#hope there's no spelling errors or contradictions here

[mintflavoredfemurs]

I love how you draw killer! Do you have any headcanons for him?

Thank you :D And I have a handful!! Mostly ones following the ending where he leaves Nightmare to go with Color. (Buckle up, I'm a sucker for detail and most of it is just expanding off of canon)

-- Killer treats his gaster blasters like cats. He had to do this because Nightmare kept hurting his actual cats and he figured it was the best way to cope without getting himself caught (easy to desummon blasters) or putting any other cats under Nightmare's wrath. When he escapes with Color, he gets actual cats again but still treats his blasters like cats (they get sad when he doesn't!!)

-- He likes hanging around with Error for the sole purpose of talking shit about Nightmare. The moment Error pulls out a chocolate bar though, he's gotta nope it out of there. Too many memories. Error never understands why but begins using it as a way to get Killer out of his anti-void when he wants to be unbothered.

-- Killer's gotten better at managing his stages, especially since Nightmare isn't there to trigger stage 3. The way Nightmare would trigger stage 3 was to, as the comics showed, stabbing right through Killer's SOUL with a tentacle. (This is just theorizing:) The negative energy of his corruption would override Killer's positivity (whatever little there was), the forced negativity putting his DT into hyperdrive (spilling out his eyes, mouth, nose, everywhere..) which triggers his bloodlust. When Color offered Killer help initially, it'd given him enough hope and positivity to linger in his SOUL residually even after Nightmare had reverted it. Now, Nightmare isn't there to manually trigger stage 3 and he lives much more happily with Color. With his SOUL both being in stage 1 more often and less things to trigger his higher stages, he's gotten a handle on it!! But! There are still things that trigger higher stages, usually things that he associates with bad memories.

-- Killer's considered joining the Stars just to spite Nightmare but had to shut that idea down quickly. Swap and the memories of fighting him would trigger his stages + He's afraid of getting caught in a battle with his old gangmates. Even worse, getting into crosshairs with Nightmare himself. Nightmare's temper had gotten worse since he left, and he always did have a chokehold on Killer. Killer couldn't risk it.

-- While he Was still in the gang, in the rare moments that Horror didn't immediately leave when he saw Killer enter a room, they might exchange brief conversations about their old AUs, Killer initiating them. They were brief because they had to be, the influx of emotions similar to grieving (grieving their old AUs, ESPECIALLY their Papyruses) would catch Nightmare's attention. After his escape, Killer vaguely considers trying to bust Horror out, too but he has his doubts. He's not sure about Dust. (Oh yeah. Horror's been plotting. Getting yanked from an active AU can cause high levels of resentment in a skelly.)

-- Dust and Horror were always on edge around Killer due to his obedience to Nightmare (this is also why Horror usually leaves when Killer enters the room). Though, Dust had, at some point, found out about Killer going behind Nightmare's back to help AUs instead of plunging them into negativity. Dust kept some grudge due to Killer betraying the gang but kept silent. It wasn't the biggest surprise when Killer left soon after he found out. It was more surprising that Nightmare hadn't bothered, even once, to try and find him again.

-- Nightmare had tried, and succeded, to trigger Killer's stage 4 on a few occasions. The negativity from his exhaustion and upwelled memories was always a nice treat afterward.

-- Killer's tried to find his old AU. He never could (almost seems like someone had gotten rid of the AU because they couldn't risk him attempting to defy them...). He found Horror's AU though and the chaos there is one of the few reasons he's skeptical to return Horror to his AU (everything's gone off the rails since Horror's disappearance. Everyone thought Sans (Horror) dusted and Undyne's rule has gotten even more out of hand.)

-- Killer's studying of blood and monster dust still stuck with him. Color's gotten concerned about his hobby before but someone had to have to left him a meticulously gift-wrapped microscope on Gyftmas. Color never fesses up but Killer catches the glee in his eye whenever he walks in on Killer examining stuff with it.

And, ending on a more lighthearted note!!

-- Killer's often takes his cats to Ccino's cafe to mingle with the other kitties while he grabs drinks for him and Color ^_^

[aounahime]

Okay well can I please ask for a yandere Yui with a Yuutsu darling and Yui grows very attached to her and

And where Yuutsu opens up about her parents and why she covers her neck

She's also an original character of mine you can find more information about her on my page here on Tumblr

Yes of course!! Forgive me for any spelling errors, it’s quite late for me 😅 I hope I did and Yuutsu justice, she seems like such a sweet girl!

——————————————————

Overall, Yui was a quite understanding and compassionate person. Being raised in such a way she was, there had never really been much room for malevolence to grow in her heart. She always did her best to be fair and to not let her emotions get the better of her—the negative ones at least.

…….Until meeting Yuutsu, that is.

Yuutsu was….something special. Unique—soft spoken, gentle….kind without limits. A warmth had bloomed in her heart over the course of time she got to know the pink-loving young woman, and that warmth was something that quickly rose into an inferno.

“She…did what? How could…A parent is supposed to love, cherish and protect you, that is their job-and she instead choose to do something so sick—?”

Placing both her hands on Yuutsu’s shoulders, Yui did her best to steady her racing heart, though it didn’t do much. She already felt ill—and furious at the prospect of her beloved, sweet, darling Yuutsu being treated so cruelly. It just wouldn’t do. Not at all…..She would see to it that that woman who wronged her so would pay for such a mistake, one way or another. She may not be that strong physically—but mentally she had an iron and unbreakable will. That….and she had connections unlike any mere human did.

Beforehand, Yui mostly just assumed Yuutsu wore ribbons and chokers around her neck purely because it fit with her fashion preferences. She never would have pieces together that it was hiding old wounds, yet now that she finally understood….it made her feel sick, angry almost. She has grown much too attached to this girl—but she didn’t care. She would take care of what was held closest to her heart—in this case, it was Yuutsu.

“Don’t worry, Yuutsu-chan. I’ll protect you, even if it means doing something I can’t take back.”

Smiling softly, Yui leans forward to press her lips lightly against Yuutsu’s in an affectionate manner before squeezing her close in a hug, the light pinkish tint in her eyes growing darker with a near-sinister intent.

“Even if it contradicts with me, I’ll protect you…”

[vannahfanfics]

Before you read, here’s the previous chapter. New? Start from the beginning!

Daffodils Bloom After Winter

Ao3

Chapter 6: Gratitude

Ayumi’s eyebrows were furrowed as her gaze painstakingly crawled through every word of her manuscript draft for the fifth time. Her hand was holding a cup of coffee to her mouth, but the liquid just lapped uselessly against her upper lip instead of being drawn in because she was hyper-focusing on the printed words. The page was already smothered in red ink, indicating spelling and grammar errors or sections that needed rephrasing for her next draft. Her brown eyes widened when she stumbled across yet another mistake, and she slammed the coffee cup down to scribble on the area with her pen lest she immediately forget her thought process. It was the last sentence of the document, and so once she had finished adding her note, she set the manuscript down on the table with a weary sigh. 

I think that’s enough proofreading for now. I should begin incorporating these edits into the file… Ayumi thought as she reclined back in the café chair and rubbed at her aching eyes. She then lolled her head to look out the window at the bustling streets of Konoha.

Usually, Ayumi worked on her personal research at home or in the public library. However, she had felt that a change of pace would do her good. She elected to work at the café by the schoolhouse. It was the same little joint she had brought Shikadai to when she had walked him home. She actually loved the quaint place; it had phenomenal teas and coffees imported from all over the world, and its pastries were all family recipes. She was on excellent terms with the owner, and they had even thrown in a free coffee cake with her purchase that afternoon. 

She picked up her coffee cup again, actually intending to consume it this time, and noticed that only a small amount of the beige liquid remained. She quickly drained the last dregs of it before shifting in her chair to go order a refill. However, before she could rise, someone set down a steaming hot and full cup of coffee right in front of her. Blushing, she glanced up with a gratuitous remark dancing on her tongue. It died when she saw who it was.

“You’re working awfully hard,” Shikamaru smirked down at her. He gestured to the iron-wrought chair opposite her. “May I?”

“Y-yes!” she stammered, thankfully finding her words again. He strode around the small table to sink down into the chair with a long, tired sigh. “Um… Thank you for the coffee,” she murmured shyly and slid it across the table towards herself. Its warmth bloomed across her palms, not unlike the warmth blossoming in her chest at his kind gesture. He waved a hand dismissively and sipped languorously at his own cup of pure black coffee.

“I saw you from the counter. The owner mentioned that you’d been here since 8 o’clock. I figured you needed a replacement,” he chuckled. Ayumi smiled shyly and sipped daintily at the fresh coffee. The owner knew her order by heart; the robust brew was sweetened to perfection with a combination of sugar and sweet cream, turning the dark liquid a honey-brown color. Its bittersweet taste spread over her tongue, easing her tensions, and her body began to buzz as it absorbed the fresh wave of stimulating caffeine. The minuscule amount of fatigue she had started to feel was swallowed in its invigorating wake. Shikamaru smiled in amusement. “You look bright-eyed and bushy-tailed already.”

“Yes, I don’t drink much caffeine actually, so it works rather quickly,” she explained. Shikamaru’s gaze dropped down to the collection of papers strewn in front of her. He looked as if he were going to inquire, so she enlightened him before he even opened his mouth to ask. “I publish historical research. I’m editing a draft of a manuscript that I’m hoping to submit to an academic journal soon.” 

He whistled in admiration and gestured to the stack of papers, wishing to peruse them; Ayumi nodded in permission, and he scooped them up to begin skimming the document.

“‘The Sociopolitical Impacts of the Second Great Ninja War on the Rural Village of Nichibotsu’?” he said with raised eyebrows as he rattled off the paper’s title. His eyebrows crept higher and higher up his forehead as he rifled through the pages of paragraphs, maps, and diagrams. “Records of personal accounts… Photocopies of death and birth records… Even photographs of the riots… The riots in Nichibotsu resulting from the governing body’s underhanded support of the enemy and human rights violations are actually very scarcely mentioned in history textbooks. Most people don’t know they ever happened. How did you ever find so much information on them?” He asked with a clear tone of awe, which made Ayumi flush and wiggle in her chair self-consciously.

“Well, I took a few personal trips to Nichibotsu to converse with the locals. Many of those documents were stored away in their attics and basements. They were more than happy to share them with me if it meant the plight of their ancestors would get the attention it deserves.” 

He clicked his tongue appreciatively and nodded with another glance down at her scribble-covered manuscript. 

“This is a very impressive account. I hope you’re able to publish it, and it gets the recognition it merits,” Shikamaru smiled as he handed the papers back. Ayumi hid her bashful grin behind her coffee cup. Shikamaru reclined back in his chair, tossing his arm over the top and looking off in the distance. A silence settled between them, a silence that caused Ayumi to fidget uncomfortably. The parent-teacher conference had only been a few days ago, and the tension between father and son was never far from her mind. Looking at Shikamaru, his lidded gaze searching the horizon for something unknown, she once again wondered if there was anything she could do to ease their pain. 

As Shikamaru shifted, a flicker of light caught Ayumi’s attention. She followed the bobbing white light to see the sunlight refracting off the smooth, slim surface of a diamond ring, hanging on a silver chain against Shikamaru’s chest. It was most obviously a wedding band. She stared at it with wide eyes, her breath hitching in her throat; when Shikamaru noticed her intense gaze, he frowned and tucked the ring back underneath his shirt. 

“Don’t stick my nose in where it’s not wanted, right?” she asked hollowly. Shikamaru’s frown deepened at her echo of his unkind words, and he rubbed at the back of his neck. “You don’t have to answer me… but I think it’s important for Shikadai’s sake… that I know what happened to your wife,” she posed slowly. Shikamaru’s dark eyes bored into hers. Doubt and fear swam within the black depths. “I only want to help my student.” And you. 

Shikamaru inhaled sharply, then breathed out through his nose. He hunched over the coffee table while gripping his coffee cup tight, bending the plastic under the force and causing the dark liquid to bulge near the rim. He did not answer her for several minutes, ruminating on the decision to allow Ayumi into his fractured heart or continue to keep her beyond the walls he had built. 

His eyes fixated on the swirls of bubbles floating in his coffee. 

“My wife perished on a mission,” he revealed quietly. His thumbs slowly slid up and down on the smooth paper of the coffee cup. “One year ago.” He drained the cup of the bitter liquid and set it down, lips smoothing into a thin, terse line. Sensing that the troubled man wished to offer no further explanation, Ayumi did not press him for more information. 

“I see. I’m sorry to hear that.” And she was. Death never loomed far from ninja, even in times of supposed peace. Even routine missions could turn deadly. Such was the uncertainty of their profession. Saddening news as it was, Ayumi was still glad for it; finally, she could understand the rift between Shikamaru and his son and why Shikadai was so emotionally volatile. Everyone responded to sudden deaths of loved ones differently— and it was clear that these two had reacted very negatively, one lashing out and the other trying desperately to bottle everything up inside. 

Shikamaru only grunted at her in response. His brows were furrowed deep over his eyes, bringing hard edges to his dark pupils. His hand curled over his mouth with a stiff grip that turned his knuckles white. She wondered if she had pressed him too much in her quest for information; guilt prickled at her gut. As she squirmed uncomfortably, Shikamaru’s eyes slowly flickered up to meet her face. The hint of a smile peeked above the edge of his hand. 

“Don’t look so uneasy. I’m all right,” Shikamaru chortled. The strain in his tone left much to be desired; it was clear he was trying to put up a strong front to keep Ayumi from pestering further. Despite her curiosity, Ayumi knew that the best thing to do would be to allow Shikamaru to reveal his tragic story at his own pace. 

As he dropped his hand, he continued, “I’m actually grateful, you know, to see you taking such an interest in Shikadai’s welfare.” Ayumi perked up, a haze of pink dusting her cheeks. He smiled wryly, seemingly amused by her bashfulness and surprise. “I know I’m not going to win Parent of the Year or anything, but I do care about my son. I recognize that he needs a positive influence in his life, considering I’m anything but.” 

“You sell yourself short,” Ayumi contradicted quietly. “You’re a man who’s suffered an inconceivable loss. Both of you have. Difficulty processing and managing that is to be expected.” She breathed in quietly and then timidly reached out to take Shikamaru’s hand. He did not retreat from her, only stared down at her small hand covering his own through lidded, pained eyes. “I’m not sure what it’s worth… but I think you’re doing the best you can given your situation. Both you and Shikadai have shown tremendous growth just since I’ve known you… I’m sure that with time that you two will be able to come together again.” 

Shikamaru continued to just stare silently at her hand, watching her thumb gently sweep back and forth over the top. A smile crawled onto his lips, and his gaze slowly up to her warm brown eyes. 

“Well, that’s not due to anything on my part.” 

Ayumi’s face flushed at the implication of his words. She fiddled with her manuscript, flipping the corners of the pages as she tried not to seem too satisfied with his unspoken praise. 

“You sell yourself short,” she repeated meekly. Shikamaru snorted amusedly, once again studying her hand. It was clearly a teacher’s, smooth and unblemished— not like Shikamaru’s, which was roughened with years of battle and toil. He studied her hand like it held all the solutions to his problems, which made her flush darker and fidget in her chair. As her hand twitched over his, it seemed he decided that he’d disrupted Ayumi’s work long enough. 

She lamented the loss of his gentle heat as he withdrew his hand from underneath hers. 

“Well, I do believe I’ve taken up enough of your time,” he sighed, languidly rising from the chair. “I’d hate to delay your contribution to academia any further,” he chuckled with a small wink. Ayumi giggled and hugged her edited manuscript to her chest with one hand while reaching for her coffee with the other. When she brought it to her lips, she recoiled, discovering that the liquid had long since gone cold. She smacked her lips distastefully and set it down with a grimace. 

“I’ve definitely taken up enough of your time,” Shikamaru joked and fished out some bills from his pocket. Ayumi sputtered refusals, but he still tucked them underneath her coffee cup with a willful smile. “It’s the least I can do, Ayumi,” he insisted in a soft voice. The gentle rumble of his tone made her heart flutter and the words dissolve on her tongue before she could speak them. 

It took her a few seconds to recollect her swooning brain. 

“Th-there’s nothing to repay,” she stammered and shyly tucked her hair behind her ear. “I am only doing my part as Shikadai’s teacher… and your friend,” she added hopefully. Shikamaru straightened, staring down at her with a complicated expression. He then smiled warmly and reached in to sweep away a stray strand of hair that she’d missed. As his fingertips skimmed over her heating skin and her eyes beheld that absolutely beautiful smile of his, all the breath left her lungs. 

“I’m grateful.” 

His smile vanished as soon as it had come, like the sun eclipsed by the relentless clouds rolling across the sky. Ayumi was left reeling, blinking rapidly as she watched him turn his back to head back to work. As she stumbled out a farewell, he looked over his shoulder, the shadow of that happy smile playing over his lips. 

“I expect a copy of the article when it’s published,” was all he said before he melted into the crowd. Ayumi gazed wide-eyed at the space where he’d been, and the glimpses of that toothy, giddy smile danced like stars in her mind’s eye. She wondered how long it had been since he’d smiled like that and what she had to do to see it again. She wondered if Shikadai smiled like that, too, or if he carried a little bit of his mother in his grin. 

Ayumi picked up the cash and stood up to get herself another cup of coffee. There was work to be done.

Enjoy this story? Here’s the next chapter! Please consider perusing my Table of Contents.

[calamity-bean]

Notes: Barkskins Q&A

Barkskins fans! Today (6/28/20), American Cinematheque hosted a Barkskins Q&A webinar with creator Elwood Reid and cast members Marcia Gay Harden (Mathilde Geffard), Christian Cooke (Rene Sel), and David Thewlis (Claude Trepagny). Elwood, Marcia, and Christian were on the call live, while David was interviewed beforehand and his responses recorded. Topics discussed included: 

The show’s general scope and the adaptation process

Historical research

Accent coaching

Colonialism and the portrayal of First Nations characters/cultures

Sets and wardrobe

An audience question for Marcia about Mathilde’s daughter

An audience question for Christian about Rene’s physical/action scenes

Here I’m sharing a summary of the notes I took during the talk. This isn’t a transcript and I didn’t write down everything, but I tried to note interesting things as accurately as I was able. Please pardon any misinterpretations or errors; I did the best I could, but if you remember something differently (or have something to add), feel free to let me know.

This got quite long... Lots of notes below!

The Show in General

First, the big one: the show has not yet been renewed for a second season, but Elwood is hopeful! He feels like season 1 just barely “set the table” for the story, only to yank the tablecloth off right at the end, and he wants more seasons so that viewers can really dig into the meal. It was always planned as multi-season, and right now he’s just hoping that there’s been a good enough viewing and that people talk enough about the show.

The season was originally slated for ten episodes, but had to be cut to nine and then to eight due to the weather changing and due to the time necessary to construct sets. 

The book was considered to be a huge challenge to adapt -- almost unadaptable. Initially, Elwood had ideas for doing a generational / time-skip structure like in the novel, where each season would start over and focus on a new time period; however, one of the main reasons he scrapped that idea was because of the cast. He really adores the whole cast and is excited to write more stories for these actors rather than switching focus to new characters. 

In general, the show was repeatedly described as being essentially about “haves” versus “have-nots” -- who are the “haves,” who are the “have-nots,” what do they want and what are they willing to do in order to become a “have.” It is also a show in which every character (except Rene, initially) has a secret and everyone has something they want that they can’t have.

Also, things such as which characters live/die will not be beholden to what happens in the book.

Historical and Character Research

Marcia and Christian have both read the entire book. Since Mathilde wasn’t in the novel, Marcia called up Elwood with a lot of ideas for how to develop the character, although in the end Mathilde became someone much gravelly, crass, and more conniving than she had initially expected. Christian was very impressed by the scope and uniqueness of the story and found Rene’s simple worldview appealing, describing Rene as a man of the forest, a man of the land, with desires that are simple but meaningful and noble: a better life, prosperity, a piece of his own land.

David read about the first hundred pages, and his initial idea of Trepagny was as someone much tougher and more physically imposing, as portrayed in the book. He then had to work to shed that preconception of the character into the very different Trepagny of the script. He described Trepagny as a man of contradictions: Is he good or bad? Charming or obnoxious? Vulnerable or a bully? Does he live in a cabin or a mansion? Does he worship a god / dual god or a rotten old log? Is he delusional or is he a visionary?

Primary source materials from the period that Elwood used in his historical research include the accounts of Jesuit missionaries, business ledgers describing trade and commerce, and a few memoirs from filles du roi. However, he found it difficult to find primary sources, especially in English, and was careful to remember that these accounts always had a French/colonial bias.

Marcia did a LOT of research on her own in order to better understand what conditions in France might have driven the Geffards to leave. She asked herself, “Why the hell would anyone leave France to come to these mosquito-filled woods with ostensibly hostile First Nations people and English? What was going on in that moment BEFORE they came over?”

Christian didn’t do much historical research but rooted his character in terms of the physical research he did, such as learning woodcutting. He said Rene came from a rural area of northern France and was a woodsman there as well. 

Accent Coaching

Marcia said they did receive accent coaching, but they didn’t want to lean too hard into strong accents because they wanted to give the impression that the French characters were speaking French, which, as their native language, would be very fluid. So it was okay to not have a heavy accent in order to better communicate that effect.

It was also okay for everyone to have different takes on the French accent, because they wanted to give the effect that these characters were coming from all different parts of France and each had their own individual background. They felt that communicating the characters was more important than getting the accents entirely correct.

They likewise had Native actors speak English on screen when their characters were talking among themselves (even when the characters should be understood as not speaking English) so that the audience would get that same impression of fluidity, cleverness, and colloquial conversation.

Colonialism: "Whose perspective are we bringing to bear? Whose story are we telling?”

Elwood acknowledged that Americans tend to be bad about looking outside their own history and that societies with a history of colonizing tend to come up with justifications for why it was okay for them to invade and colonize others. They wanted the show to avoid reinforcing that idea and to not sugarcoat the reality of it.

He mentioned the importance of having Migizi Pensoneau’s voice in the writer’s room. They also made an effort to speak with tribal communities and leaders in the area in order to gain their insight.

Elwood also hit on the effect of the Western film genre (as in cowboy Westerns) in shaping stereotypes about Native Americans and exporting these stereotypes to the rest of the world. Wanted to avoid those stereotypes (bc they’re inaccurate anyway and bc Barkskins takes place in the eastern part of the continent, not the western, and in an earlier time period) and in general to avoid portraying indigenous people as a uniform/interchangeable monoculture.

Marcia highlighted efforts to foreground First Nations characters in front of the camera as well, specifically mentioning Yvon and Mari. She mentioned that Yvon was educated at Harvard and that Mari’s father was French.

Sets and Wardrobe

This was my favorite section because I love this stuff and it was very impressive! Elwood basically gushed about how the production designer (Isabelle Guay), costume designer (Anna Terrazas), and wig maker were invaluable to the show. I tried to record the wig maker’s name, but I was going by ear, and I couldn’t find any search results that seemed right based on the spellings I tried. He was a Montreal area wig maker whose name sounded like (but I am sure is not spelled like) “Ray-jean For-jay.”

Isabelle Guay is local to the area and was in charge of building all the sets. She scouted all the areas personally and paid close attention to period details in construction. Authenticity was very important to Nat Geo; it had to look good and feel real.

Most of the costumes were not existing pieces that the show rented or reused; Anna Terrazas wanted to build as much as possible from scratch herself. She and the other costumers dyed deerskins, found period 17th- and 18th-century fabrics to make garments out of, and even hand built shoes.

Likewise, although it would have been cheaper to get okay-looking wigs premade, the wig maker wanted to make high-quality authentic ones himself. He flew to the actors, measured their heads, bought hair in France, and then constructed all the wigs himself.

Marcia on how the costume informed her character: Anna gave her a leather pouch to hang on a belt around her waist. It was filled with lavender, the idea being that Mathilde kept this lavender close to counter the foul smells of Wobik. Marcia viewed it as a “little secret” to draw on in her acting.

Christian found the costumes surprisingly comfortable/immersive and the landscape very awe-inspiring.

The moodboard for Trepagny’s wardrobe/aesthetic included pictures of Nick Cave and Jimi Hendrix.

Mathilde’s Daughter

Marcia was asked how much of the details about Mathilde’s daughter were of her own invention. She said that everything said on screen about Veronique was straight from the script, but she came up with more herself in order to inform her acting.

Marcia imagines that Veronique probably died from a sickness, perhaps something like whooping cough that to many of us today wouldn’t seem so serious but which would be more fatal in that era.

This is the point at which Elwood blindsided Marcia, me, and everybody else by talking about a scene he had been “obsessed” with a planned scene in which Renardette would go down to a room below the inn and find Veronique’s preserved body hidden down there, covered in her own dresses. Ultimately, Elwood felt that this was “too gothic” and that it wouldn’t work for Mathilde in a season of only 8 episodes, because it would too quickly take the audience’s understanding of her to a very bizarre/dark place.

He defended the idea by saying that it wasn’t uncommon at the time for people to do things like that, i.e. keep a loved one’s remains for a period of time. (I will take your word for it, Elwood. Also, I’m totally ready for you to go full gothic on this show, please follow your weird impulses in the future.) Marcia, though, felt that it wouldn’t make sense for a character as pragmatic as Mathilde. She pointed out that Francis is the one who wants things like refinements, whereas Mathilde is much more practical.

Also, I was today years old when I learned that Lola Reid (Renardette) is showrunner Elwood Reid’s daughter. In my defense, it’s not an uncommon last name.

Christian on Rene

Christian was asked about the physical aspects of playing Rene, such as chopping wood, fighting, swimming, etc., and which were most difficult and which most enjoyable. He said that he loved those aspects; he would get immersed in the physical act so much that he would forget he was acting. He could get very emotional in those intense moments and found it very difficult to come out of those scenes because of how emotionally charged they were (such as when watching character deaths) but also found it very enjoyable in a cathartic way.

Elwood said that he thought Christian had the hardest role because Rene is a stoic person who has to hold the screen with very few words. It was at this point that he talked about all the characters having secrets and something they want but can’t have; he pointed out that Rene is the only character who doesn’t have a secret and whose wants and needs are very simple. This makes his character “like a rock” that other characters try to pick up and bash around but can’t figure out what to do with.

In light of that, Elwood felt that this first season was a slow burn for Rene, but that the future focus of the character’s arc is essentially: What’s the breaking point of a man like that? What will make him crack? What will make him act out of his character?

He said it was also similar for James Bloor (Charles Duquet) because he had to take so much abuse in this first season, with Elwood assuring James that it was building toward a big future payoff.

In conclusion...

Aaand that’s all I’ve got! We are all encouraged to keep talking about the show and to make known our desire for a second season. Thanks for reading, and like I said, let me know if you have anything to add or to correct.

[rtenthusiast]

home again- b.h (part 2)

Ben Hardy x OC

Word count: 1k+

home again playlist (ben)

home again playlist (ches)

Summary: Ben and Francesca see each other for the first time in a few years. They talk outside for a bit and Ches reminds herself of what she said yesterday. Words are exchanged at dinner and a fight follows soon after.

Disclaimers: Again, this is fiction. This chapter is relatively long but I hope you enjoy. I am still not on an upload schedule and I am writing this because I want to, not off of demand. I don’t own any of the pictures on this post. Grammar and spelling errors. 18+ explicit language. Enjoy!

May 18

It’s nice out tonight, summer being just around the corner. As I drive to my old childhood home I see two little kids playing on the sidewalk. The little girl has her brown hair in pigtails as the blond boy tugs on them. How ironic, I laugh to myself. I keep the windows rolled down and my hair flies everywhere but I don’t mind. Who am I impressing?

I contradict myself as I fix my hair in my rear view mirror while I park in front of my old home. I feel eyes on me and my head instinctively moves to the right. Our eyes meet, brown and green. I want to look away but instead my eyes move down to his fingers, a cigarette laying gently between his middle and pointer finger. Time seems to stand still as we continue to stare until I finally turn back to my keys, pulling them out of the ignition and exiting the car. I walk as slow as I can but my eyes move rapidly. They meet his eyes, his mouth, his nose, his hair- it's different, it's all different. His eyes have become a deeper shade of green and his hair is styled completely different, it swoops over and a group of strands fall over onto his forehead. It’s definitely a more mature look. He looks good.

“Hi Ches.” He says slowly.

“Hi Ben…” I copy him, unsure of what to say.

“You-”

“I-”

We try to speak at the same time.

“You first.” Ben says as he throws the remainder of his cigarette onto the ground. I’ve never minded the habit. It did bother me a bit at first but the smell is somewhat comforting now; it reminds me of when we were in college.

“You look good. Grown? Just different from when we last spoke.” I rush out a sentence, not really thinking about the words.

You look good. Really?

“Thanks, you haven’t changed at all.”

Oh, I don’t look good? 

“I didn’t mean you look bad or anything, still gorgeous.” He says with a smile. The look on my face must’ve showed what I was thinking. I'm surprised he caught it.

He thinks he can just compliment me and glaze over the fact that he pushed me away with no explanation? I feel my cheeks start to heat up but the adoration is soon replaced with anger as I remember what I said to myself yesterday. Keep some distance, I repeat in my head.

“Thanks Ben.” I say as I start to walk up to the front door.

“I missed you,” He whispers. I choose to ignore it.

“Hello?” I yell as I walk into my old home.

“Frannie!” My dad yells back as I walk over to kiss him hello.

I hear Ben stifle a laugh from behind me.

“Dad, I don’t like that nickname.” I’ve never liked it but that's what my family has always called me. I shouldn’t be surprised at this point. Ben knows I hate it. It’s why he calls me Ches instead, the nickname all my closest friends have called me since middle school. He’s always been quite the trendsetter.

“Oh Frannie, I think you get more gorgeous every time I see you!” Ben's mom smiles at me.

“Thank you, Laura” I respond, wanting to roll my eyes but I instead take a seat next to my mom. Of course the only seat empty is the one to my right, in which Ben moves to and pulls the chair back. It screeches and the room falls silent. I feel like I’m five again, wanting to crawl under the table cloth to hide and having a little blonde boy following my lead seconds later. 

“So Frannie what are you doing these days?” Laura asks me from across the table.

“Oh well I’ve actually been working at a law firm further in town over by The Green and such. I’m a personal assistant.” I say as I take a sip of my wine. I rarely drink but I’m giving myself a pass for tonight.

“Which firm?” Ben asks.

“Aidan Michaels Attorney At Law.” I say with fake enthusiasm. I do enjoy my job but sometimes my boss can be a pain in my ass.

“Why a law firm? You were a history major.” He states as if he knows my whole life. Well, he does, but that's besides the point.

“Yeah well that changed but you wouldn’t know that.” I blatantly state.

The room goes silent once again and nobody seems to know what to say.

“Francesca…” My mom speaks up but before she can get another word in I get up and head for my room like a child who was just yelled at for not eating their vegetables.

I walk into my old bedroom and take in my surroundings. My twin bed still has its yellow comforter with small purple flowers, my desk has been left untouched since the last time I used it. I lay down for a minute, out of breath from running up the stairs and for calling Ben out at the dinner table. Once I feel like I’ve finally caught my breath there's a knock at the door. 

So much for catching my breath. 

I look in the mirror as I walk towards the door. When I open it I meet a pair of green eyes staring down at me. 

“What was that all about?” A sense of annoyance in his voice.

“You’re really annoyed with me right now?” I laugh and turn to sit on my bed.

“You just blew my shit up at the table, am I supposed to be jumping for joy?”

“No, in fact you should probably leave my room- or, you know what? I’ll leave, I knew this would just reopen that door if I came.”

“What's the matter with you?”

“With me? Hm, I don’t know, Ben. Maybe it’s the fact that after you got your first real acting job the calls stopped coming in. No more visits, no more movie nights, no more friendship.” I say, trying to keep my volume low. I don’t want the whole block to know my damage right now.

“You don’t understand. It’s not like that.”

“It’s exactly like that.” I stand up from my spot on the bed.

He raises his hand up to his forehead and sighs.

“I just wanted to protect you.” Pathetic.

“Are you delusional?” I push, “Protect me? I didn’t know hanging out with you was so dangerous all of the sudden.” I laugh, anger in its undertone.

“No, I wanted to protect you from the harsh media and all the rumors that come with the fame. You see it all the time, ‘Star spotted with female walking in park- Friends or Lovers?’, I didn’t want that to happen to you. People are cruel and like to make up stories. On top of that, the fans can get nasty. They’ll comment ‘Whore’ or ‘Slut’, make horrible assumptions and hate on you for no reason.”

I didn’t think about it like that.

“I-” I’m at a loss for words.

“Save it.” He turns to walk out.

“Ben, wait.”

“What?” He turns back slightly.

“I didn’t think that’s what would happen, I’ll admit I was wrong there. But you couldn’t have called me and told me this? Couldn’t drive over and tell me what was going on? You left and I had to sit here everyday wondering what I did wrong. I would see you online or on T.V, I could see my best friend’s face but there was no way for me to reach out and touch him. I felt like I meant nothing to you at all. I stopped reaching out and turned my head from every magazine and post. It was torture. I missed my best friend.” I feel a tear come down and realize I started crying.

“Please don’t cry. I was an idiot, I didn’t know how to explain it to you. I shut you out and tried to live normally without you around. Truth be told I haven’t felt like myself until you pulled up tonight.” He admits.

I’m taken aback by his confession. 

“I didn’t know it was that hard for you, I’m sorry”

“Don’t apologize, I turned away from you with no warning. I regretted it everyday, thought about you everyday…”

“I think we’re both idiots.” I laugh and wipe away a tear.

“Can we go downstairs and finish talking about this later? They might think you’ve killed me if we don’t.” We both laugh and head back down. I’m glad I got this closure and now I have a long story I can tell Emily tomorrow.

AN: I hope you enjoyed the second part! I want to clarify Ben's mom in real life is not Laura, I just used that name instead. With the way I want to tell the story, Ben is an only child in this world. Also, Ben and Francesca are 27 in this. I finally found Francesca's face claim!! I will be using Alexis Ren as Ches and Daria Sidorchuk as Emily.

Francesca

Emily

[albapuella]

Clockwork

AO3 Link!

Title: Clockwork Characters: Lumiere, Cogsworth Tags: Gen, Suicidal Thoughts, Body Horror Summary:  A short look into Cogsworth's mind just before Belle's father enters the castle. Author’s Note: This is part of moving my old fics from ff.net to AO3. This story was originally published March 31, 2006. Outside of fixing a spelling error, I haven’t changed anything. 

The most frightening moment of Cogsworth's life, even more frightening than when he was turned into a clock, was the day that he had forgotten what he used to look like. He had looked away from himself and had spotted Lumiere. He had tried to picture his long time friend's face but hadn't been able to see anything but the candlestick.

Of course, as terrifying as that moment had been, there was something more worrying going on: he was slowly but surely forgetting what being human was like. The sensation of hot, cold, soft, sharp were nothing but dim memory. He could still feel pain, but it wasn't the same as feeling it on the flesh. Sleeping was something that he pretended to do, but not something he really needed. And mostly, he didn't even bother to pretend anymore. There was no point to it. Not really.

Cogsworth was beginning to feel more and more like there was no point in anything. He had held little hope to begin with that they'd ever be human again - but he'd still had enough hope to dream about it back when he'd been able to dream. But, as the years passed and the castle crumbled around them, his hopes had crumbled too.

The Prince had to find true love and be loved in return. Cogsworth couldn't imagine any woman truly loving the Prince when he'd been human - now that he was a monster (in more than ways than just appearance on most days) . . . It wasn't possible. Who could love a beast?

And, as if that wasn't disheartening enough, there was the time limit. The rose that had bloomed for ten long years had just begun to show signs of wilt. The rose that would, in time, lose all of its petals and seal their fates. The rose . . . He'd seen it only once or twice and, if he hadn't known its true power, he would have thought it the most beautiful flower in the world.

But, knowing what he knew, when he saw it, he was not transfixed by its beauty. All he saw was his doom and the doom of all his friends and of everyone in the castle. Very soon, no more than maybe a single year more, they would all be trapped in these forms. How long would it be until they were nothing more than what they appeared? How long before they all forgot ever being human?

Well, Cogsworth had already decided one thing: the day that the rose lost its very last petal, that would be the day that he made the long trip to a town and threw himself under the first cart wheel he came across. Cowardly - undoubtably. Desperate - unquestionably. Still, better to be a dead coward than a clock that played at life but couldn't remember what living was.

At least, those were his thoughts on the subject. Thoughts that he had never voiced aloud for fear that Lumiere or Mrs. Potts would hear him. Mrs. Potts would be devastated if she knew that he was thinking of . . . ending his existence. She was a very devout woman (although, how she had remained so over all these years, he had no idea) and he knew that she would be less than approving of his plans.

Lumiere though, while he would probably understand his reasons, would try to stop him. And, while Cogsworth would never, never admit this to anyone, Lumiere was the one person who could convince him to do anything. And, as horrible as the thought of being a clock for eternity was, Lumiere would no doubt find a way to make him stick it out.

If he was a braver . . . individual, Cogsworth might have told him for that very reason. However, he wasn't and he didn't want anyone to try and change his mind now that it was made up.

"Is there something wrong? You look troubled."

Even as a clock, Lumiere found him easy to read! He shook his head. "No, just thinking."

Lumiere smiled a waxy smile. "Don't think too hard, mon ami; you might break something in there."

Friend or not, Lumiere was easily the most frustrating being that Cogsworth had ever met. "At least I try, which is more than I can say for you." He folded his brass fittings over his frame. "What are you doing here anyway? I thought that you had a 'date.'"

As a human, Lumiere had been quite the . . . lover and, as a candlestick (for a reason that Cogsworth found as hard to understand as Mrs. Pott's continued faith), he had remained so. Cogsworth couldn't imagine what a candlestick and a feather duster could do together that would be worth the effort and, being a gentleman (even if he was a clock), he didn't spend too much time thinking on it. He was fairly certain that the answer would probably sicken him.

Lumiere frowned a bit. "She said that she had a headache." Then he shrugged and smiled again. "I will just have to try harder!"

Cogsworth shook his head. His friend was never one to stay depressed for long. Even when they'd first changed, it hadn't taken him that long to adapt to the differences. It was one of the things that annoyed Cogsworth about him: it hardly seemed fair that Lumiere could bounce back from any difficulty with so little effort.

He'd been about to say something appropriately scathing when he heard pounding. It sounded almost as though . . . someone was knocking on the door. But that wasn't possible. No one came to the castle anymore.

As if to contradict him, the door opened with a loud squeak - oiling the doors had not been much of a priority since the Prince was the only one to use it and he didn't care too much about the condition of the doors - and a shadowy figure entered the castle, hesitant and afraid.

"Hello?" It was an older man, his gray hair soaked with rain and his simple clock torn in many places. "Hello?"

"Old fellow must have lost his way in the woods," Lumiere whispered softly, as if Cogsworth couldn't see that fact for himself.

"Keep quiet," he muttered as quietly as he could. "Maybe he'll go away." Part of him was ecstatic to have someone in the castle again but most of him was terrified of what the Prince would say. Or do.

"Is someone there?" He sounded afraid. It was for the best: the sooner he left, the better off he'd be.

Unfortunately, Cogsworth knew his friend well enough to know that he wouldn't agree - when he'd been human, he'd had a nasty habit of taking in strays. "Not a word, Lumiere. Not a word!"

The old man looked around him, probably sensing that he wasn't quite alone. "I don't mean to intrude," he began, speaking in a slightly raised voice, "but I've lost my horse and I need a place to stay for the night."

Oh no. Cogsworth looked over at Lumiere who was already giving him pleading eyes. This wasn't going to be good at all! It wasn't that he didn't feel any sympathy for the man, but it was just too dangerous - why didn't Lumiere understand that?

"Oh, Cogsworth, have a heart!"

What was the fool doing, speaking so loudly! "Shush, shush, shhh!" Cogsworth quickly covered Lumiere's mouth, knowing that it was probably futile now. What had the fool been thinking of? Didn't he have any sense at all?

Judging from the heat he suddenly felt on his fitting, the answer was no. And, while pain was different now that he was a clock, it still existed and Cogsworth couldn't stop himself from shouting when it got too hot.

Nursing his singed limb, Cogsworth was vaguely aware of Lumiere welcoming the man to the castle. As he watched the man's confusion over who had spoken and his efforts to locate Lumiere, Cogsworth could only wonder what would happen now. There was change in the air and he wasn't sure if it was a good thing at all.

[eirist]

A Taste of Summer

LAZY, HAZY, COZY NIGHT

One-shot #: 2

Disclaimer:  One Piece (and its characters) belongs to Eiichiro Oda-sensei.

Reminder:  I have no beta-reader. Any grammatical and spelling errors are solely mine.

Warning: OOC possible. One shot.

Rating:  M (Suggestive & Itty Bitty Naughty)

Note: Entry for the #ZoNaSummerFestival event. Theme: Yukata.

Summary: “I think you’re the one who’s lost Nami.”

Nami blinked uncertainly as she stared at the unfamiliar surroundings and a frown appeared on her face.

Where in the world is she? Did she get lost? Whoa!

She’s very sure that this is not the corridor that leads to the room she and Robin are sharing for the night.

For one, she clearly remembers being surrounded with the seemingly endless shoji screens in the area where their sleeping chambers are located.

And there is certainly no open space complete with an exquisite garden and a small pond basking in the silvery glow of the moon anywhere near where she’d come from earlier.

The sound of a souzu’s bamboo hitting the rock reached her ears. Turning towards its direction, she confirmed that this is not where she’s supposed to be.

Yep. She’s lost.

How is that even possible?

She probably made a wrong turn earlier. What she initially thought was a small, humble inn… it was a false impression… the place was humongous.

No wonder those pirate fiends they fought earlier made it their base.

The Straw Hats had docked on this island earlier and the survey group (namely Luffy, Usopp and Chopper) that scouted it cheerfully proclaimed that they saw a local inn in the mountains where they can take a ‘mini-vacation’.

Kami knows how much they need it. They’ve been doing a lot of fighting these past few weeks that its bound to push every single one of them hurtling towards insanity.

As their captain yapped about their ‘vacation time’, they all trudged uphill since said inn is in a high point overlooking a humble village.

When they arrived there, they met face to face with a really unpleasant and vicious pirate crew called the Goldiggers.

Said crew have been terrorizing the area for a month now, raiding and stealing from the townspeople in the village for sport and had made the inn their ‘headquarters’, much to the dismay of the elderly couple who runs it.

They had successfully driven out the outrageous group of ruffians. Poor pirates who haven’t heard of the names: Mugiwara no ichimi, Straw Hat Luffy and Pirate Hunter Zoro for starters.

And much to the delight of Nami, an aging map was left behind as the Goldiggers departed in panic as if the devil himself were on their heels.

That’s when they learned that the other pirate crew’s main objective for staying in the island was to hunt for treasure.

Which the navigator straightaway assigned as tomorrow’s mission… and the others know very well not to contradict.

The elderly couple, who was really thankfully that they’ve driven out the hooligans, offered to accommodate them in the inn for as long as they like… or until they were able to successfully find the treasure (Nami was adamant that they will not leave until they find it and haul it back to the Sunny—log pose locked or not—or heads will roll).

So tomorrow is going to be one heck of an adventure… and she should rest for her to be in tip-top shape for the treasure hunt.

That is… if she can find where their room is.

She felt her head droop sideways involuntarily.

That’s it! She had way too much sake. Not that she’s a light drinker, but they did party raucously and Franky kept shouting ‘kampai’ and they kept drinking toast after toast.

If she was feeling the first brushes of inebriation, then there would be no hope for the rest of her nakama.

Well… except Zoro. She could probably submerge the swordsman in a tub filled with alcohol and he will climb out of it still completely sober and asking for more.

She shivered a bit when a soft breeze blew by. Her wet yukata was clinging to her body tightly and she rubbed her arms a little for warmth. Their hosts had explained that the island is mercilessly hot during the day but it gets cooler once night-time rolls in.

Maybe that impulse to midnight skinny dip in the onsen was a bad idea.

But the steamy water was so tempting. Not to mention it offers a damn spectacular view of the sea—even in the dark of the night—that she can’t help but take the opportunity to submerge herself in it and relax by herself while the rest of her nakama partied and drank themselves to oblivion.

It was refreshing. But the combination of sake and a calming bath was making her lethargic.

She woozily made her way across the wooden floor, forcing herself to find her bearings. But it looks like her brain had already fallen asleep before her.

Thank Kami they had the place all to themselves. She can probably pass out in one of the many empty rooms; the inn had enough to accommodate each Mugiwara after all.

Up ahead she saw one of the shoji doors facing the pond garden was slightly ajar. Moving closer, she decided to peek inside out of curiosity when it slid open completely nearly making her fall on her ass from surprise.

“Eep!”

“Nami?”

The voice unmistakably belonging to their swordsman called her name.

“Zoro?” She queried in return. “You scared the crap out of me!”

The green-haired lad raised an eyebrow at her. “What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same thing!” She said with a frown. Then she burst into giggles. “You are lost aren’t you?”

Zoro scowled at her. “No I’m not idiot woman. This is our room.”

“Huh?”

“I’m sharing it with the other morons. But seems like they’re all too drunk to make or crawl their way here.”

She threw back her head and laugh. Zoro’s possibly correct. It was unnervingly silent considering that it was the Mugiwaras who are in the vicinity. The others are probably dead asleep or dead drunk back in the room where they’ve been celebrating.

“So you are not lost?”

A vein popped on Zoro’s forehead. “I think you’re the one who’s lost Nami,” he pointed out. “Your room is on the other side.”

It should’ve been a hilarious moment… Zoro pointing out the correct directions to the navigator… if not for the fact that Nami was just staring dumbly at him.

He sneaked a closer look on her flushed face and realized that she had one too many.

“Oh…” was all she could muster after a few seconds of spacing out. “Why do you have the room with a nice view?”

Zoro did not answer her and clicked his tongue in annoyance. Then he noticed the water droplets making small puddles on the floor.

He scrutinized her thoroughly. “Why are you wet Nami?”

She snickered. “Thought it would be fun for a midnight dip.”

He stared at her disbelievingly. “You’re crazy.”

“Am not! Feels good after all that sake.” She was looking a bit dazed, blinking slowly and groggily.

Zoro sighed. “Come on. Let’s get you out of that.”

“Pervert.”

“OI! Don’t lump me on the same category as ero-cook.”

“You want me naked.”

The green-haired man blushed. “Not for the reasons you’re thinking,” he huffed. “I just don’t want Chopper in my case ok? I’d be getting it if you turn up sick because I let you sleep in that.”

He turned his back on her and marched inside the room. Nami stayed outside watching him, swaying a bit as the mixed effects of sleepiness, alcohol and the hot bath took its toll on her.

“Besides, we still have to look for that treasure of yours tomorrow right?”

Nami smiled widely at that.

“There’s a spare yukata here,” Zoro explained as he went back to her, brows furrowing as he watched her start to fall asleep on her feet. “Use this,” he ordered, offering her a dark green robe. “Might be a little too big for you though.”

“Thanks Zoro,” she smiled sassily at him.

“Hnn...”

“Shiawase punch,” she sing-songed as she untied the belt of her yukata, dropping the robe down the floor.

Zoro blanched as all the blood in his head went somewhere lower as she stood in front of him in all her naked glory.

Damn if that didn’t get him into thinking things he wants to do to her.

“Nami!” He instead hissed through gritted teeth, turning his blind side towards her to avoid seeing more than he should. Even if she was shamelessly flaunting all her assets in front him, he refused to ogle like their resident perverts out of respect, though to be honest, it was really tempting.

Realizing that she was standing outside for all the living souls to see, he pulled her inside while keeping his eye on the floor as she sniggered at his reaction. “What the hell woman! Get in here!”

Sliding the shoji doors shut, he shoved the yukata at her before turning away to compose himself. “Get dressed you crazy witch!”

She had the gall to pout at him. “You’re no fun,” she complained but did what he ordered her, sliding her arms inside the sleeves and wrapping the garment around her. She tied the belt loosely and announced, “I’m charging you for peeking Zoro!”

“The hell you are! You’re the one who undressed suddenly in front of me!” Zoro rubbed a hand on his face out of frustration. She could very well be the death of him.

He will have that image ingrained in his mind and it will not make things easy for him.

“Zoro it’s too big!” Nami complained as she poked at his arm, prodding him to look at her.

He glanced at her warily, carefully, in case she decides to subject him to her happiness punch again.

To his relief, she had donned the garment, but it was slipping down a bit that it gave him a glimpse of her shoulders… and her cleavage.

“Just tie it tightly Nami.”

“Afraid to see me naked?”

“Shut up! And you know what? Just go to sleep ok?”

“You’re such a grouch Zoro.”

“Hey! Gratitude witch. Want me to throw you outside? You can sleep in the pond for all I care!”

“Mmmm…”

She did not answer anymore and just settled down on one of the futons on the floor.

He watched as she burrowed herself on the soft mattress not even bothering with the cover duvet. She lay on her side, facing him, her eyes closed.

Zoro sat down a near her. She was mumbling something about teasing, treasure and tomorrow. He snorted. Typical Nami.

He had planned on drinking some more sake while enjoying the view outside when Nami appeared earlier. Perhaps, he still can. He slid the shoji doors open, taking care not to let too much moonlight in lest it wakes the mapmaker.

And he let himself enjoy the sake, the momentary peace, the view, while observing the orange-haired girl every now and then as she slept.

He ran a hand through his hair. Nami can be a handful. It’s tiring to deal with her that’s why most of the times he tries to stay clear of her. But there are moments when he enjoys her company… if it weren’t twisting his stomach into knots and making his heart beat fast.

Lately, they both seemed to be standing on the same ground of attraction. Both had been tiptoeing on how to handle the mutual affection they’re feeling.

That naked stint of hers is just one of the many ways to confirm what he wouldn’t outright admit.

He casually glanced at her and swallowed. She looked enticing, even more when she’s sleeping this contentedly. Her yukata had ridden up, exposing the soft skin of her thigh. The garment was open just enough to give him a glimpse of her generous cleavage as well as the curves of her breast.

Damn it all. Even sleeping, Nami was still trying to tempt him.

And if he wasn’t a man of discipline, he would have her splayed wide on that futon, moaning his name.

He shook his head and decided to call it a night.

Sliding the shoji doors closed, he covered her up with the duvet before lying down on one of the futons at the other end of the room. Far away from her.

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

Zoro woke up to the feeling of warm breath tickling his chest.

His good eye flew wide open when he realized what was causing it.

Someone was cuddled beside him.

He looked down and his eye met with orange hair and it dawned onto him that Nami was now sleeping beside him with an arm draped casually over his waist, her face almost buried in his chest.

What is she doing so close to him? She was three futons away from him and in the other end of the room.

Did he move towards her?

He looked around and saw that he was still in the same place where he decided to lie down earlier.

So that means…

Nami deliberately moved closer to him.

He drew back a little and Nami groaned at the movement.

“Stop wiggling, Zoro. I’m sleeping,” she murmured.

“What are you doing Nami?”

She sleepily looked up to his face, taking in his confused expression.

“I transferred here...”

“Why?!”

“It’s a bit drafty. And you are warm,” she answered dozily. “Now shut up.”

“Nami…”

“What?” She asked irritably. The stared at each other for a few seconds; him—unamused, while she—a bit peeved off at his reaction.

Then she snorted. “You let Momonosuke’s sister snuggle beside you to sleep. What’s the difference if I do it?”

Zoro stared at the top of her head and sighed in exasperation.

“Well for starters, she’s not almost naked beside me,” he pointed out.

Nami gripped the front of his robe. “I am not naked idiot. I’m wearing something.”

“But you are underneath that.”

Silence hovered over them, as Nami glared at him.

“And she’s not making me feel weird,” he admitted.

This time she tilted her head to see his expression much better.  “And I do?”

He nodded.

“Is it a good weird or a bad weird?”

Zoro shrugged.

Nami pulled back a little. His answer was really vague and she doesn’t know what to make of it.

Maybe she was reading a bit too much than what is actually there between them.

She was about to push off away from him when his hand went to her nape, stopping her.

His lone, grey eye stared straight into her brown ones. “She’s also not making me want to do this,” he muttered, pressing his lips on hers softly.

And Nami inhaled sharply at the sensation. The hand that was resting on his waist gripped his yukata tightly

Zoro pulled away to study her reaction. She was looking at him with half lidded eyes, her lips slightly parted. He moved his head down to claim her lips again, this time for a much deeper, longer kiss.

Nami smiled against his mouth and he reluctantly pulled away.

“Anything else I make you want to do that she doesn’t?” She asked in a hushed tone

“Yeah,” Zoro answered breathlessly.

“Well what are you waiting for? We’ve got the whole night.”

[mskatesharma]

A Morning Interlude

Hello Jonerys Family! This was partly inspired by this post. In the end, it didn’t quite turn out how I expected, or really reflect what that post is about (no smut unfortunately). So it’s basically 2000 words of Jonerys on the loveboat having a moment. I hope you enjoy this, and let me know what you think! :) (This is the first time I’ve attempted to write something canon compliant so I’m apologising now if anything sounds weird. Also, apologies for any grammar or spelling errors, they all belong to me. Last also, apologies if this seems a rambley mess, although that does reflect me? And the title was the best I could come up with, I tried.)

“Why don’t you paint a portrait? Then you can gaze to your heart’s content.”

Despite being half muffled by his pillow and bed furs, the hoarse grumble still manages to startle Daenerys from her idle staring. If she were less attuned to him, or indeed herself, she may have felt a burn on her cheeks, and denied what he accused her of. Instead, she gives a small shrug in reply when she sees he has flopped over onto his back, a coy smile forming on her face.

“Mmm, any portrait would make for a poor imitation when compared to you. It would feel as though I were looking at a mummer’s ruse.” She allows herself a quiet laugh at his scoff, before standing up from the small vanity and making her way to sit beside him on the bed. He shuffles closer, rolling onto his side. He bends his elbow and rests his head on the palm of his hand. She leans down to press a chaste lingering kiss on his lips as his free hand grabs hold of one of hers. She pulls back before he can deepen it, and she can feel the giggle bubbling in her throat at his pout. Before she can begin to formulate a gentle tease, he yanks her hand so she falls fully onto the bed, and Jon rearranges her so she is sprawled on top of him.

“Is there something I can help you with? Or is that you take pleasure in handling Your Queen in such a manner?” The words leave her as she dips her face towards his, her mouth but a breath away from his.

“Both, really, but you can help us both by taking off your robe and coming back to bed.” His voice is low as he answers, pushing his head toward her in an effort to close the distance between their mouths. Before his lips reach her, Dany pushes herself up so she is straddling him over the furs, her hands placed on either side of his head.

“And how would me disrobing be beneficial for the both of us?”

“You’d be naked.” Daenerys is unable to suppress the joy that overtakes her face at his blunt reply. She tries to restore a more stoic expression, but she can feel it slipping at the delightful amusement coursing through her.

“But how does that benefit me?” She can see the mirth lighting his eyes, betraying the look of exasperation he is trying to force on his face.

“Easier for me to ravish you, Your Grace.”

“Hmm, and that is something you think I would enjoy?”

“That is something I know you enjoy.” She lets go of the laugh that she has been holding, a lightness so wonderful overcoming her. She wishes it could be bottled up, so as to be brought out to remind herself of this feeling during the oncoming inevitable dark days. To remind them both, she thinks. She knows that he is rather prone to brooding, this King in the North. He may have bent the knee, and that he is now technically her Warden of the North, but she cannot bring herself to think of him so. He still holds himself as a king should. To her, however, he is Jon, just Jon; her Jon.

“Did you rise to brush your hair?” His hands cup the back of her head, his fingers moving through her tresses. Moving to the side of her head, he starts a gentle massage and she cannot help the way her head leans into his hand, eyes closing, encouraging him. She is unable to withhold a shiver of pleasure at his ministrations, or the quiet moan of contentment that hums through her body. Her eyes pop open when she feels the pressure of his hand lessen, and she feels breathless at the utter adoration she sees shining back at her. She leans her face closer to his, her lips a breath away from his.

“I am aware of how fond you are of running your hands through my hair. I simply wished to aid you before we tangle it again.” She closes the distance between them and presses her mouth against his, a light nibble of his lips before retreating slightly. “I am hoping, however, that you will allow me to comb your hair today. I find it too pretty to resist, and I think a braid would look particularly fetching. I do recall you gave me permission. In fact, at the time, you appeared rather eager to have me style your hair.” Jon’s answering guffaw has her beaming. She’s moving then, as he removes the bed furs from between them and is rolling her underneath his body; the whole of him pressing up against her, the feeling delicious, the quiet ache within her building, beginning to drum louder.

“I think you will find I would have agreed to anything you asked when you extracted that promise from me. I would hardly call that a fair bargain, hmmm, Daenerys?” The merriment in his eyes betrays the stern expression slipping from his face. She tilts her hips further into his and revels in his quiet groan.

“You would deny Your Queen, Jon Snow?”

His face grows serious as he replies. “I fear I am past the point of being able to deny you anything. You need only ask me and it is yours.” Her breath catches in her throat, her lips meeting his in a bruising kiss, a kiss biting with love and truth; a kiss Dany wants to imprint on her soul. Her hands move from his shoulders to run through his hair; gripping tighter and tugging, matching the fierceness with which their lips are claiming each other. They break apart, both breathless and reeling, the intense look of love in Jon’s eyes mirroring her own, Daenerys is sure. She wants to confront the word they have avoided, the emotion she knows passes between them. But she will wait for the cover of darkness, the comfort it provides them both when sharing pieces of their past, to shield them both from vulnerabilities they have worked to hide from the sight of others. To not feel even more exposed by the harsh glare of sunlight.

She tries for reassuring levity, not quite ready to admit that they should both be readying for the day. “I should like to enter my chambers this evening and find you here waiting for me. Sitting at my vanity, perhaps?”

Jon leans down, his nose nuzzling hers. “Tell me, Your Grace, if someone were to discover me waiting in your chambers, without your presence, would they think I were taking liberties with The Queen? Would they accuse me of trespassing?”

“I do not think there is a person left on this ship who is not aware that I want to find you in my chambers. That I enjoy having you in my chambers.”

“Aye, I don’t think anyone can be confused about that. At least not on this ship. We have not tried particularly hard to be discreet.”

“And what of the Northern Lords? Your family? Will they think the Dragon Queen has seduced their king into bending the knee? What if I should happen upon you in the Lords’ Chamber in Winterfell instead? Would it then be I accused of trespassing?”

“Perhaps, but not by me, at least. My sister, however, may have something to say if you appeared at her door.”

“Your sister’s door? Lady Sansa has the Lords Chamber?”

She feels her brow quirk at his nod. “After we retook Winterfell, I had the room prepared for her. It was her Mother and Father’s room. After everything she had suffered in Winterfell, in her home, I thought it could have been at least a small comfort to her. Besides, I may have been proclaimed King, but I’m no Stark.” Something flickers in his eyes, fleetingly, matching the small frown that flashes across his face. He continues before she can question him on it, “In any case, I don’t think I would ever feel comfortable in those chambers. I am sure Lady Stark would turn wherever she rests if I were to take up residence there.” His explanation is followed by a small shrug, a look of practiced indifference crossing over his face. “I took Robb’s old room. They’re a lot nicer than the chambers I had as a boy before I left for The Wall.”

She wants to question him further, to dig deeper into the ghosts this man has, to comfort and soothe them, to wrap herself around him and show him that his name, or rather lack of do not matter. That the circumstances of his birth are immaterial. That it is the man, this glorious man in front of her with all his notions of honour and courage; with his mess of contradictions that frustrate yet intrigue and excite her, it is the man Jon Snow is with his truth and bravery that she has fallen in love with. Daenerys decides to wait until the evening, that evening, for the blanket and security the night provides before she will inquire further into his past. So many things waiting to be discussed under the icy glow of the moon.

Her hand drifts to the vicious scar over his heart as if betraying her most burning curiosity. She will wait for him to talk about this, for him to talk about what must be his most painful memory. She traces the length of it softly before looking up to meet his eyes. Before he can lean down to press a kiss to her mouth, she makes a request. She wishes she could banish the painful memories from his childhood, the hurtful comments and disapproving looks a small child could never hope to understand. She wants to love him in the place he most likely loved, while never quite feeling a sense of true belonging.

“When we reach Winterfell, will you show me your old room, the one you had before you left for the wall?” She notices a look of confusion cross his face, before adding a whispered “please”, and he nods before leaning down.

“As I said, I think I am past the point of denying you anything. My heart is yours.” Her heart stutters at his declaration and the look of pure love shining out of the depths of his eyes. It is instinct as she reaches up and closes the distance between them. His body settles against hers and Daenerys marvels, not for the first time, at how safe and loved Jon makes her feel, at how cherished she feels in his arms. They are completely wrapped up together, lost in their awareness of the other, and Daenerys wishes it could last forever.

It’s an incessant knocking that filters through her senses, and pulls her away from their kiss. A quiet “Your Grace” reveals Missandei to be on the other side of her door, and Daenerys feels a weight settle over her at realising their early morning interlude is at an end. She knows, however, she cannot let him leave before she shares a little of her heart with him, just as he has with her.

“I’m yours, Jon Snow, in this moment and beyond. My heart belongs to you.” The ignited elation on his face is enough to make Daenerys wish they could stay on this boat forever, to live in this moment of bliss they have created for themselves. Alas, she knows that sailing away together is not an option. But perhaps, while they fight and stumble through the wars to come, they can do it together truly, through a union stronger than just allies; a union of truth and love and support, a marriage that would unite the realm and bring happiness to their hearts. She knows they both deserve to find peace in this life, and the more she finds herself enamoured with Jon, the more she knows and understands that without him, peace will not find her.

[zonamievents]

A Taste of Summer

A Taste of Summer

LAZY, HAZY, COZY NIGHT

One-shot #: 2

Disclaimer:  One Piece (and its characters) belongs to Eiichiro Oda-sensei.

Reminder:  I have no beta-reader. Any grammatical and spelling errors are solely mine.

Warning: OOC possible. One shot.

Rating:  M (Suggestive & Itty Bitty Naughty)

Note: Entry for the #ZoNaSummerFestival event. Theme: Yukata.

Summary: “I think you’re the one who’s lost Nami.”

Nami blinked uncertainly as she stared at the unfamiliar surroundings and a frown appeared on her face.

Where in the world is she? Did she get lost? Whoa!

She’s very sure that this is not the corridor that leads to the room she and Robin are sharing for the night.

For one, she clearly remembers being surrounded with the seemingly endless shoji screens in the area where their sleeping chambers are located.

And there is certainly no open space complete with an exquisite garden and a small pond basking in the silvery glow of the moon anywhere near where she’d come from earlier.

The sound of a souzu’s bamboo hitting the rock reached her ears. Turning towards its direction, she confirmed that this is not where she’s supposed to be.

Yep. She’s lost.

How is that even possible?

She probably made a wrong turn earlier. What she initially thought was a small, humble inn… it was a false impression… the place was humongous.

No wonder those pirate fiends they fought earlier made it their base.

The Straw Hats had docked on this island earlier and the survey group (namely Luffy, Usopp and Chopper) that scouted it cheerfully proclaimed that they saw a local inn in the mountains where they can take a ‘mini-vacation’.

Kami knows how much they need it. They’ve been doing a lot of fighting these past few weeks that its bound to push every single one of them hurtling towards insanity.

As their captain yapped about their ‘vacation time’, they all trudged uphill since said inn is in a high point overlooking a humble village.

When they arrived there, they met face to face with a really unpleasant and vicious pirate crew called the Goldiggers.

Said crew have been terrorizing the area for a month now, raiding and stealing from the townspeople in the village for sport and had made the inn their ‘headquarters’, much to the dismay of the elderly couple who runs it.

They had successfully driven out the outrageous group of ruffians. Poor pirates who haven’t heard of the names: Mugiwara no ichimi, Straw Hat Luffy and Pirate Hunter Zoro for starters.

And much to the delight of Nami, an aging map was left behind as the Goldiggers departed in panic as if the devil himself were on their heels.

That’s when they learned that the other pirate crew’s main objective for staying in the island was to hunt for treasure.

Which the navigator straightaway assigned as tomorrow’s mission… and the others know very well not to contradict.

The elderly couple, who was really thankfully that they’ve driven out the hooligans, offered to accommodate them in the inn for as long as they like… or until they were able to successfully find the treasure (Nami was adamant that they will not leave until they find it and haul it back to the Sunny—log pose locked or not—or heads will roll).

So tomorrow is going to be one heck of an adventure… and she should rest for her to be in tip-top shape for the treasure hunt.

That is… if she can find where their room is.

She felt her head droop sideways involuntarily.

That’s it! She had way too much sake. Not that she’s a light drinker, but they did party raucously and Franky kept shouting ‘kampai’ and they kept drinking toast after toast.

If she was feeling the first brushes of inebriation, then there would be no hope for the rest of her nakama.

Well… except Zoro. She could probably submerge the swordsman in a tub filled with alcohol and he will climb out of it still completely sober and asking for more.

She shivered a bit when a soft breeze blew by. Her wet yukata was clinging to her body tightly and she rubbed her arms a little for warmth. Their hosts had explained that the island is mercilessly hot during the day but it gets cooler once night-time rolls in.

Maybe that impulse to midnight skinny dip in the onsen was a bad idea.

But the steamy water was so tempting. Not to mention it offers a damn spectacular view of the sea—even in the dark of the night—that she can’t help but take the opportunity to submerge herself in it and relax by herself while the rest of her nakama partied and drank themselves to oblivion.

It was refreshing. But the combination of sake and a calming bath was making her lethargic.

She woozily made her way across the wooden floor, forcing herself to find her bearings. But it looks like her brain had already fallen asleep before her.

Thank Kami they had the place all to themselves. She can probably pass out in one of the many empty rooms; the inn had enough to accommodate each Mugiwara after all.

Up ahead she saw one of the shoji doors facing the pond garden was slightly ajar. Moving closer, she decided to peek inside out of curiosity when it slid open completely nearly making her fall on her ass from surprise.

“Eep!”

“Nami?”

The voice unmistakably belonging to their swordsman called her name.

“Zoro?” She queried in return. “You scared the crap out of me!”

The green-haired lad raised an eyebrow at her. “What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same thing!” She said with a frown. Then she burst into giggles. “You are lost aren’t you?”

Zoro scowled at her. “No I’m not idiot woman. This is our room.”

“Huh?”

“I’m sharing it with the other morons. But seems like they’re all too drunk to make or crawl their way here.”

She threw back her head and laugh. Zoro’s possibly correct. It was unnervingly silent considering that it was the Mugiwaras who are in the vicinity. The others are probably dead asleep or dead drunk back in the room where they’ve been celebrating.

“So you are not lost?”

A vein popped on Zoro’s forehead. “I think you’re the one who’s lost Nami,” he pointed out. “Your room is on the other side.”

It should’ve been a hilarious moment… Zoro pointing out the correct directions to the navigator… if not for the fact that Nami was just staring dumbly at him.

He sneaked a closer look on her flushed face and realized that she had one too many.

“Oh…” was all she could muster after a few seconds of spacing out. “Why do you have the room with a nice view?”

Zoro did not answer her and clicked his tongue in annoyance. Then he noticed the water droplets making small puddles on the floor.

He scrutinized her thoroughly. “Why are you wet Nami?”

She snickered. “Thought it would be fun for a midnight dip.”

He stared at her disbelievingly. “You’re crazy.”

“Am not! Feels good after all that sake.” She was looking a bit dazed, blinking slowly and groggily.

Zoro sighed. “Come on. Let’s get you out of that.”

“Pervert.”

“OI! Don’t lump me on the same category as ero-cook.”

“You want me naked.”

The green-haired man blushed. “Not for the reasons you’re thinking,” he huffed. “I just don’t want Chopper in my case ok? I’d be getting it if you turn up sick because I let you sleep in that.”

He turned his back on her and marched inside the room. Nami stayed outside watching him, swaying a bit as the mixed effects of sleepiness, alcohol and the hot bath took its toll on her.

“Besides, we still have to look for that treasure of yours tomorrow right?”

Nami smiled widely at that.

“There’s a spare yukata here,” Zoro explained as he went back to her, brows furrowing as he watched her start to fall asleep on her feet. “Use this,” he ordered, offering her a dark green robe. “Might be a little too big for you though.”

“Thanks Zoro,” she smiled sassily at him.

“Hnn…”

“Shiawase punch,” she sing-songed as she untied the belt of her yukata, dropping the robe down the floor.

Zoro blanched as all the blood in his head went somewhere lower as she stood in front of him in all her naked glory.

Damn if that didn’t get him into thinking things he wants to do to her.

“Nami!” He instead hissed through gritted teeth, turning his blind side towards her to avoid seeing more than he should. Even if she was shamelessly flaunting all her assets in front him, he refused to ogle like their resident perverts out of respect, though to be honest, it was really tempting.

Realizing that she was standing outside for all the living souls to see, he pulled her inside while keeping his eye on the floor as she sniggered at his reaction. “What the hell woman! Get in here!”

Sliding the shoji doors shut, he shoved the yukata at her before turning away to compose himself. “Get dressed you crazy witch!”

She had the gall to pout at him. “You’re no fun,” she complained but did what he ordered her, sliding her arms inside the sleeves and wrapping the garment around her. She tied the belt loosely and announced, “I’m charging you for peeking Zoro!”

“The hell you are! You’re the one who undressed suddenly in front of me!” Zoro rubbed a hand on his face out of frustration. She could very well be the death of him.

He will have that image ingrained in his mind and it will not make things easy for him.

“Zoro it’s too big!” Nami complained as she poked at his arm, prodding him to look at her.

He glanced at her warily, carefully, in case she decides to subject him to her happiness punch again.

To his relief, she had donned the garment, but it was slipping down a bit that it gave him a glimpse of her shoulders… and her cleavage.

“Just tie it tightly Nami.”

“Afraid to see me naked?”

“Shut up! And you know what? Just go to sleep ok?”

“You’re such a grouch Zoro.”

“Hey! Gratitude witch. Want me to throw you outside? You can sleep in the pond for all I care!”

“Mmmm…”

She did not answer anymore and just settled down on one of the futons on the floor.

He watched as she burrowed herself on the soft mattress not even bothering with the cover duvet. She lay on her side, facing him, her eyes closed.

Zoro sat down a near her. She was mumbling something about teasing, treasure and tomorrow. He snorted. Typical Nami.

He had planned on drinking some more sake while enjoying the view outside when Nami appeared earlier. Perhaps, he still can. He slid the shoji doors open, taking care not to let too much moonlight in lest it wakes the mapmaker.

And he let himself enjoy the sake, the momentary peace, the view, while observing the orange-haired girl every now and then as she slept.

He ran a hand through his hair. Nami can be a handful. It’s tiring to deal with her that’s why most of the times he tries to stay clear of her. But there are moments when he enjoys her company… if it weren’t twisting his stomach into knots and making his heart beat fast.

Lately, they both seemed to be standing on the same ground of attraction. Both had been tiptoeing on how to handle the mutual affection they’re feeling.

That naked stint of hers is just one of the many ways to confirm what he wouldn’t outright admit.

He casually glanced at her and swallowed. She looked enticing, even more when she’s sleeping this contentedly. Her yukata had ridden up, exposing the soft skin of her thigh. The garment was open just enough to give him a glimpse of her generous cleavage as well as the curves of her breast.

Damn it all. Even sleeping, Nami was still trying to tempt him.

And if he wasn’t a man of discipline, he would have her splayed wide on that futon, moaning his name.

He shook his head and decided to call it a night.

Sliding the shoji doors closed, he covered her up with the duvet before lying down on one of the futons at the other end of the room. Far away from her.

————————-

Zoro woke up to the feeling of warm breath tickling his chest.

His good eye flew wide open when he realized what was causing it.

Someone was cuddled beside him.

He looked down and his eye met with orange hair and it dawned onto him that Nami was now sleeping beside him with an arm draped casually over his waist, her face almost buried in his chest.

What is she doing so close to him? She was three futons away from him and in the other end of the room.

Did he move towards her?

He looked around and saw that he was still in the same place where he decided to lie down earlier.

So that means…

Nami deliberately moved closer to him.

He drew back a little and Nami groaned at the movement.

“Stop wiggling, Zoro. I’m sleeping,” she murmured.

“What are you doing Nami?”

She sleepily looked up to his face, taking in his confused expression.

“I transferred here…”

“Why?!”

“It’s a bit drafty. And you are warm,” she answered dozily. “Now shut up.”

“Nami…”

“What?” She asked irritably. The stared at each other for a few seconds; him—unamused, while she—a bit peeved off at his reaction.

Then she snorted. “You let Momonosuke’s sister snuggle beside you to sleep. What’s the difference if I do it?”

Zoro stared at the top of her head and sighed in exasperation.

“Well for starters, she’s not almost naked beside me,” he pointed out.

Nami gripped the front of his robe. “I am not naked idiot. I’m wearing something.”

“But you are underneath that.”

Silence hovered over them, as Nami glared at him.

“And she’s not making me feel weird,” he admitted.

This time she tilted her head to see his expression much better.  “And I do?”

He nodded.

“Is it a good weird or a bad weird?”

Zoro shrugged.

Nami pulled back a little. His answer was really vague and she doesn’t know what to make of it.

Maybe she was reading a bit too much than what is actually there between them.

She was about to push off away from him when his hand went to her nape, stopping her.

His lone, grey eye stared straight into her brown ones. “She’s also not making me want to do this,” he muttered, pressing his lips on hers softly.

And Nami inhaled sharply at the sensation. The hand that was resting on his waist gripped his yukata tightly

Zoro pulled away to study her reaction. She was looking at him with half lidded eyes, her lips slightly parted. He moved his head down to claim her lips again, this time for a much deeper, longer kiss.

Nami smiled against his mouth and he reluctantly pulled away.

“Anything else I make you want to do that she doesn’t?” She asked in a hushed tone

“Yeah,” Zoro answered breathlessly.

“Well what are you waiting for? We’ve got the whole night.”

((Thank you @evilishei for this belated but greatly appreciated Yukata submission! ~ Maiden))

[notarelationship]

Klaine Advent 2017

FINALLY FINISHED. And I only fudged it a little...

Day 23 - Year/Day 24 - Zone

Summary: Blaine is new at McKinley. Kurt finds him interesting. Nerd!Blaine/Skank!Kurt

Word Count: ~750

I will be putting this up on AO3 after the advent is over after I finish them up, fecking soon after and I can fix up some spelling and syntax errors

find the rest of them here

--

“It could have been worse,” Blaine said, reaching across the console to where Kurt was sitting in the driver’s seat of Blaine’s Volvo and grabbing his hand, pulling it into his lap. Blaine had driven Kurt to school in the morning to find out his fat; he’d wound up with a one week suspension for being involved in the fight, but nothing more.

When Coach Beiste had finally questioned them on Friday it had come out that Karofsky had threatened Blaine earlier, and that Kurt had only been there to make sure nothing happened to him in the locker room. Luckily for Kurt, Beiste had only seen Karofsky lunge at Kurt while Kurt was keeping his hands to himself, and she hadn’t heard Kurt goading him into it. Since Dave didn’t seem to want to contradict what Beiste saw, she had no choice but to conclude that Karofsky had been the problem. Blaine was pretty sure Kurt had gotten a participation suspension so Dave’s family wouldn’t complain about how severely Dave was being punished.

Dave had been given the choice of a three month suspension and attending summer school to complete his senior year, as well as being kicked off the football team, or transferring to Rutherford High on the other side of town. He’d opted for the transfer. Blaine felt a little bad about that, because Dave’s refusal to admit that Kurt had provoked him was most likely driven by his not wanting to admit to anyone that he he might be gay. But at the moment, Blaine was just relieved that Dave wouldn’t be around for the rest of the school year.

Kurt shrugged. “I guess.”

“It’s only a week. And when you get back Karofsky will be gone, so neither one of us will have to worry about him again.”

“I know,” Kurt said, turning to look out the window. “It’s just -- I don’t want to be suspended.”

“It never bothered you before.” Blaine didn’t want to hope that he was the reason for Kurt’s change of heart about school. He knew that Karofsky being gone wouldn’t stop the harassment completely, but it would make it less terrible. He didn’t think Kurt would suddenly be interested in becoming a model student.

Kurt shook his head, but managed to meet Blaine’s gaze. “You weren’t there before.”

Blaine gasped quietly, and he could feel his face heat up embarrassingly fast. “Kurt,” he exhaled. Kurt tightened his grip on Blaine’s hands. “You don’t have to want to come to school because of me.”

“But you won’t mind if I do?”

Blaine grinned. He knew he was still blushing. “Are you asking if I mind having my boyfriend at school every day, where we can eat lunch together and hold hands in the hallway --”

“Don’t get carried away Blaine.”

“-- and we can make out in empty classrooms --”

“Okay that I’ll agree to.” Kurt pulled Blaine closer, smacking a soft kiss on his mouth. “How about now. Can we go make out now? It feels like it’s been weeks,” Kurt grumbled.

“It’s only been two days, Kurt.” Blaine smiled into another kiss.

Kurt pouted. “Saturday? That was barely any time at all. And my dad came home before we could get naked.”

Blaine thought about teasing Kurt some more, but he honestly wanted to get his hands under Kurt’s clothes as much as Kurt wanted to get his hands on Blaine.

“Okay.”

Kurt perked up. “We can get naked?”

“Partially naked?” Blaine raised one eyebrow. “We can put the seat down in the back and go park behind the abandoned furniture outlet on Elida. There’s an overhang over the loading zone and no one will be able to see us from the road. I can text my mom and tell her I’ll be home by seven. That gives us a few hours?”

“Why have we not explored this hidden make out spot before? And how do you know if its existence Blaine?” Kurt narrowed his eyes suspiciously.

Blaine shrugged, but Kurt waited. “Okay fine. Last summer, right after we moved here but before I started at McKinley, I used to go to the parking lot and practice singing. There was no one there and the acoustics are good under the overhang.”

“You are such a dork.” Kurt leaned over and kissed him again. “I will accept this compromise for now,” he said. “But we have a date Saturday while my dad’s at work.”

“A naked date?” Blaine teased.

“You bet your naked ass, Anderson.”

~~~~~

[jacktherph]

Hey Jack! Hope your day is going well! I was wondering if you could give us an opinion? That would be great! Thanks!

hi there @redmourhq! i’m happy to give you an opinion. you specified public as being okay, but let me know if you want me to take it down at any time.

NOTE: all opinions expressed here are mine, jack’s, belonging to jack. i make no claims to knowing what is best for every group – i only offer advice based on my experiences, what i’ve seen in the community, and my personal knowledge. no one person knows what is best for you or any group other than yourself; because you were the one who put all of this together in the first place. so take everything i say as a suggestion, and remember that you have accomplished so much!!

and if you have any questions, want feedback on something specific, or want elaborations on anything said in this opinion, don’t hesitate to message me!!

start: 1.12 | pause: none | end: 1.30TOTAL: 18 minutes to read all pages; not including character bios, supernatural lore

So on first glance at the main, while personally I’m not a big fan of contained themes (something I say in a lot of my opinions but seriously, it’s the choice of the admins) you guys have definitely utilized the space and what you’re given to the best ability. Personally I’m not sure having to scroll for long asks works well with your page but if you haven’t had any problems with it so far I don’t see a problem with it in the long run. Your color palette is really interesting -- like that lighter tone but with the muted psd that ends up washing out the color tones? Normally for a supernatural rpg I’d say something darker might be what you want to go for but in this case it actually works?? When you look at the encompassing plot to take the color scheme in, I mean. I also like that you have the admin names and timezones listed at the bottom, though it took me a minute to realize they’re hovers.

The one suggestion I’d make is your main links don’t have a hover to tell you what they are: if you know how to add that I’d suggest you do so, just to make it easier for people. [ In the code, go to where your links on the main page are, should be something like: (symbol code), all you have to do is put this in: title=”ASKBOX”>(symbol code) and you’re good! If you choose to pursue this let me know and I’d be happy to help. ]

For your Collapsible Sidebar: I think it’s a great idea and I don’t know if it came with the code or if you guys manually put it in, but it really works in providing more information for people like me who aren’t too fond of the minimalist structure of contained main themes. One thing: “truly” is misspelled as “truely.” Like with the ask portion I don’t think having enough content to make it need a scroll is a good idea, simply because of the space it takes up? You don’t end up needing to scroll to see anything hidden but it does have a small scroll bar that sort of makes things uneven. Maybe cut a line of text? I like all the links your provide as well, because they’re informative, clean, and give a potential member what they would need.

So in looking at your Plot page is when I noticed the contrast between the text color and the background color on the posts is kind of similar -- it might be harder to see for people with selective color blindness or who have worse eyesight than I do, and I have four eyes already. Maybe consider making one lighter or the other darker? Just to emphasize the difference between them for accessibility sakes. The content however is good and summarizes everything well while also giving that sort of “previously on…” vibe needed for rpgs like yours with a bit of background knowledge needed in order to engage a character fully in the group.

Your Rules are good and cover all the bases I look for in an rpg, however there are a few things I had questions about/wanted to bring to your attention. For one thing, your first point about “all adult content being under a read more” sort of contradicts/confuses itself with a later point about “all smut/nsfw content must happen on a different server and not on the dash.” Do you see what I mean? Because reading the first point makes me think I, as a potential member, can write smut so long as it’s under a read more, and then you tell me I have to write it somewhere else. Maybe find a way to put those two points together and say “yes, smut needs to be on a different server, but when you post it please use a read more.” Also, “NSFW” is a tag now flagged by tumblr’s updated content policy, so you shouldn’t ask your members to use it lest their blogs be flagged; “smut” is the current workaround used by other rpgs including my own. Your members will understand.

Your informational pages (Districts, Species, Founders, etc) I’ll compile into one paragraph because I don’t want to waste your opinion on things that you created and I really don’t have a place to judge. I will say that because of the large amount of content on your Locations page you might want to consider condensing it or finding a page theme that suits your needs? There was just a lot of scrolling and I ended up getting lost after a while. Also, you might have Funeral Home listed twice?? You definitely do but I couldn’t tell if they were different locations. For your Founders page look at the theme you use and see how it looks outside of the text box; because it does look a little disjointed. Separating them with line breaks like

might help, but otherwise maybe change up the stylizations you use to show they are different contents.

Your formal Character Page is probably the best I’ve seen out of all uses of that theme -- including my own. The fact that you guys have painstakingly taken the time to crop and design each unique person’s image with the same background and fit them to the psd coloring you use is, honestly, it’s like a designer’s wet dream to be honest and I love it. While the dozen or so filter categories ends up being “a lot” after a while I can understand why you wanted to do it and what you’re trying to achieve with them. Just so you know, under the Halfling section you have a character listed as a “Half Elf” but she doesn’t appear on the “All” section of the halflings. Might be an error but I wanted to point it out.

Your Applications (Wanted included) and forms in general are well formatted and easy to navigate and understand. I like that you included a sample application at the bottom! Is there a reason the only different applications are for the Ghosts and Demons but not the other species? If so, ignore that question! I trust y’all to know what you need for your group.

My FAVORITE THING about this rpg: the completion of your concept. You guys knew you’d have a lot to include and work on in what you were thinking and there’s honestly nothing that I’m not given that leaves me thinking “I need more information on this.” Or at least nothing that I don’t feel like I can reach out to the admins about, you know? So well done on taking your idea and bringing everything needed for it to the table.

My LEAST FAVORITE THING about this rpg: your spelling and grammar errors. I debated finding everything I could catch and including it but it ended up being more of a chore on my part than anything. There are many places where things are misspelled, the incorrect tense is used, the it’s vs its rule isn’t followed, and other grammar choices aren’t followed correctly. This totally happens! Nobody's perfect. But I had grammar hammered into me so I notice it more than most. My recommendation is just go through each of your pages and either put them through a check like the one provided on Microsoft Word or find another way to go through your content with a spell/grammar checker. It does a world of good for professionalism and just looking like a more well-run rpg.

OVERALL I’m a fan of your group! I like the fresh take on the supernatural-people-living-in-a-town concept and the way you change up the genre in your own way. You’re complete, like I said earlier, but there are just a few extra steps that can be taken to turn this good rpg into a great one.

Sincerely,Jack

[homieswithhades]

BTS Analysis;

I don’t even know if I can call this an unpopular opinion bc I know some people agree with this, this is more of an in-depth analysis and personal experience I guess. It’s all about bts... and its lowkey a mess. I apologise in advance for any grammar/spelling errors, and times I may contradict myself a bit. This is something that REALLY bothers me. I just want to clarify that I love bts a lot, and that I was the HUGEST STAN for a good 5ish months. I still stan them but not as much due to the following reasons.

They just don’t make good music anymore.  They love yourself era was when everything turned to shit. The actual core love yourself concept is very good but,,,, it was executed really poorly.

Dna was my first comeback with them, even though I’ve been listening to them since august 2016. But when actually became a stan in April 2017, I was obsessed with them. I was so damn excited for their September 2017 cb that my standards were through the roof. During the summer they changed the logo and did the beyond the scene thing,,, that’s the first thing that kind of irked me,,, and then they did the highlight reels in the style of I need u and they were redeemed.

When love yourself her started promotions and teasers, the bar was higher than the person who edited the DNA mv. The concept pics were so unfitting??? And just lacked that aesthetic element. I dint like them at all,,,, and the album cover was,,, below standard and looked rushed and lazily designed. But when serendipity came out I loved it (and I still do) so that fuelled my expectations for the music, even though they weren’t really that damaged by the odd first impression of the album. But then DNA came out and???? I was so disappointed?????? The beat was so annoying,,, the mv was so ugly,, the outfits were ugly,,, the lyrics were weird. In other words DNA was just a straight up flop... I hoped the rest of the album would have been better but,,,, it really, REALLY wasn’t.

After love yourself her I lost a lot of interest in bts. I missed their old music so much, and I was genuinely upset over it. I didn’t follow them as closely as I used to. I started to joke about them with my friends who lost interest in bts before me, but I still missed the old bts so much. The whole Ellen show thing, all the western media like Buzzfeed and Billboard making vids and articles about bts, all the rigged award shows, it pissed me off bc they were getting famous in the US bc of their worst album that didn’t display their full potential at all!!!!

Imma just go out and say it, armys are one of the most toxic fandoms ever.

Sometimes they’re just plain disrespectful and starting arguments where they don’t belong. I wouldn’t be able to count how many times I got attacked on Twitter, Instagram and even in the YouTube comments for expressing a different opinion. I remember all the fan wars and scandals. All the mobs at airports, All the times k-fans and i-fans tried to ruin another groups reputation (I’m not saying other fans never did this, bc it was always a thing, but it was never this extreme.) and the fuckin credit card thing oh my god,,,, a huge shitstorm caused by one fandom that lasts for years on end.

When bts got really mainstream, and gained more young western fans, they really ruined bts even further for me. Not to mention all the cringey tweets and memes, they hurt to look at. I absolutely don’t mind the “you got no jams” meme or the “ExCuSE mE” one, bc theyre just pure goof from the members, but when armys took it and overused it, that’s when it started to get annoying.

Some armys genuinely think bts is the only kpop group and that the world revolves around them. They comment “annyeonghaseyo any armys here???!!!” in the most unexpected places, I deadass saw someone on my overwatch team playing quick play with the name “army.FOREVER.saranghae” yall do realise it costs 10$ to change ur blizzard username, right?

Some armys also don’t respect other kpop groups in older gens (or any other ones for that matter) and assume that bts broke through into the western world themselves, which is complete bullshit, without groups like bigbang, shinee, tvxq, shinhwa, h.o.t,  seo taiji boys etc etc (and other ones I don’t know of rip) kpop would have never gotten into the western world.

I never identified as an army bc I knew they were cringey bc of my friends who were HUGE armys back in 2016 and low-key koreaboos, and I knew what the bad stans looked like, so I never associated with them, and just called myself a bts stan. But the whole western situation just got so goddamn worse. I was sick of the Americans plaguing bts for me.

I also wanna say, I know not all armys are toxic and cringey. And I respect the level headed and chill Armys, yall are doing it right.

Moving on from Armys, I noticed a change in bts themselves. Namjoon changed his stage name, which absolutely sent me. I understand the meaning behind it but for some reason I felt that he did it to be fake deep? Or woke, and that he tried to completely cover-up his past self. The other members became cocky and were always draped in all that ugly Gucci and designer shit. I knew they were being forced to act the way they were acting, bc I know them well. I know how they really are. I know that they’re good people. I know they’re very humble deep down. They had that special connection with their fans before, that made u feel like u were good friends with them, and they absolutely ruined that. They’re being forced to put on this fake image to impress you filthy Americans.

I still stan bts atm. But I stan them for their old music and the people they truly are, not who they are portrayed to be. I can’t remember when euphoria came out, but I was kinda annoyed they tried to incorporate hyyh prologue into their shitty concept. And the song was also annoying and too edm-ish (like most of their new songs, idk why their style completely changed). Anyway, when tear came out, I was still kinda off the bandwagon, and I saw the concept pics and I was surprised at how nice they were. I saw the album cover, which was still ugly but better than the previous one. Then Singularity came out and!!!!! I loved it a lot. And then fake love happened. Oof is all I have to say. But some songs on the album, were actually good. Like the truth untold, paradise and OUTRO TEAR. Outro tear will remain the best song in the love yourself trilogy.

I also feel that I have to acknowledge that for all the love yourself albums only the intro and outro were genuinely up to standard (except outro answer).

Then came love yourself answer and idol. When I found out they were collabing with niki minaj I lost it. The concept pics were ugly once again, it was supposed to a controversial comeback???? And??? It wasn’t. I’m honestly glad it wasn’t promoted.

I noticed a repetitiveness with songs on answer. The beat was off with the singing. It was all just a mess. I also noticed the amount of godddamn auto tune in the songs (eg, mic drop, fake love, idol, airplane pt.2 and others I can’t remember atm) all of bts’s old songs all sound unique and different, and they all had this “emotional” element to them, to elaborate on that, compare dna, fake love or idol to save me, I need u or young forever. Notice how dna, fake love and idol convey absolutely no emotion through the lyrics or the actual beat of the song, unlike save me, I need u or young forever, that literally have more sentimental/emotional value in the few English lines that are in the song then all of the lyrics in their 3 new title tracks combined. I think this is my most difficult point to explain bc different songs make people feel different things, but it’s no doubt that you can tell the difference between a song that’s made to appeal to the masses with no unique properties to a song that coveys deep emotion (whatever the emotion may be) through the beat, the lyrics and the sound of the vocals/rapping alike. Listen to intro nevermind, and then listen to go go and just try to tell me that im wrong.

Alos, bts seem to have incorporated auto tune into songs, especially on their vocalists. bts don’t need the auto tune bc they’re good vocalists. Also, I have to mention, the vocal line isn’t the “best” per say. they’re good vocalists but it’s nothing special. Seokjin is the best vocalist period. Jungkook’s voice is generic, and in recent songs he has been straining it to reach the notes. Taehyungs voice isn’t even that special, it’s just deep, and it only really suits ballads and R&B songs like singularity or butterfly. Jimin has a very nice voice, but again, it’s nothing extraordinary. I feel that Jin has the most vocal potential, and he doesn’t get to show it, he has this really unique voice, idk what it is about it that just??? I really love it. But to clarify, I’m not hating on their voices or saying there untalented, because they’re very talented, but most of vocal line gets too much credit. As for rap line, I think they’re one of bts’s strongest points. Namjoons style is so smooth and just overall good? It amazes me that he rapped so well over the years with a breathing problem. Hoseok is a good rapper too, his sound is unique and his adlibs add to that uniqueness in older songs, as for Yoongi, I genuinely think he’s one of the best rappers in the industry, it’s not about the speed element, it’s about his flow, his power, his emotion, everything about his rap is just amazing.

Now I wanna talk about the member’s individual popularity. The maknae line has the most stans, and quite frankly, their stans are the worst. Treat all of the members with the same love and respect. Sure, it’s perfectly fine to have a bias but to disregard the other members is just plain wrong.

Bts are human beings, first and foremost, and then there musicians second. They’re being made into media puppets and clout bait, which they absolutely don’t deserve. They deserve recognition for their good stuff, which they have PLENTY of.

All in all, I’m sick of the American attention. It’s cringey, annoying and unnecessary. Sure, bts deserve recognition but not that much of it!!!!!!

And they were being recognised for the wrong thing for fucks sake!!!! I didn’t like ANY of the new songs on answer. I only liked epiphany. And then I found out it wasn’t written by any of the members. Rip. Fans will unfortunately blindly follow, stream and like whatever they put out like blind sheep because it’s accustomed to them, bighit KNOW that they’ll make more money in America. They know no matter what bts put out, no matter how shit it is, fans will like it and itll be revenue for the company. And all the mobile games and the bt21??? Was so unnecessary?? Capitalism amirite? Quantity over quality. It’s the sad truth.

Armys tend to mix up criticism and hate. Although there is a very thin line between the two, there is a difference. Criticism is the analysis and judgement of the merits and faults of something. Hate is blind and unjustified. Hate is disliking something for no reason, or for a very invalid reason. So for example, saying; “I don’t like this apple because its bitter and im not a huge fan of bitter things” is fine to say, unlike, “FUCK THIS APPLE BECAUSE ITS BITTER, FUCK ALL APPLES” you know? It’s okay to dislike a group. It’s NOT okay to hate on a group. No one’s is going to gain anything by hate.

So, all the youtubers are reacting to bts for clout, the fandom is a fucking mess, armys are attacking other fandoms for no reason, the members lost their TRUE humbleness and neglected their real personalities and they’ve put out 3 overall bad standard albums over the course of a whole ass year.

But I still have this spark of hope for them. Why? Because I love them, they have a special place in my heart. I know they have the potential to be amazing, unique and just overall good people with their own personalities, and truly special musical abilities.

After their tour I honestly, really hope the attention dies down and they put out another good, original, album like the hyyh albums, with nice concepts, good songs, and a pleasant to look at mv. It’s really all I ask for. The old bts. I know I’ll never get them back, and I absolutely cherish their old stuff, like the bulletproof logo, bangtan boys, rap monster, hyyh, young forever, no more dream, wings, them all goofing around together and not caring about their image, their wholesome interactions with fans, and all the songs and concepts and theories that never have, and never will be recognised.

On a final note, I realise I can’t blame bts themselves entirely for this. This stuff is only partially “their fault”. Its bighit’s fault, the army’s and haters fault and the media’s fault. But, America is to blame the most. That’s all for today.

[thekingofwinterblog]

Overhaul Arc, My Hero Academia’s First True Miss Part 2

so, after the first meeting between shigaraki and Overhaul, we are then thrown into izukus quest to become the intern of all mights former sidekick nighteye.

i will have plenty negative to say about the way nighteye is used through this arc, but that will not be the case for his introduction. Nighteyes introduction is very strong, and established him quite well. both his positive and negative qualities are laid bare in the span of a few chapters.

Izukus quest begins with him calling Gran torino in hope of interning under him, and just continueing where they left off. Gran however, turns him down flat. instead, he tells him to go see his master about it, and notes that one man in particular he should ask him about, is all mights old sidekick nighteye.

after asking all might for an introduction, all might refuses, and for a variety of reasons, he instead convinces mirio(who’s been interning under night eye for a year) to introduce mirio to nighteye instead.

This little sequence of back and forths is important for a number of reasons. the first is that by having mirio introduce izuku to nighteye instead of gran torino or all might, the former sidekick is able to meet and judge izuku withouth commentary or judgement from izukus past mentors.

The second thing however, is to set up the idea that of all the students of yuei, mirio would have been most likely to have been all mights chosen successor if it hadnt been for izuku. while this could easily be seen as character shilling, i’dd argue that its there to set up for mirio and nighteyes relationship, but that this set up unfortunatly will not go anywhere.

After getting mirio onboard, izuku is finally introduced nighteye. and what an amazing foil he is.

due to pretty much everything important to nighteyes character will be revealed here, i will take this moment to go over his personality.

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Nighteye is the biggest all might fanboy in the world. that sentence is the underlying theme for everything related to nighteyes personality, it goes into his motives, his way of doing things, his personality, and why he is the way he is.

Unlike izuku, nighteye is a very composed seemingly cold person, by the book person, who has no tolerance for bullshit or errors on the part of anyone around him and is not above telling someone exactly why they suck withouth sugercoating it at all. if you think this sound completely different than all might, you’d be right. Night eye is essentially, a living contradiction, in the essence that he believes fully and completely in the ideals all might represents, but he is not able to truely embrace those ideas himself.

this is not necessarily to say that nighteye is a massive hipocrite in this regard, only that he himself is nothing like all might(neither in charisma, warmth nor power), but he that he still truely believes in the ideals that all migth represents. the symbol of peace.

as we’ll see, pretty much the only thing nighteye did not agree with in regards to the image of a perfect hero that all might represented, was in what the most important part of what a hero should be able to bring out in everyone around them. for all might, the most important thing a hero had to be able to do, is to have a bright smile no matter what, to inspire all those around them. 

nighteye however, believes that the most important thing in the world, is the ability to inspire laughter in those around them. not in a condescending or mocking way, but rather the kind of laughter that lightens the heart and spirit of those around them. hence, he holds humor as a critical part of being a hero. as he himself puts it: “it is my belief that a society withouth humor or liveliness has no future”.

it was this that presumably made him seek all might out to become his sidekick. by nighteyes own admission at the end of the arc, the one thing nighteye wanted, was to be of use to all might.

which is why the events of catastrophical battle all might and all for one had struck him, as hard as it did. nighteye, who respected all migth, and believed in him and the symbol he tried to represent, was mortified by the concept of all might dying. 

both as all mights friend and partner, but also because he fully understands the implications of the symbol of peace being killed, especially if it happens in a brutal way so all the world would see.

ever since the moment where all might was crippled, nighteye tried to convince him to retire, to find a succesor, and leave let his legacy stand as it may, unchallenged by the idea of him as a crippled man.

however, all might refuses to accept this idea, as to him, the idea of letting people live in fear for even one more day than necessary, is something he finds impossible to do. he will keep fighting and protecting people until the moment, he cant do so anymore.

this in turn lead to a break between all might and nighteye, fueled by all mights refusal to retire, and only bolstered by nighteye’s vision, of seeing a possible future of all might dying horribly to a villain, as a result of his wounds(and yes, i will have something to say about that in the next part).

thus nighteye parted ways with all might and led him, to as he put it, doing everything he could to change this future he saw.

which leads us to one of the most important parts of nighteyes character, his relationship with Mirio, the young hero he took under his wing, and tried to foster into becoming the next symbol of peace.

Its not entierly clear if nighteye specifically sought mirio out for the single purpose of turning him into the clear candidate to become the next user of all for one, as all we’ve seen of his scouting him out, is the scene of them meeting and nighteye telling him that he had a lot of potential to become strong, along with an offer to come study under him.

its worth noting that before he began his internship under nighteye, mirio was not regarded among yueis better students, and it was only after his training under nighteye, that he became regarded as yueis number 1 hero.

this lack of strength, then raises the question of wheter nighteye recruited him because of the potential of his combat abilities, his personality or a mixture of the two.

in either case, its not entierly clear wheter he took him under his wings speifficly to make him the new user of all for one from the start, or if he simply thought he had a lot of potential, and the molding into all might 2.0 came after he learned of all mights choice as a successor.

whichever is the case, its clear that by the time nighteye learns of all mights choice as successor, nighteye, has already decided on mirio as a much better candidate, and as noted by all might, it was at this point(at least as far as all might knows) that he decided upon cultivating young mirio into a worthy successor.

which shows a remarkable faith in mirio, as judging by all mights appearance at the time he contacted nigheye to tell him his choice, he might have told him as early as immediatly after chapter 1 of the manga, which in turn would mean that at this time, mirio would have been his sidekick for somewhere around 1-3 months, yet he still would pour all his energy into turning him into what he himself saw as the perfect symbol of peace.

while, mirio already possessed a lot of the qualities that he shares in common with all might, its pretty obvious that under nighteyes wing, these trait were undoubtedly cultivated into the person mirio is today, which as ive noted earlier, could easily be seen as all might 2.0. 

the exeption to this, is that mirio since becoming nighteyes sidekick, developed a trait of dropping humor and jokes as much as he can, no matter how bad they might be, or how terrible or just bizarre they might be. this trait, is likely something he develop due to nighteyes great belief in humor(which included forcing his sidekicks to crack jokes during briefings, else face tickling punishment).

essentially, for better or worse, nighteye did everything he could to make mirio into what he saw as the next all might, which isnt necesarilly a bad thing, as mirio seems to be very happy with the results. but it raises a bigger problem when faced with the actual next user of one for all, izuku midoriya.

Nighteye has no respect for izuku, and he isnt shy about it either. his very first lines in with izuku in the series, is him tearing down izukus all might impression for not being exact to all mights standard face(izuku instead having based the impression on a specific face he once made). following that he puts forth a challenge which he doesnt really care wheter izuku wins or not, as he already decided upon hiring him no matter the outcome.

the only part of izuku’s performance during this test, which impresses nighteye, is izukus refusal to hurt any of nighteyes all might merchandice.

Nighteyes reasons for doing this is rather clear, as he’s helpfull enough to spell it out for izuku. he intends to show izuku firsthand, that mirio is the one who should have all for one instead, as he is far more “worthy” of it than izuku.

if you think all of this sounds incredibly hypocritical, and against everything all might stood for, you would be correct.

nighteyes goal, is to demean izuku, to the point where he will accept that mirio is the true successor of all might and decides to give his powers to him instead. instead of trying to help izuku into growing into the next symbol of peace the way he has trained mirio, what nighteye instead does is to try and beat izuku down by showing him the “ideal”.

and by doing so, he is betraying the very ideals he believes in so much, rather than doing what a hero should, and helping someone in need, he instead is incredibly selfish. he is also hypcritical in his reasoning that izuku is completely unfitt to become all mights successor, when one year ago, his own choice did not seem any more destinied for greatness.

you might think this is a critisism of nighteye, and it is, but its not a critisism of the writing in these early chapters, cause in just a few chapters, nighteye is set up incredibly well, we are shown the dynamic he has with izuku, and its hints at future development between these two, and in hindsight, knowing that nighteye is going to die, one would assume that part of what he would talk about at his deathbed would be his regret of the way he treated izuku, of the way his drive towards fullfilling the ideals all might stood for, instead lead him to forget why he believed in those ideal in the first place.

essentially, this entire arc has done a great job setting up that while izuku might learn a lot during his internship, he is also clearly going to suffer with the fact that yet again he is going to be saddled with a teacher who has way too much of his own baggage to teach him as effectively as he could. 

there is so much you could do with this kind of relationship, a lot of scenes where izuku is forced to grow, scenes where he pushes back and stands up for what he believes, show that nighteye is way to obsessed with his idea of creating a new symbol of peace. scenes where the two of them nerd out about all might, have mirio be confronted with the idea that he’s set up to be the new all might. a lot of interesting stuff.

you would think any of these would be explored in this arc which the manga calls the “internship arc”.

instead, as ill cover shortly, this arc is effectivly going to end in a few chapters.

----

so, after izuku gets accepted into nighteyes firm, he and mirio goes on their first patrol.

then they bump into a young girl called eri, who is followed by her seeming “father” the yakuza boss overhaul. eri is covered in bandages, and is very clearly terrified of him. they talk with overhaul as he very blatantly asks who they work under, 

all in all, the situation is suspicious as fuck, something bad is very clearly going on with this young girl, and hell, overhaul flat out tells izuku that he’s a persistent guy when he pushes him about it. then eri ends up breaking free from izuku’s protecting embrace at the first sign that overhaul is about to attack them. 

mirio tells izuku not to chase after them, they go meet up with nighteye, who harshly scolds izuku when he talks about how he feels he should have grabbed her and made a run for it(a scolding by the way, which nighteye is forced to take back, and admitt that izuku was completely in the right).

and just like that, izukus intership is over. No, im not joking, this is where izuku’s intership effectivly ends. seriously.

sure he has a few more moments before we go into the big rescue mission, but as far as his intership under nighteye is concerned, its over. its done. we spent a decent amount of chapters doing a great job of setting up an internship arc, which in the end, amounted to absolutely nothing, as izuku didnt do ANYTHING under his time with nighteye, except walk through the city on patrol one time, bump into a girl, meet a yakuza boss and then be scolded for wanting to help someone.

that is literarily all he does under nighteyes internship.

all of that great buildup was for this. and let me tell you, it was not worth it.

all the interesting and complex buildup we got for nighteye, his relationship with all might, his very hostile relationship with izuku, the very bad foundation with his relationship with mirio. all of it was completely pointless.

but, amazingly enough, the fact that all that buildup was for absolutely nothing, is not the worst part of it. hell, nighteye, isnt even the most wasted charcter here, no that honor goes to young eri.

cause after meeting her one time, where she doesnt do anything, show any unique personality, this entire arc will shift from being about izukus time as an intern, into a rescue mission to save this girl from overhaul.

and im now going to go into every single reason it does not work, what could have been done instead to make it work, and also cover how eri was the most wasted character in ALL of MHA.

----

The entire rescue mission that this arc will now turn into will be completely dependant upon the character of Eri. and i dont think Kohei could have screwed this point up more if he intentionally tried.

We learn NOTHING about eri during these two chapter. we dont know her personality, we dont know her backstory, we have no reason to care about her at this point, other than the fact that she’s a young helpless girl. ok, i might not want anything bad to happen to her, but there is a far difference between, “i dont want anything bad to happen to this character” and “i care enough about this girl to justify an entire arc will be dedicated to saving her”.

izuku and mirio have no real connection to her either, they dont know her, they have no connection to eri as a person. yet upon learning what her role is in overhauls plans, both of them will essentially drop everything, and focus their enitre beings this save this young child.

and it feels CHEAP, so cheap.

rather than building eri up, and make an actual connection between her and izuku, kohei instead calls upon the most basic storytelling methods ever to make us care about this girl. she is a young, helpless, adorable girl, who is horribly abused and experimented on, and she needs the heroes to help her.

that is the cheapest, laziest way you could possibly set Eri up as a character.

which sucks, so badly, cause the fact of the matter is, that knowing everything we now know about eri, her relationship with izuku could have been not only one of the most heartwarming parts of this arc, but of the whole manga.

on paper, this is essentially the next logical step from izukus storyline with kouta back during the training lodge.

That storyline worked great, but there was a lot of stuff you could not do with kouta, becaus while he and izuku did develop a bond, kouta was nothing like izuku himself. their situations were completely different, their personalites were different, their respective trauma’s were different.

That however, is one point where Eri differs drasticly from kouta, in that she has a lot of similarities with izuku. like izuku, she is a shy but very kindhearted person, like izuku she was broken down by a long period of abuse which made her a person with absolutely not faith in herself and with a lot of self hatred.

Eri should have been the next step after kouta, a character who izuku could actually connect with on a personal level, who he would be able to help by relating to her, and show her the kindness he himself was denied at her age. izuku could have helped her overcome her hatred of herself, her own powers, and the end of this arc could have been amazing, with izuku saying that eri’s power was a kind quirk, when she had been beaten down her entire life by being told what a moster her powers made her.

and yes, i know that this is kinda what kohei was going for at the end, but withouth a setup early, this does not work. Izuku praising eri’s quirk at the end and bringing her to tears from being shown kindness, is a climax withouth any setup, which is the rescue arc in a nutshell.

and the most danmning thing of all, is that the setup the rescue mission part of the arc didnt need some massive rewriting of its very being to work.

all it needed, was for izuku and mirio to instead of letting overhaul take her, instead they take her back to nighteyes office, and she stays there for a while(to put into comparison, the whole relationship izuku had with kouta was introduced, developed, and reached its climax over the course of 2-3 days) and we learn about her as a character. have her make some connection with mirio and izuku, have izuku bond with her, and actually set up a mystery of why overhaul wants her so badly.

then after that is set up, THEN have overhaul attack nighteyes office and kidnapp eri. 

BOOM. You now have an actual connection between eri and the protagonists, the act of overhaul kidnapping her back to experiment on her, actually have built up the reveal of overhaul using her for experimentation well instead of just introducing it with no buildup, and most importantly of all, the entire second half of this arc would have been build upon a solid foundational bedrock, instead of sand.

Cause the fact of the matter is this. even if the entire rescue mission part of this arc had been amazing(and lets be clear, its NOT), it would still have been built upon a weak setup, which would have been a stone around its neck.

and that what kills me about the way eri is set up as a character. all it would have taken, was 5 extra chapter’s of interaction between these two tops, and i would have loved this girl from the start.

and so far, i havent even gotten into ALL the problems with eri’s powers. i will cover that later, when i get into her later interaction with mirio during the actual rescue arc.

----

next time, we’ll see a small glimpse of what this arc should have been with kirishima and fatgum, as the intership spotlight that should have been used for the main character is instead given to red riot.

then the actual rescue mission begins, and this arc falls completely in over itself, as the main villains motivation cant seem to be consistent, his entire group(with only one exception) proves to be among the most boring villain groups possible, and the entire plan the villain tries to make, makes no sense whatsover.

[shima-draws]

★ SIMULATOR AU MASTERPOST ★

Well, here it is! You all have been asking for it--the ultimate Sim AU guide!! Below is everything that you need to know about the AU. Thanks for all of your amazing support ^^

So what exactly is the Sim AU? The Simulator AU, shortened to just the Sim AU, (sometimes also referred to as the AI AU) is a canon divergence to the end of season 2 of Voltron. However unlike the last episode Team Voltron actually defeats Zarkon in battle definitively, managing to destroy his empire and free the universe from his reign. Prior to the final battle, for unknown reasons Lance asks Pidge to create a very complex simulator installed with all of their memories and tons of other data. He also has her create a simulated version of himself, a highly advanced Artificial Intelligence program containing all of his memories, personality, appearance and abilities. This AI version of Lance is given one task, programmed into his very core and is his sole reason for existence—protect Lance’s most important person. Later on this person is revealed to be Keith, and during the final fight Keith is gravely injured and put into the simulator (which also serves as a healing and escape pod) and is shot out into space to protect him from further injury while the other Paladins finish up the final fight. Keith awakens inside the simulator, thinking that he’s still in the real world with Lance, and back on Earth after having won over the Galra empire. However this is all a ruse to protect him from the truth, as he is being kept company by the AI version of Lance while the real one and the rest of Team Voltron have mysteriously disappeared. Soon after the simulator begins to malfunction and Keith crash lands into a planet, he is thrown into a crazy battle against the Galra uprising, the remains of the Galra empire, and is accompanied by lookalike versions of all of his friends and a now-physical embodiment of AI!Lance. The AU is basically a tale of all of his adventures falling in love with the AI and getting into crazy shenanigans with his new but familiar comrades along with the Galra Resistance.

The rest is under the read more to save space!

What’s the background on AI Lance? AI Lance, as previously stated, was created to protect Keith and serve as a moderator over the simulator. After Keith wakes up on an alien planet and encounters the lookalikes of Pidge and Hunk, the two of them work to make a physical body (a highly advanced robot, basically, think Westworld) for Lance’s consciousness to be put into. Once Lance gains a physical body, he has the same appearance of the original Lance but with a few minor quirks. Exposed wires poke out of the back of his neck and when referring to himself and his actions he often relates them back to his internal systems, all machinery and mechanical parts. He frequently gets checkups by Katy and Hunk so that they can update his systems and check his inner circuits to make sure everything’s running okay. Due to this the three of them become quite close, similar to how the original Hunk, Pidge and Lance were all friends back at the Garrison. Throughout the AU Lance struggles immensely with his identity, not wanting to be labeled as a copy of the original Lance and wanting to form his own identity outside of that. He constantly battles within himself, asking “Am I Lance or am I just me? I don’t know” and that struggle is one of the main conflicts of the story!

What is Keith wearing around his neck? That is an AI cube! It serves as a storage system for all of an AI’s data and programming. Lance’s core is an AI cube, which serves as his “heart” and is basically what keeps him functioning. The one that Keith has is a gift from Lance and contains all of his backup data. Katy fashioned it into a necklace for him for safekeeping. So not only is it a sort of accessory (I mean, it’s really pretty to look at), but it’s something for Keith to protect since a lot of Lance’s extra data is in that cube.

Who are the lookalikes, exactly? The lookalikes are all similar to the original Paladins but with minor differences! It’s still a mystery why they’ve shown up and where the original Paladins have gone. On the roster, we have Katy, a Pidge lookalike but not disguised as a boy, Hunk, who isn’t even human but looks just like one, being of a mysterious alien race, Allura and Coran, both humans and the leaders of the Galra Resistance Army, and Shiro, an Altean with a tragic past. It’s difficult for Keith to meet these people, who so resemble his teammates, and have to completely reforge his bonds with them since they obviously aren’t the same Paladins he knew before. (But, well, at least he has Lance.)

Why can’t you reveal the secrets of the Paladins’ whereabouts and why Lance had Pidge make the simulator? Because I don’t want to give everything away! All of that information will soon be revealed in the story, so please be patient! Once that stuff is written out and explained I’ll update this post about those secrets I’m keeping.

Is there a fanfiction for this AU? Yes, there is! It’s called A World of Zeroes and Ones (the title is based off of a Vocaloid song of the same name) and starts out with Keith waking up in the simulator. Everything else about the background and Lance’s identity as an AI has yet to be revealed to Keith but he’ll figure it out soon! You can read it here over on Archive! It’s still in progress, updates are slow but I’m chugging away at them :’) Thanks for all the support so far! And yes, if it wasn’t obvious already I do have an actual storyline in mind for this AU, from start to finish I have the entire plot written out, it’s just a matter of getting down and actually writing the entire thing...!

Who is Error Lance? Error Lance is basically what I’ve dubbed an “evil” version of AI!Lance where he has completely malfunctioned and been corrupted beyond saving, his entire systems being reduced to an error code. In this mode he loses all sentience and thought, only being driven to destroy and cannot tell friend from foe. Error Lance is basically just a lost confused child who doesn’t know what he’s doing or who he is or why he exists—he only knows how to kill. This mode is usually triggered if something contradicts with his core programming and his reason for existence—Keith. If Keith is somehow injured horribly or even killed this will set Lance off and totally wipe out his systems; it reduces him to the errors that are caused by his reason for existence being compromised. The only thing that can successfully snap him out of this mode and restore him to his previous “version” before he was corrupted is Keith—therefore proving his reason to exist is still there. Hopefully that makes sense? It’s sort of hard to explain haha

Who is Zero? Zero is AI!Lance’s prototype, the original original first AI that Pidge created. (Hoh, you thought that our regular AI!Lance was the first? Nope!) Due to a whole bunch of malfunctions and bugs, Pidge scrapped the prototype and created a better version, which is the Lance we all know and love now. (I mean she can’t get it perfect on the first try it was her first time creating an Artificial Intelligence, especially one of this caliber!) She meant to delete the prototype permanently, but…a whole bunch of crazy stuff happened and interrupted the process so Zero was never actually fully deleted. He sleeps deep, deep within the simulator’s core data, only longing to meet Keith at least once, since that was the reason he was created. This poor kid. He’s really scary since he’s…a huge mess and just broken. Broken. But he honestly loves Keith and sincerely hopes for his happiness, even going so far as to use all of his power to help Keith and Lance when they get into sticky situations. Like original Lance, Zero is dismayed that Keith is in love with AI!Lance, considering Zero was supposed to be the one made for Keith, but was scrapped. Maybe one day he’ll get a happy ending...

What inspired this AU? The song Shelter by Madeon and Porter Robinson! The whole idea for the simulator originated from the animated video for that song. You could say it’s become sort of the themesong for this AU haha

Can I repost the art of this AU? Nope, sorry! This AU is very very important and special and personal to me so I’m not comfortable with other people using the art from it or reposting on other sites. I appreciate your enthusiasm and support but I won’t be changing my mind about this;; Please don’t go against my wishes and repost it anyway, because if you do I’ll report you without any hesitation. Let me repeat: DO NOT REPOST ANYTHING REGARDING THIS AU ON OTHER SITES. This AU has only been shared on tumblr, so if you see any of the art for it on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, etc. please let me know right away!

Can I make fanart of this AU? YES!! Yes, please, please do! There is nothing I would like more! Please, if you do end up making fanart, tag this blog or submit it here, my submission box is always open! Either way I’m gonna want to show it off to everyone else and shout about it, so yes, it’s highly encouraged and greatly appreciated!

The AU so far:

The overall tag/The tag in chronological order

Introductory post Crashlanding Arm sword Lance Concept sketches and doodles No, my circuits are humming You can’t spell AI without Mcclain! System overheating. Love you! Katy doodles *Chirr* Valentine’s Day Dorks Pixel animations He’s glitching out of happiness! Happy birthday, Lance! The master of sarcasm Embarrassed kisses When will I be seen as myself? Laughing smooches Human Error Happy boy! Take your boyfriend and make a run for it Soulmate AU to the AU (this doesn’t have art, but a cute mini fic I wrote if the AU also involved soulmates as well!) Kisses kisses KISSES Lance, you’re sparking! Floorplan/layout of Lance and Keith’s room Error Lance appears! Smol Error boy (and Eruba) Happy birthday, Keith! (This also has a short fic attached to it too! It’s very very fluffy and sweet) Error boy Lance flirts with a mysterious boy?! Zero’s Introduction Would you kiss this sweet broken Zero boy? Zero dabs My sensors can’t handle this! Klance kisses Klance kisses KLANCE KISSES ,,˙͡ɥ͢ʇ̴ᴉ͘ǝʞ̡˙˙˙͞ƃu͡ᴉʇ̛ᴉ҉ɐ͟ʍ ͠ǝ͟q̵ ͢l̨l,I˙˙˙u̶oos̢ ̕n҉oʎ ɥʇᴉ̨ʍ ͟ʇ̡ǝǝɯ͟ ̧ǫʇ̶˙̵˙˙ʇ͞uɐ͘ʍ I ¿́no̕ʎ ̡ǝ̶ɹɐ˙˙̶˙͢ǝɹǝɥ͟M,̡, 100% Form In love in love in despair Favorite place with you (This one’s animated!)

I’ll update this post with any additional art I make as we go along!

And if you have any other questions, please, don’t hesitate to ask! I love talking about this AU, it’s my heart and soul ❤️

[shesey]

Fragments of “Where Things Touch” by Bahar Orang

“And there is, somehow, the presence of beauty between us. A beauty that offers more than its playful glimmer; a beauty that opens its arms to us, considers stillness as its impermanent home. We could not rush to capture that beauty, such an impulse would be its opposite.” “But here I am, idealizing beauty, purifying beauty, as though it’s not wrapped up in the mess of desire and regret in which we live, as though beauty does not already reside in a home of fragmented language and memory.” “... only things felt can be known, can be beauty.” “What happens to beauty when it’s removed from its own dirt? If you pick a poppy, it withers within the hour. How simple a practice, then, to let flower, let flower, smelling its own earth.” “...a shifting sense of self.” “... Are they their personality or do they contain a personality?” “Beauty must be in conversation with care -- there can be no alternative for me! So when I say beauty, I mean the slow approach of alive things, meeting each other in all their complexity and longing.” “Can we imagine language as a sort of border of care? In which case my efforts here to describe beauty are acts of love. Though it’s a project with its own perils, sometimes language is only omission.” “It is one effect of beauty to soften contradiction; indeed, to offer another language where there is no contradiction to begin with, where a mountain’s solitude is necessary for its intimacy with the sun, where a viewer’s solitude brings them closer to the art, allowing the art to become a sentient, social being of its own.” “Desire, we often think, is about something lacking, about wanting, filling a hole. Desire, we might say at first, is in the empty spaces of Sappho’s poem-pieces. But what of desire as repetition, same and different, layers overlapping and shifting; Sappho’s poems whole as they are, but with an infinite number of possible relations with any reader, any strange molecule. And beauty here, in each engagement.” “I thought of spending the whole day with you, until it could be evening again, and we might sit on the porch, cold beers and paperbacks, but I couldn’t rearrange you any better even if I tried.” “I was in love with the ecosystem of where we were, and I only hoped it could love me back.” “How does one resolve oneself to the condition of unsayability? How does one accept that language is painful, that the practice of articulating by word, whether to express beauty or care, is a blemish on the page, a crack in the silence, a fragment working to recuperate all that exceeds it?” “Having a drink with you, I am caught between the impulse to say so many things, everything, and to say nothing at all, to treat our moment with diligence. At the very least, I want to invent a new language to address you, something that better expresses my ambivalence, but don’t get me wrong, the ambivalence is a pleasurable one. I want a new language, our secret, but the old words keep slipping in. I can neither escape nor resist them.” “What if language were to remember how fragile it is, how flawed?” “... the work of thinking and writing, the work of curiosity and consideration.” “Beauty is something opening, and if you are lucky, the thing opening is you, your body, your palms and your feet, so you are more surface to press against the earth.” “We’re walking quickly down a busy street at night, excited by our conversation, our hands bump into each other until finally you grab mine; every so often I trace my finger up the side of your arm before letting my hand fall back into yours, I glance up sometimes to admire your profile, your skin, the wind is warm, few things are better than a warm wind, we wanter in and out of shops, hardly noticing them, all our cells laughing, the whole of our skin trembling.” “Detachment and coolness, my usual games, are not possible between us.” “We talk about ethics. I offer that every manner of loving is an experiment, that the only way to love is by trial and error. But there are stakes for those errors. Each trial is a risky game, a continual dispossession of ourselves for another. With another, you suggest.” “Beauty always takes place in the particular, and how particular you are, how very singularly odd and attractive, appearing in my life without problem or precedent.” “One possible ethics of loving... to look away and return... to engage ethically with Sappho’s poems is to love fragments, to love in fragments, with no totalizing category, no interest in a lost whole, no disdain for flaws. Such an encounter between lovers is to bring together only the honest pieces that we are, to know indeterminancy as precious.” “Beauty shatters, makes fragments from anything, turns body to debris.” “I learn how many ways there are to spell home: your foot, your shoe, the lamp, the chair, creases in paper, unmade beds, our night.” “I feel that you’d be keeping a ghost, as perhaps I, too, would do if the gift had been for me from an ex-lover, whose ghosts, I suppose, are also the ghosts of our past selves, sweetbitter pieces we both love and despise, ghosts we want to forget or excise. I wonder if we’d do better to treat our ghosts with some kindness for the imperfect, trembling species they are.” “I think we must be these ceramic bodies, these shattered pieces hanging from lines of desire, desire that feels at once like affliction and freedom, like beauty and pain. Suddenly I realize that beauty is at times inextricable from pain, that beauty is nothing if not an essential detail of relation, of entanglement, and we are so fragile as we edge nearer and nearer to each other, inhabiting that third space, inhabiting a perpetual state of vulnerability, wavering between wreckage and repair.” “... the first impulse to testify against fixity, against the fallacy of a closed and unchangeable world.” “... straying from the established path to follow beauty into unknowingness.” “... the winter is breaking, the days are longer, the outside air has a new texture now, something balmy, something falling away, and I’m granted meaning, or is it pleasure, a distance and a closeness at once, I’m both lover and beloved, I face a setting sun, a rustling in my body, things clearer for the moment.” “Beauty is the pink twilight hours of lying in bed with you, laid bare of language or totality, curled open like orange blossoms of springtime, baharnarenj...” “I suppose I’m confusing terms here, but poetry, beauty, desire -- they are impossible to disentangle, and I feel deeply invested in the possibilities of their entanglement. What emerges from such a mess? Pain, surely. Freedom, maybe. When desire undoes you, when your aching parts open and glisten like gossamer, when poems of beauty fill you with stillness touched by longing, longing touched by stillness, when you traverse your own pain, its edges like pleasure, freedom conceivable.” “White people cite white people into banality and violence, and I’ve been known to follow, falling for their displays of liberal politics, for their reassurance that yes, Hegel matters less now, but White is still the moniker of sophistication, intellect, poetry, and beauty. And I feel like a cliche, a phone, a shape of imagination itself, as I stand there in Farokhzad’s wind, the wind will carry us -- breathing in dreams of Sepehri’s flowers, of orange blossoms I’ve never really known.” “well, we don’t want to say I love you / it might be too easy, too much / instead we get inside the words / to a naked centre / peeling off their paper / open in my hand, soft bones / what a lovely, / aching game it is: / finding all the ways to say / what you mean to me / (everything)” “... you can only deconstruct what you love. Because you are doing it from the inside, with real intimacy... you enter it.” “I hope you know, always, the pleasure of hot coffee, alone at sunrise, then again at noon.” “Maybe, then, beauty is where language fails, where language must give itself over to something else, to an embodiment that cannot be held by a slim treatise of words.” “And yet. Against these odds, there is language and poetry as beautiful as ocean or flower, there have been writings so particular, so impossibly beautiful.” “I have been gathering what falls for months, for years, in that search for beauty, but I write to you like someone unravelling, because this time I am what’s falling, and I see no reason to gather myself.” “Other times, I write to you, pleading: I want you to know I am filled with an exquisite longing - I’m wavering between several hundred small islands, I feel like a shuddering archipelago, I don’t want a boat or rope, I’m willing you to fill your cupped hands with water.” “Us, here, flat on our backs, like rocks our remains, / is the beautiful thing I hold in my mind, / an artwork that’s not abstraction. / We could make a habit of it, / the ritual of resting head into the earth, / arm hairs just inches from you; we’re not the same, / but we’re made of the same; eventually I roll into you, / the smell of your side like a salve. I pray it never causes me pain to smell you, to remember you.” “Is it frustrating or freeing or both to imagine that we might never truly articulate the meaning of anything, that we only ever write in synonym, all our poems somewhere slightly else, meaning as vagrant and open as our own little bodies, no remedy for fragility, only our ability to grapple, to reckon, and sometimes we do it with grace or with gratefulness.” “To devote oneself to the study of beauty is to offer footnotes to the universe for all the places and all the moments that one observes beauty. I can no longer grab beauty by her writes and demand articulation or meaning. I can only take account of where things touch.” “... The pursuit of clarity is noble and pleasurable.” “... the inexpressible space between myself and myself.” “When I write you, when I write to you, sometimes carelessly, sometimes with every intensity that I have.” “There’s a satisfaction, I know, in editing and eliminating, but we deny ourselves the feeling of letting things spill over, of using an unseemly string of adjectives, each both closer to and farther from some original idea.” “I wonder if some things, like beauty, can only be known obliquely, through language, but in the body, beauty is understood most acutely, most precisely.” “You’re interested in thinking more about what we’re doing with -- or what we’re doing to -- patriarchal relations. You ask: Can we write in a language outside of it? Can we touch in a language outside of it? My response never changes: Yes. So often we are alienated from our bodies, from our sensuality, and yet one thing I know for sure is that some realizations of desire leave little in their wake other than bodies marvelling at the possibility of address.” “Sometimes, beauty is restraint. Other times, beauty is the fruit of that restraint: releasing to sensation after the wait, celebrating, freely and without shame, all the sensual details of our daily lives.” “I can return again to Solmaz Sharif’s poem “Beauty,”, the part that goes:

Most mornings / No, not morning / Morning I am still new / Still possible, still possibly How to capture the feeling of possibly? How to make it last? But I get ahead of myself, this patient never asked for the feeling of morning in any tablet or vial.” “Her pain comes from everywhere and from nowhere. Her pain dislocates the Pangaea that she was, and the shards come together differently now.” “We cannot separate beauty from the unendurable, it does not soften or make pain palatable, it’s not to be used for cruel or paternalistic meaning-making; to know beauty, here, is to know, at the very least, the cacophony of excess and contradiction that is our lives.” “It would be violence to mine her for something that connects us, in order to love her or to care. As Virginia Woolf says about the person in pain, Kahlo opens herself up to me, or at me, or near me, to be just held in solitude.” “Even if the relationship shatters and ends, it continues to act in secret pathways, it doesn’t die, it doesn’t want to die.” “I accept that our new home is haunted by past loves, that our bodies have been known to others. I accept that even though you and I imagine we live, to use Anne Boyer’s phrase, in a communism of two, really, it’s an affair among many, each new embrace touched by historical embraces, each new disclosure in conversation with all the secrets we’ve shared with other people, each intimacy burning with its own specificity, but never in isolation from intimacies come to pass, intimacies still passing.

I discard the letters. Although the way forward is not clear, it is the only manner of burying I know.” “In our distance, I’m left to remember all the days before you.” “How easy to say that this was it, this was all it was, my life, and that you, my love, you were the beauty I had been waiting for. But as Sharif goes on to say: A life is a thing you have to start. And there were many starts in my aloneness.” “These were the things that allowed my life to start, habits at home that seemed at the time like repetitions without a cause and without meaning, but looking back, these were habits of beauty, of pleasure, how I knew connection.” “Facing homeward, our perpetual orientation. By any limerence or language, all our returns seem to be home, all our arrivals seem to be home. By home I don’t mean mother’s lap or mother’s land; I mean where air is clear, fire is light, earth is delicious, and our bodies are shores for the ocean. Where we sacrifice the ineffable for love.” “Beauty weighs less than pain; it doesn’t incinerate you or burn a hole through you. It is fleeting; it never stays long enough to damage you." “It’s the only way in: to bend toward beauty, to write into beauty, to know ourselves as embedded, bellies open like palms, making poems from pieces.” ...all I know is that this particular poem and these particular words are words of beauty, and they fill me with joy. The mystery gives peace to your longing and makes the road home, home.” “It is not that we cease to stand at the center of the world, for we never stood there. It is that we cease to stand even at the center of our own world. We willing cede our ground to the thing that stands before us. In other words, in the presence of beauty, we are beside even ourselves, the pull of self-interest loosens, and we feel called to the caretaking of beauty, and we act to protect or perpetuate a fragment of beauty already in the world.” “But intimacy is not always the sudden, waking force. Sometimes intimacy is the slow, daily habit of love, the rolling over of the body in bed, shifting the other ever closer to the edge, the buying of two litres of milk rather than one, washing their yellowing undershirts, and the occasional intrusive thought of, what if they die? What if today’s the day, on their bike ride home? For no other reason than by the slight of a momentarily distracted driver, what if they’re just: gone? And I’m left waiting, waiting for their touch, the touch that assures me I am here.” “And I’ve learned so much about care, the attentiveness it takes, the pleasure it makes, by thinking about, by caring for aesthetics. It’s an epistolary practice, really, they are like love letters to you.” “Offering attention, sustained and wide, to pomegranate or otherwise, is loving, I think.” “These days, I feel that, more often than not, meaning slowly emerges from a reading that allows the thing to remain as itself -- whole, having a life beyond my contact with it.” “You know, I’d trade my youth for this: to write a few poems of you, fewer than five even. To be sure, I’d trade my youth for less -- even just for knowing the L-shape your shoulder makes with your neck. Not to say that youth is somehow the most precious, and not to say that poems of you, your body’s corners, your arms, are not the most precious. Because they are.” “A poem is something to think deeply about, its construction filled with knowledge about the site of its emergence.” “Reading, we might remember, is a kind of ecological activity. Not just because wherever we read, and our particular situatedness, affects how we read: cafe or bedroom, aloud or silent, the city in which we read, the country in which we read, whether we hear sounds from the street, the way we sit, our embodiment, the weather, the climate, and so on. Not just because the materiality of what we read alters how we read: the feel of the printed page, new book or old book, stolen or borrowed, computer or hardcover.” “Reading is ecological for what it does to our ties to that which lie around us: what and how we see when we look up from the page.” “Maybe the search for beauty has just been my circular flight around one simple desire: to incorporate many more kinds of knowing into the work that I/we do as caregivers and caretakers of people, texts, other creatures.” “Because even as I ask myself to linger in the empty space of this page, or the space between each word and the meaning to which it gestures, or the wide breath of the wind that carries us - even as I imagine the in-between, the empty space, I know that the flesh, the stuff of it, is where I want to live.” “You know, despite everything I’ve said, I’m wary of wasting words on love. By which I mean, I have already written and rewritten letters of love to you in great repetition; by which I mean, I’ve repeated myself with negligible variation, but I’ve still been sincere, and you continue to listen and to care. When did our misdemeanours, our every encounter like a rupture in my life, begin to feel normal? Love has been our slow oscillation between the feeling of wrong, the feeling of right, a boredom, a quiet, a light.” “By way of habit, we compile what you call our own glossary of touch. Our routines, knowing how you wash your body, the little pile of socks on the floor, the way you always prefer to drink from one mug and not another, the walk we take, the silence after the fight like the silence after the rain -- these habits of intimacy are among the few freedoms we can offer each other.” Kiarostami, whose films I would never describe as cynical, says in an interview: love is misunderstanding. And we might still wonder whether this is indeed a cynical proposition, that we only love what we don’t understand, and once we do understand, the love ends. In this case, love is an illusion as we project our interpretations, insist upon them, fall in love with them, and then recoil as they shatter.”

[hiruma-musouka]

well written fic with terrible characterization and/or plot OR terribly written fic with great plot/character ideas?

This is the evil ask that prompted the thing I sent you, you dastardly woman. It’s also been sitting a few days so let’s get this last ask meme out of the way since I’ve finished everything else.

Ok, here I’m defining “well written” as good grammar and spelling since that’s the technical aspects of writing. In this case, as much as it pains me, I will take a terribly written fic with great plot/character idea as my choice. Now I normally backclick out of anything that has terrible formatting or relentless spelling errors or other similar issues. This is because if the writer can’t bother to care, neither can I, and I’m not expending energy to make it through their unfriendly document.

That being said, I just backclick out of bad writing as a matter of course, no further thought. It’s the terrible characterization or plot in a well written fic that deceives me into spending time on it in vain hope and then either irritates me into leaving or bores me into leaving or sends me into meta rants or makes me forward them onto friends so I can see their pained looks because there’s nothing quite so elemental to friendships as that moment of “oh god, I can’t even-” “I know right!”

That moment is pretty much when you know you’re friends. That and a groaning “what the hell is wrong with you?” followed by the other person laughing. Either or.

Anyway. Great plot and character ideas with bad writing can be fixed by the author getting a beta. Terrible characterization or plot is much more difficult because that usually means the author is blind to the contradictions or doesn’t care which I find irritating the older I get since I’ve grown out of a lot of the fads that are popular among the younger generations and newer writers.

Like, it’s inspiration for spite fics, but it also sits in the back of my brain and gives me twitches because for some reason my memory chooses to save those instead of useful things.