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heartilywrites · 7 months ago

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Hello! You’re literally my favorite korra x reader writer and im ITCHING to read more 😞 if its not too much could you write a fic on korra x f!reader where reader is popular with girls in republic city (kinda like a mini celeb) and one of the girls get too close to reader which upsets korra and reader makes it up to her by bringing her flowers and taking her on a date 😋

𝓛oved You First ; Korra

request guide | masterlist

resume: where you are Varrick's newest actress

content warning: fluff ; a liiiitle bit of angst, if you squint enough you can see it ; Korra x fem!reader ; established relationship ; nation and bending status not mentioned! ; at least, she's not from the fire nation, that is confirmed ; no use of y/n

wc: 2.1k

a/n: HI GORGEOUS:D this one is such a fun idea, thank you so much for requesting and for your words hope i met your expectations <3 ENJOY :D

،، Everybody wants to love her like that.

Acting had always been a dream of yours.

Maybe an unsupported dream since everyone told you that theater doesn't make a good career path, but then again, who cared? It was only until Varrick started to do movers that your enthusiasm came back.

The man was preparing a new series of movers where they tried to use Nuktuk to start a whole franchise for different nations to later on make them a group of invincible heroes and the next star was going to be a firebender fighting against a group of different benders –ah, yeah, he wanted to use the Red Lotus as inspiration.– and his idea was for the firebender to be a woman.

You didn't know about this new idea of his since you didn't really have an agent or agency, but Bolin was the first to tell and recommend you after you helped him with some acting lessons back when he was Nuktuk. Varrick held an audition with you and decided that you would be his next big discovery and so it happened, even if you weren't a fire nation citizen.

By the time the mover started rolling, Korra would make you company almost everyday of filming, cheering for you after the director would yell 'cut!', sitting next to you to talk about either the scenes or anything else to keep you mind off the set when you'd get nervous about next filming scene. She would help you with firebending moves in your trailer after getting ready and a kiss of good luck was given each time you would go back in front of the camera.

It was clear that Korra supported your new career, she always had your back even a couple of years back before starting dating she would always look after you. The avatar was the best thing to ever happen to you, you would always think to yourself everytime you looked at her, there wasn't any question about how the love felt was strong and reciprocated for both of you.

‍ ‍ ‍ ‍‍ “CUT!” the man yelled, satisfied with how the fighting scene went. You let out a sigh of relief while resting your hands on your knees to catch your breath. “One second, fire lady, I just need to check something.”

Korra took advantage of the distraction to walk to you, she hugged you by the back once you straightening back up. “You were amazing, miss fire lady, you should do those fighting moves with me.” she said giving you a tiny kiss on your shoulder, you laughed at her comment.

‍ ‍ ‍ ‍‍ “I would, if someone didn't cheat with her bending techniques.” you turned to face her with a smile, your arms rested on her shoulders. Now it was her turn to laugh before a soft kiss was exchanged between the two of you.

‍ ‍ ‍ ‍‍ “HEY! STOP MESSING MY FIRE LADY'S MAKE-UP!” Varrick yelled with his director megaphone, making her step away from you with her hands held up to her shoulders height, you were laughing. “That's what I thought. Let's go! We need to have the next scene by today!”

After the mover was done, Korra and you had time again for yourselves. Everything seemed to be going great, you never knew a tiny snippet of the mover was transmitted on TV... Okay, well, at least you didn't knew the first days until one day you were stopped by a group of three girls calling you by your character's name and saying how cool the sneak peek was, that same day you went home to Korra and ran to the TV.

The avatar was confused when you stood around fifteen minutes in front of the television, until she heard your voice with a almost static sound, it made her turn around to look.

‍ ‍ ‍ ‍‍ “No fucking way... It's you!” she exclaimed excited, sitting by your side almost pushing you out of the way to appreciate how gorgeous you looked in the traditional fire nation dress. “You look so sexy there.”

Your face started to feel hot at the comment, you were able to just giggle and cover your face. Korra turned to you and tackle you to the floor completely to hug you.

‍ ‍ ‍ ‍‍ “My girlfriend is a mover star.” she said moving your hands off your face to start leaving ephemeral kisses all over it.

‍ ‍ ‍ ‍‍ “Korra, stop!” you said in between laughs, but never pushed her away, you liked when she was affectionate with you.

‍ ‍ ‍ ‍‍ “Uh-uh! We're going to celebrate this!” she stood up with such quickness that if you tried it would likely cause dizziness. “Dinner's on me.” the girl extended her hand to you so you could get up.

Both of you went on an express dinner, having two to three bowls of noodles each and regretting eating so much was how you were making your way back home.

So there you were, walking side by side and talking about all the topics that would come to mind until you were stopped by two girls. Excited they were asking you for a photo, a man with a gigant camera was behind them, you looked at Korra and she just smiled before taking a step to the side, the picture was taken and a couple of compliments were said before they left giggling in murmurs.

‍ ‍ ‍ ‍‍ “I think I can't get use to that.” you said looking to hold her hand, she embrace the action and with her free hand cupped your face.

‍ ‍ ‍ ‍‍ “You will, mover star.” a sweet kiss from her was what made you feel better, after distancing she started to walk again. “Let's go home, baby, I think I will explode now.”

After the mover was released, the things just escalated. Now you were stopped almost at every corner, most of the times you didn't mind, but when you were out with your friends or girlfriend you felt as it was too much.

You thought that maybe by the third week it would've calm down since the hype for the mover was starting to dissolve, at least that was before you were stopped by a group of five girls while Korra and you were just walking in the park to pass time with each other after the things calmed down.

They all gathered around you, making the waterbender take a few steps back without her taking the initiative. They were all talking at the same time about the mover, how pretty you looked, how you were even more beautiful in real life and how the fire nation's color suit you better.

You were trying to keep up with everyone, feeling how your right arm got hugged and a head rested upon your shoulder, you didn’t know how to stop them, so you just stayed there smiling awkwardly. When you looked up to ask for your girlfriend's help, you noticed how she wasn't in front of you, desperately your eyes looked for her finding her silhouette walking away, way too far for her to hear you if you called her name.

A bad mouth taste was what you had, smiling forcefully at the girls to be kind to them. You signed whatever they wanted you to sign, took photos and got overwhelmed with the flash, but after a couple of minutes they let you go when you used the excuse that you had to head home before it got dark.

You knew Korra enough to recognize what had happened, before going home you went to a flower shop and bought the perfect bouquet for her: her and your favorite flowers. Walking into the apartment you didn't see her at the living room nor the dinner room when you left your keys on the table so you went directly to the bedroom where you saw the southerner looking out of the window.

With your free hand you knocked on the door. “Tulips and water lilies delivery.” you said with a tiny smile when she looked at you, her eyes just went back to the window.

You sighed and carefully left the flowers on the bed before sitting next to her in the couch.

‍ ‍ ‍ ‍‍ “I know something's bothering you...” you started, trying to look for her gaze. “Are you not going to talk to me?”

The Avatar licked her lips, thinking before looking at you. “It's... It's silly, leave it.”

‍ ‍ ‍ ‍‍ “It's not silly if it bothers you.” She hugged her knees and look down. “Korra...”

‍ ‍ ‍ ‍‍ “It's just that they were all over you,” she spat suddenly, making you nod. “And I know it shouldn't bother me because you are with me, but it seemed that they didn’t respect that and wanted you for them anyways. You should've seen how they were looking at you, the girl hugging you was the worse.”

One of your hands rested in her arm and left caresses while hearing her, you were glad to have clear communication with your girlfriend.

‍ ‍ ‍ ‍‍ “I'm sorry, my love, I should've set boundaries.” you said, the girl looked back at you. “You don't have to worry about anyone, Korra, I love you and only you. There's not one person in this world who can make me look at any other direction that is not you.”

The heart of the Avatar felt as it was about to leave its place on her body, she moved to sit better and in a quick move catching you off guard her lips met yours in such a familiar manner for the both of you. Korra heard how you sighed and loved the way you melt on the kiss, almost getting on top of you if it wasn’t for how you distanced from her a little bit.

‍ ‍ ‍ ‍‍ “Let me make it up to you.” you murmured over her lips. “Since our spontaneous date was ruined, let me take you out for another date. There's a mover about a romantic comedy that just came out and after we can go for noodles, what do you think?”

‍ ‍ ‍ ‍‍ “We have a date, darling,” she said, a tiny kiss was left on your lips and she completely separated to stand up. “But no noodles for some time, I still remember the feeling of that other night after eating too much.”

You laughed, copying her by standing up. “No noodles then, we can eat meat.”

‍ ‍ ‍ ‍‍ “My spirits, you have no idea how much I love you.” she said out of breath, her arm hugged you by the shoulders to leave the apartment together.

The mover went by quicker than you two thought, loving the way it turned out. Now you were sitting on a table waiting for the food on a restaurant that closed late, there were groups of friends eating before going dancing, couples who also had a late night date and people who work until late having something to eat before going straight home to rest. You were watching Korra play with her straw.

‍ ‍ ‍ ‍‍ “Maybe I should leave the movers.” the girl started coughing, you were fast to stand up and pat her back a little bit.

‍ ‍ ‍ ‍‍ “I'm okay, I'm okay,” she said hoarsely. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

You made your way back to your seat, a little grimace painted on your face. “You know, since this thing with... fans? seems to be problematic, maybe it's best if I leave it.”

Korra looked for your hands over the table and hold them. “Listen to me, don't let those girls stop you from following your dream.” her eyes were fixated in yours, almost as if she was anxious. “Don't let me stop you either, you're such a great actress with a bright future and it would break my heart to see you waste your talent.”

‍ ‍ ‍ ‍‍ “You really think so?” you bit your bottom lip, nervous.

‍ ‍ ‍ ‍‍ “Of couse, my love! You have to be the best actress Republic City has ever seen.” the southerner took your hands and left a kiss on your knuckles. “Besides, I can presume I have a famous girlfriend that way, don't you think?”

You laughed now, Korra smiled at the sound. “As if you're not the fucking Avatar, be serious, Korra.” you breathe in, relaxing a little bit. “I love you. So much.”

‍ ‍ ‍ ‍‍ “I love you even more.” she said, standing to give you a ephemeral kiss on the lips before sitting back down to let the server leave the food on the table.

She knew it was going to be okay, you were following your dream and she was fortunate enough to see you succeed at it, the love was reciprocated and that was all that mattered in the relationship. You had each other.

#the legend of korra #korra x reader #the legend of korra x reader #request #avatar korra #korra x you #one shot #korra x fem!reader #avatar korra x reader #korra fanfic #fanfic

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doiefy · 7 months ago

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dive // kim doyoung // preview

In the six or seven years that you’d considered Doyoung as more than just a friend, definitively describing your relationship with him had always been difficult. You were ‘lovers,’ essentially, but that sounded much too dreamy for either of your tastes; ‘significant others,’ perhaps, an all-encompassing and rather conservative term, but too harsh on the ears. ‘Girlfriend and boyfriend’ didn’t seem quite right to you, considering how private you’d kept it since the very beginning.

An entertainment agency with no fear of bankruptcy, scraping together a co-ed act despite its inherent unpopularity—the both of you involved—had made things awfully complicated.

pairing: kim doyoung x f. reader (she/her pronouns) tags: non-canon idolverse (NCT and other groups don’t necessarily exist in this, I just took a lot of inspiration from the Korean pop industry. it feels like realistic fiction but also not really), somewhat slow burn, slice of life at times, friends to lovers, angst, fluff, it’s also at least 10% crack word count: 6.8k preview, 40k+ full fic (fuck off, I’m not sorry) cw: preview includes mild language, alcohol. full fic includes smoking/vaping and drugs as poor coping mechanisms, anxiety and one instance of a panic attack, suggestive content

taglist available; reply or message me! I anticipate this will be out by end of August, I only have three more chapters to write!

additional notes: - kard is the blueprint!!! they induce so much bisexual panic in me and I love them so much, it’s probably pretty clear that I took inspiration from them and their artistry for this fic hehe. - I have a lot of thoughts on this realistic fiction genre I’m dabbling in but will hold off on sharing them here… just know that it’s written to feel realistic but god knows what actually happens behind the scenes in K-pop; none of this is meant to be speculative or mean, I’m just having a bit of fun. if you’re someone who actually gets deep into the industry drama and how the industry works, don’t get hung up on the details. please.

prologue: in the blur of the rain

For once, you were thankful for the rain.

It was a momentary relief from the heat of Seoul summers: a gust of coldness to push aside the heavy haze of pollution, and a steady stream of water to wash away the smell of cigarette smoke always lingering around your building. Sprawled out on a lawn chair with your legs stretched out, you watched mindlessly as the rainwater spilled into and accumulated in the balcony above yours. The rhythm of the water hitting the concrete was mesmerizing. Woosh, splat. Like glass, the drops shattered into a fine mist that sprayed your bare feet. Woosh, splat. Next to you, Doyoung mumbled something about the weather. Splat, splat.

“Aren’t you cold?” he asked. He’d joined you shortly after you stepped outside, disappointed by the gloominess of the low-hanging clouds, but content to sit with you nonetheless. Pleasantries, a couple of laughs over the beers he’d brought over from your fridge, then you’d sat in silence. Until the wind picked up a great deal and begged the inevitable question.

You glanced over at him, quickly understanding what he really meant. Huddled in a hoodie with his hair damp from the shower and the circular lenses of his glasses starting to fog up, he was cold. A man of surprising patience and sympathy who was always willing to stay as long as you did, but you supposed his will was wearing thin in the rain.

“Not really,” you shrugged. “You?”

“A little,” came a rather impassive response through a stifled yawn. He stretched his arms above his head lazily, then curled back into himself. “Mostly just tired. The alcohol’s making me sleepy.”

You snorted, unimpressed. “Mina’s gonna be real unhappy when she finds her stuff missing from the fridge.”

Doyoung grunted. “She owes me money.”

“For what, drinks from McDonald’s? Don’t we all?” you joked, patting his arm in mock reassurance. “You can go inside if you want. I’ll probably stay awhile.”

“Mm, I’ll manage.”

It fell silent again. There was some hidden reminder in both his words and the rain: a constant backdrop, constant background noise that was bound to be brought up explicitly soon, as much as you wanted it to stay buried. It had been like this for a couple weeks, ever since Doyoung sat down with management and made the decision. You were all aware of his choice, certainly not thrilled by it in the slightest, but dutifully observing a countdown—only five days, presently. There would be another, after the first hit zero, but you’d already decided that you wouldn’t count the days until his return.

There were plenty of crying, heartbroken fans of his who would gladly do it for you, anyway.

As you reached into the pocket of your jacket for something, you suddenly felt a judgemental gaze following you. Doyoung watched with incredulous amusement as you pulled the vape pen from its hiding spot to take a long drag. It was a bad habit that your manager hated and Doyoung liked to make fun of, but neither of them made efforts to stop you. There were worse things you could’ve been doing.

“Oh, I see,” Doyoung laughed, reaching over to absentmindedly massage your shoulder, where he knew you always tensed up. Had the two of you been in public, that was one of the worse things you could’ve been doing: giving the people any reason to doubt the nature of your relationship. “Should’ve guessed this was why you came out here.”

“Yeah,” you admitted, then showed him the pen: newly-ordered with your last pay cheque, pale pink and sparkly. “Wanted to take the new girlie for a spin.”

Ever curious, or maybe just looking for another excuse to ridicule you, Doyoung plucked it from your hand and took a hit. “Gross,” was the final verdict along with an exaggerated face of disgust, as he handed it back to you. “I don’t know why you and Johnny do this shit willingly.”

You shrugged. “Stress.”

“You wanna talk about it?”

“About what?”

Doyoung stared at you like it was obvious, yet not impatiently—one of the many things you liked about him, especially when the industry had a mean little habit of making you feel dumb and oblivious. “What’s stressing you out?”

There it was, the onset of the conversation you’d been waiting to have. “You. What else?”

He raised a brow, grinning sarcastically. “You don’t think I can survive two years in the military and fulfill a responsibility that’s to be fulfilled by every good and able-bodied Korean son in the country?”

“Please. You can barely learn an entire choreography without bitching about back pain at least once.” You rolled your eyes and brought the vape back up to your lips.

“What about the good son part?”

You’d met his parents before: hard-working, upper-middle class folks from the suburbs who had undoubtedly wanted their kids to pursue law or medicine for sake of job security, only to get an actor and singer instead. Cackling at the promise of getting a rise out of him, you met his gaze with glee. “I think it’s really sweet that you buy your mama designer stuff all the time. But she probably wanted that money from a well-respected lawyer, not a K-pop idol who clowns around on national television for a living.”

Doyoung glared and flipped you off, but it was all in good fun. “Right back at you.” Then in a disbelieving murmur from behind his drink, “I’d be a pretty fucking hot lawyer though.”

You sighed in agreement, the notion making you feel more dreamy than you would care to admit—but for good reason other than the fact that he would make a very hot lawyer. “Oh, how life would be so much easier.”

“We probably think that because this is the only life we’ve ever known,” Doyoung smiled softly as a certain sense of contemplation settled over the balcony. You both knew it was true, and would eventually settle for some semblance of normalcy when given the opportunity. You could hardly despise your jobs, nor could you fully embrace it. Like any other employment, it was just that. Only yours seemed to define you as a person much more than any other 9 to 6 in the city would a typical person.

“Will you be okay?” he asked a little later, watching you blow lazy smoke rings. The concern was more genuine than usual, prodding at emotions you’d kept bottled up for the better half of the week. “It’s… Sunday.” You knew he was counting down the days too. “I’m going on Friday.”

“I don’t know if it’s quite registered yet. It’ll probably hit harder once you’re gone,” you said. “But I mean, two years isn’t the worst. We’re used to it.”

“We’re used to not being with each other. We’re not used to being without each other completely.”

Ah. Another conversation to be had, when he came back. Now just a bit more dejected by the mere mention, you joked, “There’s a difference?”

“There’s a difference.”

You knew the difference, of course. You could explain it in great detail if you wanted to, covering the years of history behind it and the gruelling effort you’d put into keeping a story alive. But it was a story that never made it further than Doyoung and yourself, echoing just slightly to reach Mina and Johnny in muted detail as well.

In the six or seven years that you’d considered yourselves as more than just friends, definitively describing your relationship had always been difficult. You were ‘lovers,’ essentially, but that sounded much too dreamy for either of your tastes; ‘significant other,’ perhaps, an all-encompassing and rather conservative term, but too harsh on the ears. ‘Girlfriend and boyfriend’ didn’t seem quite right to you, considering how private you’d kept it since the very beginning.

An entertainment agency with no fear of bankruptcy, scraping together a co-ed act despite its inherent unpopularity—the both of you involved—had made things awfully complicated.

But in all the ten or eleven years that you’d known each other just as people, you’d never been apart for so long. You’d never been without him as just a friend. Even the occasional modelling or acting gig on his end took no more than a few months, while your solo work only peppered your usual schedules with overnights at the studio. The fact that he was enlisting alone was possibly the saddest part, with you and Mina obviously exempted, and Johnny too by his American citizenship. From seeing him almost every day to only once or twice a year… it would be hard on you all, but on you in particular.

Sensing your low spirits, Doyoung still found it in himself to joke, “You’re gonna hate my hair.”

You groaned, refusing to imagine him with the dreaded buzz cut and green beret. “Fuck, don’t remind me. I’m not searching you up on Naver for the next two years.”

“You search me up on Naver?”

“Shut up.”

But he was unwilling to let it go that easily. “Aww, that’s cute. You know what? Between me and you…” Scooting closer with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes but hardly a waver in his voice, he whispered, “I search myself up too.”

“You’re so annoying,” you scoffed, blowing smoke in his face.

“You love that about me,” he grinned, then leaned in to kiss you.

For years, you’d always jolted away when he did it—purely out of paranoia, always worried that someone was watching. But Doyoung was unbelievably meticulous: restricting himself to the dorms, his car, and occasionally his family’s empty vacation home. Never in the company building. Never anywhere else. It wasn’t often either; for the most part, you abstained from any romantic gestures, lest you got used to it and went too far in public without even knowing it.

It became muscle memory after that, for you to startle away and for him to coax you back to him, for you to trust his judgement of your surroundings and safety. In the spur of the moment this time, he wrapped his arms around your waist and pulled you gently into his lap. You knew he already missed you from the abruptness of his affection to the way he kissed you breathless. And while you thought about how he would be stolen away from you for the second time and reminisced all the times you had to hold back from going all the way, you were infinitely grateful for the stormy skies.

Because in the blur of the rain, the world was none the wiser to who you were, or who you were to each other.

i. never grow up

You met Kim Doyoung on your first day at the company, in a dingy storage closet.

You were eighteen at the time—fresh out of high school and your old entertainment company, where you had few prospects apart from amassing crippling debt and cameos on rigged survival shows. You couldn’t quite despise the shitty management though, or the hellish programs they offered. Because at the very least, they’d help you stick your foot in the door. Finding your next destination was hardly difficult, especially when a family friend of yours distributed the company’s business cards as a side hustle.

Taeyong responded almost instantly when you asked him for help, then sent you a blurry picture of a pink card drenched in someone’s beer. Vitamin Entertainment. A quick Naver search brought up a number of decently-successful acts, mostly soloists and actors. And a recently-disbanded idol group, which was most reassuring.

“Don’t I need to audition?” you asked meekly when he called to make sure you’d gotten his message.

He was tipsy at a party, slurring and tripping over his words. “Nooooo, sweetheart. You’re hot and experienced, don’t waste your time. Either email them a link to your old YouTube channel, or I’ll do it for you.”

“I’ll do it,” you grumbled. “Speak nothing of the YouTube channel or I’ll kidnap your dog.”

“Okay, whatever you say,” Taeyong chirped, obnoxiously sing-song as always. “Well then, my dear, the bubbles are bubbling and the wine is flowing! Love ya, see you later, make sure to send that email, okay byeeeeeeee—”

The line went dead, and you reluctantly powered on your laptop to do as he’d told you.

Imagine your surprise when someone got back to you two weeks later and asked you to come in. Either Taeyong had put in a word for you and your tape was impeccable (you knew it wasn’t, you’d filmed it at 2 AM), or they were desperate.

Your expectations plummeted when Google Maps took you to a rose-tinted glass building in the scrappiest part of the neighbourhood. And they hit rock bottom when you found yourself in a lobby modelled tactlessly after a container of children’s gummy vitamins.

The floors were a checkerboard pattern of blue and aquamarine tiles, while the uneven plaster walls were painted salmon pink. The furniture strewn about the foyer were made from cheap, hard plastic, resembling sheets of gelatin and brightly-coloured candy. Caricature drawings of Vitamin artists and CEOs stared at you from their glass frames while a manager took you on a tour. Your first response within twenty minutes of arrival was to check that your contact lenses hadn’t fallen out of your eyes; there was something very vague and blurry about the place, which seemed to bleed into the atmosphere and all the people you passed by.

“New here?” a few of them would ask you in passing, be it other trainees or instructors, and you always responded with a polite nod. They’d shrug nonchalantly and welcome you with a simple, “Cool,” before moving on. You didn’t doubt that they were busy, yet they seemed to float around aimlessly, like idle characters in a video game.

It didn’t help that the trainee floor felt like a game too: a game of interpreting awkwardly-placed signs and room numbers that more often than not took you to all the wrong places. The fated storage closet was just one of them, hidden behind a mirrored door you thought would lead to an empty practice room.

“What the hell?”

Upon entering, you were met with lopsided IKEA shelves filled to their maximum capacities with cleaning supplies and cardboard boxes. It was a back room not meant to be associated with the company’s poppy, pretty exterior: drab but organic, clearly deviating from the standard blue-pink candy colour scheme. Amidst the mess sat a boy around your age, pale faced, black haired, wearing round glasses. He was perched atop an old washing machine, his focus glued insistently to a mobile game, until you unceremoniously barged in. Then he looked up like a deer caught in headlights, instinctively shoving the phone into the front pocket of his hoodie.

“Hi.”

You stared at him, confused. “Sorry, uh… this isn’t practice room B, is it?”

“This is practice room D,” he said.

You stared at him. He stared back—completely deadpan for several seconds before breaking into a toothy smile. “I’m just messing with you. B’s around the corner, on your right.”

“Thanks.”

“New here?”

Like you already had several times that day, you nodded. But unlike previous occurrences, he didn’t welcome you halfheartedly and then float away—or rightfully kick you out of his hiding spot. Instead, he noted your attire and demeanour, both of which lacked the usual jitters and nervousness of a new recruit. “But not new to the scene, are we?”

“No, not really,” you said.

“How long?” It was a touchy question amongst trainees, strangers especially. Yet from him, it hardly seemed invasive, only curious.

“Two years now.”

Intrigued, he hopped down from the washing machine. Even back then, he hovered a few inches above you, just a little lanky, still in the process of growing into himself. “Me too. Debut is a scam.”

“A scam you and I keep falling for,” you reminded him with a chuckle.

To your relief, he cracked another smile. “You’re so right,” he laughed, sticking his hand out to shake. “Kim Doyoung. Welcome to Vitamin.”

You would soon learn that Doyoung took everything with good humour. And from that alone, you knew you would become good friends.

You saw each other quite frequently after that. For the sake of their finances, the companies had lumped all their trainees together regardless of gender and experience. You tripped over yourselves in cramped dance studios and listened to strained voices together in vocal rooms. On weekends, you slept for eighteen hours at a time and debated dropping out to pursue proper higher education, only answering calls from your fellow trainees if it involved free food. And on Monday mornings, you got right back to work.

It was less busy in the wintertime, thankfully. When the foreign trainees were granted long breaks to see their families and the high schoolers took time off to study for their finals, you and Doyoung had to keep each other company. Little got done those days, as you opted to play variations of “Fuck Marry Kill” or “Never Have I Ever” over soju from a plastic soda bottle.

“Johnny, Yuta and Airi,” Doyoung prompted with a snicker and took a lazy swig, as if it were anything but an easy decision.

“Oh, c’mon,” you retorted, stealing the bottle back from him. “Kill John, obviously.”

“Good choice.”

“I’d pay money to marry Airi. And then fuck Yuta.”

“Way to immediately ruin your marriage.”

It was pure reflex to hit him hard on the head, with the closest thing you could find. “Not in that order, smartass!”

Unfazed, Doyoung only glared at you. “Just for that attitude, we’re skipping your turn.”

“What type of fucking rules— Wait—”

“Airi, the nail tech who ruined your set last month, and…” He trailed off playfully, purposely making you wait in irritation—but your impatience quickly turned into shock. “Me.”

You damn well choked on your own spit.

You’d never seen Doyoung that way, much less had any time to entertain those kinds of thoughts. Maybe some quiet recognition and acknowledgement when you first met him, which was about a year ago now: just a respectful and very private nod to how well he would do as a celebrity. He was polite when he talked, pretty when he sang, confident when he danced… but were you appreciating those qualities because you needed them yourself? Or did they really make you see him in a different light?

“I’m still marrying Airi,” you started defensively. “Killing the nail tech. She literally scammed me. And did you see that neon pink she used? Absolutely foul.”

Doyoung raised a brow. “And…?”

“If you ask me nicely, you might just get what you want.”

Silence. You stared at each other for a long moment, but ultimately both decided you’d had enough fun.

“Meh, I wouldn’t fuck you.”

“Yeah, me neither.”

It had always been easy to be so brutally honest with each other.

The incident went completely forgotten until a year later—one evening when you found yourselves in a tight circle with the other trainees, drinking beer and spinning Doyoung’s empty soju/soda bottle for shits and giggles. It was cliche, certainly. But you were all missing out on drunken college parties in the real world, and this was as good as entertainment would get.

The bottle spun and spun, making rounds but always narrowly avoiding you, picking and choosing duos to go into the notorious storage closet for the allotted seven minutes. Within half an hour, Yuta and Airi had come back disheveled, while Ten had returned with pink marks on his neck—the latter of which lost you five thousand won to Doyoung in a stupid bet. Not all pairings were so frivolous, however, with Johnny and Mark deciding to awkwardly play tic tac toe seven times on the same crumpled napkin.

By your impeccable luck and the good graces of the saints, the last spin of the bottle matched you with Doyoung.

“He’s probably just gonna fall asleep,” you grunted, then dragged him out of the room.

“You know, all of these losers have been faking it,” Doyoung said once you’d shut the door and set a timer on your phone. He sent you a knowing look. “I mean, if you’re hung up over Airi and Yuta, they probably just jogged on the spot for seven minutes. They respect each other way too much.”

“In that case, give me my money back,” you said, already making a grab for the five thousand won.

“What?” His hand immediately flew up to guard the pocket of his track pants, where he was keeping your money. “Oh no, Ten’s was probably real. You think he just punched himself in the throat for seven minutes while Kun watched?”

“Damn, okay, I didn’t know I was friends with fucking Sherlock Holmes himself.”

Doyoung cackled, slapping your shoulder hard enough to send you into the wall. “C’mon, they’ve liked each other—well, pretended to hate each other—for years now.”

Then for whatever reason, your last game of ‘Fuck Marry Kill’ suddenly crossed your mind.

“Should we do them all one better?”

He was skeptical, but perhaps more so by the logistics than the notion of actually doing it. He checked the timer. “How, by actually making out? We’ve got, like, five minutes.”

“That seems like a good amount of time.”

He paused and looked down at the timer again. You were left anticipating his reply for just a few seconds, but there was little anxiety attached to it.

“Fuck it, why not.”

He set your phone down on the nearest shelf, turned you around to face him, and suddenly his lips were on yours.

That was the very first time you flinched away. It wasn’t bad, or even that weird considering your being friends, but there was a sudden confidence behind it that made you realize two things. One: there were multiple sides to this guy, as there were with all people, and one you had never taken seriously. Two: the side of him you were missing was his attractiveness.

You parted from him to catch your breath, completely caught off guard by the way he’d tucked a finger under your chin and lifted your head up to meet him halfway (where the hell did he learn that from, K-dramas?). His hands quickly found your shoulders instead, comforting despite the way his eyes widened and he rushed to apologize. “Too much?”

“No, I just—” You laughed. “Surprised, that’s all.”

He caught onto your train of thought quickly enough, and when you didn’t protest, gently crowded you against the wall. “Didn’t think I’d have some experience after twenty years of life? I’m not a stick in the mud.”

“Straight A’s in high school, perfect attendance, vice president of the student council, after school volunteering, part-time tutoring—”

“A surprising number of girls were into that,” Doyoung retorted, then grinned proudly. “Boys too.”

“Ugh, so you peaked in high school, we get it,” you grumbled.

“Ugh, so you’re jealous, we get it.”

“Shut up.”

“Got it.”

With that said, he pressed his lips back to yours and snaked an arm around your waist—with a surprising amount of care given the spontaneity of this entire ploy in the first place. Not one to be outdone, you wrapped your arms around his neck and pulled him closer. It didn’t take long for him to grab both your wrists after that, pinning them above you and fully caging you in. It was undoubtedly rushed and messy as you raced against time, the alcohol from earlier obviously playing some part too.

When the timer went off, Doyoung gently pushed off from the wall and reached for your phone. But his gaze never left yours—his eyes staying insistently dark and full of mischief even as he silenced the offensive ringtone. But eventually, he broke into laughter, at which point you realized he was messing with you again.

“That was fun,” he chirped as he fixed his hair in the reflection of a broken TV. Then jokingly, “I’d give it a 4 out of 5.”

You rolled your eyes. “Thanks Doyoung, your review helps small businesses like ours improve and get those five stars. Would you do it again?”

He swung around to look at you, surprised.

“Maybe.”

Funnily enough, “maybe” became something entirely different, as you began sneaking off with each other at every possible moment. Rarely to do something as scandalous as making out in a storage closet (although sometimes), but spending more time together nonetheless. You often forwent sleep entirely and wasted away the early hours with him, eating at random diners and burger joints, or watching the stars from an empty parking lot.

It became apparent pretty quickly: you’d been a little too studious in high school, and still tightly-wound two years after graduation. But now at twenty years of age, you felt some strange urge to develop a rebellious streak. Doyoung was no different despite always denying it, frequently taking his brother’s car out for joy rides and continuing to sneak alcohol into the practice rooms. Admittedly, he sometimes fell back into the old habitual role of goody-two-shoes, entertaining what-if scenarios and cover stories for use if the two of you ever got caught.

But you weren’t doing anything illegal, much less even wrong. Plenty of trainees spent their evenings doing much more questionable things. And no one at the company had formally banned you from dating as predebut, wannabe stars, although it was obviously frowned upon. And most importantly, neither you nor Doyoung had said anything about dating.

Surely it had crossed both your minds. On occasion, once he’d kissed you breathless and stared you down with some unfathomable emotion, you had to resist the urge to blurt out, “What are we, exactly?” It wasn’t just the present state of your relationship that mattered. It was all else that might follow.

If it was all for shits and giggles now, would it develop? With debut being the obvious goal after four years of gruelling work, what would you do if you both reached the goal and something had developed by then? Break up? Stay together secretly despite the obvious backlash that would ensue if people found out? After every sleepless night, every car ride, every midnight dinner, you caught yourself thinking about it.

Eight months later, things took an abrupt turn.

“Please tell me you’re joking.”

The bathroom door slammed shut behind you as you stormed into the common area of your dorm—now empty, with Mina out shopping and the two younger trainees you lived with having gone home for the weekend. Something about their absence and the lack of activity sharpened the rest of your senses, perpetuating the sharp sound of static that filled your phone call. The place had felt incredibly deserted for weeks, growing gloomier and quieter with every departure of an ex-trainee.

The company was down in numbers again.

“They can’t just—” you let out a muffled noise of frustration, putting Doyoung on speaker so you could continue stomping around. “I mean, why?!”

“Yuta leaving was the last straw,” Doyoung replied, just as agitated by the news. His voice cut in and out of white noise. “If he hadn’t, they could make do with debuting us as a trio and delaying you and the girls by a year or two. Or if Airi and Jiwoo were still here, the other way around—”

“But why are they in such a rush?” you spat. “What’s five years without putting out a new group? Bankruptcy?”

Doyoung didn’t respond. But you could tell it was because he was preoccupied. The sounds of city traffic and wind were prevalent on his end, as he presumably made haste toward some place. Suddenly, it went silent. A door swung open, then clanged shut. “C’mon,” he said breathlessly. “I’m downstairs.”

You grabbed only your phone and keys before stumbling out to find him. Not knowing how he’d arrived so quickly, you could only be grateful that you weren’t all alone.

Upon seeing him, you practically launched yourself from the stairs and crashed into his arms. The anger and frustration hit all at once, as you buried your head into his chest—burning hot and relentless against all reason, far too overwhelming as it pushed down on you. Then came embarrassment and overwhelming discomfort for even feeling angry in the first place. Was it selfish to be this angry? Was it selfish to feel so much hatred?

They’d served you a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity on a silver platter, yet you could only think of yourself. You could only blurt out one scathing hot truth that would have sent your younger trainee self into hysterics:

“I don’t want this.”

Doyoung was calm as ever, but you could hear the strain in his voice. “I know.”

“I— It’s stupid! No one asked for this. I didn’t sacrifice four years of my life to put up with this!”

There was no reply this time. Not for a long time. When you finally resurfaced from the warm fleece of his scarf for air, he was wiping the tears from your cheeks. A physical outburst from the overload of conflicting emotions, one you had hardly noticed.

At the core of the situation was just that: conflict. You were torn between relief and apprehension, joy and anger, so incredibly relieved that your efforts hadn’t gone to waste, but so disgusted by the company’s blatant reach for attention. So eager to take the offer, but terrified that it would prove to be the wrong decision.

You, Doyoung, Mina and Johnny. It was a lineup unlike anything anyone had seen in years, unconventional in the Korean pop scene for obvious reasons. All you had to do was sign the documents. Then debut was all yours—likely alongside criticism and skepticism from everyone watching.

“I know I’m being ungrateful,” you said, barely louder than a whisper. “But I didn’t sign up to deal with ridicule and rumours the moment we’re announced. Why do we have to deal with that bullshit when the consequences are their fault?”

When it came to consolation, people failed to acknowledge the necessity of a listening ear over advice. And in that moment, you were grateful that Doyoung listened. No unsolicited comments pointing out your tendency to blow things out of proportion, no attempt to calm you with reason. It was in Doyoung’s nature to analyze, to stay logical, to stay grounded in reality at every sharp turn of the road. But he did nothing of the sort, knowing it wasn’t in yours. There was only a warm embrace to cling onto—then a simple reassurance that would’ve broken you, had it not come from someone who really meant it.

“We’ll be okay.”

He let you settle back against him. For several minutes after that, you rocked back and forth in his arms, thinking to yourself, Will we though? It had finally dawned on you, what awaited you in the coming days, months, years, even.

“What about us?” What… are we?”

He mustered a wry grimace at the question, slowly pulling apart to hold you at arm’s length. The weariness of his expression didn’t look right on the face of a 22-year-old. You wondered if you looked the same: tired and worn out years before the average person begins to wear. “Regardless of what we are now, regardless of what we become if we sign contracts, we were friends first. Right?”

You nodded, but suddenly found it difficult to look him in the eye.

“And at the end of the day—of any day, good or bad—we’ll always be friends, yeah?”

You’d seen him at his ugliest, and he’d seen you at yours: from his episodes of black-out drunkenness, to the insults you used to hurl at your parents over the phone. You’d fought on occasion too, exchanging backhanded comments and getting into full-blown arguments before reconciling later. There was nothing to hide from each other, and no one you trusted more with your secrets. No one knew both you and the industry you worked in quite like him. It went both ways.

So you nodded again.

He gave you a wry smile. “Then let’s be friends while we deal with all the other shit. If we want to be something else some other time, we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.” There was a long, nervous breath, as his hands found yours to steady himself. “Is that okay with you?”

Insinuating that you could be something else in the future. Insinuating that his mind had wandered in the same direction as yours, at some point in time.

“Okay,” you murmured softly, resting your head against his shoulder. “That’s okay.”

As friends, you found momentarily solace in each other, while the wind howled outside.

“The way I see it? The company doesn’t give two flying fucks.”

Johnny’s voice rang out across the room, ever loud and thunderous like the titan himself—despite a mouthful of McDonald’s fries and ice cream. A chorus of hushed and panicked voices followed immediately.

“Seo, you better shut your fucking mouth.”

“Ew, John you got spit on me!”

“Dispatch would have a field day with this one.”

“Can’t take this man anywhere, I swear,” Doyoung rolled his eyes, leaning over to snatch a chicken nugget from your tray. Just as quickly, you wrestled it out of his hand and shoved it into your mouth, your idol etiquette class be damned.

“Can’t take you anywhere either,” you scoffed, then pointed at Johnny with greased-up fingers. “As much as you need to learn how to shut the hell up when we’re in public, continue.”

He gave an indifferent shrug and kept shoveling vanilla soft serve into his mouth. Away from formal settings and the prying eyes of company seniors who expected utmost discipline, Johnny Seo was nothing short of an American frat boy pulled straight from a cliche American movie: most commonly seen in joggers and leisure wear, stumbling lazily over his words, eyes constantly half-closed like he was stoned out of his mind.

“I said, the company wouldn’t give two flying fucks if we, hypothetically, dated each other. Well, ideally they don’t want us to at all, but if it’s gonna be a dating scandal, best keep it between two people from the same agency,” he said, admittedly quieter now, but with a definitive thud of his empty sundae cup against the table as if to make a groundbreaking point.

“Yes, love, we’ve established that already, we can all read and already noticed that dating rules weren’t outlined in the contract,” Mina sighed from next to him, deadpan and feigning boredom. “Got anything more interesting to share?”

“Well obviously, I wasn’t finished talking,” Johnny huffed, but quickly continued when everyone jeered in annoyance. “Just think about the publicity. Fans love couples that make music together, they eat that shit up. So let’s say someone starts dating. Good for the company. Say nothing happens at all, for the entire length of our contracts. Also good for the company.”

“What if they break up?” Doyoung asked, skeptical. “Still good for the company?”

“Yes, because they’d say it was an amicable breakup in favour of both parties’ careers, get free publicity, get praised for being professional, and life goes on,” Johnny snorted. “We’re dealing with execs who will try to make money off anything you throw at them. They’re all capitalist pigs.”

Mina rolled her eyes. “You’re literally American.”

Johnny glared. “You have tea and crumpets for breakfast.”

“What if the couple’s gay?” you broke in before the two could start another squabble over their nationalities and British colonialism. If you were exploring hypotheticals, why not explore them all?

“I’m not gay,” Johnny said immediately.

“I never said you were,” you snapped. “I said what if.”

“Then they’ll never disclose it, the public is left to speculate, and fans make one hell of a tag on AO3. At the end of the day, nothing particularly bad for the company.”

Doyoung frowned, confused. “What’s aye-oh-three?”

“John reads gay fanfiction.”

“I don’t!”

Then the table descended into another war, and in the midst of the chaos, Doyoung ate your remaining chicken nuggets.

Still just a group of nameless, faceless kids at the corner McDonald’s, the four of you let your profanities and threats flow free. You all knew: things would change drastically in the coming weeks, and you wanted to hold onto this for just a little longer. Regardless of pending fame, regardless of possible successes or failures, it wouldn’t be every day that you ate fast food and caused mayhem in public this spontaneously. Nor insulted Johnny this freely, nor copied Mina’s British vulgarities in a near-insulting accent, nor curled up over Doyoung’s shoulders when you inevitably got tired.

How ironic it was, bringing yet another youthful, chipper idol group into the industry, when you’d sacrificed all your teenage years for this moment. While Doyoung carried you across the parking lot on his back, you thought back to when you’d put your pen to the paper and signed neatly in the little box they’d provided. It was hard to believe that it had happened only a few hours ago. Even your exit from the restaurant, barely five minutes ago, felt so far away. You were incredibly wired, overwhelmed, always overthinking.

You trekked back to the dorm by bus, Doyoung having relinquished access to his brother’s car, and your new manager not yet responsible for your every move and location, much less driving you places. You’d met him earlier in the day—a handsome, charismatic, 30-something-year-old who could easily debut himself if not for his age—hardly spoke, and quickly exchanged goodbyes. You could only hope that he would turn out about as easy-going as he looked.

It was past midnight when you arrived home: a modest building not too far from the company building, two small units split between the boys and girls. Soon after, Mina went out to the convenience store for ice cream, while Johnny went up to the roof to puff on his vape. You found yourself sprawled out on Doyoung’s bed, watching him browse internet deals on Coupang. It didn’t take long for you to make it to his side and slouch against him with your arms around his neck. It took only minutes for him to put his laptop aside and hold you properly. Barely a few moments for him to throw caution to the wind and kiss you.

Something about it felt more like a parting gesture than anything else. Like a silent and mutual agreement that this—whatever this was—would have to stop soon. Like you both acknowledged the lack of clear definition for your relationship, and that it was okay. Some part of you was envisioning everything that could go wrong from here. The other part of you fully trusted his judgement, and your own.

“Won’t be able to do this once Kibum moves in tomorrow,” he gave a breathless laugh several minutes later. But he sobered quickly enough, brushing aside a stray strand of your hair and whispering, “Probably shouldn’t, anyways.”

“Probably won’t have time,” you joked lightly. “Only four hours of free time a day? I’d rather be sleeping in those four hours, not sucking your face, thanks.”

“Not sure how we’ll survive that.”

“What, not sucking face?”

He looked at you, clearly unimpressed. “No, only getting four hours of sleep every night.”

“Maybe even less than four.”

“Double stuff me in the ass.”

“Christ, Doyoung.”

Ever true to himself, he hurried to undo his vulgarities. He smoothed your hair down again, laughing quietly and murmuring in your ear, “Joking. I think we’ll be okay.”

Then he closed the distance between your lips one last time, gently taking your face in his hands to give you a proper goodbye.

We’ll be okay.

Those words carried more weight than he even knew, following you long after you parted. It was there when you finally retired to bed, still echoing when the lights went out—lulling you to sleep where you would have been tossing and turning in any other circumstance.

We’ll be okay.

IMG_4749.MOV from Mina’s iPhone

“Observe: Kim Doyoung reading his first fanfiction on AO3. It’s, um. A Harry Potter x Draco Malfoy ABO male pregnancy mafia kidnapping AU that ____ found—”

“WHAT THE FUCK?!”

“Read it out loud!”

“What the fuck am I reading?! ‘His fifteen-inch-long co—‘ JOHN YOUNGHO SEO, YOU DERANGED SON OF A BITCH!! IS THIS WHAT YOU READ IN YOUR FREE TIME—”

“We’re so getting fired if this video gets out.”

“Oh, definitely.”

Some more tomfoolery for this fic here! (I said this was 10% crack this is what I meant)

#nct #nct 127 #nct dojaejung #nct fanfic #nct 127 fanfic #nct angst #nct fluff #nct scenarios #nct imagines #doyoung #kim doyoung #nct doyoung #doyoung fanfic #doyoung angst #doyoung fluff #doyoung scenarios #doyoung imagines #doyoung drabbles

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thebroccolination · 2 years ago

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Key I think you can help me. I’ve only just got into Thai BL . 1st being Between Us as it took over my TL and then Even Sun, 7 projects once upon a time (yes a Bounprem theme here) then cutie pie and love in the sky. But I’ve noticed that the leads are always normally paired actors? As in, they do a lot of work together in other roles/works too. Is this a Thai industry thing? for example I only knew about Bounprem working together and being close friends a lot but then in these other series other actors have also done lead works together before. Is this just in Thai BL?

Be interesting to hear if you know anything about this as I love that they pair up.

Awww welcome, Anon! \:D/

This can be a fun li'l corner of the internet, and I hope you enjoy your stay. <3

I'm not sure I'm the best person to explain this, but I'll do my best.

When I joined the fandom in 2020, I noticed the same thing, and the way it was explained to me was this: "The series are incidental. The actors are the money-makers." I don't know how much that's changed in the years since, but I'm willing to bet the answer is: not much. They make a lot of money off this system.

If you follow BL actors on their socials, you'll notice a ton of sponsored content. Convenience stores, skin products, plastic surgery clinics, bottled teas, snacks, etc. Essentially, if pretty man + product = capitalism, then TWO pretty men + product = Thai BL marketing machine fuel.

Take Boun and Prem as an example.

They were cast in Until We Meet Again in April of 2019. Boun was 24, and Prem had just turned 21. Prem was on the brink of giving up on the industry, and so was Boun, who'd been trying to land a major part for seven years without much success, running into shady practices and outright scams that deprived him of his pay. UWMA was basically their last shot at a career.

UWMA was produced by Studio Wabi Sabi, a relatively small agency/studio owned by New Siwaj Sawatmaneekul. He's not just the CEO, he's also the director. He has his own socials, and he's regularly in contact with fans and viewers on Twitter. When UWMA was airing, BounPrem fans complained to New that WinTeam were hardly in the series. And there was a good reason for that: they're side characters in the novel UWMA is based on (The Red Thread), and they had their own entirely separate novel where their relationship is explored (Hemp Rope, the inspiration for Between Us).

So why were WinTeam scenes even put into UWMA if they have nothing to do with the main story? Isn't that bad writing? It depends how you look at it. If you're judging UWMA only by its writing, then sure, WinTeam's scenes are randomly placed and jarring and, again, have nothing to do with DeanPharm or InKorn's story. Win and Team are Dean and Pharm's best friends, and apart from group scenes, their love story really doesn't belong.

But if you understand that the industry's strongest money-maker are paired actors, and that New and Sheep included WinTeam scenes to promote BounPrem to potential fans and entice sponsors to financially back the eventual production of Between Us, then it makes perfect sense.

Basically, that's what side pairs are for. I think of them as little "teaser trailers" within the series. "Oh, you like these two? You want to see them in their own series? Then support them on social media and trend their hashtag so potential sponsors notice them and give them more exposure."

When the pandemic spiked soon after UWMA finished airing, Between Us was announced but put on hold along with everything else. BounPrem were in a unique situation where they had their own series guaranteed, but they didn't have a main series behind them, so they were stuck in a horrible limbo for two and a half years where they were essentially dependent on sponsorships and promotional work to keep their "brand" relevant and in people's minds. They regularly talked about how nervous they felt about losing fans because of the long wait (especially Boun, who, again, had waited seven years for a break just like this).

They never knew when the pandemic would ease up enough that they could film Between Us without interference from the government, so they had to stick to bit parts and cameos in other series. But that's where being a pair really helped them out.

So, Between Us is airing now, and thankfully it's doing really well, so BounPrem's joint future is more stable now than it has been since I became a fan. Big sigh of relief. <3 They're also able to do their own solo projects now without fear of becoming irrelevant thanks to their pair work. And that's a very good thing, because Boun and Prem have very different interests, and I think it's very healthy for them to be able to explore different genres.

So yes! From what I've seen and been told, paired actors in the BL industry make a lot more money than the actors who go it alone. Which makes sense, right? BL is literally Boys Love, so it's, y'know, about romance. And the paired actors who tend to do the best are either the ones with natural chemistry (BounPrem, TayNew, OffGun, ZeeNuNew, etc.) or the ones who go in hard on the fan service ([redacted], [redacted], [redacted], if you know you know).

If you watched Cutie Pie, you'll know ZeeNuNew (LianKuea), and you may also know that they have another series airing later this year called The Next Prince. They're one of the most successful BL pairs out there with a ton of promotional couple work, and NuNew is a talented singer with his own line of songs that he's had produced, and Zee does other acting jobs in heterosexual-leaning series, aaand he's also one of the co-owners of Domundi, the agency they're both part of. Basically, they're a good example of a pair who've successfully diversified their joint and individual careers and don't keep all their eggs in one basket, so to speak.

Most of the successful ones are like that. OffGun (Not Me) and TayNew (Dark Blue Kiss) of GMMTV are BL Royalty since they arrived on the scene early, and their work in BL helped launch their current fame and various eggs in baskets. (Gun might be an exception, though. He was a successful child actor, if I'm remembering correctly.) KristSingto (SOTUS) were another juggernaut who officially disbanded recently since Singto's disembarked from the Great Ship GMMTV, but the two of them have scores of solo work (a restaurant, theatre roles, music production, etc.), and Krist is due to appear in a BL series this year with Gawin (Not Me, Dark Blue Kiss), a true delight of a man who's been secretly collecting BL Royalty Costars like a li'l acting sniper. <3

Basically, BL series promote the actors, not the other way around.

There are pros and cons to this system, of course. Series have been churned out like mad to capitalize on the BL boom, and most of them suffer from budgeting issues. Some have real heart that compensates for the lack of money, and those are the ones I enjoy. Even series with a major budget usually have tight postproduction windows, which means sound engineering problems or painful editing decisions. Amid all these series, there are are tons of BL pairs vying for a piece of the spotlight, and it's hard to keep people's attention as a newbie when there are multiple series airing at once.

Fan service is a thorny issue, but it's becoming less of an implied mandatory thing as time goes on and (I presume) fans are more and more vocal about not wanting actors to feel they have to flirt with their coworkers to remain employed. Some of them, like BounPrem and ZeeNuNew, are just genuinely like that, but that shouldn't be a requisite aspect of the job. They're actors, after all, and their work shouldn't extend past the set. (And there are many stories of actor exploitation in certain studios.)

However! I'm sincerely happy that actors work with each other on multiple projects. I was just watching National Treasure with my sister the other day and said, "It's a shame the leads in this didn't do more together, because their chemistry is fantastic." I also love it in movies from the Golden Age of Hollywood when studios had, like, their own stables of actors, and the same leads could get paired together more than once.

It's very hard to find two actors with talent and chemistry. BounPrem had chemistry from the word go, and they had raw talent, but it took them time to get to know each other and experience in other projects for them to get to the level they're at today. And it must be nice for them to have a partner to lean on when the industry is putting them through some heinous fuckery.

I mainly follow BounPrem, and Wabi Sabi (Boun's agency) and Starlatiz (Prem's former agency) have historically been very respectful of them individually and as a pair, so I think as long as that sort of respect is emulated, it can be a great system.

ANYWAY, thank you for reading my thesis if you got this far! If you have any specific questions, I'll be happy to answer them more concisely. :)

#kiranokira answers #bounprem #thai bl #thai bl actors

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asphodelical · 1 year ago

Text

Brief FFXV/XVI comparisons

Knowing the dev team of FFXIV headed FFXVI, it feels like they were singing, “Anything you can do, I can do Better” in the face of FFXV. Many of the key story elements and beats are identical: An orphaned prince clad in black who was a supposed heir to a noble bloodline, the hero’s kingdom being destroyed in the beginning, a deadly plague that is slowly consuming the world and its people, etc. Hell, they both end with a 1v1 duel and both the heroes and villains die at the end. Except FFXVI actually has a cohesive, more focused narrative, better lore, and smarter world building. It also has a massive advantage over FFXV since it is a self contained story—not a bullshit multimedia project where you have to watch a movie, an OVA and play four separate DLC games.

Things I liked:

Torgal. Best boy.

Mothercrystals - Both the crystal’s role and appearance are really fucking cool. It takes the basic premise of the original FF games, and looks at it realistically. (Though I felt robbed since we didn’t see the heart of the purple crystal in Waloed.)

The interpretation of the summons and Dominants. - Similar to the crystals, I like how people across Valisthea have such different thoughts on the Dominants: fear, reverence, worship, etc. Their character designs are very appealing. It’s also great to see summons who haven’t appeared in a game in well over a decade.

Cid - Easily a candidate for the best Cid, only rivaling Cid Highwind and maybe Balthier’s dad. He was one of the few characters who had a distinct voice. (Along with Mid.)

The music - Opinions on this game are all over the place. The one thing everyone universally agrees on is the music fucking rules. It definitely deserved its prize at the Game Awards. Great job, Masayoshi Soken.

The Hades-esque combat system for Clive. It was fun experimenting with all the powers and abilities.

Nektar - MOOGLE. We actually had a moogle in a FF game for the first time since FFIX. HAPPY DAYS.

No day/night cycle. No fishing. No forced mini games. Fast travel was accessible from the start. Blessed dreams.

Things I didn’t like:

Jill is useless. She has no agency. Her confrontation with her abusers was ruined, since Clive did all the fighting in that encounter. They should’ve done what they did with Joshua, and given us control over Jill/Shiva just that one time. After the ocean fight with Barnabas, why did she waste time creating a path on the ocean floor, instead of turning into Shiva and flying themselves out of there? So stupid. And don’t get me started on the sad excuse for a romantic relationship she had with Clive. What a waste of the only female party member. (Also, why does she look so much like Tifa?)

Lack of interaction with other party members, and a lack of a core party - Sparse off the cuff conversations/remarks, no tag team attacks, no breathing room for these characters to simply exist. And when they do, it feels out of place. (I.E. the optional picnic scene with Jill and Clive that felt like watching two rocks try to talk to each other.) Final Fantasy has always been a franchise that has always had a group of eccentrics of different ages, creeds, and species banding together to fight a shared enemy. FFXVI loses that entirely. With a large portion of the game just being Clive and Torgal, this could be any other dark-ish fantasy game. (My ideal core party would be Clive, Joshua, Cid, who would then be replaced by Mid. Byron, Gav and Dion would rotate as guest party members. Jill can go away.)

Lack of good character writing and dialogue. It feels like a redux of FFXII, where the dialogue is dramatic, poetic, and oh gosh no almost everyone talks the same, and the core cast has such little personality.

Too many characters and too many unnecessary story elements. - Torgal being a frost wolf? Doesn’t matter. Sleipnir being an ‘egi’? Doesn’t matter. Spend more time on your characters, dammit!

How every goal, main and side, is impeded by a seven step process. Oh, we have to get through this gate? Well first you have to talk to five people for a fetch quest, run to another area, and defeat two rounds of mooks followed by a mini boss. GIVE ME A BREAK. Are you so insecure about your story and its run time that you have to have bumps in the road at every single turn?

The length of the boss battles. If I weren’t on story mode, some of these battles would take me over an hour (and multiple tries). The Bahamut fight in particular was absolutely absurd.

So many of the problems could’ve been solved if characters just waltzed into places and killed their targets immediately. Clive could’ve stabbed Hugo in the back before the hallucinations kicked in. If Dion just threw his lance at Anabella or Olivier instead of making a whole fucking speech, then maybe he wouldn’t have killed his dad. It feels like nearly everyone in the game is just stupid.

#video games #final fantasy

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anarchy-and-piglins · 2 years ago

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different anon here, it's gotten to the point where I dont even bother going through the techno tag on ao3 anymore. I have to stick to the techno-centric tag otherwise it's all tommy, and even then sometimes the fics are /still/ centered on tommy. its exhausting

Yeah, character tags are a hopeless mess but so are character-centric tags because newsflash: this fandom doesn’t know how those work either. Hold onto your boots kids, I’m doing a second impromptu AO3 tag guide: character-centric edition. And after that I have some advice for you Anon, but I’m forcing you to read my rant first because I’m thriving.

Let’s start with the basic thing that everybody gets wrong:

Character-centric =/= pov character =/= all the main characters.

Character-centric = the one character the plot centers around.

Now, obviously a centric character and the pov character can often overlap. However, not always. A pov character is just the character whose head we’re in, so to speak. A centric character is the character the fic is about, the One Main Character. For example: if you write a fic that is from Techno’s pov but is all about him finding Tommy after exile and taking care of Tommy and such, then the chances are high that it’s just a Tommy-centric fic.

Which leads me into the second thing: not all fic need to have a character-centric tag. And if they do: one or two MAX will suffice.

You’ll notice that a lot of AO3 fic doesn’t have a character-centric tag. That’s because you should see ‘character-centric’ almost more like its own subgenre, it’s an additional tag used to filter content and say to people “hey, this fic is very much disproportionately focused on this character”. This character is the center of the universe in this fic, so to speak.

Your fic can have one centric character, you can maybe have two if you’re writing about a specific dynamic. (Be wary of examples such as the above post-exile fic though. A fic can certainly be Technoblade-centric and Tommy-centric if it gives them both equal weight of importance in the plot and focuses on them individually as well as together. Not if Techno is just being a Big Brother (tm) who does nothing but care for Tommy and feel guilty about not being better for Tommy the entire story.)

You should not have more than two character-centric tags. The exception is if your fic focuses on a pre-established group in the source material, those often have their own centric tags (SBI-centric, dteam-centric) though AGAIN: only use that one if your fic actually focuses on the different dynamics within this group and on the members as individuals that have a life and agency outside of the other members. Do not tag a Tommy angst fic where the other three SBI guys are only there to take care of him or interact with him as SBI-centric.

“But Shae,” you scream desperately, “what if I write a fic that DOES focus equally on three or more people who aren’t an established group with their own tag???”

That’s great. Just use a combination of character tags, relationship tags, other additional tags and your summary to make it clear who the fic is about. It’s that easy.

As I mentioned above, character-centric tags are used for filtering by people looking for content of their favs, where they’re the MAIN main character. Just like how you shouldn’t tag a character that only appears for a few scenes because people looking for that character’s content will be disappointed, somebody looking for character-centric content will be dissatisfied with a fic where that character is not present for large chunks at a time because you’re focusing on other people for a bit.

There’s nothing wrong with an ensemble cast fic, those are fun to write and read! They’re just not character-centric.

So that was my rant. Now Anon, my advice for you? Sort fic by additional tags + filter out other tags generously. How do you do that? It’s very simple:

Step 1) find a character specific tag for your blorbo. Preferably something you enjoy reading. For example, I frequent tags such as ‘Technoblade needs a hug’ or ‘Technoblade angst’ or ‘hurt Technoblade’.

Step 2) While sorting, exclude the ‘Tommyinnit-centric’ tag. As mentioned above, this fandom doesn’t use tags correctly so this is not a foolproof plan. But I guarantee it makes a HUGE difference. You can proceed to also filter out other tags you don’t like or those that are often used by Tommy-centric writers (’traumatized Tommyinnit’ for example). Theoretically, you can even sort out Tommy’s character tag. Tada!

Disclaimer: Be aware that this is a double-edged sword. The more tags you exclude, the higher the chances are you’re also accidentally excluding fics that would appeal to you and just happen to use Tommy tags. Some of my fics are tagged ‘traumatized Tommyinnit’ or ‘Tommyinnit needs a hug’. My recommendation is to see what your mood is like. Do you want to get a fic to read as fast as possible with minimal scrolling? Exclude away! But if you want to do a more thorough fic scavenger hunt, I usually feel like just excluding Tommyinnit-centric already makes a world of difference even if it doesn’t solve the problem completely.

#asks #Disgruntled Shae teaches the dsmp fandom to use AO3 tags #(yes i tagged the other one with that as well so might as well do this)#(so I can find both easily-

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spidersmiceandeverythingnice · 3 years ago

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Is ACOTAR actually worth reading? I get that it's mostly just a cringey romance novel with fairies but I'm still kind of morbidly curious anyway.

Honest answer: it depends entirely on your bullshit tolerance levels and your personal boundaries.

ACOTAR has nuggets of gold and for me it's worth reading because of individual characters and Lore Potential - which is why i primarily interact with this content via fanfiction/fandom. But there is a LOT of stuff in the books that I try to ignore - like let's set aside the issues with representing marginalized groups (the entire main cast is white and we are always reminded about how STRONG and BEAUTIFUL they are compared to a supporting cast containing multiple black and brown characters who should logically be just as powerful if not much stronger [special shoutout for Helion Spellcleaver, my favorite minor character], and this series contains one of the worst instances of maybe bi maybe lesbian who even knows coming out drama that I've ever read.) The main couple is genuinely insufferable, the plots are often thin, and the world is inconsistent because it constantly has to bend to accommodate the male hero, because he's a legitimately awful person who the author wants you to believe is a misunderstood hero. Events and character motivations are retconned as a matter of course. This series also handles topics like sex, abuse, and trauma legitimately poorly - I've seen reviews of people getting quite legitimately triggered by things like a heroine having a "recovery arc" that involves her loosing all of her agency and autonomy, reproductive abuse by the main hero, and other examples.

But! Let's take Lucien for example. In a better book, he's the main character. A biracial, disabled faerie whose main job is to secure political alliances for the Court. He's charming, friendly, flirts for fun, and has a mischievous streak. He steals every single scene he's in. He has lived his entire life in a bloodthirsty royal court where his only solace is his mother, tormented by six older brothers and an incredibly abusive father who once murdered his fiance because he believed that she wasn't good enough to marry a royal before he escapes to sanctuary offered by his closest friend. This guy immediately becomes ride or die for the main heroine in book one and almost gets himself killed trying to help her multiplie times. He hasn't even learned the identity of his real father yet! He's currently in what amounts to a magical arranged marriage with the main characters sister which has a lot of really excellent potential. Of course, the author is not super interested in writing this and repeatedly teases a love triangle with the sister and a character who is canonically employed to torture his Courts enemies and loves BDSM for some fucking reason. (No this was considered essential character information for this random ass guy.)

So it goes.

The worst instance of this was Nesta, my favorite female character. She's the main heroines eldest sister so in book one she plays the Evil Spoiled Sister role to her martyr little sister - until 3 quarters of the way into the book it's revealed that Nesta is immune to faerie magic and tried to force her way into the faerie kingdom to rescue her little sister after she's taken away to fulfill the curse. Nesta is a strong, brilliany, and inconvenient heroine who has a lot of heart even though she masks it with indifference and rage. The author later proceeds to browbeat her for this inner strength and agency, declaring via the narrative that she was always a bad ungrateful person and she has to learn to Become Good and Nice and Sweet and a warrior like her angelic sister who suffered so so much for her sake - then and only then will she deserve to be loved and cared for!!!

And that for me was when I knew that there was no saving this series.

Basically my advice is to read the first ACOTAR book. If you can't get through it, you find it tips your bullshit meter one way or another, you can't stand the main characters - literally whatever! Then don't bother with the series. If you can ignore a metric shitton of BS and prospect for the bits of lore/characterization that you like, then I say put the blinders on and enjoy. Book one is a beauty and the beast retelling with a sprinkle of the Ballad of Tam Lin for spice - its a decent YA novel that I do legitimately enjoy reading. But because i got attached to the leading man of THAT book, I'm not sure I can recommend the rest of the series on good conscious even if the cool lore bits that I like come later - (I'm especially interested in Summer Court geography, the one thousand libraries of the Day Court, and I have a theory that the true magic of the Dawn Court is time manipulation.)

Tldr, I have very strongly divorced the series canon from the content I make and consume about it - I have recreated entire personalities for the majority of tje cast and supply my own lore - and if you want some better fanfics about the series tho I've got you COVERED.

#acotar #anti sjm #from someonr who has read Way Too Much SJM is this my fullest analyses and critique #Basically i like acotar book one but keep reading the series to punish myself and find stuff i can fix via fanfiction #i legit created an entire oc for this series to take the main characters to international faerie court for war crimes #so yeah lolol #i can also recommend sources to read online for free!!! audiobooks are on YouTube but idk how i feel about the narrator

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anti-dazai-blog · 2 years ago

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Obsessed how the other anon wants to see a fictional abuser live a happy life... like aside from the moral part of it, does it not make them feel like a lot of interesting events will never happen if Dazai ends up on great terms with the agency? What's fun about "and they lived happily ever after" ending? I personally think it'd be very satisfying to see Dazai's crimes exposed and him facing the conequences. And major character development

All that aside... Dazai is obviously fictional but it's always so weird to see people defending his actions. Anon obviously read your posts. And they go as far to attack YOU for disliking him? I wonder if they have the same attitude towards real abusers.

The thing with story endings is that they don’t have to be happy. They don’t even have to be satisfying. I agree with you wholeheartedly. I’d love to see Dazai face some massive consequences. I’d like to see the agency turn on him, realizing that he’s much worse than any of them ever suspected. If that doesn’t happen, people who like and support Dazai will consider it a happy ending, but from our point of view, it’ll be more like a tragedy. While some people will view it as a man who was formerly a criminal successfully joining the good side, we’ll view it as an abuser infiltrating a group of kindhearted people and using manipulation tactics to repeatedly take advantage of most [if not all] of them. If it ends like that, we’ll view it as a tragedy.

But there’s nothing wrong with tragedies. In fact, I really like tragedies. My main blog is for classic literature. Mostly Shakespeare, to be honest. So it follows that I have a great appreciation for well written tragedies. And whether or not Asagiri intends for Dazai’s “happy ending” to be tragic, it’s up to the audience's interpretation to view it however they want. I’ll definitely view it as a bit of a “hidden dark ending” if it ends with him and the agency hanging out as per usual, without him ever having to see a single consequence of his actions, or try to fix any of the damage he caused.

And there’s nothing innately wrong, per se, with wanting to see a fictional villain [or in this case, abuser] win. It’s just a writing choice- it’s something to analyze. The example I always give is Edmund from King Lear. If you’re not familiar with Shakespeare, all you gotta know is that he’s one of the main antagonists, and does a lot of horrible things (with an understandable but not justifiable motive). He dies in the last scene, but a lot of the tumblr King Lear fandom likes imagining what it would have been like if he lived. Many of us, including myself, would have actually preferred for him to win. This isn’t because we love people who frame their own brothers for attempted murder, this is because we enjoy him as a character. We want to see our murderous blorbo go and rule England after committing many, many crimes.

The problem with wanting to see Dazai win isn’t the fact that Dazai’s an abuser. There’s actually no innate problem with wanting to see what it would be like for a fictional abuser to win. The real problem is denying that he’s an abuser in an attempt to justify him. It becomes harmful when people deny that certain actions are abuse, because in doing so, that does, in fact, carry over to the real world. For example, if a fiction character pushes someone down some stairs, and I say that it’s not abuse to do that, that’s justifying the action, with no regard for if the action took place in fiction or reality. If someone says [action] is not abuse, that is a statement about their beliefs regarding what is and isn’t wrong to do— so it doesn’t matter if [action] took place in fiction or reality; they think it’s fine.

I made a longer post on this topic before, but in short: It’s not bad or wrong to want to see a villain/ abuser win in a work of fiction, but it is wrong to deny that the character in question was abusive in the first place*, in an attempt to justify liking them or wanting them to win.

[*Nuance!! This doesn’t mean you can’t bring up your own counter-evidence when someone says your blorbo did something wrong!! This just means that if someone is like “well it’s bad to kill orphans and kick puppies”, your reaction shouldn’t be “actually doing those things isn’t bad and you’re all just trying to make problems out of nothing”]

Anyway. This reminds me of this one tumblr post:

#The whole point of villains is that they do villainous things #And who is and isn’t truly a villain is up to reader interpretation #Especially in a work like BSD where so many characters are morally grey #Anti dazai asks

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lokiondisneyplus · 4 years ago

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Natalie Holt's timeline was turned upside down last fall when she landed the highly-coveted composer gig for Marvel Studios' Loki series on Disney+.

"My agent got a general call-out looking for a composer on a Marvel project," she tells SYFY WIRE during a conversation over Zoom. "So, I didn’t know what it was. It was [described as] spacey and quite epic ... I sent in my show reel and then got an interview and got sent the script and then I realized what it was for. I was like, ‘Oh my god!’ It was amazing ... Loki was already one of my favorite characters, so I was really stoked to get to give him a theme and flesh him out in this way."

***WARNING! The following contains certain plot spoilers for the first four episodes of Loki!***

Imbued with glorious purpose, Holt knew the score had to match the show's gonzo premise about the Time Variance Authority, an organization that secretly watches over and manages every single timeline across the Marvel multiverse. The proposition of such an out-there sci-fi concept inspired the composer to bring in uniquely strange sounds, courtesy of synthesizers and a theremin.

"I got my friend, Charlie Draper, to play the theremin on my pitch that I had to do," she recalls. "They gave me a scene to score, which I’m sure they gave to loads of other composers. It was the Time Theater sequence in Episode 1. The bit from where he goes up the elevator and then into the Time Theater ... I just went to town on it and I wanted to impress them and win the job and put as many unusual sounds in there and make it as unique as possible."

The end result was a weird, borderline unnatural sound that wouldn't have felt out of place in a 1950s sci-fi B-movie about big-headed alien invaders. Rather than being turned off by Holt's avant garde ideas, Marvel Studios head honcho Kevin Feige embraced them, only giving the composer a single piece of feedback: "Push it further."

Holt admits that she was slightly influenced by Thor: Ragnarok ("I loved the score for it and everything"), which wasn't afraid to lean into the wild, Jack Kirby-created ideas floating around Marvel's cosmic locales. Director Taika Waititi's colorful and bombastic set pieces were perfectly complimented by an '80s-inspired score concocted by Devo co-founder, Mark Mothersbaugh.

"To be honest, I tried not to listen to it on its own," Holt says of the Ragnarok soundtrack. "I didn’t want to be too influenced by it. I watched the film a couple of times a few years ago, so yeah, I don’t think I was heavily referencing it. But I definitely had a memory of it in my mind."

After boarding Loki last September, Holt spent the next six months (mostly in lockdown) crafting a soundtrack that would perfectly reflect the titular god of mischief played by Tom Hiddleston. One of the first things she came up with was the project's main theme — a slightly foreboding cue that pays homage to the temporal nature of the TVA, as well as the main character's flair for the dramatic. "He always does things with a lot of panache and flair, and he’s very classical in his delivery."

She describes it as an "over-the-top grand theme with these ornate flourishes" that plays nicely with Loki's Shakespearean aura. "I wanted those ornaments and grand gestures in what I was doing. Then I also wanted to reflect that slightly analog world of the TVA where everything has lots of knobs and buttons ... [I wanted to] give it that slightly grainy, faded [and] vintage-y sci-fi sound as well."

"I just wanted it to feel like it had this might and weight — like there was something almost like a requiem about it," Holt continues. "These chords that are really powerful and strident and then they’ve got this blinking [sound] over the top. I just came up with that when I was walking down the street and I hummed it into my phone. There’s a video where you can just see up my nose and I’m humming [the theme]. I came home and I played it."

As a classically-trained musician, Holt drew on her love of Mahler, Dvořák, Beethoven, Mozart, and most importantly, Wagner. A rather fitting decision, given that an actual Valkyrie (played by Tessa Thompson) exists within the confines of the MCU.

"I would say those flourishes over the top of the Loki theme are very much Wagner," Holt says. "They’re like 'Ride of the Valkyries.’ I wanted people to kind of recall those big, classical, bombastic pieces and I wanted to give that weight to Loki’s character. That was very much a conscious decision to root it in classical harmony and classical writing ... There’s a touch of the divine to the TVA. It’s in charge of everything, so that’s why those big powerful chords [are there]. I wanted people almost to be knocked off their socks when they heard it."

With the main theme in place, Holt could then play around with it in different styles, depending on the show's different narrative needs. Two prime examples are on display in the very first episode during Miss Minutes' introductory video and the flashback that reveals Loki to be the elusive D.B. Cooper.

"What was really fun was [with] each episode, I got to pull it away and do a samba version of the theme or do a kind of ‘50s sci-fi version of the theme," she explains. "I can’t say other versions of the theme because they’re in Episode 5 and 6…or like when Mobius is pruned, I did this really heartfelt and very emotional [take on the theme] when you see Loki tearing up as he’s going down in slow motion down that corridor. It was cool to have the opportunity to try out so many different styles and genres. And it was big enough to take it all. It was a big enough story."

The other side of the story speaks to the old world grandeur of Loki's royal upbringing on Asgard, a city amongst the stars that eventually found its way into Norse mythology.

"I went to a concert in London three years ago and I heard these Norwegian musicians playing in this group called the Lodestar Trio," Holt recalls. "They do a take on Bach, where they’re kind of giving it a folk-y twist … [They use] a nyckelharpa and a Hardanger fiddle — they’re two historic Norwegian folk instruments. I just remembered that sound and I was like, ‘Oh, I have to use those guys in our score.’ It seemed like the perfect thing. I was like, ‘Yes, the North/Norwegian folk instruments.’ It just felt like it was the perfect thing for his mother and Asgard and his origins."

That folk-inspired sound also helped shape the music for Sylvie (played by Sophia Di Martino), a female variant of Loki with a rather tragic past. "Obviously, we’ve seen in Episode 4 what happened to her as a child," Holt says. "I just feel like she’s so dark. She’s basically grown up living in apocalypses, so she has that Norwegian folk violin sound, but her theme is incredibly dark and menacing and also, you don’t see her. She’s just this dark figure who’s murdering people for a while."

And then there were all the core members of the TVA to contend with. As Holt mentioned above, fans recently lost Agent Mobius (Owen Wilson), may he rest in prune. We mean peace. What? Too soon? During a recent interview with SYFY WIRE, Loki head writer Michael Waldron said that he based Mobius off of Tom Hanks's dogged FBI agent Carl Hanratty in 2002's Catch Me If You Can.

"There’s this thing that he loves jet ski magazines," Holt says. "I had this character in my head and then when I saw Owen Wilson’s performance, I was like, ‘Oh, he’s actually a lot lighter and he plays it in a different way from how I’d imagined.’ But I was listening to Bon Jovi and those slightly rock-y anthemic things. ‘90s rock music for some reason was my Mobius sound palette."

Mobius is pruned on the orders of his longtime friend, Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), after learning that everyone who works for the TVA is a variant who was unceremoniously plucked out of their original timelines. A high-ranking member of the quantum-based agency, Renslayer has a theme that "is quite tied in with Mobius and it’s like a high organ," Holt adds. "It doesn’t quite know where it’s going yet. But yeah, we’ll have to see what happens with that one."

Wilson's character isn't the only person fed up with the TVA's lies. Hunter B-15 (Wunmi Mosaku) also became disillusioned with the place and allowed Sylvie to escape in the most recent episode

"Hunter B-15 has this moment in Episode 4 where Sylvie shows her her past, her memories. I thought that was a really powerful moment for her," Holt says. I feel like she’s such a fighter and when she comes into the Time-Keepers and she makes that decision, like, ‘I’m switching sides,’ so her theme is more like a drum rhythm. I actually kind of sampled my voice and you can hear that with the drums. I did loads of layers of it, just like this horrible sliding sound with this driving rhythm underneath it. So, that was B-15 and then her softer side when she has her memory given back to her."

Speaking of the Time-Keepers, we finally got to meet the creators of the Sacred Timeline...or at least we thought we did. Loki and Sylvie are shocked to learn that the red-eyed guardians of reality are nothing but a trio of high-end animatronics (ones that could probably be taken out by a raging Nicolas Cage). Even before Sylvie manages to behead one of them, something definitely feels off with the Time-Keepers, which meant Holt could underscore the uncanny valley feeling in the score.

"When they walked in for their audience with the Time-Keepers, it was like this huge gravitas," she says. "But you look up and there’s something a bit wrong about them. I don’t know if you felt that or if you just totally believed. You were like, ‘Oh, this is so strange.’ I just felt like there was something a little bit off and musically, it was fun to play around with that."

Holt is only the second solo female composer to work on an MCU project, following in the footsteps of Captain Marvel's Pinar Toprak. Her involvement with Loki represents the studio's growing commitment to diversity, both in front of and behind the camera. This Friday will see the wide release of Black Widow, the first Marvel film to be helmed solely by a woman (Cate Shortland). Four months after that, Chloé Zhao's Eternals will introduce the MCU's first openly gay character into the MCU.

"I just feel like it’s an honor and a privilege to have had that chance to be the second woman to score a thing in the MCU and to be in the same league as those incredible composers like Mothersbaugh and Alan Silvestri. They're just legends," Holt says. "Another distinctive thing about [the show] is that all the heads of department are pretty much women. Marvel are showing themselves to be really progressive and supportive and encouraging. I applaud [them]. Whatever they’re doing seems to be working and people seem to be liking it as well, so that’s awesome."

Holt's score for Vol. 1 of Loki (aka Episodes 1-3) are now streaming on every music-based platform you could think of. Episodes 1-4 are available to watch on Disney+ for subscribers. Episode 5 (the show's penultimate installment) debuts on the platform this coming Wednesday, July 7.

Natalie isn't able to give up any plot spoilers for the next two episodes (no surprise there), but does tease "the use of a big choir" in one of them. "Episode 6, I’m excited for people to hear it," she concludes. "That’s all I can say."

#Natalie Holt #composer #Loki #OST

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gogogobarry · 3 years ago

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I HIT UNFOLLOW BY ACCIDENT WHEN I MEANT TO HIT ASK IM SO SORRY but either way! what drew you to rping barry all the way back in 2013? what's kept his muse so strong, despite approaching nearly 10 years? were there points where you didn't play him at all, or has he always been consistent?

ADA!! ASK DAN ANYTHING | accepting

[ FIRST OF ALL, no worries!! I SUPPOSE I can find it in my heart to forgive you...thanks for such an awesome ask!!

When I was looking for new creative writing outlets back in 2012-2013, I stumbled across what was then a very small Pokemon RP group on Tumblr. I joined up with an elderly Gambler Trainer OC and immediately took a liking to the scene. The group was full of insanely talented writers, artists, and creators--some of whom I still talk to today!--and I noticed that nearly all of them played conflicted or super serious characters (there’s nothing wrong with that btw!) What this group could use, I remember thinking, is a character who’s an blindingly bright ray of sunshine. And so, enter this blog right here. Enter Barry.

When I first started playing Barry back then, he was a total clown and an absolute meme, not meant to be taken seriously at all. My main goal with him was to farm Laughs. I was perfectly fine making him the butt of every joke, or injecting him into the most ridiculous AUs. No seriousness was allowed.

However, over time, I got inspired by my group to write serious hcs, explore Barry’s conflicts more, and create a more multifaceted image of the character. I still love writing Barry’s sheer amount of positive energy and bright-eyed enthusiasm, but I think I’m also careful not to let him devolve into just a “gotta run fast gonna fine you meme man” or some clown caricature of a portrayal (even if I sometimes gleefully toe that line.) I know that there are people in the fandom who think my boy’s too annoying, too hyper--but I like to think that I’ve developed Barry beyond those stereotypes, and he’s still growing in unexpected ways (PLA verse hello!!) thanks to many great people in the indie space. I can’t wait to see where he goes next, ‘cause I’m not planning on stopping. :)

I’ve kept Barry around for so long because writing him honestly has proven to be a great stress reliever for me. Like Barry, I’ve always set my mind on one goal after the next--breaks be damned--and, as a result, my life has changed so much over these past ten years (no crap, lol.) I’ve always loved writing, but my first job was at a newspaper, where my writing was regularly axed with red pen. I worked at PR agency, where I felt like I was creating supremely fake content, not my own words. During my master’s, my final project was revised over and over again by others before it was approved. Even today, my job requires a lot of “business speak,” so I have to constantly monitor my language. When I RP, I have full control of what I want to say and create. When I write Barry, I can write silly, heartfelt, unfiltered things and just express myself without someone always looking over my shoulder for once! Ironically, writing Barry (+others) helps me relax (while also still serving as a really fun creative outlet/escape!)

I took a small break from this site from 10/2019 to 05/2020 because of said IRL stuff and adjusting to That One World Event, but I’m so glad I took the leap back into this scene. As overwhelming as the indie space can be sometimes, I’m grateful for the people I’ve met here/have interacted with so far! So, even as I continue to pump out novels for posts, I hope people are still enjoying Barry too. We’re gonna keep shining a light around here. :) ]

#ooc #long post #(seriously thank you for the wonderful ask friend...i once again get carried away but OH WELL)#(im in a writing mood tonight :') )#(tldr i love it here man)#memeZ

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coupsnim · 3 years ago

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what would your moots be like as idols?

this ask has been sitting in my inbox for ages because 1. I didn't have enough time and 2. I'm not the best at this kind of things 🙈 but I wanted to give it a try

I don't know all my mutuals personally, as I don't talk to most of them (sorry about that...), so I included the ones I think I know better or I see more often on my dash! ☺️

🌼 @scoupsy - the producer, is involved in all artistic aspects of every project, from music production and song writing to album design. is usually the one who comes up with the concept for every comeback and is obviously the richest one, so will buy a lot of meals for the other members (because she may seem a little intimidating, but is a big softie). 🌼 @soonhoonsol - the trustworthy leader, promotes her group better than the agency, defends her members when they get mistreated and is usually the spokesperson at awards shows. as the leader, she goes through a lot, but tries not to show it to the public. is the pillar of the group and all the fans have a soft spot for her (and would do anything to protect her).

🌼 @xuseokgyu - the glue, is the reason why the group is still together, official emotional support and mom of the group. supports every member in all their solo endeavours: sends coffee trucks on the sets of their movies/dramas, is the first guest on their variety shows/radio programs, posts their updates on social medias and promotes them better than the agency.

🌼 @hwiyoungies - the friendly one, speaks to her fans as if they were her bestfriends and likes to chat with them through the group fancafe or by going live. is the one that keeps fans updated on the other members and like sharing little anectodes about funny behind the scenes. probably the one who gives the most spoilers, just for fun. people like her honesty and her not being the most "conventional idol", but she knows when to draw the line when fans get too comfortable.

🌼 @gyukwans - the passionate maknae, variety shows, radio shows, sub-units, solo projects, acting gigs, she does it all! she works so much that her fans sometimes worry if she gets enough sleep or if she takes days off to recharge, but she's young and full of energy and would do anything to promote her group.

🌼 @dongkwan - the radio host, listens to a lot of different artists and likes to share new groups or her favourite tracks with her fans. she probably started with a short podcast and now landed her own radio show where she invites other underrated idols and talks about music.

🌼 @woozi - the social butterfly, knows everyone and has a lot of friends in different groups (but no one knows how and when she met them), even if they're not part of the same agency. cheerful and funny, is known by all kpop fans even if they don't support her group.

🌼 @iiasha - the variety genius, appeared in one episode of a famous variety show, said something funny and now every pd wants to work with her. her sense of humour and wittiness are known not only to kpop fans but to the general public as well. hates appearing on variety shows but still accepts every offer because she's a workaholic.

🌼 @haniehae - the choreographer, the group main dancer that spends hours and hours in the practice room. a little introverted, doesn't speak often on variety shows, but once is on stage or is asked to show her talent, she becomes the brightest star and everybody is left speechless.

🌼 @dkmakemyday - the kind one, never did anything wrong, never said anything bad, has a pure heart and has always nice words for everyone. likes to share little encouraging words on the group fancafe for her fans.

🌼 @jihooned - the idol turned actor, may have started as an idol, but now works mainly as an actress. from cheesy web dramas to legal dramas, from coming-of-age movies to sageuk, she excels in every genre. her distinct acting style is always praised by fellow actors and juniors look up to her and can't wait for her next project.

🌼 @ohoshi - the wild card, no one knows what is going on in her head or knows what her next move will be, but that's what makes her so endearing. has the best reactions, that's why is often asked to guest on variety shows. loved by every single fan, is probably everyone's bias wrecker.

🌼 @julyprince - the blueprint, has such a distinct style that everything she produces is easily recongnisble. fellow artists admire her and juniors take her as an rolemodel, but as it often happens to talented people, other groups' fans don't aknowledge her. that's why her own fans like to make long threads on twitter on how she paved the way.

#is this how I should've done it?#I don't know but that was fun ahah #ask #anon

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walking-mf-dead · 3 years ago

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Fem! SS and Nick

SS is helping Nick with a case he is working on (Maybe a missing persons)

They are very close "friends"

𝓜𝔂 𝓑𝓮𝓼𝓽 𝓛𝓪𝓭𝔂 Pairing: Fem!Sole Survivor/Nick Valentine Word Count: 1167 Warnings: Kidnapping, missing persons case, mentions of blood and yelling, hints towards physical violence, non-canon case A/N: This is my first time writing anything for the Fallout universe and I hope it's good enough :') (the divider I'm using is one with the Vault-tec symbol and I just took the png from google and duplicated it in paint lmao you're free to use if you wish)

“Y/N, how do you know this lead is any good?” Nick questions. We’ve been on a missing persons case for a week now and we hit a dead end until one of my sources from the wasteland gave me insight on what could be happening. “I told you Nick, just trust me on this and we’ll get the woman back to her family, okay?” I stop for a moment and place my hand on his shoulder, “We’ll find her Nicky.” He sighs and nods, giving me a gentle smile before we keep heading to the building that stands before us.

The building is dilapidated, falling apart even as we walk through the broken glass of the door, the stench of rotting and fresh meat and blood invades my senses. This lead may be more dangerous than I anticipated. I pull out my Plasma Rifle and start to survey the area, Nick following my lead and drawing his Western Revolver. “Now Doll, I do trust you, don’t get me wrong, but did you just lead us to a nest of Super Mutants?” pipes up my partner in a hushed voice, “Well, Nicky, I didn’t really think this is what my contact had in mind for where the girl might be.” I reply through gritted teeth, not wanting to risk being loud and being spotted.

•

We spend a good hour surveying the area, taking down about 5 of the brutes before we find the group, the boss sitting upon a meat throne, his followers around him snacking on food, and the woman. She’s up in a cage, bleeding but not so much that she’s anywhere close to dying. For now. “And what do we have here? More puny humans for me? Gutsoul deserves more blood.” Booms the loud voice of the mutant, oddly well spoken for someone of his type. No wonder he’s the leader I suppose. “We’re just here to get the woman ‘Gutsoul’. We get the girl, and we won’t kill you. Simple.” I say, standing my ground on the subject. Nick is close behind me, a hand hovering on the small of my back, still holding his revolver in the other, leaning down slightly to whisper in my ear, “Doll, it’s not smart to rile up a mutant, you know that right?”, “Nicky, honey, I know what I’m doing.” I retort, waiting for the mutant to respond. “Graag, grab the woman human. She’s annoying me.” Orders Gutsoul, the larger Mutant charges over to me and grabs my arms, locking them behind my body as I squirm and try to worm my way out of the grapple. Nick raises his revolver to shoot before I shake head “No” at him, needing to stay away from this fight. I won’t let him get hurt.

•

It’s been a day, maybe two since 2 of the mutants took me, leaving Nick Valentine, the best detective of the Commonwealth, to bargain with the brutes. It hasn’t been fun to say the least. While alone I think about him the most. He’s always been there for me, helped me, and the look in those yellow eyes two days ago when I was grabbed, the worry and desperation to get me back made me blush. He treats me well. He’s one of the closest people in my life at the moment, which is hard to come by in a post-apocalyptic world like this. “Food for human lady.” Says one of the two towards me, throwing a piece of stale bread towards me. Hey, it's better than irradiated mudcrab meat. Biting off the tough pieces of bread I look around the cage I’m in, trying to find an exit, a broken pipe I can use to attack the two before me. They look like the weakest, it’s why they’re stationed here to look after me.

I’m still trying to find a way out before I hear yelling and gunfire. The two watching me go to see the situation. Dammit Nick. “You get out, run back to Diamond City!” I hear the Synth yell. Probably towards that woman. What the fuck did he do? “Doll! Doll!? Where are you?” A small, sad smile appears on my face. “I’m here Nicky! I’m stuck in this stupid cage, they took all my shit.” And they had, I was only in my singlet and underwear when Nick came to help me. “Fuck Doll. That’s one shiner.” He points to my face before starting to lockpick the cage open. He hugs me once the door is open. He’s warm. He puts his coat over my shoulders before we go to find my things. He’s rushing around. Frantic almost. “Hey Nicky, Nick, slow down.” I say softly, reaching my hand out towards his shoulder, his white dress shirt slightly unbuttoned down the front, his slacks have blood on them and his hat is slightly shifted on his head. “Doll, I coulda lost ya. If I weren’t fast enough I coulda…” He trails off. “Hey, hey, I survived a nuclear blast, albeit in a bunker and frozen but, if I could survive that, I’ll survive anything. I’ll always come back to you.” He hugs me again. So, so tightly. Almost too tightly, this synth is stronger than he thinks. “Don’t you ever leave again Y/N.” He looks into my eyes and I can’t help but smile. This man is too good for anyone.

•

Once we arrived back at Diamond City, the young woman was there at Nick’s detective agency, thanking him profusely for his help in saving her. I smirk watching the scene unfold and start looking at files of other cases we could take after a small break. “And I was wondering, Detective, if we could go on a date, I’ll show you a good time, for all the help you gave me.” the woman says to him, very seductively. You wouldn’t have thought she spent almost 2 weeks with super mutants. She plays with the collar of his coat before he says, very flustered, “Oh uh, that’s sweet of ya Dollface but I don’t date previous clients. Just how I do the job.” I giggle to myself, listening to him. That’s a lie, I think so myself. She tries again with her advances before I finally save him from the awkward encounter. “Hey Nicky, what about this case? Missing daughter, she’s only 12. We should get a start on it soon.” I yell towards him, still looking at the file. It’s empty, but the woman doesn’t know that. “Alright Doll, I’m coming. You’re welcome for the help kid.” He then walks towards me and the woman leaves with almost a huff. Nick places a hand on the small of my back and I rest my head back onto his shoulder. “You still got it Nicky, get any pretty lady on your case.” I smirk, looking up towards him. “I’ve already got the best lady.” He replies before placing a soft kiss on my forehead.

Hey dude! Thank you for requesting something T-T I hope I did okay and that you like it! Let me know if there are any mistakes in it at all and I'll fix it up <3 Enjoy!!

#one shot #1k #request #fallout 4 #fem!sole survivor #fem!ss #nick valentine x sole survivor #nick valentine #fluff #fallout fluff #super mutants #missing persons case #valentine detective agency #random lady #tw: kidnapping #mentions of blood #yelling #hints towards physical violence #uhhh i think that's all the tags

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magicofthepen · 3 years ago

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top 5 tv doctor who episodes/serials?

ooh, I haven’t rewatched Doctor Who episodes in a minute, so let’s see what my gut instinct is…..

btw these are all going to be new who because new who is My Doctor Who (and I actually haven’t seen that much of classic)

1. Face the Raven/Heaven Sent/Hell Bent. am I allowed to count these all as one? I’m gonna count them all as one. and I’ll point in the direction of this post for the long version of why I love this finale so much. short version: Face the Raven building to that moment of tragedy and sacrifice and the acting in the goodbye scenes! Heaven Sent as an intense exploration of grief! Hell Bent as a story of agency and autonomy and writing our own stories! it was the first companion exit I ever saw live, and what an exit it was.

2. Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang. I love this finale so much also!! it’s grand and intimate at the same time. it’s about the power of stories. it’s that rare new who finale with a happy ending. it’s got the full team of Amy, Rory, the Doctor, and River, in this earlier era when they’re just a fun group to have all together, when the secrets haven’t yet been revealed (although knowing them makes rewatching extra fun and painful). something about the Pond era is very comfort Doctor Who to me, and this is both that and emotional and beautiful and a wild and wonderful story.

3. The Husbands of River Song. this is The comfort episode for me, I’ve watched in a ton when I was sick. River is my favorite new who character (controversial, I know), and when I first binged new who I was really disappointed about how her story sort of fizzled out once the secrets were revealed, instead of exploring the ramifications of her backstory and the ramifications of the pain she goes through in the episodes themselves. and then THORS finally gave me a post-Manhattan River episode, an episode that is fun and delightful and yet explores River’s loneliness, the ways that she’s hurting. and the Doctor has learned, finally, about how trying to prevent endings hurts people, and he’s choosing to be present for River, to not be lost in trying to pick apart her past or prevent her future. and it’s a fun, beautiful episode with a sort of sad but also happy and ultimately emotionally satisfying ending.

4. The Doctor’s Wife. an episode that explores the relationship between the Doctor and the TARDIS? yes. yes. “you didn’t always take me where I wanted to go.” “no, but I always took you where you needed to go.” the banter and the emotional connection, and the tragedy of saying goodbye to the TARDIS-in-Idris, while still knowing that she’s always going to be there…..yeah, I love this one very much.

5. The Magician’s Apprentice/The Witch’s Familiar. the set of episodes where I finally got invested in the Master as a character. I love Missy’s chaotic nature, how you’re never quite sure whose side she’s on or what she’s going to do next. Missy and Clara teaming up and bantering with each other is so good and such a contrast to the Doctor and Davros having these deeply intense, serious conversations. the jokes in these episodes are so good, the pain in these episodes hits so hard (Clara in the Dalek, my god). the relationships between each set of characters, the acting—yeah I love this series premiere more and more over time.

#i love and have grievances with all eras of new who #but the moffat era is the era of my heart these past several years #thanks for the ask!!#ramblings #asks #doctor who #natequarter

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astridthevalkyrie · 4 years ago

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Do you think AOT is better than FMAB?

sorry not sorry for the blunt answer but no, never, not in a million years, not even close, not for a number of reasons.

few reasons under the cut, because apparently I’m doing this instead of focusing in class. obviously there will be spoilers for both shows, and obviously some of this will be based on personal preference.

1. Genocide/Oppression

so both shows have some vivid imagery of nazi germany. bradley is addressed as the fuhrer in fmab, and the eldians wear stars on their sleeves in aot. and even if the aot writer wasn’t pretty much confirmed to be a nationalist and raging anti-semite, it’s rather painfully obvious which show handles it better.

in aot, the eldians are oppressed because they can turn into titans and were originally trying to take over the world or something, which is so blatantly anti-semitic that it’s terrible. shows are allowed to tackle these kinds of topics, but they should handle them well, not be a stand in for nazi propaganda. this is something so many fucking shows do wrong whenever they make an oppressed group of people - there’s always somehow a reason for having them be oppressed. take bbc merlin. wizards are oppressed because they can do magic and so they’re dangerous, just like how eldians can turn into titans and so they’re dangerous, and that’s a bad thing to imply, because it implies that jewish people somehow deserved what happened to them and that’s a fucking dangerous idea to put into an already anti-semitic world.

and that’s exactly why i was so relieved and appreciative of how fmab did the battle of ishval. it is clear who the bad guys are in that scenario, and it’s clear that it was never deserved and that the soldiers who carried it out are war criminals and deserve to be put into jail. riza says as much herself. while i think scar shouldn’t have been as guilted as he was (sure, he shouldn’t go after innocent people, but him killing winry’s parents is not comparable to what happened to him and doesn’t put all of them on equal footing), i was pleasantly surprised that he lived and wasn’t killed off in some stupid form of “redemption.” if roy deserved to live, so did scar, a hundred times over.

2. Characters

characters in fmab are done ridiculously better than in aot. let’s compare similar characters!

edward and eren - the protagonists

up until the third season onwards, eren is very one dimensional and uninteresting. he’s entertaining, but his one and only goal is killing the titans and it’s super frustrating because they lay down the groundwork for more, but it’s never really addressed. show more how he cares about his friends, show him dealing with his trauma through anger and how it’s unhealthy. (actually, a lot of problems could be fixed if they showed more of the cadets’ training days. i feel like i wasn’t feeling as betrayed by annie and reiner and bertholdt because i never really felt they were that close to eren.)

ed is a delightful main character. he too is angry and doesn’t mind talking with his fists, but at the same time, he’s starchly against killing anyone and has multiple goals. ofc his primary one is getting their bodies back, but when he finds himself in the conspiracy about amestris, he doesn’t hesitate before making that his problem as well. every relationship he has is wonderful. i could get bored with eren on the screen, i wasn’t bored with ed.

armin and alphonse - the deuteragonists

i’m sorry but armin is literally just “the smart one.” that’s it. he’s also the dreamer but it only comes up when they’re about to do something dangerous.

i feel like i don’t even need to go into how good of a character al is? he’s very obviously multifaceted and the epitome of sweet and badass at the same time.

winry and mikasa - the love intests-ish

i don’t like referring to either of them like that, but while mikasa is the tritagonist (or deuteragonist, her and armin can interchange there), winry is not.

and surprise, surprise, this is actually where i’m not so sure winry comes out on top. mikasa is, in my opinion, the most interesting out of the trio. she also has a very single-minded goal, but seeing her interact with other characters (armin, jean, levi) who either fall in line or disagree with that goal is fun to watch. she’s also obviously super competent and i have a thing for competent characters.

winry is a good character and i love her, but it’s always bothered me how out of place her scenes feel in relation to the entire show. and as much as i know it doesn’t deter her agency, there’s just something off about ed telling her to have an apple pie waiting for them. it actually brings in one of my few problems with fmab. while its female are pretty good, they’re far from perfect, and that’s because nearly all of them exist because of their relation to the more important male character. winry is ed’s mechanic and the elrics’ family friend. riza is roy’s lieutenant. lan fan is ling’s bodyguard. izumi is the elrics’ teacher. i’m not saying that’s all they are, but this is a major part of their role in the story (olivier and mei stand out as female characters with goals relating to themselves and not a guy around them.)

so who’s the better character? mikasa is more fierce and winry has better lines that aren’t just calling out the protag’s name. i’m gonna give it to winry, but by a short shot.

roy and levi - the op fan favorites

this one’s much easier. roy is not just a badass who’s also the hero’s direct superior like levi is, he’s a person with clearcut goals and weaknesses and he has to make sacrifices and work for what he wants. levi has all the makings for a great character, a tragic backstory and a chill personality, but he doesn’t have a reason to stay in the scouts, he just...does. out of loyalty to erwin, i guess? it’s not clear and it’s even worse if you don’t watch the ova. roy’s reasons are clear and relatable. he also has a dorky and endearing side, plus the political side of things he brings to fmab is interesting and an equally important part of the story. his fight with envy is satisfying and thrilling. levi’s fight with the beast titan, while it is super well animated and cool, kiiiinda falls flat because there was no set-up for him being the one to take the beast titan down (should have been connie). it also ends a bit too fast, honestly.

but hey, you say, aren’t you the one writing 15k worth of fanfiction for levi within two weeks? didn’t see you writing that much for roy. yeah, well, unfortunately, my attraction doesn’t determine the better character and i never said i was proud of this, please leave me alone.

there’s more comparisons i could make - carla and trisha, hohenheim and grisha (ha, trisha and grisha rhyme), roy can also be compared to erwin, there’s multple side characters, but fmab wins, you guys get it.

3. The Story, Plot, Deaths

listen, i get it. aot is a bloody, brutal show and you’re not supposed to get attached to characters. i’m not gonna complain about pointless deaths, because that in itself is the point. it’s like twd or got, it’s gonna have lots of death. but the deaths don’t have to be so stupid. i’m specifically thnking of levi’s squad, because the way they die is so dumb. gunther should not be taken down by a cadet, petra shouldn’t be flying so close to the ground, oluo should know not to engage the female titan alone. these were elite titan killers, they knew not to be stupid. there were ways to kill them off without making them look so stupid. and if there’s not, consider not killing them off just for shock value.

fmab’s deaths mean something, especially since one of its central messages is that life is precious, no matter whose it is. everyone’s life means something and no one dies in vain.

there’s more i could go into, but i just spent my entire classtime doing this and now my second one for the day is about to start, sooo i think i’ll stop here. thanks for the ask!

#fmab #anti aot #anti fmab #at some parts #aot is anti-semitic please be careful when watching it and think about the media you're consuming

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twh-news · 4 years ago

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Loki' composer on how her MCU score reflects the main character's flair for the dramatic

By Josh Weiss

Natalie Holt's timeline was turned upside down last fall when she landed the highly-coveted composer gig for Marvel Studios' Loki series on Disney+.

***WARNING! The following contains certain plot spoilers for the first four episodes of Loki!***

The other side of the story speaks to the old world grandeur of Loki's royal upbringing on Asgard, a city amongst the stars that eventually found its way into Norse mythology.

Wilson's character isn't the only person fed up with the TVA's lies. Hunter B-15 (Wunmi Mosaku) also became disillusioned with the place and allowed Sylvie to escape in the most recent episode

#Loki #loki series #natalie holt #Loki spoilers #loki series spoilers #Article #Interview #SYFY #Long post

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cosmiclatte28 · 4 years ago

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#12 Lay by Your Side (Taeyong x you)

Twelfth day of Christmas (the last one!)

Lay by Your Side (Taeyong x you)

I do not own pictures, but I own the stories :D. It’s the last day of the project and although the header doesn’t really fit the theme, it’s too cute!! I gotta do it lol

Before reading I want to thank you all for reading this much :D I really appreciate your time and everything else you give for this 🥺🤗💖 ily all! Here we go

It’s another new year, a new chance to start the things you missed last year, a chance to fix your mistakes, the time for you to learn and grow from your past self.

You rest your eyes from watching the picturesque scene laid before your eyes. The blue green endless ocean that meets the horizon, the bright sun shining above your head and of course the sight of a book cover you can see when you raise your head.

You’re enjoying the last day staying in a bungalow at Hawaii before duty and responsibility call back. With your boyfriend, Lee Taeyong, relaxing on the long couch while reading his newest novel and your head is resting on his strong thighs.

The gentle breeze coming from the ocean through the window is enough to almost drive you to sleep, along with Taeyong’s slender fingers slowly stroking your hair as he focuses on his story, you can’t hold back the sleepiness hitting your body.

You yawn and feel his fingers leave your hair, only to hear a page flips and his fingers are back, stroking your hair calmly while sometimes applying a bit of a pressure to your scalp. You exhale and relax your shoulder, feeling even drowsier now.

“Yong-ie” you mumble with your eyes closed, you’re bored seeing the cover.

“Hmm?” he asks you back, his head didn’t move, his book is still in the same place and you bet his eyes are not stopping at all from those lines.

“Fun part?” you ask him the chapter he is reading, well it’s not like he is ignoring you the whole holiday to finish that book. No, he was treating you so well and he just continued where he left off today. You understand if he wants to add a few more pages before he is back to his tight schedule as an idol.

“Quiet exhilarating, why? Need anything?” he asks finally pausing and putting aside the book so he can see your face.

“Glad I can finally see your face, not that boring book cover.” You grin and he leans in to kiss you.

“Sorry, let me fix my posture a bit,” he pulls his body that has been slipping down the couch and you yelp when you feel your head forced to meet his knees.

“Whoops, sorry” he picks you up from your neck slowly and helps you return to your position.

You giggle when you realize he’s still sweet even after he did something so clumsy. You flip your body so you’re resting your arms on his thighs as you cup your cheeks. You’re laying on your belly between his legs. (I really hope you can picture this)

“It’s okay, what are we going to do after this?” you ask, sending him a subtle hint you’re wishing to be able to do something else in this good villa before going home.

Taeyong smirks “Want what? We’ve explored everything around here, we even went swimming this morning.” He rubs circle with his thumb on your slightly tanned shoulder.

“Didn’t you have enough tan already? I cannot go tanner than this even if I want to, my stylist will kill me.” He chuckles and you nod your head “I know, I mean if I want my skin to be tanner, I’ll do it by myself. But-“ your breath hitched when you catch his red shiny lips in your sight.

Taeyong follows your gaze and realizes where you are staring at and he licks his lips when he caught you staring “Eyes are up here miss,” he teases you and do the regular “see my eyes here” finger gestures.

You gulp “Sorry,” and you focus your eyes to see his. His dark eyes are twinkling as usual but today with his messy hair he didn’t look cuddly at all.

You secretly snake your arms around his torso and bury your face into his chest before snuggling closer to his body if that is possible.

“Woah, careful can you breathe?” he asks when he sees you plant your face to his torso, you nod “Perfectly fine.”

He giggles and reaches out his book to continue where he left off. He peacefully hold his book on his right hand and his left hand is back to stroking your hair and now touching your skin too slightly grazing over it with his callouses fingers.

You did not know you fell asleep while hugging him. The soft snore coming out from you is what makes Taeyong stop reading his book.

He marks his page down and puts it aside. Slowly without waking you up, Taeyong moves your head so at least he can see your pretty face and ensures himself you’re not suffocated.

The man smiles down lovingly and gently places a kiss on your temple, he lets go when he feels your body stirring. While leaning back to the sofa, Taeyong watches the endless blue horizon that meets the sea. A small smile tugs his lips when he remembered the night he confessed his true feelings to you.

Taeyong always says he is a man with the heart of the sea, yes the sea because it is deep and mysterious. Though some of his friends say that may be interpreted in a wrong way, he met you and you bravely answered him with “And I am a fearless adventurer, who’s not afraid of the deep and mysterious sea. Guess we matched.”

He cannot hide his happiness away when his ring finger sparkles while stroking your hair and getting caught in the golden sun ray. With memories playing in his head, Taeyong plays with the metal ring on his hand. He always wears it everywhere he go, even to music shows!

Taeyong keeps his promise ring on his hand no matter what, no matter how hard the stylists tried to make him put it down just for the sake of the wardrobe and cameras. He always find a way to sneak it back on or just go to a long ass bickering of ridiculous things like

“It is my lucky ring… my mom said to never take this off…. Hey I might lose it….” And others even silly ones. But in the end, he did it. He always brings that small part of you with him, to remind him you are his and he is yours. He’s glad you’re not the type who gets jealousies instantly or even put needless curiosity over him.

Instead, Taeyong is more protective of you. He knows your past with your boyfriends are not good, especially the ones that secretly date another person, or just the abusive ones who are obsessed to have you. Taeyong acts protective because he didn’t want any one of them to hurt you, but you just smile and tell him “Thank you Tae, but trust me I can keep myself safe.”

And for three years of dating, you proofed yourself to Taeyong that you can take a good care of yourself. Saesang fans have gotten through your way before, but you can finish it off with a cold head and cold heart. You talked to them nicely, explaining that no it’s not a relationship. Well to you and him this is already beyond relationship, both of you are committed already and slowly taking steps to marriage. The fans asked your apology and you told them you won’t make a fuss if they keep quiet and also stop being a saesang.

You even asked them to join you for a drink and they open up to you, you learnt they became this wild because they crave for attentions they couldn’t get. So, you give them the attention they needed. Every month, you make a small gathering for that group of fans and they even bring more fans too and you just reveal yourself to be a nobody. They didn’t really mind who you are, they’re so happy to see that being a healthy fan is way way way much better.

You never tell Taeyong about that secret project, he only found out about it when a fan came to him during fan sign and told him everything. Taeyong went home that day with fascination, he told you about the story and he even praised the creator of that event.

You teased him “So you wanna marry that person?”

Taeyong on that day giggled and pulls out an “are you insane face” “Hell if I am not committed yet, I might ask that person out.”

You nod your head “I’m gonna tell you, even when you’re committed you can do that.”

He shakes his head “No way! I am not going to hurt you. I was just talking nonsense.”

You just silently walk to his back and hug him “Will you still say no when I show you who runs that project?” you show your phone to his face and swipe the photos you took from each event.

He went speechless and when his soul is back, Taeyong gets down on one knees and proposes without a ring. But that spontaneity and the air that night, made you nod your head. The night and the promise were sealed with a warm passionate kiss.

He bought you the ring two days after it, because he asked the jeweler to crave names inside.

It was a beautiful memory and you’ve passed the event on to another friend you trust can handle the lonely fans. You disappear from media because slowly Taeyong and you will be coming up to the agency and open up the hidden stories, though you both don’t know when.

He wants to marry you once the agency gives him the green light and of course after both your parents and his agree. Though he knows the latter part will be easier than the first one.

“So, are we going up this year?” Taeyong mumbles to the air, he is not actually talking to you for he knows you’re sleeping.

But even in your sleep, you unconsciously nod your head and give him a reassuring face he always gets from your face whenever he is in doubt.

Taeyong brushes your hair away from your glowing face and leans in once again to seal his lips with yours. “I love you (y/n), to infinity and beyond.” He whispers and seals your lips one more time.

end

thank you guys for supporting me, this is the last story for the 12 days of Christmas fanfic project! ;D I am happy you all are enjoying this and I just want to wish you all a happy new year!! May all your goals be achieved this year

See you on another story :D

I love you all!! Thanks for being an amazing friends who want to read my small writings 💖

Christmas masterlist completed

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