#i know i have a tendency to worry about the final product and beyond rather than just enjoying the journey

[vagueiish]

why write something if nobody else is gonna care about it anyway????

i get to experience it myself in my head perfectly. rotate the scene like a cow, yknow? rewind and rewrite on a whim. the only reason i can see to write something down is to share it, but if nobody's gonna care, then it's just a waste of time

[thatscarletflycatcher]

Would you mind elaborating on Don't Worry Darling 👀?

Hi!

I wish I could properly elaborate on that movie, because I have been thinking about it quite a bit, but I still get the sensation that there's some idea about it that is escaping me.

Tumblr mostly focused on the batshit stuff going behind the scenes, and honestly, who wouldn't, and clearly a huge part of the mess the end product is is tied to that.

The things I mentioned in my review of Glass Onion have to do with

DWD feels like a clumsy rehash of The Stepford Wives. Which is an extremely well known novel with two very well known adaptations. But you get this sense that DWD is pretending that TSW doesn't exist. Both Knives Out and Glass Onion treat the works they are referencing (mainly tropes from Agatha Christie) with... referentiality. More "Rich people ;) all shut up together on a trip of pleasure ;) and there's murder ;)" and less "Rich people??? all shut up together on a trip of pleasure???? and there's a murder??? in the mediterranean??? exciting and new!" Even the part that is supposedly new is, apparently, accidental: when Shia Lebouf was on the role of Jack, he was some sort of creepy janitor kidnapping a woman he didn't know. When Harry Styles took on the role, apparently for optics, they went for the route of his being her husband and his misogynistic behavior, benign-y in his concern for her being overworked. Which leads to

The villains in the story: Jake and the boss that is a thinly veiled attack on Jordan Peterson.

(rather 2.1, I really hate the new post editor) I honestly think that there is room for a TSW-adjacent story that addresses the specific subtype of "benign" control-objectification that this movie accidentally stumbles upon; the men in TSW love their wives as an extension of themselves; love them as something that is useful, and so they don't feel a loss at all in turning them into robots. But there's a brand of it that presents itself as being meant for the good of women; a stay at home mom is a woman liberated from the shackles of capitalism, protected from stress and harrassment, liberated from having to make hard decisions because she is subordinated to her husband, finally in her natural environment. It is a view I have seen more and more in Catholic circles, but that feels anthropologically Lutheran in a way. Catholicism has a long history of nuns and sisters making their own way in the world, organizing and ruling themselves, not having biological children, managing businesses (ultimately a monastery that makes food, candles, vestments, drinks, etc, requires being managed with an eye to its continued existence) and professions (as teachers and nurses and such). I digress. I think there's a general tendency to objectification in romantic relationships, that because it isn't sexual in nature, often goes under radar; I remember reading this article about how people, in dating, most often search for a person who can make them happy (that is, someone that fills a checklist of characteristics, like a phone or another product) rather than searching for a person they can be happy with (someone that shares the same basic ideals and life goals. And I think a whole lot of the time the "homestead 1950s nuclear family with a stay at home mom and a bunch of kids" mishmash fantasy is an exaggerated version of that. "I want a wife that will stay at home, I want 12 children, I want... I want... I want... specs for a product and a plan that spins around the self. That¡s interesting to explore! But that's not something DWD does anything with.

(2.2) Then there's the Jordan Peterson villain. I haven't ever really sat down to make my own firm opinion on him. My gut feeling is that he's overrated in both directions. Beyond the caricature portrayal of a guy that is EVIL just because HE HATES WOMEN and ALWAYS SPEAKS IN GIBBERISH... it's a wasted opportunity for talking about cults, why some people create cults and why others fall into cults. The movie attempts to make of Project Victory a cult, but has a terrible understanding of what cults are and how they work (as a side note, I have seen people say that the job Jack gets is inside Project Victory, which tells me some people have a hard time understanding how MLMs work). More often than not, cults are fascist-y, and I don't mean this in ideological terms, because fascism is fundamentally action and not ideology. A fascist movement is first a charismatic leader and a goal, and then an ideology is formed to theoretically support the former. Which usually means that most charismatic leaders of cults are not believers in the cause; the cult is an excuse to gain money, power over others, and/or satisfy the leader's appetites (that's why sexual abuse is so so common in cults). Cults prey on people that are isolated, emotionally starved, and idealistic, people that want to bring change or do good and are willingly to put a lot of volunteer work on it. The cult establishes heavier mechanisms of isolation, control, group aesthetics and a them-vs-us mentality that hinders questioning and raises a barrier for leaving to disillusioned members (public perception of people in cults as bad people that deserve bad things and no help does also greatly contribute to that goal). The big villain of DWD is not realistic that way, but if he were, the movie would have been radically better. Show that the man is in it for the money and the power trip and the sex, and that he is extremely cunning and charismatic and that's how he can get away with it. Have the heroine be able to look through his facade. Built in a redemption arc for Jake, if you want, based on the realization that he's being used. Or not, if you don't want to. You can have a failed attempt at making a resistance (resistances don't work in cults because the structure itself is designed to prevent them from succeeding). Show the difficulties the heroine faces in leaving the cult. Attempt to showcase what kind of people and why would fall for a cult like this one.

Man is an evil evildoer because he's evil and the men that follow him are evil because they are evil and bad can be satisfying if all you want is dehumanize and make a fantasy of dismissing the threat your ideological enemies pose, but it's bad storytelling, and a fundamentally lazy and unthinking storytelling.

[nais-doodles]

THE FINAL PRODUCT AHHHH. This took a lot out of me but I am so proud of how it came together in the end, ahhhh.

Here are the original sketches if you’re curious as to how everyone looked originally.

Obligatory ask for you to click through

And finally, finally, my headcanons below the cut, so ya’ll don’t have to be bogged down with them. Warning, it���s kinda long

Hi, I put off making pancakes to write this

Lucifer

Lucifer owns a private detective agency (Edit: It’s got a name now! Morningstar Detective Agency, courtesy of the lovely @impastaz309), and all the brothers are in one way or another involved in it

The agency works with the police in the more secretive cases, usually ‘important’ people going missing under mysterious circumstances, drug trafficking etc.

Though he’s the head, a lot of the time he’s handling paperwork which helps cover the brothers and his back, especially since some of the stuff they do, and links they have with other people and organisations, could be exploited at their expense.

He’s looking at satan btw lmao

Running a detective agency and also keeping tabs on his brothers is very hard ™ so Lucifer is just, tired, all the time. Please give him a shoulder rub and smooches

Mammon

Usually used as bait, believe it or not, therefore his existence is somewhat of a mystery. He has to keep a low profile.

If you asked someone in the street, unless they were really involved in the agency (which they wouldn’t be), has a high ranking in the police (unlikely), or any of the other organisations the agency associates with (probably not) they wouldn’t know he exists

Mammon is very good at his job, organising meetings with middlemen, smooth talking his way out of situations, getting even the criminals themselves to come and meet him without a mediator

He is only ever used when they agency or police know with absolute certainty that the person they’ll be catching will be arrested without fail - which is of course impossible to know, so it’s always a gamble when they pull Mammon out of the deck

Good luck dating him because this guy can’t really go in public for too long at a time

Leviathan 

He works at a newspaper agency, or at least that’s what they want you to think

In reality the whole reporter business is a front, and Leviathan is an information broker. Or rather, the head of a small group of information brokers.

The city is big, and one person alone isn’t enough to cover everything, but man is his group efficient

Every address change, every telephone call made, every booking of hotel rooms, all of it, he keeps tabs on it all

The information he’s gathered has helped the private detective agency out in a pinch many times, and will continue to do so in the future

“I’m very very busy, so please don’t call me during work, sweetheart. Especially not this particular number, that’s only for emergencies, and even then, it better be life or death, okay? Okay.”

Satan

Works in a bar. Specifically, a bar in a kinda sorta illegal underground fight club. It’s very illegal don’t let anyone fool you

A lot of the more questionable people of the city frequent this bar, and let me tell you, some people cannot keep their mouth shut once they’ve had a few drinks.

Anything Leviathan or Asmodeus can’t catch (don’t worry I’m getting there), is usually picked up by Satan via a blabbermouth who had too much to drink that night.

Satan is also pretty chummy with a lot of the fighters, and has a tendency to be the one patching up the milder injuries after fights

Therefore, he has a lot of favours he can collect, so if Lucifer ever needs some muscle that goes beyond what Beel can provide, Satan in there recommending a few of the more... smarter(?) fighters at the club.

Please don’t scratch his bar, he is a very forgiving bartender, but ruining the mahogany imported from England will have him beating the shit out of you 

Asmodeus

A bit of a celebrity, his rise to fame being both accidental and very useful

Think barbershop quartet, but he does a lot of solo work as well. The other three guys in the barbershop quartet are an absolute blast, and Asmodeus loves them to bits.

Originally, Lucifer was furious. How does he expect to work in the agency if he’s off singing at clubs and attending fancy parties? Then he realised something: Asmodeus can keep tabs on any of the more sketchy celebrities who slip through the net

So off into stardom Asmodeus went, attending lavish parties and singing at packed theatres, collecting dirt, formulating blackmail, getting only the best gossip and pulling favours along the way.

“Jen, hon, did you hear about Carter? Apparently, he’s sleeping with the daughter of the Chief of Police.” 

“Wait a minute... Asmo, isn’t she married?”

“She is most definitely married.” 

“Oh my.”

Beelzebub

Usually seen working with Belphegor, partially because, well, that’s his twin brother and he likes his brother, so why not?

And also because Belphegor always needs backup

Though he isn’t always with Belphegor, really, he’s just sent whenever Lucifer is wary of sending anyone in the agency somewhere on their own.

Think of Beel as a bodyguard of sorts. He is always there to stop things form getting physical if needs be, but he isn’t always enough on his own despite being an absolute powerhouse. So sometimes he’ll go around with someone Satan recommended too

They’re really nice actually, Beel was super surprised, you’d think they’d have no manners? (That’s because Satan gives you the nice ones Beel, thank him once in a while) 

They also all think he’s a marvel of muscle send from the gods so ya know. And they all get him cakes from that bakery he loves, so they’re all good in Beel’s book

Belphegor

You know the whole good cop bad cop routine? Yeah, Belphie is both depending on who you need for that current situation. 

Masterful in the art of manipulation, Lucifer uses him on the more tough to crack people who sit in the interrogation room

He is actually pretty good at shoving the fragmented pieces of a case together, weaving a story that gets the person being interrogated sweating bullets

Even when he is way off, he still manages to worm information out of the subject a lot faster than anyone at the police station. Point, private detective agency.

Like I said, he can be the good cop or the bad cop, though because he isn’t all that intimidating, he’s usually asked to be good cop

But dear lord he is a scary bad cop, and everyone in the police force and their mother knows it

If you got this far wow, hi, thanks! And you may or may not be happy to know I’m planning on another noir piece, this time featuring the undatables and maybe my mcs too idk yet

[duhragonball]

Battle Tendency Liveblog: JJBA Ch. 65-66

This is the start of the “Ultimate Warriors from Ancient Times” arc, but I want to focus on these two chapters because they feature Mark.   I’ve got a lot to say about Mark under the cut, but the short version is that he’s a lousy Nazi and he deserves everything that happens to him.

A large chunk of Chapter 65 is just Caesar hanging out in Joseph and Speedwagon’s hotel room.   They try to play cards, but they’re both cheats.  This wouldn’t bother me at all until Speedwagon points out that he’s been here for eight hours, and never bothered to explain why.   You’d think Joseph would have demanded an answer a long time ago, since he’s not known for patience.  

As it turns out, Caesar’s been waiting for Mark, a buddy of his in the German Army.   Stroheim was in the German Army too, and he told Joseph that the Nazis had discovered three other Pillar Men in Rome.   That’s why he and Speedwagon came here, after all.    Well, Caesar’s an Italian, and Italy and Germany are allies, so Caesar managed to persuade the Germans (through Mark) to let him take a look at the Pillar Men.    So in this chapter, Mark rolls up in a car and drives them over to the site. 

But we already know what happened at the site in Chapter 64.   The Pillar Men have already reawakened, and all the Nazi soldiers stationed there have been slaughtered.   When Mark leads our heroes into the catacombs, they find the remains of the Germans, while Mark bumps into the Pillar Men themselves.  (Note: the above image is not to scale).

The thing is, bumping into the Pillar Men is hazardous to your health.    We saw that vampire grab Santana and large chunks of his body were completely absorbed.   The same thing happens to Mark, only faster, because Wamuu doesn’t even slow down as he walks past him.    He just walks right through Mark and half of his body is gone.  

So when I first watched the JoJo anime, it was right after I watched the Hellsing Ultimate anime, and I got a kick out of seeing two completely different anime takes on vampire lore.   Let’s face it, the Pillar Men are presented as something beyond mere vampires, but they’re basically just super-vampires, not so different from Alucard in Hellsing.    And both make use of the Nazis, except in Hellsing, the Nazis are the villains, while in Battle Tendency, they’re kinda sorta allies.  Stroheim is clearly a bad guy, because he killed his prisoners and tormented Speedwagon, but Mark is presented as a completely sympathetic person.   He’s got a sweetheart back home, Caesar’s the one who introduced them, and he’s planning to get married the next time he goes back to Germany.   And for his very brief appearance in JJBA, he’s completely friendly and helpful to the heroes.   We’re supposed to feel very sorry for him when he gets killed here.  

Part 2 is my favorite, but I think this stands out as it’s biggest flaw.   I get the idea.    Hellsing was dealing with a lot of dark themes, and the protagonists were horrifying in their own right.   So Kouta Hirano used the Nazis as villains to humanize his vampire characters.    By contrast, Hirohiko Araki seems to be using the Nazis to dehumanize the Pillar Men.   They’re so evil that even the Nazis look halfway decent by comparison.   At least the Nazis are human, with human loves and fears and honor.    The Pillar Men kill Mark without even noticing him, and Speedwagon likens this to a human stepping on an ant.     I get what Araki is trying to do here, but it rings hollow.    Fuck Mark, and fuck his Nazi fiance.  The first time we see him, we get a close up of his Iron Cross medal, with the damn swastika in the middle of it.    We’re supposed to buy into the idea that he’s “one of the good Germans”, and it’s 1938, so World War II hasn’t officially started yet, so somehow Mark is supposed to be cool.   But no, I don’t buy it.

Let me go off on a little sidebar and try to explain how we got here.   Battle Tendency was published in 1988.   Back then, Hitler had been dead for decades, and Germany had been partitioned into two countries, East and West Germany.   The Nazis seemed to have been consigned to the dustbin of history, and as time passed, pop culture grew more comfortable using the Nazis as historical villains in stories like this one.    There was a sense that yeah, the Nazis were really bad, but they were gone now, and they would never come back.   I think there was a similar mentality surrounding the Soviet Union after the U.S.S.R. dissolved.    By the 2000′s there were all sorts of internet memes about Nazi stuff and Soviet stuff and it was rationalized as harmless envelope-pushing. 

The problem is, it doesn’t seem so harmless in 2021, when Russia is a autocracy that meddles in U.S. elections, emboldening white nationalists in the process.   The “alt-right” fanatics who marched in Charlottesville in 2017?   The rioters who stormed the Capitol building this past January?   Those assholes probably wouldn’t call themselves Nazis, but neither did the Nazis.   They called themselves “National Socialists”, because they were trying to make their ugly policies sound more legitimate.   The same holds true for “alt-right”, “economic nationalist”, “Qanon”, “truther”, and so on.   They’re just new labels for the same old horseshit.  

I don’t want to judge Battle Tendency too harshly, because it’s the product of a different time, an era when people could at least pretend that Nazism was one of the few problems that we didn’t have to worry about any more.   The same mentality can be found in Hellsing.   The Nazis in Hellsing are definitely villains, but the conceit is that they’re all immortal vampires or werewolves, because that’s the only way the Nazi menace could possibly exist in 1999.    Otherwise, they’d all be dead of old age.   Battle Tendency is set in 1938, so it takes the liberty of presenting sympathetic Nazis, because we already know they’ll be defeated in the end, right?   We might as well see what makes them tick.  

Araki may have thought that using Nazis in a story set in the 1930s would be no different than using Napoleonic French soldiers in a story set in the 1800s.  And in the long run, that might be true, but I don’t think we’re there yet.   In the here and now, it’s aged rather poorly.  

Of course, just because Caesar and Joseph feel bad for Mark doesn’t mean I have to.   And Araki may have been more self-aware than I’m giving him credit for.    Nazi Germany wanted to set itself up as the Master Race, and in this fictional world, the Pillar Men have come to do the same thing, only they’re much, much further ahead of the game.   I think part of the point of Stroheim and Mark was to contrast the Nazis’ supreamcist attitudes with Kars’ ambitions.   For all of Stroheim’s boasting, he’s helpless against Kars’ might.   But at the same time, for all of Kars’ power and brilliance, he’s ultimately chasing the same pipe dream as Hilter and his followers.  

Let’s get back on track.    While the good guys react in horror at what happened to Mark, the Pillar Men just stand around nearby and discuss their situation.   They completely ignore our heroes, just like they ignored Mark.   Kars wants to locate the Red Stone of Aja, because it’s the secret ingredient to the mask he designed that will make them immune to sunlight.   Esidisi doesn’t understand how the stone helps their plan, but he’s totally on board.    But as they head out, Wamuu suddenly attacks Kars, because Kars stepped in his shadow, and apparently Wamuu just lashes out at anyone who does this, friend or foe.   

Wamuu is deeply sorry for this, and begs to be punished, but Kars apologizes instead, because he knows about Wamuu’s whole shadow thing and he feels that he’s the one who made the mistake here.  I really love this exchange, because it defines the Pillar Men so well.    As indifferent as they are to human lives, they respect one another a great deal.   Kars is the leader, but he still treats the other two guys like close associates.    He needs Wamuu’s sharp senses and keen warrior instincts.   Meanwhile, Wamuu and Eisidisi practically worship Kars like a god.   They’ve literally followed him around the world and across thousands of years in pursuit of his vision. 

So yeah, if the goal here was to use Mark’s suffering to make me hate the Pillar Men, it doesn’t work.  The Pillar Men are evil, sure, but they’re pretty cool bad guys.   On the other hand, Mark looks ridiculous here, with Caesar holding and talking to half of his body.   This looks like something out of a Tex Avery cartoon.   

I mean, let’s set aside the whole Nazi thing for a moment.   Why should I feel sorry for Mark?  Because he’s in pain?   He got cut in half!   He should have died instantly!    Because he was going to get married?   We only met this guy one chapter ago!   Because he’s Caesar’s friend?  Well Caesar’s kind of a jerk too.  

Anyway, Mark begs Caesar to kill him and end his suffering, so Caesar uses the Ripple to stop his heart.    Or the half of it that’s still there, I guess.   

Okay, so the whole point of Mark’s death is to really get the good guys fired up to battle the Pillar Men, right?    Okay, Caesar tries to take them on, and he opens with the Bubble Launcher, the same move he talked about earlier.   It didn’t beat Joseph, but Caesar’s Hamon power does hurt Wamuu’s skin, which is more than Joseph managed to do against Santana.  

The Bubble Launcher is supposed to surround the opponent with dozens of soap bubbles charged with Hamon energy.  Wamuu can’t escape without touching them and getting hurt.   But Wamuu just sprouts all these long braids from his head and clothes, and swings them around with superhuman precision to know the bubbles away without hurting himself.  

As it turns out, these Pillar Men are familiar with Hamon.   Santana was surprised to encounter Joseph Joestar’s powers, but Wamuu and the others have fought Ripple users in the past.    And Wamuu’s more intrigued than worried...

Oh, as one final aside, on the car ride to the catacombs, Speedwagon asked Caesar if he tried to use the Ripple to destroy the Pillar Men before they woke up, and Caesar explains that it didn’t work while they were in their dormant state.   Remember, at the very start of this story, Speedwagon called Straizo because he wanted someone to use the Ripple to destroy Santana before he could wake up.   Now we see that even if Straizo had agreed to his request, it wouldn’t have done any good.   Sunlight doesn’t seem to kill the Pillar Men so much as it makes them turn to stone, and the Ripple only hurts them while they’re flesh and blood.   So the only way to kill them seems to be by using Hamon in a direct confrontation, and that’s a tall order...

[maozijun]

Mao Zijun Xing Fan Interview

Removing the “adonis of period-costume dramas” label, and returning to a Republican era drama

Before Killer and Healer (or KillHeal hence), Mao Zijun had not filmed a republican drama in a long time. For almost the past five years, the audience’s impression of him has been his costume dramas, such as Qin Wuyan from The Legend of Chusen, An Qinxu from The Glory of Tang Dynasty, Yin Yiren from The Legend of Haolan, and so on and so forth. Because most of his dramas are costume dramas, as it happens, offers that come to him are the costume dramas.

Thus, when an offer for KillHeal, a TV drama about “drug crackdown” set in Republican China, appeared before Mao Zijun, he accepted it without a second thought. “At the time, I felt that I didn’t want to keep shooting costume dramas.”

If “costume drama” is a tag the audience associates with Mao Zijun’s role and acting, we can also claim that “zen,” “placid,” and “easy-going” are impressions he leaves on most people. Other than for the purpose of promoting the broadcasts of his new dramas, he seldom appears in public. If he “wasn’t at home, [he’d] be hanging out, or watching movies.” To the public, it’s as if he’s been “spirited away.” As a regular whose name ranks on the “skilled actor without due fame” chart, regardless how many times he’s been asked about the matter, his response has always been “I really haven’t paid it much attention.” His response may seem like a pleasantry, but he means it from the bottom of his heart.

Mao Zijun knows that ever since he became an actor, his career has been successful for the most part without any major setbacks, and he’s met many great people along the way. From his first TV drama Beauty's Rival in Palace when he cooperated with Lin Xinru, he stumbled into the entertainment industry and was swept along despite his inexperience and unworldliness. Including Director Yu Zheng who was willing to give him the male lead roles for The Legend of Haolan and The Matriarch. “So I thought I’ve had good luck. I’ve met people who appreciated me and were willing to give me opportunities. I’m very grateful.”

Mao Zijun’s “zen” attitude, however, doesn’t extend to everything he does. When there’s a role he really wants, his “wolf-like ambition” is brought out. When it comes choosing projects, he doesn’t compromise either. “I think everyone has the desire to strive for things they don't have; regardless of where you are in life, you wish to become better, you wish that you can climb higher. It’s a never-ending climb.”

Regardless of whether he’s gained fame and popularity, or remains a fine wine waiting to be discovered, “becoming better” is a creed he lives by and acts upon.

- 01 - Shooting KillHeal was an effortless process

What made Mao Zijun “return” to KillHeal after a long separation from republican dramas was its story and Jiang Yuelou’s personality. Jiang Yuelou is a morally grey character: a police officer and Chief of the Inspection Department. He's made law enforcement and drug crackdown his lifelong war, and it’s an undertaking he’s willing to sacrifice his life for. Although a patient with manic depression (known as bipolar disorder in modern clinical terms)--which results in his irritable, violent, and stubborn personality and tendency to be a lone wolf--he’s upright at his core, and there’s a gentle side to him deep down.

When Mao Zijun saw the script, he knew that this character had a lot of potential and creative room to work with. Precisely because of the great amount of creative room, on top of Jiang Yuelou’s vivid and distinct personality, filming for KillHeal was a relatively easy-going process for Mao Zijun despite the character’s lifelong angst and suffering. The character was rich and human per se, “so there was no need to brood over some things,” and it could be rather realistically portrayed. By the same token, the more one could ease himself into character, the better the final results.

Many actors determine the difficulty of portraying a character by criterion of the character’s degree of complexity, or their own compatibility with the character. In this respect, Mao Zijun is somewhat different: his criterion is whether the character can spontaneously come to life in the mind’s eye. “When you’ve read the entire script and discover that the character is very vivid and lifelike--his motives, intentions, behaviour and course of actions, all of which constitutes his rich psychological wiring--you will be able to portray him with relative ease, and not based on whether he’s similar to you. “Compatibility is only one aspect.”

Even if you were to act a character completely different from yourself, “you can imagine yourself in his shoes--what he would say or do” because he’s such a vivid character. “You can effectively get into character.”

In crafting Jiang Yuelou, Mao Zijun largely relies on following the script, his character changing with the progression of the plot; as a result, Jiang Yuelou’s uncontrollable violence, uncompromising ways, and other destructive habits doesn’t extend beyond the character and affect the actor himself. Unlike other actors whose characters took a mental and physical toll on them, Mao Zijun isn’t a purely immersive actor.

“Filming for a movie may require more personal feelings and emotions, but for a TV series, I think it’s half-and-half. Except for particular emotional scenes, that is.” In KillHeal, for example, the emotion expressed through Jiang Yuelou’s eyes when he’s solving cases, or reaction to receiving news, are all achieved through acting techniques. But for scenes where he’s facing the death of his subordinates, his mother, his adoptive father, his brother, and other loved ones, his reactions and expressions of pain must be nuanced and highly faceted. Even for crying scenes, he must cry in widely differing ways. For these scenes, Mao Zijun must lend his own emotional faculties to the character.

However, he does not believe tears are the only way to express his character’s emotions. When his younger and less inexperienced co-star, Ian Yi, consults him about his worries of being unable to shed tears, Mao Zijun tells him, “Why must you shed tears? Tears do not mean everything. The more dramatic and emotionally heavy a scene is, the more you must relax yourself.”

Filming to Mao Zijun is in fact a creative process where he imagines the character, then completes him. Hence, for every character he has acted, Mao Zijun would forget about the character. In his next drama, he would similarly imagine the character, understand his character, and the cycle continues.

So far, he believes there has yet to be a character that requires a lot from him mentally and psychologically, or even one that took him a long time getting out of. But, he hopes he will encounter such a character; a character that can let him experience more, feel more, and empathize with more.

KillHeal was a project Mao Zijun worked on two years ago. Two years ago, he did everything he could to bring Jiang Yuelou into fruition. Looking back now, there are details that could be further refined or supplemented, but the current KillHeal is still to his satisfaction, from his performance and methods of expression, to the overall product that is his character. “As to whether it has met my expectations… Because the broadcast of KillHeal had been held off for so long, I was worried about if the drama would go out of date when it finally came out. But there haven't been such problems so there’s nothing else I’m unsatisfied with.”

- 02 - I’ve become increasingly sentimental

While Mao Zijun may not be a purely immersive actor, he is not a wholly rationalistic one either. It’s in his analysis of his characters and response after completing a character that is rational. This rationality is present in his logic, or his healing process after getting out of character, but not acting itself.

Rationality is perhaps a result of Mao Zijun’s own experiences and personality. He had no formal training in acting. He had good grades in high school, perhaps due to parental pressure and his own belief that good grades made life somewhat easier. After graduating from high school, Mao Zijun successfully got into Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics and majored in Auditing.

“Why had I chosen auditing? At that time, I thought auditing had good prospects. It wasn’t a complicated job either--I took math and the sciences in high school, so auditing isn’t hard.” After getting into university, his parents weren’t as strict as they were in high school, so he had the opportunity to “set himself free” and explore new options. Just like that, he started taking jobs for advertisements, and then acting.

“Beauty's Rival in Palace was especially looking for people to fill in roles at the time. Liu Che was an important character despite not having a lot of scenes, and they thought my appearance fit the role.” Mao Zijun laughed lightly, “Also because of my looks that I started acting.”

The profession of acting provided him with many new experiences, because every character was new and unlike the mechanical motions he had to go through everyday. “This is also the reason why I will persist on this path.”

As someone who changed career paths from the sciences to acting, Mao Zijun has never second-guessed his decisions. He thought of himself as lucky, and his path a smooth one. Many of his friends around him have changed their career paths because of setbacks or other reasons, but he hasn’t. His parents have given him understanding and support. “My parents would express their worries, but they would not try and make a decision for me. Every big decision I've made is my own choice.”

Mao Zijun is a Capricorn: steadiness and rationality are a big part of it. But because he’s been an actor for so long, he’s in fact becoming more and more sentimental. When he first started out in the industry, he would care about others’ views and opinions about him. But with time, they gradually ceased to bother him. This is one of the very few things that have changed about him since his debut.

As an actor with no formal training, but has still received praise and acknowledgement for his acting skills, he does not attribute it to natural talent. Instead, he attributes it to his own capacity for self-excavation. “I think as an actor, you are mining yourself (your talents and skills). For example, if you meet other good actors, good characters, you will be driven to tap into your natural talents. For many actors, rather saying they don’t have talent, they simply haven’t been given the chance to discover their potential.”

In Mao Zijun’s opinion, every actor has talent, it is only a matter of chance and whether they can encounter a great character.

- 03 - Try and lose the “let it be” attitude

Mao Zijun has been in the industry for more than ten years. Ten years’ time is enough to change the state of the entertainment industry and the actors in it. As a post-85 liner interacting with post-90s and -95s actors, he’s picked up a hobby of collecting tarot cards, and has been playing video games like Super Mario and Contra that came with the gaming console gifted to him by his fans.

Newcomers in the industry would abide to the instructions of senior artists and the director. If they met difficulties or discomfort in the process of the shoot, they could only learn to deal with it themselves. But the market has changed, with new genres, subject matters, and the actors, too, are young. These young actors can willfully express themselves and vent, unlike the older generation of actors who learned to put up with things.

These changes cannot be predicted. Just like how it happened in a few years’ time, when an actor may no longer have a large audience base like before--an audience who sits in front of the TV just to catch the airtime of a TV series. Mao Zijun, too, is no longer the unworldly and inexperienced newcomer he was.

If he had to draw a demarcation, he says it’s the year 2016. “Before 2016, although I was an actor by profession and had thought I took my job seriously, looking back now, I’d just been in a status quo of “passing time.” Life had been smooth for Mao Zijun: high school, university, getting a job. He hasn’t met any real obstacles. The efforts and hard work he thought he had been putting into his work were tantamount to what he could easily accomplish in his best and most favourable circumstances.

He strongly agrees with the view that actors need to experience pain and setbacks. But he thinks that’s only a part of it. An actor can experience some things, but he is not able to experience everything. To him, some experiences can be gained through reading novels. “The stories, including the thoughts and behaviours of characters, are enriching and detailed. If you’re not able to personally experience some things, you can experience them via other methods.”

Mao Zijun is a very carefree person. He takes on drama offers when he feels like it, and rejects it when he doesn’t. He’s content with hiding himself away from the public eye to take time off for himself. But now, even he doubts whether the “let himself be” attitude is appropriate. “I noticed that there was a gap, like the period of time after The Legend of Haolan finished airing to the airing of KillHeal now. During these two years, you had no other dramas on-air. Your fans want to see your new projects and content, but you couldn’t give them anything, yet they would still give you a lot of support. It would make you question, shouldn’t I be filming more projects for them?”

After questioning himself, Mao Zijun started taking on more projects. Even during the pandemic, he filmed a movie (no news yet), acted as a cameo in The Journey of Flower as the character Sha Qianmo, and filmed for The Matriarch. “Since my fans want to see me so badly, I’ll just have to act in more projects, I thought.”

In The Matriarch, he plays the role of Wei Liang’gong, a very kind, “moonlight” (unattainable) character--a character with all the wonderful traits and virtues of a person--much like the male version of Empress Fuca Rongyin from Story of Yanxi Palace (2018). “This costume drama depicts a very realistic portrayal of life during the period. Acting in this drama was more of a process of experiencing and feeling, using an everyday-life way of performing was quite nice.”

Mao Zijun doesn’t really care whether he’s famous or popular. Even to this day, other actors from the casts he’s worked with would offer him new projects. Speaking from this point, he thinks he’s lucky enough as it is. To him, a TV drama actor, a bit of fame and a lot of fame doesn’t hold much of a difference. In the long term, “fame” is only a matter of degree. “Unless you win an award--a prestigious film award, whether it be movies or TV films--how much fame is but a matter of quality.” What he must do now, and spare no effort, is to give himself more opportunities.

In retrospect, Mao Zijun has gotten the roles he wanted, and there’s really no regrets. What he desires perhaps lies in the future. Fortunately, there’s just enough time.

Writer: 77

WeChat ID: LJLX2013

Original Post

[stuffedeggplants]

hullo pls can you tell me about your clone ocs?? any and all of them would be just lovely :D

Lieutenant Six! He’s a supply officer in Coruscant Guard Aviation Support Squadron 66. (They handle logistics and are also an OC squadron! So they don’t have pilots but deal with maintenance, parts, ordnance, etc..) Conveniently he’s CT-60-3102 which also adds up to six- twice. He likes making the kind of jokes that are usually way too obvious for most people to actually make, indulging in clone humor, and has a very optimistic personality. He’s creative with language (and chewing people out lol), but does not excel at lateral thinking and is routinely defeated by bureaucracy and his inability to think outside the box, (but that’s what he has friends for.) Very nice guy, will absolutely go out of his way to help you, but struggles with coming up with creative solutions on his own.

Trooper Eyes-up! He’s on the younger side and also in the Coruscant Guard where he works at the detention center. He got his nickname in very unfortunate and embarrassing circumstances wherein commanders Fox and Thorn caught him doing something he absolutely should not have been doing and told him to bring his “eyes up here, shiny!” So they gave him his name which he’ll never live down. He’s curious, enjoys reading, and is prone to pushing boundaries when he shouldn’t. But he’s also honest and owns up to his screw-ups and is kind of resigned to routinely getting shit for the nonsense he gets himself into, but people love him for it because the fallout is amusing. He was unfairly blamed for bringing granite slugs into one of the barracks (which then proceeded to eat the duracrete walls and cause a problem that only flame troopers could ultimately fix.) He’s good at reading people emotionally but his risk vs reward calibration is a little off. In worlds where Order 66 happens, Eyes-up never participates though the rest of his unit does- this is because his latest screw-up put him on SUFR duty (”sweeping up the fucking rain”), Fox telling him to stay outside in the rain and keep sweeping until it was completely dry. Well the ground was still wet when Order 66 was activated, and Eyes-up’s visceral fear of upsetting the commanding officer of the entire Coruscant Guard overrode his in-built compliance with Order 66, so he stayed and swept up the rain while his brothers went on to worse and darker things. :(

Corporal Corr: the Coruscant Guard Corpsman who ‘mysteriously’ has not managed to promote to sergeant (and likely never will....👀) He works under Thorn in the Diplomatic Service, is a great connoisseur of alcohol, and goes extremely hard for the Coruscant Guard (and nurtures a rivalry with 501st guys whenever they go planet-side for whatever.) He’s very serious about the concept of CG brotherhood and becomes a fixture in Diplomatic Service initiation rites (where shinies are ‘officially��� inducted into the group after their first milestone) to the point where he pretty much leads them. Part of this involves shinies mixing a drop of their blood into red paint, and then their older brothers in the CG mix in their own blood as well. The ex-shinies then use the paint for their armor. Corr has been implicated in brewing his own barracks moonshine which Fox and Thorn let him get away with just long enough to let him finish the process so they could see how good the final product actually was when they confiscated it. Corr also has an agreement with Toast clone, where he trades alcohol for the bread that Toast makes in a crematorium oven that’s non-operational on official records but which is very much operational in a hushed, practical sense. (He also has Toast score the bread surface with the pattern of the CG symbol because he can’t help himself, and has tattoos of the CG armor armbands and legbands actually over his arms and legs. Some might describe Corr as overzealous, but he believes you need passion and strong bonds in life or you have nothing. [This guy is also kind of a joint OC with my friend who runs a Coruscant Guard blog here!]

Are you sick of the Coruscant Guard yet? Well I have 12 more guardsmen alone where this came from and 13 if you count this next guy; I wasn’t kidding when I said I had half a platoon worth of OCs. 

Kov, rank to be determined, pronounced like “cove.” (I might change the spelling to better reflect that.) He’s in one of the Special Tactics Groups of the Coruscant Guard, a unit which I made up to work kind of like a SWAT team. He and his STG are also part of a designated force that can respond extremely quickly to developing situations and get there first to deal with the trouble before anybody else comes in. His STG’s motto is “made to kill, decanted to die” and he has a target tattooed over the side of his face to go with it. (They get shit from non-CG and units that think all they do is give out parking tickets and stand around looking pretty in the Senate building- these guys very much do not do that.) His face is very expressive, and he’s decisive, straightforward, and unfortunately comes off as kind of low on empathy. He wants people to see him as very pragmatic though he’s actually rather idealistic and kind of naive about certain things. He and his best friend are very interested in plants- Kamino didn’t have any, and they’re generally rare on Coruscant. There’s something calming and ‘constant’ about them that he enjoys. He likes taking photos of the ones they find together and looking them up later to learn about nature/biology. Kov learns he really likes children, but is uncertain/a little afraid to let himself interact with them because he’s worried about what sort of influence he’d have on them (and on a deeper level whether he’d learn from them that he’s not actually the person he thinks he is or tries to be.) He and a Twi’lek woman who immigrated from Ryloth sort of fall into a relationship without meaning to, and they both learn a lot from each other and grow as people. (I’m planning on having her take him to a botanical garden that he had no idea existed, and sometime during their visit he realizes he loves her even. He has trouble putting it into words in his mind, but he definitely knows.) 

Okay last one, I’m sorry! :( 

Lieutenant Rakia of the 212th, part of Slick’s direct chain of command. He goes through Geonosis with his best friend and batchmate Arak. When they were cadets on Kamino, and Arak’s helmet saved his life during a training accident but was partially shattered, and Rakia’s random compulsion to bend down and pick up a shard of the helmet inadvertently saved his life too during this incident. Arak and Rakia kept the small plastoid chunk, carved designs over its surface, and exchanged custody of it for years. Before Geonosis Arak gave it to Rakia. Rakia survives but somehow can’t find the chunk where it’s supposed to be in his utility belt, like it just disappeared, and Arak goes missing and is presumed KIA during the battle. On a deep internal level, Rakia has similar realizations to Slick, but because his personality is different he takes that in another direction. He doubles down on a deep trust and faith in the Republic and the Jedi because he’s subconsciously afraid of what it means about his life and purpose if those things are not the things he should believe in. He sees that they’re all cogs in a machine, but his response is that that’s a good thing. He finds something very personally significant about the idea that all those tiny cogs come together to become something much bigger. So his own internal tendencies towards a collective approach and trusting the leadership he was instructed to trust all his life just get kicked up to higher levels after Geonosis in the face of his anxieties.  

In normal speech he’s casual and kind of playful, but when he gets angry he becomes overly explicit/didactic about things and snaps a lot to the point where he can be condescending even without meaning to be. Rakia has an artistic side but doesn’t get to explore it much at first. He’s clean-shaven and lets his curls grow out a bit because he likes how he looks that way, but otherwise looks like everyone else and doesn’t want to visually distinguish himself from his brothers too much besides the slightly longer hair. He wants to be someone others look up to and tries to ignore/deny parts of himself that he doesn’t feel fit that ideal image he wants others to see. Part of that ties into him really struggling with grief but not even allowing himself to contend with it and find closure, stuffing it back down and ignoring it to negative effect. It also ties in to him resisting discovering himself as an individual beyond a certain point/his comfort zone because he’s afraid that will isolate himself from his brothers, but resisting that (and continuing to deny his grief/keep it bottled down) ends up doing that exactly, leading him to feel cut off and alone in certain ways that compound the problem in a bad spiral. (He gets out of it, I promise.) So because Slick is busy developing his own radical ideas and solutions which he can tell no one about (on top of feeling like he’s the only one who’s cottoned on to something nobody else can see,) that’s isolating too, and he and Rakia understand each other a lot better than they think they do in some respects, regardless of their disagreements. 

I know you didn’t ask for a six paragraph essay. Sorry I just really love these guys.😅

[phantompearlsalt]

Sour Cherry, Chapter 6

Sweet anon, THANK YOU for giving me the push I needed to finally think through this idea and write it out. I had such a blast writing this one, so I can’t wait to see what y’all think. I’m a sucker for an emotional engagement story 😭Check out chapter 6 on AO3 as well!

Despite having your eyes closed, you immediately know it’s Kuvira when the airship entryway hisses open. You’re sprawled across the couch with one leg hanging over the edge and you hear heavy footsteps walk towards you. 

Kuvira stops in front of you and lifts her metal armor off, tossing it to the ground where it crashes in a loud clamor that would normally make you jump if you weren’t thoroughly and utterly exhausted. 

Without a word, she collapses on top of you, settling her head against your chest and sighing deeply. “Long day?” you mumble, instinctively wrapping your arms around her shoulders. Her response is a funny muffled sound but you can’t bring yourself to muster a mere chuckle — in addition to every muscle in your body, it seems like your mouth is somehow sore as well. 

You both doze off at some point but a piercing whir outside of the ship bustles you both awake. “What on earth could it possibly be this time?” Kuvira groans. When you finally decide to pry your eyelids open, you see her hair is barely held together by a now unkempt braid. The sun is just about to set so a fiery orange glow bleeds through the windows, highlighting the dark circles under her eyes. 

“Just some maintenance,” you remind her. “It should only take a few hours. You should keep sleeping. I’ll go check on everything.” But Kuvira roughly shakes her head, lifting herself up and straightening her back. “No, I’ll go. You stay here...rest,” she assures you. You’re tempted to roll your eyes but you know this behavior comes naturally to Kuvira, especially as you’re nearing your year and a half in Ba Sing Se. She has managed to oversee a major renewal of the city’s infrastructure, making strides in systematizing order in ways no one believed possible without Suyin Beifong’s intervention.

But with Kuvira at the helm it doesn’t surprise you in the slightest and as thrilling as the prospect is, you worry over the toll it has taken on her. She is incredibly covert around the rest of the army, never once demonstrating a degree of exhaustion or tension. However, it is not difficult for you to see the physical and mental repercussions of this endeavor. You support her wherever you can, though you are still unable to break this tendency of hers to assume nearly every task that requires attention. 

She is just about to push herself off the couch when you gently wrap an arm around her waist, pulling her back down. “Before you go, you might wanna fix that,” you say, eyeing her hair. Sighing again, she mutters what you assume is an affirmative response, turning so her back is facing you. 

You grin widely and hoist yourself up so your feet are on the floor and your body is angled towards Kuvira. You pull away the thin black ribbon that holds the braid together, running your fingers through her hair to undo the plaits. It is nothing short of sublime watching the heavy, dark waves gracefully spill down her back. Once the knots are undone, you begin styling the hair in Kuvira’s preferred manner, tucking the pieces into each other while leaving a lock hanging along her right cheek. Though she doesn’t make a sound, you notice the tips of her ears have adopted a shade of vivid pink. 

In moments like these, you are hit by just how much you miss sharing these intimate activities with Kuvira. Yes, you see her (nearly) every night after flurried hours of near-constant activity but your time beyond that has dwindled dramatically over the past year. It’s not like you didn’t expect it either — there is only so much free time one can have when you’re stabilizing a city as vast as Ba Sing Se. You reassure Kuvira frequently that you manage well, and for the most part you do, but it doesn’t diminish that stifled ache you feel every so often when you remember how delightful these moments really are. 

You shake yourself out of the melancholy, returning your attention to your fingers weaving through Kuvira’s hair. As you secure the braid with the ribbon, you press a soft peck to the back of her neck. She stands and when she touches your face, a distinct flash of sorrow brushes over her eyes. 

“You know I love you, right?” she asks, her voice rather strained. You smile wistfully and nod. “Of course I do,” you affirm.” She looks at you for several moments with an enigmatic expression before her face softens into something passive and she leaves the ship. 

If a tear manages to drop from the corner of your eye, you choose to ignore it. 

---

The following weeks grow increasingly tense as Kuvira continues her attempts at consolidating the revitalized groundwork she has established in Ba Sing Se. At some point, there are scattered comments about calling upon the United Republic for resources as everyone fears you are near the point of exhausting your own. But Kuvira remains adamant. 

“The United Republic of Nations has done nothing but sit and watch from the comforts of their homes while we bring peace to the Earth Kingdom capital,” she asserts. “Or have we conveniently forgotten that this chaos is largely a product of the Republic’s negligence to step forward themselves?” 

It is a compelling reminder that effectively squelches any further mention about turning to President Raiko or other leaders. Ultimately, you believe Kuvira’s endeavors will definitively preserve peace in the capital and extend beyond its walls. Furthermore, you know most of the army agrees.

That night in your tent, you’re in the middle of hanging your uniform when Kuvira steps in and immediately goes to her desk. Lifting the metal helmet off her head, she sets it atop a pile of scattered paperwork and leans back in her chair. You gaze at her sympathetically but don’t make any move towards her. You’ve learned to read Kuvira’s body language well and it’s evident she needs some time alone. 

After you’ve plopped onto your sleeping pad, you blow out your lantern and stare at the wall ahead, wondering what could be going through Kuvira’s mind. You can’t tell exactly how much time has passed when you hear the soft jangle of metal and shuffle of fabric. Eventually—finally—Kuvira joins you on the pad, looping her arms around your waist and pulling you close. You instinctively burrow deeper into the embrace without a word, waiting to see if Kuvira will break the silence first. 

When she does, you don’t expect the words that follow. “This won’t be over anytime soon,” she states. The statement itself is objective — there’s no way the capital could survive on its own at this point, even with Kuvira’s reconstruction efforts. There is now order where there was once chaos but it’s tenuous at best. Furthermore, even after Ba Sing Se is totally stabilized there are still all the other Earth Kingdom states in ruins and barely able to fight off bandits. Everyone was aware of her intention to carry this enterprise beyond the capital but the reality of it is much more daunting than you had prepared for. 

Nevertheless, there is an undercurrent of something else beneath Kuvira’s words. Something distinctly somber. 

Being all too familiar with the emotion, you loop your fingers through Kuvira’s and lovingly squeeze her hand. “I know. But it will be, at some point,” you respond simply. 

“Can you live with that?” she asks. “What do you mean?” you reply, twisting your body so your face is huddled against her neck. 

“The magnitude of this,” she clarifies. “When I first brought you into my army, we both knew it would stretch beyond a year. Then, after we...started this...I asked if you were willing to accept this future with me, knowing what it entailed.”

“And I did,” you point out. Kuvira remains silent after that and although you are unable to see the finer details of her face, this stillness feels heavier — it carries the anxiety of someone who craves deeper reassurance but is unable to communicate it. 

“Kuvira, I will tell you this every single day while I can: I love you. I love you so much it frightens me sometimes because this is new for me too. And it’s precisely because I love you this much that I am going to be at your side through all of this. I promise,” you pour out. 

“Even before I knew I loved you, I knew I would follow you in this endeavor. You know exactly how devastated we were seeing what was happening in Ba Sing Se, in the other states. We felt powerless, we felt like traitors abandoning our people. But you gave us the opportunity to do something where others wouldn’t. Just as I will stay by your side as your partner, I will stay by your side to see the Earth Kingdom reunited. And when the time comes, we’ll have all the time in the world. For now, this is okay. I’m here, we’re here, and it’s okay.”

You’re barely finished uttering your last few words when Kuvira’s arms coil around your head and she buries her face in your hair. You latch your hands onto her back and inhale deeply, immersing your senses in Kuvira. Her smell, her warmth, the sound of her tight breathing, the steady thrum of her pulse. 

She doesn’t speak another word that evening but she doesn’t have to. As much as Kuvira has gotten better at expressing her emotions, it still doesn’t come easy to her. In fact, you’re certain it brings her great discomfort. This time around, the silence is peaceful. It is no longer threaded with the strands of sadness that laced Kuvira’s voice. 

Instead, the weight is replaced with airiness that ultimately eases her into a deep slumber.

---

The rest of the month proceeds busily as Kuvira begins implementing new bureaucratic offices that will help oversee the continued stability of the capital. She is confident her army will soon be able to demobilize and carry the reunification efforts into the neighboring states. The world leaders have begun praising the successes of her leadership.

“Gosh, isn’t this amazing?” Bolin sighs. You’re both walking through the streets of Ba Sing Se, marveling at the progress Kuvira has facilitated in a relatively short amount of time. “It really is,” you agree. “Just think,” he continues. “When we first got here, we didn’t think this place would even last the next year. Now look at it! It’s like a completely different city.” 

“I know, right?” you respond. “Before you know it, we’ll be out of here and —” You’re suddenly cut off when a hand touches your waist, startling you. Bolin looks like he’s about to burst out laughing when you turn and see Kuvira at your side, idly observing you both. 

“Bolin, I hope you don’t mind my interrupting your conversation,” she says. Bolin immediately shakes his hands and gestures towards the other end of the street. “Nope, never, not at all,” he sputters. “We were just wrapping up here so...I’ll just leave you to it.” He promptly salutes and is on his way, quicker than he might care to admit.

“What’s the matter?” you ask. “Has something come up at the construction site?” “Not at all,” Kuvira responds. “I simply needed to inform you to stay up for me tonight. It’s our last evening in Chameleon Bay before we relocate cityside, and I’d like to spend some time with you before we begin the demobilization process.” 

Your mouth drops open a bit and you clamp your hands together behind your back. It’s been quite some time since you’ve been able to be with Kuvira like that. “Oh, um, okay. That sounds nice,” you say. It comes across pathetically boring which of course raises Kuvira’s eyebrows. “I hope so,” she replies. “You won’t have to stay up late. I will be wrapping up my evening assembly early tonight.”

“Early?” you echo. “My commanders have excelled in realizing the tasks I’ve set before them. There is little to discuss tonight in preparation for the transition that we haven’t already touched on,” she elaborates.

“Alright. I’m looking forward to it. It’s been a while,” you note, biting back the smile that tugs on the corners of your lips. “Indeed. I look forward to it as well,” Kuvira says. “As you were.” You bow slightly before turning towards the direction Bolin left, attempting (and failing) to stifle the warm tickle in your chest. 

---

When night falls, you’re back in your tent waiting for Kuvira. You’ve stowed away your metal gear and settled onto your sleeping pad, flipping through the pages of an old journal you found in your storage box. The pages have certainly seen better days and the darkened leather cover has started fraying around the corners. 

You’re moderately embarrassed by how often Kuvira’s name flashes through the thick squares of parchment. You recall the days you started writing about her, way before you even knew her name. The dancer with the braid, as she was known for so long. After you saw her in the Zaofu paper, it felt as though your hand viscerally craved the movement of scrawling her name. Your muscles seemed to commit each line and curve of the letters to memory, to the point where you very nearly stopped altogether for fear of letting your infatuation consume every entry. 

Eventually, you come across a dogeared page and when you open it, there’s a smaller piece of paper lodged into the gutter. Kuvira’s neat script is instantly recognizable and you’re just about to unfold the note when the door to your tent slides open. 

You snap the journal shut, earning an inquiring look from Kuvira. “It’s been a while since you’ve pulled that out,” she notes. Tucking the journal back into the box, you stand up and gently push it away with your foot. “Yeah, a few months at least,” you chuckle. “Just taking a trip down memory lane. Wanna head out?” 

Kuvira gestures to the door and you promptly exit, eyeing your surroundings for any evening wanderers. You manage to spot a handful of privates gathered around waning embers but Kuvira curls her hand around yours and gently tugs you forward. The walk itself isn’t too far from the campsite — Kuvira quickly finds a patch near the rocky cliff for you to sit on. From here, you can hear the soft lapping of water on the shoreline and see the distant glow of the fire you noticed earlier. 

“You know, I never really noticed how beautiful this place is,” you remark. Kuvira’s arm is lined against yours, her hand resting on your thigh. “It’s quite different from Zaofu, isn’t it?” she asks. You nod and lean your head against her shoulder. “That’s an understatement,” you chuckle. “It’s not like we were totally isolated from the ocean or anything, but there’s something so vast and different about this place. Maybe because it’s so far from everything I grew up with.”

“Do you miss it?” 

The question is so hushed you nearly believe it’s an echo from the campsite but then Kuvira’s body shifts and you realize it came from her. 

“I don’t know if I miss Zaofu specifically,” you admit. “I feel like I’ve gotten so caught up in this that I haven’t given it much thought...I know I miss my library. Sometimes the professors at the university. But it’s so fleeting I forget about it most of the time. What about you?”

Kuvira’s response is immediate. “I have no attachment to Zaofu. When I told Suyin I would return on my own terms, at that point I had severed any connection I had to the city. It served its purpose when it needed to and it was time to move forward,” she explains. 

Instead of answering, you wind your arms around Kuvira’s to bring your bodies closer together. You are left wondering how much truth the admission carries, evoking memories of whispered conversations late into the night when Kuvira would tell you about her childhood in Zaofu, her adolescence, and her life with the Beifongs. Regardless, you know better than to continue pressing her so you sit in comfortable silence for some time. 

“I bet this wasn’t part of your grand plan though, huh?” you tease later, softly pushing her shoulder with your cheek. While her voice remains solemn, you feel her muscles relax beneath your own. “I never did contemplate something of this nature. Still, it has easily been one of the more pleasant developments to emerge during all of this,” she murmurs. 

“You know, just before you walked into the tent, I found that letter you wrote me months ago,” you say. “You said something along the same lines… ‘a pleasant development.’” The words come across somewhat stilted, unable to capture the style with which Kuvira expresses them. Despite this, her shoulders shudder as she exhales a brisk laugh. 

“I wrote that letter for you about a month after we started our relationship,” she confesses and the revelation nearly rocks you off your seated position. Short images of her writing race through your mind: adore you — changed me — hope — I promise — a future together. She wrote all of that after one month?

Careful to avoid any abrupt movement, you unfurl your arms so you can see Kuvira’s face. “I wouldn’t have guessed,” you sputter. Kuvira leans forward so her elbows rest on her knees, contemplating the extensive bay of water before you. “That was intentional,”she continues. “I...had no idea how you might react if I gave that to you so early on. I nearly shredded it because of that. But...it didn’t feel right to do that either. So I just waited.” 

Even one year into your relationship, Kuvira is not prone to faltering when she speaks. You can count the number of times it’s been noticeable to you because she insists on carrying herself otherwise. She tells you it happens when the emotions become too immense, too unfamiliar and her body doesn’t know how to make sense of them. It’s her body’s way of telling you, “This is new to me. I don’t know what to do with this feeling. Please — be patient.”

You extend your arms so you can take Kuvira’s hands in your own, holding them against your knees. “I’m glad you never threw it away, that you gave it to me when you did. But I always knew, Kuvira. Even after a month I knew it would always be you. Yes, it terrified me too but I never doubted it for a moment.” 

Her face, which had been marked by an unmistakable touch of distress, gradually softens. She removes her hands from yours, lifting one to brush away the strands of hair at your temple. “And you still feel this way?” she inquires. “Even with everything that lies ahead, is this still true?”

You want to respond so desperately but the sounds are caught and tangled in your throat in a cumbersome knot. You realize this is the culmination of the past several weeks, of your intense desire to just exist with Kuvira outside of the meetings and the speeches and just relish in this enchanting ether where you’re bound to each other by the sheer force of your emotions alone. Now that you have the opportunity, everything feels like too much. 

Exactly as Kuvira feels.

So, you nod rapidly and hope she understands the meaning behind the gesture. Kuvira’s lips tighten for an instant before her other arm moves and when you look down, a thin band of metal is nestled in the center of her palm. 

Everything goes silent: the ripple of water below, the coarse whisper of windswept grass, the throb of your heart against your chest. There isn’t a single sound in the world or any other sight. The entire universe appears to have compressed into this exact moment and the ring Kuvira displays. 

“Three weeks ago, I asked if you could live with the weight of what a future with me entails and you said yes. You reminded me how much you love me. You reminded me that you have been at my side from the beginning, far before I knew the depths of my own feelings for you. I know this will not lessen the challenge of being with me and I don’t expect it to. Nevertheless, you must know that I do this because I cannot envision a future where I don’t vow myself to you in this way.”

A breath, a juncture in time. The sound of your name, sounding warped in your ears. 

“From that first night you confessed to me, I knew I would not spend the rest of my life with anyone else at my side. But I still need to know now: will you marry me?”

Deep in your core, you knew the words were coming and you expected them to land like the resounding crash of a landslide: boisterous and disorienting. Instead, they descend with the simple grace of cherry blossom petals, twisting downwards and sprinkling over your senses until you are encased in their rosy film. 

You awkwardly bend your fingers as you feel yourself return to your body and you realize your eyes never left Kuvira’s hand. Astonished, you lift your gaze to meet hers as she stares back expectantly.

The words then cascade from your lips without hesitation, smooth like the waves that sweep across the coast. “Yes. Yes, Kuvira. A thousand times over, yes. Yes, I’ll marry you.” Everything sounds so much louder in your head, echoing in your mind and roaring in your ears. 

Her face instantly yields into expression of absolute awe, ultimately shaping into one of rapture. She releases a bated breath and closes her eyes momentarily before turning to you again, the edges brimming with the faintest dusting of tears. 

She stretches her arm forward so her hand touches yours. You spread your fingers and watch as Kuvira reverently slides the ring into place. For the first time since she presented it, you notice the striking attention to detail. It’s a slim silver band engraved with smooth strokes of grooves and spirals that overlap in ornate patterns. Upon closer inspection, you recognize the pandy lily inscribed at the center. It is not ostentatious — rather, it’s a beautiful display of artistry in a most polished fashion.

It’s a ring that perfectly captures Kuvira, as if the piece itself were an inanimate embodiment of her essence.

“I made it myself,” she discloses. “To be quite frank, I couldn’t trust anyone to make something worth offering you. I can’t say I feel this completely satisfies that either but it comes much closer.” 

It’s a confession that is so totally Kuvira that all you can do is throw your arms around her and bring your lips to hers. She cradles your face adoringly and when she pulls away, a murmured “I love you” washes over your face and you can do nothing else but echo the words against her mouth. 

[prettywordsyouleft]

Band Sessions: Wonpil

Pairing: Kim Wonpil x reader

Genre: band au / university au / fluff

Warnings: none

Word count: 2305

Index: Jae | Sungjin | Young K | Wonpil | Dowoon

“Careful, Y/N!” Wonpil called out, stepping over to your side and pulling you back before you bumped into a library trolley stacked with books. You blinked at your sudden change in place and then back at the obstacle your boyfriend had prevented you from knocking into.

Shooting him a grateful smile, you chuckled lightly. “What would I do without you?”

“End up with a lot more bruises,” he concluded, shaking his head.

Wonpil loved everything about you except that you were clumsy. Over the past two years of dating, he had learned all there was to you. And mostly it was all good stuff. You were the type of person who grounded him in his weaknesses and empowered his strengths. And he’d like to say he did the same for you, however, most of the time he was simply saving you from impending doom.

For all the good that came with you, you also attracted all sorts of chaos. He would never understand how or why but he had witnessed it enough now that you were a walking time bomb. If he spent an entire day with you and no accidents occurred to you, then it wasn’t a miracle. It only meant the next time was guaranteed to have more than one.

Despite your bad luck, you were rather upbeat about it all. “Thankfully you saw it before me!”

“How you didn’t is beyond me,” he remarked and you merely laughed.

“You’re right, I should have seen that trolley. Could you imagine the mess I would have made?”

Wonpil nodded, biting his bottom lip to hold in his sigh. He could see it all too well because he had seen it in the past. And all the bruises that you had gained from sending books flying on the third floor of the campus library.

If he wasn’t with you, he sometimes worried about what could potentially happen. You had an innate knack for tripping over your own feet, and so setting you free on the university campus full of other students and potential hazards could easily give him anxiety if he let it manifest. However, he had had to learn that it usually worked out for the better. You were naturally accident-prone and it wasn’t something he could protect you from.

Even if he tried his best to do so whenever he was with you.

Wonpil never wanted to treat you like a damsel in distress. In fact, he knew you’d hate it if he did. Sure, there were moments where you liked whenever he fussed over you after sustaining an injury, but for the most part, you had already lived over two decades on this earth and survived without him before you started dating. He had to believe that you would be safe otherwise he was certain his mind would implode from constant worry.

“So it’s band practice night, right?” you mentioned when you both left the study session you had been at the library for, giving Wonpil another one of your infamous smiles.

For all the trouble you could cause to his heart and mind, your smiles made up for it. That and the kisses you gave. After kissing him briefly, Wonpil nodded. “And for you?”

“I have a date with Netflix,” you proudly stated and Wonpil playfully gasped.

“A date?!”

“Lee Minho and Woo Dohwan will keep me company whilst you hang with the boys.”

“I’m feeling the need to cancel,” he teased before brushing his lips over your forehead. “So long as you know that when the date is over they remain in their world and you come back to mine.”

“Hm,” you pondered innocently, pursing your lips with your thoughts. Wonpil leant in to kiss them, mirroring the grin you gave him when he pulled back. “Will you come over when you’re done?”

Although he had shared a bed many times with you now since your relationship progressed, Wonpil always felt his cheeks warm up with the idea of holding you all night long. If he was honest, he wanted to do that every night. Nodding at you happily in response, you then squeezed him tightly into a hug before stepping away, his hand quick to reach out to stop your departure right away.

He didn’t want to part ways just yet.

“Good, well I’ll go home and enjoy my dinner and dramas instead of causing any trouble at the studio. Have a good session with the boys.”

“I won’t be too long.”

You smirked. “Take your time; I have a few episodes to catch up on.”

You pried your hand out of his and turned rapidly, losing your balance and he lurched after you, stopping when you righted yourself. You snapped your head to look back at him with a breathy chuckle. “I’m alright! Love you!”

“Love you so much you will end me,” he mumbled, watching you intently until you disappeared around the side of the building.

As Wonpil walked the short distance from the campus to the studio, he almost wished he had brought you along with him instead. He knew how dangerous that was. You had tripped over the cord to his keyboard in his apartment more times than he could count, and the instrument was up against a wall. Wonpil thought of all the cords to the equipment in the studio and shuddered. There was a lot of expensive gear in there that he wouldn’t want you to damage or hurt yourself on.

Even you were aware of how much it would be like testing fate. When he had invited you in the past, you had come up with multiple excuses in the beginning before admitting you didn’t want to ruin things for the band with your accident-prone tendencies. So you had never seen the band outside of performing at their gigs and usually it didn’t bother him. Wonpil had a short attention span whenever he was with you, and wouldn’t be very productive if he spent all his time staring at you instead of working as a team with his fellow bandmates.

Sometimes though, he wanted to just bring you along and deal with the consequences. And lately, that urge had been growing. With your official two year anniversary two weeks away, he wanted nothing more than to perform the song that he had written for you then. He knew he would eventually bring it up on stage but something special like a private performance really stood out to him as a desire he wanted to fulfil. Especially after the playful session with Brian’s girlfriend recently, Wonpil yearned to have you sit on the studio couch away from all the equipment and play for you.

Surely that would be easy enough to do, right? Throughout practice that night, Wonpil stared at the empty couch and then at the door. The pathway from both was relatively clear and if he assisted you to your seat, nothing should eventuate. That way he could play for you and protect the studio from any potential mishap as well. It was a solid plan and after discussing it with his friends, Wonpil headed over to your apartment after practice feeling excited by his thoughts. It would be the perfect gift for your anniversary, especially with the restaurant reservation he had booked for later in the evening.

By the time you opened the door to your apartment and looking more than ready for bed in your sloth themed pyjamas, Wonpil was confident. Nothing would go wrong because you would have him to make it all go off without a hitch.

When your anniversary arrived, Wonpil wasn’t worried about anything going wrong today. In fact, all he felt all day long in your company was constant adoration and equal levels of disbelief that he had nurtured something this beautiful with you. He couldn’t understand just how lucky he had gotten, even if you spilled your drink on his shirt – thankfully it was only water – and tripped over and landed into his side awkwardly as you walked towards the studio. Usually, these moments would make him feel as if a bad omen was looming, yet today Wonpil felt more in control. He had saved you from falling and he would keep everything safe at the band session as well.

“Are you sure about this?” you questioned hesitantly, your expression clearly showing your concern. “I mean, this place is pretty special to you all.”

“All the more reason to have you come by finally.”

“I’m scared I’ll break something.”

Wonpil shook his head and smiled with assurance. “You will be fine and cause no harm. I mean, you’ve already done two things today and we’ve survived through them.”

Despite his encouragement, you didn’t look convinced, clinging onto Wonpil’s side when he twisted the handle to the studio. Thankfully, due to the entire afternoon yesterday he had spent decorating, your nerves eased when you saw the balloons and banner in front of you. Eyes now welling with tears, you gave Wonpil a watery smile and he led you inside, right over to the couch.

“Happy anniversary Wonpil and Y/N!” Sungjin exclaimed and Jae let off a party popper.

“Welcome to our humble abode,” Dowoon mentioned and then Brian slung his bass guitar over his head.

“You ready to play, Pil?”

Nodding as he shifted across to his keyboard and turned it on, they agreed to play a couple of songs you already knew first. It was a great experience. You sat and clapped, loosening off from all your previous tension and Wonpil felt bolder with his triumph. It had actually happened. You had come to a Day6 practice and nothing had gone wrong. He hadn’t even forgotten his lyrics once and when they played the song he had created for you, it was the most magical moment he had felt within this room. Everything worked in harmony, the music filling the space was some of the best he had ever had a part in making.

And once the room fell silent after the last guitar strum, you were clapping proudly, wiping away your tears momentarily before clapping again. That’s when it all started to go wrong.

“Oh, you don’t have to stand, Y/N!” Wonpil mentioned as you got up from the couch, his mind flashing with panic. Before he could understand anything else, you had already sat down and he was… falling too?

He watched as the keyboard stand he had knocked in his hurry lost its balance and fell into one of the amplifiers in the room. He also tripped over a cord in the process and ripped that out, causing a screech of static to bounce off the walls. Brian and Sungjin covered their ears and Jae got a fright, backing into another amp and knocked it over and popped several balloons in concession. It was like a domino effect and even Dowoon’s station was affected in some way before the entire room fell dead silent.

No one moved for a good minute or two. And then there was laughter.

The five distraught men looked in your direction as you now helplessly held your stomach, waving a free hand in their direction as if in attempt to dismiss your amusement. You sucked in a deep breath to try and settle your laughter but it rolled through you some more.

“I’m sorry!” you wheezed, trying to catch your breath. “It’s just this is exactly… what I have imagined so many times… if I was to ever come here… and for once it wasn’t me who caused the chaos!”

Sungjin couldn’t help but chuckle, though his was darker and pointedly aimed at Wonpil still sprawled on the floor. “You’re right. It wasn’t your fault at all, Y/N.”

“I have to admit when we prepared for tonight this wasn’t what I was expecting,” Jae announced and Brian moved to help Wonpil up.

“It looks like all your fears about Y/N and this place only ended up coming true by your hand instead.”

He was mortified, of course. Head lowered as he tried to calm down from the various emotions coursing throughout, Wonpil eventually cast his focus around the room. It was in a right state but for the most part, everything looked like it wasn’t broken.

And then he glanced in your direction, sighing heavily. More bravely than he expected, given the turn of events, you stepped over to his side and gave him a warm hug. “I loved everything about today.”

“I messed up just now.”

You tried to stifle another laugh. “Is it bad that I’m kind of relieved? After all this time, it’s always me causing calamity everywhere I go. We’ve been together for so long and it’s the first time I’ve been on the opposite side of things.”

“I’m glad it made you laugh.”

“Will everything be okay?” you asked of the other members as Brian checked over the amplifier behind Wonpil’s station.

“It should be. And if I remember correctly, you two have a dinner reservation to make.”

Wonpil sighed. “Maybe I should-”

“No,” you said firmly, taking his hand in yours. “Whatever else happens tonight is meant to occur. It’s our anniversary. Let’s shake up the town!”

“Not too much!” Jae pleaded as Wonpil’s smile slowly grew.

So maybe you were a little dangerous to be around, given how accidents followed you wherever you went. And now Wonpil was certain he couldn’t save you from them all. In fact, he could cause them himself too. Yet, your hand was in his and as you both fare-welled his band members, he realised that this was okay. You’d no doubt have many more accidents in the future to navigate together.

And a whole lot more to laugh about in the future whenever you thought over the crazy memories you made together.

_________________

Next: Dowoon

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[nclkafilms]

The power of stillness

(Review of ‘Sound of Metal’)

*Warning: contains minor spoilers*

“The world does keep moving, and it can be a damn cruel place.  But for me, those moments of stillness, that place, that's the kingdom of God.”

- Joe (Paul Raci)

What is an addiction? That is in many ways one of the central questions asked by ‘Sound of Metal’, the six time Academy Award nominated feature film debut by Darius Marder. On the surface the film seems like a tale as old as time with a protagonist who all of a sudden loses the ability to do what defines him. This storyline is the recipe for a classic tale: the athlete who suffers a career-ending injury, the surgeon who loses his fine motor skills or in the case of ‘Sound of Metal’, a heavy-metal drummer who loses his hearing. But what makes ‘Sound of Metal’ reach above the bar of this recipe - apart from a stunning technical side - is the fact that it is not as much about losing an ability as it is about facing an addiction. It is in this personal discovery for our main character, Ruben, that the film proves itself deserving of its six Oscar nominations.

As described, we follow Ruben, who is the drummer of a heavy metal band in which his girlfriend through four years, Lou, is the lead singer. However, during a tour, he is suddenly faced with a deteriorating ability to hear. Initially showing itself as a tinitus-like sound, which quickly develops into a deep, humming “lack of sound” making it impossible for Ruben to not only play his drums but simply to keep a conversation. As he is presented with the cold facts that the hearing already lost will never return, he is spiralled towards a tumultuous past of drug addiction. As Lou becomes worried for him she helps set up a meeting - through Ruben’s sponsor - with Joe, who leads a support group for addicts with hearing loss as part of a much larger deaf community. Ruben’s stay with the group is equally conflicting and eye-opening as he is forced apart from Lou, faced with the consequences of his hearing loss and presented with new opportunities under the firm but endearing leadership of Joe. 

As Ruben, Riz Ahmed delivers a career-best turn moving himself further up the Hollywood food chain. It is an extremely nuanced and touching performance. One moment he burns through the screen with a powerful and/or frustrated presence only to almost hide himself in the next sequence as he gives space to Ruben’s vulnerability and inability to fully accept his new reality. Ahmed embodies all these feelings close to perfection and it is topped off by an authenticity in his performance and chemistry with the film’s many deaf actors that underlines his dedication to Ruben’s character arc. Ahmed spent a lot of time in the lead-in to the production within the deaf community and it pays off as Ruben’s growing acceptance of and inclusion in said community feels immensely real.

At the centre of the film’s heartfelt portrayal of the deaf community stands Paul Raci, however. He creates one of the most endearing characters of the year as Joe, a Vietnam War veteran  (where he lost his hearing) and former alcoholic, who now hosts the support group for hearing impaired former addicts. Raci brings the role a natural authenticity as he himself is no stranger to the American deaf community as the child of two deaf parents. He clearly uses this to create a fully fleshed character, who you come to both care for and respect. Because, make no mistake, as heart-warming as many of Joe’s scenes are, he is also at the centre of one of the film’s most heart-breaking scenes towards the end, in which he gives a profound and touching message to a desperate Ruben. Raci plays this scene with such heart and presence that Joe’s emotional reaction towards the end of it feels as if it was Raci’s own reaction to the scene. A stunning performance that would and should have earned Raci many more awards had it not been for a certain Daniel Kaluuya.

As Lou, Olivia Cooke is somewhat sidelined half way through the story, and knowing that the Marder brothers did write her story in full detail, I would have loved to see more of it and discover how she dealt with her own addiction(s). Admittedly, I guess that would have been at the cost of the film’s quite tight focus, but the main reason I wanted to see more of her story, is that Cooke manages to create a fascinating character with the limited screen presence she gets. Her scenes with Ahmed as their characters try to realise the extent of Ruben’s hearing loss both individually and as a couple are simply heartbreaking. Most of the film’s remaining supporting cast were found in the deaf community and it - once again - helps heightening the film’s anchor in reality. To highlight a few, Lauren Ridloff brings charm to a teacher in the deaf community school, Chelsea Lee brings life and heart to one of Ruben’s new-found friends and Jeremy Stone, who also worked as Ahmed’s personal ASL teacher and Marder’s creative assistent on the film, features in a specifically memorable scene as an - surprise - ASL teacher. 

This desire to include the deaf community as not only a focus point of the film, but as an active part of the production is a clever and brilliant move by director, Darius Marder. Not unlike the nomads in Nomadland, it creates a certain sense of some of it being close to documentary, although ‘Sound of Metal’ is much clearer in being a work of fiction. It is obvious that the story is deeply personal to the Marder brothers who co-wrote the script on from an original story by Derek Cianfrance (‘Blue Valentine’, ‘Place Beyond the Pines’) with the film being dedicated to their grandmother who went deaf herself. One of many personal touches is the choice to open caption the film, which - of course - can be seen as a statement to make more films accessible for the deaf community, but it also heightens the film’s creative vision to put the viewer in the shoes - or rather ears - of Ruben.

The main reason why this works, however, is the film’s absolute strongest asset: the daring creative choice to create a (with Marder’s own words) Point of Hearing (PoH) experience. Years of work has been put into the film’s work with its sound and how it connects with its imagery. In many situations the way they try to portray the sensation of deafness could have felt gimmicky and, thus, fallen flat. It doesn’t, however. From the first scene in which we experience Ruben’s auditory sensations, I bought it all the way and it truly heightened the film experience. An experience I would love to have in a cinema. It works thanks to the immaculate work by the Marder brothers in their script, the intimate cinematography by Daniël Bouquet and most of all the collaboration between Danish editor Mikkel E.G. Nielsen and the sound department under the leadership of supervising sound editor Nicolas Becker. The way they first create some of the best concert footage of recent years (featuring only live performances by Ahmed and Cooke) and then one of the best realised depictions of a sensation so many of us never have had or will have is awe-inspiring.  

Ultimately, ‘Sound of Metal’ is just as much a film about facing your past and your ideas for the future as it is about a deaf drummer learning to live his new life. As such it features some the same thematic questions as other films of the year (‘Soul’ and ‘Another Round’ to name just two): what drives and what should drive your life. What is purpose, what is a meaningful life? As the quote in the beginning of this review hints at, life has a cruel tendency to roll on no matter where you are in your life. For Ruben, his journey reveals that while distancing himself from his drug addiction he might just have moved on to a new addiction: an addiction to sound and the world that sound opened up for him. The world of Lou, the world of love, the world of purpose. In a telling scene after Ruben has made a life-changing decision, a clearly hurt Joe calmly says to Ruben that he sounds like an addict. And he does. Ahmed delivers this scene with such necessity, such desperation and inconstancy that we feel his addiction to sound, to hearing. The following and final 30 minutes of the film end up being both hurtful and hauntingly beautiful as Ruben comes to terms with his addiction in a realistic and satisfying way. The final scene is up there with the best of the year; you can literally hear it and feel. The power of stillness. 

4,5/5

[invokeinspiration]

Queerbaiting and Hannibal

My thoughts on Hannibal and queer baiting

Queerbaiting, according to the consensus, is when TV writers and producers add homoerotic tension and gay subtext between two characters to attract a LGBT viewership with no real intention of following through on an explicit queer romance. 

Queerbaiting gives rise to a LGBTQ romance but doesn’t take the risk of consummating it because producers and studios don’t want the potential loss of straight viewers and because acknowledging the gay community by teasing them is easier than giving a more authentic voice to the LGBT community. It’s wrong for a number of reasons. The biggest problem is that it erases and mocks the voices of LGBTQ people represented as characters on mainstream television. Adding gay subtext to mainstream masculine male characters but not entertaining a serious same-sex relationship simply puts LGBT people in a box. 

There are lots of shows that queerbait unethically: Supernatural, Sherlock, Merlin, Riverdale, and Teen Wolf are just a few. Gay subtext definitely exists in mainstream television. Sometimes, writers even acknowledge that there is a romance but it never comes to fruition. Queerbaiting perpetuates the heterosexual, male-dominated, and patriarchial society. If the same subtext was present with a female and male character, there would be an eventual consummation of that relationship; even if it was an expression of feeling, a kiss, a sex scene, whatever. They don’t want their male hero, portrayed as a strong powerful protagonist as gay. Even though by having one same-sex relationship does not mean someone is gay, but I digress. Whether or not that matters anyway is besides the point; it’s what viewers will say and how the rating may change. Television shows are more comfortable now with a feminine, female queer character but when it comes to masculine male protagonist characters, they deny queerness. Unless that protagonists story is solely about his queerness. Instead, queer male characters in television are protrayed as a superficial stereotypical queer person and that’s not accurate to the queer community as a diverse community.

Most production studios are not ready for a queer, masculine mainstream male character on television and that’s the problem. Television is still afraid of what too much LGBT acceptance might mean for their ratings. The shows that participate in queerbaiting want to acknowledge the LGBT community enough to get them excited, but not enough to show their authenticity and give proper and whole representation in mainstream media. I fear that society still has a long way to go before queer authenticity becomes a reality in mainstream media. 

Now, despite my frustrations, I don’t think that Hannibal falls into this category and I’m not alone. Bryan Fuller, one of the writers and creators of the show, is queer and actively articulates the romantic relationship between Hannibal and Will. Now, yes, season three came out in 2015 but was released on Netflix this year. I know that I’m late to the game but I am obsessed nonetheless, leave me alone. 

I know that if you’re reading this, you’re likely already familiar with Hannibal and hopefully have watched season three finale, but I still have to acknowledge, for the purpose of background, that Hannibal and Will have an extremely toxic relationship. They constantly try to kill each other. They cause each other severe depression and mental instability. They hurt each other as much as they help each other. Also, they kill people, so realistically, they are bad people. However, as viewers, the story is written to love these two despite their psychopathic tendencies. In the same way a cat brings a dead bird to your door. It’s disgusting and macabre but the cat is still kind of cute, even though you wouldn’t let it lick your face.

The way that Bryan Fuller created and developed the story of Hannibal and Will is not to queerbait. It’s to take you on a journey of their complicated relationship. Now, even though there are a lot of viewers that still want an explicit consummation of the relationship, even if it’s a kiss, I - and Bryan Fuller - don't think the relationship is ready for it. It may be a relief or just more excitement, but it wouldn’t make sense to the story and plus the tension is the good part, I think. Only because the viewer already knows that they love each other. If you know the characters well enough, they’ve already told each other in their own ways.

Not all on-screen relationships have to be consummated by a sex scene. Sometimes it just perverts it and takes away from the emotion. Bryan Fuller, Mads Mikkelsen, and Hugh Dancy aren’t adding sexual tension to torture the audience - well, maybe they are - but rather to convey how troubled they and their relationship is. For Hannibal and Will, a simple physical touch has more intimacy and significance than more explicit activities like sex or kissing, at least for now. Their relationship is extremely delicate and Hannibal is careful to not push himself onto Will and to let Will come to him. It has to be natural. It has to have clarity and stay on the right trajectory. In my own opinion, I want to see more of a domesticated relationship. I want to see what they act like on a lazy Sunday when they aren’t busy killing. Again, I digress.

In terms of queerbaiting, Hannibal doesn’t fall within the definition because the queer subtext goes beyond subtext to text. It is unclear what the sexual orientation is of the couple. Hannibal has had sex with a woman and Will has done the same and even married a woman. However, this does not mean that the characters are automatically heterosexual. I think that it’s very clear that Hannibal doesn’t subscribe to labels. I bet he thinks it’s rude. On the other hand, Will does worry about how people percieve him and would likely be uncomfortable with the title of being queer. “You called us ‘Murder Husbands’”, he said with disdain.

At the end of the day, Hannibal isn’t queerbaiting. Sure, we don’t get the kiss or a declaration of “I love you” but we don’t need it. Bryan Fuller isn’t marginalizing LGBT people, he’s telling a story about a tense and delicate relationship where sexual intimacy would be unrealistic for such important characters. That’s the beauty. However, this isn’t to say that sexual romance is impossible for this relationship. Though, one can expect that physical intimacy won’t be easy for them. The end of the third season really showed Hannibal and Will’s relationship growing stronger and gave realistic expectations for a romantic relationship in season four. The specifics are up to the viewer to decide. 

[polar-stars]

3rd out of an 5 part ask of @smokeprincess24 (sorry that it took a bit)

👹 How does you OC act around different people and how does their personality change to match the environment they’re in? How do they act with: friends, family, strangers, children or their lover(s)?

For the most part, Yasu is just more open and comfortable around people he's close to. He's friendly and polite to strangers, but also rather closeted and he won't expose all too much of himself. Around his friends and family he's just a bit more prone to be more talkative, even joke here and there and just generally be more laid-back so to speak. 

🍅 How easily is your OC embarassed? What subjects make them flush and why? What event has made your OC the most embarassed they’ve ever been?

Yasu is not all too easily embarrassed and when he is, he's still rather good at hiding it actually. He blushes mainly at sexual things being openly discussed because he thinks that's inappropriate. 

He's usually good enough at reading people and a situation to know what to say…So when someone gives him the impression he said the wrong thing, that certainly embarrasses him as well. 

💥 Are there any emotions your OC doesn’t know how to deal with, doesn’t understand or hates having to feel? Any reason behind this?

Answered already.

🏀 Does your OC have any skills that people wouldn’t expect them to have? Do they have a hobby or pass time that others would consider strange or weird? How did they learn this particular skill or pick up this hobby?

The fact that Yasu can dance as well as he can is much of a surprise to quite a few people and not many find out, since he does not often dance anyway and rather sits somewhere at the sides of parties. 

He also has aa hidden poetic side to him and writes poems and song texts in secret at times. He himself doesn't consider them good enough though to show them to anyone. 

⭐ Does your OC like to sleep alone or do they enjoy sharing their bed? Have they been to any sleepovers? Have they ever been camping? What did they think of the experiences if so?

As I've said already, he did share a bed at times with Chieko when they were really small smols and he never really minded it. It was fun listening to her discussing various theories and stuff she had thought over throughout the day and he liked it. 

He does not have all too much experience beyond that, except for having to share a bed with his sister Kasumi at times (which was also not much bother to him since Kasumi is rather peaceful) and he does not think off it as anything special.

🍏 When your OC says “I had a bad day” what does that tend to mean? Is it really as bad as they’re saying or are they being a bit dramatic?

When Yasu speaks about a bad day it's most likely truly, truly bad. He's not really one to over exaggerate and he's also not one to speak up a lot over being upset or something in the first place. So when he actually opens his mouth and says he's having it rough this day? That definitely means that it's serious. 

At the same time he doesn't really use this phrase as a way to say "please comfort me" but it's more of a way of telling whoever he's talking to that he's most likely not going to be as polite and friendly as usual….it's an advanced apology in a sense should he maybe snap. In order to avoid such he quickly retreats in his room anyway. 

Again…Yasu pushes people away when upset. 

🐉 How religious is your OC? Do they pray to any god(s) or do they not believe in that kind of stuff? What is their view of religion in general? Where do they believe people go when they die? If your OC is not religious why not and what do they believe in otherwise?

Yasu was raised to be a Buddhist by Ryoko and does hold on to the religion all his life. But at the same time his beliefs do not really affect his daily life all too immensely. 

To him it does still have something comforting though in a sense. 

💧 What is something from your OC’s past they’re the most ashamed of and why? What is something they’re really proud of? And lastly what is something in their past that could make them shake with dread?

What Yasu is truly going to be massively ashamed off is yet to come in the future, 

Other than that, Yasu is very skilled off avoiding blunders and while of course he was embarrassed here and there there's no real major event so far that truly stands out to him as the most embarrassing thing that ever happened. 

🐟 What was your OC like as a baby? What were they like as a child? A teenager? An adult? How do you think they’ll develop ten years into their future? Twenty years? Will they live to old age?

As a baby, Yasu was already more calm than other babies and didn't make all too much tumult; which Ryoko interpreted as a sign for having chosen the right name for him ("Yasu" means "peace, quiet"). He showed an affinity for nature early on and would show himself incredibly happy when Ryoko or Shun would take him outside into their garden or a park or something and set him down in the grass.

As a child he was not really the most social kid around but thanks to his mother he had learned enough polite phrases to get on everyone's good terms. While he did not make all too many friends, he was always pretty well-liked and in the end he always had Chieko as a friend. He ultimately spent most of his time with his parents however (Chieko in the end still lives in Tokyo, while he grew up outside of town and as I said he didn't spent all too much time with his peers in the small town he lives in) and helped them out a lot. His favorite hobby as a child was most definitely the exploration of the forest that's close to the family's house. 

As a teen he'd grew into a very friendly and calm young man who does usually not have all too much problems to get on people's good sides. While he's still much of an introvert, he's more sociable and open than he was as child thanks to Polar Star's influence mainly. He also came to idolize his parents however and carries an everlasting fear of disappointing them. 

Yasu won't change all too much as an adult, given that he was already rather mature for his age when he was a teen. He will have learned some of the errors in his ways however (like his overexaggerated protectiveness over Chieko) and also his worries regarding his parents will have been eased. I see him getting married rather late in his 20s honestly. 

🍇 Does your OC have any bad habits? Does your OC have any addictions like smoking or drinking? How did they fall into these habits and why? 

Yasu's major bad habit is definitely trying to gulp down all of his negative emotions because he feels he would be a bother if he were to vent and just let them out. He looks out for other people a good bunch of times but when it comes to his own emotions he likes to ignore them until he's alone with them at night creating the perfect conditions to overthink everything (which does not help…ever). 

He also drinks on Polar Star Parties but he can hold his liquor. No one ever saw Yasu drunk. 

🔮What does your OC think is their best trait. What is actually their best trait? What about their flaws? Are they one to admit these flaws or do they like to pretend they’re perfect?

Yasu thinks his best trait is his politeness but I'd say his best trait is his care.

A flaw of his is that his own worries, anxieties or envy can cloud his view and his judgement immensely at times. 

🌸 What’s a sentence that would make your OC’s day better? One that would make them laugh? One that would make their day worse? Why? What words would you have to say to them to completely ruin their day?

A sentence that can always make his day better is certainly "Can I use your [insert fermentation product here]?" He really wants to support his mother's business on Totsuki and advertises it whenever he cans. It really makes him happy when his efforts pay off. 

A sentence that can ruin his day is any sentence that has both "Chieko Marui" and "Shigeo Eizan" in it. 

🌷 How much effort does your OC put into their looks? Do they care much about how they’re dressed or what their hair looks like or are they not bothered? Could they be considered a snob or a slob?

Yasu's pretty casual in his fashion choice and is mainly concerned over wether the clothes are comfortable and loose than anything else. 

He takes rather good care of his hair though but there's not much else that concerns him a lot. 

❤️ What inspired you to make this OC? How long have you had them? How have they changed in the time you’ve been developing them?

Shun/Ryoko was one of my first ships…of course I wanted to give them a child. Yasu is one of my first Fanchild OCs and was created alongside Kimiko, Mika and Hiroshi. He was really tough to design as I had a lot of trouble mixing Shun's and Ryoko's designs. Eventually I came up with the idea to give him Shun's blinding bangs and Ryoko's silkiness but…how exactly that would look changed multiple times throughout the years ahdhd He truly took long to be finalized in that area. 

Character-Wise, I decided very quickly that he'd be Chieko's best friend. Because of course he would. It also didn't took me long to characterize him as peaceful, calm and such…given that I had literally named him that. 

Over the years he hasn't changed all too much personality-wise. But I went through a lot, a lot of story-ideas with him…many of them very angst.

🧡 What traits of your own do you see in this OC? Are they a little bit self-inserty? Don’t be shy, we all put parts of ourselves into the creations we love!

I do always try my best to be polite, especially in Real Life. I don't think I excel at this as good as Yasu does because I do tend to be inattentive to my surroundings at times but well….It's still something?

I do ultimately prefer the ocean but I also like the forest as well. Also we have a bit of the same view on religion, although we're not part of the same religion ahdhd

What I majorly can relate to in Yasu though is his tendency to always attempt to shut down all negative feelings because I do as well like to pretend that sadness and anger do not exist. 

💚 Are you writing anything with this OC or planning on writing anything for them? Do you rp with them or are they just for fun to mess around with?

You gave me asks for them but I'm still into figuring out how exactly to write them ; 7 ;

💗 Ramble a bit about this character!

Yasu can be greatly used for angst but in the end I do want to know him happy. He deserves it. 

He'll makes some mistakes here and there but in the end, he's always trying his best. I really don't know how to construct his future really…ovo;; But I hope I'll eventually figure it out. 

[88missmarauder88]

All right, my dear person who requested this -- this is SO not my wheelhouse, so please... be gentle. :) I did my best! Thanks also to the people who helped me learn some of the fanfic ropes. I now know that this is a

Sirius x Reader sitch that does not include “smut” lol Just loveyness. And apparently, a great big heaping spoonful of fluffiness as well! :)

and hereabouts was the original request:

“Can you do a SiriusxReader with the reader being James' sister and she's figured out she has feelings for Sirius but she's scared to make a move because she doesn't want everybody mad at her? And then they have a moment while they're listening to music or at a concert or something and she thinks maybe he has feelings for her too now?”

You couldn't sleep.

It was becoming more and more common. Depending on your state of mind, you'd either lie motionless, staring at the canopy for hours, or thrash fitfully until passing out near dawn from the sheer exertion of trying. You'd sleepwalk through the following day, quiet and irritable, desperate to climb out of your own head, falling deeper into it every time you remembered there was no one to whom you could turn with your feelings.

Your behaviour hadn't gone unnoticed by your family and friends. James had muttered on more than one occasion that you were turning into Sirius, which certainly did not help. Remus, ever your protector, had tried so many times to talk to you, most recently that very afternoon.

"I know there's something wrong. You know I know there's something wrong, so why won't you just tell me? I'm your best friend."

The look of hurt that passed over his delicate face broke you in two. Merlin knew you wanted to tell him. You were having to dig your fingernails into your thigh, in fact, to keep from just launching yourself into his arms, sobbing into his shoulder, and telling him everything. It would make it all so much easier to bear... but only for you. Because yes, Remus would stroke your hair, and rock you, and tell you everything was going to be all right, and you knew beyond the shadow of a doubt he'd keep your secret. But then it would change his behaviour, even if only subconsciously. And the boys were too in tune with one other, especially these days. They'd notice, they'd demand he tell them what was going on, and he'd find himself in the same position you were in now. You wouldn't wish that misery on him for anything.

"Remus, do you trust me?"

He nodded, but sadly, already knowing what was coming next.

"I'm fine," you said, giving him the most convincing smile you could muster. You knew from the look on his face that you hadn't mustered much at all. "It's nothing I can't handle, all right? And nothing I want you dwelling on. I'll work it out."

Technically, it would have been easier to unburden yourself to Lily, but you didn't see a light at the end of that tunnel, either. She'd never be anything other than supportive, but Lily was a fixer. And considering how much she hated Sirius and your brother, her preferred fix would most likely be to try to talk you out of the whole thing altogether. Then again, maybe you should just let her. As the universe's cruel jokes went, having you fall in... whatever this was you were in with Sirius Black had to be up there on the list.

It certainly hadn't been a conscious effort. In fact, you were entirely baffled as to how it had happened at all, which contributed significantly to your inner turmoil. One minute, you'd been roaming the halls of Hogwarts with your brother and his friends, giggling and trodding on one another underneath the invisibility cloak, popping in and out of secret passages, and celebrating in the Gryffindor common room after pulling off another epic prank. The next, Peter was behaving more and more oddly every day, Remus's transformations combined with the changes his body was undergoing had him in a terrible state, James was either failing miserably at wooing Lily or taking out his frustrations on Severus Snape with little else in between, and Sirius had turned quiet, sullen and moody. And you... you'd woken up one day, walked into the Great Hall for breakfast, and felt your stomach drop into your feet when he glanced up at you.

You'd been exhausting yourself for months trying to reason your way out of it, telling yourself it was just a reaction you were having to his situation. You and Sirius had always been close in that you could open up to one another about the darker aspects of your personalities in ways you couldn't with the others. You both had short fuses and more-destructive-than-average tendencies and devious streaks that frequently tilted more towards reckless abandon than calculated risk, and you were both more than a little afraid of those traits. It was easier -- safer -- to work that out between yourselves. Because of that, you knew quite a bit about Sirius's home life, whereas James, Remus and Peter knew only what Sirius deemed necessary. You knew what had flipped a switch on Sirius's typically overbearing-yet-affable demeanor was nothing short of pure evil. These... feelings were nothing more than your desire to help and protect him manifesting oddly. So what if you felt like the breath had been knocked out of you every time he was within five feet of you, if a shiver went down your spine every time he said your name, if your nerves went haywire every time he touched you. Your friend was drowning, and he wouldn't let you throw him a line -- said it was "too dangerous now" and he didn't want you involved. The rest of this idiocy was just a side effect of your feelings of helplessness.

And now, he was living in your house. Right down the hall.

He'd finally escaped, and you couldn't have been more thrilled, more relieved. When he'd arrived at Potter Manor, you'd flung your arms around him freely, crying softly into the crook of his neck as he gently rubbed your back and assured you that everything was going to be just fine from now on. You didn't feel anything in that moment but the pure, overwhelming affection for your friend you'd felt ever since the day you met him. Foolishly, you thought that would be the end of it. He was safe now. No more need to lie awake at night worrying about what might be happening to him at Grimmauld Place. No more feeling useless. No more feeling frightened. No more feeling.

But you'd been wrong. Whatever it was -- and it was not love, you reminded yourself repeatedly; you knew enough of that concept to know it was supposed to be all googly eyes and hearts skipping beats and butterflies, not this abject terror you were experiencing -- it was persistent. And you'd found yourself simply avoiding him, and, by default, the other boys, while you tried to sort yourself out. It wasn't proving to be a very productive plan of action thus far, but it was all you had.

Sighing, you rolled out of bed, resolved to head to the family library. If you had to be awake, you could at least try to otherwise occupy your mind.

As you made your way down the corridor, faint music caught your attention. Following it, you recognised the band. You listened for a moment more before coming to a halt. You knew where the music would be coming from, and your head told you the last thing you needed right now was to be confronted with the very problem that had you out of bed and wandering the manor at this hour in the first place. Your heart, however, seemed to have other ideas -- and had apparently commandeered your feet, as you suddenly found yourself moving towards the sound once again.

Silently, you turned the knob and cracked the door to Sirius's room. It was dark, but the moonlight spilling in through the window cast sufficient glow. He was seated on the floor, back against the foot of his bed, turntable beside him. He hadn't changed clothes, still clad in the jeans and Queen t-shirt he'd worn that day. As "Can't Get Enough" continued to play, he examined the tracklisting on the back of the album, one with which you were familiar. You'd bought it yourself just a week before, and you'd been excited to get home and play it for him. You knew he'd love it. Instead, he'd smiled at you, and you'd excused yourself to your room for the rest of the day, only partially feigning illness.

Tears pricked your eyes, and you carefully, soundlessly, turned the knob again in order to pull the door back into place.

"You can hear it better from in here, you know."

You jumped, slamming the door loudly in the process.

"Shit!!"

I swear, he's got the wrong Animagus form. Should've been a bloody bat or something.

Embarrassed at being caught, you grappled with the thought of fleeing back to your room, but that would look even stranger than spying on him. Besides, if he thought all you were trying to do was hear the music, there was no reason to be standing here in the hallway, blushing like a complete idiot. Taking a deep breath, you opened the door.

"You've a right foul mouth on you these days," Sirius chuckled.

"Wonder where I could've gotten that from."

"I'm a perfect angel, just ask your mum."

He looked up at you, pulling a wide-eyed, innocent face. You forced a laugh to accompany the quickly exhaled breath that fled your lungs. The moonlight cascaded across his face, highlighting his handsome features, lending an unearthly shimmer to his dark hair.

An angel. That's exactly what he looks like.

"Can't sleep again?" he asked, turning the music down a bit.

You shook your head, moving to take a seat on the floor opposite him. Instead, he patted the space beside him. "Can't see the liner notes from there," he reasoned. You couldn't seem to feel your legs, but you were grateful when they somehow lowered you onto the spot he indicated rather than dropping you like a wet rag onto the turntable.

Sirius held the album where you could see it, unaware you were already familiar with every track.

"Bad Company. Brand new. I'm into it. There's a tune on here I swear was written specifically about the Marauders," he grinned.

You knew to which song he referred. The title track. Swap "gun" for "wand", and it would be just about spot on. You managed a smile as the opening notes of "Rock Steady", your favourite track, began.

"This is a great one as well," Sirius said, turning the volume back up before settling against the end of his bed. "Lean back," he instructed. "It'll clear your head, I promise."

Sirius had pulled his blankets down to cushion the bed frame, and you pressed yourself into them.

Close my eyes, and I let myself go Listen to, oh, baby, let the music flow

Slowly, your eyelids drooped as you allowed the music to wash over you. It had been impossible lately to focus. Stress, confliction, fear -- they'd all combined to keep your mind swirling constantly, making you feel out of place and confused. At night, with nothing to distract you, it was worse. You felt like you were living multiple lives all at once. But now, with a newly loved song surrounding you as warmly as the soft blankets behind your back, you were nowhere but here.

With him.

You opened your eyes and turned your head to find Sirius staring at you. Inhaling sharply, your body tried to react -- to look away. You needed to look away. Now. But you felt pinned to the spot by his gaze. In the moonlight, his grey eyes were nearly silver, and you had the sensation you were falling into them. You wanted to fight it but found yourself lacking the strength. You realised you weren't breathing. A part of you didn't care. The thought of the pain of the last several months just melting away to nothing seemed incredibly appealing. And he would be the last thing you ever saw.

Turn on your light And stay with me awhile And ease your worried mind Turn on your light And stay with me awhile

You took a slow breath, suddenly wanting to live again.

Numb as you were, you barely felt it when Sirius's arm slipped around your waist, drawing you against his side. You exhaled. You felt miles above your body when your head dropped of its own volition onto his shoulder. You plummeted back down into yourself at the sensation of his cheek coming to rest on your forehead. He reached over with his free hand and gently took yours, slowly interlacing your fingers. You inhaled. He smelled like the cedar trees around the Black Lake after a storm. And firewhisky and tobacco and...

Vice.

A truth at once comforting and terrifying dawned on you: You had never wanted anything more than you wanted to remain in this moment, always... to let time and space and fate crumble around you unnoticed. The burning, tingling pressure in your chest you'd been trying to will away for weeks now finally broke through your barriers, but not as the despairing flood you'd expected; instead, as a slow seep into every empty corner of your being. A completion.

Please... oh, please no... it can't be...

For all the world's romantic fairy tales, surely love could not be as simple as a tinderbox boy and a paperdoll girl, broken in the same hidden places, trying to hold one another together to the pulsing rhythm of a dirty guitar.

But it is...

The answer echoed through your mind as the song ended and a new one began, and you both slipped silently into sleep.

[hereticpriest]

Sparks Part 1

John Wick Post Chapter 2 AU

John was made excommunicado but without the bounty on his head. He moves away and lives a normal life for once.

Warnings: None for this chapter. Future chapters may become NSFW. Canon-typical violence and swearing may occur in later chapters. Will be tagged.

@lvngdvns

It took a while for John to feel comfortable after his expulsion from the world he’d lived in most of his life. Unlike when he got out the first time, he felt quite certain that someone would come after him just for the prestige of having killed John Wick. He wasn’t protected in the same way he was the first time. He didn’t have a contract out for his head, but he was no longer welcome at the Continental, and he had plenty of enemies around the world.

His new home was outside of the city, up in a less inhabited region of upstate New York. The town closest to his new home was quaint, with only a bookstore, a pet store/groomer home business, a grocery store, a bank, a family restaurant, a hardware store and a gas station. The neighbouring town had a Target and a couple of chain fast food places, but anything beyond that would require a longer drive into the city. He had everything he needed close by, he had his dog, and he finally had the time to grieve.

Peace didn’t necessarily come easy to John. It took him months to stop looking over his shoulder and pulling his gun over random noises at night. He stopped wearing his tactical vest suit every day after a couple of months, though he didn’t get rid of it. It took him a while to become comfortable going out, but after a couple of months, he became a regular at the local bookstore. It was a small business owned by a young local woman, and it contained the only decent coffee in town. The Nestled Nook was in the old bank, so it had a very old school aesthetic and a reading area in the back which was once a vault. It was also one of the few places in town that had free wifi, and the download speed was faster there than it was at his house.

Which is how he met Natalia.

Natalia owned and operated The Nestled Nook with only minor assistance from her sole employee, Courtney Holland. Where Courtney was loud and boisterous in her efforts to sell product, Natalia was calm and disarming. Where Courtney was the epitome of youthful optimism, Natalia was what one would think of when hearing the phrase ‘an old woman in a young woman’s body’. They were opposites in almost every way, including in appearance.

Courtney had a sunkissed tan, pin-straight brown hair, and brown eyes that were so light they looked like the colour of honey. She was younger than Natalia by only four years, but her youth shone in a way that made the age gap so much more pronounced. She was not so average in height, but extraordinarily average in weight, and carried both off quite well. Tall as a beanpole with a slight pear shape and thighs that she claimed could snap a man’s neck, Courtney was one hell of a woman.

John couldn’t claim to be very fond of interacting with Courtney at length, as she had a tendency to push boundaries and ask probing questions. That being said, she had also married the owner of the local pet store and had helped him quite a bit when he was choosing things for Dog. He liked her well enough but kept her at arms-length in order to avoid her prying.

Natalia, on the other hand, was as white as a porcelain doll if not for the freckles dotted across her skin. Her hair fell in red curls around her face when she let it down, but she generally kept it in a loose bun held with hair needles and a whole lot of luck. Her eyes were such a light shade of blue that they were nearly grey, framed by long, pale lashes and crow’s feet at the corners that she was far too young to have. Natalia was average in height at about 5’6, but her shape was closer to a typical hourglass figure. She was toned where Courtney was soft, but she always made the excuse that it was from carrying books all the time.

John didn’t believe her when she waved off Courtney’s questions with that excuse, but he wasn’t supposed to be listening from his place in the stacks. He was waiting for Courtney to head back into the coffee bar area so that he could speak to Natalia and get her latest recommendations. She always knew what to suggest, and she always seemed to know when he needed a distraction. Despite his best efforts, he found her to be a rather tempting distraction. Natalia was just over half his age, a gentle soul, and most certainly not his wife. That being said, he had spent quite a bit of time adjusting to his new life and thinking about Helen’s note to him. She had made her wishes quite clear before that as well. She didn’t want him to dwell and close himself off completely. She told him he needed something to love. It had been just over a year since Helen passed away, and he finally felt some measure of peace.

Courtney batted at Natalia playfully, then glanced in his direction and smiled. She leaned in to Natalia’s ear, whispering something he couldn’t make out right before tweaking Natalia’s ear. Natalia’s cheeks turned pink, the blush showing easily on her light skin, and she tried to punch Courtney on the arm but missed. Courtney danced out of her reach and laughed full and loud.

“Even just one good one would last you for a while, Nat. You’re not as old as you act; you can’t use being too busy as an excuse forever.” Courtney practically sang, moving past him through the aisles towards the coffee bar. As she passed him, the brunette winked playfully and threw out a quick “Evening, Mr. Wick.”

Natalia had turned away from him, fanning herself and muttering something about nosy employees sticking their noses into her business. She wore her typical uniform: a black skirt that flared out around her stocking covered thighs and a white button-up topped with a cozy cardigan. If she wasn’t wearing a button up, she usually wore a sweater or a book-themed t-shirt.

“Natalia.” John greeted her quietly, a bit of a smirk tugging at his lips when she jumped in response.

“Oh! John, sorry, you startled me.” Natalia turned to face him, offering him a warm smile that caused the corners of her eyes to crinkle and emphasized her dimples.

“Sorry, my fault. I didn’t mean to sneak up on you. I’ve finished the last couple of books. I was wondering if you had any more suggestions?” John murmured, rubbing his short beard. He certainly didn’t look as intimidating as he usually did, considering his suit had been replaced by plain blue jeans and a white crew neck. That being said, his posture had only softened a bit and he was still just as quiet as he used to be.

Natalia laughed quietly, offering him her arm as a joke. Her laughter grew louder when he actually took her arm, large hand closing around her bicep to feel out her muscle tone.

“Of course, Mr. Wick. What are you looking for today?”

“Fiction. I’m interested in something different today…” John trailed off, starting to over-think his choice.

“And what would that be, John?” Natalia asked, leading him in the direction of the fiction novels.

“… Romance, I think.” John said before he could worry too much and talk himself out of it.

“Oh, I see. What sort of romance were you thinking? Are you looking for something mixed-genre where the romance is only part of the story, or flat-out romance? Serious, or light-hearted?”

Well, apparently that had flown right over her silly ginger head. John thought briefly of what Helen would tell him in this moment, oddly enough. She wanted him to be happy. She would be upset with him if he wasted away by himself. She was his best friend, and she knew him better than he knew himself some days.

“Would you like to get dinner with me tonight?” John asked after using his grip on Natalia’s bicep to guide her to stop walking. Wide blue eyes caught his gaze, and he offered her a small, reassuring smile. The young woman was silent for a moment, and he started to worry for a second before the corners of her lips turned up.

“Oh, of course John. I didn’t mean to leave you hanging there, I apologize. I just… wasn’t expecting that.” Natalia’s smile was brighter than usual, and there was a humour to her voice that usually wasn’t there. He took that as a good sign, considering the redhead was usually quite reserved. He nodded briefly, stepping just a tiny bit closer so she would have to look up at him.

“Do you want to eat at the Old Chelsea, go out of town, or would you like me to cook?” He asked, releasing his hold on her bicep, though he couldn’t help a small smile when Natalia caught and squeezed his hand.

“If we eat at the Old Chelsea, we will not get a single moment of peace. If you want to cook, I’d be happy to help?” Natalia offered, then giggled softly, “And what you’re thinking is completely correct – I am most certainly using you for your adorable dog.”

John snorted, and Natalia’s smile widened in response. She led him through the stacks to the romance section, pulling out a book before he could catch the title. Three stacks over, she grabbed another book, and lastly, she led him over to a ��New Releases’ stack to pick up the sequel to one of the books he had read recently. She stacked up the three and put them in his hands, then scribbled her cellphone number onto a piece of paper which topped off the stack of books. John smirked at the sight of the number and the heart drawn next to it.

“Here are my suggestions. Take a look, and then come see me if you need more help. Text me what time you want me to come over. And your address.” Natalia leaned up to kiss his cheek, then headed up to the front of the store, leaving a smiling John Wick with the slightest hint of a pink kiss on his cheek from Natalia’s lip balm.

Twenty minutes later, he purchased all three suggested books from a smirking Courtney. She didn’t say anything, but it was clear she knew, approved, and thought she was very smart for predicting this.

“Bye Mr. Wick. Have a good night.” Courtney sang cheekily after him.

“I intend on it.” He retorted, waving at her over his shoulder, then letting out a short laugh when he heard a thump followed by Courtney yelping.

913 Bois-Franc Ave. Any time after 4, dinner will be at 5:30. Dog is excited to see you again. – JW

Be there with bells on. I’m excited to see him too. What should I wear? – NJ

You just said you would be wearing bells. – JW

Dress comfortably. It’s just me. – JW

I need to wear something under the bells, John. – NJ

Don’t even. I realized it as I hit send. I will be there just after 4. PS Courtney says you have lipstick on your cheek. – NJ

[sunkeepersolarpunkmusic]

Free Solarpunk Essay for your thoughts

There’s not many essays and findings in academia that are given away to anyone without special access, so since I just got a 100 on my Environmental Ethics Reflection Essay, I’m posting it here for solarpunks it might benefit to think about these ethics considerations. (hit read more for essay)

My environmental ethic in recent years has grown to center around bolstering man’s integration with the environment. I see almost any given postulation regarding land use ethics to pat its own back while its front is on fire. In other words, people’s ideas about the proper use or stewardship of the environment always hit a wall when challenged in their authority. This wall is also invisible, so to speak, meaning where a moral or ordained boundary (or lack thereof) cannot be decided on without agreeance upon what humanity “should” be doing with the planet it is occupying. I have, in my infinite naiveté as a single human being with single brain, begun to embrace how “Capital I Integration” may be the most productive way forward in how man both heals and continue to utilize the environment for its inevitable “progress”—whether or not we can all agree it was ordained to make such progress.

Firstly discussed will be how the idea of integration relates to the documentary film In Light of Reverence, where indigenous North American people are interviewed in opposition to Western culturists, typically Caucasian, where the two parties clash over the use of various natural areas. Perhaps it’s more accurate to state that the film is highlighting the “innate stewardship” that Native Americans have shown since their use of North American lands began and the Manifest Destiny-driven sense of construction, innovation and progress that European settlers brought with them along with their genocidal colonization effort in the Americas. With God as their witness, and the power of their environmental use destiny still uncontested, Western lineages in the United States can’t be discounted in environmental ethic due to the gravity of their claim to have been ordained as fate-bound stewards of the land.

In contrast to the western settlers and their intent to use sacred grounds for recreation and “weekend conquering,” Native Americans—dwindling in number and power since the pilgrims came—still hold firm in their also-religiously-mandated approach on worshiping the land literally. The irony is how these peoples had originally not occupied these lands either, and that their rationale does not extend beyond what they are religiously (and/or culturally) inclined to believe about environment use. Native Americans believe in serving and protecting the land (read: environment), only using what is necessary for survival from it. While it can be easy to think this approach to man’s exchange with his environment is most productive in the new Anthropocene Era, there are myriad counterarguments available to support how now, more than ever, humanity should be developing technologies to stitch the wounds inflicted on our planet by the same technologically-prone cultures which caused them. Here we find how these (and other) ideas about how man should relate to the planet reveal themselves to be culturally masturbatory paradoxes the moment they’re challenged by anyone who can zoom out their thinking far enough to examine them from outside the scale of “man versus man.”

As a frequent explorer of existentialism and ethics considerations, I know that where paradoxes are found, danger lurks—not unlike how Val Plumwood’s advising ranger warned her that the swift currents of a main river in the Kakadu wetlands would bring her into the gnashing teeth of crocodiles. Plumwood would, out of selfish curiosity, find herself in these areas anyway on her exploration of the paperbark wetlands, and it is by the same selfish curiosity I worry mankind will continue exploring the forest of environmental ethics paradoxes until they find themselves in their own set of gnashing teeth. Val Plumwood has the wherewithal to know her run-in with the wild element of nature was not indicative of any malicious intent of nature. Instead, Plumwood echoes in Being Prey how the crocodile who had nearly eaten her should not be condemned, for man is physiologically part of the food chain regardless of his beliefs or origin.

So, too, is man part of the environmental stability chain regardless of his beliefs or origin. In the next century and beyond, the way humanity treats the planet will determine how safe it is. Plumwood’s warning was “stay clear of dangerous waters” and our warning as a species in the 21st century is “stay clear of environmental paradoxes.” In other words, if a notion about how to interact with the environment was planted in a factually unverifiable bed of soil (like religious ordainment, for example), it must be repotted at the dawn of the Anthropocene Era as the human race begins to work as an increasingly collectivist organism.

This is where I find myself embracing wholly the idea of integration with nature rather than preservation of or stewardship of it, or so on. I find that, since construction/progression is inevitable in the cultures that cannot be dissuaded from having that sort of influence on the environment, the productive elements of that worldview should be taken and adapted with more preservationist worldviews to balance the destructive tendencies of either (here referring to how Western culture views the lack of use of the environment as a “waste,” thus it is equally as  destructive as their pollution from cities, etc.)

When viewing the future of cities and human-nature cooperation from “integrationist” eyes, cities look like structures within natural environments rather than separate or in opposition of them. Wildlife is relatively unhindered, yet commerce, innovation, technology and civilizations in general can continue to thrive and grow so long as they are carbon-neutral or better. Saturated sustainability taking priority creates a “new final frontier” for “alpha cultures” like those of the US, Europe, Russia, Korea, to compete to dominate in. Singapore, Costa Rica, etc. are finding explosions in growth since their refocusing on a sustainability paradigm within their infrastructures, and the dying embers of post-war-obsessed generations and countries will finally be rekindled with senses of cultural pride as soon as the race for sustainable cities and nations becomes the new standard for economic value.

Talking more specifically, biomimicry in design is growing in its influence across all industries. Mimicking nature, designers of all sorts of things have discovered that efficiencies beyond imagination can be unlocked the moment something is redesigned according to nature’s exact specifications. Theologians and scientists can both agree on the results, since biomimicry does not need proof of either. The invention of Velcro as an “adhesive fabric material” benefited humanity the world over—whether it was evolution and adaptation or God who developed the burs which stick so easily to animal fur, where through nature the invention was discovered. The Shinkansen bullet train was changed to not create sonic booms when exiting tunnels any longer, not because of a redesign formed by a human, by a redesign according to the exact specifications of a kingfisher’s avian beak. Termites are teaching us how to design sustainable buildings, dolphins are teaching us how to send signals underwater, humpback whales are teaching us how to create efficient wind power. The list goes on and will only grow as more of nature’s processes are examined for the sake of man’s sustainability and integration with nature.

As an author for the solarpunk movement, a new genre of fiction exploring eco-centric futures of man’s relationship with the environment, I absolutely stand behind the idea of integration between the two. A zero-waste preservationist would say integration still can damage and change the environment, and a fossil fuels industry billionaire would argue that integration would disrupt socio-economic prosperity the world over for the “boring” notion of balance between man and nature. I find that, usually, when two opposing extremists equally despise a compromising ideality, it’s probably the best possible solution to move forward with in the complex Venn Diagram that is “practical ethics”—and I’m sure the motion carries to environmental ethics in the first century where they really, truly matter. Only time will tell, as always, yet in this case, time is very, very angry. I guess for once, compromise might have to take precedent in the eyes of the collective human race.

[dianakko-week]

Day 1: Adventure

From the very moment they met, their lives were an adventure. The one-sided rivalry Akko had declared seemingly annoyed Diana, but in actuality, it sparked something once long gone: anticipation. Be it making a fool out of herself or dazzling people with incredible magic, Diana began to look forward to moments with Akko. She felt scared and ashamed when she thought about hurting Akko during Papiliodia incident, excited when she recalled their broom race, flustered when she remembered the LoveLove Bee, and amazed when she relived the Samhain Magic Festival. It isn’t until Akko chases her back home and saves her from her Aunt’s snakes does Diana realize that these feelings could mean more.

Meanwhile, while Akko initially wanted to outshine Diana, she found herself vying for her acknowledgement, then her approval, then her respect, and finally, her friendship. It was annoying at first. When she failed in classes, Diana was there to correct her. When she fell from her broom, Diana was there to catch her. Then, when she was at her lowest, Diana was there for her. When Diana gave her her Premium card and reignited her hopes and dreams, a new dream was created in the process.

Akko, who had just overcome her grief, did not notice the way her heart pounded when Diana told her that she believed in her magic. Diana, who was too concerned with stopping the missile, did not notice her stomach fluttering when Akko invited her to save the world. The two protected and saved each other in the fight, overwhelmed with fear at one moment, then joy at another. Once the two stopped the Noir Missile and restored magic to the world, they realized exactly what those feelings and those moments meant: They wanted to spend the rest of their lives together.

  While the rest of their school lives where easy, the next step of their relationship was not. Akko, who blundered and powered through trials and tribulations without much thought for failure, was absolutely terrified at the prospect of losing what she had with Diana. Knowing her tendency for mistakes and her low-but-not-as-low-as-before position as a witch, she refused to even think about confessing, especially after how far the two had come in their friendship. How would others view them? How would they view Diana? She couldn’t put Diana through the same teasing she endured for so long. She was just Akko, while Diana was Diana Cavendish, the most beautiful, talented, perfect, and kind witch of all time. What could she possibly offer?

Similarly, Diana, ever the perfectionist, could not find some problem that would come with a relationship with the energetic Atsuko “Akko” Kagari. She worried about the amount of public slander and gossip that would negatively affect Akko. She feared that between her duties as heiress and her work in school, she would lose time for Akko. She paled at the thought of dragging Akko into her own problems, and she didn’t want to put even more pressure on the Japanese girl. And even if these problems did not exist, Diana would actually have to confess first, and there was no shortage of the amount of things that could go wrong, such as weather, spectators, timing, miscommunication, or the worst, anything that was less than what Akko deserved. Doubt, worries, and struggles plagued their lives, to the point where their friendship started to suffer. The two met less often, spoke little, and smiled rarely, too worried about their feelings and each other to properly speak.

Everyone else had enough. Like with Sucy and Lotte and with Hannah and Barbara, their friends were willing to wait and let it happen. This, however, was taking too long and costing too much. The three teams, minus Akko and Diana, of course, had a meeting to decide how they would get Akko and Diana to talk. After hours of diagrams from Constanze, Nightfall references by Lotte and Barbara, rejections to potions made by Sucy, and a massive slam from Jasminka that shut everyone up, Amanda and Hannah came up with a simple yet effective solution.

  After numerous wards, spells, barricades, and fortifications (with some special help from Croix and Chariot), the seven had managed to lock Diana and Akko in the Blue Team’s dorm. Magic was used to Akko-proof the doors and windows while the physical blockades were used to Diana-proof the exits. Had the two worked together, they could have escaped, but neither were in the mental state to cooperate. And so, after being forced to talk by their friends, the two finally let out their anxieties and feelings. Misunderstandings came into light, conflicts were resolved, and their friendship began to repair.

It, however, did not stop there. As the dams broke, neither girl could stop themself, blushing red as they admitted that they liked each other. When Akko talked about her blunders and Diana spoke about her imperfections, two vows were made that would forever cement their love.

“I will always be there to catch you.”

“As long as you’re with me, everything in my life is perfect.”

And with that, the two kissed. It was indescribable, an action so simple and tender, yet so powerful and meaningful, that any description the two would eventually give could never do it justice. One thing was certain: it would be the first of many. When they emerged from the door, their seven friends and two professors cheered. The two were too smitten with each other to remember that they were mad at the others for locking them in a room for five hours.

  Soon, graduation came upon them. Diana, of course, was the Valedictorian. Families of all the witches came to celebrate. Lotte and Sucy decided to open up their own magic shop, though the more…eccentric…potions would be left in the back. Hannah and Barbara, surprisingly, set out to create their own magical productions, albeit more on the musical rather than the showy side. The Green Team worked together to create their own shop, featuring brooms, magitech, and pastries. Akko and Diana decided to travel the world, studying the new effects magic brought upon the world and performing for whatever audiences they gathered.

Over the years, everybody progressed through their lives and their relationships, but still kept contract with each other. Whenever there was a wedding, everybody would be there, starting with Chariot and Croix’s. The Yanson-Manbavaran shop expanded into a massive chain, with Sucy becoming the leading expert in potions while Lotte managed the business. With the normalization of magic and the increasing demand for magitech, Constanze had become a multi-millionaire almost overnight, allowing her two wives to study to become Luna Nova’s next headmistress and become a world-renowned broom racer. Hannah and Barbara England had become a duo of directors, creating all sorts of media, though Hannah had to reel in Barbara’s more…creative…writing tendencies.

Only Diana and Akko had not married (yet, if someone were to ask their friends), and Akko was becoming anxious. Had Diana grown tired of her? Were their shows secretly disgusting her? Had she fumbled too many times and gotten them into too many accidents? Or was it the same reason why everyone had teased and mocked her all those years ago: She wasn’t a real witch? Diana always seemed more stressed and hid it whenever she saw Akko. Akko had seen Diana staying up late to write letters, most likely finding new suitors that could properly bolster the Cavendish name. Maybe her Aunt Daryl had finally gotten into her head. Maybe Diana now say Akko as the rest of the upper class of magic saw her. If she truly was a burden on Diana’s happiness, she would gladly leave, but that wouldn’t make it any less painful.

In reality, Diana was furious. How dare her aunt mock the love of her life! The audacity of the magic community to question her decision to love the witch who restored magic to the world! With the bombardment of letters and responsibilities that came with the preparations for her to become the head of the Cavendish family, she had been stressed beyond relief. Only the sight of Akko could make Diana smile now, hiding the stress she didn’t want to radiate towards the person she loved the most. She apparently wasn’t doing a very good job, considering how Akko stiffened around her and approached with less of her normal gusto. Still, every night, she hugged Akko, whispering sweet nothings in her ear as both of them relaxed. Every morning, Diana would kiss her lover awake, still in disbelief that they were in each other’s life. She could feel the pain and worry in Akko, so she made sure she did her best to cuddle it away. After all, she had a proposal to plan.

  Mount Fuji. Their final stop before flying back to England, considering the leyline was atop of it. With surprisingly no protests from either of them, the two trekked up the 12,000 foot volcano. Thanks to all their travels, both girls were fit to travel at a steady pace, though Akko had to control herself, wanting to walk next to Diana the whole time.

Wrapped in layers of raincoats, boots and thermals (because Akko insisted that they use as little magic as possible for this specific part of the trip), the witches admired the view of the city and country during the day, then gazed at the stars at night (though none would admit that they kept sneaking looks at each other’s eyes). Midway up the trek, the watched the sea of moving clouds in awe, the moonlight creating various hues of blue and white. The trek had granted them views of civilization and nature, each equal in their beauty. Each girl, however, needed no more beauty than what was in front of them.

It was almost dawn. Despite the high altitudes causing a drop in temperature, Diana was sweating. She knew that she loved Akko and Akko loved her. That was a fact, but a fact could be proven true or false. What if Akko didn’t love her? Wait, no. That’s as likely as Amanda becoming a teacher. What if Akko wasn’t ready to get married? What if Akko didn’t want all the responsibilities that came with becoming part of the Cavendish household? She was a free spirit, through and through. If they got married, she would be tied down. She wouldn’t able to become the next Shiny Chariot. If any part of their lives were anything less than what Akko deserved-

Akko gripped both of Diana’s hands as the sun rose, bringing her out her self-made abyss. With light sparkling across her face, a huge smile and light tears coming out of her eyes, she said three simple, yet oh so meaningful words.

  “I love you.”

  That was all she needed. Wordlessly, she dropped to one knee and opened her hidden box. Sitting in the velvet box was golden ring, topped with a light-blue sapphire gem that matched Diana’s eyes. The ring was smooth to the touch, but thanks to the sunrise and a little magic from Diana, seven stars on the ring glowed with red light that matched Akko’s eyes.

Akko never reacted faster in her life. She surged forward, pulling Diana up and into a deep, passionate kiss, pouring all of her love, adoration, hopes, and dreams into it. With her arms around Diana’s neck, she wondered why Diana was not reacting. When she quickly pulled away, she found out why. The ring was no longer in Diana’s hand.

Akko spent the next ten minutes running down the volcano while Diana stumbled for her wand.

  They kept the wedding as small as possible, only inviting their closest friends and their respective families (Wangari finally whittled them down to allow her to take the photos). In the slowest flash of their lives, they were married; their best friends were their bridesmaids (Amanda and Constanze donned matching suits), their family and professors walked them down (Don’t ask how Diana managed to get Aunt Daryl to agree), and their tears stained their wedding dresses.

While the ceremony radiated the beauty and elegance of Diana, the reception emitted the humor and bizarreness of Akko. During their first dance, someone (Amanda) kept changing the song and the style, going from elegant waltzes to high-tempo salsas (The fact that Akko knew how to dance like that did many things to Diana’s mind). A montage of Akko’s clumsy moments were shown, yet it was followed by a video of all the times Diana snuck a look at her, which somehow ended up being longer than Akko’s. Thankfully, food fights were avoided. It was the best reception the two could’ve hoped for.

  Years passed. Slowly, but surely, the Cavendish house was rising back to its former glory. Due to Akko and Diana’s reputation as the witches who revived magic and both being part of the Cavendish family (“Kagari-Cavendish,” Diana would constantly correct), financial support began to pour back in. Lord Andrew Hambridge, using his (hopefully legal) connections, gave back most of the artifacts that had been sold away, insisting it was an “extended wedding gift.” Even the former house staff had returned, revitalizing the manor. Thanks to Akko’s shows, sometimes accompanied by Diana, the popularity of magic and the Cavendish name became widespread. At the end of each day, no matter how far apart or how busy they were, the two would find a way to sleep and wake together. They put each other first before anything else.

  Diana was the first to realize something was up with Akko. When their Aunty Chariot showed up with a swollen belly one day, Akko leaped in joy, bouncing off the walls in excitement. In between each bounce, however, Diana could see a hidden pain behind her face. It wasn’t until Lotte and Sucy showed up, the former crankier than usual while the latter seemed more afraid than usual, that Diana realized exactly what that pain was. It was envy. Akko wanted to have a child of their own, either with spells or potions (though Diana didn’t trust Sucy at all with those).

In truth, Diana had put too much thought into it. How would she be able to raise a child? What if one day, her or Akko disappeared? How could she put the same stresses of being an heiress on a newborn? Despite these thoughts, one thing stuck out the most in her mind: Akko was unhappy, and deep down, she felt empty as well. Her life was filled with Akko, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t room for something, or someone, else. When Diana told Akko that she was ready to have family too, she responded similarly as atop of Mount Fuji: tears, happiness, hugging, and kissing. They were going to be mothers.

  Akko could not carry the child. Due to past injuries and unknown effects of various magics and potions, there would be massive risk to her and the baby if she were to have it. Despite her initial protesting, Diana put her foot down. As much as she wanted to have a child between the two of them, she would not risk Akko’s life to do so. She could not lose her. She could not handle losing everything again.

Although she understood, Akko was devastated. She had wanted to do what her mother had done all those years ago, to raise someone that would walk the Earth after her, to have something that only her and Diana could have created, to create another special family. Even though she knew that she would have Diana in her life forever, which already made her feel better, the fact that she couldn’t have Diana’s child always put a damper on her mood. Unlike Diana, who dealt with the added stress by throwing herself into work (and with comfort and cuddling), Akko’s work suffered because of it. When she took a break, none of her fans questioned it. News had spread fast, and tons of support letters came through the mail, minorly annoying Anna.

Diana spent all of her free time studying possible causes and solutions to Akko’s condition, but none were completely risk free, trading danger between Akko and their unborn child. She hit wall after wall, growing increasingly frustrated, only able to relax when she was with Akko in their bed. She would find a solution for this, no matter how long it took.

One night, Akko sleepily cooed a single sentence in her ear.

“You will be a great mother.”

Diana mentally slapped herself for not thinking of this sooner. After some tests, Diana was confirmed to be completely healthy and in perfect condition to carry a child. If Akko could not have the baby, then why couldn’t she? Such a simple solution to a complex problem. When Akko found out, she was ecstatic! They were going to have a child thanks to her perfect, beautiful, amazing, and all-around-best wife.

That night, Akko treasured every part of Diana’s body and soul, filling each with as much love as she possibly could. Before they knew it, the sun was rising and the two were basking in each other’s presence. It was the start of another chapter in their adventure.

  While Akko was known for her boundless energy, even she was starting to run ragged. When pregnant Diana asked if she could have McDonalds, Akko shut down for five solid minutes. Only a request for chicken feet broke her out of her stunned state.

Normal Diana, the epitome of elegance, composure, and grace, was nowhere to be seen in pregnant Diana. Pregnant Diana’s mood constantly changed, from draping herself across Akko to snapping at her with every possible word in the English dictionary to sobbing uncontrollably about how she had “verbally abused her amazing, beautiful, and perfect Shiny Wife.” The amount of midnight runs Akko had to do was staggering, and Diana could become more…sensual…at a moment’s notice. Sleep became a luxury. On the other hand, Akko became really good at making sushi, especially deep-fried chocolate-covered rolls filled with avocado, lobster, pickles, and plums. Thank god Anna and the staff were fully supportive, keeping fridges stocked, bathrooms cleaned, and reporters away.

When the day finally came, Akko was prepared. She speedialed her mentors and friends, grabbed all the towels she could, carried her wife to the room they had prepared, and stayed by her side the entire time.

Well, she did do all of that, but not without Akko-levels of panicking and running.

Diana was in immense pain, yet she did her best to hide it in order to keep Akko calm. Anna was already nearby, doing her best to support her. Amanda, Constanze, and Jasminka rushed in, setting up extra medical equipment and medicinal treats (Even a tart that was designed to specifically prevent Akko from hyperventilating). Chariot and Croix did their best to calm both Akko and Diana, having already gone through the process themselves. Using new spells, Akko linked herself to Diana, trying to take as much of the pain into herself. Diana, surrounded by the people she loved the most, was ready.

  Bernadette and Kazumi Kagari-Cavendish were born on May 19th, 2029.

  The fraternal twins inherited traits from both of their mothers, with Bernadette having Diana’s hair, but Akko’s eyes and nose. Kazumi, inversely, had Akko’s brown hair, but Diana’s blue eyes. When the two were born, they instinctively reached out to each other, crying until she could feel each other. Akko and Diana swore they never saw anything cuter. They were now mothers. The very idea of that alone was enough to send both into tears.

Lotte, who had just arrived, shielded the two children from the waterfall.

  It started with a shared crib right next to their main bed. Often, the crib was left forgotten as the twins were simply placed between Akko and Diana. With all four family members comforting each other, cries and hunger were easily resolved. While the couple was often woken by their children, it was perfect.

Bunk beds came next, the girls taking turns who got to sleep where. Many blanket and pillows forts were made during this era, and Akko and Diana often slept with their children.

Bernadette, while almost the splitting image of Diana with shorter hair, acted much more like Akko with boundless energy and stubbornness. Kazumi, who had now developed Diana’s wavy hair, still had her fun, but was much more relaxed and harmonious with her surroundings.

Both girls loved spending time with their various aunts and uncles. Uncle Frank was always nice and gave the girls candy while Uncle Andrew made sure they both stayed safe while spoiling the girls as much as possible. Auntie Lotte summoned faeries for the girls while Sucy conducted colorful experiments, often inviting Akko to sample some “for old time’s sake.” Aunt Constanze had robots carry the girls wherever the want to, aunt Amanda gave them brooms and broom rides whenever Diana wasn’t home, and Aunti Jasminka allowed them to be the first to try out her new recipes. Aunts Hannah and Barbara told stories to the girls and brought them souvenirs from across the world.

Above all else, the girls enjoyed their playdates with their friends/cousins. Rosamie Yanson-Manbavaran was always kind, though she tinkered a lot with potions, sometimes singeing her long, wavy, blonde hair. Isabella, Sophia, and Anastasia Antonenko-O’Neill-Amalie von Braunschbank Albrechtsberger were the perfect balance of rough, soft, and fun. They even had their fair share of big-sistering with Elizabeth England, who was four years younger than them. For Bernadette, however, the best times were with Cecelia du Meridies, the magenta-haired inventor with equal parts intelligence and kindness. Despite being three years her senior, Bernadette had the most fun with Cecelia, other than with her own sister, of course.

By the time the girls had finally grown out of bunk beds and into adjacent, connected rooms, it was time for them to attend Luna Nova. With headmistress Jasminka Antonenko at the helm, the school experienced record amounts of students and popularity. First-generation witches were treated with extra care in order to nourish talent while prodigies were assigned to help those in need. It was a new paradise for the girls, but also one where mischief was bred.

With the girls in school for extended periods of time, Akko and Diana now had even more time for each other. They took another world tour, bringing smiles to every face with dazzling performances and free tickets. They went on all the dates they could possibly think of, from romantic boat rides through glowing cities to bombastic festivals with equally powerful food to quiet walks and picnics in nature. All the while, the only complaint they got was from Amanda, who said that their girls kept flying ahead of her lesson plan.

While Kazumi excelled in her book studies and casted spells proficiently, her physical prowess was lacking. Thankfully, Anastasia, the school’s resident athlete, stayed around to help her in exchange for tutoring. Bernadette, meanwhile, was a natural runner and flyer, but her lack of restraint and her robust magic caused many accidents. Cecelia (“Your Senpai?” teased Akko, one day) was assigned to help her control her power, which Bernadette was happy to receive. While they had their ups and downs, the twins enjoyed their life at Luna Nova with all of their teachers and friends.

  Thanks to Akko’s unpredictability and Diana’s persistence, their lives were always exciting. Akko bawled many tears during graduation, crushing all three of her family members in a bear hug. Diana, who had watched the rivalry between Kazumi and Sophia to reach top marks in their grade, was extremely delighted to hear that both girls were Valedictorians, due to a massive tie that Jasminka wasn’t allowed to judge. Both were pleased to hear that Bernadette said she would become a teacher as good as Cecelia was (who came to visit and subtly blushed under the compliment) and Kazumi would go into magic research. Although both girls led their separate lives, they never forgot to periodically visit their parents, especially for big events.

Even though each day always had more adventures than the last, certain ones would stick in their minds forever.

Akko squealed when she saw matching rings on Bernadette’s and Cecelia’s hands while Diana hugged both of them tight.

Diana forced herself to read the marriage contract between Kazumi, Sophia, and Anastasia - a full fifty pages promising equal, endless, and infinite love with sides of cuddles and tons of kisses (but no incest).

The two of them nearly went deaf when Amanda called and said that Isabella and Elizabeth were getting married.

Akko nearly slipped on her tears while walking Bernadette up the aisle, nearly tripping when her daughter froze at the sight of Cecelia in a suit.

Diana finally cracked when she watched Jasminka, Constanze, and Amanda walk their to daughters up to Kazumi, letting the tears flow freely while Lotte and Sucy had to hold Akko down to prevent her from leaping and comforting her wife.

Akko literally froze in time when she heard that they were going to be grandmothers, forcing Diana to drag her to bed.

Both of them let the waterworks flow freely during the funeral of Chariot and Croix du Meridies, doing their best to comfort their family members.

They enjoyed the massive family gatherings held at the manor, now in it’s full restored glory but with the same humble attitude it took to rebuild it.

Most importantly, they remember the times they spent together, be it stopping the Noir missile all those years ago or holding six grandchildren at once, all crying.

  Finally, they reached the end. Although magic had elongated their life, it could only do so much. Akko and Diana laid in their bed, surrounded by friends and family. They would be the first to go, as their original friends from Luna Nova stood around them in relatively good health. The two had given so much to the world in happiness and healing, and it was time for them to leave. Each generation said their goodbyes, from the great-grandchildren all the way to Bernadette, Kazumi, Cecelia, Sophia, and Anastasia. This way held the record for the most tears shed, yet for once, not by Akko or Diana. After saying their final words to their children, the two looked at each other, saying one last sentence that would forever be remembered:

  “Thank you for the adventure of a lifetime.”

  Thank you guys so much for reading! This is my first fanfic, so if you leave any feedback, I will cherish all of it! As of this moment, I do not have an FF or an AO3 account, but be on the look out.

[mickeylover303]

while trying to free up much needed space on the dvr

I guess I want to at least be able to tell myself I posted something, even if it’s not finished.  Playing AE can only do so much for the completionist in me, although I’m still not feeling particularly optimistic about any of this.

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“That’s some of the most aggressive packing I’ve ever seen.”

 Readjusting the clasp of the wide band around his bicep, Itachi spares a glance to Naruto and Sasuke standing at the cabin’s table.

 Sasuke’s packing, it’s not aggressive, not by any definition of the word, but Naruto’s always had somewhat of a dramatic personality, with a noted tendency to exaggerate, sometimes if only for the sake of doing so.

 As Naruto’s grown older, though, it seems to have become more so a means he’ll use to help lighten the mood, right now in particular, in the form of teasing, a casual attempt to divert Sasuke’s attention from the knapsack Sasuke has been methodically packing and unpacking for the past few minutes.

 And it works, as that kind of attempt often does, because there are certain emotions Sasuke still tends to avoid, what Naruto likes to call part of weird biological tic Sasuke has, preventing him from expressing his feelings like normal people, since Sasuke doesn’t know how to use those things called words.

 “I’m just making sure this is everything,” Sasuke says, as he lowers his hand, placing a small canteen pouch on the table.

 He looks to Naruto walking to stand beside him, Naruto still peering at the knapsack, squinting, as he turns his head to meet Sasuke’s waiting gaze.

 “What’s wrong with making sure Itachi and Juugo have everything they need?”

 “Aside from this whole weird packing ritual thing you apparently have going on, you mean.”

 “You know I don’t have any weird packing rituals, Naruto.  And there’s nothing weird about me wanting to—”

 “Okay, says you, but don’t you think you’re going to squish everything like that, the way you keep taking stuff out and putting it back in?”  

 “REMs and NPs?  Really?”

 “Hey, the blueberry tart package I saw, I bet you that one’s going to stain everything if it spills.”

 “I already know how to pack, Naruto.  You’re the one who likes to wait until the last minute, like you did Tuesday, when you already knew we had to leave for the peace...summit.

 “Besides, I’m not going to squish anything.  I’m just...I’m just making sure.  I just want to make sure.”

 “Eh, well, if you say so.”

 With a light shrug, with the easy drop of his shoulders, Naruto doesn’t hesitate to raise his hand, lets it rest against Sasuke’s side, a careful touch that lingers with the placement of Naruto’s arm around him, yet it’s a touch Sasuke readily seems to all but sink in to, drawing from him a nearly inaudible sigh, as the tension begins to leave his body, before Naruto gives a light squeeze, slowly allowing his hand to fall away.

 He takes a few steps back, although he doesn’t wander too far, eyes slightly narrowed, still watching, as Sasuke returns his attention to the opened knapsack on the table.

 Again, Sasuke picks up the small canteen pouch he finally decides to place inside.  It takes another moment for him to close the knapsack, until he seems satisfied enough to it leave alone, but then he’s already reaching across the table once more, reaching for the next set of already rationed provisions to place in the bag he’d found for Juugo.

 That heightened extent of shared contact, between them that sheer level of physical ease, even at this point in their lives, at first glance, Itachi wouldn’t necessarily deem it inappropriate.  It’s simply along the lines of the sort of interaction he’s come to expect, hence no need to intervene and his refraining from any mention of it aloud.

 Yet even setting aside Sasuke’s age as a factor, though he won’t approve of anything beyond their more casual sense of intimacy (due to unique circumstances, a very distinctive closeness that genuinely developed as part of their friendship), he will acknowledge that there’s always been something a little more profound about their bond; even as children, already an intensity to the newfound relationship burgeoning between them, having evolved so very quickly, it made their parents exceedingly reluctant to move forward during discussions about enforcing any prolonged distance between them.

 (Iyashi himself mentioned the long term effects of any immediate attempts to separate Sasuke and Naruto could prove to be more detrimental for them both, and suggested instead to monitor their relationship, to remain wary of signs that could lead to troubling patterns of co-dependency, in which case he would have to actively intervene.)

 And although those discussions were before Itachi held as much sway in the decisions pertaining to Sasuke, even then he shared the same reluctance; of the very few people allowed near Sasuke, of the very few people who could be trusted, Naruto was the only person close to Sasuke in age, and, at least for the foreseeable future at that time, would probably remain Sasuke’s only friend.

 Despite what he knows of their relationship now, what he inadvertently discovered merely weeks ago, after having the opportunity to cool down, as disappointing as it was that neither of them had told anyone, still, the idea of separating them hadn’t occurred to him.

 He won’t say the change in their relationship came entirely unexpected, at least not the emotional aspects of it.  The more recent physical aspects, though it was a possibility once or twice he may have subconsciously thought to consider, the discovery itself came after Sasuke had essentially been grounded, following his reckless decision to sneak aboard the Lazulum; and while he still hasn’t quite come to terms with the reality of his little brother having engaged in any sort of sexual activity (much less with Naruto), however short that period of time, he also can’t deny what was probably a natural progression of their relationship.

 If it weren’t for that day Sasuke developed empathy, if it weren’t for a shared trauma that eventually compelled an eight year old Naruto to seek Sasuke all the way in Reife, even taking into account the previous attempts from their mothers to encourage a friendship between them, he isn’t sure Sasuke and Naruto would’ve had the opportunity to be as close as they’ve become.

 Which, all things considered, is actually somewhat surprising, because in so many ways do Sasuke and Naruto complement one another.

 He’ll even venture to say it goes beyond their more obvious parallels.  They’ve grown up learning how to take care of each other, and they also happen to work very well together, at times seemingly in their own world, often do seem to share a familiar sense of understanding, similar lines of thinking.

 Yesterday, when Sasuke recalled what he knew of Kabuto (a researcher regularly associated with Orochimaru, though only publically introduced during last year’s peace summit), alongside Kabuto’s proposal to increase funding for the experimental development of Magdunium alloy, Naruto immediately picked up on Sasuke’s train of thought, where Sasuke left off, was able to further the conversation initially prompted by Juugo’s mention of the metallic stone his people had been forced to mine.

 (Arguably, within both their families, it’s near impossible and more so impractical to isolate themselves from many aspects of political culture, especially on Nagi, but that commonality has also led them to become more cognisant of the purpose politics serve, how the fluctuating dynamics of power tend to ebb and flow, ultimately allowing them greater insight into how the recent political climate continues to shape the world around them.)

 However, in regards to the current state of their relationship, the attraction already between them suddenly no longer platonic, all he can do is establish clear boundaries, and trust that they’ll both continue to respect the necessity of those boundaries, which, so far, has been the case.

 Perhaps, even more so than Sasuke, he has to trust that Naruto will maintain those newly established boundaries, because he still trusts that above all else Naruto will prioritise Sasuke’s safety in this kind of situation with so many unknowns, as Naruto’s already done numerous occasions before, what he’s shown himself capable of doing now.

 Without any further mention of Sasuke’s packing ritual, with another glance this time Sasuke doesn’t return, Naruto turns to move away from the table, heading for the other side of the cabin, towards the black, electronic panel slightly protruding from the wall, where he placed his PCD to charge.

 More often than not, as with many instances between them, the nature of their apparent closeness here is simply a product of their childhood, when Sasuke would actively seek the physical reassurance Naruto wouldn’t hesitate to offer, made evident by Naruto’s concern, rather than anything Itachi’s witnessed that would be cause for concern; it’s for this reason, even in light of what he does consider from Naruto to be as a more egregious sort of indiscretion, that he still has confidence in Naruto as both a highly qualified Academy trainee and the only other person Sasuke’s always felt safe with.

 It doesn’t make the decision to split their group any less difficult, but, even given the circumstances, while not the most ideal situation, he’d still feel far more at ease separating Sasuke and Naruto from Juugo, having them stay near the ship, without having to worry about factoring into the equation a number of scenarios possibly effected by Juugo’s apparent volatility.

 After Sasuke and Naruto are situated, he and Juugo will set off for the dale, because he does want to investigate Juugo’s claims, predominantly whether or not Orochimaru had been involved in some capacity, alongside the likelihood that whoever had been involved would return.  Hopefully, going to the dale will reveal some kind of evidence that could help determine what may have happened on Barrah, if there’s even anything to be found.

 To Juugo’s credit, he has been cooperative.  Especially in this sense, he’s been more than agreeable, having easily accepted Itachi’s request, with seemingly no qualms about leaving Sasuke, despite his prior demonstrated attachment.  Nonetheless, Juugo’s actions thus far still don’t negate the fact that he remains yet another variable Itachi simply can’t account for and someone with whom he hasn’t been able to establish a more comfortable degree of trust.

 Unsurprisingly, Naruto didn’t question his decision.  As Naruto’s commanding officer, there was very little doubt in his mind Naruto would try to contest it because Naruto truly understands the gravity of their situation, and particularly because of Sasuke, who, for the most part, fortunately, hasn’t been left exposed in an environment without his usual systems of safeguards, without the constant flux of people moving around him, often times out of his sight.

 This morning, however, before they left for the ship, before Itachi even had the opportunity to announce his decision, during the lull of the shortened time for a meagre breakfast shared between them, Sasuke had approached him.

 And though Sasuke had been the first to fall asleep, unaware of last night’s conversation, the last to wake, almost immediately, he’d been able to anticipate what Itachi intended to do.

 “You’re leaving again.”

 There was nothing accusatory in the words, unlike yesterday’s uncharacteristic attempt to provoke him, simply stated, nothing more, and yet the significance conveyed with those very three words, it resonated within him, remnants of the same sentiment underlying the now unspoken question Sasuke had asked so many times before, the same answer Itachi still hadn’t been able to give.

 Admittedly, it wasn’t the first time he’d heard those words, but it still served to remind him of so many times when he hadn’t been able to stay by Sasuke’s side, on the eve of late night departures, with each gentle assurance of an elusive next time that only grew further and further out of reach, so many times what did enable him to endure, gave him the impetus to move forward against an increasingly wavering resolve—between the realities of necessity and childhood expectations, confronted with his past naiveté, the gradual loss of ideals he once sought to adhere to, now such seemingly whimsical notions of morality, so many times the very same light reflected in his little brother’s eyes, the very same ideals he himself failed to uphold, marred by his own convictions, actions he’s still unable to remit, by his own hands, too much of what he’s done.

 And yet all of it would be so easily displaced by so simple a thing, seemingly the most mundane notion, however brief at times the respite, simply the thought of returning to Nagi, the thought of being welcomed home, the sight of his little brother running toward him, in between excited cries of Nii-san, being granted the warm smile on his little brother’s face.

 Despite everything he’d never wanted to become, this person he could no longer recognise, this person he couldn’t allow himself to forgive, that Sasuke could still look to him with so much trust in his eyes, with so earnest a gaze, would readily give such unconditional affection, would so easily regard him with the kind of acceptance Itachi still selfishly strives to retain, among words carefully construed, around deliberate omissions of truth, one of the very few things he’ll allow himself to hold close, even now, as Sasuke stands in front of him, lips pursed, the way his little brother continues to peer at him, dark eyes searching, to near eerie an extent, almost knowing, beneath the reluctance he won’t voice, a sense of understanding more expected rather than any sort of resigned.

 It’s a given his little brother doesn’t want him to leave.  More to the point, he knows his little brother is worried. Despite attempts to appear otherwise, as cautious as Sasuke has to be with his emotions (how often he tries to pretend he isn’t as affected by them), as reserved as he already is naturally, poorly concealed worry he refuses to openly acknowledge has proven to be a reasonably consistent indicator of the state of Sasuke’s empathy, and why asking Sasuke if he’s worried would usually precede a good majority of his dailies.

 (Save for mitigating circumstances, instances like this that do warrant considerable discretion whenever Sasuke’s empathy or magic is involved, eventually, the need for dailies lessened over time, persisting for a period more so continued out of habit, rather than the previously established necessity, until they were no longer part of Sasuke’s daily routine.

 Iyashi had advocated for the change.  Not long after Sasuke turned thirteen, shortly before the repercussions of that first peace summit, Iyashi strongly recommended that Sasuke develop a more self-sufficient routine, against even their parents’ initial opposition, actively pushed the case that Sasuke should begin preparing to become more emotionally independent, especially given Sasuke’s most recent empathetic attack at Yuna the year prior.

 Sasuke’s overall emotional dependence on others, as subconscious as it seemed to remain for Sasuke, that had always been a particular concern for Iyashi, even when Sasuke turned fourteen, as Sasuke was gradually allowed more freedom in other areas of his life: between academics, physical training via self-defence, and so forth.

 In respect to his empathy, making fundamental changes to his daily routine, however, was somewhat of a more strenuous process.  The transition itself took a little over sixteen months, until Iyashi was satisfied with Sasuke’s progress, ultimately accumulating with the decision that Sasuke would no longer need to wear his gloves.)

 He still doesn’t feel Sasuke’s reached that stage to warrant having dailies again quite yet, as disconcerting as it is to see Sasuke’s sudden regression.  Granted, it hasn’t even been what would presumably pass for a little over two days on Barrah, normally what wouldn’t be enough time to properly gauge the state of Sasuke’s empathy, especially when Sasuke’s emotional shields have become so advanced.

 Since the incident at Yuna, Sasuke’s been doing fairly well, comfortable to the extent he no longer flinches around larger crowds of non-magic users, although he’s a little too casual whenever he does choose to share his empathy; even as a means to release pent-up magical energy, too often Sasuke does it seemingly without much thought, without truly comprehending the potentially addictive effects of his life magic—to the public at large, a much lesser known aspect of Sasuke’s empathy, but, of course, there are people who would attempt to take advantage of that, as eager and brazen as Orochimaru had been in his attempts to coerce a thirteen year old child.