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amadeusgame · 1 year ago

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This month I've... accomplished a lot. It's difficult to communicate just how much, because a lot of the work is the kind that isn't exciting to talk about and doesn't look like much... but it is a lot, and it needed to get done. The narrative work I did this month in particular has helped me prepare to finish the full 5-episode saga, not just a new demo or the first episode.

Speaking of the new demo. I originally planned to release it by the end of this year, but it's looking like that was optimistic, considering how much I'm adding from the original demo. New goal is to have it ready for private playtesting by the end of this year, and released publicly early in 2024. Next month I'll confirm if we're still on track for that!

If you'd like sooner updates, or are interested in playtesting, you are welcome to join the Discord server.

Other resources here, including the new website. Now to the devlog!

Highlights for this month:

Updated Mechanics Implemented: I have built a test scene to triage the new mechanics I've built, and functionality is now at the point where I can start rebuilding the demo with them. I am working with playtesters to identify and iron out bugs as I do so.

Finalized Narrative + Art Direction: I have determined which art assets will be inked, and which will remain in pencil. Part of this decision involved making a lot of overarching narrative and thematic details concrete, so while I don't have much to show for it at the moment, it will really pay off when the later episodes release.

Project Management: I now have a part-time job (unrelated to games), and have spent this past month re-learning how to manage my time and keep on track while also getting enough rest. Brief discussion of navigating this adjustment as a solo dev.

Marketing: This month, I really started thinking more about the kind of marketing *I* appreciate as an audience. I've shared social media posts from other indie dev projects - what is it about those posts that communicated to me I would like the games?

Recreation: media I engaged with this month!

Details below.

Updated Mechanics Implemented

I've made improvements, changes, and additions to several core mechanics so that they are flexible enough for me to build a complete game. This has been very complicated because most of the code I wrote for the old demo was very, very limited, and was held together with duct tape that could just barely handle what I built for the demo, and nothing beyond that. So my mission has been to purge the spaghetti and make my scripts able to actually do what I need them to for a more complete game.

It's very easy to get lost on where to start when approaching something like that, so I want to share an approach that really helped me: writing out the intended functionality in just English as comments first, and THEN figuring out how to script it. It's a way of "sketching" code to break down how it will work before getting into the weeds of proper syntax and functionality.

Some specifics on overhauled mechanics:

Movement - movement scripts can now handle things like an obstacle in the middle of the "walkable" area of the screen. There is polish to do but the core functionality is there and easier to iterate on. I've also added some tweaks that make it "smarter" about handling whether you're currently using point-and-click or WASD inputs.

Screen Transitions - this mechanic is MUCH more generalized now. It can handle as many entry/exit points from a screen as needed, so scene layouts can be much more varied. A downtown screen with multiple alleys each leading to different screens is possible now.

Point-and-Click - I made a lot of changes to the point-and-click movement scheme, many of which involved learning how coroutines work; unfortunately, it's still pretty buggy and rough-feeling. I think I made a mistake by trying to make my control scheme support two completely different types of inputs, because it has resulted in two half-polished movement schemes instead of one relatively polished one. However... I cannot bring myself to axe the point-and-click movement scheme, despite WASD currently being more reliable. So I'm going to move forward with the hybrid, and workshop it as I rebuild the demo. The good news is it is at the point where I can safely implement it without breaking anything (hopefully) while I continue to iterate on it. The better news is, even if it's unpolished, I think it makes the game feel very unique.

Menus - I figured out how to track "layering" the two menus (backlog, and settings screen) so it properly handles freezing/unfreezing movement if you open one on top of the other, and I made the placeholder menus/UI nicer looking. Also added audio volume controls.

Virtually everything in this image is just a placeholder, but it's a placeholder that feels much better than what I had before. Sketching this out on paper gave me a template to start building on.

I will be utilizing the "notebook" as a shortcut to view the text backlog, as well:

I have more work to do formatting the backlog, but it works, and a scroll-bar is automatically added once it exceeds the height of the backlog window.

Thanks to building this test scene, I've got all of my test scripts to a place where I feel confident rebuilding the demo with the new mechanics. There's a lot that needs to be tweaked and changed, but it's finally at the point where it feels like replacing the existing demo with the new mechanics is pretty much a clear upgrade. So I'm excited to get started on that!

Finalized Narrative + Art Direction

In October's devlog, I wrote that determining precisely which assets will be inked and which will remain in pencil was probably this month's most important project. I debated going with a practical approach (such as "ink all assets of this type: talk sprite, interactible, etc") - but I quickly realized that I would have more fun doing something cool with it instead. This turned it from an art direction problem to a narrative problem, which forced me to answer a LOT of questions for myself that I had been putting off until later, because most of these questions will not be unveiled within the scope of Episode 1. They weren't strictly needed to finish just Episode 1 originally; but they would be if Episode 1 were to include an art direction decision that is related to very late-game concepts.

The drawback to this is it took up a lot of time and energy that could have been spent focusing on Episode 1 and finishing the new demo faster and getting a release faster.

The (huge, in my opinion) benefit to this is that Episode 1 is going to be much more effective now, as there are so many things I can set up early on because I already know precisely where I'm going with them. I also just feel more prepared to continue this momentum over the next several years and write the entire narrative, not just the first segment of it. I think the overall experience will be better and more convincing, and that this was an effective use of my time.

I fully expect some things to evolve as I make the other episodes - my experience just in creating the demo has been that some parts of the game truly do write themselves - but I still think this was a very good use of my time this month. It's going to drive me nuts keeping everything I'm planning under wraps for the years until the reveals come, though.

(Which leads me to another very important thing I did this month: called a friend and spoiled literally everything I've been planning to them. I was drawing spoilery fanart of very late-game reveals and needed SOMEONE to spill all of the beans to. The friend in question is an author so they also acted as a very useful brainstorming/sounding board for certain themes I still wasn't sure where to go with... anyway, I cannot recommend this enough. Having just One Dedicated Spoiler Friend has been invaluable.)

Since I spent so much time on the brainstorming part of this, I don't have much to show for it at the moment. I've started inking some more assets, though. Here's Solea (not yet scanned/colored):

Project Management

If you don't read anything else in this section, take away the following: I now have part-time work to offer financial stability and life experience. My real job is developing Amadeus.

Adjusting to being outside of school was difficult, and adjusting to now having a part-time job has also been difficult. However, I am really lucky in that this job is pretty much perfect - it's completely unrelated to games (so ALL of my games and artistic energy can go to Amadeus, not to work), it's part time (so I have much more time to dedicate to Amadeus than I would if I was working full-time), and I like the people there. Thanks to this, I don't have to stress about my financials or a fruitless job hunt, and can focus all of my remaining time and energy to my own projects.

However, having limited free time - even if it's more than I would have if I worked full-time - means project management is even more essential than it was before. It's not just a matter of giving myself deadlines so I get things done, it's a matter of understanding what tasks I can actually accomplish on a given day/week without burning myself out. I find that inking assets is something I am willing to do a little at a time, in bed, before I sleep. Coding is something I'm more than happy to do on lunchbreaks and on my commute. Music composition, however, requires a solid 2-hour block of sitting at my desk with no distractions, and a completely free day afterwards just in case I hit a groove and happen to bang out an entire piece in one afternoon. Learning to work with my own tendencies and not against them is essential to actually getting things done.

One more benefit of my new job is I've learned how to use project management software in a way that works for me to remind myself of what needs doing (especially regular upkeep tasks), in addition to special projects. I've started using it outside of work (on an unrelated, personal account! For the record! Asana is free for small teams!!) to manage Amadeus tasks, and I have to say it has been a game changer. It's really getting me to stay on top of everything that needs doing. I got the advice from several indie devs at SIX to use project management software, and wouldn't you know it, they were right. The folks who actually get enough stuff done to have a demo at SIX know what it takes to get your game made! Who knew??

Marketing

I've been paying more attention to what other indie devs do to advertise their own work. Many aspects of "successful" posts are beyond my control - whether something reaches a wide audience or not depends on too many factors to stress over. So I have decided to focus on what I can control: if the post reaches someone who might like this game, how do I show them that they might like this game?

For the past couple weeks, I've picked a game whose marketing posts I willingly shared on social media because I was excited about the game. I retweeted Small Saga's trailer advertising its upcoming release last week - why? Well, because I watched their trailer video and found it appealing. Why did I watch the video? I don't watch every video on my twitter feed! But something about the trailer footage reminded me of Final Fantasy IX, one of my favorite video games ever made. What, specifically? The character designs and town designs evoked that feeling for me. Then I unmuted the video and really liked the track that was playing, and I decided I wanted to share this.

As a musician, it pains me to say that the music was not remotely close to my first priority when determining whether to share this post. It was a deciding factor, but one that did not come into play until after the visuals had captivated me. The visuals showed me "this game feels like Final Fantasy IX," and that is the hook that got me to stick around for the rest. The trailer succeeded in convincing me, as someone who might like the game, that I might like it. And it did so by letting the game speak for itself. The fact that the font in the trailer matched the aesthetic of the game footage was also a nice bonus.

So last week, I put together a post with a video that was supposed to communicate: "if you like Umineko When They Cry, you might like Amadeus." The same way Small Saga communicated "if you like Final Fantasy IX, you might like Small Saga." I included more of the pure text-based visual novel scenes in this trailer than usual, because Amadeus is turning into more and more of a visual novel the more I flesh out the narrative. I don't know if this accomplished what I hoped it would, but the process of making it taught me a lot.

A couple weeks before this, I based my post off of Cavern of Dreams marketing on Tumblr. Cavern of Dreams appealed to me because its posts told me exactly who it was for: it was for people with a nostalgic love for N64-era platformers. Who is Amadeus for? Well, since I was deep in revamping the point-and-click controls to also allow point-and-spacebar for wrist ease, I made a trailer advertising this accessible input scheme.

I don't pretend to be very good at marketing still, but I've learned a lot just from seeing what other people have done that clicked with me. Marketing, as an indie dev, is really about communication. It's about showing people the heart of what you're making, in a way that lets people who share the same interests find it and enjoy it.

Recreation

3 games to shout out that I played this month:

Burly Men At Sea - an excellent reference for a game with a simple style and focused concept that is really appealing and polished. It's fun, silly, cute, and does what it wants to do extremely well. It's... effectively the opposite of what I am making, which is a game that is scrappy, overly ambitious, and all over the place. But that's okay! It's very grounding to play a game that features strengths completely the opposite of my own.

Once by Moonlight - a short werewolf visual novel here on itch. I don't pretend to think I am the first person to write a visual novel about a werewolf, so I wanted to look at someone else's take on it. I recommend it if you have a couple hours to spare. I took about a page of notes while playing it for my own reference, as both a dev and a storyteller, so you know it's solid!

Tsukihime - I only just started this, but it was a recommendation from a friend after I asked for a VN recommendation that was long enough to binge and go insane over, and preferably had vampires or werewolves. I am certain this will show up under "Recreation" for next month as well, because I can already tell this is going to give me a lot of ideas and influence Amadeus in ways that are yet to be determined. While I myself am not writing a horny visual novel, I also feel it's important to acknowledge that horny visual novels are the backbone and history of the whole genre, so why not play the super iconic one about vampires?

That's a wrap for this month! Next month, my goal is to be able to sum up my entire devlog with "the demo is remade and in private playtesting." Fingers crossed I can hold myself to it. Stay tuned!

#devlog #Amadeus: A Riddle for Thee #visual novel #indie game dev #indie dev

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dashawfrostart · 3 months ago

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This... Month? In "Time & Again" #20: Die Herausforderungen des Schreibens 📚 - und mehr

Here, I thought I'm finally coming back with some truly awesome news quite shortly - but alas, it turns out it's been roughly a month. Sounds like the frequency of my overly giant posts is rigorously dropping... But I intend to let it simply flow, following its own pace, so I write whenever. I have probably already mentioned that writing doesn't always go buttery smooth for me (and I'm pretty sure I said that somewhere before; it's not just the title of this post signifies that). If the posts do not form in my head - then I simply don't write, and I don't force the process either. The spark is very, very important when creating.

But enough of digression, let's get straight to the business! First things first!!! And the news is truly fab!!!

Chapters 1, 2 and 3.1. of "Time & Again" now exist in the physical world!!! 🥳🥂

This is so cool, I cannot contain myself!!! 🤪 This is a very odd and somewhat awkward feeling, to hold your own book in your hands. Back in the day, I started working on it as an exclusively digital release - and yet, I designed it (just in case!) as a book almost right away, with the covers, inner artworks, and the proper page count that was suitable for physical printing, if need be, although without the bleed areas.

Well, turned out the "if need be" situation happened in the end. And after all, it's just very nice to have a physical copy of your own work on hand... Well, because I'm an old-school person and I love paper books. Once the entire story is done, I will definitely prepare and order a hardcover copy just for myself. And if the local (and beyond local) readers so desire, I'll print some for them, too. But that is just a potential plan for the future consideration 😁 Right now, the succulently depressing Chapter 6 is waiting for me.

Preparing it for the physical printing was a bit of a struggle - the topic I already mentioned in one of the previous posts. I have spent a month working on all of that, plus refining some little things and adding "Notes, Commentaries & Hints" section to each one of the chapters. Ordering prints, unfortunately, was also a struggle, in an odd way.

But I succeeded. And now I am very happy.

Please note that I also added a QR code that leads to the landing page with all my art links and socials for everybody to explore. That was also yet another one little thing I've worked hard on for a while last month. It even has a link to my Doomworld profile 😁 *a happy smiling and spinning cacodemon smiley should go here*

Now, I am ready for yet another one juicy announcement on today's agenda:

The script for Chapter 6 is finally done!!! Yaaaaaay!!!11!!1!1!!! 🥳🥂

Revisiting the fruits of my labour yesterday, I can say I did good. It made me happy. And that's saying something. Chapter 6 is going to be very, very wordy (thank you Lothar for thinking non-stop). 19 pages with approximately 12500 words sure will make a big impression on some readers, I'm certain... However, a large part of that whooping page number is actually commentary only. But there's still a little more reading than in any average previous chapter. Now, off it goes directly to my editor-in-chef for the proofread. Which means that incredibly soon I will finally be able to start working on the page templates for the actual release. Excited. Chapter 6 is going to be highly experimental and daring. ... and unbearably dark, too. Darker than Chapter 5.

Returning back to our aforementioned topic of the writings, as well as the ultimate torments and tortures of the process, I must share something that you might find interesting to clarify the situation - or at least entertaining to some extent. Yet again: writing does not always go smooth for me. In the previous post I have shared my fears and concerns in regard to Chapter 6 in general, particularly the writing. Well, here's the full story for a disclosure: back in the day, approximately around the time I created Lothar (and shortly Jeanny), sometime in 2015, I attempted to write a large novel about the catpeople named Freia and Fjolvarr. That story has never been finished, and the problem with it happened to be, as I ponder now, the lack of self-organization of the author. Meaning, I could write separate notes for the story in multiple notebooks, because a lot of different ideas and thoughts would swirl in my imagination, so, like fools, I would try to save them all. Which was a good tactic - and I still think it is!.. The real problem, however, emerges from the depths of creative process later on, when it's time to stitch everything together into a logical and consecutive narration. I ended up with a lot of parts that were very difficult to tie together. Usually, when I used to write my text-only stories, I went with the flow and let the logic of the characters' conversations circulate naturally - and in most cases, it yielded great result. But with the things written split in parts right from the start, finding the right chain link to link them all together into a naturally flowing conversation was... a nightmare to say the least. Perhaps I was not persistent enough, or maybe the amount of work was a little too much, for that story was supposed to be, well, at least 200 pages in total (I approximate), therefore there as a lot of unrefined material to work with. As for "Time & Again", I definitely didn't want it to die in a swamp of creation that went awry. "Time & Again" bears ENORMOUS importance to me. I could not simply let it disappear into nothingness, because that would've been easily the most disappointing thing in my life. By the time I sat down to get to finishing up and polishing the script in July, there were indeed parts of the dialogues and Lothar's delirious monologues that required connection links. I cannot really say that I dreaded working on it. But I had fear that it might end up being as unfinished as the aforementioned catpeople story. This time I was aware of the weaknesses and failings of my previous, almost 10-year-old outdated approach. So I was ready to embrace a potentially tremendous amount of works that was waiting for me.

And I did really good this time!

Have I ever told you that narratology interest me very much? Narratology classes were something I've never taken. The same with psycholinguistics and the its lesser known, more targeted subdivision called ethnopsycholinguistics. And now I feel like I have missed out on INCREDIBLY MUCH. For a language nerd such as myself, it's shameful. But nothing's impossible (am I, like, in the mood for Depeche Mode quotes today or what?..), and there are lots of books available on the above mentioned topics, so I am not sad one bit. I love sciences 🤓 And I am always up for self-education (basically almost everything I've learnt very willingly was thanks to self-education alone).

I thought I wanted to mention some other fun topic, but I no longer remember what it was. That's alright; chances are by the time I decide to return to make another post, it will shape itself a tad better anyway. So I'll save my currently improperly shaped thought for later.

See you soon! 👋 I really gotta pick up the slack and start posting more frequently 😅

#TimeAndAgainbyDWF #This Week In Time And Again #graphic novel

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blu-joons · 3 years ago

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When You Shut Him Up With A Kiss ~ Ateez Reaction

Seonghwa:

“It’s gone midnight again,” Seonghwa sighed as he walked through the front door in a huff.

“You’re back,” you smiled, getting up from the sofa to walk over and greet him, “you’ve been working hard Seonghwa, you can’t help getting in so late.”

He sighed once again as you moved your arms around his waist, “I’m fed up with them working us so hard, it’s like we’re toys for them to play with.”

“Relax,” you smiled, reaching up on your tiptoes to press a kiss to his lips and try to keep him calm so late in the night.”

The moment you pulled away, a sigh of relief came from Seonghwa, “I’m so glad that I get to come home to you every single night.”

“You don’t have to worry about work now.”

“Thank you, Y/N.”

“You don’t have to thank me,” you chuckled, cupping the side of his head, “you just need to stop stressing out so much, work is just a bit chaotic right now for you.”

His head nodded in agreement with you, “I hate coming home and feeling as if I don’t have the time to be with you Y/N.”

“I understand, please don’t worry about me at all, I get it, always.”

Hongjoong:

“I just can’t be bothered anymore,” Hongjoong announced, pushing the piece of paper away.

“You can do this,” you tried to motivate, walking across to take a look at what he was up to, “you and I both know that these raps don’t write themselves.”

His head nodded as he let go of a light sigh, “I was full of motivation earlier in the day, but I can’t seem to translate any of that to the paper.”

“Give it time,” you assured him, leaning down to press a kiss against his lips before he could argue with you once again.

His head shook as you pulled away, wiping his finger across his lips. “That might have been a little bit helpful of you to do actually.”

“Then why did you wipe my kiss off.”

“Just wait and see.”

“Hongjoong?” You asked, only to watch on as he picked up his pen and began to write some notes down, specific to how the kiss you gave him tasted on his lips.

Once he had got it all down, he looked across at you once again. “I might have to rant more often if it gets you to help me just like this.”

“Any time, you know how happy I am to help you when I can.”

Yunho:

“Hello to a week off,” Yunho screamed as he came home from work, finding you immediately.

“A week of nothing,” you grinned as his arms snaked around your waist in excitement, barely able to properly contain himself at just the thought.”

He squeezed you tightly as you held onto him too, “there’s so many things that I want to do with you, the beach, shopping, family food…”

“We can do it all,” you chuckled, cutting him off with a kiss before he ended up planning out your whole week.

An apology came from him as he sensed why you were cutting him off, “I just can’t wait to really spend some proper time together.”

“Me too, but let’s not plan too much.”

“I agree, you’re right.”

“We’ve got all week to decide what we want to do together,” you reminded him, “for once we don’t have to stand here and decide straight away what to do.”

His smile grew as you spoke, slowly calming down, “I need to stop running away with myself, I’m just so happy.”

“So am I, we’ve got seven days to do whatever we want to.”

Yeosang:

“They want us to memorise so many lines,” Yeosang huffed, showing off his script to you.

“Let’s go through it together,” you proposed, resting your hand over his softly, “getting yourself worked up isn’t going to help you get these lines memorised.”

His eyes looked across at you softly, “right now I feel like I just don’t have the answer to get all of this, and I don’t think that I’ll find the answer too.”

“I’m right here,” you reminded him, pressing a kiss against his lips before he had the chance to reply to you again.

The moment you pulled away though, Yeosang started again. “I can’t be wasting time when I’ve got to get all of these lines remembered.”

“That’s why I’m here to help you Yeosang.”

“You don’t need to.”

“I want to,” you assured him, taking his script out of his hand, “I don’t want to see you get annoyed and upset about something we can try to fix together.”

His head nodded back across at you, “I can’t even begin to tell you how thankful I am for all of your help every day.”

“You can thank me when you remember these lines Yeosang.”

San:

“What does this even mean?” San vented, throwing the instructions to your new unit into the air.

“Is it really that difficult for you?” You asked him as you picked the instructions up, reading through them briefly, “all you need is a few screws and wood.”

His head shook back across at you, “some people are born to be able to build things, but I think I’ve decided that I’m just not that person at all.”

“You are,” you encouraged, leaning across the mess to press a kiss to his lips and stop him from berating himself more.

As you pulled away, his eyes glared across at you, “I know what you’re doing, that old trick isn’t going to work with me Y/N.”

“It kept you quiet for a few seconds.”

“Not long enough.”

“True,” you agreed, taking him by surprise, “why don’t we try and build this up together? Between us we can’t both be stupid and fail to understand all of this.”

San nodded, making a bit of space for you beside him, “if you can make sense of this, then you’re a definite hero in my eyes Y/N.”

“Come on, we can’t let a stupid bedroom unit conquer us.”

Mingi:

“Don’t walk away from me,” Mingi called out to you as you tried to leave the room for some quiet.

“You’re not listening to me,” you yelled back at him, matching his volume, “I’m just talking to a brick wall with you right now, so what’s the point of being here?”

Mingi’s head shook back across at you, “I am listening to you, I just want to get you to understand how I’m feeling.”

“Then talk to me,” you asked, only as his mouth opened, you cut him off with a kiss to finally get him to shut up.

When you pulled apart, Mingi stared across at you with wide eyes. “How can I talk to you if you just kiss me instead of letting me?”

“That’s how much I want you to talk, none.”

“I don’t get it.”

“All you’ve done is talk to me, when we can’t agree, I think it’s best to just leave it,” you explained, “we’re just going to make things worse if we carry on.”

His shoulders dropped as he realised that you had a point. “I guess we should probably stop trying to argue, right?”

“I think so too, it’s a pointless thing to blow up over anyway.”

Wooyoung:

“They said yes!” Wooyoung screamed, running into the room and twirling you around in the air.

“Steady,” you panicked, holding onto his shoulders to try and steady yourself, “you’re going to drop me if you spin me around any faster than you are right now.”

He placed you carefully down onto the floor, “tour,” was all that he could say to begin with, “they’ve said that you can come on tour and see the world.”

“Stop rambling,” you laughed, sensing that he was going to continue for a while, silencing him before he could.

He chuckled as soon as you pulled away, “I’m sorry, but I’m just so excited about the fact that they’ve said that you can come with us.”

“You’re not messing with me, are you?”

“Of course, not.”

“Really?” You laughed, allowing your smile to grow, “I can’t believe that they said that they would be happy for me to join you guys on tour, I was prepared for no.”

Wooyoung’s arms moved back around you, “isn’t it obvious, I just worked my charms so much they felt obliged to say yes.”

“Definitely, I’m sure it was your charms that convinced them.”

Jongho:

“All this stupid software does is crash,” Jongho sighed, slamming his hands down against his desk.

“Take a moment,” you suggested from the chair beside him with a shake of your head, “I’m not surprised it crashes when you clatter around the place.”

Jongho’s eyes shot across to look over at you, “this programme is supposed to be the best in the world for composing, and it’s anything but.”

“Don’t panic,” you tried to assure him, moving across and cupping his face, coupled with a kiss being pressed to his lips.

As you moved away, Jongho’s eyebrows raised in surprise. “Kissing me won’t stop me from getting annoyed at this stupid thing Y/N.”

“It might help calm you down a bit.”

“I’m just so fed up.”

“I know,” you sympathised, keeping your hands by his face, “but this is unlike you, you don’t normally get so bothered about things, especially like this.”

His head nodded, knowing that you had a point, “I’m just glad that I’ve got you here to calm me down right now and sort me out.”

“If a kiss needs to calm you down and shut you up, I’ll do it.”

---

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princess-prentiss · 2 years ago

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I Bet You Think About Me

Chapter 1 - The Last Time

Pairing: Natasha “Phoenix” Trace/Jake “Hangman” Seresin

A/N: hello and welcome to my newest dive into the lives of Natasha and Jake! I'm planning to have a series of one-shots of the lives across different universes, my asks are open for suggestions, but there is no guarantee of how long it will take me to write each one For those of you reading All Too Well, I am by no means done with it, this is just something that has been in my head pretty much since I started writing that Anyway, for our first chapter, we have an AU of chapter 8 from my ATW universe (TW: major character death)

His heart never left his throat because she never landed back on the flight deck.

He had heard through the comms her shout that they had been hit, Dagger three was going down and there was nothing he could do about it.

He was frozen in his seat, unable to move even when he felt Javy’s hand on his shoulder, standing on the ladder beside his F18. The others were landing, he could understand that much, but there was a plane missing, and to him, it was the one that mattered most.

He had heard Cyclone’s demands that search and rescue not be deployed and it tore him apart, she could still be alive, they could have ejected and be sat somewhere waiting for him to rescue them.

But he couldn’t. He couldn’t even move his hand away from where he held his dog tags in his hand, the reassurance of the cold metal normally brought him some comfort, but now, with the harsh metal of his grandmother’s ring hanging next to them, all he could think about is how he would never get to give it to her.

And oh God, Mia.

He was just getting to a stage with Nat where he thought they might actually be something again, that they could be a proper family with Mia, and now he had to go back to a little girl that didn’t even know he was her father and tell her that her mother would never come back.

He wished it was him that wasn’t going home. He’d give anything for her to be the one sitting on the flight deck, returning to a daughter that had lived six years of her life without him but had a mother who was there for her for everything. He had watched, even in the hospital, the way she just knew what Mia needed, the way she cradled her head and stroked her hair as she hugged her. If it was him not going home she wouldn’t know any different.

He wasn’t aware of anything else until Javy was replaced on the ladder by Maverick, telling him there was nothing else he could do, that he should leave the F18. But he knew that, and that was why he was still sitting there. There was nothing else he could do, what good was moving going to be?

Eventually, someone pulled him out of the F18 and back below deck. He was dragged to the debriefing, zombie-like in state, not really taking anything in, other than that she and Bob had been declared MIA.

He couldn’t face the others after that. Instead, he returned to his room, lying on his bunk staring at the ceiling, only moving to go to the bathroom. At night was the worst, that was when the tears he had been holding back in the daylight managed to trickle their way down his cheeks as he remembered what it felt like to hold her, to wake up next to her. It had been years since he had slept next to her, yet he still cherished the memory of waking with strands of her hair covering his face, inhaling the soft smell of her shampoo as he hugged her tighter to his chest.

They docked in the evening, just before sunset. Halo came up to him just before they disembarked, holding out a white envelope with his name written on it in a script he knew all too well. She said nothing, looking at him with a look of pity mixed with her own grief before she moved away again.

He returned to the base housing he had been assigned before the mission, dumping his duffle bag in the entryway to the apartment before slamming himself onto the mattress. There were so many things he could do, and yet he had no idea what to do. By now, he thought, her parents would have been informed of her status. He wondered what they would have told Mia, he longed to be with the girl, to draw her into his arms and hug her tightly, but, as far as she knew he was only one of her mother’s colleagues. That destroyed him all the more.

He sat up on the bed abruptly, pulling the envelope off his bedside table where he had put it when he first arrived back in his room. He opened it with great care as though it would burst into flames if he handled it with anything other than a feather-light touch. But, as far as he knew, these could be her last words to him.

His name was written at the top of the page, in swirling letters; Jake rather than the Hangman the envelope had been addressed with.

Jake, I want you to know I’m so so sorry. I made a choice for you without even telling you what it was all because I was scared because I thought I was doing the best thing. But the truth is, I know now what an amazing dad you would have been, and will be. Please be there for Mia, she needs someone to be there for her. I told my parents if anything was to happen that I’d want you to be involved with her life and I hope you will be. One day, when she’s a little older, tell her about me, please. Tell her about how we met and instantly hated each other, but then we changed, tell her I hope she has a relationship like that, because, the truth is Jake, I always loved you, and I still do. I know it's too late, and that there’s nothing you can do now, but I hope it means something to you. Don’t stop living your life because I’m not there Jake, I want you to have everything you ever wanted and I just wish I was there to see it. Please let Mia know I love her, and that everything I’ve ever done has been for her.

All my love, Your Nat

He had begun to sob before he even finished the first line. It took him more than an hour to reach the end of the letter, having to stop every other word to try to compose himself enough that his eyes could focus on the letters.

It took him two days to gather himself enough to go to her parent's house. He remembered it from when he had visited it with her all those years ago.

Bringing his fist up to the door he knocked once and waited, returning his hands to his pockets while he waited. He wasn’t really sure what he was doing, other than he wanted to see Mia, he wanted his daughter, the last part of her mother that he had. He knew it was selfish of him to consider her that way; he loved her for who she was, but right now, he needed to be close to her mother.

One of her brothers answered the door, looking at him with confusion.

“Wha..” He started before a voice called out behind him.

“Who is it?” He heard muffled within the house, the voice sounded as broken as he felt.

Her brother couldn’t seem to form any words to reply, this led to the shuffling of her father to join him at the front door.

If he was surprised he didn’t show it. Although it was true, grief really was all-consuming, Jake wouldn’t be surprised if his own face didn’t look like a statue by this point.

“Please,” He said rasping, “I need to see Mia.”

Her father nodded, turning and leading him into the house and up the stairs to his daughter's room.

He left him there, standing in the corridor, opposite what he knew used to be her room.

He opened the door softly, looked to the bed in the middle of the room at the sleeping figure, walking over to stand next to the bed. She was clutching the orange ball of fluff in her sleep, which he now knew was meant to be a phoenix. He leaned his back against the wall, sliding down it until he could rest his arms across his knees, burying his head in them.

How the hell was he meant to do this?

When she awoke, she looked confused to see him but still climbed off the bed and into his arms, so that she was cradled in his lap, his chin resting on her head.

“Mia, I’m your father.”

She didn’t react, only tightened the grip of her hands around his neck.

“Your mommy loved you so much,” He began to

There was no funeral.

She was missing in action, there was nobody to bury. Her parents held a memorial service for her at their house two weeks after she was gone.

He wasn’t coping well.

By the midway point, he had moved to sit on the stairs, away from the chatter about her. He barely noticed someone climbing halfway up the steps to join him, leaning against him, tugging on his arm as she sat next to him.

“Daddy,” She started, “I don’t want to be here anymore.”

He understood completely. Pushing himself to his feet before turning back to pick her up, so that she rested on the side of his hip, he grabbed his keys from the hook beside the door before leaving the building. He would text Nat’s mom later telling them they’d gone out.

They just drove for a while, before he pulled into a car park and got out of his truck, grabbing her hand as they walked over to the edge of the pathway, her gripping onto the railings as they both looked out onto the sea.

It was the last place they had all been together.

Mia got older. He got deployed again and again. They started a routine, she would stay with her grandparents but every leave he would come back and pick her up and they would go to that beach. The one that held the memories of the only time they had all been together, happy.

After her tenth birthday, her dad had told her to talk to Uncle Bradley, but Uncle Bradley wouldn’t look at her the same as before, none of them would. Her grandparents looked at her as though they were scared of her being swept away by the smallest gust of wind, her grandma’s hugs had become almost suffocating. But she accepted them, out of everyone's they were the most similar to her mom’s.

She grew up and moved out to college, which was why he found himself knocking on a tan wood door, waiting awkwardly in the corridor, switching his weight from foot to foot.

Finally, the door opened abruptly, giving way to a green-eyed woman who looked annoyed at first at the disturbance, but then, on seeing who it was, seemed to sag in relief.

She was the spitting image of her mother, despite her eyes, her eyes were the only thing telling him it wasn’t Natasha. The Navy t-shit she was wearing did nothing to stop his hallucinations.

Her hair was a mess, poking out at different angles as though she had just gotten out of bed, he did suppose it was before ten am on a college campus, so he didn’t really know what he expected.

“Happy Birthday Mia.” He said, pulling her into a fierce hug, trying to smooth her hair down with one hand in the way her mother used to.

“Thanks, dad.” She mumbled into his shirt.

She had a mixed relationship with her birthday. Before she turned seven, every birthday was spent with her mother, even when she wasn’t there in person, she always called, her grandma holding out the phone so that she could hear her mother’s comforting words, pretending like she couldn’t hear the guilt in her voice.

Then her mom died a month before her seventh birthday.

She’d never hear the pride in her mother’s voice as she whispered her congratulations while giving her a big hug, tangling her fingers in the tendrils of her hair like how her dad was trying to do for her now.

It wasn’t the same. It never would be.

Now instead of listening to her mom, she got a letter each year. Apart from this one was the last, her dad had told her last year. She didn’t know how to feel about that, on the one hand reading her mother’s neat script every year had only served as a painful reminder to her how much she missed her and how much she’d missed out on with her mom. But then, it also made her hear her mom’s voice in her head, telling her how much she loved her and how proud she was of her.

Her birthdays had turned to torture.

“Mia. Can’t. Breathe.”

She didn’t realise how tightly she had been gripping her dad.

Muttering some apology she pulled back, opening the door far enough for him to follow her into the room as she went to go sit on the edge of her bed, sheets tangled from where she had left them when he knocked on her door.

“I assume you have the last one.” She said glancing up at him.

He looked at her with pity, a look she was more than used to over the years, pulling a white envelope out of his jacket pocket, her name written on the front in the familiar swirl of her mother’s handwriting.

She took the paper from him, turning it over in her hands once before setting it down on her bedside table.

This was their tradition, he would always see her on the morning of her birthday and give her the next envelope he had been safeguarding for her mom, she would store it away until that night when she would read it under the covers pretending that she was six again, hiding from the monsters her mother was reading to her about in her bedtime story.

But the biggest monster was always that she would have to come out from under the covers and go back into a world where she couldn’t pretend her mother was still there.

Her father stood awkwardly in the middle of the room, looking as though he still had more to say.

“There’s something else.” He said, digging back into the pocket of his jacket, and pulling out a small black box.

He moved to sit beside her on the bed, holding the box out for her to take.

“I gave this to your mother on her twenty-first birthday, she told me that she wanted me to give it to you on your twenty-first birthday if anything ever happened to her.”

She opened the box to reveal a golden chain necklace with a single diamond sitting in the middle of the chain. She had a vague recollection of her mother sporting the necklace, smiling at her lovingly. All the memories she had of her mother seemed to be happy. It was like her brain had blocked out any of the bad, and she couldn’t be more grateful.

“Dad.” She said at a loss for words, taking it out of the box and holding it up to further examine it.

Finally deciding on what she should do, she held it out for him, pulling her hair back out of the way for him to fasten it around her neck, enjoying feeling the weight of the stone against her chest.

She tangled her fingers in the chain, playing with it as she turned back to look at him.

“Thank you.”

Her arms wrapped back around his body, and he allowed his eyes to water as he placed his chin on the top of her head, revealing in the feeling of being as close as possible to the only thing left of the woman he once loved.

Things were far from okay, but there was nothing else they could do.

Later that night, Mia let herself cry before she even touched the envelope, when she’d been ten she’d told herself she would stop crying, she was a big girl and big girls didn’t cry. But since she’d left the safety of home the tears had returned. There was something about spending her birthdays away from her childhood bedroom that brought it all back. Her mother had never got to see her college dorm, never got to see her graduate elementary school let alone high school. In her bed at home, she still had memories of her mother reading to her, while here she was a stranger.

Ripping the seal on the envelope before she could change her mind, she pulled out the sheet of paper.

My Mia, Happy Birthday, baby, there are no words to say how proud I am of you. I’m sure whatever you’ve done with your life so far is incredible. This is my last letter to you my Mia, you’re an adult now and I just wish I was there to see it. But, my Mia, I hope you can learn to move on, and live without me. If you’re anything like your father, I know you will have been glorifying these letters, and me, but I want you to know I am far from perfect, you need to embrace who you are without me. I hope your father gave you the necklace; he gave it to me on my twenty-first birthday and I couldn’t have been more surprised, a part of me thought he was going to propose, but then we fell apart and he never got the chance. I hope you have a good relationship with him my Mia, I’m sorry for ever keeping you apart and I won’t go into the reasons why I did it, just know that everything I’ve ever done was for you. I’ll say goodbye now baby. I love you.

All my love Mom

She sobbed silently under the sheets gripping the soft fluff orange fluff of her phoenix, pulling the letter to her chest, wishing that instead, it was her mother that she was hugging.

#hannix #natasha phoenix trace #jake hangman seresin #top gun #top gun maverick

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gallavictorious · 3 years ago

Note

I saw your tags and I think you might need to write that fic of Ian and Mickey recreating their first time when Ian gets a tire iron. 🧐☺️

Okay, so this took me a hot minute, and I did it as a kind of speedwrite so it's rather short and not exactly thought out. I also went off (my own) script a little bit and it got unexpectedly sappy there for a moment... But! Have 1,4k very silly words of Ian and Mickey roleplaying their first proper get together because Mickey gave Ian a tire iron. I hope you enjoy it, dear one – thank you so much for the prompt! I had unexpected fun with it. ❤️

(Oh, and tags in questions are the ones on this post, so all credit to @jenatte for providing the original inspiration.)’

ETA: It’s on AO3 now too.

---

Ow. The fuck?

Reluctantly, Mickey blinked awake. The bright light suggested it was already near noon, but that wasn't what had woken it, that wasn't–

It came again: a hard poke to his back. Not the good kind, either, of Ian pressing his hard-on against Mickey's rear while they were snuggled close, but something cold and sharp. Insistent.

”What the fuck?” Mickey groaned, rolling over on his side and peering up at–

–his husband standing over him with... a fucking tire iron in his hands? Not just any tire iron either, but the one Mickey had gotten him as a gift for their anniversary as a mix of a joke, sentimentality and practicality; it was how they started, sure, and meaningful for it, but also a damn good thing to have, no home was complete without it. He thought that maybe Ian had overlooked the practial aspects, though, in favour of going a little misty-eyed before he started dropping half-assed quips about hard lenghts and Mickey had to roll his eyes and punch his husband in the arm a little bit.

Now Mickey's brow furrowed further as he tried to make sense of the scene. For a brief, terrifying moment, apprehension siezed his gut: was Ian having a manic episode, seeing enemies where there was none? But no; though he feigned a fearsome scowl, there was that glitter in Ian's eyes and a small quirk to his lips that spoke little of mania and everything of being a fucking dork and a tease.

”Give me the gun, Mickey,” he intoned, and Mickey was about to ask again what the hell and what fucking gun and maybe are you feeling okay man because perhaps Mickey didn't have quite as good a read on his husband as he thought he had–

–and then he got it, memory reasserting itself, and he could feel the fucking grin growing on his face quite of its own accord. He'd have felt stupid for not immediately catching on, but give him a fucking break, he'd been sleeping two seconds ago and his days of waking up with a start and ready to fight were slowly and thankfully becoming a thing of the past.

Ian's faux frown broke, as he was unable to contain an answering smile. He seemed inordinately pleased with himself, and with Mickey for getting it. Mickey would tell him he was a fucking idiot, but Ian looked so expectant that Mickey decided to play along instead. No harm in a little weird roleplay to make his husband happy, right?

Besides, it wasn't like Ian standing over him and looking vaguely threatening and very hot didn't do it for Mickey on several levels.

”Okay, fine,” he said, climbing to his feet while doing his very best to appear drowsy and uninterested. It had been instinctive back then, the plan of lulling the irate kid into a false sense of security before pouncing on him and kicking his teeth in for having the fucking gall to march into Mickey's room and demand things.

Mickey made a show of slowly turning towards the nightstand, just as he had all those years ago. He could feel Ian's eyes track his every movement, ready to react to the sneak attack he knew was coming. There'd be no taking him by surprise this time.

His face turned away and unseen, Mickey smiled. Or would it?

He grabbed hold of the bottle of lube on the table and spun around to throw it at Ian's head, took a quick step up and to the side, and as Ian gave a short yelp and involuntary raised his hands to protect his face, Mickey rushed him from the side to push him down on the bed. Ian went with a thud and an oof and Mickey didn't hesitate; he was on his husband in a second, straddling his chest and wrestling the tire iron from him grip.

”What the hell, Mick?” Ian demanded, not bothering to struggle but glaring up at Mickey with wide reproachful eyes. ”This isn't how it went!”

Mickey grinned. ”How it went is I kicked your scrawny ass,” he said smugly. ”Now, how am I gonna do that if you know which way I'm gonna move?”

”I was going to let you win!” Ian protested.

Mickey's eyebrows rose. ”Oh, you were gonna let me, huh?”

”Yeah,” Ian said slowly, eyes narrowing, ”I was going to let you.” And with that he grabbed hold of Mickey's arms and pushed him to the side while using his greater body weight as leverage to flip them around.

”Fucker,” Mickey spat, kicking at Ian's shins. He dropped the tire iron – not like he was actually going to hit Ian with it – to have both his hands free for a renewed assault on his sneaky little shit of a husband, but Ian had already wrapped his his stupidly big hands around Mickey's wrists and was pushing him down into the mattress, grinning triumphantly while Mickey struggled and squirmed beneath him.

”Guess I had a change of heart,” Ian said.

Mickey stilled, biting at his bottom lip as he considered. He was pretty sure he could still take Ian if he really wanted to, mostly on account of him being a ruthless motherfucker with no interest whatsoever in fighting fair. However, that required a level of playing dirty and pulling nasty jabs that went far beyond what he felt comfortable doing to his husband these days.

”Uh-huh, and what's the plan now, genius?” he demanded, opting for snark instead of violence.

Ian didn't answer. The look in his eyes had shifted from triumphant to something thoughtful, and softer.

”Do you think it'd have gone the same way if it'd been me on top of you instead of the other way around back then?” he wondered aloud.

Mickey made a face. It fucking figured that his sap of a husband would turn a promising round of foreplay into a game of sentimental what-if.

”I dunno,” he said, wriggling his hips a little to remind Ian that there were otherstuff they could be doing right now, stuff way more exciting than having a goddamn conversation. ”Does it fucking matter? It didn'thappen like that, and it never would have happened like that either, 'cause back then I didn't give a shit about fucking you up too bad, so I'd bashed your fucking brains out before letting get on top of me.”

He wanted to bite his tongue as soon as he'd said it, but it was too late: Ian's eyes had lit up and his thoughtful look transformed into a smirk. ”Well, I mean,” he drawled, leaning down to put his mouth to Mickey's neck, just for a moment, just a little bit of teeth in the brief touch.

”Fuck off,” Mickey said, but he was laughing. Ian's weight pinning him down was as exciting as it was annoying, as it was grounding.

Ian just hummed. He'd straightened again and was gazing down on Mickey with a look that was so damned fond it made a small blush work its way up Mickey's neck.

”I think we'd have ended up here anyway,” Ian decided. ”Somehow.”

”Oh yeah?”

”Yeah.”

Soft smiles then, as something warm and happy bloomed in Mickey's chest. For a moment, they just looked at each other, eyes resting on the face each of them knew best, loved best.

Ian let go of Mickey's wrist to put his hand on the side of his head, fingers tangling in Mickey's hair as Ian ran a thumb over his husband's cheek. He bent down again, but this time to capture Mickey's lips in a long, lingering kiss.

”I think I was always going to have you,” Ian murmured as they broke apart, forehead pressed against forehead.

A second later he yelped in surprised outrage as Mickey took advantage of his lapse in vigilance to grab hold of his hair and yank his head sharply to the side while pushing up to get Ian off him and halfway down onto the floor. Mickey followed him with a snicker, and off they went again, tousling and laughing and absolutely heedless of any noise they might make.

#gallavich #ficlet #asks #my stuff

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raleighcarrera · 4 years ago

Text

falling

platinum | raleigh carrera x mc (cadence dorian)

a little while ago i posted about the idea of a soulmate au where the first words raleigh & cadence say to each other are tattooed on them their whole lives, and this... is that. (for @platinumweekend ❤️)

tags: @choicesarehard ; @empressazura; @emomoustache ; @natesewell ; @zigtheeortega ; @pixeljazzy ; @brycemaloliver ; @grigori-girl ; @dulceghernandez ; @bitchloveskcbaseball ; @withbeautyandrage

~10.5k words | T

the words appear in looping script on his thirteenth birthday, right on time. they curve along the inside of his bicep, innocently punctuated. what’s your name?

“you got lucky,” one of his older cousins tells him, later, when everyone in his family comes by for cake and to ooh and aah over his new tattoo, “you’ll be able to hide that with a shirt or a jacket easily.”

but raleigh sleeps shirtless every night for the next two years, even when it’s cold, so that the words are the last thing he sees with his head pillowed on his arm before he falls asleep, dreaming of the nameless, faceless person who will one day say them, wondering what their voice might sound like when they do.

ii.

she has a more difficult go of it.

being a thirteen year old girl would be miserable enough without the added pressure of the words that practically feel broadcast across her forehead, most of the time. everyone at school teases her constantly and ruthlessly: say something funny, cadence. go on. tell us a joke!

so it’s difficult not to resent the two words scrawled lazily across her collarbone and the person attached to them, especially in the mornings before school when she’s angrily rearranging her neckline and jewelry in the mirror while the bus idles outside.

very funny. she isn’t, really. she’s plenty of things -- determined and passionate and sensitive, definitely, but... no one’s ever found her particularly funny, before.

and no one seems to understand just how much the expectation of having to be funny, one day, is weighing on her, not even her parents, when she finally works up the courage to squeak out, “but how am i supposed to know what i should say?”

her mom laughs indulgently, like she’s already said something funny. her stomach sinks further.

“oh, sweetheart,” she tells her, “don’t worry, it won’t matter. you just will.”

iii.

people ask him about it. a lot.

it gets difficult to keep it a secret as things change around him, but raleigh’s careful to avoid slip-ups and paparazzi photos and he doesn’t say a word about it in interviews, even when he’s asked directly. he’s never seen without short sleeves on, at the very least, and he doesn’t even tell blair and cameron about it.

he sort of wishes he had, though, because as his life turns upside down and he adapts to a new country with a new set of rules and an industry that makes his head spin most of the time it starts to feel more and more confusing, those three words -- what’s your name?

everywhere he goes, thousands of girls blocking the street scream it at him. so how is it possible that whoever’s waiting to meet him doesn’t already know it?

and what does that mean for how the rest of his life is going to turn out?

what if all of this -- the fame and the money and the notoriety -- is fleeting, and he’s only a few short years from being completely washed up and irrelevant? what if the day he’s meant to meet his person is so far away that he’ll be completely out of the spotlight, by then, with sunset skatepark playing reunion tours and him having spent most of his life alone?

it’s a lot of pressure, for someone who’s already working their way through such a serious adjustment, and most of the time it’s dizzying, thinking about the fact that there’s someone out there who’s supposed to be perfect for him, when everyone he meets seems determined to forget every word they know other than yes, so they can suck up to him as much as possible.

his teenage years fly by in a whirlwind of mistakes and regrets. there’s things he would’ve never dreamed would come his way, like world tours and more money than he can count and so many girls who know everything about him before they even sit down to dinner, but there’s more than that, too.

there’s all the ways the industry weakens his trust until it’s gone, all the people who try to use him for what he can do for them, all the times he stumbles until he finally learns to distance himself by cultivating a persona, by leaning into all the expectations of raleigh carrera and creating something so outlandish it doesn’t hurt as much when disaster follows him around because it’s supposed to.

he watches everything that surrounds him turn fake and plastic and puts his energy only into his music, coasting on the rest. the days are less exciting than when he first joined the band at fifteen; he’s a solo artist, now, and most of the time, he’s just trying to get through.

but chaos continues to follow him and eventually his notoriety is inescapable. his first solo album is self-titled and he somehow manages to get a trademark on the word raleigh, as if the name is now more his than anything that ever belonged to the state of north carolina, and part of him sort of expects the words stamped on his arm to change, once he hits one-hundred million followers on his social channels.

they never do, though, and when he’s alone, and the veneer he’s built up for everyone else fades away, he can’t help but to be fascinated by this person who just wants an answer to the question no one else would ever dare ask him.

iv.

college isn’t exactly the fresh start she was hoping it’d be.

she was a loser in high school and things don’t get much better for her even now that she’s with ‘her people’ at a performing arts university she can barely afford, even with two part-time jobs.

shane is across the country at a proper state school with parties and a social life and lots of friends who aren’t her, and she’s failing her improv class, proving that she isn’t actually very funny at all.

boys continue to not notice her and patrons in bars continue to turn away from her one-woman performance, her old acoustic guitar the only constant in a life that feels utterly, unbelievably pointless, most of the time.

it’s like she’s drifting through the days, putting her time in at college in the hopes that it’ll fortify her for what’s next -- her big break, the discovery that’ll get her out of that shitty small town she’s been trying to escape her entire life. she writes hundreds of songs about how lost she feels and hates every single one, dreaming of a time when things might be different and she doesn’t have to second-guess every single one of her decisions.

she doesn’t have much of a love life and tries not to think about that, either.

the person on the other side of those two words stuck on her collarbone is probably looking for someone self-confident, who knows who they are and is comfortable with that. they’re probably expecting to meet someone who has their life together, who, at the very least, has a plan.

they’re probably not expecting a talentless nobody screwup like her, someone who tries as hard as she can yet never seems to make anything work.

things don’t turn around after graduation, either. sure, she manages to find an apartment in a building that’s nice enough and uses the last of her savings on the deposit and trying to furnish it, but it’s only a few weeks of trying and failing to secure a regular paying gig performing before she’s back at smoothie star again, begging for her old job back.

and there’s nothing that makes her feel more like a failure than working the same shifts she had in high school.

as she hums along to the radio on a random tuesday afternoon when the store is dead and there’s nothing to blend, she wonders what mr.-or-mrs. very funny would think if they walked in and saw her here -- twenty-three years old and flat broke, with a dead-end job and a one-bedroom apartment all she has to show for her very expensive and very useless bachelor’s degree.

that, and a notebook full of half-finished songs about relationships she could only ever dream about and an escape from the miserable small town she lives in that feels farther away with every day that passes.

she can’t imagine they’d be very impressed.

raleigh’s life gets monotonous very quickly. the music takes a backseat to the scandals and for a while there’s a predictable pattern of cause trouble, clean up image, rinse and repeat.

there are girls in between the cycles to help him pass the time. some he likes well enough and some he despises, but for the most part his management gives their recommendations and he agrees and makes awkward conversation for an hour or two over brunch until it’s time to go trash something again.

things get particularly bad after one minor cruise ship hijacking incident.

but in his defense, no one ever told him that breaking into the harbor and joy riding was a first-degree felony, worsened by the fact that he’d just so happened to crash the boat into the pier while he was trying to dock it.

at least he’d been sober.

though a monumental fuck up like this felt sort of inevitable; everyone who knew him probably figured it was only a matter of time before he went too far. how could he not when he was always chasing the next high?

still, the image rehab tour that follows is far from what he’d call enjoyable. he has to cut off all his hair and play nice at industry parties and waste time standing around being seen at charity events he winds up just cutting checks for instead of helping out at.

on top of the miserable community service comes the pr bullshit his team so loves -- dozens of tv appearances back-to-back where he’s herded around all day like cattle, in and out of green rooms with crappy coffee and bad catering.

he has no idea that showing up to be a judge on one in a million is going to change his life. hungover and running late, he barely even makes it to the taping of the semi-finals, slinking inside the concert hall in middle-of-nowhere, usa with a headache and some choice words for whoever thought this was the best way to clean up his image.

fortunately, raleigh manages to make his way inside virtually unnoticed. his phone is buzzing angrily in his pocket -- undoubtedly his manager trying to encourage him to hair and makeup or some other absurdity -- but he ignores it in favor of ducking back behind the line near the auditorium doors, only barely catching the last few words of some catty confrontation between two contestants as he goes.

as one of the girls stomps away, he sees the other’s shoulders slump from behind. “guess i’m not making any friends,” she mutters.

it’s clearly said to no one -- not even to herself, really -- yet for some reason, he can’t stop himself from responding. “where i come from, that’s a good thing.”

the girl’s shoulders straighten, but she still doesn’t turn around. “i’m not trying to succeed at the cost of others.”

raleigh smirks, leaning back against the wall beside his guitar case. “you do realize you’re at a competition show, right?”

“of course, but...” her hair ruffles with what sounds like a huff. she’s still not facing him, staring off at where the other girl she’d been talking to had run away. “that doesn’t mean i’m not rooting for everyone here to share their music with the world.”

“what a sweet sentiment,” raleigh drawls sarcastically, almost feeling a little bad for her and her naivety. this poor girl is going to be eaten alive. “it won’t last.”

her body tenses, her shoulders tightening again. he can almost see smoke start to pour from her ears before she spins suddenly on her heel to face him.

whatever sharp retort had been on the tip of her tongue gets swallowed with a blink as soon as their eyes meet. something like electricity crackles in the space between them, strengthening the invisible pull he’d felt when he first stopped behind her. instead, she only asks, “what’s your name?”

vi.

the man in front of her snorts. “very funny.”

a smile tugs at her lips. “very funny, that’s a weird name.” this is unlike her -- the quick comeback, the flirting. usually being face-to-face with a guy as good looking as the one talking to her now made her want to wither away and die, but something about the stranger standing before her sets her instantly at ease. “so, are you gonna tell me, or not?”

now it’s his turn to blink at her. a hand lifts to rub at his jaw. “huh. you really don’t know who i am, do you?”

cadence’s eyes narrow as she assess him. there is something vaguely familiar about that crooked grin, she’s sure of it.

at the very least, it’s an excuse to stare at him, and she does, moving her eyes slowly over the tattoos poking out over his jacket collar, the line of stubble on his sharp jaw, the glint of mischief in his eyes.

her helpless gaping is interrupted by a sudden shrill scream. “oh. my. god! is that raleigh carrera?!”

everything clicks at once. as a wild group of girls corner him, she realizes where she’s seen that smile before -- on just about every tabloid cover known to man, plastered all over convenience stores and the internet with headlines about his latest bender. in fact, she’s pretty sure he was just in the news for something similar -- crashing a yacht or something else ridiculous like that, something that only someone as rich as raleigh carrera could have accomplished.

then she realizes what he’d said to her, as soon as she’d turned to look him in the eyes. very funny.

her heart stops. all she can do is stare wide-eyed at him as he dispels the girls clamoring for a selfie, snapping back to the present when he waves one large hand in front of her face.

“sorry -- what?”

“i said, what’s your name? it only seems fair, now that you know mine, and all.”

“cadence,” she answers numbly, “i’m -- um, i’m used to your hair being longer.”

“cadence,” raleigh repeats, smiling at her, “so you do know who i am.”

“what do the magazines call you again? r&b’s time bomb? puerto rico’s hottest export? you’re kind of notorious.” she blinks at him, then admits, “i’ve heard your songs.”

“seen the tabloid covers too, eh?” the expression on his face suggests he’s almost proud of them.

this is surreal.

“didn’t you crash a yacht or something?” she asks, brain whirring into overdrive as she tries to process what’s happening. he doesn’t seem to have realized it yet, which gives her a moment to gather her thoughts, something that feels impossible when she can’t push the way he’d scoffed very funny out of her mind.

“or something. insurance paid out a couple million in property damage, but...” raleigh trails off, brow suddenly furrowing. he stares at her silently for a beat too long, then slowly turns a dull red. “hey, what’d you say earlier, again?”

cadence wets her dry lips, trying not to panic. stay calm, she silently coaches herself. raleigh carrera is not your long-awaited soulmate and you are not doing this in line to audition for one in a million. “i said -- what’s your name? and then you said...”

oh god, this is happening. her teeth dig into her bottom lip as she fidgets with the neckline of her top, tugging it to the side so raleigh can see the two words on her collarbone.

“very funny,” he mutters, “oh, jesus fucking christ. you can’t be serious.”

“me?” she demands, “you’re the one who --”

“next up,” calls a voice suddenly, cutting sharply through their argument, “contestant #9,276.”

her blood runs cold as she realizes that’s the number she’s wearing pinned to her shirt. she can feel herself start to sweat; how the fuck is she supposed to perform like this? she wants to throw up. why did this have to happen to her now? this was her shot -- her one fucking chance --

“hey, easy.” there’s suddenly two strong hands on either side of her shoulders, and she startles as raleigh stares at her from up close, closer than he was just a moment ago. “relax, okay? you’re gonna be fine. you’ve got this.”

“but --” she starts, then realizes her mind is racing too quickly to even articulate what she wants to say. she settles for shaking her head, eyes wide and panicked. “i can’t just -- oh my god, i’m going to throw up.”

“here,” raleigh directs, “take my guitar. prince gave it to me as a birthday present.”

prince?! she mouths hysterically to herself, as he flips the latch on his case open and pulls out the instrument. “how is this supposed to help me?”

“just trust me,” he says, giving her a gentle nudge towards the auditorium, “now go.”

she does, stumbling forward with the most expensive piece of equipment she’s ever held in her hands in her life alongside her, drawing in a deep breath as she makes her way onto the stage.

she can do this.

everything else will have to come after.

vii.

the thing is -- she’s talented. exceptionally so.

he can tell she’s a little nervous, but maybe that’s just because he’s used to looking out for that sort of thing; he could probably recognize it more easily than the average person would. it probably has nothing to do with who they are, how he notices the nuances in her body language...

her belt is impressive. her voice is stunning, clear and uniquely melodic. his guitar looks spectacular in her hands, and cadence plays it like she’s been practicing on it her entire life.

he tries his best to look nonchalant, feet kicked up onto the seat in front of him, but when she locks eyes with him from the stage he knows he hasn’t succeeded. raleigh’s breath catches, and he stares back at her, transfixed by the way her dainty hands cradle the neck of the guitar and strum the strings, how her lips purse around the long, emotional high note at the end of the song’s chorus.

she’s really very pretty.

he’d probably be lying to himself if he said it doesn’t make him a little bit jealous and uncomfortable, watching how she and avery fawn over each other when she’s finished. he’s probably a much better suited match for her, clean cut and pristine as he is.

he wonders if she’s disappointed that it’s him -- that it’s now, when she’s clearly on the cusp of something great all on her own.

it’s a lot to think about, and so he dips out of the auditorium before she finishes up, rushing outside with his heart pounding. it’s not until he’s halfway through the crumpled pack of cigarettes in his jacket pocket that raleigh starts to relax even an iota, and of course that’s when the stage door he’d left propped swings open wide and cadence’s sneakers hit the asphalt beside his boots.

“uh, you can’t just leave me with this thing,” she says, apropos of nothing, and as he stares at her he realizes she’s talking about his guitar, which she’s holding in one hand like it’s a dead fish. “this costs more than everything in my apartment combined, i’m sure.”

he shakes his head at her, laughing as his fingers flick ash from the cigarette he’s holding. “no way -- you should keep it. you two looked perfect together.”

she hesitates, looking down at the instrument again. he can see in her eyes that she’s torn; it’s obvious she knows the right thing to do is to refuse a generous gift from a stranger, but she wants to keep it, and already his mind is racing as he considers what else he could give her that would excite her like that -- a private flight, a tour of his penthouse, a million dollars.

“are you sure?” cadence asks, without looking at him, and the hesitancy in her voice makes him realize how unsure she really is. she’s the one who’s wondering if he’s disappointed in her.

he licks his suddenly dry lips and drops what’s left of his cigarette to the ground, finding he doesn’t actually need the rest of it, anymore. “positive.”

viii.

they don’t actually get to spend a lot of time together, while she’s filming. she has to focus and it seems like she’s always busy, somehow -- not that she sees raleigh very often in the first place.

the days are spent rehearsing with avery and cramming in as much mentoring as possible, and when she can pull herself away from fiona’s lessons on image to get home at a reasonable hour she collapses into bed pretty much immediately, out like a light from the whirlwind of the day and hardly even aware enough to dream.

but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t think about him. she does, especially on the rare occasions she manages to catch a glimpse of raleigh walking around in the studio, or on one memorable evening she stays late in the auditorium to bang on the piano keys of the beautiful, enviable baby grand on set and startles to find him leaning in the doorway, watching her play.

it’s all a blur and wildly difficult to process; just when she thinks she has a grip on things she remembers the private moments she’s had with raleigh and her emotions tumble to pieces again as she lets the weight of the implications of what’s going on between them crush her completely.

one moment sticks out on her as being particularly worrisome, insofar as how it bodes for the rest of her life.

it feels like something significant from the moment raleigh offers to help her warm up; they’ve hardly had a moment alone together in days and she still has absolutely no idea how she’s supposed to talk to him or what she should say, but for some reason the conversation flows easily and she hardly has to think about the (no doubt incredibly stupid-sounding) words coming out of her mouth.

“you’re going to kill it,” raleigh says finally, once they’ve worked through all the exercises in his arsenal, “you really don’t need my help.”

never in her wildest dreams did she ever imagine someone like him would say something like that to her. “you think?”

“i know it,” he answers confidently, shrugging his shoulders like it’s that simple. “and you should, too.”

there’s a moment of silence where they just stand there staring at each other, ignoring the restless murmuring of the crowd outside that’s waiting for him to slip into his seat at the judge’s table. she’s effortlessly lost in raleigh’s eyes, so fixated on the intensity of his gaze that she doesn’t realize he’s leaning in closer until it’s too late.

“insurance policy,” he mutters, before he kisses her, hands cupping her face gently.

for a split second, she stands frozen, shocked totally still. then, her brain reboots enough to propel her into motion, and cadence gets with the program enough to wind her arms around raleigh’s waist and pull him closer and kiss him back, until her heart’s lurched up into the throat she’d just been warming up, pounding relentlessly.

they make out until the roar of the crowd is deafening -- until it’s impossible not to acknowledge it any longer.

of course raleigh’s a life-ruiningly good kisser. why wouldn’t he be? why should any of this be easy?

it’s only a few simple touches, but raleigh’s mouth leaves her dizzy and lightheaded when she’s supposed to be concentrating on performing, and, independently of the way she’s blinking at him in stupid shock, cadence already knows she’ll never be able to kiss anyone else ever again without thinking about him.

“i have to get out there,” she gasps between desperate presses of their lips against each other, grasping ineffectively at his clothes while his fingers tug her hair out of shape.

“be late,” he suggests, “it always works for me.”

but she’s not him. she’s not like him -- they have nothing in common. they come from different worlds; they’re two completely opposite people.

and yet every minute with raleigh is like coming up for air after being underwater for years, like the knots of guilt and shame and awkward embarrassment she’s carried around for her entire life without understanding why she has them are slowly starting to undo themselves, unlaced by his careful fingers.

they make it out there. eventually.

before she knows it, confetti’s raining down from the ceiling and falling all over her, and she locks eyes with raleigh from across the room to find his lips pulled into a genuinely affectionate grin -- lips that she’d just kissed for the first time a fucking hour ago and, seriously, what is her life now -- his eyes bright and excited.

things just keep getting weirder and weirder, but the way they’re beaming at each other like idiots in a room full of thousands, broadcast on national television, too, makes her think things might be pretty great, too.

ix.

it sort of takes them a long time to getting around to talking about it -- the soulmate thing.

it’s not that he doesn’t try. he does, but she’s got a lot going on, these days: a big move and a new record deal and days filled with songwriting and nights out being seen. he’s still on his image cleanup tour, while she’s at it, so his fake smile stays fixed on his face throughout another boring week of restaurant openings and charity events and talkshow appearances before he finally gets the chance to spend some time with her again.

they text here and there, but nothing pans out until the stars align and they manage to slip out of the back door of a nightclub unnoticed together after a night of dancing too close for the comfort of her publicist while avery and the others cause a commotion at the front entrance to distract the press.

she goes back to his penthouse with him. he can’t remember the last time he brought a girl back to his apartment just to talk, and especially not one who spent the better part of the evening in a sparkly minidress grinding against him.

but here they are.

“so -- how’s the city treating you?” raleigh asks, pouring them both a drink he doesn’t want from the bar cart in the corner of the room for something to do with his hands.

cadence shrugs from where she’s perched on the edge of his sofa, tugging at the hem of her dress. “good, i guess. it’s honestly all kind of overwhelming.”

“yeah,” he nods, passing her one of the glasses in his hands and taking a seat on the ottoman in front of her, close enough to see her face in perfect clarity but still maintaining a distance that he hopes is respectful. “i know what you mean. when i first came here after joining sunset skatepark everything felt so... huge.”

“totally,” cadence answers quickly, nodding in a way that’s almost aggressive. “i mean, there’s so much pressure to deliver an album right away, but i want it to be perfect, and the studio is so different from, like, writing songs in my room at home, and i... i guess i feel kind of homesick, but -- not for my hometown. i hated that place.” there’s hesitancy in her gaze when she asks, “do you know what i mean?”

“yeah,” raleigh says again stupidly, because the truth is -- he knows exactly what she means. cadence has just articulated something he could never quite put into words better than he’d even thought the sentiments to himself. “it’s like... nostalgia for something you don’t even want.”

“exactly,” she breathes emphatically, and then they’re kissing again, and she’s in his lap on the ottoman and he definitely brought her here to talk, for sure, but is it really so terrible if they get a little sidetracked on the way to their destination?

well -- they wind up making out for hours. so, there’s that.

it’s not part of the plan but it’s a hell of a side quest, memorizing the shape and feel of her with his hands while her lips pull every last bit of breath from his lungs, until he’s lightheaded and dizzy in a way no other girl has ever made him, before. it’s to the point where when he finally finds it within himself to push her away, he’s uncharacteristically nervous -- something that’s never happened to him before, not even on the night he lost his virginity.

“i really did ask you over to talk,” he says, voice hoarse.

cadence licks her lips and then beams at him, eyes sparkling. “i know.” she shuffles delicately back onto the couch, lingering in his lap for only a moment before pulling away entirely. he stuffs his hands under his thighs to stop himself from reaching out for her again. “sorry i haven’t been around more.”

“you don’t have to apologize.” raleigh shakes his head. “i should be apologizing to you, i feel like... i should be the one who’s around, to help you with all of this. or at least -- i want to be. i don’t know if i’ll be any good at it.”

he blinks, surprised by his own honesty. he hadn’t meant to say all of that, but the words came up before he was cognizant of them and now they’re out there, and there’s no taking them back -- especially with the way she’s looking at him, all soft and sweet and happy.

“well, you don’t have to be good at it,” cadence murmurs, reaching out for his wrists and tugging his hands free so she can interlock their fingers effortlessly. they fit together like puzzle pieces. “you just have to be you.”

her budding relationship with one of the biggest names in r&b doesn’t have much time to bud at all before it’s rudely plucked from the plant and stepped on.

she finds herself blinking at fiona in confusion as the words take some time to process. “you want me to do what?”

xi.

raleigh balks at his manager, shaking his head emphatically. “no,” he spits out, “absolutely not.”

xii.

“cadence, it’s not a big deal,” fiona tells her, very nearly rolling her eyes. “everyone does it. you go on a few dates, play up the relationship for some photos, social media eats it up -- boom, you’re a star.”

“i don’t know,” she answers hesitantly, mind drifting back to the photographers that have already been following her around, screaming about avery when she ducks into the car with him. things with raleigh are... new, and complicated, and do they really need to add public scrutiny into the mix as well? “i just don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“it’s a great idea,” fiona sighs, shaking her head. “all our focus groups agree. the label thinks it’s best, what with your single taking so long to put out.” she opens her mouth to protest -- it’s not like she’s dragging her feet on purpose -- but barely has a second to get a word out before fiona continues, “besides, raleigh does this all the time.”

her teeth bite at her bottom lip uncertainly. “he does?”

“of course. chantal clearwater? she was a pictagram model when they met, and now she’s opening shows at paris fashion week. it’s just business.”

it’s not, though. it could never be just anything, for reasons no one else knows about except the two of them, for reasons she’ll never tell. “well... what did raleigh say about it?”

xiii.

“i said no, frank.” he’s annoyed, now, and his manager knows it, raleigh’s arms folded across his chest and his eyes set into a glare. “n. o. no.”

“and i hear you, but is it really the end of the world? she’s exactly what we’re going for, and i know you already get along --”

“which is exactly why i don’t want to do this. so pick someone else. anyone else.” he’s not going to let his label turn her into one of the girls he has to be seen with for fake photos and mutually beneficial positive press.

for so many years, he’s watched people fake feelings and use each other -- willingly participated in the using himself, too, more times than he can count. he never cared about any of it before.

but being with cadence doesn’t feel fake, and he doesn’t ever want it to. and he knows that if he agrees to this, everything he enjoys about spending time with her will disappear in favor of the ugly, plastic decay that’s eaten away at so many of his personal and professional relationships before. organic, genuine time with her will become strolls near celebrity hotspots, angling just right to help the cameras get the perfect shot. he’ll show up to support her at shows because her publicist called him, and their time together will become some manufactured narrative meant to push their labels’ agenda, until six months down the line they don’t even recognize themselves or what might’ve been if they’d done things a different way.

“look, there isn’t anyone else. her team’s already agreed to it, and i’ve got brunch set up for sunday. all you have to do is play nice for two fucking months, raleigh. is that so impossible for you?”

yes. already he feels a deep-seated desire to go somewhere and break something, to tear through the flower beds in central park with his motorcycle and wink at the cameras when they catch up to him.

instead, he storms out of the office he’s in, and into the sunlight, tugging the hood on his jacket up and melting into the crowd on the corner so he can be as anonymous as possible when he picks up his phone and calls cadence.

“hey raleigh,” she chirps as soon as she picks up, sounding far too cheerful for someone who’s likely had an equally as miserable early morning meeting on a friday. “guessing you heard the news?”

“can’t i just call you to say hi?” he grumbles, ducking his head as he strolls through the intersection with the mob of people crowded along fifth ave, turning down the next side street so he’s alone again, with no one following, just like that.

“well, you can,” she teases, and some of the anger he’s carrying around with him fades, dissipating into nothing and evaporating like smoke. “but you’re not.”

“no, i’m not,” he agrees with a sigh, shaking his head. “you sound surprisingly cool with it, though.”

“should i not be?” cadence laughs, but he can detect a thread of nervousness in her tone. “i already want to hang out with you. we have the same friends and work in the same industry. we’re... probably going to go on dates anyway, so... how hard can this be?”

god. she has absolutely no idea. part of him thinks it’d be cruel to burst her bubble, but he should warn her, shouldn’t he?

she sounds so optimistic about it, though. it’s hard to feel anything but hopeful when her voice turns up like that at the end. in the back of his mind, there’s a voice that’s not his suggesting maybe this time, things will be different.

surely he knows better than to think something as ridiculous as that, though, right?

“well, i guess it’ll be interesting, at least,” he muses, slowing his steps by the entrance to the subway.

he’s going to lose his signal just as soon as he heads underground, and he’s not quite ready for that, yet.

xiv.

time with raleigh flies by.

it doesn’t feel like they’re fake-dating -- they do everything she hopes he’d want to do with her anyway, like go out to eat at fancy restaurants and take walks through the park and bounce melodies for songs off of each other, facetiming late at night from their apartments or on the days he visits her and micah in the studio.

he’s by her side for the release of her first single, and her first music video, and through it all, raleigh plays the role of the doting partner perfectly, holding her purse on the red carpet and feeding her paella at a strategically-placed outdoor table and fetching her coffee order when she’s too busy to stop writing for even just five minutes.

in the blink of an eye, it’s time to put out her album -- just like that.

raleigh’s perfectly charming through that process, too. he shows up on time, says all the right things, and keeps a drink in her hand all evening long, so that when she’s finally done making the rounds and can enjoy herself after the entertainment and the networking and the schmoozing she’s giggly and touchy, doing her best to steal him away from the crowd.

“what were your other relationships like?” she asks, half expecting him to brush her off, though he’s always indulged her before. they’ve never really gotten this personal. “fake or... otherwise.”

“they’ve all been fake,” he shrugs, “and i can say with confidence that you’re the best one i’ve ever had.”

“really?” cadence smiles, chin propped up on her hand as she leans over the bar. “be honest. what did you really think, when you realized it was me?”

“what?” he asks, pushing the empty rocks glass in his hands around on the bar top, “you mean this thing?” he gestures at his arm, covered in expensive, custom tom ford, and the tattoo laying innocently beneath it.

“uh huh,” she confirms, “‘cause i was totally like oh shit.”

raleigh laughs, loud and wild, the sound swallowed up by the noise of the party around them. no one nearby is paying them even an ounce of attention, and it’s fun, to be anonymous at her own party, invisible to everyone in the room except for him. “i can imagine. i wouldn’t want to be stuck with me either.”

cadence shakes her head -- that’s not what she’d meant. but before she can protest, he rolls his glass between his palms and thoughtfully continues, “i guess i was a little surprised. it felt like i’d been waiting forever to meet you, so part of me was like, fuck, we’re doing this now? and i never thought it’d be someone so...”

“boring?” she suggests, eyebrows arching when raleigh’s expression immediately twists into one of disagreement, his nose scrunching up with distaste.

“no,” he huffs, “so... good, i guess.” she stares at him as he reaches for one of the waiting tequila shots on the bar, pulling it away from the line he’d set up for the crowd he’d been with before she’d tugged him to the side to talk, leaving the drinks untouched. raleigh knocks the shot back -- no salt, no lime. he’s had twice as many drinks as she has, and she’s definitely feeling them -- she has no idea how he’s even still upright, no worse for wear other than a few slurred words here and there. “but you just are. it’s like every song i’ve ever written was about you, and i just didn’t know it yet.”

the noise of the party fades in favor of the pounding of her heart, loud like a kick drum in her ears. she bites her lip and stares at him, watching as raleigh shakes his head at himself, dazed. “you okay?” she asks quietly, leaning in a little across the bar.

raleigh’s quiet for so long she has to wonder whether or not he actually heard her. just as she clears her throat and opens her mouth to repeat herself even louder, he nods, reaching across the bar and squeezing her hand before dragging her back over to the line of tequila shots waiting for them to enjoy.

the night is a blur after that, and there’s patches of the evening that are fuzzy in her memory the next morning, but she knows she’ll never forget the gentle kiss goodnight raleigh gives her when he helps her stumble into the car back to her apartment at dawn.

xv.

things go really well, until they don’t.

they have a blissful six months together with more fun than he’s ever had with anyone. slowly, he learns every single thing about cadence and returns her openness with honesty of his own -- honesty that feels strange and unfamiliar but weirdly thrilling, in a way, made easier every time one of his stories pulls a laugh or smile from her.

it seems unnatural, having a honeymoon period that goes on for so long. in the entire time they’re dating, he doesn’t destroy a single thing -- doesn’t even want to, which is the weirdest part of it all.

there are some moments that catch him completely off guard. more than a few times, he hardly even recognizes himself, she turns him into such a different person.

he doesn’t hate it, though -- just the opposite, in fact. raleigh realizes he’s really starting to like the carefree, far from jaded person he is when he’s with her, though it only hits him for real when he’s watching her storm away from him on liberty island, eyes fixed on the angry sway of her hips.

he stews on it on the long ride back to his penthouse; the game had, admittedly, been starting to wear on him. but he’d gone along with it because it was supposed to benefit her -- he’d agreed to the stupid public breakup and following the rules and not seeing cadence in public for the foreseeable future because it was what she wanted, and -- frankly, it felt like a stupid fucking decision.

not that it lasts long. he starts texting her just as soon as he’s done washing electralite out of his hair and doesn’t make it more than twenty minutes when they first see each other again at the moda gala before he’s sneaking off with her, ducking under the velvet rope that demarcates the planetarium as ‘off limits’ with her hand tucked neatly in his.

“maybe this is better,” cadence muses between sips of her drink, her eyes on one of the stupid glass exhibits he couldn’t possibly care less about. “now we can just be together -- no pressure. our relationship is ours again.”

their relationship. is that what this is? they’ve spent a lot of time talking about who they are and what they like and don’t like, kissing and touching and holding hands. throughout it all, he’s done his best not to buy into the ‘soulmate’ bullshit too heavily, but over the last few months it’s been hard to deny that there’s a reason he was meant to meet her, that she’s been changing him from the inside out.

“what’s on your mind?” she asks, turning towards him with an open look of genuine curiosity on her face, like she really wants to know.

“it’s nothing,” raleigh answers at first, reflexively, like he has so many times before. no one has ever really wanted to know. but cadence’s eyebrows arch, and she waits, patiently silent, and then the words tumble out of him. “it’s just that -- my whole life, i’ve watched other people use each other. so many people are just interested in the concept of celebrity status. so i played the game. never trusting anyone.”

he shrugs. a hand lifts to rub his jaw, and he looks back to meet her gaze just in time to see the little smile playing at her lips, like she already knows what he’s about to say. “but it’s different, with you. you make me not want to be that person anymore. when i’m with you, it’s the only time i feel anything real.”

“raleigh,” she murmurs, her expression flickering before her face does something that cracks his chest wide open. her eyes go all shiny and sparkly and her cheeks crease with a grin, and the way she laughs is so ridiculously joyful the hand he has stuffed in his pocket curls into a fist to stop him from doing something stupid. “i feel the same way. i just... this whole thing, i know it doesn’t always -- work out, but... with you i really want it to. i’ve never felt this way before about anyone, and i think...”

there’s a pause as her lips purse thoughtfully, and then she says the words that make it impossible for him to do anything but close the distance between them and kiss her over and over again: “i think even without this tattoo it’d be you, anytime, anywhere.”

xvi.

being raleigh carrera’s (real, confirmed, 100%-authentic) girlfriend feels almost too good to be true.

raleigh is... everything she never knew she wanted in a boyfriend, wrapped up into one tall, dark and handsome package, with a loud, goofy laugh and a deep, sexy voice that sends a shiver down her spine whenever his mouth so much as lingers near her ear for too long.

it turns out that, despite their differing status in the industry and her initial assumptions that they came from two completely different worlds, they’re actually on the same page about pretty much everything. she finds that the pressure of the word she’d held in such high regard for so long -- soulmate -- disappears entirely where he’s concerned because being with raleigh is just fun.

there’s motorcycle rides and boat trips and hours up late talking about everything and nothing; facetime calls with his mom and shopping trips where the stores are kept open late for them so they can shop alone, in an empty boutique, like every teen movie she’d ever watched growing up.

there’s late nights in the studio and either of their apartments where they both noodle around on their guitars and improvise half-hearted duets, content to just work in the same orbit as each other for as long as possible.

raleigh’s texting one night on the couch in her living room when she plucks out the melody to who i’ll be on her old acoustic, sitting on the floor in front of the tv.

he looks up before the first verse is over. “what’s that one? it sounds good.”

“oh -- just a song i wrote in college,” cadence hums, already downplaying it as she lifts her shoulder in a shrug. “i got stuck, never finished it. ellis made me sell the progress for some other writer to finish.”

he frowns, pushing up onto his elbow. his phone is tossed carelessly somewhere among the couch cushions. “why?”

“because i was taking too long with the odyssey,” she sighs. “it was kind of my only option. it’s weird, though -- thinking about someone singing something that was so personal to me.”

“play me what you had so far,” he says, and so she does, hesitating for only a second before strumming the chords, singing the lines she had slowly.

when she’s done, she looks up to find that raleigh’s slid to the edge of the couch, elbows on his knees as he leans in as close as he can get with the coffee table in his way. “okay -- that was beautiful. you should finish it.”

she shakes her head, setting her guitar down. “i can’t. they already sold it. and even if i wanted to... i don’t know how it ends.”

raleigh’s legs spread in invitation and she stands to walk around to the couch, slipping into his lap and leaning back against his chest. his hands are tender as he rubs them across her shoulders, sliding up her back before one lifts to brush a lock of hair back behind her ear, his pointer finger pushing her glasses up her nose affectionately. “maybe one day you can write something else with the same theme,” he suggests, and she tries her best to smile even though it feels like a dream lost, somehow -- a ridiculous thought, given that she pretty much has everything she ever wanted, but the way she feels all the same.

“maybe,” she sighs, the kiss he drops to her forehead a bandaid on a wound that’s been doing its best to heal for what feels like her entire life.

xvii.

he’s never brought a date to the vinyls before.

there’s been plenty of after parties he’s stumbled out of with a girl on his arm, sure, but cadence is the first person to sit by his side during the ceremony, and he’s surprised by how much he likes having her next to him.

then again, he’s self aware enough to realize he’d like being pretty much anywhere, with her.

still -- the awards are a lot less boring with her around to kiss and stroke his hair and make snide commentary about the rest of the attendees with, and when she squeezes his hand goodbye to rush backstage and get ready for her performance he misses her instantly.

what happens next makes him endlessly regretful of the fact that he’s not backstage with her.

he rushes around just as soon as he can, pushing his way through security and frantically scrambling technical assistants to find her exactly where he thought he might, between ellis knight and fiona, looking lost with her head in her hands.

she seems equal parts broken and pissed in a way that tugs at his heartstrings and makes him a little bit proud. raleigh shoves through the crowd to get to her and slips an arm around her waist. he’s only caught the tail end of the conversation they’re all having, but he knows enough to know that “you can’t bench her. that’s bull.”

ultimately, though, it doesn’t matter how much they stomp their feet. she’s under contract, their hands are tied, and he walks away seething at the unfairness of it all, this shitty industry that’s turned on her when all she ever wanted to do was make music.

she cries in the car back to her apartment to pack her things. there’s no way he’s letting her go home to iowa or idaho or indiana without him, and he barks at his team over the phone until they agree to move his appearances around so he can make that happen, his free hand clasped tightly in hers until he physically has to let her go so she can unlock her front door with trembling fingers.

cadence tosses clothes haphazardly onto the bed and he silently and precisely moves to folds each piece for her, until she gives up and sinks down onto the edge of the mattress, defeated.

wide eyes filled with tears lock onto his, and he watches her bottom lip wobble before she says, “you really don’t have to do this. come with me, i mean. i know i messed up, and -- you have so much else going on. i don’t expect you to --”

“i’m coming,” he states firmly, setting the sweatpants in his hand down and stepping closer to her, sitting beside cadence on her bed. “what happened tonight was fucked up, cadence -- it shouldn’t have happened at all. i’m not going to let you go through this alone.”

“but --”

“but nothing,” he says, and before the words have even left his mouth she’s falling into his arms with a soft sound of gratitude, mashing her face into his chest as she sniffles.

“thank you,” cadence mumbles, sounding so unsure of herself it makes him wonder if she’s ever had anyone show up for her when it mattered most before, or if that’s yet another thing they unfortunately have in common.

xviii.

raleigh tries his best to cheer her up, but it’s still hard, feeling like she’s let the entire world down. her fans. herself.

there’s something embarrassing about showing raleigh her apartment back home and the person she was before she met him -- all the places she felt most uncertain and where she experienced some her worst self-doubt, the room that still has the smoothie star apron hung up in the closet.

but there’s also something exciting, about being totally off the grid with him. no one knows they’re here and there’s no paparazzi waiting to snap photos of them -- especially given the fact that they don’t leave her building for the first three days she spends moping around while raleigh orders all the takeout he can get his hands on.

it sort of reminds her of when they first met, and there was nothing to do but learn about each other, though now there’s a familiarity to him she relies on, a unique raleigh-ness that feels more like home than this shitty apartment ever did.

still, she struggles, and the weight of the world doesn’t let up until zadie shows up with her fanmail and avery does his best to make her smile with a beach trip and some fancy new toys and a day in the sun with a drink in her hand.

eventually it’s just her and raleigh again, out by the fire after everyone else has gone to bed. her stomach is full of s’mores and her cheeks hurt from smiling for the first time in weeks, and it’s a shock when she realizes she feels content, even after everything that’s happened -- almost as though things will all work out for the better no matter what happens next.

“oh my god,” she gasps suddenly, cutting off what raleigh had been saying as her eyes light up and she hastens to stand. “i’ve gotta -- i need to -- oh my god.”

just like that, she knows how her song ends.

recording it is a process, but raleigh calls in some favors and gets them studio time and agrees to be featured on the song even though she knows he’s still working through a sound change that he feels unsure about.

but it means a lot to her, having him crammed in the booth at her side, singing into the same mic. they sound almost unbelievably good together, too, raleigh’s harmonies on the words that finally resolve that lost feeling she’s been harboring her entire life making something deep within her wriggle up happily, wagging its proverbial tail.

the fact that raleigh remains by her side throughout the entire fight with her label, the long nights of despair agonizing over what her next move is going to be and even the moment where they decide to break into indio, of all places, means more to her than she can ever say. she feels markedly less nervous about the entire thing every time she turns her head to the side and sees him, right there next to her -- right where he’s been this entire time -- smiling encouragingly and squeezing her hand hard in his.

though it’s not until they’re up at the top of the ferris wheel that she realizes how precious what she has really is. it’s not until he looks her dead in the eye and says, with that same soft earnestness he’s awarded her since they first met at the one in a million auditions that feel quite literally like a hundred years ago, “cadence, everything you want is on the other side of fear. and i want you to have everything you want,” that she truly understands that’s what between them is special and rare.

not because of any tattoos, or any preconceived destiny. not because of who they are and their status and the fact that people take pictures of them when they’re out in public together.

but because of this -- all these real moments of genuine connection they’ve been fortunate enough to share since fate threw them into each other’s paths.

“raleigh, i love you.” the words are said easily, not a moment’s hesitation behind them.

just before she crosses over in the cart to kiss him until they’re both breathless, raleigh gifts her the brightest smile he has and says, “i love you, too.”

xix.

the night is a blur from the moment he first takes the stage with his old bandmates to when he finally finds himself alone with cadence in a rundown old motel a few miles out from the festival in the desert.

he can’t recall ever being so happy, so of course he doesn’t remember every agonizing detail of the evening, though he does know he doesn’t feel the need to have a single beer with cadence around, twirling barefoot in the grass and giggling when she leads him up to the room they’ve borrowed.

afterwards, when they’re sitting on the roof together in the blanket they dragged off the bed, he reflects on the wild year they’ve had with her in his arms, fingertips tracing the delicate very funny scrawled across cadence’s collarbone.

he feels... free. completely liberated. like there’s absolutely nothing and no one that can get to him, now, like he’s untouchable, like he doesn’t care about a single thing that happens after today and how perfect things have been.

“i think i’m actually freer than i’ve ever been,” he muses, where his lips are pressed into her hair, “i can take my sound in any direction i want.”

“i’m so happy for you, raleigh,” cadence returns genuinely, tilting her head back so he can see her upside-down smile.

his arms tighten around her. “i’m so excited for what you’re gonna be doing, too. i’m excited for us.”

“yeah,” she sighs, “who knows what’s next, right? now that ellis let me out of my deal...”

he can hear the thread of worry undercutting the words. he shakes his head, hands rubbing up and down her arms. “you can worry about that tomorrow. for tonight, just enjoy the comeback. what you did out there was amazing.”

“what we did,” she corrects, and he blinks up the stars as he realizes she’s right -- they’re a we now. he’s part of a we again, after being on his own for so long.

the phrases bounce around in his head, unfamiliar and foreign. me and my girlfriend, he thinks to himself, cadence and i. we’re going to be late. we’ll be away that weekend. we just started watching that show. we, we, we.

“what we did was amazing,” raleigh amends, the words slow to come out but feeling right all the same. “whatever we do next will be amazing.”

“absolutely,” cadence confirms, with conviction, like it’s something she believes wholeheartedly.

and though he has no idea what to expect or what it might be, a large part of him is inclined to agree with her -- she’s been right about everything else so far.

xx.

one year later, she’s finishing a set in berlin, the last stop on a sprawling european tour that had taken she, avery, micah and raleigh across the continent for dozens of performances to sold-out crowds of thousands screaming her lyrics back to her.

if her contract with overknight had been a dream come true, signing to wilshere records is heaven incarnate. cadence’s trip through the u.k. with her new label is proof enough, and the chance to meet new fans with new stories to share that she could connect with is one she’s taken to with enthusiasm, the experience made all the sweeter by the fact that her favorite people get to be by her side throughout it all.

berlin’s crowd is one of the best, and she fully expects to end the tour on a high note, head banging to the last few notes of ‘knockout’ before raleigh’s planned entrance for the last song of the night, so they can sing the duet that’s closed out every show they’ve had on the tour together.

when he struts out with his guitar, waving and grinning at the crowd, she can’t stop herself from smiling stupidly at him, just like she does every time she sees him join her on stage, every time she realizes that this is their life, that this is something they do every night, now.

though her grin falters when raleigh pauses in front of his microphone and asks, “berlin, do you mind if i talk a little bit before i start the song? no? cool, because i’ve got an important question to ask.”

her eyes widen. cadence’s mouth drops open and doesn’t close throughout the entire speech raleigh gives her, even though thousands of people in the crowd are filming every moment of her gaping like an idiot, snapping close-ups of her shocked face.

the arena practically vibrates with screams when he drops to his knee, popping the box in his hand open so she can see the giant diamond ring nestled inside of it.

“so?” raleigh asks, and cadence can just barely hear him in her in-ears with the way her heart is beating frantically up into her throat, as wild as the crowd’s raging around them and then some. “whaddya say, babe? will you marry me?”

as if the answer could ever be anything but yes. she nods, laughing as she launches herself into his arm for a kiss that’s too grand to be given on stage, though that’s hardly going to stop her -- not tonight, at least. tonight, she’s okay with the whole world watching their every move, just one more time.

“oh, i don’t know if it’s going to fit,” raleigh jokes as the ring slides easily onto her left hand, amping up the theatrics for the fans still watching them avidly, even up in the cheap seats.

cadence rolls her eyes playfully at him. “very funny,” she praises, and the grin he offers her in return is so loving -- so knowing, with the secret that only the two of them share and every weird piece of their history included in it -- that it takes everything she has to shove him away so they can perform instead of dragging him down to the floor to kiss him over and over again.

clumsily, she flubs a few notes of love who i’ll be on her guitar. from across the stage, between the bridge and the chorus, raleigh jeers, “someone hasn’t learned to play with the extra weight on their left hand, yet, i see,” and when she flips him off while belting out the last lines of the verse, his raucous laughter is all the harmony the final few bars of the song needs.

#platinumweekend #platinum #raleigh carrera #raleigh carrera x mc #cadence dorian #raleigh x mc #raleigh x cadence #myfic #long post #well. this sure took me a long time DFJGHDFJHGDFJKGH so i hope you guys like it !! it was kind of a new style for me 😳

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danpuff-ao3 · 3 years ago

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Another NaNoWriMo update: I completed NaNoWriMo! I hit 50k on Friday, 11/19! That's over a week early!

I went rogue on NaNo this year and last year due to the world situation and my anxiety levels. All of the bigger projects I'd like to work on have been put on the back burner, and I just "chaos wrote" in many projects.

Normally I'm a very orderly, neat person. I'm more of a plotter than a pantser. I go into everything with outlines, know exactly where I'm going, and I focus on one project at a time, start to finish. So when I say "chaos" writing I mean "let me write a few hundred words here, and a few hundred there, and oh how about a sentence over here?"

And because I'm such an orderly sorta person, going "rogue" did not sit well with me. And writing all over the place didn't sit well with me, either. I like to do things "the right way" so it's been a struggle to get out of my head and not be so down on myself for not doing things the way I normally like them done.

(Not judging anyone who likes rogue and chaos, I am just a gal with OCD and anxiety whose brain is very particular about how it likes me to work.)

Like: who cares that I went rogue? Who cares that I wrote a bunch of one shots rather than a proper novel-length work? Who cares that I have a document full of 20 projects with a little bit in each? Who cares that I went off script a bit? Who cares that I didn't fully outline everything? Me, obviously. But why?

If anyone of my writer friends were being that hard on themselves, I'd sit down and give them a big ole pep talk, and lots of love and encouragement. And thankfully I do have friends who were able to help get me out of that mindset and who fussed at me for being unkind to myself.

Anyway, I didn't finish one novel-length story. And I don't know that every project I started will be finished. I don't know that everything will see the light of day. But, I did write! I hit that 50k goal. And I did get some projects done. That's a win, right?

I finished my fic for Snarry-Adopt-a-Prompt. I wrote a fic for Rare Pair Fest. I wrote a pretty angsty one shot. And a fluffy, holiday one shot. And the second chapter of smile with sweet surprise. And I at least made progress in other works!

So....I've been battling my own expectations this month. And you know what? I'm proud of myself. I wrote through some pretty rough times and big changes. I wrote through insecurity. I wrote through chaos. I wrote and wrote and I achieved all of my main goals! And I didn't let anything stop me.

To all the writers out there: I hope you're being kind to yourself and taking care of yourself. And if you're doing NaNoWriMo, good luck to you!

To everyone who actually read all this: thank you!

Now, anyone still here, please wish me luck with editing. I really, really hate editing. A lot. (Maybe I'll just keep writing and start editing December 1st, that's a solid plan, right?)

#danpuff writes #writerly woes #nanowrimo

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teknicianwrites · 3 years ago

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So I've gotten a number of lovely prompts that I have ideas percolating for, and the first thing I've finished since deciding to try writing again is a self-indulgent fanfic of someone else's fanfic. In my defense, that fanfic is Accursed Ones by @thethirdamell, which is excellent. Thank you for giving me the ok to play in your sandbox!

Also, thank you @darkloire for looking it over and helping me with phrasing despite having very little context.

A little missing scene set right before 199 begins that's been bouncing around my head since I read it, and the most recent chapter inspired me to actually write it down.

Read on AO3

We Could Have Been (So Good Together)

They'd spent the past two days going over options, but none of them led to a world in which Anders could stay with Amell.

Amell was better at this than he was. He'd picked the time - night, when people would be around, when shouting would draw the most attention; the place - the courtyard, where a proper crowd could gather and Anders could transform and make a quick escape; the false target - Leliana, Amell's friend, who it would make sense for him to defend, and whose continued presence would keep the swordsmen at the Chateau until Anders was long gone.

It felt like the only part Anders had planned was how to leave Amell again.

Servants had brought dinner, and Anders tapped a fork against the plate he placed before Amell. "Venison. Green salad. Potatoes." He poured two glasses and let both clink against the table as he set them down. "Red wine. Water. So you know… options." Justice rumbled his discontent at the first, but all things considered, this hardly seemed the night to push Amell about his coping mechanisms.

"Thank you," Amell said softly, and to Anders' surprise he took the water. Well. There would be plenty of time for him to drink once they were gone.

Anders picked at his own dinner in silence, alternating between watching Amell, and when that became too painful, staring down at his food.

Halfway through his salad Amell spoke. "Do you want to go over what we're going to say?"

…. They probably should have discussed this before now.

"I… no," Anders said, setting down his fork. "This is going to be hard enough. If anyone thinks I'm rehearsed…" It would probably help Amell, but Anders was no actor. The idea that he might falter over scripted words and everyone would see through him was unacceptable. Amell may have been untouchable in Ferelden, but they weren't in Ferelden, they were in a castle in the Free Marches with Templars, and Hawke's threat to see him made Tranquil sat heavy in his gut. "I can't have this come back on you. I can't."

".... Okay. That's fine. I can lead the conversation where it needs to go." Amell gave him a reassuring smile, and his heart ached for it. Amell and the Wardens would be the ones to suffer if the ruse failed, and the damnably perfect, beautiful man was comforting him.

The least he could do was give him a starting point. "Just… talk to me like an Aequitarian, maybe," he offered, thinking of Wynne. "Say things you know will set me off. If I'm genuinely angry maybe they'll believe it's at you."

The brief disdain that flashed across Amell’s face made Anders wonder if he was thinking of Wynne as well. "I can do that."

The meal lapsed back into silence, and Anders nibbled on as much as his nauseous stomach would allow. He ended up scraping most of his venison into Dumat's bowl when Amell set his fork down. He moved to gather Amell's plate to set aside for the servants, and Amell caught his hand.

Amell stood and drew him in, and the kiss that followed was soft and desperate. Anders breathed in copper and the Fade and kissed him back, trying to put all the words he couldn't say into that one single act.

They made love, and for once in his life the phrase felt right. It seemed like they should have each other memorized by now, but they took their time tracing and kissing the other's skin like every inch was new. Anders spent the evening committing to memory every mark, every burn, every scar, filing it away for the future when memory was all he had left of him, and did his best to ignore the treacherous voice of hope that he might one day learn the stories of new ones.

In a kind world time would have slowed for them, expanding seconds into hours until they had a month of goodbyes. But if they knew anything it was that the world was unkind, and midnight was swiftly approaching.

Anders smoothed out Amell's doublet and ran his fingers through his hair, wondering half-hysterically if Orlesians would be more or less inclined to believe the coming performance if they looked like they'd just had sex.

"I'm sorry," he whispered when Amell caught his hand to hold against his cheek.

"Don't be," Amell whispered back, and damn him if the steady devotion in his beautiful eyes didn't make Anders' throat close.

He didn't deserve him. He didn't deserve all the patience and kindness and love he had given him while asking for nothing in return. Amell had given him everything. He had given him a family, and Anders was leaving it. His chest constricted.

"Tell Kieran I'm sorry," he choked. "I told him I'd be there. I told him I'd teach him. I told him I'd stay." Four months and a lifetime ago he'd told Morrigan he wouldn't leave her son. Kieran had been there. Had Kieran heard? Had Kieran been paying attention? He was six. He was six so he had probably ignored what the adults were saying. But he was six, and if six was too young to understand forgetting Satinalia, how would he ever understand being left by the man he'd asked to be his father? "Tell him I'm doing this for him," Anders begged, "and for all the other Kierans who deserve to know their magic is beautiful. So none of them have to go through what we went through." So he didn't have to be frightened of Templars anymore. So no one would ever threaten him, or beat him, or lock him away in the dark and claim it was all for his own good. So that even if one father left him, he never had to fear being torn from the other, or from his mother, or from anyone else he loved. "Tell him I love him. Tell him-"

Amell cut him off with a fierce hug, and it felt like his arms were the only thing holding Anders together. "I'll tell him," he promised, his voice thick with emotion. "I'll tell him his Vati loves him."

Anders choked back a sob. "Amell-"

"I know."

"I'm sorry."

"I know." Amell pulled back and set a hand on his chest, a gentle pull of blood magic slowing his breaking heart. "You have to do this. I am so proud of you for doing this. I love you."

Anders kissed him. He let a pulse of mana infuse the rosewood ring, and tried to pour every ounce of love and admiration and devotion and gratitude into that kiss, and felt the same in return, until both of them were breathless from lack of air or sorrow.

Justice had the strength to pull away. "Your support has meant the world to us," he said, tracing Amell's cheek with his thumb. Amell stilled, watching him and letting him guide their contact as he always did when he was forward. Justice kissed him gently. "We love you."

Amell took a shaky breath and Justice stepped back, putting the distance between them Anders would need in order to walk away. He waited a moment for Amell to regain his composure before ceding control back to Anders.

Maker, he didn't want to do this. He allowed himself one last honest look at the love of his life, then drew on Justice's resolve and turned to the door.

"Well. These nobles are always desperate for gossip. Let's give them a fucking show."

#Accursed Ones #Teknicianfic #Did this chapter need more angst? NOPE #Did I write more anyway? SURE DID #Does Careless Whisper suddenly hurt ever since Vik paired it with this chapter? YEP #Do I now blast it on repeat on the highway when I'm feeling Emotional?#.... listen I don't want to talk about it

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matthiasschoenaertsdaily · 4 years ago

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Matthias Schoenaerts full interview for De Morgen Magazine (original in Flemish, translated into English by @matthiasschoenaertsdaily)

Interview by Els Maes, published on November 28, 2020

Even a global pandemic will not destroy the optimism of actor Matthias Schoenaerts (42). Because he knows from his own experience how much beauty can emerge from the most hopeless situations. "I've had my back against the wall often enough, I'll always find a way out."

A bleak autumn day on a concrete square. There is lukewarm coffee, lukewarm Chimay and rolling tobacco. At dusk we see the silhouettes of fat rats that shoot past our ankles. And yet Matthias Schoenaerts will tell us in a glowing argument that this, here and now, is the very best place to be. That there is so much beauty to discover, he says. Le paradis c'est ici. As long as we want to see it.

"It's strange to say in this unpleasant period, but I've enjoyed the past few months enormously. It's the first time in ten years, since Runskop actually, that I'll be home for a long period of time. This is so beneficial: I am photographing, painting, writing. I can devote time and attention to the very simple things we'd otherwise race past."

"Seriously, look at that," he says, picking a leaf off the ground. "Those colors, that pattern. I can spend hours looking at the pure beauty of the things that surround us."

Above us a pigeon is wreaking havoc between the thinned out foliage. "While you are singing about the wonderful beauty of nature, that animal is going to shit on our heads," I say. "And that too will be a s-p-l-e-n-d-i-d moment," Schoenaerts answers.

Matthias Schoenaerts is Belgium's most successful international film star. But here and now, on a bench in his hometown, he is a technically unemployed actor, an all-round searching artist, but above all: fighter of cynicism. "I refuse to go along with all negativity and fear. The true battle today is cynicism versus courage. And I always choose the latter."

We're on the Oudevaartplaats, the square that everyone knows as the Antwerp Bird Market, and where Schoenaerts' childhood memories are waiting to be picked up. It comes into the conversation just like that: Brando, the cute chow chow that little Matthias got from his mom on this square, when here on the bird market puppies were still sold. "My dogs were my great loves. The home situation was often difficult, and with my dogs I found security. We had three chow chows, those fluffy lion dogs with a blue tongue. Brando was the first, I loved that animal."

"We lived in a small apartment with three dogs, anything but ideal. One day we let them go, to people with a large estate. That was heartbreaking."

There is a beautiful lesson in that, about love and letting go. It would have been selfish to keep your dogs if you could give them a nicer life elsewhere, wouldn't it?

"Absolutely, but I obviously didn't process that departure properly. Brando still appears in my dreams, after all these years. Then he returns home unexpectedly, and am I mad with joy.

"I often dream about my parents too: that reunion is so intensely beautiful and warm. Oh, there you are, finally! Those dreams are true to life, and the awakening is rock-hard."

Is that one of the reasons why you like being here in Antwerp, because here you feel more connected to the people that you loved?

"This is my home, my zero, I can't imagine a place in the world where I would rather live. When my mom was alive, and especially when she got sick, in between filming I tried to be with her as much as possible here in Antwerp. In the meantime I have an apartment here, my first permanent place of my own, but I've hardly been there in recent years. Now I can finally enjoy my home, I find peace, tranquility and inspiration there. I have seen fantastic sunsets on my roof terrace in recent months. So much beauty, and you can just admire it there, every day, for free. As long as you take the time to enjoy it.

"Normally I would have started filming again in April, and left for a hectic ride of at least two years, with projects that would follow each other quickly. I was at my limits, sooner or later I was going to bang my head against the wall. I feel how beneficial it is to slow down for a moment. David Lynch said that: 'Just slow things down and it becomes more beautiful'.

"As an actor you have to work in a big machine, according to a tight schedule. I have now discovered the pleasure of creating things for myself very spontaneously in my own cadence."

Is that work something you ever want to go public with?

"I want to do something with my photography someday, but I'm in no hurry. I'm also writing a film script, I've had an idea for a trilogy for a long time. It's a very personal project, and it takes time for it to crystallize into something very pure and proper. Maybe those films will come within ten years, maybe never.

"The most important thing is to keep busy. You have to look for something, anything, on which you can focus your passion, love and attention. Of course I would like to return to set, and those projects will come back later. But if I can't change anything about a situation, why worry about it?

"From a very young age I learned that there are not many certainties in life, I adapt easily to unexpected circumstances. There is one thing I can't stand, and that is feeling powerless. I never want to be the victim of a situation, I will always think: what can I do myself? Which way can I go? I have often enough stood with my back against the wall, I will always find a way out and take matters into my own hands."

So Schoenaerts decided to use this period to put Zenith - his artist name as a street artist - to hard work. Since the lockdown he has already created nine impressive murals, including one in the courtyard of the Oudenaarde prison, and one at the beginning of this month in the Antwerp Begijnenstraat, on the bare walls that form their furthest horizon for the prisoners. A moving event, he says. Not only by the touching conversations with inmates, and the forty-minute applause with which the prisoners welcomed him. "The mural contains a poem by my father. While I am there painting those beautiful words of my dad on the wall, I suddenly remember that my mom used to give meditation lessons to the prisoners there in the Begijnenstraat. I had completely forgotten about that until I stood there. How beautiful that is. Suddenly I felt my parents very tangible, very close to me."

It's a bit funny: a long time ago you were arrested for graffiti, now they invite you to prison to make a mural.

"I used to tag a lot, but I really don't like the vandalism that sometimes comes with graffiti. Defacing a facade, that's just ridiculous. But trains, bridges, tunnels.... frankly I think that's the max. Soon I'm going to do another oldskool graffiti wall, with some friends, back to the roots. But with permission, yes."

Scary dudes

The problems of the Belgian detention system are well known: outdated infrastructure, overcrowding and a system of pre-trial detention which means that some people are innocently stuck for years. Schoenaerts: "These are human lives that are destroyed by the Belgian state, isn't that scandalous?"

Schoenaerts' engagement started years ago, after meeting Hans Claus, prison director in Oudenaarde, who contacted him when he wanted to organize a screening of Le Fidèle, the film by Michaël R. Roskam starring Schoenaerts. Claus has been fighting for many years for a reform of our detention system, among others with the non-profit organization De Huizen, small-scale centers that are more focused on rehabilitation and reintegration of the detainee. How does Schoenaerts see his role? "Those murals are a kind of lubricant for me, to get attention for this problem. I am not the expert and I am certainly not a politician. This injustice touches me as a human being, and my message is clear: please listen to the people who have been working hard for decades to reform the system from the inside."

In The Mustang, your last feature film to be seen here before the lockdown, you take on the role of a prisoner who learns to tame wild horses and his demons. Has that role changed your vision?

"That rehabilitation program with mustangs really exists, and the chance of recidivism is almost zero percent. I had a conversation in the Begijnenstraat with the minister of Justice Vincent Van Quickenborne (Open Vld, ed.), and he told me that the chance of relapse here is 40 to 50 percent. Isn't that madness?

"That's what fascinates me most of all: what do we do with those detainees while they're stuck? How can we help to break the destructive patterns that put them in prison? Imprisonment is a punishment in itself, but someday we'll send those people back into society, so let's mainly support them in their self-development.

"In preparation for The Mustang, I visited prisons in the U.S., and talked to men who had been detained for 20, 30 years. Heavy guys: Aryan Brotherhood (powerful crime syndicate of neo-Nazis in American prisons, ed.), Mexican gang leaders... real scary dudes. You know what those say to me? That they live in fear every day, but they must not show weakness. Psychological counseling and things like that have their value, but that's often very cerebral. I especially believe in the healing power of art. Imagine that inmates can express all those fucked up emotions through art: I think that there is an enormous potential in this."

I heard you're playing with the idea of giving acting lessons to inmates?

"That's not a concrete plan yet, but I would love it if people from the creative sector would commit themselves to this: musicians, sculptors, dancers. Or writers who help prisoners put their own story into words.

"The cultural sector needs to start sticking its neck out. The sector is lying flat, and that's terrible. But we have to keep moving. We can all do something for the community, without being paid for it. Planting small seeds, doing something good for your fellow man, something beautiful always comes out of it."

Had you been to a prison before The Mustang?

"To visit friends, yes. In Merksplas, Hoogstraten, Hasselt, Dendermonde... We shouldn't talk about that any further. A prison is deep tristesse. Who dares to call that 'a hotel', shame on you."

This summer you painted an impressive mural in Paris in honor of George Floyd, murdered by American officers. And in Ostend last week a new mural was unveiled, with a 'decapitated' Leopold II. Is activism an important part of your street art?

"Graffiti used to be more of a style exercise for me, you want to create things that get noticed within the scene. But gradually I felt like communicating with a wider audience. I like to incorporate a lot of symbolism in my paintings, such as the cracks I photograph all over the world and then magnify them in another place. And the praying hands, a universal image of hope and faith in yourself. Art has the power to speak to our deepest emotions, and that is what binds us to the other. Connectedness, empathy, harmony, solidarity, that's the essence for me."

The corona crisis is one big exercise in empathy and solidarity. Sometimes we seem to lack that.

"I refuse to surrender to cynicism, and I surround myself with positive people who do beautiful things for others. This period would lead us to insights: how do we deal with each other? Do we help each other, or is it every man for himself? A human is such a wonderful creature, but we mess it up so much for ourselves.

"Yeah, I know. Some people who read this will think: this guy is smoking too many joints. (laughs) I don't smoke joints, and I'm not an unworldly idealist. But I will always focus my attention on the good, in spite of everything."

If you always want to see the good in people, are you sometimes disappointed?

"Yes, of course. I'm not a naive brat, I've learned to guard my boundaries. I can't please everyone all the time, and I don't let anyone rush me. I react badly when people put pressure on me because they want things from me. The perception of me that others have of me, I can't control. I don't let myself put out of balance easily anymore."

I saw that on your Instagram Stories you warned about fake profiles on social media, of people pretending to be you. That made you visibly angry.

"Really, that makes me angry. Every day I receive screenshots from people who have been tricked by crooks who approach innocent victims with my name and my pictures. There are stories of fans who have paid thousands of euros because they were promised a meet-and-greet with me. How disgusting is that? One person has transferred 14,000 euros to someone who pretended to be my manager.

"Of course, that raises questions about how gullible some people can be. But I've seen those chat conversations for myself: those criminals are terribly sneaky. They know how to play on the vulnerabilities of their victims in a very cunning way. This is manipulation and swindle of the filthiest kind.

"Really, I get physically unwell when I think about it. How can someone be so mean? If I ever catch these guys, I'm gonna bash their skulls in, I'm not kidding. Sorry."

Or: those crooks get a jail sentence, where you're going to give them acting lessons.

(laughs) "Okay, let it be clear that I think everyone should be punished for their crimes. My commitment to the prison system is not a plea for impunity, and I certainly don't want to romanticize crime.

"But when someone abuses innocent people's trust in such a cunning way, the question is: how did you derail so morally? And above all: how can we initiate a transformation in that person? Surely you can't lock someone up and expect that person to suddenly make better choices years later? First such a person has to take responsibility for his own actions."

Do you have something criminal on your conscience?

"No." (Thinks for a second) "No. Thank God. I couldn't live with that.

"I've probably hurt people in my life, like everybody else. Sometimes we just hurt people because of who we are, or because we can't fulfill what others want from us. But I have never harmed anyone consciously or criminally, no."

As a teenager you sometimes came into contact with the juvenile court, for vandalism. Do you think you could have ended up on the other side of the bars?

"Probably, a life can take strange turns sometimes."

What made you sit here today, and not get on the 'wrong' path?

"Wait... that's a good question. There's the one terrible dramatic event that caused a total turnaround in my life: when my dad went into a coma after a psychosis, and I was told he only had 24 hours left to live.

"I was 21 then, thrown out of school for the umpteenth time. I was doing graffiti and wanted to find my way creatively. But I was messing around, going with friends who... Anyway, there was latent danger, it threatened to go a little bit the wrong way.

"And then I got that phone call: come and say goodbye. Bam. The relationship with my father had been sour for years, we hardly saw each other. Until I stood there at his deathbed in intensive care... I only felt love, a wave of emotions that I had pushed down very deeply. That realization was rock-hard: this was it. My father and I will never get the chance to figure shit out, I thought.

"Long story, the rest is known: after 72 hours my father woke up from a coma against all odds. Like a plant: he could not speak, reacted to nothing or nobody. According to the chief psychiatrist, we had to accept that his condition would never improve. That was without the fighting spirit of my mother and me.

"It's because of that unlikely event that I've changed my whole lifestyle. For eight months, my mother and I went to visit my father every day. We talked to him, but he seemed to look straight through us. For hours we sat with him at the psychiatry department of Stuivenberg, how desperate those first months were also. We continued to fight, taught him to talk, to eat, to walk. A miracle, the doctors called it. Bullshit of course. It was love, dedication and stubbornness. Especially thanks to my mother, the lioness who kept fighting for him. And see how much beauty came out of it. My life then received an entirely different impulse.

"I suddenly think of an anecdote I've never told before. After a while we were allowed to take my father to the cafeteria once in a while, or to the garden. But he was absolutely not allowed to leave the hospital. Fuck it. I hid a bag of clothes for him, secretly dressed him in the toilet and took my father to the city. By bus, because I didn't have a driver's license. I wanted to stimulate his senses, test if any memories would come back. He was fond of Our Lady's Cathedral, so that's where I wanted to take him."

Matthiaske, why am I crying?

He plays it out. The written version here is only a dead script compared to the lived-through performance, right there on that dark square, just around the corner of the Arenbergschouwburg, where Matthias made his stage debut as a 9-year-old boy next to father Julien, as The Little Prince.

Matthias shows how he supported his frail dad, and how they shuffled in small, careful steps towards the cathedral. Dad looking at the ground to be sure not to fall. "I say, 'Dad, look up'. He looks up, and I see the tears rolling down his cheeks. I had never seen my father cry. 'Matthiaske,' he says, 'can you tell me why I'm crying?'

"I had already decided then that I would take my father into my house. Overconfident, yes, at that age, but they have become the most beautiful years of my life. Mom came by every day to help. Suddenly we were a bit of a family again, something we had only been for a short time when I was young."

It was at that time that you decided to become an actor. Why did you decide to become an actor?

"I had always resisted following in my father's footsteps. In my youth I mainly wanted to break away from my father, and seek my own path. I didn't want to have anything to do with him and all those loudmouths around him in the theater world. But most of all I was terrified that compared to the great Julien Schoenaerts I would never be good enough.

"Only now do I understand why I then decided to go to the conservatory. Not to become an actor, but to understand my father. We had so many years together, and now that we had been given a second chance, I wanted to get to know him as well as possible. By acting, maybe I could get closer to him." (pauses)

Sentimental fuss

He banishes the tears. It's one of the many things he has in common with his father, he says: they're both very emotional, but they hate sentimental fuss. "Come on, Matthias: breathe," he commands himself.

"Voilà, see how much beauty can come out of misery. What a chain of beautiful things came out of the fight my mother and I put up in the most hopeless situation. Who knows how differently my life would have turned out?"

"There are so many lessons in that. If we just talked about the rehabilitation of detainees, for example. It takes commitment. Not a workshop of two hours. You have to persevere, even in the event of a setback, with no guarantee of a happy ending. That's why I think it's so important to keep telling that story about my dad. Those are the values I believe in: dedication, stamina, attention, love. You can apply that to everything in life. Love is the fuel."

You often talk about your parents as if you want to keep them alive with your words.

"Because my mom and dad are the people I've loved most. With them I shared the most important moments, built the most beautiful memories. That loss is enormous. Life has been really fucking tough since they've been gone.

"That's what grabs me so much in this period. How many people have died of corona in Belgium?"

According to Google, today, on the day of the interview, the counter stands at almost 14,000 deaths.

"Fourteen thousand! Imagine how many people that has an impact on? How many people have suddenly lost their mother, father, brother, sister, best friend or neighbor? Behind those figures lie tens of thousands of poignant stories, of people who see a loved one torn from their lives. That is a mountain of unresolved grief, and far too little attention is paid to it."

Earlier during our conversation a guy had walked past coughing and maskless. It pissed Schoenaerts off: "And whining about masks or strict measures. Grow some fucking balls. Having to say goodbye to a loved one, that's the worst thing."

"Isn't that what this period teaches us? That our time here is limited? And what really counts in life: sharing moments of beauty with the people you hold most dear. All the rest is wallpaper. Having success, making movies, that's all fun. But the day you lie on your deathbed, you really don't think about the professional successes on your resume. No way."

#matthias schoenaerts #interviews #misc #by us

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dawning-star · 3 years ago

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ii. Aberrant

((Mostly under a cut for length))

“Right now miss, before I can give you the order, I’ll be having you sign for it. Gotta keep track that it got picked up and all here. For business sake. That won’t be a problem, right?”

Same old song, same old dance whenever it came to this seller in particular it seemed. Even if she had been there several times before, the shopkeep this time was a new face to her. One that seemed a bit cold from her side of the counter even if she was a paying customer. Actually, if she had to place the look it was…

“Not a problem in the slightest,�� came the reply, the train of thought of Rin’s trailing off as light eyes turned to the parchment slide across polished wood. Crisp paper and quill being all that kept her from that small pile of books she’d sent for. Gaze trailed slowly over that paper, reading the words to herself to confirm just what it was before reaching for the quill. A tap against the inkwell and her hand would begin to carefully form those first couple letters of her name. A slow pace that showed her unease at writing yet.

...Only to pause at the small huff that came from the man at the other side. That feeling returned with the sound as lavender gaze trailed back upward, quill yet connected to paper as the ink blotted it slightly, uncaring by the xaela in her pause. Somehow she had the feeling that he didn’t expect those books to be for her, going by that demeanor. That judging look.

“Miss, you know your letters might look a fine sight lovelier for you if you used the other one. Be more fitting for a pretty one like yourself.” That earned him a bit of confusion. Yet that only seemed to gain a scoff as he continued. “The hand, girl. Most everyone with some level of class knows to be taught with the other for writing. Proper. Neater. Surely you learned that much if you’re as learned as you’re trying to say you are. Unless those are all gifts. Not that it’d surprise me seeing big ol’ history tomes in a couple of the list. Doesn’t seem like your style even if Lore’to Sabah’s stuff in there might. Always been popular with the younger ladies, that one’s works. Almost like them Limsan pirate pleasure novellas that can be all the rage.”

Canting her head slightly, she’d ignore the nice puddle of ink that had taken up where the 'i' would have been formed in that Eorzean script to glance down. She’d essentially frozen at the start of his explanation and made no quick move to unfreeze. At least it was easier to ignore than the obvious tone he had taken. Nevermind that she had paid a fair bit of gil to get her hands on some of the ‘not her style’ books sent her way at Honore’s recommendation, much like the tomes mentioned.

Yet, the quill in her left hand suggested clearly that she’d never heard such a thing before. Never came up with the owner or the lady who was working the last time she’d stopped by. Even if most others she ever saw did use the right. Plus she had always used it to draw and sketch out landmarks when figuring out locations without issue. It bothered her, though she was doing well enough to keep it off her expression.

“So….it’s wrong? That’s what I’m gathering from this right?” she would ask to clarify, finally lifting the quill from parchment, holding that pen in both hands briefly.

“Go on and try, less you’re trying to prove something by using the other.”

Well that just sounded silly, still, she would give the man a small, quiet look before dipping the quill back in the inkwell. To move on past that dark blot staining the page in a sight far worse than any letter she may pen. She’d humor him, of course. Only to make a point of writing even more slowly in a display that likely put a toddler to shame as the letters held none of the polish she’d originally aimed for. As much as she no longer cared how they looked upon the paper. Well, this sheet of paper, at the least.

As the last character was penned she would set the quill back in its well none too lightly, nearly toppling the vial on pristine wood as she slid the paper across. For a mercy he didn’t seem to critique how messy it was this time even if he seemed rather amused. Condescendingly so. His words were beyond the care of her horn by this point as she collected the parcel and set on her way without so much as a care to whether the shop door slammed behind her or not. She had already written it off as a lost cause as vast as their stock was.

“They arrived,” she’d offer softly once a distance away, raised hand activating the linkpearl. “Yeah, all of the ones you told me to try or suggested the last time. The shop I mentioned was able to get them in, though I’m….not really sure that I plan to use them again. That or maybe I’ll have you grab them for me next time. --Huh? Oh it's... yeah. I'll tell you over tea next week. I can't right now. Your place this time, I think? --Yeah, see you then."

At the last of it, she'd disengage linkpearl from horn to wrap her arms about the parcel, keen to hold it close as a frown settled into her features.

"It won't bother me. It doesn't… Not like he knows the first damned thing about me or how learned I am. And pretend to be.”

--------

Mentions of @houserosaire 's Honore (always), as well as a certain pen name of someone who could very might well be @latikaa-renaz...supposedly.

#FFXIVWrite2021 #ffxiv writing #drabble #{my writing}#this has kept me up late but I wanted to be DONE while it was still in mind #oof though #also this might be under one of her lesser-known facts #given all her trades so far have been ambidextrous in weapon

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365days365movies · 4 years ago

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January 16, 2021: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014)

I am a massive comic book nerd. Not unusual these days, to be fair. But I’m definitely up there, as far as my obsession with Marvel and DC go. And, yeah, I stick mostly to those two houses, and their various imprints.

Why do I bring this up? Well...remember this movie?

Kick-Ass was a pretty big deal when it came out in 2010, as it was a Marvel Comics movie that was completely unrelated to the relatively new Marvel Cinematic Universe. Based of a 2008 comic book written by Mark Millar and drawn by John Romita Jr., the film was directed by Matthew Vaughn, and featured a more realistic take on how real-world superheroes would actually work.

Vaughn and Millar by this point at least, were friends. Around 2012, they’re getting drunk at a pub together, and talking movies. The topic of spy movies come up, and how there hasn’t really been a good, non-parody, fun spy movie, and that there should be. And that was the bulk of their conversation.

Enter Dave Gibbons, a legendary comic book artist, whom you may know from drawing the comic book that was turned into this:

Oh yeah, he’s a big deal. Gibbons and Millar end up getting together to write a fun spy comic book based on this idea. Vaughn, meanwhile, is getting ready to direct X-Men: Days of Future Past, the sequel to X-Men: First Class, which Vaughn directed. That’s a good movie, by the way, even if I have...issues...with the treatment of the X-Men in film. Maybe one day I’ll get into that, we’ll see what happens. Ask me about it if you’re curious.

Anyway, Millar goes to Vaughn with this script, and Vaughan looks at it and realizes that he needs to direct this movie before somebody else makes it. So he leaves Days of Future Past, and he signs on to...

I feel like it’s an obligation, as a comic book dude, to watch this film. I should also read the book, but I didn’t do that with Kick-Ass, so to hell with it! Let’s get this recap started! SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Recap

Starting off with some Money for Nothing, and somewhere in the Middle East, 1997! We go into a stone temple, where some kind of mission is taking place. A surprise grenade causes the loss of one of the agents. The surviving agents are Merlin (Mark Strong), Lancelot AKA James Spencer (Jack Davenport), and Galahad, AKA Harry Hart (Colin Firth).

Hart, feeling guilty over the death of this agent, tells his wife, Michelle (Samantha Womack) and child Eggsy (yes, Eggsy) of his sacrifice, and gives Eggsy a medal.

From there, we jump forward 17 years, to Argentina where...Mark Hamill?

Holy shit, it’s Mark Hamill! Apparently, he’s playing Professor James Arnold, and being held hostage by a group of mysterious men. Just then, he’s rescued by Lancelot, showing up with some classic James Bond-style swagger and asking for a cup of sugar, sardonically.

He kicks the asses of these guys, but is SLICED IN HALF BY A MAN WITH SWORD LEGS WHAT THE FUCK????

I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I was watching the best thing I’ve ever goddamn seen. And as if that weren’t enough, she’s working for Samuel L. “Motherfucker” Jackson, playing Richmond Valentine. I am...I am so pleased.

We go to the Kingsmen headquarters, where Lancelot is being mourned by the Kingmen and their leader MICHAEL CAINE, REALLY, HOLY SHIT

Ahem. Sorry, uh...the star-studded cast has basically caused me to have a minor aneurysm. Caine plays Arthur, the leader of the Kingsmen. Get it? I can dig it, I’m a sucker for a good Arthurian reference. Anyway, now that Lancelot’s dead, it’s time to find a new candidate. Apparently, the man that died 17 years ago was part of an “experiment” by Hart, which Arthur says has failed. Galahad calls Arthur a snob, and says that they need to evolve with the times. \

Speaking of that former candidate, how’s his son doing?

Not stellar, it seems. His mom is dating a very unsavory gentleman, and not really taking good care of her youngest daughter. Eggsy (Taron Egerton), on the other hand, is a carefree delinquent. After engaging in an entertaining backwards car chase with the police (it’s cool), he gets arrested. He refuses to give up his friends, and he instead asks for a phone call.He looks at the medallion around his neck, and remembers that he can use the number of the back to contact someone for help. He uses a specific code phrase, but it appears not to have worked. But then, Eggsy is turned loose with little more than a phone call. That’s when Eggsy meets Hart.

We find out that Eggsy has a high IQ and Olympic-level athletics, but has dropped out of the Marines, and has been arrested for drugs and other illegal activities. After being read out by Hart, Eggsy goes on an anger-filled diatribe about the differences in privilege between the two of them. Although it’s short, it’s a powerful speech.

But that speech is interrupted by the owner of the car that Eggsy stole the previous night, as well as his gang. They’re yearning for a fight with Eggsy, and they threaten Hart. He doesn’t take that well, as he shuts the doors and windoes to the pub. Time to teach a lesson.

youtube

Yup, I’m giving this fight the posted video award. It might be short, but it’s also one of the best and coolest sequences I’ve ever seen in a spy movie. And OH, it’s giving me that gadget shit I was missing from the Bond movies.

After one of the most enjoyable fight sequences I’ve seen in a while, Eggsy’s understandably stunned. So is his stepfather Dean (Geoff Bell), the leader of the gang that Hart beat up in the pub. He’s not happy, and he beats Eggsy in their apartment, and that scene is...WHOOF. Much to their surprise, however, Hart’s left a device on Eggsy’s back. He threatens Dean through the device, and tells Eggsy to meet him at a tailor that he’d mentioned.

Once Eggsy escapes from Dean and the gang via nest parkour tricks, he makes his way to the tailor, where Hart officially brings him into the fold, giving him the opportunity to become a Kingsman. He exposits the history of the agency as a private group of spies, meant to protect the world while not bowing to the bureaucracy that plagues government-affiliated spy institutions.

We get to go to Kingsman Headquarters proper, and yeah...yeah, it’s cool. As compared to the other recruits, Eggsy’s pretty obviously out of place. This, of course, is part of the point, as Hart believes the Kingsmen could use someone with different life experiences and background. That would be the experiment mentioned earlier.

Eggsy’s competitors include Roxy (Sophie Cookson), who appears to actually be polite to him, unlike most of the potentials. They settle in for the night...but not for long. Their quarters fills with water, as the entirety of the Kingsmen head towards the showerheads and toilets for air. While they all succeed, Eggsy is the one who actually gets everyone out, by literally punching the window.

Unfortunately, for one of the candidates...it’s too late. These candidates could die in the hiring process. Rough.

Sadly, Mark Hamill also doesn’t quite make it, as Hart finds him, surprisingly freed from Valentine’s capture. As he’s questioned, Valentine is forced to kill him via Suicide Squad implant, and barely escaped from his men. Valentine and his henchwoman, Gazelle (Sofia Boutella) are trying to figure out who the Kingsmen are, to no avail at the moment.

Back with Merlin, who’s training the Kingsman candidates! They’re all told to get a puppy! Aw. Eggsy chooses J.B. a pug, under the mistaken impression that it’s a bulldog. And I’m not a pug person...but that puppy is cute as shit.

Time marches on, and the Kingsmen continue their training. Eggsy’s colleagues continue to discriminate against him, especially Charlie (Edward Holcroft). Hart, who was knocked out by the explosion, eventually wakes up. Valentine goes around to political leaders and proposes his plan to “save the world,” whatever that’s about to mean. Apparently, that includes giving the King of Sweden a surgical implant of some kind. Huh.

This, of course includes some, uh...conflict with Gazelle.

Awesome.

Eggsy’s in the final 6! As Hart congratulates him over this, we finally get some exposition on Richmond Valentine’s plan. See, that implant is the Suicide Squad bomb that killed Hamill, and Gazelle also has one. Additionally, he’s released a plan to the world that will provide free internet and phone data...forever. Not ominous at all, that.

After a cool skydiving training sequence, only three candidates are left. Hart, meanwhile, poses as a wealthy philanthropist, donating to Valentine’s cause. As a result, he’s treated to an extravagant dinner...of McDonald’s. Yes, it is the best product placement I’ve seen in a while, in case you were wondering. That reveal was hilarious.

Anyway, their conversation turns from talking about climate change studies and concerns, to their opinion of James Bond movies, in a lovely little piece of meta flavor. At this point, they would appear to understand each other’s role in the play, as it were. Forgot to mention, Valentine’s been kidnapping anyone who disagrees with his goals, while also distributing his free internet cards. So, there’s that. But he’s also trying to figure out what exactly the “Kingsmen” are. Speaking of...

Our three remaining Kingsman candidates are assigned a mission to seduce a young dignitary. However, all three of them make a mistake, and allow themselves to get drugged at a party, by someone wanting to know who Hart and Kingsmen are. When Eggsy wakes up, he’s been strapped to train tracks. Uh oh.

Despite an oncoming train, Eggsy doesn’t give the man any formation. Which, of course, was the point. It’s Hart, helping to give the Kingsman candidates a little loyalty test, which both Eggsy and Roxy pass with flying colors. But Charlie...Charlie’s a coward who immediately gives everything up, including Arthur himself.

Eggsy gets to spend 24 hours with Hart, before being thrown headfirst into a mission. Hart explains that being a Kingsman means being a gentleman, which Eggsy isn’t. Hart, of course, plans to fix that.

They head to the tailor, and check out some spy gadgets. And much to their surprise, Valentine is also there, under the guise of getting a suit. Hart takes the opportunity to recommend a hatter, who gives him a top hat with built in listening devices. I love it.

Eggsy, meanwhile, speaks with Arthur at Kingsman HQ. He’s commanded to perform one final test: kill his pug, J.B. Which...yeah, damn, that sucks. He doesn’t do it, understandably. Unfortunately...Roxy does kill her dog. She succeeds...and Eggsy’s kicked out of the Kingsman candidacy. Which feels like a bullshit play, if I’m honest.

Eggsy steals Arthur’s car, then goes back home. As he’s about to confront his stepfather, Hart brings back the car via remote access, then explains to Eggsy that the gun was filled with blanks, and that Eggsy ended up giving up his shot. He also reveals that the first candidate to die...didn’t actually die! It’s been a ruse all along, meant to test the candidates under the strictest of conditions. Which sucks, obviously, because Eggsy’s out of the program.

And at that point, Valentine says something of note, revealing that he plans to go to a hate church in Kentucky to begin his master plan. Hart heads there, and tells Eggsy to stay put.

We get treated to just...just the loveliest of sermons. Disgusting. But then...

...that’s the point, isn’t it?

Because Valentine uses the SIM cards to create a signal that drives the parishioners crazy. Hart’s also in the church, however, and he also starts going crazy. Which leaves the question: what happens when a highly trained spy goes up against untrained civilians, has a bunch of gadgets...and has absolutely no restraint whatsoever?

A MASSACRE, THAT’S WHAT HAPPENS. And most surprisingly, it’s a massacre that we actually SEE. Hart basically kills almost EVERYBODY in the church. I’ll put the video up, but...y’know, be warned here. It ain’t pretty.

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Hart comes to, and realizes exactly what he’s done. He leaves, only to be confronted by Valentine and his men. The Bond metaphor finally comes full-circle, explained directly by Valentine. But instead of explaining his whole plan and devising some complicated way to kill Hart that he’ll inevitably escape from...

He just shoots Hart in the head. Holy shit. And this is while Merlin, Arthur, and yes, Eggsy watch on through Hart’s home feed. Looks like a new Kingsman is needed.

Arthur tells Merlin to assemble the Kingsmen. But Eggsy...Eggsy has other plans. Thinking on Hart’s words about wanting to do something good with his life. He goes to Arthur to talk to him about Hart’s death. Arthur invites him in for brandy. And that’s...when my mind exploded.

HE’S FUCKING IN ON IT?!? Michael Caine, NOOOO! Turns out that Valentine’s convinced Arthur of his true plan: a culling. He believes that the Earth’s temperature because there’s simply too much humanity, like a body trying to kill a virus. And so...he’s going to make the virus exterminate itself. And that argument’s enough to win Caine over.

Turns out that the implant is meant to protect those individuals against a neurological signal emitted by the SIM cards, the same one that went off in the church. Arthur, realizing that Eggsy understands exactly what’s going on, poisons him, then asks if he would like to join them. Eggsy refuses...and Arthur sets off the remote poison to kill him.

But NOPE! EGGSY SWITCHED THE FUCKIN’ GLASSES! I love this movie. Arthur dies, and Eggsy uses the opportunity to dig the implant from his neck. He takes that and Arthur’s phone to Merlin and Lancelot, who realize that they can’t trust anyone at this point. And so, the three of them - yes, the three of them - go to stop Valentine.

And, yeah...I can dig it. OH HOW I CAN DIG it.

Roxy goes up in an experimental vehicle to bring down the satellite, Merlin is flying the plane, and Eggsy...Eggsy’s the one going in disguised as Arthur, in order to infiltrate the mountain lair of Valentine. Here, he and the other beneficiaries wait it out, while the world literally tears itself apart. Now wearing a bespoke suit and playing the role of a gentleman, Eggsy enters the lion’s den.

But as expected, it’s time to hit some snags. Roxy waits juuuuuust a little too long, and one of the balloons in her craft pops. As for Eggsy, he meets an old “friend” of his in the form of Charlie, who’s now working for Valentine.

The missile’s fired just in time, as Charlie’s taken out and Eggsy runs for the plane. AWESOME climax here as Eggsy escapes. I mean it; it is VERY cool. They succeed JUST in time, and the satellite is destroyed. However, Valentine’s still managed to partially start the process, and they can’t do anything about that.

Eggsy’s gotta go BACK in, before Valentine gets another satellite to trigger the signal worldwide. Now armed with Hart’s AWESOME umbrella, he makes his way there under heavy gunshot. They’re also teaming up against Merlin in the plane, so he’s not doing great. And that when Eggsy has the idea...to turn the implants on. ALL of them.

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It’s amazing. Violence in fireworks. So, it’s too bad that it doesn’t stop the signal. It works, and people start to tear each other apart all across the world. But only for was long as Valentine has his hands on the desk. Eggsy manages to stop that by laying down some suppressive fire.

That provokes a response.

..This movie is, for lack of a better term, fucking rad.

Gazelle and Eggsy have an awesome fight, worthy of any James Bond movie, seriously. I really want to give it the video post honor, but I’ve done that too much already. For god’s sake, I literally JUST did that.

Gazelle dies (it’s kinda goofy how she dies, if I’m honest), and Eggsy kills Valentine with her prosthetic leg. It’s over, as the signal ends, and Eggsy even gets the girl. Not Roxy, the Princess of Sweden. Not going into it, but it’s funny.

And that’s Kingsman: The Secret Service! Honestly, I gotta say, that was a rad-as-shit movie, and...

Ooh, a mid-credits scene! Eggsy goes back home, to the pub, where his stepfather and mom are hanging out with the gang. And let’s just say...Dean’s gonna get a little comeuppance. Manners, after all, maketh man.

OK, THAT’S Kingsman: The Secret Service! And that, again, was pretty rad. See you in the Epilogue in a few!

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