made quite an effort to teach me to look at things from all angles. As a child, whenever I got in a fight with this friend I had, he would sit me down and ask me to put myself in my friend’s shoes. It was hard, because a lot of the time my friend was being unfair to me and I actually could have used some support, someone to tell me that it was not okay to treat me this way. But I’m still immeasurably grateful for my father’s lessons, through which I’ve learned to understand peoples’ motivations and gained an understanding for the complexities of every conflict. He also taught me to doubt, to look closer, to not just believe the first thing I see, or want to see. To this day I still consider my ability to pin down the relevant factors of a situation before I make judgments one of my strengths.

That definitely sounds like a very strong, beloved Bird model.

- Whenever I had to write an essay at school or uni, I first had to come up with some aspect about the subject that I really cared about, even could be passionate about. (I am passionate about many things, so it was usually possible to find some connection to that.) Then I would use the essay to discuss this aspect in great detail, ending with a polemic flourish. I had the time of my life doing that; meanwhile the text would structure itself magically in relation to the issue I had chosen to focus on. Whenever I tried to write without such a focus, I’d get bored, stressed and the text would be of a much lower quality.

- Something similar happened in oral exams at uni: Only when I got the opportunity to bring a discussion paper (a few pointed statements regarding the exam topic) which I could then debate, I was able to recollect all the important details I needed for that. If I just had to report on the topic or answer questions, I often got confused, to the point of drawing a complete blank.

Linking things to emotion and passion - thinking with emotion and passion, basically - is a Lion primary thing. Especially if doing that makes you feel safe & comfortable & effective & happy.

- Even as a teenager I was very interested in philosophy, ethics and moral decision making.

I love teaching philosophy to teenagers. It’s the perfect time for it, they are so into it, and if it were up to me I would absolutely make it a required class.

I picked up certain philosophical ideas and concepts that I liked and integrated them in my belief system (yes, I know how very Bird that sounds).

I had my mind blown by Genealogy of Morals in high school, and I still won’t shut about Eichmann in Jerusalem. But what was so staggering to me in high school was… here are these ways of thinking that are possible and allowed. The fact that here they are in words in front of me made me a great deal more expansive.

Now that I think about it — I don’t remember adjusting my beliefs as in any way traumatic back then. The shift from a belief in the Christian God to Mother Goddess to my very own brand of agnostic paganism was smooth, natural.

Now that I think about it… I would describe myself as a mythic relativist (which is a term I just made up.) Systems of belief are metaphors, and they’re metaphors trying to describe and say something large and beautiful about what it means to be human, and what it means to live a good life. And since we are all human, they are all attempting to describe the same central, indescribable thing in different ways.

I feel this very deeply, but it took me a long while to be able to articulate it.

I constantly reevaluate, and I adapt.

You stop reevaluating and adapting, might as well be dead.

Still, there are some basics I’ve kept with me that just make too much sense to me to give up, and some that perhaps I keep because I just really like them and I’m kind of attached to them.

… somebody’s thinking with Pathos :)

- I’m a constructivist at heart, so that makes it much easier to tweak the content of my beliefs while staying true to the principle that we (socially) construct our reality, and (my take on this): that I choose what kind of world I want to live in, and according to that I make choices which are the most likely to create that world.

- At uni I attended a seminar about the development of moral judgment and action. What I remember most clearly about it is how much it bugged me that the other students didn’t seem to understand that morality always depends on the perspective. Even though I had definite moral convictions that I was ready to fight for, at the same time it seemed obvious to me that theoretically there could be a justification for every kind of moral guideline; it depended on your principles and the world you wanted to live in.

A human after my own heart.

I wanted to understand these different perspectives, not talk about empty categories like “right and wrong” or “good and evil” that meant nothing to me. I still feel that way.

Absolutely. I don’t use alignments when I DM Dungeons & Dragons. I mean, I can list evil *things* but that’s not the same thing as defining *being evil.* I want to know WHY these people did these evil things.

It just seems so impractical and complicated to base a conversation on those broad categories that don’t have any definition people can agree on instead of referring either to defined principles (in order to explain what good/ bad is *for you*) or consequences of certain actions, and whether you want them/ accept them/ don’t want them.

Oh that’s a fun discussion. Asking a highschooler to define “evil.”

(and then they have to figure out what moral systems Jigsaw, Pinhead, the Joker, and Bane all subscribe to.)

- Between “the Revolutionary” and “the Grail Knight”, I would love to be the former, but I’m clearly the latter. I’m someone who questions, not someone who knows.

Take my archetypes with a grain of salt, they are supposed to describe characters. (Who are different from people - but still useful, because they are attempts to describe us.) I actually want to write more about the differences I see between the way fictional secondaries are written and the way real-life secondaries work.

And just “knowing”... is dangerous. That’s how Exploded Lions happen. 

There are a lot of causes I find worthy to fight for, but I haven’t committed to any one, which so far I’ve attributed to my Burned Secondary (How do I do things?).

Sounds about right.

If I’m honest, though, it feels a bit strange to really, really fight for anything. I’d rather contribute to the cause by keeping an eye on whether we stay aligned to our values on every level of the fight, not by storming sightlessly in front of some army. (I got polemic again, didn’t I? ;))

So after all this Bird talk, why do I think that I’m a Lion?

… that was the Bird segment?

- I trust my intuition. It has never steered me wrong, with one exception: My Primary burned for a time when I first understood the concept of privilege and internalized bias, which was coincidentally at a time when I also went through a lot of changes in my personal life. Like many people unaware of their own privilege, I had thought of myself as “one of the good ones”. I learned that even with the best intentions I could cause great harm without even noticing it. This then also happened to me in a relationship, when I was already confused, hurt and more than a bit burned. It seemed like I couldn’t trust my intuition anymore, but I also couldn’t figure out intellectually what to believe, because I felt mentally overwhelmed by all those new concepts, all of which put my previous convictions into question. Which Primary burned then?

Been there, done that, it’s brutal. It sounds to me like a Lion dramatically changing direction - that’s what I mean when I say that it *hurts* when a Lion changes their mind. Birds see their past selves that thought wrong as almost different people. “I wasn’t aware of my privilege then, now I am, and can take steps doing forward.” But if you’re a lion it’s like… I *should* have been aware, and the fact that I wasn’t says something terrible about my moral/emotional calibration, and THAT has to be put right.

- I felt like everything I had learned about the world and myself didn’t count anymore. My concepts and my strategies didn’t serve me anymore. So I started to rebuild everything from scratch, this time with less pride and more practicality.

Yeah. That’s some Lion recalibration. With a Bird Model, to help.

- Anyway, I trust my intuition. It contains my experiences, instinct and all my accumulated unconscious observations of the situation, and it’s very reliable. Usually I use it as an important source of information which I try to back up with data/ understanding, but when push came to shove and the apparent facts would contradict what my intuition told me, I would be unable to set my gut feeling aside. I wouldn’t follow it blindly, of course. But I would never just go against it either. If the voices of my unconscious and conscious mind don’t align, I keep poking at the issue until they do. If I absolutely cannot come to a satisfying conclusion, I go with my gut. Since I know it usually knows what it’s doing, I’ll find out the reasons for my feelings later. (Weird, says my inner bird who is busy compiling these examples.)

I’LL FIND THE REASON FOR MY FEELINGS LATER. What a perfect way of articulating what is perhaps the central experience of being a Lion primary.

- Probably I’m just both, you know. Some interesting lion/bird-chimaera. I like it.

I read you as a pretty clear Lion Primary, Bird primary model. But as always, the decision is very personal.

- I have a weird way of processing information: I read/ hear it, work to understand it, work to connect it to existing knowledge in my mind, then my beliefs, my existing knowledge and my feelings about it all wind around each other, grow into each other, some dissolve together, becoming a swamp which then nourishes the plants of new ideas and connections that grow from it.

You grok it. And that’s not weird.

I often can’t remember where certain knowledge came from. I can’t take it out of a memory shelf and tell you about it. I usually remember that I’ve read a certain book and whether I liked it / it influenced me, but I won’t exactly remember what was in it, even if it was important to me. Because all that information is already processed/ digested/ transformed into something new. It’s much easier to access my memory swamp intuitively than consciously.

and you seriously had like… any doubt that you were a Lion.

In intellectual discussions I tend to get stuck because I just can’t remember enough of the details (for my satisfaction), just my conclusions about the topic and how I feel about it.

I’m inclined to think that not accessing the details is either a secondary thing, or an entirely unrelated processing thing.

What do you make of all this? I’m very curious!

:)

[On an unrelated note, I’d like to specify the compliment I made at the beginning of this post. I’m really impressed with your ability to pick up on what people need, not just what they say they want. As a counselor this is a skill I try to hone, so I know how difficult it is to not get too distracted by the story people tell and miss the more subtle cues. You have a powerful combination of perceptiveness, insight and so much kindness, which you use to effectively support people who have questions, are in distress or confused. You don’t generalize. You don’t judge. You see the people who talk to you.  I love that you’re a teacher, because I can see you’re using the influence that gives you in a way that contributes to making the world a better place. Fellow Idealist, I’d like to give you a High Five for that, if I may. :)))]

I’m not sure I’ve ever been given a better compliment. Thank you.

[unpopularly-opinionated]

I don’t play WoW but I used to play Overwatch and Diablo and this touches on just the general issues that are inside of Activision Blizzard right now regarding the major decline of World of Warcraft and how they’re losing to Final Fantasy XIV, how if the latest WoW expansion or Overwatch 2 flop as they’re projected to do then Blizzard’s most definitely going to pivot almost entirely to mobile games, and how the differences in age demographics are actually dividing the company into multiple camps.

It’s important to note two things: 1) this could be fake but also 2) the link came from Grummz, a former team lead on WoW and producer on Diablo II and Starcraft. It still could be fake despite this, but if he’s sharing it then I feel like there’s at least some measure of truth in this.

Transcription below in case this gets deleted and/or you don’t wanna click the link. Warning, it’s fairly long.

“I’m dropping this here after getting chewed out for three hours over shit the chewee did at work so fuck it. Assume larp and let me vent.”

>Shadowlands is a shitshow. Critical response, Player drop off and just about every engagement metric outside of cash shop have been catastrophic. No higher up expected this because of their “we are too big to fail, if we built it they will come” mentality. They refuse to accept their focus on the world being a begrudged mechanic to funnel players to raiding is not appealing to the player base at large because it appeals to them. They have spent the last 4 months trying to course correct but there is no solid direction and the response to 9.1 has only made things worse.

>Sylvanas is planned to replace the Arbiter despite so many people in the company and god knows how many online saying this would be a total replication of Kerrigans storyline in Starcraft 2 that killed none competitive interest in the brand entirely and you can only go “no, no they WILL like it eventually” for so many real world years before its time to change course. Thus far that has not happened.

>The elephant in the room is FFXIV. To the people in charge they are acting like this came out of nowhere and don’t even seem to understand why its drawing players away in their tens of thousands. We have all tried to highlight things it is doing that are clearly appealing to an mmo audience and not, in my opinion, focussing more on mobile game style retention traps to keep MAU users and habit forming personalities logging in. Its not that they don’t care. They just seem so pig headed and digging their heels in with their fingers in their ears thinking all the problems will go away because WoW is “too big to fail”, there will never be real competition and “they will keep coming back”. But they aren’t coming back anymore. Not in the numbers they used to.

>The people making the spending choices know this. The new model for WoW is market the hell out of a expansion pack for a huge quarter then use 6 month lock ins to pad numbers for the quarters after that. Even if corona had not happened 9.1 still would have been dropping after the initial 6 month subs expired to “keep the chain holding”.

>The mood in the company is tense but also very much “its just a rough transition period”. Activision has been pushing hard for Blizzard to release more regular product and to generate more income per user. As far as i know this is going to be a transition over the next 5 years to a much larger mobile/tablet gaming focus. By all accounts not just WoW but Overwatch was intended to be the moneymaker in the interim but once again someone had the bright idea to kill a game casual players loved on the alter of e-sports hoping for another Brood War. From what i hear the “told you so’s” were loud and a lot of people walked beyond Kaplan.

>The sentiment that was shared quietly in private but being spoken more often is simply that the leadership at Blizzard are not bad people, nor incompetent people but people who had to fill seats left when the old guard jumped ship wether they were suited for it or not. Brack is a genuinely good man out of his depth, Ion is a fantastic raid designer put in charge of designing a virtual world he has no interest or real ideas for and so on. They have been taking form the roles they excel at to be put in positions where they get to do far less of that purely because there is nobody left with the experience to do so and the trickle down is a lack of concrete direction, ambition and focus.

>2021 has seen the playerbase, media and gaming at large “turn” on WoW to a degree i don’t think the leads in their “positivity dojo” bubble considered possible. Its gone from people going “This is how Blizz needs to fix WoW!” to “WoW is no longer salvageable, time for greener pastures” and i think on some level this was never considered as a possibility so there have never been any major plans beyond the usual “try and minimise player drop off by arranging releases around competitors launching updates/products”. The official forums being filled with talk of FFXIV and worse “why do we actually pay a sub?” hasn’t helped.

>There have been some testing the waters lately from certain higher ups if we can remove the line “No King Rules Forever”. Read into that what you will.

>There are still arguments going on about the Kael’thas Voice actor shitshow. I don’t know much about it but i know its heated, wouldn’t be the first time a knee jerk reaction only seemed to generate bad press. We lost a noticeable amount of pvp engagement after the Swifty thing.

>The Preach interview was treated as a disaster and there was talk of more strongly vetting interviewers for “bad actors” and only engaging with a list of questions Blizzard provides. Some pointed out that could just be used to create some form of Fireside Chat akin to the FFXIV “Live letters” but that fell on deaf ears.

>The two sentiments right now among the team are either “we really need a win” or “theres a dedicated cabal of internet trolls out to kill WoW”. Right now we are crunching hard to get 9.2 ready to wrap up the jailors storyline so we can get an expansion out early 2022. If that doesn’t happen there are talks of major shakeups coming down from Activision that have been threatened for a few  years now. Its an all hands on deck feeling thats been around to some degree since the “Is this an out of season April Fools Joke” Blizzcon. A make or break deadline is coming closer and things like Diablo 4 were not planned before then. Blizzard needs a significant win not just in initial profit but consumer goodwill. Nobody likes working at what the public now seems to see as “the bad guy” of the mmo industry.

>This has also made new hires decline. Not significantly but the “you WANT Blizzard on your resume” line doesn’t seem to have the appeal it used to. This has lead to more hiring via friend of a friend, to some rumblings about nepotism, and people severely lacking in experience “because they get great twitter optics”.

>On the topic of Twitter we are not being told to “disengage” from it. Multiple employees like Nervig and Holisky publicly attacking paying customers because they got too heated and couldn’t keep quiet is bad press that could have been avoided. A email reminder has gone around more than once lately stating “if you are not customer relations you should not be representing the company to customers, especially if you cannot remain professional”.

>Lastly the biggest elephant in the room is “yo’ boy” Asmongold. The newer hires cannot stand him. They have used terms like “toxic masculinity” and “dogwhistles to dangerous males” while some of the oldest crowd still remaining have called him “based” or “telling it like it is” which has lead to friction to put it mildly. People are told not to talk about him and the recent FFXIV stuff only made it all worse. The idea that an outside element can have such an effect on the product genuinely upsets people. Like Zach is engaging in some malicious act of cyberwarfare. Many of us have point out the now famous quotes by Naoki Yoshida about understanding that players will drift and we need to make something worth coming back to because they want to but some people for lack of a better word see out customers -or “consumers” as they refer to them nowadays- as some kind of antagonistic relationship where the goal is not being an entertainer putting on a show for a crowd but some kind of game hunter trying to trap a large, profitable kill. I wish i could blame Activision but this is a sentiment from more of the younger crowd than the “tech boomers”. Which personal opinion is probably why so many folks like Metzen and Morheim left.

>Before you ask, yes the topic of “wokeness” has shown up in group talks. Its not all some grand sjw conspiracy, people really do want to feel welcome and represented. However the “we need everything veto’ed by people not working on it to see if its inoffensive and bland enough” rubs some of us the wrong way. Like anything in life you can take something too far and lose sight of the core ideals and with everything gone on since Blitzchung it feels like people are forming little factions to pull people in different directions to decide “What Blizzards identity is now” and how to appeal to new players. There has been some drop offs with “go woke go broke” as the only answer in the survey when unsubbing but honestly we are losing subs in unforseen numbers anyway and still making more money than ever through cash shop “heavy users” so it honestly doesn’t make an impact.

>All in all things are rough right now. Blizzard doesn’t have the love of the customers anymore, is no longer treated as an industry giant and while D4,D2R and Immortal aren’t going to kill Diablo even if they fail the sentiment for World of Warcraft and Overwatch 2 are a lot more tense and stressful. The phrase “it might be good to brush up on your mobile development portfolio if we get another underperformer” has been doing the rounds a lot. If Shadowlands continues its stark decline and Overwatch 2 is looking to underperform like its current projections suggest i think the Blizzard of a few years from now will be imitating King a lot more than trying to learn any lessons from Square Enix’s mmo division.

[thatsjustrwde]

For the RWBY character prompt thing: you gotta tell me about Ironwood for sure! And if somebody already asked, how's about Qrow? :)

OH BABEY A DOUBLE (I’m gunna put Qrow in a separate post to avoid making this too long) thank you so much!

Warning: This is a PRO IRONWOOD POST. I also go into team RWBY taking responsibility for their abuse towards Ozpin. Don’t read this if you don’t like it. You’ve been warned

My top three two ships for Ironwood

1) Ironqrow (Ironwood x Qrow) {Volumes 3-7}

I have loved the idea of these two since the fall of beacon. When they first interacted, I wasn’t too sure about them because it seemed like they didn’t really like each other.. but that scene where all the robots were turning on beacon and Qrow spotted ironwood, ran at him with his scythe, only to jump over him and save him from a Grimm, sold the ship to me. It was clear that they didn’t actually despise each other. Qrow wasn’t quick to point fingers; he knew that what was going on wasn’t James’ fault, and he even tried to add a little bit of comic relief to the scene. (When ironwood’s ship fell, and Qrow smirked “well, it won’t be much of a walk”)

My love for the ship was reinforced in v6 (yeah I know it was the fan service volume but I’m rolling with it anyway). Qrow knew that they HAD to get to ironwood in order to complete their goal. He trusted James, and he knew that he was a smart and capable leader who would know what to do (ah,, the good old days ;;)

And then in the early episodes of v7, their bickering that we once saw in v3 was non existent. They were happy to see each other, and James even initiated a hug. He was just so relieved to see him ;; it made my heart melt, I remember posting about this moment so much, all over instagram and tumblr. I loved them so dearly.

2) Ironwood x Glynda (idk if they have a ship name)

God,, I always loved them. that scene in v2 with Ironwood and Glynda standing together in the dead of night looking over the city of vale was so special to me. I love Glynda and her character, she is so dynamic. that scene with her and ironwood showed to us that she truly respected and cared for him and his well-being. She was worried for him as well. I just wish they had more interactions before his death. they would have been very sweet and POWERFUL together.

My three least favourite ships for Ironwood

1) Ironqrow {Volumes 7-8}

Oh boy. RT really knows how to take something good and just, ruin it huh.

I feel as though I don’t need to dive too deep into this (as I’ll be covering Ironwood’s fall from grace later) but yeah... The fight with Qrow and Clover was.. unfortunate. Everyone seemed to lose their braincells in that scene, and the moment it was over, Qrow was dead set on killing Ironwood for some reason even though he was the one who decided to side with a literal murderer, but go off MKEK you really did something there...

Yepp this absolutely killed the ship for me in canon (though I stilln love thinking about them out of the canon setting), I was an absolute wreck after this scene. they deserved better.

2) Ironwood x Winter

don’t worry I’m not about to pull the “IRONWOOD WAS AN ABUSIVE FATHER FIGURE AND GROOMED HER CAREERRHYUGGHR” no.

I always saw Ironwood as a POSITIVE father figure to winter, even before v7. We knew that winter was one of his best soldiers, and was most likely one of his students before then. I believe that Ironwood gave winter a chance at something great, to leave her actual abusive father and hone her skills as a soldier instead of becoming the heiress to a company that she did not want to be tied to. I believe Ironwood was a stellar father figure and role model to her, and that is the reason why I do not ship them. their relationship was so much deeper than that. it was found family.

3) Ironwood x Salem

What the fuck. Like actually what? This was a thing? What is it with this fandom and glorifying abusive relationships... I remember seeing a lot of people trying to justify it like “awh salem was so sweet with him she just wanted him to stop fighting. She would leave him alone after!!” Thats manipulation honey, we don’t fuck with that here. no. Absolutely not

My biggest criticism for Ironwood

See: the reason I made this side blog

It’s no secret to us in the RWDE community that his fall into the role of the villain was POORLY WRITTEN AND WE ALL HATE IT SO FUCKING MUCH. where the hell did this even come from? oh I know! TEAM RWBY LYING TO HIS FACE AFTER HE WAS NOTHING BUT KIND AND GENEROUS TO THEM. god I’m heated already.

I’ve talked about his stupid semblance before but it doesn’t even matter because his semblance wasn’t the cause of his descent anyway. We were all HOPING that it was but nope! it was him “losing his humanity” because he lost his other arm. How fucked up is that.

Shitty writing aside, I know James had flaws even before the shitshow that was v7-8, but honestly there was nothing he did that I can criticize harshly. He was a good and honest man with good intentions and a pure, big heart made of gold. Of course he made mistakes and of course he wasn’t perfect, but he was always trying to do the right thing to protect the people. He was a good man until MKEK decided they needed a reason to kill off another headmaster.

My favourite thing about Ironwood

his MUSCLES

His willingness to sacrifice himself to save others. During the fall of beacon he told the students that they didn’t have to stay, even though he could have used the help greatly. But he KNEW that they weren’t ready to handle a crisis like this, and he didn’t want to force them into a responsibility that could have left them emotionally/physically damaged, or worse.

During the Ironwood and Watts fight, IRONWOOD MANGLED HIS OWN ARM TO CAPTURE WATTS. He was so headstrong and brave and he wanted to do everything he could to prevent Salem, even if that meant hurting himself and losing another part of himself. God I miss him so much ;; I’m tearing up a little writing all of this...

A head canon I have for Ironwood

I love creating head canons for characters, it always makes them feel more real to me. one of my biggest head canons is that, in a peaceful world setting, he would enjoy sleeping in on the weekends. ;;. He is a headmaster AND a general which means he has to follow a strict schedule all the time. Maybe this is coming from my desire to take care of him and make sure he is happy and healthy and not stressed out.. But yeah, lazy Sundays, sleeping in late. pls let him sleep he needs so much sleep. What I would change about Ironwood if I were making a rewrite

Strap in kiddos I’ve been thinking about this for a very long time. I’m sure that someone has come up with a similar concept, but I will share my ideas anyway (: I am going to preface this by saying that for this rewrite to work, we need to have Winter receive the Winter maiden powers from Freya in V7.  To start, we will have to go back all the way to v2 when Ironwood was first introduced. I would have Ozpin and Glynda share their concerns to each other about Ironwood bringing all of his ships to look over the festival, but I would take that time to thoroughly explain his semblance. His semblance is stupid, so I would make some changes. To start off, I wouldn’t make it passive. The way it is now is just,, a weird way to give him a mental illness without actually giving him a mental illness. Activating it would have to be a decision that he made if he knew that he had to make decisions that would be hard for him. This way if his semblance caused him to do something actually horrible, he would be directly accountable for it, instead of blaming him for something that he couldn’t control. Semblances are a representation of the user, so with time and with more stress put onto Ironwood, I could see him falling victim to his own semblance if he were to abuse it too much. This will help as we lead into a better way to write his fall from grace. 

From there, I would keep pretty much everything the same until we get to v7. Team RWBY arrives in Atlas and gets arrested and brought to Ironwood just as they do in canon. This time, however, we have Oscar explain EVERYTHING. No lying. Salem cannot be killed. Oscar explains that Ozpin shut himself off after team RWBY forced the truth out of him, and while the truth is a lot for Ironwood to handle, he understands why Ozpin kept it a secret. He shuns team RWBY for their methods and explains why their actions were unnecessary and abusive, but agrees to help them anyway since he knows that they all need to come together if this is going to work. Hence, his arc kind of goes backwards. Instead of team RWBY having his trust from the beginning, they will need to work to gain it back. 

He takes Oscar under his wing to try and draw Ozpin back out. He greets Qrow, they fall in love, he also formally introduces the team to the Ace Ops. The Ace Ops take an IMMEDIATE backseat in the story. We don’t need more characters. For the sake of this rewrite specifically, they are barely around. We are focusing on Ironwood and his growth/relationships. I would explore more times to show the deep connection between him and Winter. As I said earlier, I see him as a healthy father figure for her, so I would definitely focus on that for a bit. At this point, Winter would not have received the maidens power yet, so we could have a scene of him assuring her that she is a perfect fit for the role, and encouraging her and just,, you know, solidifying that he wasn’t pressuring her into doing it. 

Carrying on with the main plot, instead of being left in the dark for the whole season, Ironwood is already aware that Salem cannot be killed. This gives him and the rest of the team a lot of time to work on a new plan to defeat her. They spend lots of time training, Ironwood takes care of them, offering his resources to them. Overtime the team do start to gain his trust little by little again, but this will all kinda fall apart when Salem arrives. 

With stress levels higher than ever, he activates his semblance. Team RWBY and friends KNOW about his semblance and they understand why he is acting irrationally. Maybe they have different ideas than him, but they would not directly oppose him. This completely fixes him from becoming a cartoon villain. Team RWBY and friends would work WITH Ironwood at a distance to fix amity and get global communications back up safely. From there, Ironwood could deliver a message to the world about Salem. Since people know who he is, it will make the message more impactful. Just like he did with his message to Mantle.

Qrow and Winter are positives in his life. They keep trying to ground him and bring him back to reality, but he will not deactivate his semblance. He is too scared of what’s to come with Salem. They support him in this, and do not turn their back on him. 

Winter receives the maiden’s power, and is told to open the vault to obtain the staff and raise atlas further into the sky to save his people. Winter agrees, why wouldn’t she? They have already evacuated most of mantle to atlas anyway. In situations like this it’s impossible to save everyone. RWBY could whine and bitch if they wanted to, but there is nothing they could do in this situation because, for the sake of this rewrite, they wouldn’t be as stupid as they are in the canon proper. 

The vault is open and the staff is vulnerable. It is in this moment that the ACTUAL VILLIAN comes into play. Watts took advantage of the security from behind the scenes, giving Salem the exact time that the vault was open. And thanks to him overhearing everything, he knows that all she needs to do is use the staff, and Atlas will fall. Salem appears in the room, and the big finale battle would occur. They weren’t ready yet. They hadn’t finalized the plan to stop her without killing her. Team RWBY Oscar and Qrow would do their best to keep Salem distracted while Winter and Ironwood speak to the staff. Meanwhile, Neo could breach Ironwood’s office and retrieve the relic of knowledge for Salem. 

The battle plays out, she keeps coming back, the team gets tired, Salem loses her patience and just PLOWS through them to get to the staff. She enters the realm and the mystical world around them begins to shatter and break. With that much concentrated evil in this place coming up out of nowhere, it would be sure to shift the balance. 

She goes head to head against Winter and Ironwood for the staff. She knows that using the staff will cause Atlas to come crashing down, so that is exactly  what she does. Since he is already out, she just gives him a command. It doesn’t matter what it is. Atlas starts to fall. She strikes a lethal blow to Ironwood (Keeping the theme of her killing headmasters) and flees with the staff. Qrow runs to his side, he and winter are crying, Team RWBY is upset, OZPIN IS UPSET. With his aura broken and his semblance down, he smiles at them all, says that he is proud of them for their work and he knows that they will find a way to defeat her. He tells them to get out and save themselves, save as many people as they can. They do that, but for further angst, Qrow stays with him, holding him and crying against him as Atlas falls. Team RWBY use the gravity dust keeping Atlas falling slowly to their advantage. They get as many people as they can into airships and send them to mistral. They then make their own way to Vacuo... Since global communications are back up, the world would know about this. This would give Shade academy a good chance to prepare. (damn I could write a fic)

What I think of Ironwood’s allusion and what I would change.

It’s dumb the way that CRWBY has portrayed it. In the story of the Wizard of Oz, the tin man doesn’t have a heart, but learns to love overtime. I used THIS aspect for helping my rewrite of Ironwood. He was hardened at the beginning, but managed to trust again and eventually smiled and said that he was proud of team RWBY and friends in his dying moments. It’s just more impactful that way I think. 

[everybodyscupoftea]

chemistry

isaac lahey x reader

isaac needs help in chemistry and you need help in english - the beginning

this is for isaac anon and the few people that wanted this. i’m just dabbling here, so let me know if you guys want more! (i did quite a bit of Research for this and i have ideas)

also let me know, i left it vague, but if i expand i’m probably going to add in scott, stiles, allison, and lydia. would you guys like to keep it supernatural or do full au where they’re just normal college students?

You noticed the boy in your Intro to Academic Writing course, but you didn’t really focus on him, mostly due to freshman year stress, until he sat down next to you in General Chemistry. Stepping into the classroom you’d felt at ease, science was your jam, but the really cute boy put you back on edge. You felt hyperaware of him, his scent, kind of cinnamon-y, fall-esque.

He tapped his fingers on his notebook, and you couldn’t help but notice he wrote in green pen. You glanced every so often to see him doodling in the corner of the page instead of taking notes on the intro lesson on the scientific method that your professor was doing.

The boy rested his chin on his hand and his fingers went from tapping on the notebook to his jaw and you shook your head, trying to focus back on the professor who was talking about your lab groups.

“The people at your table are in your group. Lab is on Wednesday nights, I won’t be the instructor, you’ll have a TA, but you can email me or come to my office hours if you have any questions about what’s going on. I’ll see you all on Thursday.”

You started to pack your stuff and the boy turned to you with a crooked grin, “I’m Isaac.”

Shaking his hand, you introduced yourself and he stood, waiting for you to finish packing your stuff. You zipped your booksack, “You’re in my English class, right?” you asked, faking as if you didn’t notice him as soon as you stepped into the door.

He nodded, “Yeah, with Dr. Terranova.”

“He seems,” you trailed off, looking for the right word, “interesting.”

Isaac grinned, “You mean overwhelmingly picky for an English 101 professor?”

“That’s a great way to put it,” you told him, laughing.

The two of you walked out the door and down the hall together. Isaac shifted his booksack on his shoulders a little and asked, “Do you have any more classes today?”

“Calculus,” you told him and he grimaced.

“Fuck that.”

“You?”

He nodded, “Spanish.”

Unfortunately for you, the buildings were on opposite ends of campus, so you paused just outside the door to the chemistry building. Isaac paused too and smiled, “See you tomorrow night?”

“See you tomorrow, Isaac.”

-

Your lab group was made up of two boys and two girls. Isaac, Andrew, Abigail, and you. Out of the group, you were the only STEM major, and the only one who actually liked chemistry. Isaac patted your shoulder, “Well, that officially makes you team captain then.”

“Thank god,” Abigail added, “I’m an advertising major, my brain noped out of the sciences years ago.”

The other guy, Andrew, said, “I took Chem 2 in high school and didn’t pass the AP exam, chemistry and I have beef.”

You snorted and said, “Cool, well, I’ll try and lead us to the promised land.” They seemed to like that.

-

Your group was really smart, everyone was picking up the labs really easily and you were thrilled, especially when the teacher stood in front of the class after the first test review. She clapped her hands once, “Okay, the lab group with the highest combined test average gets five bonus points added to their test scores. This is me trying to get you guys familiar with study groups, especially if you’re going to be in STEM, which I know some of you are. Study groups got me through school.”

Unfortunately, everyone in your lab group already had stuff going on, so you couldn’t study with them. Fortunately, the test was on intro stuff like the scientific method, conversions, and balancing equations, and your group hadn’t had any issues in any of the lab work, so you weren’t worried.

But when you got the test back, you realized, maybe you should’ve been. Isaac got his handed back first and actually laughed when he looked at the grade. Before you could ask, the professor set yours down on the desk and you started flipping through it, frowning at the little points you’d had taken off for careless mistakes.

“Fuck,” you muttered, “should’ve gotten at least a 97.”

“Wow, can’t believe you fucked it up for the whole group,” Isaac sarcastically responded, nudging you with his elbow, before sliding his test on top of yours. He nudged you again, “As you can see, I’m carrying the team,” and he motioned toward the D written in bright red at the top of his paper.

Your mouth dropped open and you picked the test up, flipping through to see what he’d missed. Eyebrows furrowed, you looked over at him, “You should tell her you accidentally skipped the back page.”

“Oh, it wasn’t an accident, I just didn’t know how to do it.”

“Well,” you stuttered, “it was the same stuff we did in the last lab activity.”

Isaac nodded, “Yes it is, and I didn’t understand it then either.”

“I thought,” you paused, mind racing, “I thought we all did?”

He grinned at you, “Some of us aren’t science brains, my friend.”

“What are you?” you asked as the class started to pack up.

With a soft smile, he threw his booksack over his shoulder, “I’m a literature major.”

-

You didn’t mean to think about it as much as you did, but when 2 a.m. rolled around and you were at your most impulsive you couldn’t stop yourself from sending out a text.

Hey, do you maybe want to meet up and study sometime?

After hitting send you could’ve slammed your head into a wall. You locked your phone and put your head in your hands, “God damnit.” And then your phone dinged.

I’d love that, love to have a STEM genius in my corner.

Your cheeks heated as you read it and your mind raced with your heart. It was beating harder and part of you couldn’t even believe he’d said yes. Taking a breath to steady yourself, you responded.

Idk about genius but I’m not half bad at chem

He responded, even faster than the first time and you grinned, unable to stop it from overtaking your face.

I may not know much about the scientific method or whatever, but all evidence suggests otherwise, genius

-

The next test wasn’t for a few weeks, but Isaac wanted to start studying earlier. He suggested meeting at a coffee shop called The Beanery. Coffee shops weren’t really your jam, you liked the silence of the fourth floor of the library. Go early, get a table, put in head phones, and go to work. But, you were open to try Isaac’s suggestion.

It was brightly lit when you walked in, and he was already there, at a table in the corner, laptop out. Books were spread across the tabletop, and he already had two empty mugs on the table in front of him, leg bouncing as he aimlessly chewed on a pen.

Shaking yourself out of staring, you walked to the counter to order. Isaac smiled up at you when you made it to the table with your coffee.

“Welcome,” he told you, moving some of his books out of the way. Sitting up straighter, Isaac glanced around, “What do you think about this place?”

“It’s nice, definitely a change of pace from my norm.”

“Where’s that then?”

“Library, fourth floor.”

“Quiet up there, huh?”

“Yeah, but I listen to some music for background.”

“I like coffee shops,” Isaac said, closing his laptop, “the vibes are nice and my clothes always smell like coffee afterward which is a fun bonus.”

At his comment, you looked down at his clothes. You were a little surprised to see that he was dressed just like during the week: jeans, a nicer t-shirt, and a cardigan. You’d wondered, deep down, if he dressed nicer for class, but it didn’t seem the case. Isaac cleared his throat and your eyes snapped to his face, ears burning when you saw him staring at you in amusement.

Coughing quietly, you reached for your booksack, “So, chemistry. Do you understand what we’ve been going over?”

“I know they’re called Bohr models but I don’t know anything else about them.”

“Right, so,” you paused a minute, trying to figure out where to start, “it’s a way to draw an atom and it’s kind of like a planet.”

Isaac leaned forward through your explanation, resting most of his weight on his elbows, and tapped the green pen against his lower lip. Every so often he’d ask a question, shift a little and write something down in his notebook by whatever he’d scribbled in class. His questions were shockingly insightful, and you eagerly answered them all.

By the time you’d gotten through the basics of thermodynamics, he’d added a whole page of notes, and you could tell he was starting to lose interest. Shutting your notebook, you told him, earnestly, “I hope this helped a little.”

“I promise,” he looked you straight in the eye, “it makes sense. This all looked like a foreign language before we met up.”

“Good,” you nodded, “this is my jam.”

“Keep on spreading it,” he joked and you couldn’t help but laugh.

“Well,” you admitted, “you may not be good at chem but you’d kick my ass into next week in English.”

“How’s your paper going?” Isaac asked, leaning back and crossing his arms, looking genuinely interested.

“It’s…going.”

He snorted, “That doesn’t sound promising.”

“Yeah neither does my thesis.”

“Do you have your laptop?”

“Yeah.”

“Let me have a look,” he suggested.

Pulling up the word doc, you passed your laptop over, staring down at your hands, twiddling your thumbs, a little nervously, as he read through your rough draft.

“What did Dr. Terranova have to say in your conference?” he asked, pushing your laptop away.

You sighed, “He was less than complimentary.”

Isaac laughed, “It’s not that bad, but it could use some polishing. I can help of course.”

Relief washed over you and you felt a weight off your shoulders, “That would be incredible actually.”

“There, now we’re even. You tutor me in chemistry and I’ll make sure you pass English, starting with this rough, and emphasis on rough, draft.”

Reaching across the table, you shoved at his hand, “Be gentle.”

“I’m going to get another chai,” he said, standing to stretch a bit, “and you pick out what sentence exactly you think is your thesis. We’ll start there.”

Biting your lip to conceal a grin, you nodded, waking your laptop back up.

[classic80sand90smovieloves2]

Meeting and Dating Joey Donner

(Not my gif)(Requested by anonymous)

- It was a little known fact that nearly every girl in your school wanted to date or at least screw Joey Donner. You were no exception but at least you could tell he was a total ass and didn’t actually try to get with him.

- You acted uninterested, convinced yourself at times that you were uninterested yet deep down you knew you secretly were attracted to him even if it was just the surface you were attracted to.

- But you’re disinterest is what drew Joeys attention to you in the first place. As everyone else swooned you completely ignored him and talked to “losers” instead, hiding away from attention and for the most part wearing clothes which left nearly everything to the imagination. Though to be fair, you woke up at five in the morning and stayed in school till two; frankly you just weren’t in the mood for heels.

- He wasn’t entirely compelled just by that. No, his real interest towards you started when a friend of yours decided to give you a makeover and plead with you to try it out for a week just to see what would happen. Since you were equally curious you gave it a try, even though you knew it was going to be a hassle.

- Thats why early one morning you arrived at school dressed in a v-neck top, a tight skirt, heels, hair perfectly done and more makeup than usual. To say he was enticed would be an understatement.

- “Had you always been so hot?” Was a common question among your peers but most didn’t even realize it was you until halfway through the day. Even Cameron and Michael; your friends, were having trouble not staring at your cleavage. Boys were swarming you to say the least.

- It was kind of fucked up to have the same people who made fun of you throughout middle school and high school now open doors and pull out chairs for you.

- You and Joey were lab partners so to an extent you were forced to interact for at least a good ten minutes a day. A lot of girls were jealous of you for this exact reason but you didn’t pay them any mind.

- It was when you were sat at your desk pulling on gloves to cut open frogs that Joey actually got his first look at you, well, the new you. He genuinely thought you were transferred and a new girl was sitting in your place. Sure he thought you were good looking before but every girl looks a bit better with makeup and some tight clothes, at least to guys like him.

- He slowly sat down next to you, eyes trained on your face and body as he went. You paid him no mind as you wrote down your notes and got to work. He sat there staring at you for a few moments before shaking his head and getting a hold of himself. He couldn’t actually get with a “loser” like you; it would ruin his reputation.

- He was bewildered when he found himself actually starting to like you. You, the girl who was a nobody, the girl that half the school didn’t know existed and the girl that, regardless of all that, still didn’t like him. You were weirdly endearing for it; hot even. He actually had to work to gain your attention.

- Joey doesn’t really know how to go after girls that he doesn’t have leverage on. Like if a girl likes him it’s easy to score with her but what does he do if they seem to hate his guts?

- He tried flirting, complimenting you and being sweet before he asked you out for the first time. You rejected him, quite brutally might he add and so he had to take a different plan of action. His second plan was to annoy the hell out of you, getting you riled up so that you’d give him the attention he wanted from you, even if it was given to him with a glare.

- After an especially rough week with him borderline bullying you he made the mistake of asking you out again. That’s how you and him got into an insult match in an empty hallway of the school after classes ended.

- A moment of stillness came over the two of you after a particularly heated exchange of words. When all of a sudden his hands were cupping your cheeks and your lips were smashing together.

- It was rough, passionate, heated. You didn’t exactly know why it was happening but to hell if you weren’t enjoying it. So long story short you ended up making out with the cocky most popular guy in the school who only moments before you were calling a pompous ass.

- When you came to your senses you realized he had you pinned against the wall and was thoroughly enjoying himself. The two of you pulled apart to catch your breath and were silent for a while, still close in proximity. Both of you leaned in and shared a much tamer kiss before he spoke.

“I’m an asshole, I get it, but that was great and you can’t deny it, alright? There’s something between us and you know it so why don’t we see how this plays out. Let me take you out and make everyone in this town jealous that I have you.”

- Well maybe it was worth a shot, right? You pulled him into another kiss which he smiled into like a giddy fool even if he wouldn’t ever admit it.

- So that’s how you became the hottest couple in school and started living out the dreams of all your classmates.

- He has a major soft spot for you.

- He’s really cuddly when you’re alone. He’s like a totally different person.

- Lots of gifts and dates people your age shouldn’t be able to afford.

- Being backstage at his modeling and commercial jobs.

- He’s jealous as hell, he hates boys looking at you but at the same time loves it because he’s a smug asshole. It makes him proud that people want what only he has.

- He’s lowkey possessive.

- You have to wear his jacket in classes you don’t have with him.

- Hickeys and constant pda.

- When he’s bored he tends to write his name on your skin. At some point he’ll get you a necklace with his name on it and a ring for himself that has yours engraved on it. He probably wouldn’t even tell you about his ring, you’d just notice it for yourself one day and get a little misty eyed.

- He’ll randomly grab a part of your body and start drawing on it. He reserves dicks for other people though.

- Once you’re in his car he’s eating your face. His lips are on yours and they aren’t letting up until they get their fill.

- He likes to grab your face and pull you into kisses.

- His arm is constantly wrapped around your shoulders or waist.

- You’re on his lap like 90% of the time.

- Even though he’s got a big ego, he actually gets pretty flustered when you compliment him on things other than his looks. He doesn’t know how to react at first but he tries his best to play it off and act cool.

- Someway, somehow, you’re incorporated into his workouts whether it be you sitting on his back or underneath him during pushups or you being used as a bench press. It makes things more entertaining for him and lets him show off.

- I feel like his household was the kind where money substituted actual relationships so this boy is probably hella attention starved. The first time you showed him innocent affection he was kinda confused.

“What are you doing?”

“Loving you.”

“...alright.”

- He’s an asshole but it’s somehow endearing?

- Anyone who comes close to bothering you is getting his ass kicked either by him or someone he’s paid to do so.

- He’s a pretty demanding person, he wants your attention, affection, anything you can give him. You’re basically inseparable.

- Hugs from behind with his head resting on your shoulder.

- He’s a sexual guy and proud of it so undoubtedly sex will be a part of your relationship.

- It gets him all hot and bothered when you wear his clothes.

- Him “accidentally” touching your boobs and butt. Just blatant groping yet he’ll probably apologize like it was a mistake.

- Wearing one of his rings, most likely on a chain around your neck.

- Flowers and cute but ‘macho’ notes.

- Fighting usually ends up being his fault because he’s a cocky bastard and won’t ever admit he’s wrong. It also doesn’t help that he thinks he can do whatever he wants.

- You tend to give him the cold shoulder. It annoys the everloving fuck out of him because he’s only just now gotten used to and started to rely on your affection. When you’re not giving it to him there’s a lot of tension and stress in his life. People in school suffer since he takes out all his annoyance on them.

- After a little while he’ll man up and apologize, holding out his arms for a hug once he’s finished. He both smugly smile and melts like butter when you wrap your arms around him.

- If you massage his scalp he’ll turn to putty in your hands.

- Skincare with him. Masks, creams, etc; he probably pampers himself more than you do.

- Likes laying his head in your lap and having you read to him.

- Your teachers love you since you tame him in the classes you share with each other.

- Getting him to stop picking on people.

- Helping him with schoolwork. He’s not dumb he just lacks the motivation and focus to actually go through with and finish his assignments.

- He tries his best to calm down with his drinking and partying because he knows you hate when he’s drunk.

- He likes randomly picking you up and throwing you over his shoulder.

- Pestering you is a game he’s good at and one he enjoys.

- His parents probably like you fine enough but your parents probably don’t like him. Not many parents would unless perhaps you just show your mother a picture of him.

- He’s definitely attempted to bribe your teachers into putting you guys in the same classes, teams, and lab groups.

- When he’s alone and actually tries to do well he can be pretty good at drawing.

- If you mention that you like a certain kind of shirt on him he’ll magically own like a dozen more over night.

- He really likes when you gush over and compliment him. It gives him the confidence that he really didn’t need but greatly appreciates. Or maybe it’s just a boost to his already inflated ego.

- Whenever you’re cold all you have to do is snuggle into him, he’s like a human heater and is all smiles when you randomly bury yourself into his chest.

- No one is allowed to interrupt the two of you at lunch without a proper reason unless they want to be made a fool of in front of everybody.

- He has a hard time saying he loves you because he wants to keep up his tough guy reputation but his heart swells everytime you say it. Deep down you know he does.

- You’re the power couple of the school.

[punkpoemprose]

Go Figure- A Kristanna Oneshot

Universe: Art Student/ College AU Length: 2600 Rating: T (I mean there’s nudity and... descriptions... y’all can handle it I’m sure)

Notes: Happy Unbirthday Emma @epbaker! I finally finished that art student/ figure model AU for you. I know I’ve been promising it forever, so here it is! I hope you like it!

Anna yawned as she walked across campus. The art building was mere steps from her dorm, but she’d met a friend for lunch in the science building’s café, had ended up spending a bit too long chatting and subsequently was running late, too late at least to catch the bus across campus. It was not, however, so late that she couldn’t make it across campus on foot, and she was making a valiant effort at it.

The weather was pleasant, the sun was warm on her face and someone was sitting on a low wall outside campus center with a guitar, strumming “somewhere over the rainbow” while being kind enough not to sing it.

All was well in the world, until, that was, a rather strong gust of wind rolled off the Fjord, struck her portfolio and sent her sailing straight into the largest man she’d ever seen. Well, not the largest she’d ever seen really, but the largest she’d ever run directly into, which was saying something as, despite her best intentions, Anna had a bad habit of running directly into people fairly often. The apology she always had prepared slipped from her lips.

“I’m so sorry!” she said as she tried to steer herself and her oversized portfolio away from the man at her side. “I’m so clumsy, I didn’t mean to…”

She paused when she felt his hand wrap around her portfolio handle, two fingers were just on the other side of her four as he turned the whole thing long so as to not catch the wind again. When she looked up to thank him, her mouth went dry. He was not a particularly “pretty” man like many of the guys she had classes with, but he was handsome and looking mildly annoyed.

“I’s fine,” he responded gruffly, releasing the handle and continuing ahead of her, his long legs carrying him along a lot more expediently than her own could manage.

She knew her cheeks were flushed, and she stood, for a moment, to collect herself and watch him get lost in the crush of bodies heading towards the art building.

She made a sound of annoyance under her breath, deciding that she didn’t like people who didn’t take her clumsiness in stride. It wasn’t really her fault this time anyhow, and while he has said that it was fine, his face and his quick walk off hardly said the same.

“Probably a Grad Student,” she decided, mumbling under her breath, “they’re always crabby. Maybe a music major, they’re the worst.”

She sent a mental apology to the “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” guy but decided that as he wasn’t singing, he probably wasn’t a music major anyhow. Music majors always sang, whether they were any good or not. It didn’t matter to them, and their favorite captive audience tended to be anyone on campus who wasn’t in the library and who couldn’t run. Music theory master’s student, the truest breed of asshole in the building, was what she ultimately decided on before regripping her portfolio and heading up into the building.

She found her seat in the studio with a grateful sigh. She’d managed at least, not to bump into anyone else. She did secretly like the idea of bumping into Mr. Tall-Dark-In-A-Gloomy-Way-And-Handsome again. Despite his crabbiness, or what she’d perceived as crabbiness, he was nice to look at, and Anna nefariously thought that if nothing else it might be fun to mildly inconvenience him again.

She let the thought fade into the back of her mind with other daydreams like getting Chinese for dinner instead of dining hall food and talking Residence Life and Housing into letting her bring her cat Olaf to campus as her “therapy animal”. God knew she needed one with all the stress she’d been under between classes and trying to live up to her family’s expectations of her meanwhile.

“Good afternoon class,” he professor called as she started pulling her supplies out of her bag. “I think I told you last week we’d be starting life drawing from models this week, so I want you all to turn your attention to the center of the room where our model will be joining us in just a moment. His name is Kristoff and I expect you all to be professional and work at your most efficient speed. We don’t want him holding a pose too long, you wouldn’t think it, but it can get quite uncomfortable.”

Anna had been looking forward to this unit. She still wasn’t exactly certain of what she wanted to do with her art degree, but she was leaning towards being a medical illustrator, so finally getting to draw actual bodies instead of working from photographs was an exciting prospect.

She pulled her sketchbook out as well as the conte crayons that were already her worst enemy. It seemed like every time she went to use them she snapped them under her fingers. She was going to ask her professor after class if he would mind her switching to charcoal pencil for next class. She knew that it was her fault for pressing too hard, but her hands just always seemed to work better with a pencil or marker than with small waxy fragile things. Chalk and vine charcoal likewise hated her.

“Okay, you all set Kristoff?” her professor said, “Alright, whatever is most comfortable for you. Perfect! Okay, we’re just going to do some quick gestures first so we’re going to do five minutes…”

A groan came from the assembled students, and Anna almost chuckled, finishing getting herself together as her professor quieted the dissention with reminders that they’d been warned they wouldn’t have long and that they were going to do some longer poses towards the end of class. He was saying something about warm ups and how he was starting the clock now.

Anna pulled out one of the lighter crayons to start with and looked up to the model.

The crayon snapped and fell to the floor, crunched in her grip when she realized that the man standing before her was very familiar. Not only that but that he was very familiar and very naked.

Her heart raced, her eyes went wide, and she wished more than anything that she had taken another seat. Oh to be one of her classmates that wasn’t facing Mr. Tall-Dark-In-A-Gloomy-Way-And-Handsome’s face… and perhaps worse than that, his manhood.

The brief thought she’d had while climbing the stairs to the studio that he was rude because he was compensating for “something” was whisked from her thoughts as she was faced with that particular part of his figure. She knew her face was growing hot, and that he caught her eye made her feel like deflating completely into her chair. Recognition sparked in his eye, and then she saw the slightest shift in his own expression towards embarrassment.

She could hear minutes ticking down in the back of her head, forcing herself to keep looking at him, but not to think about anything other than taking what she saw and put it to paper. She scrambled to pick up the broken bits of crayon and press the nub she managed to collect into the paper. This, she decided, was going to be the longest class of her life.

***

When they had taken a break, Anna had excused herself from the room before she could catch their model, Kristoff’s eyes again. He was slipping a robe on when she made her escape. She felt his eyes on her as she left the room, and when she’d returned, he’d met her eyes as she reentered the room. She thought that maybe he’d wanted to say something to her, but she didn’t give him the opportunity to say it.

Now though, as class was ending and he was redressing, she didn’t have much of a say in whether or not he’d be able to say something to her. Her professor had seen her conte crayon incident and was discussing the importance of pressure and tool use to her. He was, also suggesting, much to Anna’s relief, that she start using a toned charcoal pencil set instead of the crayons in order to increase her productivity.

She had only a few sketches, and all of them were as much a mess as she felt. Her professor was kindly, telling her how the first figure drawing class with nude models was always stressful and that she’d do better next time, when she saw Kristoff, the model, staring at her, fully clothed.

She nodded to her professor appreciatively and told him that she’d look into the pencil set and that she appreciated his feedback and that she’d see him next week, when she saw him slipping from the room and into the hall. It was a small mercy, she supposed, that he, Kristoff, didn’t want to talk to her after all. She supposed that there was plenty he could say to her “you shouldn’t be so clumsy with your portfolio you could have hurt someone”, “your crayon falling on the floor ruined my focus”, “you probably would have gotten more work done if you weren’t constantly in a battle to look at and to not look at my dick”. She flushed at the thought as her professor released her and she was able to walk out with her things. She didn’t have another class for the day, so she fully planned to collapse on her crappy college dorm mattress and bemoan her inability to be a normal person.

He was in the hall when she walked out, looking sheepish, and totally un-asshole-ish, which made her wish that he was the jerk that she’d made him out to be before class. It would be easier to draw him next class if she just didn’t like him and was hate drawing him. She’d even take any points off her professor wanted to take if she drew him the with tiniest dick on the planet, a clear and evident incorrect detail.

“Hey… uh… Anna?”

She had thought about walking straight past him, making those muscled legs chase after her if he really wanted to talk, but the expression on his face was nervous and shy and she found herself unable to do any such thing. She realized that he must have heard her professor call her over, or maybe he’d asked a classmate for her name during the break. She certainly hadn’t given it to him.

“Yes?” she said, trying her best not to scowl or smile, both of which felt like logical expressions in reaction to him. Her brain was battling between how to treat “jerk who didn’t have the time to deal with her in the quad” and “attractive and shy guy standing in front of her in a tight fitting shirt that barely hid the strong muscled form she knew to be underneath” in a way that felt logical and satisfying.

He looked down at his shoes, pushing off from the wall he’d been half leaned against, waiting for her to walk out. It struck her as a sort of nervous motion, like he hadn’t really thought this far ahead and like he was much less smooth than he’d like to be. It was enough to make a smile ghost on her lips.

“I… I’m sorry about earlier… in the quad. I was late… I commute and my truck had problems and… you probably don’t care about that… I just, I just wanted to say that I’m sorry for acting so annoyed with you. I’m just… not really good with people, even when I’m not upset. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you though. I should have said that it was okay.”

She couldn’t help but laugh. It was a small one, and she did her best to cover it.

“No, don’t… Look I’m really clumsy, I shouldn’t have expected for you to say it was fine. I’m sorry too.”

He was standing close, he towered her, but she wasn’t intimidated. She could tell now that she was seeing him as he was, as he usually was at least. He seemed a little shy, a little nervous, but kind, and it made her wish she hadn’t been so mean earlier, even if it was mostly just in her thoughts.

“Can you answer a question for me though?” she asked, unwilling to help herself.

“I.. yes. Sure.”

She smiled at him, trying to give him the warmth she probably should have given him from the start.

“What’s your major?”

He seemed surprised by the question, but quickly answered, “Pre-vet.”

Oh, she liked that. Not pretentious… at least not nearly as much as she thought music majors were. He looked a little bit older than her, so she wondered if he was a senior or just had gotten a late start to still be “pre-vet” instead of on the vet track. It didn’t really matter she decided. He already liked him.

“Can I ask you something too?” he said, seeming nervous again, even when she assented with a nod.

“Can I get you a coffee or something… you know… because I want to apologize. Not because I…”

He trailed off and she watched him brush a hand through his mussed blonde hair. A part of her had wanted to comb her hand through it while he’d been standing there, naked in the classroom when she’d been trying to decide whether she didn’t like him or whether she found him insanely attractive.

“Not because you…?”

She saw the flush on his cheeks and she felt like she was missing something that she should have caught.

He seemed confused for a moment, and then he flushed harder, avoiding her eye as she looked up at him.

“Oh… I didn’t think… I figured you’d noticed and that was why you’d left during the break?”

She shook her head, trying to think what he thought her motivations could have been other than her annoyance about their interaction outside.

“I… well… I was staring and… you’re very beautiful… and…”

She snorted, “I spent a whole class drawing you naked, why would I be annoyed that you were looking at me when I was trying not to stare at your… Oh.”

She put two and two together in that moment. She had done a lot of staring and trying not to stare at a certain part of his anatomy, and she supposed that she might have just not noticed a certain… change in him while she was drawing.

She thought that she might combust. He was standing a bit uncomfortably, she supposed it made sense, she’d just not connected the signs until he said something.

“Coffee… coffee would be nice,” she said, face hot and voice squeaking out of her throat. “But I think I should buy… sorry about that.”

He gave a little half shrug, red as a tomato himself. “It’s not something you should be sorry about I should have…”

She giggled then, unable to help herself, “No, no. I’m flattered, really! And I mean… I guess if I knew that all it took to get someone this nice and this attractive interested was to smack them with my portfolio…”

He laughed then, a warm sound that made her feel like she was melting on the spot.

“I guess I’m lucky you didn’t. Because now we get to have coffee, and maybe talk a little?”

She smiled and kicked out her portfolio with her toe, bumping it into his side again, before walking down the hall, knowing he’d follow.

[gffa]

WHY I WILL ALWAYS DEFEND THE CGI IN THE PREQUELS--They were doing some pretty mind-bogglingly new stuff that had never been done before and creating all these tools and techniques that are still being used today and, honestly, while not everything holds up, a shocking amount of it does.  The work that went into The Phantom Menace really was amazing: ‘ALL FILMS ARE PERSONAL’: AN ORAL HISTORY OF STAR WARS: EPISODE I THE PHANTOM MENACE [x] ‘Well, This is the Future’ Once in production, The Phantom Menace would lean heavily on digital effects and technology, with more visual effects shots than any film in ILM’s history. John Knoll: I think the first time I really got exposed to what was ahead of us — I suppose the first thing was we read the script. There were, I think, three or four of us: myself, [visual effects supervisor] Dennis Muren, I forget who else was there. I think there were three or four of us, went out to the Ranch. There was one copy of the script [Laughs] and so basically what it is, we sat together in a room, and somebody started and would hand off the page that they had just read to the next person in the line. I don’t know, I was third in line or something, and I would get the pages and read them and hand them on. It was pretty overwhelming. I had a million questions because you’re reading it written on a page, you can imagine a lot of different ways that that could be executed. That could be a full set, the alien character that’s being discussed, I haven’t seen a design yet so I don’t know whether that’s just a guy in a suit or what. Initially reading through the script it seemed like it was a pretty big and ambitious thing. Sometime later we had — and there’s video of this, I think it’s on the making-of video — we saw the storyboards. George had the art department draw up storyboards for the whole movie. It was 3,600 storyboards, something like that. George walked us through all the storyboards. It wasn’t just telling us what was going on and this is this and that, he was also kind of mixing in what he was thinking about [for] shooting methodology. He had a number of colored highlighters, he had a magenta, a blue, and yellow highlighters, and as he was going down, things that he was going to shoot in front of a blue screen he’d scribble blue where he’d imagine the blue screen would be, and I think yellow was for live-action, and magenta was for CG characters like Jar Jar or battle droids or whatever. He sort of went through that, he went, “Yeah, it’s going to be this,” sort of telling us what was happening in all the frames. I was used to a situation where almost every show we did there was something that we were doing that was new, that we’d have to develop new tools or new techniques to do, but it’s like almost every storyboard was something that we hadn’t done before or didn’t have tools that could do. I was taking notes the whole time, making note of all the things we were going to have to do in R&D, or new things that would have to be developed to handle doing dense scenes with thousands of characters in them, or robust cloth simulations, or rigid body dynamics. There was a pretty long list of things. I walked out of that meeting with my head spinning, because it was not only massive in terms of sheer shot number, but in terms of all the new tech that has to be developed to get it done.

Rob Coleman: I remember going back to California and building the team up, and doing the early animations, and as time went on, I started really suffering in terms of insomnia and stress and freaking out, and I knew the world was waiting for this film. After a couple of months, three months, I actually drove up to Skywalker Ranch to resign the job to George. So I booked the time in to see him, and I went in there and I started fumbling and saying all this stuff through three hours of sleep, or whatever I had. He’s like, “What are you talking about?” I said, “Well, just, the world is waiting for this, and the pressure of this, and I’m not sure if I can perform, and…” He goes, “Hey, hey, hey, wait. You’re working for one person. You gotta make one person happy. That’s me, and I’m happy. I think the animation you guys are doing is great.” I said, “Y-you do?” He said, “Yeah. It’s great. It’s my problem to worry about the world, and I’m not even worried about them. We’re making these films for me. You’re making me happy, so you can relax, and you can go back down to ILM and everything will be fine.” I was the happiest guy driving back down Lucas Valley Road. I was like, “Oh, my God!” From that point on, I was fine. I slept like a baby, I was able to do it, I was able to focus on it. George Lucas: You don’t really start something unless you think you’re right, and think that you’re on the right track and what you’re doing is going to be great. It never occurs to you that it’s not going to work. Otherwise you wouldn’t do it. That’s what keeps people from doing things. So I didn’t worry about that part. I knew that the process of making a film was very difficult, and most of it was grounded in nineteenth century technology — or older than that, actually. And it had just reached its limits and there wasn’t anything anyone could do about it. That was especially true in visual effects. And it was through visual effects that I began to realize we had the power and the knowledge to develop something that really would make a big difference. I started that whole process. I wanted to raise my kids, so I retired, but I spent my time building up the company and at the same time developing this digital technology. Rob Coleman: As reference, I think there were around 200 [effects] shots in Men in Black, and there were 2,000 shots in Phantom Menace. John Knoll: I’ll give you an example of some of the things we had to develop. I think prior to Episode I, the most complicated CG animation we had ever done was on Mars Attacks!, years before. We had one or two shots that had like 16 or 18 Martians in it, and they all had the little spacesuits and the helmets and their props and all of that. But that nearly brought the whole system down to its knees because having that many rigged characters in a scene at once just was more than the systems could handle at the time. I was regularly seeing shots where there were 50 battle droids, or a big battle scene where there are two characters fighting in the foreground, but the background had hundreds or thousands of characters back there. This is a whole order of magnitude of higher complexity than we dealt with, so we’re going to need to have systems for managing that level of complexity. And then a few years before, I think it was maybe ’95, we had done Spawn. There was a number of shots where Spawn’s cape does something magical, and we’d done cloth simulations for that that didn’t look super realistic, and it was fine for the movie because it was kind of stylized. The cape was almost a character in itself. We didn’t have a particularly good or usable cloth simulation system. But looking at the designs of the characters, they’re all wearing clothing. Jar Jar has clothing, and Boss Nass has clothing, and Watto has clothing, and we’re going to have to do digital doubles of the Jedi to do some of stunty things that we can’t shoot for real, and they need to have their cloaks and all of that. We’re going to need to have a good cloth simulation package in there. And we said, all right, we’re going to have to develop that. And then we had — there were lots of shots of Jedi cutting through battle droids, so the pieces of the battle droid clatter down onto the ground and that’s hard to animate completely from scratch, and there were so many shots, that, all right, we can’t fake it through that. We need to have a rigid body dynamic system. These were the things I’d been seeing at SIGGRAPH and technical papers about how to do those believable physical collisions, and we’re going to need a robust rigid body simulation system that’s integrated into our pipeline. It was just a lot of that kind of stuff. All these things that I knew were technically possible; we didn’t have any tools that did that. Rob Coleman: Part of my problem was, for months, there was no crowd system, which meant there was no Gungan battle. No ability for my team to animate hundreds of characters back then. It just didn’t exist. I remember there was one line in the script that said something along the lines of “The Gungan army walks out to battle.” That was six months of work — that one sentence. You were like, “Holy [expletive], how do we do that?” And that was one sentence out of a 100-page script. Ultimately, it was a matter of acquiring the right tools to accomplish what George Lucas was asking, using the latest versions of software already available, or developing new techniques. Rob Coleman: We had a database with all the different Gungan walks, runs, throws, falls, fights. We had little vignettes. We’d have Gungans and battle droids, upwards of five of them together in a little cluster, and we’d animate that. And then we could put that cluster into any shot, and we could rotate it, and it wouldn’t look the same to the camera. So we could create a finite number of those and then we could place them, and we’d actually get a fair amount of movement into the shot. We’d just be able to use it over and over again, and we’d put some hero work in the foreground, and the audience would never know.  Jean Bolte: Back then they called it Viewpaint, it was the first software that was developed to paint onto computer graphic models. I was the Viewpaint supervisor. Most people know this, but Viewpaint was a huge leap forward in Jurassic Park. Dennis [Muren] has always acknowledged that. As I have stated publicly, I don’t want to make it sound like I think my job was the most important contribution to computer graphics, but it was a very important one. The work that we were able to do, because we could paint onto the models, transformed the look of everything. Up until then we’d had The Abyss water tentacle, we had the mercury man in T2, very simple, very rudimentary, you know, the shading on things didn’t allow for very much believability, really. What we were able to do with the paint software, even in the very early, early stages there on Jurassic — I didn’t work on Jurassic, but I was having a good look at it. They were able to contribute a bump surface and a paint surface to give things the scale pattern, the aging, obviously the color, the different qualities of specularity. And in addition to that, for anything that was hard surface, there’s the aging that comes into making something rusty or dented or scratched. And when you have that, suddenly a thing has a story. It has a history. In addition to it having the believability, you can introduce the backstory as to, why did it get dented here? Why are the scales roughed up in this area? What kind of creature is this thing? Is it dry? Does it hunt? Is it an apex predator? Is it moist? All of that stuff is the story. So even if you’re making a creature that has never been seen before, you can kind of establish what its niche is in nature, and then contribute all of that to the look of it. The dinosaurs in Jurassic, that was a huge breakthrough to be able to see that. So the software being very rudimentary still functioned and continued to update. Every project there were things that were written into the software and in our technique and approach that allowed us to get more and more realism. The Phantom Menace featured several completely digital characters. Jar Jar Binks, played through motion-capture by Ahmed Best, would be the most high-profile, a supporting character that shared screen time with our heroes. Initially, the idea was for Best to perform in a suit and have Jar Jar’s neck and head created digitally, but this proved more costly and labor-intensive than just using a full CG model. Watto, the junk dealer, and Sebulba, Anakin’s rival podracer, were two other completely CG characters that played prominent roles. Ahmed Best: George wanted a character that was part-Goofy, but very physically aware. He really moved me toward what eventually became the walk. He wanted me to move slower, longer. Jar Jar was taller than I am, so he really wanted Jar Jar’s head to move in a specific way, so that forced me to try to come up with a physicality so that Jar Jar could move in a way that would work once animated. But a lot of it was just a collaboration of movement, me giving George options, and him saying, “Yeah, more like that.” The voice was the same thing. It was just me giving George options, and he was like, “Yeah, do that one. Do that voice.” George Lucas: I was tired of putting masks on people. I was much more interested in having them be all-digital so you could do more things with them. More freedom.

Ahmed Best: Jar Jar’s character, the movement and the motivation, was really based off of Buster Keaton. George really honed into that aesthetic when it came to me. Jean Bolte: Casper had a speaking character, Dragonheart, that was a speaking character, but there was something about Jar Jar being a character in this film that was a huge step further. I mean, he had to work in so much of the film in so many different environments. He had to sit there and interact as if he was somebody George had cast and put into a suit. Ahmed Best: It was great. I loved it. It never really felt like I was this other thing. It felt like we were all actors in the movie working together. This whole idea of me being in the movie or not being in the movie never occurred to all of us while we were shooting. It was never a separate thing and, subsequently, that’s what mo-cap has become now. It’s become actors in the movie, doing the motion, and then animation later building the realized, fantastical look of the character. But the actors are an integral part of the filmmaking and an integral part of the collaboration. And that kind of started with Phantom Menace. Rob Coleman: I believed in my crew, and I believed that I’d understood what George was looking for from a performance point of view. Ahmed Best: After principal [photography], I spent probably another year and a half, maybe two years, going back and forth between ILM and New York working out some of the kinks. That final battle scene with all the Gungans and the droids and the battle tanks, that was me, George, Rob [Coleman], John [Knoll], everybody at ILM, up in San Francisco figuring it out. It was just us in a room, there was nobody else there. I was doing all the motion that Jar Jar did in the final battle scene. George really wanted that to feel like not only just a live-action battle, but he wanted it to have the same physical comedy as a Buster Keaton movie. We worked really hard on that final battle scene. Jean Bolte: One of the things about this film is that this is what George wanted. He wanted them to have a similar kind of quality to the animatronic characters who also were not necessarily always 100 percent believable. But they had a charm to them, they had a life in them. That was more important than anything. I think Jar Jar has this quality. Ahmed Best: For me, it was just such a joy to be as creative as I wanted to be because I knew I had so much room. And George was really generous with the amount of room he gave me to bring Jar Jar to life. Doug Chiang: Watto was completely out of nowhere, and that scared me, because the genesis of Watto was that I did an early trader baron portrait that George really liked. The story of that character changed eventually, but he liked that. One day he came in and said, “Remember that portrait of the trader baron? Take that portrait, let’s put on a body, and add the feet, and add bat wings.” And that was the brief! It scared me because it didn’t make any sense, and I thought it was going to be a complete cartoony character that people are going to laugh at. I remember we spent weeks and weeks designing it, trying to make it very real, and George kept saying the same thing. And then literally one day I said, “Okay, I’m going to take George exactly at his word, and draw exactly that.” And it worked. One of my big appreciations for George is that he can push us quite a bit. I learned to trust him that he knows what he wants, and he will then stop us if we’ve gone too far. And right now Watto is one of my favorite characters. Rob Coleman: The amazing thing about The Phantom Menace, I think, certainly for the ILM animators, is we were moving from putting creatures in scenes to actually being actors in the movie. This is what I was trying to get across to them. The notion of getting up and acting things out. Talking about what’s happening internally inside a character’s head. Do they believe in what they’re saying? What do they want from the scene? Everything you would talk to an actor about I was trying to teach these animators. Jean Bolte: The main characters, Sebulba, Watto, and Jar Jar, were things that I had painted. Those were great. I mean, Jar Jar, obviously, was an important character. I remember that Doug Chiang [paid] very, very close attention to him. After there was artwork from Doug, and the model, then I would do the texture paint on it, and then Doug Chiang would take a frame render and paint on it. The next morning I’d come in, I’d see what he had done, have a meeting with him, I would incorporate those changes into Jar Jar. That process went on every day for weeks and weeks and weeks. Rob Coleman: I remember showing [a test of Watto] to George, and he was so excited that he showed him to Frank [Oz], who was doing the actual rubber puppet of Yoda on that first one. And then Frank said to George, “Well, this is the future.” And George was just beaming. The centerpiece action sequence of the film is the podrace, a fast, furious race between Anakin Skywalker and a smattering of strange aliens, through a course that includes a stadium, caves, rocky terrain, and the occasional Tusken Raider sniper. John Knoll: I had been playing around with a desktop tool that did two-dimensional physics simulations. It was called Interactive Physics. You could draw 2D shapes and you could have gravity and drag, and you could attach springs or chains to them and let them collide, and kind of do what they do. Seeing the designs for the podracers, they’re supposed to be suspended on repulsors, like Luke’s speeder, where they just sort of hover, and if you disturb them they have a kind of springy action to them. So they’re supposed to be just kind of hovering there, and then the cables go back to the cockpit. I just kept thinking that they should be, as they’re driving along, bouncing and springing and kind of look like they’re being held up by springs.

I used this Interactive Physics program to build a top down version of a podracer in 2D, where I had two engines and chains that went back to a cockpit. Then I attached thrusts to the engines, and I hooked them together by a spring network. I would jostle them a little bit and they would have this nice secondary springy motion that you would never have the time and patience to animate believably. I just really liked the look of it. I talked to Habib Zargarpour, my friend that was doing all that [computer animation software] Maya beta testing, and I said I want to try setting something up like this in 3D where we make up a frame and we suspend the pods from springs that attach to the frame. Basically, what we’re going to animate is, we’re going to animate the frame, we’re going to jostle it around, and when we animate the pods we’re basically just animating this frame. The pods are just going to hang from that, and when we move the frame, they’ll kind of bounce around and we’ll get all this really nice secondary motion. So that’s how the animation system worked, we weren’t actually animating the pods directly. We’re animating this frame that was holding them up. That was, I think, the first time that we’d done vehicle animation that was all being driven by rigid bodies and dynamic simulation system. Jean Bolte: I remember the first time I saw the podrace come together on the screen, and I was like, “This is it. This is amazing and it’s a beautiful collaboration.” The model makers and the computer graphics department come before me in the [process]. It’s first artwork, then the model makers get busy, the CG model department gets busy modeling, then it’s passed off to paint. Often it goes back to model and back to paint and back to model. John Knoll: Yeah, it’s a mixture. Doug and the group had designed this racecourse that had all these very distinctly different-looking regions. It was all pretty deliberate because George wanted you — if you saw two racers in one particular terrain — to immediately understand where you were in the racetrack. “Oh, that’s the area right past the stadium,” or “There’s the arches,” or “That’s the area where they get into this narrow canyon.” So if you kind of understood what that racetrack is like, then you cut to this character and you kind of know, “Oh, he’s like 10 seconds behind Anakin because he’s still in the crater field,” and that kind of thing. We had all these different terrains we had to create, and some of them were more closed in than others. A couple of them, like Beggar’s Canyon, and there was another sort of cave, this stalactite cave, I figured were closed in enough that we could do in miniature.

(The stunning podrace arena miniature.)

(Thousands of painted Q-tips stood in for audience members in the podrace arena miniature.) The podrace stadium was another one where I really felt like we’d get a lot of benefit out of building a miniature of that. Partly I was kinda looking back at how people had done things in the past, and the Ben-Hur stadium from the chariot race, that always really impressed me. Those were done in miniature and they just looked amazing. We’ll build a miniature of that arena, and we’ll shoot all the elements outdoors, and we’ll get that really nice, realistic daytime look. And then there were other terrains where it was just wide open and we were going at 600 miles an hour, and it seemed like the only way to do it was this CG projection technique. It was a whole mixture of whatever technique would work. Ben Burtt: I followed through with the podrace from day one to however we ended it. [Laughs] Even in the earliest stages of temporary assemblies of the race I showed George, I always was starting to put sound in. I, of course, had a library to start with of aircraft, and some automobile, cars, and things that had high-speed racing-type sounds that I could manipulate. I would sketch those in a temporary way. As we went along and the podrace developed, I would go out and record new vehicles, as would [sound designer] Matt Wood and a few others. We’d send them out to races to get drag strips, cars, we did some — everything from antique biplanes with wires humming on them to running an electric toothbrush up and down a harp string. It wasn’t just restricted to aircraft or anything. We did a lot of cars, a lot of aircraft of different types, and then manipulated other sound effects. George Lucas: The podrace was the direct result of my lifelong fascination with racing. I thought it would be fun to build really intense race vehicles that were as much sort of chariots as they were anything else, like two horses and a chariot. I took that idea, and plot-wise, it was necessary to get them off the planet. Obviously, you could come up with a million different ways, but I have a tendency to always go toward the racetrack. It was very dynamic. And it’s fun. I love it. The digital revolution of which The Phantom Menace was part did not stop with effects; it played a big part in the editing of the film and the entire delivery method. Still, the movie was ultimately made utilizing techniques both new and traditional. George Lucas: I’m not sure where my embrace of technology comes from. All art is technology. Film, or the movies, were the highest point of technology in the art world. You just had to learn a lot, and there’s a lot of technical things to deal with. So that wasn’t the issue as much as it was the fact that I didn’t mind change. And I didn’t mind change because I actually physically worked in it. I worked as an editor, I worked as a cameraman, and I know how difficult it was just working in the medium where you have little splices of film, you can’t find them, when you go to look for something you have to go through reels and reels of film. It takes a long time and it’s very frustrating on lots of levels. Just the whole idea that back in the Kodak days, you’d shoot the film, and then you have to send it in to the drugstore to get it processed, and then bring it back to see what you have, is slow and frustrating. And the whole thing was built on that, whereas if you do it electronically, digitally, you can see what you’re doing as you’re doing it. So you know exactly what you’re doing. Ben Burtt: Phantom Menace was shot on film. It was the last of the ones shot on film, but it gets transferred to a digital form, then we’re cutting on Avid editing machines. Once you’ve got the image in the digital realm, rather than a physical piece of film, of course then it opens up the door to the amenities of working digitally. You can cut and paste images, and you can duplicate them, and you can flip flop and enlarge them and shrink them, doing all kinds of stuff with a lot of fluidity that you would never have if you were working on a physical film. George loved that world of manipulation after the fact. You learned working for George that no shot as the camera saw it was final. [Laughs] It could be thought of as just an element for further development.

(Jean Bolte paints a Sebulba maquette.) Jean Bolte: When Jurassic came out, the company offered to train those of us who were interested in making the switch — they referred to it as “making a switch to computer graphics.” I had no intention whatsoever of making a switch [from the model shop]. What I always wanted to do was to train on this, in the new technology, learn as much as I could about it, but also keep the door open in the model shop. I had to fight kind of hard to make that work. But I think I was fairly successful because during Episode I, I was still able to go back to the model shop and paint maquettes, sort of keep both doors open. I loved that. John Knoll: To be perfectly frank, I was getting a lot of pressure from George and Rick to do less with miniatures and more with digital techniques. And what George told me, this was, I think, during Episode II or III, he was pushing back on me wanting to do so much with miniatures. He said, “Listen, the future is in computer graphics with these digital techniques, and you’re using miniatures as a crutch. You’re going to have to get better at doing this computer graphics work and expand the palette of things you’re going to be able to do that way. And the way you’re going to get good at it is doing it, so I’m going to kick the crutch out from under you and it’s for your own good. Don’t build so many miniatures. Do this stuff more with digital techniques because you need to be doing that.” Even though my preference would have been to keep doing what I was doing on Episode I. I look back on a lot of the miniature work we did on Episode I and I think it still looks amazing. Like Theed city, I think a lot of those shots are completely convincing. You’d never know. And I think the podrace stadium looks pretty good, and the podrace hangar looks really good. And there’s a lot of extensions that I don’t think people even know are extensions that are in the Nemoidian ship, of the corridors and the bridge and all of that. You’d never know. 

[watermelon-pxpsicle]

ℙ𝕚𝕔𝕥𝕦𝕣𝕖 ℙ𝕖𝕣𝕗𝕖𝕔𝕥| ℍ𝕒𝕨𝕜𝕤 𝕩 ℝ𝕖𝕒𝕕𝕖𝕣

ℂ𝕙𝕒𝕡𝕥𝕖𝕣 𝕆𝕟𝕖||𝔻𝕠𝕨𝕟𝕝𝕠𝕒𝕕

𝕏𝕏𝕏

{•N/N•}=nickname

{•M/L/N•}=mother's last name

𝕐𝕠𝕦𝕣 ℙ𝕆𝕍

I wait patiently in my chair checking my notes on this week's modeling session. In pure boredom I start to do that leg thing that people do when they need to get out extra energy. Before I look up though I can feel warm calloused hands covering my eyes. "Guess who?" I chuckle and say "Hm, well I suppose my only guess would a certain man with wings who is late to his modeling session" he laughs and says "aw come on, I'm not late you're just always early!" He takes his hands off my eyes and says "I'd never be late for a modeling gig with you" he gives one of his famous smug smirks and I roll my eyes.

I lead him back to the hair washing chair and continue to wash his hair. "So how’s hero work?” He sighs and says “Stressful, I guess but it’s nothing I can’t handle” he says it with a cocky smirk but I can’t help but feel sad for him. Hero work certainly does look stressful and it’s a shame that the hero commission can’t give the heroes just a little bit more free time. Although I guess it’s not like villains are just going to give them some days off to chill and just relax. His wings make it a bit difficult for him to lay down in the chair so he usually just sheds all his feather into a pile and just leaves them there, until he uses them again. It’s kind of weird to just have hawks feathers all over the place, but I’ve gotten used to it.

Once I'm done with washing Hawks's hair I blow dry and brush it. After I'm done with perfectly brushing it though he just has to run his hands through it. "H-hey! What are you doing that for!" I rush over and he chuckles. "Aw come on, I was itchy! It's not my fault that you buy high-class shampoo. Besides I like having you brush my hair" I sweat drop and go back to styling his hair until it's back to its fluffy, clean, and neat self.

Next is makeup. I don't have to add too much makeup to Hawks since he already has flawless skin, but fixing his bird eyeliner usually helps the aesthetic. It wasn't until the first time I tried wiping the little triangles under his eyes that I found out that that was part of him. We laughed it off anyways, but I still felt embarrassed inside and curios on how he just happened to be born with eyeliner on. When applying the eyeliner I have to be careful to not to touch Hawks too much, since he's ticklish and last time I did that his wings ruffled and spread and knocked over the chairs.

I can almost hear his breathing when I'm applying the makeup, maybe scared of getting ticklish again or just from staying still for a period of time. After I'm done he relaxes again and he follows me to his changing room. When he's in the changing room I check my phone to see any text notifications from the date I had last night. Although it seems as though I'm cursed to be forced alone, forever.

When Hawks comes out he notices my slightly saddened expression. "Hey chickadee, whats got you down?" I look up at him surprised and try to put a smile back on. "Oh nothing, just was spacing out that's all" He nods but I can tell he doesn't believe me. When we're around less people he asks again. "Seriously though, are you okay?" I sigh "I don't know, I guess right now my love life is slowly dying, although not like it was strong in the first place" Hawks looks a little taken a back by what I just said and a little sad too.

"I mean, all my friends have boyfriends. I'm just a twenty two year old who hasn't had one in what feels like forever" I exhale and look back up at him. "I'm sorry, I really shouldn't be talking to you like this. Super unprofessional of me let's do the photo shoot now" he was hesitant to move or talk back first but Hawks eventually followed me to the shoot. "So anyway I was thinking about matching the tones of your outfits to compliment the backdrops to really get a whole aesthetic going. And anyway I was also thinking about- Hawks?" I snap once trying to regain his attention. "Hawks?" Snapping gains got his attention and he turned to me.

"Hm? Oh! Sorry spaced out there for a bit" we continued the shoot without any further problems with him and his tendencies. We actually got it down fairly quick. "Anyway we'll reschedule for next time?" He nodded "yup just as usual" I go to exit and then I hear him mumble "look forward to seeing you again" I turn around making sure I heard him correctly. "Hm?" He looked a bit a flustered and just said "ah, I meant- I mean, um Bye!"

"Uh, yeah sure. Bye!" I exit the building a bit confused but eventually shrugged it off. "Just bird stuff right?" No matter the cause I go back to my cozy studio loft and sigh. "It's only Four O clock, but I still feel tired" maybe I should make something to eat. After I made something to eat I sat down on my couch and started sketching new ideas for different fashion and jewelry lines. I also brought a bag of popcorn with me. Eventually I put my hand in the bag and nothing was left in there except kernels. Looking around I realize the sun has already started to set. "Did I really just spend three hours non-stop drawing?" I shrug and decide to get to bed.

𝕋𝕚𝕞𝕖 𝕊𝕜𝕚𝕡 𝕥𝕠 𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝕟𝕖𝕩𝕥 𝕕𝕒𝕪'𝕤 𝕃𝕦𝕟𝕔𝕓

"Aw come on {•Y/N•}! You need to put yourself out there. Here it's a free app, just get it" I sigh listening to my friend, Alex's lecture about why I should get a dating app. "Listen here you've been single for way to long girl friend. It's time you go get yourself a man!" "Alex I'm honestly fine, it's sweet that you're doing this for me, but maybe I'm just not destined to meet someone" I take a sip of my drink and look down at my purse.

"Hey can I borrow your phone I want to know what the weather is tomorrow"

"don't you have your's?"

"Yeah but I left it in the car"

I reluctantly gave her my phone and before I knew it she was giggling. "What?" I look over and realize she already downloaded the app!

"A-Alex!" She puts her hand up just to drop and give me one of those "Oh please" looks and showed me my phone back. "Look hun you already got a match" I look down at my phone and notice that I did get a match. "Hold on, really?" I scroll though the person's name and it read 'Keigo Takahiro' he didn't have a picture but it seemed like none of these profiles did. "Hey why aren't their any photos here?"

"This app is made so people don't focus on looks and focus more on the person. "But then you could be talking to a creepy old man!" She just shrugs "you could be doing that too on any other app". Wait so you put my name as {•N/N•} {•M/L/N•}?" She nodded. "I mean you're kind of well known. Since your always around Hawks it's probably better if people don't read your profile and just say 'omg it's that one girl who always around hawks'"."I suppose" although I wasn't really listening I was scrolling through his profile. I didn't find anything that really stood out to me. "Hm his favourite food is chicken, he likes heights, he has a stable job. Maybe this isn't such a bad thing after all" alex smiles "see? I told you so, soon enough you'll be out here with kids" I roll my eyes and laugh "oh please no let's talk about marriage before that"

ℍ𝕒𝕨𝕜𝕤'𝕤 ℙ𝕆𝕍

𝔼𝕒𝕣𝕝𝕚𝕖𝕣 𝕥𝕙𝕒𝕥 𝕕𝕒𝕪

"I don't know Miruko, I just want a girlfriend" she looks at me weirdly and says "don't look at me I already got myself a girlfriend, and trust me I don't think I'm going to be needing no man anytime soon" We're lying in a parking lot because apparently I crash landed there and Miruko came because she thought there were carrots involved. I sigh "I didn't say you, Although you know {•L/N•}?" she jumps up and says "you mean your fashion designer?" I nod "I think I like her" after a few minutes of silence she says "dude, I know. You tell me this everyday" Then it looks like she gotan idea "hey! You should get a dating app!" I blink "what why?" "To get your mind off {•L/N•}! Since your obviously not going to make a move anytime soon" I think for a while "but what if I don't want to get the app?" She shrugs and says "then have fun complaining to me that you want a girlfriend everyday even though you found a girl but are too scared to make a move. You should just put your self out there. You'll be surprised" I look down "I don't know Miruko I think I'll pass" she then goes off to leave "suit yourself with loneliness!"

"Wait!" I shout back already regretting what I’m about to say. She turns back "yeah?" Defeatedly I pull my phone out of my pocket and hold it towards her. "Can you at least help me set up the account" she laughs and grabs my phone. "But wait, what if people only like me because I'm a pro hero and the publicity they would gain?" She looks up at me "just change your last name, and this app doesn't allow you to add a photo" I lean over "why?" She chomps into a carrot and says "something to do with love isn't about how you look or whatever, but I made your account, just fill out some of the other stuff"

"Hold on, am I going to be cat fishing people?"

"Course not! Just change your last name to your mom's last name!"

"Oh, okay"

Once we get my profile ready I hit done and wait a while. Then my phone buzzes "hey look you got a match!" I look on my phone to see '{•N/N•} {•M/L/N•}' I scroll through her profile and think to myself what's the worst that could happen right? “Hey, I gotta go, but have fun with your online dating!” I wave goodbye and check my phone again. It’s not my ideal way to finding a partner, but besides, this is only to get my mind off of {•L/N•}. It’s unprofessional of me to have feelings towards my employee, I mean I’m technically her boss and yet I have these, these.... feelings! That I can’t get rid of, and I just, I just want to.. I don’t know what I want to do with my feelings.

Miruko was right, I really do need to get my mind off her. She is just my fashion designer. That’s it, nothing else. Just my really attractive, kind, and nice employee. If there is some god out there,I hope they will at least send me a sign! Then my phone pinged.

||{•L/N•}||

Hey you free in two weeks? I was thinking maybe Wednesday at 9am

||Hawks||

Yeah why? Taking me out on a date lol

Could this be it? A sign from the gods? Maybe a push that {•L/N•} and I are meant to be?

||{•L/N•}||

To discuss your next fashion line silly :)

||Hawks||

Oh Okay

This girl is going to be the death of me, and hopefully {•M/L/N•} will be able to breathe me back to life.

𝕏𝕏𝕏

[neokollection]

Profile Analysis ㅡ Yuta

‘Hello, can you please write profile analysis for Yuta? Thanks so much!’

A/N: Havn’t made one of these in a loooooong time- A dissection of Nakamoto’s persona and mind. JUST MY OPINION. He highkey a ride-or-die kinda guy tho

Yuta is a lot of things... And you may be thinking ‘Duh...’ but Yuta stans know what I mean.

Like he literally embodies every emotion and personality, it’s difficult to categorize him.

Starting off tho,,, he has the bestest of intentions towards life. Towards his members and fans, as well as family, etc...

The reason why is because he shows his gratitude and love so often through a plethora of ways, sometimes thoughtful and subtle, sometimes sudden and brashly.

He has a positive energy to him that comes from a positive outlook on life- That being said, he is definitely still realistic when making decisions.

He really hopes that he can give his energy to others, especially fans- Because he was once a fan too- He saw TVXQ on television and was like... Wow. And he wants to inspire people to follow their dreams because he followed his and now he’s TVXQ’s lil bro-

He really is so thankful for his life and for the people that supported him along the way to make him so happy.

Thinking about this kind of gratitude, he is SO THOUGHTFUL!!!!!!!!1

Like, in my opinion one of the most thoughtful members;

Thoughtful not only in a philosophical manner, thinking about life and how he is where he is, but also in all other definitions of the word! OMG BB

He has thought of society and our human nature, as y’all seen on abnormal summit, he is woke about gender roles/equality and vanity- Which he must have contemplated these issues for a while and I’m sure plenty more he didn’t get to speak about.

He’s also so thoughtful towards other in a positive way---- He does subtle things like ‘Ah, I won’t get this flavor because Taeyong doesn’t like it actually-’ or cheering on Johnny when in Chicago because he knows how important it must be for him to be in his hometown.

He’s also thoughtful in the sense that he’s a worrier......... He can easily overthink things and start to worry; ie: when Sicheng got a new bag and Yuta claimed he was trying to impress someone else with it- To put it bluntly he defo had a jealous attitude and must have been mulling over that fucking bag in the middle of the night, thinking of all possible traitors that could be flirting with his child.

And honestly, I can’t talk about Yuta without bringing up Sicheng...

We don’t know why Yuta has this certain affinity for the Chinese member, but Yuta mentioned that Sicheng reminded him of himself when he’d first come to Korea and struggled with Korean and was shy- See, another thoughtful moment, he’s so cute fheuihfeijfiejf

He really wants to have the roll of looking after and taking care of someone, especially a younger one whom he can help.

This being said, it is not just out of a ‘good Samaritan’ mindset that draws him to situations like this...

I wouldn’t even call it selfish, but he also craves the companionship. 

He thinks a lot in his head and it can get lonely. Plus being a foreign idol, his friendship circle is sort of small.

He’s a clingy and needy guy who craves to be an older brother and role model.

He feels a need and want to protect those who are innocent in his eyes because he feels he knows the world well enough to conclude that it’s fucked up (even tho he wants to have a positive outlook, he has to be realistic and critical still.)

Okay, that was the sort of positive perspective on him, but we also have to talk about the deeper and darker things as well.

We all know Yuta is a confident king;

I mean with looks like that who wouldn’t be?

This being said he is a little vain. In my opinion, his vanity is totally warranted and usually he brings it out for comedic purpose or when being egged on.

But I feel like there are times he definitely thinks of himself as better than others, even over a trifling matter- And ESPECIALLY in bouts of jealousy.

He does believe though that what matters on the inside is more important than the outside- changing the outside is easier and quicker than changing the inside so you should put your focus on becoming beautiful within before focusing on your exterior.

He’s not saying people or you have to change, but I think it’s just what he lives by himself.

However... We know beneath his confidence and bubbly exterior that he is also insecure.

Everyone has his insecurities, but like I said he’s a worrier- He can’t just write off a critical remark or sideways glance, he holds onto it, wondering why and what he should change, etc...

Because of this he needs a lot of acceptance and seeks assurance from his close friends and family without even knowing he’s doing so, but the simple reassurance or praise makes him feel more at ease.

He thinks he has a lot of flaws he needs to work on and I bet is constantly thinking about how to become better- He’s a driver go-getter who believes he owes his members and NCTzens for giving him this happy time and platform; thus thinks he has to be perfect for them to make them happy in return.

Not only a more well-rounded and better person, but also a perfect idol with all the moves and charisma needed to please fans- dance king, vocal king, visual king, aegyo king, sexy king, comedy king, woke king, model king, etc........ this is what I mean in he’s a lot, he’s everything.

Because of this he’s v self-critical and finds it difficult to be completely satisfied with performances, working hard to improve for next time.

Onto the next semi-dark thing,,, he can brew up a stormy attitude quicker than you’d expect.

He can be bubbly and cute, but he can also be distant and passive aggressive.

Because he thinks so much he can over-analyze people or events and get a bad attitude when upset, angry or jealous.

There are times he’ll be vulnerable and talk things out if he’s upset and feels it could be solved this way,,,,, but he can also let things brew inside and let out passive aggressive remarks or avoidance behavior. Even if he were to have a sit down discussion about something directly involving him like jealousy, it’d end up in an argument, so it’s inevitable he’ll end up saying some sassy things either way.

He has so much love for people though that he could get over it if he’s at least friends with said person, but don’t think he’ll forget it. He’d remember it and drag it up next time a similar incident occurs.

He doesn’t want to seem needy or dramatic, or emotional, but he has so much raw emotion that you can easily tell what he’s feeling (as we’ve seen on broadcasts, etc...)

Speaking of raw emotion. He cries more than you would think.

He’s sensitive!!

He’ll cry over stupid stuff like letting a few tears fall down at the end of a sad anime or crying in happiness and then saying he doesn’t know why when being asked...  But he also cries over stress and the feeling of not-being-enough, of comparing himself to others and feeling impossibly trapped, struggling alone.

I’ve seen him cry with my own eyes. At NeoCity’s final statements/endments it was a mixture of joy, but also gratitude and feeling so humble he didn’t know how to possibly thank the fans as he talked about his journey from a trainee to now... Literally broke my fucking heart because he cries so much- like he doesn’t really hide it or wipe at his eyes much, he lets the tears stream and gets choked up T T talking to thousands of fans so vulnerably.

He just wants to be loved and feel the joy of giving love too; taking care of others- other members in brotherly love, or of fans due to a feelings of gratitude.

[whattimeisitintokyo]

Somos Familia Ch 38 Birthday Eve

Tomorrow is my birthday, so now I can relax knowing I got this GD chapter out! Hallelujah!

------

“Hola, Coco.” Miguel said happily, leaning in to give his sister a kiss on the cheek.

Coco smiled as she tilted her head to accept it. “How are you, Miguel?”

“Good, now that school is out.”

“Are you excited about your birthday tomorrow?”

“No.”

With a small sigh Coco shook her head and pointed a thumb to the back of the house. “Well go on to your little club meeting then. I’ll ring Papá and tell him you’re over here. You know how he worries.”

Miguel rolled his eyes. “Don’t remind me.”

“Don’t forget the Cokes!”

“Gracias, Coco!” Miguel grabbed two ice cold bottles out of the refrigerator and raced to Victoria’s bedroom upstairs, taking two steps at a time.

Over the years Coco’s house had become a sort of safe haven for Miguel to spend his free time. Yes, he had friends at school that he could hang out with, but nothing compared to how stress-free, homey and normal Coco’s house was. A spacious yet modest colonial style home built near the town’s border, it was the perfect place where Miguel could relax and actually be himself with no fear of his love of music being discovered by his parents.

Never really understanding his father’s unwavering stand on having no music listened to or played in his vicinity, Miguel was forced to keep his passions to himself until his older sister took pity on him and let him listen to dozens of records from her own private collection. He was also joined by his niece Victoria, and their shared secret hobby had led them to becoming each other’s best friend.

His smile faded as he reached the door when he saw another little girl standing in a huff in front of it, her face blotchy from having been crying, and she threw him a hard glare. With a stomp of her foot, she pointed at the door. “Tío, make her open up!”

“You’re not coming in here, Elena!” Victoria’s angry voice called out from the other side. “Get out of the way so Miguel can get through!”

Elena whined and hopped up and down. “Why does he get to come in and not me?!”

“Because he didn’t feed my tutu to your stupid goat!”

“Diego is not stupid! And I didn’t feed it to him, you just left it out!” Hands on her hips, she smiled smugly. “Besides you deserve it. If Abuelito knew that you were dancing he’d be mad at you. Maybe even hate you!”

Not liking how that line in particular made him feel, as well as not wanting to waste anymore time, Miguel held one of the Cokes out to Elena. “Here Elenita. Have a Coke.”

As her eyes settled on the bottle, Elena gasped in delight and reached for it. “Gracias tío!” Tilting it back and taking three large, refreshing gulps, she sighed in satisfaction. “Ahh, delicio-”

*SLAM!*

“HEY!”

Locking the door behind him as Miguel managed to zip inside, Victoria laughed and leaned against it while Elena kicked and yelled from the other side. She was already clad in her leotard and pointe shoes, but sans tutu of course. She nodded approvingly at Miguel. “Very clever Miguel. I’m impressed.”

Miguel chuckled and set the remaining bottle down. “Not that clever. Now we have to share one.”

“I know what you’re doing in there!” Elena screamed at them. “You’re dancing and playing music! Abuelito hates music! I’m gonna tell on you!”

“That’s only when Abuelito’s around, estupida! Mamá says we can do whatever we want with music as long as he’s not here, so you’re not allowed to tell!” Victoria crossed her arms and smiled smugly. “You’re just jealous because your legs are too short and fat to even walk, let alone try to dance.”

There was a moment of silence, before the sound of quick footfalls flying down the hallway and the piercing cry of “Mamá!” echoing off the walls let them know that they were finally alone. For now.

Miguel pulled his guitar out from underneath Victoria’s wardrobe, smiling reverently and brushing his fingers lightly against the crudely drawn skull on the stock. It was an old thing, the wood worn and splintering slightly along the edges despite how much gold paint he had slathered all over it. Limited artistic abilities aside he was quite pleased with how much he made it to look like Ernesto de la Cruz’s famous golden guitar. He just needed to get a Sharpie or something to draw in the final details. It wasn’t the best guitar in the world, but he was too scared to buy a brand new one. The fear of Papá somehow finding out kept him from doing so.

It could be worse though. It could have been a guitar made from scraps, screws and nails.

“So what do you want me to play?” Miguel asked as he tuned the strings to perfection. “Lago de los Cisnes again? Ooh, or maybe El Cascanueces because it’s almost the holidays. I’ve been working on the Russian dance if you’re up to the challenge.”

There was a time where Miguel wasn’t exactly fond of playing classical ballet songs for Victoria to dance to, considering it boring and her dancing to be prissy and goofy. That was until Victoria angrily challenged him to try it himself. He arrogantly agreed, and his one attempt to stand en pointe resulted in a dislocated big toe and a nail split down the middle. He had to lie to his parents about it too, saying that a horse had stepped on his foot. Now he treated Victoria’s dancing with the awe and pride that it deserved. And the songs were good practice for his plucking anyway.

“Not yet Miguel. First… I have to give you these.” Victoria placed a box in front of him, a small yet pleased smile on her face. “Feliz cumpleaños, Tío.”

With a roll of his eyes, Miguel took the lid off the box. “C’mon, Victoria. Why couldn’t you just wait to give it to me to-… morrow?...”

“Because Abuelito would throw a fit if I gave it to you in front of him.”

“Leather wrist bands!” Miguel cheered happily, throwing the box to the side and slipping the brown leather over his hands. “Just like the ones Tío Nesto used to wear! They actually look like the ones he wore in El Camino a Casa!”

Victoria nodded proudly. “Yep! I worked really hard on them to make it look exact.”

Miguel looked up at her in wonder as he finished fastening the buttons tight. “You made these?”

“Uh huh. I used leftover leather from the old workshop after the museum tour guide finished the shoe demonstration. I’m very good at weaving leather, who would have thought?”

The old workshop, along with the entire Rivera household, had finally run its course. After years of hemming and hawing Héctor had finally conceded that it was time to move into a bigger, safer house for his growing family. Not as flashy as any of Ernesto’s mansions, it was still an enormous complex with enough bedrooms for all the guests that were coming to Miguel’s birthday celebration. With high security walls, a lush garden full of both lovely flowers and fresh vegetables, and a five-car garage with the latest models inside, it was a house that truly showed off the Rivera’s wealth.

The old house had been turned into the Rivera Shoe museum, showcasing it as the origin of Imelda’s business as well as a small monument to the history of the family. There were demonstrations on basic shoe repair with workshops on cutting and sewing leather for tourists to enjoy, a gift shop to buy Rivera souvenirs as well as the usual fittings for their own custom-made shoes that they could order.

That was only during the weekdays. On the weekends it was closed to everyone but the family, and it was also where they would be having Miguel’s birthday party and where the ofrenda would be set up: So Leti could visit her real home.

But over the years the actual holiday came second to Miguel’s birthday. His father put all his time and energy into giving his youngest the best birthday a child could ask for: Mountains of food, games, presents and all his friends at school would come over and have the time of their lives.

Miguel had loved it.

At first.

But as he grew older his father’s exuberance over his birthday became more and more embarrassing. It was his main focus on all the days leading up to it, and on the day of the party he became unbearably chipper and happy.  Never mind the fact that Miguel would soon be turning twelve years old. Papá always acted like he was celebrating a five year old’s birthday. And despite the pleas from his friends parents Papá insisted that he celebrate his birthday on the day of, refusing to move it to another day so the families could also celebrate Dia de Muertos. Also since every party had no music for entertainment they became increasingly boring for all who came.

So eventually his friends stopped coming to his birthday parties, and it just became a family get together. Miguel would have rather just not celebrate at all, but Papá wouldn’t let him. He insisted that Miguel celebrate his birthday, but the boy knew by now that it wasn’t for his sake.

Papá needed to celebrate his birthday. To have something joyous to focus on, so as not to think about the daughter he had tragically lost, nor the day that his best friend and brother had been gruesomely ripped away from him. His birthday was a blessing to his father: the one good thing about Dia de Muertos.

And so Miguel endured it. But as he flexed his wrists and admired the exquisite craftsmanship of his sobrina, it made it feel like it would be easier to do so this year.

“Gracias, Victoria. They’re great! I feel just like Tío Nesto now!”

“De nada, Miguel.” Victoria smiled warmly. “And yes, I would like to try the Russian Dance. Your tempo has been poor lately, I’d hate to see if those wrist bands somehow make it worse.”

“Ha! Yeah right, just try to keep up!” Miguel laughed, and broke out with a loud flourish of his guitar. 

----

“Well I hope you enjoyed your little nap, Héctor.” Vicente grumbled as he and his supposed boss walked down the streets of Santa Cecilia, both munching on street food. “It’s not like quarterly report meetings are that important to your financial wellbeing as well as the thousands of people who work under you. And the board was even willing to come all the way to Santa Cecilia just so it wouldn’t upset your holiday plans.”

Héctor waved him off. “Ah, Chente, I’m just a figurehead for the company. You’re the one who should care about these things, not me. I’m like the uh… I’m the King George to your Neville Chamberlain!”

“It’s Churchill now.”

“Whatever. The point is you take care of the important stuff while I force a grin and wish the shareholders a happy holidays once a year.” Héctor grumbled, taking a huge bite of a tortilla filled to the brim with garlic, onions and fried chapulines. “Mmm… Oh yeah, last batch of the season is always the best… Besides I caught some of it. Especially when old man Tapia suggested we shut down some of the soup kitchens. Can you believe it?! That viejo looks like he’s never missed a meal in his life! He has no idea what it’s like to starve or do a hard day’s work for your food. Do you know what my first job was ever?”

“Catching grasshoppers when you were four years old.”

“Catching grasshoppers when I was!-… Oh, I told you that one, huh?” Héctor mumbled. “Well no matter. My grandchildren are coming in from America for the celebration tomorrow. They’ll appreciate my stories!”

Vicente smiled. “Ah, I haven’t gotten to see the newest one yet. It’s nice that they get to experience an authentic celebration for Dia de M-”

“Miguel’s birthday!” Héctor cut in quickly, his grin stretching a little wider than normal. “Si, it’s nice they get to see celebrate their tío’s birthday. All kids love parties, right?”

Vicente winced a little, nervously thumbing through the work papers in his hand. “… Right. Still I love this time of year. I remember being so excited to get to stay up all night for the festivals in my hometown when I was little. Helping my Papá decorate the ofrenda, sampling all the dishes my Mamá and my sisters cooked. The stories. I’m sure your grandchildren will love it. It’s always exciting to experience it the first time with your family when you’re little.”

“Wouldn’t know.” Héctor grumbled around a mouthful of tortilla, his earlier mirth gone. Vicente could tell he was trying to shoot down this conversation flat. “My parents dumped me in the orphanage when I was a baby, and the nuns thought Dia de Muertos was too pagan to celebrate. Didn’t really join in on the festivities until I moved out with E-…” Héctor paused, a flicker of pain in his eyes, before he forcefully swallowed down a too dry bite. “Until I had a family of my own.”

“Ay, Dios mio, speaking of families! Sorry Héctor I forgot.” Flicking through the pages he pulled out a couple of sheets. “I had this under miscellaneous since it had nothing to do with this morning’s meeting, but a certain Señor Domingo Cavallero approached me with this last evening while I was in the market.”

Héctor stared at the papers and groaned in disgust as he took them. “Domingo Cavallero? What does he want?”

Ever since the late elder Cavallero had brutally lost his position of the town’s mayor and the source of his embezzlement was taken from him, the whole family’s wealth had been steadily decreasing over the years. So set in their old ways they had kept up their lavish lifestyle until the pooled funds had trickled down into a puddle. What was once a proud and dignified family now lay on the very brink of heading off to the poor house. Héctor remembered quite clearly ever since he was a little boy the way Domingo had sneered in disgust at him every so often when their paths happened to cross. Now the former mayor’s son was coming to him?

“It seems that he and his son Ignacio are trying to build a hotel nearby. A family venture, he said, though it’s clear it’s a desperate attempt to reclaim their past wealth. I’m assuming they’ve scrounged up whatever money they’ve got left over to fund it but it’s not enough. They are humbly asking for a donation from you to make their dream come true… Or, rather, as humble as they are capable. I spent two minutes with the man and his son, and it was two minutes too many.”

“’El Dorado.’” Héctor read the description. “Hmph, very original… ‘A glorious extravaganza that combines superb customer service, gourmet meals delivered right to your room, and an astounding décor guaranteed to amaze and excite every guest.’”

“Sí. They’ve included blueprints and an artist’s rendering of the place to further incite you.”

Flipping to the next page, Héctor’s eyes widened as he looked at the illustrated drawing of what looked like the main lobby: Everything was gold. Gold furniture, gold wallpaper, gold plants. The wet bar, the piano in the lounge. Carpet, drapery, every single item nearly the exact same shade of gold. Not one other color to balance it out, not even a white or a brown. Just gold and gold alone.

“…This is the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“I’ve been told Ignacio came up with the theme himself.”

“That’s not saying much. How much are they asking me to contribute?”

“Oh, roughly seventy five percent.”

“Seventy-five?!” Héctor sputtered, folding the sheets in half and flinging them back to Vicente as if holding them anymore would burn his skin. “Why don’t I just pay for the whole damn thing myself?! Anyone with half a brain cell can tell that that… thing… wouldn’t last even half a year. Well, you can tell them that I am simply not interested in putting my time and effort into a lost cause.”

“Wh-?... Oh you’ve got to be kidding me!”

Héctor looked over to see Vicente with his face in his hand in frustration, and grimaced. “What, you think I should pay money for this basura?”

Vicente looked up. “Huh? Oh, no, I agree. It’s an eye sore. I’m sorry Héctor, but something’s just come up. I need to go to the cemetery for a minute, I’ll meet you at the house for lunch. Adios!”

Héctor blinked, just now noticing that they were in front of the town’s cemetery. As he watched Vicente head straight towards Ern-… The biggest mausoleum in the center of it all, he immediately turned heel and walked away as quickly as he could. All he needed to do was wind through some off the path streets, far away from the plaza, and he would be home. It would take longer, but that was okay. All the more time to plan for Miguel’s birthday surprise tomorrow. Héctor smiled, he was so excited to see Miguel’s face light up when he told him the big news. And he would have to thank Chente afterwards, he gave him the idea after all! He couldn’t w-

“Arf!”

“Gyah!”

Looking down Héctor sighed in relief when he just saw Dante, once again, sneak up on him and scare the living daylights out of him. And he wasn’t so sure if it was purely unintentional on the dog’s part either. “Hola Dante. You’re looking… remarkably well these days, especially for a twenty-year-old dog. No arthritis, vision loss, anything?… Sometimes I think you won’t die until you take me with you, the way you keep scaring me.”

Dante yipped again and gently tugged on Héctor’s pants leg, pulling him back towards the road to the plaza, but Héctor shook free of him. “Stop it Dante. If you’re going to the plaza you can bother someone else there. Because I’m not going. Now go on.”

Ignoring the whine of the dog behind him, Héctor made his way home. He had a party to organize, after all. And a surprise.

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

Walking up the path towards the mausoleum, glancing around to see if there was no one else within earshot to hear them, Vicente approached the man standing at the front gate glaring inside. Wrapped up in a thick poncho and wrinkled baggy pants, he held a cigar to the side before bringing it in for a thick puff. His wild sandy brown hair, thin patchy facial hair and piercing golden eyes made him look like he was a dirty vagabond no different from the ones lounging out in the street of the slums. No one would ever be able to tell that he was actually the head of the entire art department for Rivera de la Cruz productions with several prestigious awards to his name.

Especially not the way he was pouting childishly at the painting of Ernesto de la Cruz mounted high above his crypt and his shiny golden guitar.

“Javier, what are you doing back here?” Vicente asked tiredly.

“Just looking at the artistic travesty that has the power to make every true artist unfortunate to lay eyes on it retch in disgust.” Javier blew out a thick cloud of smoke, sneering all the while. “Look at it. Any child with a broken crayon could have made a better likeness of Señor de la Cruz.”

“Javi, how many times must we do this?”

Javier ignored him, continuing bitterly. “The background is such a slash and slop of blurs that it gives true focus on the face. That ugly horrid face that looks nothing like the man himself. Such cold, dead, expressionless eyes. You can feel it sucking your soul out.”

“Javi-”

“And that chin cleft. Is it a cleft, or did a psychopath just cut into him with a rusty knife? Might as well have given him a Glasgow grin while we’re at it.”

“Javi!”

“The person who made this painting should be drawn and quartered in front of the entire artistic community in order to avenge the death of art itself!”

Pinching his nose as he felt the pain of a headache coming, Vicente growled out. “Javier, Javi, mi amor… For the millionth time, and I don’t know why I have to keep saying this… YOU painted it!”

“All the more reason why I’m allowed to critique it.” Javier smiled widely in a way he knew always made his lover’s inside squirm. Seeing him flush slightly Javier drew his attention back to the painting. “I can’t believe I used to think that this was my masterpiece. You’d think I was the one on drugs at the time, not the other way around... Heh, though I was tempted to add a few white sprinkles on there. Ha ha!... But seriously this thing is un pedazo de mierda.”

Vicente sighed. “Look, if it bothers you so much maybe you can retouch it a little? Or we can put in another painting.”

Javier whirled around, eyes blazing fire and cheeks burning red. “And sully the greatest contribution to society I have ever made?! Commissioned by Ernesto de la Cruz himself, Mi obra maestra, mon pièce de résistance?! Are you loco?!”

Vicente stared blankly at him, then turned to leave. “I give up. I’m going to the house for lunch. Stay here and starve or come and eat, I don’t care anymore.”

“Ooh, comida!” Hopping down the stairs and running up next to Vicente, he flicked the head of his burnt off cigar up into the air, not caring when it landed in an offering dish of one of the graves with a clang. “Gonna get me some carnitaaas~…”

Fighting back a smile, Vicente pretended to glare at him. “You’re hopeless.”

“I’m hopeless?” Javier chuckled haughtily as he attempted to smooth down his flyaway hair. “No, I’m an artist. I live in the now, paint what’s in my heart, love it and then despise it years down the road. It’s part of the package deal, you’ve known that for a long time. No, you are the one that’s hopeless.”

“Me?”

“Sí, tonto.” Javier said. “This hopeless idea of yours: Getting Héctor Rivera to take his little coddled son under his wing and to pursue music with Rivera de la Cruz Productions. The same man who practically hisses like a cat at the mere sound of even a maraca shaken by a baby? Yes, I do think it’s hopeless. Childish even. A fool’s dream.”

“I think it’s a good idea!” Vicente said grouchily, shoving Javier slightly to the side. “And Héctor has always known that Miguel is nothing like his brother in terms of interests. So, while Mateo works with his mother and follows in her footsteps, literally in their case, heh… then Miguel will follow in his father’s! This will give Miguel an opportunity to branch out on his own and eventually and pursue his musical dreams. Maybe a record producer, or a talent agent. He’ll be surrounded by music. I think it will be a nice birthday present for him from his father. And since it was my idea then technically it’s my present to the boy.”

Javier hummed a little at that, worried. “I don’t know… Are you sure you convinced him properly?”

Vicente huffed. “Please, Javi. If I can convince Pedro Infante to record a cover album of the best of de la Cruz at half his normal pay rate, then I can convince Héctor to let Miguel work in the music industry. Trust me, when this all falls into place, you will be bowing down to me in awe and praise.”

“Ooh, that would be a nice change of pace, eh? Usually it’s the other way around.” Javier smiled widely again, enough to wipe Vicente’s smirk off his reddened face, and was shoved away again with more force.

-------

“Mija, I’m coming in.”

“Is Elena with you?”

“Sí.”

“She’s not allowed in, Mamá! I’ve forbidden her!”

“Too bad, I’m overriding you. Come unlock the door. Now.”

With a loud, drawn out groan Victoria unlocked the door and opened it for her mother to come in. Julio was also with her, holding onto Elena’s tiny hand as the little girl sniffled and glared daggers at her older sister. Victoria stuck her tongue out at her, which Elena paid in kind with a full-blown raspberry. Before a full-blown slap fight could break out Coco flicked both girls on the forehead. “Stop it.”

“She fed my tutu to Diego, Mamá!”

“She called me short and fat!”

“No, I said your legs were-”

“I said stop!” Coco said loudly, and when both girls quieted down she stood over them with her arms crossed. “Now, what do I always say when you two fight over silly things like this?”

The two sisters, still glaring at each other, said through gritted teeth “‘Be nice to your sister, because she’s the only one you’ve got’.”

“That’s right.” Coco said. “You’ll never know how precious she is to you until, somehow, she’s gone for good.”

Both girls immediately looked at their mother with wide eyes before ducking their heads in shame, while Julio gently took his wife’s hand for support. “We’re sorry Mamá.”

Miguel had never known his older sister Leti. Despite all the stories he had heard about her over the years, she was a practical stranger to him. He knew how she had acted with Coco and Matty, but the feeling that he had never had his own relationship with her gave him a weird empty feeling in his chest. He didn’t know how her voice sounded, how she laughed, any of her own special quirks and tics. And yet there was a longing deep within him to know what she was like, so strange to long for something that he never had. He knew, however, that his pain was several times less than the ones who actually knew her.

To break up to sudden tension, Miguel set aside his guitar and grinned. “I guess I’m lucky that my brother and sister are too old to fight with. Older than dirt-OW!”

“I’m not too old to flick you too, gordito.” Coco smirked as Miguel rubbed his stinging forehead. “Now Miguel I know you’re never especially thrilled when it’s your birthday, but I think this year will be different.” Coco said, an excited grin threatening to burst out. “Because I have a surprise for you.”

“A surprise?”

Before Coco could elaborate, Elena bounced up and down happily and squealed. “I think I know! Tia Rosita is pregnant again, right?!”

Miguel blinked, completely unsurprised. “Oh, is she?”

Julio snorted derisively and crossed his arms. “That’s not a surprise. That’s becoming an annual holiday itself.”

“Julio!” Coco hissed, glaring at her husband. “That’s not true!”

“She's right, Papá.” Victoria smirked. “Osvaldo and Facunito are only nine and a half months apart.”

“Victoria! Both of you!” Coco sighed in exasperation. “No, Rosita is not pregnant!... I think… Well, she might b- I don’t know! That’s not what the surprise is anyway! This is the surprise!”

A pink sheet of paper was thrust into Miguel’s face, and it took a second for him to focus on what was on it. Decorated with black painted skulls and dancing skeletons, the words ‘Dia De Muertos Talent Show’ stood out in big bold letters. Taking it from his sister’s hands, Miguel looked at it in confusion for just a moment before a creeping sense of understanding and hope started to well within. “The talent show? You mean… I get to go see it?”

“No.”

Miguel sputtered. “Wh-?! What gives Coco?!”

“You’re not going to see it hermanito, you’re going to be in it! I signed you up as the first act and you’re going to play in front of the whole town! Now everyone can finally see how talented you truly are!” Coco cried out, smiling widely and grabbing her astonished little brother into a huge bear hug. “Feliz cumpleaños, Miguel!”

Miguel gaped in awe as his sister let him go, looking at the poster, then his guitar on the bed, then to Coco. Slowly a grin formed on his face and he laughed out loud. “Really?! I’m going to play in the talent show?! I can’t believe it!”

“I want to see that!” Victoria added happily. “That’s so exciting!”

“Gracias, Coco! Gracias gracias gracias-”

“No!” Elena shouted, causing everyone to look at her. The poor girl looked both angry and a little afraid as she clutched her mother’s skirt tightly and tugged it frantically. “No he can’t! It’s one thing to play in the house, but in front of people?! Abuelito will be mad for sure!”

Victoria groaned. “Ay Mamá, why did you have to show Miguel’s secret present in front of el lengua larga? She’ll blab for sure.”

“I won’t blab if he doesn’t go!” Elena cried, and hurried over to Miguel’s guitar. Clumsily she lifted it and placed the large instrument behind her back, as if thinking that if it was out of sight then it was out of mind. “Please don’t perform tío! If you go on stage you’ll be hurt or even killed. Just like Ernesto de la Cruz!”

“That was an accident Elenita. It had nothing to do with music.” Miguel said dismissively. “And what’s so bad about wanting to be like Ernesto de la Cruz? We all used to know him, you didn’t. He was the greatest of all time.”

“You want to end up like him too?! Smooshed flat, and the only thing left of you would be a picture on the ofrenda?!”

Miguel rolled his eyes and crossed his arms. “I don’t care if I’m on some stupid ofrenda.”

While everyone else in the room winced at Miguel casual disregard for tradition, Elena gasped so long and hard, her eyes and mouth wide with pure horror, it was almost comical. Turning to look at the guitar in her hands, her brow furrowed, and her face scrunched up in absolute hatred and disgust. Lifting the guitar as high as she could go, and with a warlike cry, the brought it to the ground!

*thunk*

….

*thunk*

Coco sighed. “Elena, what are you doing?”

Straining as hard as she could, Elena brought the guitar down again and again. “Mmph!... Trying to- uuff!... break the- nnyah!... guitar!” She tried and tried again, but the instrument was both too sturdy and too cumbersome to maneuver properly, and she lacked both the strength and the force to damage it even a little. The guitar simply made some light twangy sounds as the strings were slightly squeezed and brushed against, almost as if the instrument was just as annoyed as everyone else by what was happening.

“Stop it Elena. You’re going to scratch it!”

“It’s already scratched Miguel. One more won’t hurt it.”

“Callate…”

Huffing with exertion now and sweating, Elena started to struggle with the large object. “I can do it… Haa… haa… I can do it! Gah! Tío, help.”

“No, I’m not gonna help you smash my guitar!” Miguel yelled angrily, swiping the guitar away from her. “I’m playing in the plaza tomorrow for my birthday. Your Mamá gave it to me as a present, and I’m gonna enjoy it! Period!”

“But-!”

“Elena…” Julio said sternly, getting his daughter’s attention. “You won’t say anything to your Abuelito about this, alright? I know you’re afraid of what he might say, but what he doesn’t know can’t hurt him. And he won’t know if you don’t say anything. Claro?”

“But-!”

“You must always listen to your parents. Please don’t ruin this for Miguel, okay?”

Elena looked at her parents, then her sister, Miguel, and back to her parents. As her face reddened more and more and her cheeks puffed up to the point of bursting, she fled the room in tears and ran down the hallway wailing. Coco sighed as he watched her daughter run off then patted Miguel on the back. “Don’t worry. Everything will be alright.”

“What if she’s right though?” Miguel asked softly, holding the flyer tightly to his chest as if he was afraid that even that could be taken away from him at any second. “What if Papá finds out? Or Mamá? They would never let me go.”

“We won’t let them find out, we promise.” Coco said gently. “Matty, Victoria and I will be there to cheer you on, while Julio will distract them long enough for you to perform.”

“Th-that’s right!” Julio nodded and laughed nervously. “I mean-… I-I can do that! I can… Lie… to my father-in-law and my mo-… It shouldn’t be too hard, right? I can- Sí, I can do that!”

“Sounds like you’ll need all the help you can get, Julio.” A voice suddenly popped up. “And should I be concerned about Elena flailing about on the couch downstairs? She looked like she was starting to turn blue.”

The four turned and smiled to see Wanda standing in the doorway, dressed in a fancy travel suit and holding a suitcase in one hand. Holding onto her other hand was a small boy, smiling shyly and wearing an adorable cowboy outfit complete with tiny Rivera boots. The small ten gallon hat couldn’t hide the dark wavy curls of his hair poking out from underneath and his face was a little dirt smudged. He carried a brightly wrapped birthday present in his other arm and held it out to Miguel. “Happy birthday, Uncle Miguel.”

“Charlie!” Victoria cried out and enveloped the small boy into a big hug, his round face smooshed against her shoulder. “Charlie, mi primo favorito! Oh Charlie, you look so cute! What are you dressed as?”

Charlie smiled sweetly up at Victoria. “The Lone Ranger. I got a plastic gun and bows and arrows in my bag, too. Can we play?”

“We can later.” Miguel said, taking the present from his nephew and knocking on the top of his hardened cowboy hat. “Thank you for the present, Carlos.”

The little boy’s smile faded and he gave an adorable pout. “My name is Charlie.”

“Not here. In Mexico you’re Carlos.”

“Basta, Miguel!” Victoria snapped, and gave Charlie another hug. “Oh, I missed you so much Charlie. You are my most favorite primo ever. So sweet and cute.”

“What about Dahlia?” Miguel asked. “And Margarita? And Anselmo? And Osvaldo, Facunito, and Amapola?”

“I don’t see him every single day of my life, and he doesn’t drive me crazy as soon as he enters the room.” Victoria said. “That’s what makes him my favorite.” Behind her Julio nodded silently in agreement with a shudder, and Coco swatted him with a glare.

“Matthew has already told me the game plan for tomorrow, Miguel.” Wanda said as she placed Charlie’s suitcase full of toys down and began to unpack it for him. “But if this is going to work then Julio, Coco and I should talk about how we’re going to keep your father from guessing what’s happening. Don’t you worry.”

“Gracias, Wanda.” Miguel said, walking over to hug her in gratitude. “Your Spanish has gotten really good by the way.”

Wanda returned the hug and smiled proudly. “Of course it has. That’s what happens after long term exposure, being outrageously intelligent and having the internal drive to learn new things. I mean seriously, did you have any doubts in my ability to learn it?”

“Sí.” “Yes.” “Sorry.” “I, uh-... Sí…”

Wanda huffed irritably at the slight, but brushed it off and bent down to her son to speak in English. “Now you be careful when you play, alright? Your arm is still a little weak, so be extra gentle. No cops and robbers or anything like that, alright?”

“Okay, Mommy.”

“Oh that’s right!” Victoria said, bending down to look the little boy in the eye. “You broke your arm a few months ago! I was so sorry to hear that. Elena even cried when she heard.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry too.” Miguel asked. “Did it hurt? What happened?”

Gripping his left arm slightly, Charlie grinned as if he was telling a funny joke. “Daddy is the one who broke my arm.”

“WHAT?!”

“Matty broke your arm?!”

As the two children gasped and shouted at what they heard, both Coco and Julio winced as they looked at Wanda with pity. Wanda placed her hands over her mouth and sighed sadly, shaking her head wearily. “Charlie, you weren’t supposed to tell anyone that.”

“Oh, sorry.”

Miguel shook his head. “Man, you must have gotten into big trouble if Matty broke your arm-OW!” He rubbed his shoulder where Victoria had socked him hard, but before he could say anything Charlie continued.

“He didn’t mean to.” Charlie said softly. “Mommy says something scared him and he was trying to protect me, but did it too hard. Daddy was very sorry, he cried for a long time. I didn’t know grown-up men cried! My arm was in this itchy cast for a long time and Daddy let me eat ice cream for breakfast every day after that!” Charlie’s smile faded at that, and a slightly nauseous grimace passed over him. “I don’t like ice cream any more…”

“Guys listen.” Wanda said to the two older children in a serious tone. “I don’t want you to let Matthew know that you know about this, all right? It is a very sensitive subject that he feels terrible about, I don’t want him to feel any worse. It’s in the past and we’re moving forward.”

“Is Matty all right?” Miguel asked softly.

“He’s fine.” Wanda said assuredly, holding her son closely. “We’re all going to be fine. Just like tomorrow is going to be fine. Don’t worry. Everything is under control.”

-----

Héctor smiled as he held the whining baby high above his head, puffing out his cheeks and crossing his eyes until she dissolved into giggles. Lowering her down he blew loud raspberries onto each cheek until she squealed before giving her a kiss on the forehead. It was such a treat to see his granddaughter Clara again, not having seen her since shortly after her birth. Living in the United States prevented him from seeing her and Charlie regularly, so he relished the opportunity to see and hold her while she was still so small. He was also happy to see that after five months her eyes still had the same lovely shade of blue as her mother’s, his only grandchild to have different colored eyes. As the baby quieted down again, he nodded to his son. “Keep going mijo.”

Matty nodded somberly, downing his cup of coffee and handing it over for Imelda to refill. He nervously fidgeted with the polished knob of his cane, a necessity for his damaged leg, and shook his head with intense remorse.

“It was an old truck backfiring.” Matty said quietly. “It was so loud and sudden, especially on a quiet street. We were just walking to the park, talking amongst ourselves, and then ‘bang!’… Dios, it took just a millisecond. At that moment I wasn’t in Houston anymore, I swear all I could see was smoke and all I could smell was mud and decay and-…I just reacted.”

“The next thing I knew Charlie was underneath me, and he was screaming… I was frozen, just watching my son scream in pain, until Wanda was shouting ‘Get off of him Matt! Get off of him!’… Wanda rode with him in the ambulance, and she took the baby too, because I couldn’t touch her. I couldn’t touch him for days, I just felt so sick with what I had done to my little boy. Not even five years old and I had broken his arm. I tackled my son, trying to protect him by reflex, and I broke his pinche arm. Dios, Wanda was holding our newborn daughter at the time, if it had been them that I-!”

“Shh…” Imelda hushed him, rubbing his white knuckled grip on his cane until his fingers loosened. “But you didn’t. They’re both fine, and so is Charlie. They all know that you didn’t mean to hurt him.”

Matty nodded shakily, smiling at his mother in thanks. “Yeah… Yeah, I know. Sometimes it’s hard to believe that, but my therapist says that line of thinking is normal for someone with my condition. I’m trying to get better-”

“You’re seeing a shrink?” Héctor asked, his brow furrowing to show his confusion and slight aversion to the very idea. “But why? Everything turned out alright, Charlie’s arm is better. It’s fine.”

“No, Papá, it’s not fine. In fact, it hasn’t been fine for a very long time for me.” Matty said. “Over the years a lot of things have bothered me. Certain smells trigger images in my mind, I can’t stand the sound of fireworks, even low flying planes make me freeze up and panic. I’ve been dealing with it for years by simply avoiding it, like not accompanying my family for Fourth of July picnics or other situations where these triggers might occur. But this last incident made me realize that I can’t avoid the unpredictable.”

Héctor still looked uncertain as Matty spoke, but Imelda nodded encouragingly for him to continue.

“Wanda recommended a therapist from the hospital she works at. He’s good, Papá. He diagnosed me with shell-shock, something that a lot of former soldiers get so it’s not just me. But that's not all. He says my triggers go all the way back to Leti’s death, how it still affects my emotions and my interactions with my family to this day. I’m sure you all already know about that, but I didn’t really see it until he spelled it out for me. That I sometimes hurt them, and you guys, unintentionally. That I’m somewhat, well… emotionally stunted. But he’s been helping me a great deal. I feel like I’m making progress so far.”

“That’s wonderful, mijo.” Imelda said, leaning over to kiss his cheek and grimacing at the scratchiness of it. “Maybe your therapist can convince you to shave as well.”

“I can’t.” Matty laughed, running his fingers down his goatee and grateful for the well-intentioned nagging to lighten the mood. “Last time I did Charlie cried for a whole day; thought I was a stranger instead of his Daddy. I’d hate to do that to Clara as well.”

Héctor cleared his throat uncomfortably, then turned his attention back to the baby in his arms. “Sí, well good for you mijo. If you think that’s what you need then I’m happy for you. And this little girl is happy too. Aren’t you, cileita? Look at Abuelito. Ay, que lindaaa…”

As Héctor babbled and cooed at the baby, he didn’t notice that Matty and Imelda exchanged worried glances at each other. He continued until Matty cleared his own throat to get his attention, and his smile faded when he saw the two of them staring intently at him. “What?”

Standing up and walking with the aid of the cane, Matty reached out an arm and gently took his daughter out of Héctor’s hold. “Um, Papá… What I just told you about my struggles… Didn’t that seem at all, I don’t know… Familiar to you in any way?”

Héctor blinked dumbly at that, starting to not like how Imelda was starting to look sad as she stared at him. “No?”

Matty huffed out a sigh. “Come on, Papá. You must see where I’m coming from: Triggers that upset you, make you angry and in turn upset everyone around you? Avoidance of certain stimuli, to the point of outright banning it? Do you understand?”

“Oh… Oh!” Héctor laughed out, relieved. “Oh, I understand what you’re saying now. The music thing. Listen, it’s just not my kind of thing anymore. I know I owe a great deal to it, that the whole family does, but it’s time to move on. There’s more to our business than music, you know. There’s the hospitals, the schools, the canning factories, and of course the shoe business that you have turned into an empire all by yourself, my clever boy. Did I hear that they’re going to be on almost every athlete’s feet in the Olympics next year?”

“Please don’t change the subject, Papá.” Matty said in exasperation. “It’s not like you don’t care for music anymore Papá. You can’t stand it. You’re afraid of it.”

Héctor smiled, again a little too widely, and patted his son’s shoulder. “You think that- Ay yi yi, such a sweet boy, thinking about your Papá like that. Well you don’t have to worry about me, Matty.”

“Papá, you don’t listen to music. You don’t want anyone to listen to music. You’re avoiding it because it’s a trigger! And the thing about triggers is sometimes you can’t avoid them. If you don’t prepare yourself you could end up hurting yourself or worse: someone you love!”

“I don’t have what you have, Mateo. That, uh-… shell-shock, right? No, I don’t have it. I’m not a soldier, this is completely different.”

“It doesn’t always have to be about fighting in a war Papá.” Matty explained. “It can be caused by a very traumatic event that you witness. And I can’t think of anything more traumatic than watching your best friend-”

“I do not… have… shell shock!” Héctor snapped, pointing a finger to both his son and his wife. “We don’t need music, we’ve gone nine years without it, and we’re fine. I don’t avoid it, I just don’t like it anymore. I’m not like you, alright?! I don’t need help! I don’t need a shrink! I’m not crazy!”

“Héctor!”

At his wife’s hissing voice Héctor stopped his tirade in shock. Clara was crying in her father’s arms, deeply disturbed that the sweet old man who had held her before was now loud and scary. And Matty looked at his father, jaw clenched and eyes downcast. His throat bobbed a few times and Héctor saw his lips tremble a little before he looked up to glare at his father.

“You think… I’m crazy, Papá?”

“No!” Héctor gasped, placing his hands gently on his son. “Oh no, not you mijo, no… You’re uh… a special case. You have a condition, si? Happens to soldiers all the time, like you said right? If it makes you feel better than I’m all for it! You go to your shrink, and-”

“It’s therapist, Héctor.” Imelda said harshly, glaring at him as she moved to stand next to her son. “Not shrink. You say it like it’s a disease.”

Héctor sagged, not looking either of them in the eye anymore. “Therapist, right…”

Not liking how the fun visit with his son and granddaughter had turned so toxic and claustrophobic so fast, Héctor inched his way out the door to make a hasty retreat. “Listen, I think we need to just forget about this, so I’ll just leave for a while. I’m gonna go to the house- I mean… the museum. Get it all ready for the party tomorrow. That’s why you’re here, right Matty? Gotta make it a special day for your brother! Okay, I’ll see you later!”

As they both watched Héctor race towards the garage in an effort to get as far away and as fast as possible, Matty soothed his daughter back into an easy slumber and mumbled softly. “I’m here for my sister too… Guess he’s avoiding that as well…”

“I’m so sorry, Mateo.” Imelda hugged her son close and rubbed his back. “He didn’t mean to upset you. I know you tried to help, but he needs to want to be helped, claro?”

“He’s only getting worse Mamá.”

Imelda shook her head. “He’s not usually this bad. He has his good days more than his bad. It’s just that this time of year is so hard on him, you understand right? It was a terrible day for all of us, but even more so for your father. It nearly destroyed him.”

“I just wanted to help him. Help all of us… At least I tried.”

“Yes you did. It will be alright, mijo.” She smoothed back his hair and took the sleeping baby from his arms to give her a kiss. “Let’s change the subject, sí? I want to know all about your plans for Helsinki next year! How many pairs of shoes are we talking about?”

Matty smiled softly at his mother, letting her drag him into a boring, yet calming, conversation about shoes once again to soothe the pain of his father’s words. As he and Imelda talked about the Olympics next year, the upcoming winter catalogue, the demand to not smoke in the kitchen, and the vague plans of expanding to include a clothing line in the upcoming future, things seemed to fall back into a relative peace. There was still hurt there in Héctor’s heart, but nothing they couldn’t overcome as a family.

Things couldn’t possibly get any worse, right?

-----

As Victoria put away her pointe shoes into it’s shoe box she looked up to see Miguel staring at the contest poster.

Again.

For probably the billionth time within the last hour.

Her Mamá’s surprise had really put a damper on their little practice session, and soon even Charlie had grown bored with the lack of guitar playing from his tío and had gone off to play with Elena instead. Miguel just sat and stared at the poster with that dumb grin on his face, tracing the letters and illustrations with reverence like he did with all his other de la Cruz memorabilia.

But even if she felt like she didn’t get enough practice in, Victoria found that she didn’t really mind it in the slightest. She could see Miguel already going through the performance in his head, his eyes closing momentarily as if basking in applause that only he could hear. Then he’d continue to look at the poster and the process would repeat.

It was dumb, but Victoria was glad. It was about time Miguel was excited about something for his birthday. She couldn’t wait to see the performance herself. And maybe, hopefully, this would be a stepping stone for her. Maybe she would one day get to perform on stage, maybe even get a real teacher. Share a stage with her ballet idols. It was exciting to think about, but for now she would just be happy for Miguel.

“So, musico…” Victoria hummed, smiling when Miguel dumbly broke free from his trance to look at her. “What are you going to play tomorrow?”

With an excited grin, Miguel looked at the poster again and nodded to himself. Confidently. Assuredly. “Definitely Remember Me!”

Victoria sighed. “Why did I even ask?”

[lelouche]

Orphans of the Storm: Attachment, Trauma and the Developmental Trajectories of Lelouch and Nunnally in Code Geass

Alternatively titled, Matt Has a Lot of Thoughts About the Lamperouges. 7000+ words of thoughts, to be exact. Some of them might even be semi-intelligent. Admittedly, much of this was written from a hospital office while procrastinating writing patient journals for actual patients who are real humans and not fictional characters. Thank you to my supervisor for not supervising me very much.

I. Introduction

First, let us first briefly set the stage. The story of Code Geass is set in an alternate universe where the social-darwinist, imperialist superpower The Holy Britannian Empire is ruling large parts of the world. Lelouch and Nunnally vi Britannia are born into the royal family as children of 98th Emperor Charles zi Britannia and one of his consorts, Marianne. After their mother is assassinated in a terrorist attack at the Imperial Palace, an incident which leaves Nunnally blind and paralysed from the waist down, the two are sent to Japan as political hostages. The Britannian Empire then invades Japan shortly after they arrive, and they must seek refuge with the Ashfords, a wealthy family with ties to their mother Marianne. Presumed dead by the rest of the royal family, they take on the surname Lamperouge and begin to live in hiding in the now-colonised Japan, renamed Area 11.

These events constitute what is to become Lelouch’s raison d’être through the entire series - finding out who assassinated his mother, and creating a safer, kinder environment for his sister to grow up in. Nunnally is an extremely, and I cannot stress this enough, extremely important figure for Lelouch through the entire series (to the point where it’s kind of a joke in most spin-off material). He’s her main caregiver along with their maid Sayako, and protecting her is his primary goal - often at the expense of his own safety, his friends’ safety, and/or massive collateral damage. In this essay, I will analyse their relationship with their parents and each other through the lens of attachment theory, and discuss how these dynamics shape their developmental trajectories as they grow up. I will focus on two domains of development in particular: (1) emotional regulation and (2) identity. Based on this analysis, I’ll make the argument that Nunnally, despite being the one experiencing the most trauma, ended up more well-adjusted than Lelouch. Furthermore, although the series places much emphasis on how Lelouch is the one protecting Nunnally, he is actually more dependent on his sister than she is on him. I will also discuss how these central themes tie into Lelouch’s goals and political ideology.

II. Ode to My Family: The Fundamentals of Attachment Theory

Attachment theory is a psychological theory originating from the work of John Bowlby, concerning the bond between caregivers and their children. Put simply, Bowlby proposed that children are biologically predisposed to form deep, lasting bonds with their caregivers, and this bond has an important influence on subsequent development. In the attachment relationship, the caregiver functions as both a secure base from which to explore (for example, a child feeling safe when playing knowing a parent is nearby), and safe haven to turn to for emotional support (if they get scared or hurt when playing). Caregivers, on their end, facilitate secure attachment through moderate and appropriate stimulation of the child, warmth, mutually responsive interactions, and other behaviours that promote ‘connectedness’. Especially interesting is a trait called mind-mindedness, which can be described as a caregivers ability to conceptualise their child as an independent person, understand their mental/emotional state and respond appropriately. Important to note about attachment bonds is that they’re not “horizontal” - the caregiver and child aren’t on the same “level” as mutual attachment figures to each other, but the caregiver (as the older, wiser, and more experienced person who is able to provide care) will be a figure that the child can rely on.

A healthy attachment bond has a variety of important functions. It promotes the growth of self-reliance (which promotes independency), increases capacity for emotion regulation, promotes later social competence (such as empathy and mutual relationships), and is important for later identity development. This happens through the acquisition of so-called internal working models, that the child employs through their life. To simplify a bit, think of attachment as the mechanism by which caregivers, through their behaviour, teach children what to expect from the world around them, and what strategies to employ to best cope with it. At its core, it is about seeking security and safety - a form of healthy and adaptive dependence that provides a solid foundation and sense of security from which independence can grow

There are three main classifications of attachment bonds - secure, insecure and disorganised. Securely attached children will develop positive internal working models, where world is a fundamentally safe place, they are loved and worthy of that love. Interactions with the caregivers are frequent, mutual and predictable. For insecure attachment, there are two subcategories: avoidant and ambivalent. Insecure-ambivalent attachment is associated with unpredictable interaction styles, where some interactions between caregiver and child may be warm and mutually responsive, while others are more detached or unpredictable. This leads to frustration and confusion, and an ambivalent relationship. Insecure-avoidant attachment, on the other hand, is typically associated with a non-responsive and uninvolved form of care, or an absent caregiver. In this case, the child may feel rejected and like they cannot rely on anyone. Disorganised attachment simply means there is a lack of any organised form of attachment, but that’s not going to be relevant here so let’s ignore that one.

In summary:

Did you really think you were getting through this one without at least ONE chart? (Note: ambivalent and resistant attachment is the same thing)

Also, important note before moving on from this bit: (1) Attachment is not the be-all end-all for positive/negative developmental outcomes, and (2) I’ll obviously be a bit quicker to assume correlation and draw conclusions than I would in real life, because in my mind applying this stuff to literary analysis vs. applying it to real people are two completely different things. Fiction consists of a series of deliberate choices of storytelling and elements you can easily pick apart and draw lines between (preferably with red string on a corkboard wall, while looking slightly manic), whereas people are, like, more complicated and stuff - nature and nurture and all that.

Now, with attachment theory in mind, let’s have a look at the evil Britannian disaster parents.

III. The Mother We Share: (In)Secure Attachment in the Imperial Palace

Before taking a deep dive into Lelouch and Nunnally’s relationship with one another, it’s essential to discuss their relationships with their parents. Unfortunately for me, there really isn’t much canon material regarding their lives prior to Marianne’s death and the subsequent exile in Japan. However, even with the limited information available, I think it’s fairly safe to say neither Charles nor Marianne deserve a parent-of-the-year award - a point cleverly foreshadowed by me when I referred to them as evil disasters just a few sentences ago.

As for Charles, I hardly need to even make a case that he probably wasn’t a great father. It’s never outright stated in the series, but I’m going to assume they had minimal or no contact with Charles. The main reason behind this is: why would they? He had 108 (!) consorts with whom he had many children, and was busy ruling the largest empire in the world. And as if that wasn’t enough, Lelouch and Nunnally weren’t even particularly high up in in the line of succession and would have been unlikely to ever rule in their lifetime (if it hadn’t been for, er, circumstances). Furthermore, because of his grand plan to fuse humanity into one collective unconscious through the Ragnarök Connection, none of this would matter to him anyway. Additionally, I think his lack of contact with his children is very apparent through the way Lelouch interacts with his father when confronting him about Marianne’s death, which I’ll get back to.

So, we can reasonably conclude Charles was an uninvolved/absent caregiver. However, things get a little more interesting with Marianne.

This isn’t relevant to the topic or anything, I just think it’s neat how they made Lelouch so visually similar to his mother. In addition to physical traits, Marianne’s dress here has a really similar structure to what would later become her sons rebellion outfit of choice. She even has a chess-piece-esque hat to go with. Then again, I suppose the alternative was making him visually similar to Charles, and that wouldn’t make for a lot of good fanservice now would it. Anyway, this image description is too long.

As mentioned, avenging his mother’s death is one of the most significant driving forces for Lelouch throughout the series. Her assassination impacted him greatly, both in and of itself and through the harm it caused Nunnally. Whenever she’s brought up, they both seem to get visibly downhearted, and there’s never any indication they remember her anything but fondly. In picture drama 22.25 (from their time as children in the Imperial Palace), the Britannian siblings find a commemorative plate that belongs to her in Euphie’s room. They start to bicker over it, because Nunnally wants to have it herself, while Lelouch thinks Euphie should keep it because it belongs to her. This all indicates that the royal children admired Marianne, and she was obviously an important figure to them both. Through this idolisation, as well as Lelouch’s obsession with what happened at the Imperial Palace, the narrative seems to want us to assume she was a good parent.

However, there are a few things that call into question how reliable of a narrator Lelouch actually is concerning Marianne. Towards the end of the series, it’s revealed that she is actually very much alive, and completely on board with Charles’ Ragnarök plan - making her one of the series’ main antagonists. During Lelouch’s final confrontation with his parents in C’s World in S2 E21, she is unable (or unwilling) to see how faking her death, traumatising her children, shipping them off to a country the Empire promptly invaded without ever making sure they’re still alive, and then trying to convince them to get on board with her human instrumentality plan is wrong. As her wiki bluntly states: “She only superficially loves her children and will not hesitate to kill them if they get in her way.” Taking this information about her character into account, I consider it more likely that the reason Lelouch and Nunnally idolised Marianne was either (1) because they based their impression largely on her reputation, rather than because she genuinely was a loving mother, or (2) she was a very good actor.

At least she provided some strategies to prepare her children for having to cope with the emotional trauma she was about to inflict on them.

How to make sense of their relationship with Marianne from an attachment perspective? I think this is largely up to interpretation due to lack of pre-series material. Lelouch and Nunnally both seem to like and look up to her, but that does not necessarily indicate secure attachment. I would argue they had an insecure relationship with Marianne, and that argument is based on two things. First, her personality traits and actions (rather than Lelouch and Nunnally’s accounts of her): she blatantly uses her children as pawns for her plan, and doesn’t care all that much that they were suffering as a result. Even though she does argue all her planning was well-intentioned, this act quickly fall apart when Lelouch challenges her. As C.C. tells her, “the only people you love are yourselves”. Calling this sort of behaviour “poor mind-mindedness” or “lack of parental warmth” is an understatement - I simply don’t see a scenario where Marianne would genuinely care.

Secondly, I’d argue you can infer it from Lelouch’s patterns of behaviour as he grows older. Many of his actions, and the themes surrounding him as a character, could be seen as a manifestation of insecure attachment - his attitude towards Nunnally, attitude towards his friends in the student council, his emotionality, and the general theme of a  fragmented identity, to mention some. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Point is, there is good reason to believe Lelouch or Nunnally had any form of secure attachment bond to either of their parents, and this has some implications for their development as the series goes on.

IV. Abandoned by the Empire: Trauma and Parentification

In addition to not having the best relationships with their parents to begin with, Lelouch and Nunnally were then burdened with more baggage after their mother’s death. In Nunnally’s case, her trauma from the incident was primarily physical (blindness and paralysation of her legs), due to her being literally in Marianne’s arms as she was shot. Lelouch was a witness, and escaped without physical injury. Afterwards, while his sister is still in hospital, he takes it upon himself to confront his father about what happened, and accuses him of having allowed, even facilitated, the assassination through purposefully neglecting security measures that day.

While Nunnally was by all means most harmed by the attack, it is here in the aftermath I’d argue Lelouch takes his “main blow” in the parental trauma department. When confronted, Charles gets angry and tells Lelouch that everything in his life has been handed to him by virtue of being a child of the royal family, and thus he’s never truly accomplished anything - he might as well be dead, and therefore has no right to doubt or disobey him. This is an especially cruel statement in the context of the social-darwinist Britannia, where the strength to survive by your own measures is seen as highly important, maybe even the only thing that truly is important. Lelouch then visibly flinches and falls back when Charles stands up, in a manner that seems outright terrified. Keep in mind, all this is happening in front of the Royal Court.

This scene in particular is the main reason I cannot imagine Lelouch or Nunnally having any kind of relationship with Charles prior to the incident, much less a secure and healthy one. You’d think the threshold for a young child to turn and publicly accuse his father of premeditated murder in front of the Britannian Royal Court would be astronomically high, especially if he actually liked and trusted him. Additionally, as I mentioned earlier, one of the most important functions of the caregiver is being a secure base in difficult and unsafe situations, which means that children typically tend to turn towards their parents during situations where they feel scared. Flinching away (so severely he even falls back, with a horrified expression on his face), rather than seeking closure, is highly indicative of insecure attachment/parental neglect.

As if all this wasn’t enough, Lelouch and Nunnally are then separated from all their siblings to be relocated to Japan as political hostages. Again, the pre-series material is pretty thin, but throughout the series there are indications that they had good relationships with some of their siblings. For example, Lelouch recalls playing chess with Schneizel, and possibly had some kind of relationship with Clovis judging by their conversation before Lelouch kills him. Both Lelouch and Nunnally also seem to have been very close with Euphie - in Stage 22.25, they’re playing in her room and don’t want to go to sleep because they’re having so much fun. Lelouch even refers to Euphie as the first girl he ever loved (let’s just... not unpack this one). Point is, not only do they get traumatised by and separated from their parents (whom they already had an insecure relationship with), but they’re also ripped away from their entire network of social support, except for each other. 

This image is so fucking sad. Fuck.

So, when Lelouch and Nunnally arrive in Japan, they’re on their own. And because he is older, and because of Nunnally’s disability, Lelouch ends up taking on most of the responsibility. He carries her up the stairs when they arrive at the shrine, washes their clothing, buys their food, and so on. In addition to these practical tasks, he also tries to comfort his sister emotionally and seems to also feel responsible for her well-being - for example, when discovering their lodgings were small and quite sad-looking, he tries to shield Nunnally from it by lying and telling her it looks like Euphie’s room. When Suzaku first meets Nunnally, Lelouch instantly runs into the room because he heard a noise, and freaks out at Suzaku because he thinks he’s going to harm her. For all intents and purposes, he steps into a caregiver role for his sister - an attachment figure, one might even say. This shift in their dynamic becomes very apparent when comparing their relationship in Japan and onwards, to the aforementioned bickering-over-a-plate incident in Euphie’s room, where they were fighting and playing like siblings.

This phenomenon is sometimes called parentification, in which the absence of adult figures providing sufficient care causes one child to bear more responsibility than is normal for the age, and step into the role of “parent”. Parentification can be adaptive and healthy with concrete/practical tasks, in small periods of time and with plenty support, for example pre-teens babysitting their younger cousins. Suffice to say, Lelouch had none of those things. He is Nunnally’s sole contact, made worse by himself by being stubborn and not wanting to let anyone else in to help. Additionally, plenty of other risk factors for destructive parentification is present - the tasks are diffuse, all-consuming and way above the level appropriate for his age, he gets no sort of recognition, reward, or help, it lasts a long period of time (permanently), generational lines become somewhat blurred, and his own needs end up taking second priority to him. And, as you’ll remember from the attachment theory section, this kind of relationship is not horizontal in nature - Lelouch and Nunnally don’t provide each other mutual support of this nature, but rather Lelouch is the one providing a function for Nunnally.

In the beginning of this section, I mentioned that Nunnally’s trauma as a result of Marianne’s death was primarily physical. However, she evidently went through a great deal of psychological trauma as well. A novel detailing their childhoods in Japan states that Nunnally privately had a terrible time coping with the changes in her life and would throw tantrums when left to her own at Kururugi residence, destroying nearly anything she could get her hands on. However, unless she secretly throws tantrums whenever her brother is off screen, this doesn’t seem to be an issue during the span of the series. I’d argue this could be attributed to Lelouch functioning as a caregiver for her - she had someone there to help her, calm her down and provide external emotional regulation, which in turn helped her learn to better regulate her emotional states on her own. Lelouch provides safety and warmth, and, in doing so, becomes a buffer for his sister.

Lelouch, however, has no such buffers. Because of this, it’s easy to draw a line between his parental problems and trauma, and his subsequent maladjusted pattern behaviour when the siblings arrive in Japan. At the Kururugi residence, both him and Nunnally are offered both food and clothing, but he is insistent on providing everything himself - he washes all their clothes, and buys their food with coupons in town, despite being beat up by the other boys there for being Britannian. He’s distrustful towards everyone there (before later warming up to Suzaku) and hypersensitive for any possible threat to Nunnally’s safety. In my opinion, it’s evident Charles’ words had an impact on him. When Suzaku asks why he is so hellbent on refusing help, he responds with: “I’ll live by my own strength, and I won’t be dead any longer!” Through caregivers, children learn what to expect from the world and their own place in it - in Lelouch’s case, he clearly sees the world as an unsafe place with few people to truly trust, and considers himself only worth something if he is entirely independent. Although independence is often seen as a “mature” trait in children and therefore indicative of “good” development, healthy dependence and attachment in childhood is crucial for the facilitation of later healthy independence. And unlike Nunnally (who has him), he doesn’t have anyone to rely on and turn to for his security.

Diverting slightly from the topic at hand, I think this highlights the interesting narrative role of C.C. as the closest thing Lelouch has to a caregiver proxy. I am in no way trying to imply she is outright maternal towards him, but she’s of help and offers practical and sometimes emotional support - a role no other person in Lelouch’s life really fills. I already explained why Nunnally isn’t a possible candidate, and Suzaku, while an important figure in Lelouch’s life, has his own essay-worthy plate of parental problems to deal with. Additionally, their whole enemy situation doesn’t make him someone Lelouch can reliably turn to for comfort and support. C.C however, is older, wiser, more “stable”, and seems to know how to offer emotional support in a way that somewhat calms Lelouch down. In turn, he occasionally tries to reach out to her in difficult situations (or at least he gives into having breakdowns in front of her), which he doesn’t seem to do with anyone else. If only she’d intervened when he was a child instead of just standing there dramatically in the background. But alas.

V. Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind: Differential Susceptibility

Earlier, I briefly mentioned Nunnally being the one most harmed by Marianne’s death. She was younger when it happened, more directly involved, and experienced a greater loss of function as a result which altered her lifestyle significantly. Based on this, I could easily argue that the incident would have far more damaging implications for her long-term psychological well-being compared to her older brother. I could, but I won’t, because it didn’t. Despite all these risk factors present in Nunnally’s case, their mother’s death seems to have made far more of a long-term impact on Lelouch. We’ve already discussed the most important reason why: Lelouch providing Nunnally with protective care associated with a secure parent, thus functioning as a buffer for her trauma. In this section, I’d like to discuss another important factor, interacting with attachment security: namely, differential susceptibility (also sometimes called responsiveness for care).

When we meet Lelouch in the beginning of Code Geass, he feels stuck and utterly powerless in his situation. He gambles on chess to pass time, but feels otherwise bored, restless and detached from his environment. When he receives the power of Geass from C.C., it gives him what he claims he wanted all along - a tool to take control of his life, get revenge on those who wronged him and actually do something. Thus, a plan to overthrow the Britannian Empire is formed and set into motion. The main targets seem to be the royal family as he struggles to systematically take down the empire and search for information - once he meets his brother Clovis, he shoots him (seemingly) without much hesitation. As time goes on, he sacrifices more and more time and energy to his obsessive goal, while his web of lies and various interpersonal becomes increasingly difficult to manage. There is a reason his character is often compared to the likes of Light Yagami (despite them having completely opposing ideologies, but that’s an essay topic for another day) - his arc follows the same downward spiral pattern, where one thing leads to another and suddenly you’re up to your ears in civilian casualties. It’s obvious Lelouch hasn’t accepted, gotten over, or forgiven his family in the slightest, and takes this anger out on those he perceives wronged him in search of an answer.

Meanwhile, Nunnally doesn’t exhibit anything close to this kind of grudge. She seems upset whenever it is brought up, but otherwise seems to have made peace with what happened and ready to forgive her family. One might argue this comes down to a difference of opportunity - Nunnally doesn’t exactly have the power of Geass, or even functioning eyes of the non-mind control variety, so it might be a bit more difficult to get certain things done. Such as killing off most of the Britannian royal family. However, even before Lelouch got the power of Geass, he expressed a wish to destroy Britannia for what they did to him and his sister. So, unless Nunnally has some secret desire to kill that was just never mentioned (in which case this whole essay is null and void, I suppose), Lelouch seems to be coping with his trauma in a much more maladaptive way than his sister, turning his sadness and feelings of rejection into anger and resentment, which ended up staying with him pretty much until the day he died.

Reach your arm out and grab the stars or whatever that quote from LoGH is.

Based on this, I’d argue Lelouch is what one might call a flexible strategist. This doesn’t refer to his military tactics (although he seems pretty flexible with those as well) but simply means that, for better and for worse, he’s relatively sensitive to factors and people in his external environment. On one hand, he seems to flourish in environments where he gets support. During his childhood in the Imperial Palace, he seemed to mostly get along with and care about his siblings (as mentioned earlier). He was also by all accounts a very bright child - he did say he never managed to beat Schneizel at chess, but to give Lelouch some credit here, Schneizel at the time would have been an adult man in his early 20s, while Lelouch was, like, 7. The fact he even stood a chance is fairly impressive. I do not want to argue chess ability is the ultimate measurement of childhood functioning, but my point here is this: he seemed to be on a decent developmental path, both cognitively and socially, all things considered. On the other hand, he tends to react poorly whenever something goes wrong. I’ll talk about this in more depth in the emotional development section, but tl;dr: Lelouch is a very volatile character, who tends to have very high highs and low lows.

While Lelouch seems to be more “formable” by both positive and negative environmental influences, Nunnally is more of a so-called fixed strategist. She, like Lelouch, seemed to be in a decent place before the incident, had a period of acting out after her trauma (throwing tantrums etc.), but got “back on track” through Lelouch fairly quickly. She seems more forgiving of her family, for example when she is instantly supportive of Euphie’s special administrative zone (which Lelouch has a very ambivalent relationship with). Towards the endgame in S2, she even aligns herself with Schneizel. As her arc goes on, she shows herself more and more capable of functioning without Lelouch’s help, and make decisions of her own, based on her own opinions. Her outlook on the world seems to be much more down-to-earth and less black and white. Even when her own brother (the only person she’s been able to rely on for most of her life) geasses her and literally leaves her lying on the floor, she tries to reason with him. This is obviously just speculation, but I think had something similar happened to Lelouch he would have, psychologically speaking, completely lost it (in fact, he does lose it multiple times, which I’ll also get back to). Additionally, from the glimpse we see of Nunnally with Suzaku after Zero Requiem, it seems like she’s been able to cope relatively well with her brother’s death. In general, she seems to find her feet much easier than Lelouch and is more stable across situations.

To summarise everything so far: I’d argue neither Charles nor Marianne were secure caregivers for Lelouch and Nunnally. This is implied not only by their traits and actions, but can be inferred from Lelouch’s maladaptive developmental path. The reason we see this pattern develop in Lelouch but not Nunnally is that he, through parentification, functioned as a buffer for her. Furthermore, this difference in trajectories is amplified by their different underlying susceptibilities - Lelouch more sensitive/formable by negative events and loss in general, while Nunnally is more resilient. From this point on I’ll focus mainly on Lelouch, and discuss how this magnificent cocktail of risk factors explain his developmental outcomes as an older teenager - in particular, how it shines through when it comes to his emotionality, identity, and goals/motivations.

VI. Thunder in Our Hearts: Emotional Development and Interpersonal Relationships

Lelouch frequently throughout the series, for lack of a better term, loses his absolute shit. For example, in the scene where he plays chess with Mao in S1 E16, he screams and dramatically falls backwards when the last piece is thrown onto the scale. He’s completely devoid of expression, and is well and truly out of it until Suzaku arrives. He ends up in a similar state of mind when he thinks Nunnally is killed in S2, where it seems like he’s completely detached from his surroundings - just repeating that he wants to speak with her. In addition to these dissociative-esque states in response to extreme stress, he has lesser breakdown and outbursts as well, such as: after Shirley’s father dies, after the incident with Euphie, when he’s flipping out at Rolo upon seeing his phone locket, etc. Additionally, he’s been shown to take stress and anger out on other people in the (kinda hilarious) scene where he goes to an abandoned street to use his Geass on random people, making them dance as he stands there being angsty. These bursts of emotion don’t exclusively concern negative situations either, as evidenced by his multiple periods of manic laughter and monologues during battle.

I once read this Geass analysis claiming Lelouch is an unemotional character. As evidenced by these screenshots, that was a correct take and not inaccurate at all. Emotions? Where?

In addition to being fairly emotional, Lelouch’s character is also very centered around the people in his life. His mother and sister are the primary motivation through the series. He uses Nunnally’s well-being to justify his actions. He let’s C.C. comfort him. He cares greatly about Shirley, and is devastated at her father’s death (though one can only assume he feels a bit better after punching a wall in the shower), to the point where he erases her memory to spare her the suffering he’s bringing by getting her involved. He obviously deeply cares about Suzaku (again - essay for another day), and orders him to keep on living no matter what, despite him being the number one obstacle for Zero’s plans. If he expresses this affection in a reasonable way is another question entirely - his main way of expressing his love for Nunnally seems to be killing thousands of people for her sake, Shirley by erasing her memory, and Suzaku by forcing him to live on at any cost, which is the exact opposite of what he wanted.

He also has a recurring pattern of requiring a lot of external emotional regulation through other people. Nunnally is the most obvious example of this (obviously) -  whenever something goes slightly wrong, he usually defaults to screaming about her, and becomes absolutely devastated whenever she’s unsafe. If Lelouch functions as her buffer, I’d say she’s her crutch. He heavily leans on her for justification and a purpose in life. But, these maladaptive ways of leaning on people also occurs with other characters, such as in the scene with Kallen in the warehouse where he’s about to inject himself with refrain. Kallen takes the needle from him and throws it on the ground, and he reacts by walking towards her asking her to console him - saying “there are things a woman can do for that, right?”. Kallen promptly (rightfully) slaps him, and he seems to regain his senses.

The most frequently repressed scene by all Lelouch fans.

In summary, I’d argue Lelouch is the complete opposite of an unemotional or uncaring character. He often seems to struggle with controlling his (plethora of) emotions in healthy ways, and copes with them either through completely shutting things out, having frequent breakdowns, lashing out on others, or using people as emotional crutches. He’s also very centered around other people, but tends to express it in less-than-appropriate ways, and goes on about things in an almost childish way, at times. This, I think, is indicative of his insecure attachment and lack of sensitive caregivers. In contrast to Nunnally, who had him, he didn’t have anyone to provide safety and externally regulate his emotions, meaning he was never able to internalise such strategies. Thus, there is a pattern of unhealthy (lack of) regulation of emotional states, leading to these stark contrasts between high and low points, and the quite bad ways he deals with them. Years of stress, repressed restlessness and unhealthy coping mechanisms for trauma certainly didn’t help either. Put simply - he’s a bit emotionally immature, and this is a significant aspect of his character.

VII. Reflektor: Identity and Projection

One of the most prevalent motifs in  Lelouch’s arc, save for the chess symbolism, is the theme of masks and a fragmented identity. Throughout the series, he uses different identities to fill different roles in his life: Lelouch vi Britannia the prince, Lelouch Lamperouge the student, Zero the terrorist/freedom fighter and eventually Lelouch vi Britannia again, the tyrannical 99th Emperor of the Holy Britannian Empire. This switch is the most obvious display of the fragmented identity theme, as he is quite literally changing his name and masquerading as different people. With his Zero persona he even puts on a literal mask to conceal his face, but he also uses subtler, figurative masks for his other personas in order to achieve various goals. Additionally, there are also subtler role shifts at play within these identities: Lelouch Lamperouge exists  as Nunnally’s caregiver, a student council member, Suzaku’s childhood friend, etc. (as with all people, fictional or not).

It is here his main ideological conflict with his parents arises. Charles and Marianne wants, through their Ragnarök plan, to abolish all “masks” and fuse mankind into one collective unconscious. Their reasoning is that if everyone were honest and there were no separation between people, the world would be a better place. Lelouch, however, finds the concept of identity masks useful and even defines himself by them. This is clearly shaped by his own experience - in order to survive in Area 11 and protect his sister, he had to change his name and lie. In order to gain real power and influence to overthrow Britannia, he had to change his name and lie. This modus operandi goes straight to the heart of his identity, because it is the reason he is able to exert his will over the world in any meaningful way - which, as we discussed earlier, is the reason he is “not dead any longer”. His core idea is that those who are privileged enough to be able to tell the truth about themselves, have no right to deny others the right to lie for their own survival or to achieve their goals.

Carl Jung arguably had a much more significant impact on anime than he did psychology. Actually, this isn’t even arguable.

Another, subtler way the series conveys the theme of fractured identity is Lelouch’s projection of desires and wishes onto others. This is shown quite literally through how the Geass gives him the power to command anyone to do anything. But not only does he impose his will onto others through verbal command, he also projects his more abstract goals and desires into the people in his life. Again, Nunnally is the most obvious example of this: Everything he does, he claims is for the sake of Nunnally. It’s interesting he never outright says that he wanted to do any of this for any personal reason - it’s all about a kinder world for Nunnally, Nunnally’s smile, and how their parents abandoned them. In the final confrontation with Charles and Marianne, Suzaku asks him if he used Nunnally as an excuse to justify his actions. Lelouch confirms this, and then says he fought to protect everything he wanted to protect. Still, he never mentions he feels rejected, or that he would want to grow older in a kinder world, even though it’s obviously more his own wish than hers (as Nunnally mentions during Zero Requiem, she would have been happy just being with her brother). In a way, he considers himself two steps removed from his desires - only working against Britannia on the basis of what he imagines the people in his life would want him to do.

Lelouch also has a tendency to view his own identity(-ies) through abstract symbols, rather than as a concrete human being with a backstory, grudges and motivations. In exile he expresses frustration at being a pawn of Britannia, as Zero he functions as a faceless symbol of Japanese liberation and a rebellion against the establishment, and as Emperor he aims to become a symbol of people’s hatred towards their oppressors. Even the orchestration of his life’s ending is primarily a symbolic act to him; with the world’s hatred focused on a tyrannical Emperor, the world can be peaceful when that symbol disappears. Lelouch seems very aware of this himself: that he is past the point of no return, and destined to become someone who will bear the burden of sacrificing his own identity, morals and character to play a part. He, in a way, seems more comfortable in this realm of abstraction - in being more of a symbol. However, if we try to strip away his rather grand narrative for a second, we’re left with a person committing suicide at 19 because he thinks the world will be a better place for it.

Black king captures e1, checkmate.

VIII. Pity the Child: Politics and Spite

Lastly, I want to make the argument that the parental abandonment Lelouch and Nunnally experienced, and the subsequent cascade of issues is the most important aspect of the series. Even more so than the central ideological conflict of working against versus within systems of oppression. As I’ve already touched on a fair bit, I think Lelouch’s circumstances growing up and the experiences arising from that was the very foundation for his later ideology and hatred for Britannia, rather than his ideology in and of itself being the reason he hates his parents and the system they represent. This is best represented by the climax of the scene with Charles and Marianne in C’s world, where Lelouch speaks not of systems of power, racism, oppression, politics, etc. - he speaks of abandonment and hurt.

In my opinion, there’s reason to question whether he would have gone to the same lengths to destroy Britannia if he’d not been exiled from the system himself. In one of the picture dramas from his summer in Japan as a child, he lectures Suzaku on Britannian and Japanese foreign trade policy, making the argument they’re both unethical. This indicates he already knew of and disagreed with the actions of Britannia, but it’s only after he’s exiled and war is declared on Japan he begins talking about enacting revenge. Additionally, he has some truly magnificent displays of hypocrisy throughout the series that (in my unpopular (?) opinion) puts Suzaku to shame. Even the very act of him using Geass is contradictory to his fundamental belief: that opposing a well-intentioned act upon others is no different from an evil act. During their confrontation, he is very concerned with expressing this ideology to his parents, before promptly turning around and making his brother a geassed slave forever, two episodes later.

Not to completely undermine his ideological streak; I do genuinely believe he is anti-Britannia, and I do genuinely believe he values personal freedom highly. However, based on everything discussed so far, I’d argue he would perhaps not have cared as much, or at least been more open to a more Suzaku-esque approach, had he not had deep personal trauma connected to the whole situation as well. So, his main motivation isn’t to “bash the fash”, as it were, but rather bash these few specific fash who traumatised him and his sister before shipping them off to a foreign country they then immediately declared war on. Revenge, spite, and pure, childish anger towards a family that wronged him is a much more useful lens through which to view the series, rather than an ideological conflict per se.

IX. The Conclusion Bit, Finally

To summarise this entirely too long essay, Lelouch and Nunnally both suffered from insecure attachment and later trauma and parental abandonment. Nunnally’s main protective factor/buffer for this trauma was Lelouch, which gets her “back on track” towards becoming an emotionally stable and independent girl. Her brother, however, doesn’t have anyone to fill this role, and this cascades into dysfunctional behaviour and strategies across different domains: his trust issues as a child, obsession with revenge, immature emotionality, poor handling of stress, projecting onto others, and a fragmented concept of his own identity. Lastly, I think these personal issues constitute the crux of his motivation throughout the series - Lelouch’s arc is about trauma, parental neglect and spite more than it ever was about politics.

[pies-writes-and-more]

( @lovelyy24 had asked for a Steve x Reader so here goes!) Modern AU

"This. Is. Killing. Me.” (Y/N) groaned, slamming her textbook shut and hitting her forehead against the desk in front of her.

“Aw come on, how hard could med school be?” (Y/N) glared at Bucky who was happily sitting on her bed, playing a game on his phone. “I’m kidding!” He insisted with a grin.

“You know, not all of us get to waste our time on games, asshole,” (Y/N) grumbled, running her fingers through her hair.

“Yeah, Bucky, leave her alone. She’s got finals coming up,” Steve piped up from the doorway, smiling at the two of his best friends. “But I have something that might cheer you up,” he sang happily, holding up a pizza box.

“PIZZA!” (Y/N) jumped out of her seat and into Steve’s arm. He managed to hold her in one arm, balancing the pizza box in another.

“Hey, watch it! I could’ve dropped it! Or you!” Steve groaned, putting the pizza on the bed and shifting her weight to both his arms.

“Oh please, we all know you’d drop the pizza before you dropped her,” Bucky mumbled with a grin, sliding over to grab a slice.

“Shut up,” Steve’s ears turned pink but (Y/N) seemed too preoccupied with the pizza.

She munched down on a slice eagerly, pulling at the extra cheese, “Steve Rogers, I fucking love you,” she exclaimed through a mouthful. Steve’s cheeks started to go pink now, avoiding Bucky’s annoying she-loves-you glance.

“Yeah yeah. Just remember I need you to model for my sketch project due next week,” Steve shrugged, plopping onto the bed and grabbing a slice of pizza. “How’d your studying go today though?”

“Awful!” She complained, swallowing the large bite she had taken. “I have 17 more lectures to go through, 3 more chapters, and I only have a few more days.”

“Maybe if you had started studying earlier-” Bucky started, a wide grin on his face.

“Maybe if my stupid roommates didn’t come home drunk and throwing up everywhere, blasting their goddamn music and Super Smash Bros, I would have!” She glared, making Bucky laugh with his hands in the air innocently.

“I promise I will not bring Stevie out hardcore drinking out again. It was awful. I remember very little of what happened, to be honest.” Bucky smirked, going back to his game.

“I remember we came home and I threw up in the sink,” Steve grimaced, giving an apologetic look to (Y/N). “Sorry, love, promise it won’t happen again.”

“We were supposed to stay out later. Met a couple of gorgeous girls who were totally into Stevie, but he started to feel sick,” Bucky shrugged, as if he was pretending he didn’t know why Steve wasn’t into the girls.

“Oh yea? No interest in the dating scene, Steve?” (Y/N)’s head tilted a little, trying to catch the blond boy’s gaze. “I thought you were over Sharon.”

“I am!” Steve said quickly, looking up at her. “I just, I dunno. Guess I haven’t found someone yet,” he shrugged, rubbing the back of his neck.

(Y/N) felt her heart skip a beat, trying to not look so pleased with the fact that Steve wasn’t eagerly looking for someone. Maybe it meant she had a chance. “Well you know what they say, love always finds you when you least expect it!” (Y/N) smiles at him, skipping off to the kitchen to find them drinks.

“Who knew Stevie could lie so easily to the love of his life,” Bucky teased, nudging his best friend.

“Shut up, she’ll hear you,” Steve hissed, hitting him back. “I didn’t lie-”

“You told her you didn’t find someone! You’ve been in love with her since first year. It’s not that you didn’t find someone, it’s that you’re too chicken to do anything about it!” Bucky exclaimed, sighing. “She likes you too, sport. She talks about you all the time. She was absolutely devastated when you started seeing Sharon-”

“She thought Sharon was a bad fit for me, and she was right!” Steve interrupted.

“She thought Sharon was a bad fit, and that she would be a better fit!” 

Steve opened his mouth to retaliate when (Y/N) called into the room, “Someone make a note! We need ice cream next grocery store trip!” She grinned, hopping into the room with 3 spoons and a tub of Ben and Jerry’s. “You boys are going to help me study with ice cream as my incentive.” She proclaimed, sitting in front of Steve with a grin. 

It was hard to focus with her wiggling around so much. Finally, she plopped her head into his lap, playing with one of his hands while the other held her study questions. Steve struggled with concentrating but he knew she needed to study so he tried the best he could. Though he didn’t really understand the topics, he found her passion for medicine fascinating. After a while, she wiggled herself over to her desk chair, quickly going over some diagrams.

As she mumbled out a long answer to a question, Steve started to doodle across some scrap papers, sketching out the gorgeous girl in front of him.

“Steve?”

His head popped up from his drawing, sheepishly realizing she had been calling him for the past few minutes. “Steveeee, I told you you can’t just draw me when I’m not ready! I don’t even look good, my hair isn’t washed, my makeup is all faded, and my skin is breaking out from stress,” she complained, pouting at him but rolling her chair over to catch a glimpse of his sketch.

“You always look gorgeous, (Y/N), how many times do I have to tell you?” Steve replied, letting her pull the piece of paper from his fingers.

“Well thanks for making me look somewhat decent,” She smiled, dying internally over the fact that he had been staring at her and drawing her all this time. She looked up at him with bright eyes, the two of them staring at each other for a moment.

God she’s gorgeous, Steve thought to himself, his eyes lingering over her lips for a second. Would it be so bad to kiss her?

Fucking kiss me, (Y/N) thought to herself, feeling them both drawing nearer to each other.

The moment was ultimately ruined by the sound of Bucky snoring. A loud, Dad-like snore. Steve jumped in response, glaring at the unconscious boy lying next to him. “God, I almost forgot he was here,” he grumbled, avoiding her eyes shyly.

“Ya,” she murmured softly, sighing as the moment slipped away from them. “He’s taking up my whole bed,” she groaned, packing up her things. “How the hell am I going to sleep?”

“You could take his room?” He offered.

“And touch the DNA of thousands of girls he’s brought home? No thanks,” she laughed, scrunching up her nose in defiance. 

“What about my room?” 

(Y/N) looked at him and they both froze for a moment. “Y-You want me to sleep with you?”

Steve gulped, wondering what he was supposed to do next, “I-I mean, I can take the couch. I’d just feel bad if you slept on the couch.”

“I’m not going to take your bed and make you sleep on the couch!” She shook her head eagerly. “That’s so cruel. Besides, I fit better on the couch than you do.”

“It’s still a small fit. That couch is so uncomfortable to sleep in,” Steve’s frown tightened and he looked at her, feeling a wave of confidence. “Sleep with me then. Not like it’s the first time we’ve shared a bed.”

(Y/N) nodded slowly, remembering the nights they’d fallen asleep binge-watching shows or having a movie marathon. When they were younger and she’d have stressful nights, sometimes the only way for her to actually fall asleep without worrying over everything was to crawl into Steve’s bed. But after Sharon, everything changed.

Steve cleaned up the pizza boxes and pop cans, tossing them into the garbage and recycling before going to his room to make sure it was all tidied up. He threw his shirt off, throwing on some sweatpants to replace his jeans and waited as she washed her face and changed. 

(Y/N) could’ve sworn she saw Bucky’s eyes twitch, wondering if he really was asleep or if this was some part of his crazy plot to get his two best friends together. She rolled her eyes thinking about it, tossing on some pyjamas and slipping into Steve’s room. 

“So.” She stood in the doorway, wondering if today would mark the day they broke the boundary that Sharon had laid out for her many months ago. Even though Steve and her broke up, (Y/N) never wanted to be that girl friend that his partners were worried about. 

“So.” Steve responded, watching as she nibbled on her lower lip nervously. “I don’t bite, (Y/N), promise,” he offered with a gentle smile.

She laughed nervously, crawling into the bed beside him. She shuffled the blanket over her shoulder, looking up at him as he laid down beside her after turning off the lights. 

“Let me know if I’m squishing you,” he whispered to her, his eyes staring into hers.

“Mhm,” was all she could manage to get out. Her heart was pounding so hard, he was definitely going to hear it or it was going to burst out. Was that even possible? A heart bursting out of someone’s chest? Every romance book talked about it but was it medically possible? What even is the procedure for something like that? Why wasn’t that written in the chapter about heart diseases? Is this not a disease?

“(Y/N), are you okay?” Steve’s eyebrows furrowed with worry, her breathing getting a bit faster.

“Y-Yeah, I’m fine. I just-” She took in a deep breath before looking up at him again. “I’d forgotten what it’s like to sleep next to someone.”

Steve felt his heart drop. The number of nights he wished she would crawl into his bed again or would ask for him to come to her room were probably astronomically high. He thought maybe since she was so busy with medical school, he shouldn’t bug her with his affections. But having Sharon in his bed was even worse than an empty bed. “I missed you,” he let out softly. 

It was barely a whisper and the two of them sat with it lingering in the air for a moment.

“I missed you more,” she finally whispered back, feeling his hand cover hers gently. 

“Sleep, doll. You’ve got a lot of work to do in the morning,” he whispered, leaning over to kiss her forehead. Her eyes closed with the fleeting kiss and he waited a few moments to close his own eyes to make sure she was feeling safe. 

One of these days he would tell her how he felt. But for now, just knowing she was still comfortable in his bed made all the difference.

Few hours later, Bucky awoke to darkness, frowning tightly when he didn’t see either of his friends around. “Betrayal,” he grumbled but smirked to himself when he didn’t see either of them on the couch or his room.

At least they did something. Maybe they’d finally spill their hearts out to one another and Bucky would stop having to watch the two of them gaze longingly at each other all the time.