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everythingsinred · 3 years ago

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Let's Talk About NatsuMikan: Natsume (pt. 6)

Last time, we talked about Natsume's growing crush on Mikan. As the festival continues, his feelings will only grow. Today we'll discuss how these new feelings will affect him, and particularly how they have the potential to create tension in his friendship with Ruka.

Chapter Twenty-One

Mikan is guilty for not having already gone to Iinchou’s haunted house in the latent ability class area. So they end up going together. Although Mikan is easily distracted and wants to try everything in the latent area, Natsume is strict on going straight to the destination with no tangents.

Iinchou lets them in right away without having to wait in the hour-long line. Mikan puts on airs about being a country girl and, just like she’s unafraid of bugs, she’s also not afraid of ghosts. Except she totally is.

Ruka and Natsume don’t seem particularly scared of the haunted house so far, but Mikan is, and she clings to Ruka, desperate not to be left behind, even if it means she hurts him with her grasp.

The person who posted these TokyoPop scans forgot a couple pages so for the longest time the beginning of the chapter was so confusing to me...

Natsume looks behind to see them and is jealous, yet again. Just like with Tsubasa, Natsume is unhappy with his fate to be the bad guy in general. He goes out of his way to look bad to protect people and as a result will not be the one clung to. It’s different from Tsubasa though, because this isn’t some nameless middle schooler that Natsume can take his anger out on: this is his best friend, somebody he’s never felt anything but affection for. Natsume doesn’t want to hurt Ruka; he’s just sad that the situation is so messed up.

Lucky for Ruka, Natsume gives up before there can even be a competition.

It’s for the best this way, after all. For Ruka to be happy, for Mikan to be with somebody kind who deserves her, and even for him, because maybe this way Mikan won’t be used against him like everybody else he cares about.

Natsume makes this decision without talking to anybody and before anyone can even figure out that there’s a choice to be made in the first place.

Then they run into a crawling hag and nobody’s immune to the terror that being chased after by that demon brings. All three of them run for it, but they end up in a new spooky room, which freaks Mikan out so much she screams and faints, foaming at the mouth, causing Natsume to fall and twist his ankle and for Ruka’s rabbit to run off. He chases after it, leaving Natsume and Mikan alone. Iinchou breaks whatever causes the electricity to run in the building and now they’re trapped alone in the dark, unable to get out.

Mikan tries to figure out a way for them to escape, but climbing the wall is out of the question since Natsume’s ankle is twisted. He suggests that he blow up the wall, but Mikan is adamantly against that idea because the latent students worked hard to make the mansion. Natsume acquiesces. That’s fine. He doesn’t mind spending more time with her. It just means she’ll have to stay in the dark for longer.

She is very clingy when she’s scared, and although he complains he doesn’t really make any moves to get her off. I mean, why would he? This is exactly what he wanted, though he did only get it because he was the only person around that she could cling to. There’s a moment where he spooks her, perhaps so she would hug him more, but then she whines for him to stop scaring her and the panels are quite sparkly. Natsume is distressed about his new crush and the effect it has on him. Really her whining and puppy-dog eyes are not any less powerful on Natsume than they are on Ruka. He’s just better at hiding it.

He looks at her softly and then has a moment where he looks almost peeved to have felt so fond at all... but it won't last. These days he has more affection for her than irritation.

Mikan tries apologizing about getting angry with him at Anna’s cafe, but he pretends like he has no idea what she’s talking about. To me, this cements that Natsume wants to look bad to her in particular. He doesn’t really want her to figure out that he’s kind deep down or that he’s selfless 99% of the time. He doesn’t want her to think he cares at all because it’s best for him to continue being the same jerk he has been for the past twenty chapters. He’s okay with her hating him, because that way she won’t become the new Ruka, used by the academy as a pawn to get him to jump through more hoops.

She tries to make him smile and that’s another big deal. Most people think Natsume is cool for being so unaffected. His fans think he’s the man, a tough guy who frowns all the time. Even Ruka’s approach to this issue was to stop smiling too.

Mikan’s approach is to tell jokes.

Of course, it doesn’t work, and the jokes aren’t any good, but Mikan is trying something nobody else has done: instead of looking up to him or going down to his level of misery, Mikan’s trying to lift him up. She wants him to smile and be happy and that sets her apart. She’s immature and childish and that brings out the childishness in him too. And like I mentioned a while ago, childishness in Natsume is a good thing. With her, he can bicker and argue and tease like he used to before he came to the academy. She has no idea what he’s going through and her mood changes so quickly she can’t even stay mad or upset. She’s just a joyful and loud girl who rubs off on everyone she meets and Natsume is far from being an exception.

He can just mess around like a kid for once. He doesn't have to be serious around her all the time.

Thus, the next important thing in regards to analyzing their relationship is that the last page of the chapter has him teasing her and then smiling at her reaction. We’ve only seen Natsume smile twice before: with Youichi for a brief moment, and then with Ruka on the cover for Chapter Sixteen (Natsume's evil smile when Mikan gets bullied by middle schoolers doesn't count as a real smile). This officially adds Mikan to the incredibly short list of people who can make Natsume smile. She’s angry with him, arguing, but being able to let go of all his darkness and just tease a girl and have her act with such strong emotions is enough to make him happy. And that’s what this is: Natsume is happy.

Chapter Twenty-Three

The musical creates some tension between Natsume and Ruka, as expected, because liking the same girl can make rifts between friends. On the other hand, this isn’t your typical love triangle. Usually in love triangles, the two guys are already positioned against each other. Though Natsume and Ruka may be opposites in many ways, they are not rivals at all. They love each other, and that love is not at all damaged by the conflict of falling for the same girl; it just becomes tense between them.

In fact, the beginning of the chapter has some Class B pals eagerly going backstage to find Ruka before the somatic ability class musical. When they find him, Natsume is the only one to not laugh at or tease him, and seems to be the only one really concerned with Ruka’s feelings about being cast as Snow White.

When the sticky ball incident occurs, there’s a lot more damage done than there is in the anime. In the anime, some cast and crew get stuck, but ultimately nobody was in any real danger of being hurt. In the manga, there were potentially catastrophic consequences for the blast and a lot of equipment got damaged in the process. A somatic child playing one of the seven dwarves is about to be hit by a stagelight when Natsume rushes to get him out of the way, resulting in them getting stuck together. If Natsume hadn’t stepped in, that kid could have gotten really injured, at least.

As a result of Natsume’s heroism, Narumi suggests that he dress up as a forest friend. When Natsume refuses, the child is to be kicked out of the play, and the seven dwarves will be changed to six. Natsume sees the kid pout and with absolutely no more need for convincing he goes to get changed into a cat outfit.

This is noteworthy because the cat outfit is humiliating (not that Natsume hasn’t worn similar things in official art… just saying) and it’s something he truly does not want to do, but he does it, even though he doesn’t even know the kid. It’s some random somatic kid, not Ruka or Youichi or even Mikan, and yet he goes out of his way to do something truly selfless so that the kid can perform what he’s practiced. Natsume is kind in quiet ways, and not just with the people he cares about. Like with Anna, Natsume puts the needs of someone he isn’t close to in front of his own reputation.

Now, Natsume is in a horrible mood, embarrassed to be seen in the costume, and Ruka is confused why he’d even bother, until he sees the smile on the little kid and everything snaps into place for him. Mikan is a very intuitive and emotional girl who can sense things about all sorts of people, but when it comes to Natsume, nobody knows him better than Ruka, who can tell right away the motives for any of his actions.

I work at a restaurant and kids Natsume's age will be like, "I don't want a kids' menu" and act all grown up and then see how big the adult portions are, so they end up eating the Cub Pancake anyway LMAO. Do you want extra whipped cream and chocolate chips, Natsume?

Onto the actual NatsuMikan portion of this analysis, at long last, Mikan is overjoyed to see how adorable he is in his costume and she is the only one who won’t hold back from saying so because she’s not scared of him. I’ve seen someone complaining that Natsume says “Don’t call men cute,” but I always found that line funny because Natsume is a literal ten-year-old boy… He is not a man at all. It’s the sort of thing you’d expect a kid to say, especially one who wants to be a grown-up as soon as possible, which makes the line endearing to me, but that’s my personal feelings about it. (Like the above caption, I find it very amusing when little kids pretend they're all grown up.)

Anyway, Natsume is as much an idiot as he is in the anime, volunteering Mikan to be the prince, even using one of his three wishes to make it happen. This is all motivated by his feelings of humiliation, and he’s taking it out on her, arguing that he doesn’t want to wear the outfit for no reason so the show has to go on no matter the cost--but this will bite him in the ass sooner rather than later.

Chapter Twenty-Four

The chapter begins and Mikan is very nervous about playing the prince, particularly about looking the part as she is very uncomfortable with her hair down.

This is actually the first time we see Natsume’s feelings about it, but he’ll only make it more clear in about ten more chapters. Here, Mikan wonders if she should put her hair back up and Natsume snaps, “No!” before walking away in a huff. It’s a small scene, and it’s even told through tiny text, but it’s enough to let any reader paying attention know that Natsume also thinks Mikan looks cute with her hair down. Yes, he’s embarrassed to have said anything, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t say it.

Don't worry about him, he's just in a bad mood.

Natsume mainly observes, and nothing noteworthy happens. He eventually goes and gives his line and his aura alone is threatening enough to discourage anyone from laughing or “aww”ing.

The next important moment is when Mikan sees the stage direction to kiss the princess directly on the lips. Narumi says it’s because he’s trying to make up for the loss of sizzle due to the accident, but knowing him, there’s probably more to it. Naru likes stirring the pot and causing drama, although I can hardly tell what his motives are half the time. Truly, I believe he is the most mysterious character in the whole story.

Natsume does not allow this to happen, so he throws something at Mikan’s head--some random box thing--and Hotaru shuts off the lights.

Natsume does something kind of selfish here. He didn’t want them to kiss, so he stopped it. The fact that he grabbed the first thing he saw meant it was a sudden choice to chuck it. I wonder if he had any intentions of just toughing it out and dealing with it, but eventually jealousy won out and he did the selfish thing.

When I say selfish, I don’t mean “bad”. I just mean that for once Natsume is acting based on what he wants, rather than what will make somebody else happy. When it comes to this kid in particular, I actually want him to do selfish things more often, because he very rarely does. He’s been selfless and heroic enough for one day, having saved a kid from getting injured and then wearing that embarrassing costume. He’s allowed to have done this one thing for selfish reasons.

It’s not like it was a bad thing to do either. It would have only benefited Narumi, and possibly the somatic class to have a spicy musical kiss, but it wouldn’t have been good for Ruka or Mikan. Having their first kiss under such conditions, especially when Mikan was just doing the class a favor by acting in the play to begin with, would have been sad. Natsume essentially saved her from the consequences of his own actions, because it would have been his fault if they’d had no choice but to go through with it.

Moreover, like I said earlier, Ruka can simply tell what Natsume’s motives are from a single look. It’s more obvious in the anime, of course, but I still think manga!Ruka is aware that Natsume intervened. He knows Natsume better than anybody, and he’s too smart to think that box came out of nowhere.

This is just the beginning of a long-standing tension between them, one that they will dance around and pretend isn’t happening for quite a while before actually addressing it properly. For now, they have undiscussed feelings and jealousies that will go unchecked and unresolved for some time, building an even deeper divide between them. After all, Natsume and Ruka have enough of a gap on account of Natsume’s missions and his general feelings of not being able to fit in with anybody. This only broadens the gap.

Chapter Twenty-Six

The dance will be very fun to analyze from Mikan’s perspective, but we’re not nearly finished with Natsume’s, so that will have to wait.

For now, we’ll discuss Natsume’s softening, which Permy points out bitterly on account of being surrounded by closet fans. Previously, she says, they were terrified of him, and why wouldn’t they be? We talked ad nauseam about Natsume’s first thirteen chapters of misery and coldness. He was a scary and unkind guy, definitely unapproachable. Even his admirers in Class B were scared of him, equal parts affection and terror. In a very short time, Natsume has softened and it’s obvious. He even dressed as a cat for the somatic musical! His reputation for being cold and dangerous is softening and the girls who used to fear him are now flocking to him to ask if he’s willing to accept their last dance proposals.

But with all this talk about romance and dancing, Mikan feels left out and can’t relate. Her frustrations only grow when some girls start gossiping about her and she ends up taking it out on Natsume, saying she would never ever wanna dance with Natsume for the last dance. He brushes this off, but he still pouts, obviously affected and a little hurt. Their relationship was on the rise, after all. They were starting to hang out more and were bickering often, something Natsume doesn’t make a habit of doing with most people. But just because Natsume is feeling more fondness for her, that doesn't mean she feels the same way.

He expects this in some way, of course, because it's partially his intention. He expects that she would only tolerate him after everything that happened with them, but that doesn't mean he likes the feeling of rejection.

They're so cute when they pout!

Having a crush is bad enough, but hearing that girl shout that she’d never wanna go out with you is even harder, even if you were maybe purposefully making her angry with you to try and protect her. It would be a tough emotion to bear, especially for a kid unversed in romance. He proceeds to be just as huffy as her.

And as twisted as it is, I’m happy for him.

Natsume was cold and mean and difficult to talk to before he fell for Mikan. Now he’s way more approachable and expressive, willing on occasion to show an emotion that isn’t rage, like hurt or grumpiness or amusement. He can now sit at his desk and pout, something he wasn’t doing before, like a kid throwing a fit.

At the actual dance, Natsume is still hurt, still pouting. It doesn’t help that Mikan glares at him upon spotting him. It’s interesting to see how much this affects him. One girl said something harsh in the heat of the moment and he is taking it so personally. Of course, he gets hurt or angered by many things. Upperclassmen bully him and call him a murderer and he simply uses his alice on them to shut them up. He keeps his face straight, moves on, and forgets it. Naturally, the hurt and resentment sit there in his gut to torment him, because he’s a kid and they’re awful things for anyone to hear, but he’s not acting like that here. Here, he’s grumpy and pouty. His feelings are hurt but they don’t come with urges to punish like being called a murderer does.

And it’s obvious he has no genuine hard feelings because Natsume then shoves Ruka onto Mikan, since Ruka was being transparent about his gaze. He goes on to dance with someone else, anyone else, because Mikan made it clear that she too would rather dance with anyone else, just as long as it wasn’t him. He’s clearly still in a bad mood, though.

He's so used to not getting what he wants that he will do all of Ruka's work for him, so that Ruka can get what he wants.

Later, when Mikan and Natsume are singletons in the middle of the dance floor, they notice each other. Here would be a perfect opportunity to dance, but she made it clear she hated the idea, and he’s not about to embarrass himself to ask. Hence, he huffs again, pouting because there’s no way he’ll ask her to dance once she’s said such harsh things. They stand in silence for just a moment, until he finds some other girl to dance with and leaves Mikan all alone.

They’re both grumpy over the way they’re being treated by the other. Natsume is being immature and petty with his feelings, almost childish (heehee it's all I want for him!). With all the dark and depressing divide between Mikan’s academy life of fun and laughs and Natsume’s life of secret missions and physical abuse, he’s somehow found a way to wedge himself into hers. He’s taking something so minor so seriously. He’s been on the front lines, used his alice to hurt enemies and been hurt by enemies and dangerous ability types alike. He is literally dying and he’s aware of it! But he’s still pouting because the girl he likes was a little mean to him.

But the dance with the girl obviously wasn’t much fun, because Mikan quickly finds him again, away from the party, along a secluded path by some trees. He’s in a pouty mood and obviously needs some time alone with his thoughts.

It shows that he’s done some thinking because he doesn’t even mention her angry words from earlier.

Instead, he just calls the whole festival stupid.

We’re reminded here of a scene from way before they liked each other, when the festival was first announced. Then, she also found him playing with a dog, all on his own, using anger to mask his feelings of hurt. He said the same thing back then, that the whole thing was stupid and it was dumb to get all worked up about it. He’s doing it again now, but it’s a little different this time. Their relationship has changed, improved. They actually care about each other now, and although Natsume starts off just talking through his anger, he eventually turns honest.

The truth is that these periods of childishness will always have to end. It’s just an extended version of the dodgeball game. No matter how much emotion he puts into these experiences, they will be overshadowed by his real life. Now matter how much fun he has, he will always have to stop smiling and go kill himself on Persona’s orders. And even more honestly, the more fun he has, the harder it will be on the people he has fun with. It’s not enough for the ESP and Persona that Natsume completes his missions and does all his work; they find pleasure and relief in his constant misery. The second he cares about something, they use it against him. His joy is never meant to last and will always have consequences for the people he loves.

I hate tumblr's 10 image limit. I hate it. I despise it. I abhor it. I cannot come up with a caption. So instead I'll say again. I hate the 10 image limit.

And so he explains, for once, that he’s simply different from everyone else. The festival is something that doesn’t belong to him. He’s merely been an observer this whole time. He’s never actually been a part of it. And then he tells her that she should stay in the light, stay out of the dark. He calls her naive, but it’s not as much an insult as it used to be.

She is childish and loud and optimistic and annoying and a little sweet and even though he hated all these things about her before, he now realizes that these traits are things to be protected. The more she mingles with him, the darker her life will be. After all, her light is not the only thing that’s contagious: his darkness rubs off on people too, and in his mind it will only hurt her to be involved with him. She should stay in the light--in the shiny, sparkly side of the manga, where everyone is concerned with sports and coming up with ideas for the festival--and keep out of the dark--where there’s murder and blackmail and danger and death. It’s bad enough he can’t keep Youichi or Ruka out of it: Youichi is already in the DA class and Ruka came running after him. He can’t distance himself from them. The most he can do is protect them and raise their star ranks or keep them off of dangerous missions. But with Mikan he has a chance to really protect her, prevent her from being used against him at all. Ideally, she’ll stay away and he won’t need to worry about her as much.

And he wants her to be safe and gone, so when she asks what he means, he changes tactics and decides to be rude and mean instead, telling her to get lost and insulting her. She gets angry and it almost seems like it’ll be another bickering match, where they will both be childish and hurl insults at each other, but he doesn’t take that path.

She is complaining about how he doesn’t seem to know that she has a name, thank you very much--and then he calls her Mikan. He concedes to her demands. He does what he perceives to be the mature, adult thing, ending the argument so she will leave for good. When she has nothing left to argue about, she will have no choice but to walk away, and she does, once he makes it clear that his last command is for her to stop complaining about what he calls her.

Natsume chooses to do the selfless thing again, and gives up the first thing in a long time that made him happy. He barely had any time with her at all, but he lets her go, because she can only continue to be sunny and cheerful away from him. He’s giving up before anyone can tell that something was around for him to give up.

He has no idea how much one word has affected her.

Conclusion

Natsume is a selfless kid. He gives up on what he wants very easily, but especially because he knows that the second he gets what he wants, those things could be destroyed, just by association with him. He just wants the people he loves to be happy, even if it means he could never be.

In the next segment, we'll talk about what Natsume is willing to do to protect Mikan, even if it means being cruel and hurting her. NatsuMikan is the living embodiment of the "break her heart to save her" trope, and I very much adore that trope with my whole heart, so we're going to be having a LOT of fun with the next essay!

Also, disclaimer: I'm not smart. I refuse to take responsibility for any mistakes I make in these essays. There also are no mistakes. I've never misspelled a word in my life.

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quirkyhero · 3 years ago

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My OchaCow headcanons

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BACKSTORY AND BACKGROUND:

Cow Ochaku: is a wild thang who is a strong heifer as well as adventurous. She was born and raised in an abusive habitat only ment to breed strong bulls for fighting rings. She's been through some shit, and learned to not take some shit because of it.

Cow Ochaku: this gal was raised and taught that she would breed with bulls when she was old enough to mate, she would be forced to submit to bulls for as long as she could and as long as they would need. She remembered being forced to "watch and learn" of what would be happening when she be came old enough to do the same thing. And them, doing things to her in order for her to get the "hands on process".

Cow Ochaku: by the age of 15 she had thankfully managed to escape thanks to her parents and the instructions they left her. Though sadly she was too weak and had no time to save any others. On her own she ran as far as she could, hiding in the city in always with a black hoodie and sweat pants she stolen from a box.

Cow Ochaku: thankfully enough she was found by a kind human who was kind enough to offer her home and shelter. Seeing as she was starving and cold and fucking exhausted, she took the humans offer, still suspicious of this person not sure weather to trust them or not.

Cow Ochaku: this was of course six years ago, and she had come to love her home with trees and forest surrounding the place. There was two male hybrids that lived beside her, their names are Monama, who's a bull and Kouda who'san ox. Monama, while a bit rude at first and Kouda who was pretty shy and skittish around her. Came to be protective of her over the years, now their all pretty close and good friends.

Cow Ochaku: after a long time of healing and bonding, she came to open up with her human farmers and two male friends. She even worked out and lifted logs and other such heavy things, which in turn gained her muscle. She also became quite the fan of martial arts due to the movies they'd watch together, learning new techniques along with the old farmer and their grandkid that was the same age as she.

Cow Ochaku: she had also come in contact with the internet. . .you can see where this is going. As she grew into a strong young lady, she came to also be comfortable with sex. . . That is to say with bottom boys. She absolutely loved her Monama and Kouda who she helped out with their ruts and explored new things (kinks) and the such together.

Cow Ochaku: threw a family doctor, who is a friend of the farmer had come to the conclusion that she may be infertile, and there was only a low chance of her having her own calf. This to her and the others was heartbreaking news, but nonetheless she still clung to hope that she would have her own calf one day. She was just relieved that the others didn't think less of her like the heifers back at the bad place would have done.

HOW SHE IS WHEN SHE GETS TO THE NEW FARM + WITH THE BULLS , HEIFERS , STAFF AND EVEN CALFS!?:

Cow Ochaku: was excited yet nervous to go on a trip to the new farm she, the bull and ox will be staying at for a year for her farmer friend that's going to be there for a study work trip.

Cow Ochaku: on one hand, she could finally make that bull harem she wanted. But on the other hand there would be thousands of new faces and in an environment thats a little similar to the bad place. In a sense that's there's quite alot of her kind there. But with the reasurement of the old farmer, the two boys and her calmed a bit.

Cow Ochaku: once on the farm and out of the moving vehicle. Ocha(Ochako), Mono(Monama) and Ko(Kouda) all went to explore once everything was signed in and registered. Only for Mono and Ocha to get whistled at and cat called by the bulls. Mono wasn't exactly the standard looking bull with him being smaller and more feminine looking with smaller horns, he was mistaken for a heifer quite alot. So them both being cat called was not a surprise.

Cow Ochaku: Kouda on the other hand, was being ogled at by the heifers that was curious about the newcomers. Kouda is pretty big, after all he is an ox, he's actually almost the same height as Kirishima, and poor baby was sticking very close behind his heifer and bull friend, not really liking the attention.

Cow Ochaku: meanwhile Ocha paid no mind to the ogling and cat calls, she was looking at the bulls that came to look at her and her friend. Debating and thinking of who she would start her "Bull Harem" plan on first.

Cow Ochaku: along they're walk they bump into a charming cowboy named Midoriya Izuku and a handsome bull named Kirishima, both kind and cute and sexy in they're own rights. . . Ocha came to terms with the idea of adding the cowboy to her bull harem plan, and let her mind run a little thinking of ways to ruin him for only a moment as to not be rude.

Cow Ochaku: after that meeting she came to see at one point, cute Little CALFS!!! OH MY GOODNESS! Ocha decided that this farm was fucking amazing. After all, it came with plenty of bulls and cute farmers for her Bull Harem plan. The staff were pretty great and there are even cute little Calfs here to watch and play with if she's aloud.

SOME EXTRA DETAILS ON COW OCHAKO:

Cow Ochaku: is a lover and fighter, this as I said came for her difficult past and trauma as well as her new beginning on her home land where she met her boys and humans. So she can be pretty intense, as well as straight forward.

Sometimes she scares the bulls with her strength and stamina, alot of them can't keep up with her during her exploration in the hay. The ones who can keep up with her are kiri and Bakugou, but even they sometimes fall victim to her brutal pace which earns her some heavy respect in their books.

Cow Ochaku: she absolutely adores sparring. At first the bulls wouldn't train with her because, "she's a heifer, she'll just get hurt" which seriously pissed her off. That is until a Bull who was messing with one of the heifers took things too far for her liking got take down by her just grabbing his horn with one hand and slamming the big bull down with just sweeping his leg out from under him and Basically making him face plant down onto the ground.

She Basically forced oversized "calf" to apologize to the heifer, and better not do that shit again. Bakugou who Basically went from not impressed and only intrigued to Having mad respect for her and now wants this woman in his harem, though he ain't the only one.

Cow Ochaku: poor baby still at times has nightmares about the bad place and will sneak into the living quarters of either of her boys or into her human friends room, or just brings all three of them to her own living quarters to cuddle and sleep together. If anything this is something her and Bakugou bond over, since he was a rescue bull from a pretty harsh place and she ran away from a bad place.

One night he just caught her awake early in the morning breathing in the cold air, with a melancholy look upon her usually smiling face. While it's a sad thing to bond about they do bond over it, and it brings them closer.

Cow Ochaku: she's love mochi treats, the kind that the old farmer made specially for hybrids. If you found a way to make them she will be your godamn best friend! Speaking of friends while she can make easy friends with any gendered human, she's not really good with other heifers for some reason. She just. . .feels nervous and a bit off around them

It could be because she has no idea on how to add the heifers in her bull harem plan, as well as the fact that she's not really. . . On the same wavelength of thinking as them at times??? Basically she wants to dominate the bulls while they want to be fucked submissive by them.

She wants to trust Said bull before EVER fucking them, while all it takes is the bull to show off how strong he is to get them wet and ready. She doesn't care for being treated frail and being taken care of while she can take care of her self. She would adore being taken care of twenty for seven by their strong bull. . .she just doesn't get them. . .at all really nonetheless she tries. . . She really tries.

Cow Ochaku: loves giving advice to the bulls about sex techniques and telling them about human sex toys. If she's close to a bull, she teach them some human tricks that she learned while surfing, "the web." She'll also be a babysitter for the heifers and bulls that want alone time at a specific moment so they can get they're grove on if you know what I mean?

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I did my own version of an Ochako Cow! I'm pretty proud of my drawings as well as how I made her! I based her on @miggiisdumb 's Bull/Cow AU cause I'm heavily obsessed with the godamn AU and her writing, please go check out her stuff as well as art cause it's fantastic.

I'm also gonna tag @headkandies in here cause they make pretty good headcanons as well as being a fellow lover of this AU!

But anyways that's all folks be safe and have a Heroic Day! Since it's not safe out there please take a mochi loving Ochacow on your way. 🥰

#Cow Uraraka #bnha headcanons #my things #uraraka headcanons #bnha #mha

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artobotsrollout · 4 years ago

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Harbingers AU Q&A 1

Awww thank you so much @warrioroffandoms!!! This is super motivating and I'm so glad you liked it!

Lemme answer/reply to your points properly!

1. Can we get some obscure bots too? Like Perceptor!

Absolutely! I already have a few in mind and even ideas of what they'd look like in TfP. I didn't consider Perceptor but I think I will think of a good place for him now that you mention it since he's a really fun character. Even if one character doesn't end up in the early part of the AU I'm open to including them in later parts when the squad is on Cybertron! Just a heads up tho, they will be my own take on them so they will be varying levels of different from their other continuity counterparts.

Other characters I might add:

-Swindle

I'm still figuring out his role but I like the idea of him being sorta a neutral player who runs his own little store for shit one side or the other needs.

-Mirage

The conflict potential with an Autobot noble oohoohoo!

-Hook

With Knockout ditching the Decepticons, Megatron need a new medic. I like that he's a snob, so I'm gonna run with that and make him a high caste medic who joined the Decepticon side.

-Blitzwing

He would largely be based off his design in Travis Knight's Bumblebee cause that design seriously SLAPS IMO. I'll get into why it slaps when I design him. Personality wise. I don't think I'm going to go with the TFA characterization, but I think I will keep some of that chaotic energy. I think I'll also have his emotions change on a dime.

-Steeljaw

I kinda have to. I mean... In RiD they did the whole crossing out Decepticon logo thing started by him so... I gotta. Also just.. Having a beast former on the team would be dope. (Also gives me an excuse to expand with my own BEASTFORMER LORE)

-Dinobot

I started reading this dude's wiki and he has so much potential! An ex predacon! ? Yes please. Except his name is just... Dinobot???

I'm salty.. It says Rattrap called him Chopper face in the show so... Maybe I'll just have his name be Chopper or something but Miko calls him Dinobot cause his predacon form looks very reminiscent of dinosaurs and the nickname catches on or something like that.

Feel free to yeet other characters at me to consider. I may or may not use them but it'll give me inspiration nonetheless.

2. I really want to draw/write some fan-works of this! It's beautiful

First of all thank you so much!! ❤️ ❤️ I would absolutely adore and cherish any fan-work made of my AU whether written, art, or otherwise. I'd absolutely inhale that so please tag me or send it to me or SOMETHING so I can scream my love.

3. Finally someone else realizes the chaotic goodness of Wheeljack and Knockout!

OH YEAH they have so much potential to create so many problems. I actually have an 'episode I wish we had' post I wrote which I'm now making a part of this AU. They get along like a house on fire

#Harbingers au #Autothots answers #My aus

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danceworshipper · 4 years ago

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Oliver Adams - HPHM Profile [redone]

(information is as of sixth year - shared universe with @ask-hphm-crew)

Identity

Name: Oliver Tyler Adams

Gender: Male (cis)

Age: 16

Birthday: May 28th, 1973 (gemini)

Species: Human/wizard

Blood Status: Halfblood

Sexuality: Pansexual

Alignment: Neutral Good

Residence: The family farm in the Irish countryside. It's huge, a bit outdated decoration-wise, and homey. His room is on the third floor, looking out over the field and he can see the sunrise if he wakes up early enough. The farm is so old and imbued with magic that Oliver can use underage magic without the Ministry finding out

Personality Type: ESFJ-A (the consul)

Magic

Wand: 13 3/4 inches of pliant pine wood encasing a phoenix feather core. The wand is thick and heavy, light in color, and with no defining marks other than Oliver's name carved into it with a knife. Doing this did not damage the wand in any way, but when Ollivander saw it he nearly had a heart attack.

Animagus: A mixed breed cat, Siamese/Ragdoll, similar to the stray cats that lounge around the farm

Misc. Magical Abilities: Legilimency and Occlumency, though he doesn't practice them often

Boggart Form: In earlier years, it was a werewolf, since one could be heard howling somewhere near the farm during full moons. As he got older and met actual werewolves like Chiara, Oliver lost his fear of them and his boggart changed to a mortally wounded vision of himself, having failed to save anyone from the vaults and meeting his own painful end

Riddikulus Form: The vision of himself is instead only afflicted with a concussion, with his Quidditch team mothering him as he insists he's fine

Amortentia (what do they smell like?): Oliver would smell like roast chicken, fresh tomatoes, and bright sunshine

Amortentia (what do they smell?): At the current point, Oliver smells the ocean, cat fur, and wood polish. As he has no strong romantic interest (though that may change very soon) the smells just make him happy and aren't related to any specific person

Patronus: Dolphin

Patronus Memory: His first time seeing the ocean. Nothing went wrong that day, and he got to see dolphins for the first time too. He and his family all had a great time together.

Mirror of Erised: His mother and grandparents standing proudly behind him. It's his graduation day, not an injury to him. Everything turned out okay

Specialized/Favorite Spells:

- Reficere Aspectu - temporarily repairs his vision. The spell he uses for Quidditch matches.

- Lumos, Aguamenti, Wingardium Leviosa - extremely useful spells for around the farm

- Arania Exumi - spider repellent is always useful

- Orchideous - he conjures flowers for his mother and grandmother all the time

- Reparo - the first Transfiguration spell he got on the first try

Appearance

[concept image made using the zepeto app]

Height: 6'3

Weight: 191 lbs

Physique: Skinny with noticeable muscles from all the Quidditch and farming

Eye Color: Light, slightly greyish blue

Hair Color: Dirty blonde, usually kept in a bowl cut that his mother gives him. Oliver knows it's not fashionable (Andre is constantly nagging him to change it) but he doesn't really care enough to learn hair charms

Skin Tone: Light, no freckles. He burns easily so when he comes back at the start of every year he's a bit pink

Body Modifications: His eyesight is atrocious. He wears round glasses most of the time and uses a temporary vision charm for Quidditch

Scarring: Oliver has a nasty scar on his back from being kicked by a cow as a kid, and some scratches on his arms and legs from the various animals and work around the farm

Fashion: This kid has no fashion. Andre is in hell. Oliver wears shorts whenever he can and t-shirts. If it's cold he'll add a flannel. Around sixth year he starts updating his wardrobe a bit, but keeps his usual clothing for around the farm. No point having decent clothing get all dirty and ripped up

Hogwarts

House: Gryffindor

Class Grades:

- Astronomy: E

- Care of Magical Creatures: E

- Charms: A

- Defense Against the Dark Arts: E

- Divination: E

- Flying: O

- Herbology: O

- History of Magic: A

- Potions: A

- Transfiguration: A

Quidditch: Keeper since year 3

Extracurriculars: Dragon Club, Gobstones Club

Favorite Professor: Professor McGonagall. She's his head of house, and she reminds Oliver a bit of his grandmother with her stern but kind nature. She encourages his love of Transfiguration, even if he isn't the best at it, and she's a huge Quidditch fan

Least Favorite Professor: Professor Dumbledore. Oliver is an easygoing, agreeable guy most of the time. He respects his elders as his grandparents taught him, but only when they deserve it. Dumbledore most certainly does not

Relationships

Mother: Katie Adams

- Katie is a shy, quiet woman. She was homeschooled for most of her life, receiving at-home tutoring in her later years as her mother Gertrude was unable to properly teach her what she needed to know, and she's only seen the inside of Hogwarts twice: when she sat in for her O.W.L.s and her N.E.W.T.s.

- As a mother, Katie made sure to raise Oliver to be kind and always drink his Respect Women Juice. She had him take on some of the farm duties at a young age to help teach him responsibility

- Oliver got kicked by a cow when she turned her back on him for no more than ten seconds. Katie's boggart is what would have happened had Oliver been standing slightly closer - he would have been paralyzed, as the kick would have hit his neck

Father: Kyle Donovan

- Oliver never knew him. He was a muggle who left Katie shortly after she became pregnant

- He was a decent guy in general, but the idea of being a father at the age of 24 scared him and he ran like a coward. He never knew about the Wizarding world, and even if he wanted to return to try and make amends he'll never be able to find the family farm ever again, thanks to Marvin

Grandfather: Marvin Adams

- Marvin is a cranky, slightly old fashioned kind of guy. He cares a lot about tradition and keeps telling Oliver that one day the farm will be his, and then his kids', and then their kids'. Oliver doesn't have the strength to tell him he's not sure he wants kids at all

- Marvin loves his wife. There were many times in their relationship where it looked like the marriage was about to fall apart, but they were somehow always able to get through them - mostly by him apologizing to Gertrude

- Oliver is able to hold his own in a duel thanks to Marvin. Despite being an old crud, he's got a lot of fight in him

Grandmother: Gertrude Adams

- Gertrude was horrified that Oliver was going to grow up without a male influence, which is why Katie never moved off the family farm with him. The old woman made Oliver learn to cook and sew so that he wouldn't be a useless husband in the future

- She's the type of person who'll say that she still dreams of marrying her teenage sweetheart and moving to an island with him, but she doesn't mean it. She loves her family and her life, but she does one day want to retire on an island

- After Oliver graduates Hogwarts and takes over the farm, Gertrude will finally be able to convince Marvin that they can retire without worrying over the farm, and they'll move to a lovely beach house. Her last ten years will be spent in her own little paradise

Love Interest: Isla Lyall @sapphicsaffir

- Isla is the twin sister of Vera, one of Oliver's closest friends in Gryffindor. Isla is in Ravenclaw, so originally they didn't spend much time together. However, Oliver always found Isla cuter than Vera

- People who didn't know them well thought Oliver and Vera liked each other, but anyone who did know them knew Vera would rather die, and that Oliver preferred the red haired twin over the blonde one

- Vera is the one who keeps pushing to get them together. She told Oliver that she knows Isla likes him, but he refused to believe it. Still, she kept trying, saying that if anyone had to be her brother-in-law she'd rather it be him

- In fourth year, Ravenclaw lost a crucial match and it took them out if running for the House Cup. Isla, a chaser, was disappointed, but went to the final match to support her sister and her crush

- Gryffindor won, and in the excitement, Isla ran up to Oliver and yanked him down so she could kiss him. Oliver understandably short-circuited, while Vera yelled "Finally!"

Best Friend: Andre Egwu

- When Oliver first met Andre, they didn't like each other at all. They were on opposing Quidditch teams, after all. But their mutual friends forced them to spend more time together, and now the two are practically inseparable. It makes little sense to most people.

- They're the kind of best friends who insult the living daylights out of each other to show their love

- They went as friends to the Celestial Ball. A few people got the wrong impression, but they've never considered dating each other. They feel more like brothers than anything else

Rival: Anyone on an opposing Quidditch team. Even if the rivalry doesn't affect them off the pitch, Oliver's instinctive reaction when he sees his opponents is one of distaste (ironic since both his best friend and his girlfriend are his rivals)

Enemy: Every last member of R

Dormmates:

- Charlie Weasley

- Ben Copper

- Jae Kim

Pets: a barn owl named Priscilla, and a sheepdog who stays at the farm named Sparky

Closest Canon Friends:

- Charlie Weasley

- Nymphadora Tonks

- Diego Caplan

Closest Noncanon Friends:

- Vera Lyall @sapphicsaffir

- The gang from @ask-hphm-crew

- Unnamed members of the Gryffindor Quidditch team

Storyline

- Oliver was raised a happy, carefree little boy. His incident with the cow never deterred him from helping his mum and grandparents around the farm, and he even gave the cow an "I'm sorry I provoked you" treat as soon as he could. He didn't ask about his father until he was ten, and Gertrude sat him down and told him what happened. Oliver resents the man that fled his mother. Gertrude knew he'd be angry and didn't tell him his father's name

- During his first couple years at Hogwarts, Oliver made friends and charmed his way into most of the professors' good graces. In year three Oliver joined the Gryffindor Quidditch team, and after his first match against Ravenclaw, he and Andre started butting heads until their other friends forced them to hang out more

- Oliver gets involved with the Cursed Vaults almost by accident. He has no cursed brother like the game says, but he does have a desire to help people, so when he hears of a group of students trying to save the school from certain doom, he gets involved right away

- His discovered Legilimency throws him for a loop, as no one in his family has that power. He rarely ever uses his mind reading without permission, but when it becomes necessary he's usually able to do it without the target finding out

- After Hogwarts, Oliver will take ownership of the family farm for a few years, but it's not his passion and he hates the idea of being stuck there for the rest of his life. At age twenty two he sells the farm to one of the farmhands with three young kids and uses the money to buy a bakery with an apartment above it. He grows some of his own ingredients and buys the rest at discount from the old farm, and also runs guitar lessons out of his apartment. His grandparents are a little disappointed, but they understand, and his mother reveals that she had a secret boyfriend who she moves in with and later marries. He's a nice man with a kid a little older than Oliver

- Oliver and Isla have a small wedding a little before the Battle of Hogwarts. A few years later, Isla gives birth to twin girls Kenzie and Kleio. Five years after that, their son Caspian is born

Extra Info

- Oliver is a family man through and through. If he had to, he would have stayed on the farm forever to support his family. When he has his own family, he's an extremely devoted father even though he was never sure he wanted children when he was younger

- Despite not moving on to play Quidditch professionally, Oliver does join a recreational team after he sells the farm, as does Andre, who starts up his own fashion line

- Oliver is a total house husband. Isla is a cursebreaker, and Oliver brags about her to whoever will listen. She often comes home to a fresh cooked meal/baked goods

- Oliver's a cat person. He adopts two stray kittens when he moves to the bakery and loves them with all his heart

- He can't be alone for more than a few days or he'll go crazy. He loves spending time with his friends or even meeting new people

- He starts playing the guitar at the age of seven. Marvin is the one to teach him. Later on he learns about the muggle electric guitar and buys one as soon as he can figure out how to get electricity into his apartment

- Oliver visits his grandparents at their beach house at least five times a year. He can't get enough of the ocean, even when it's too cold to go swimming (and he'll usually do it anyway)

- He's the tallest one in his immediate family. Oliver assumes he got his height from his father, but he actually got the height from Gertrude's side of the family

- Oliver will always prefer to cook himself than to go to a restaurant

- He's a fairly good dueler, but Diego could always kick his ass

- Oliver will try to arrange a big meetup with all of his friends at least once a year. Not everyone can make it every time, but he refuses to let their friendships fade into the past

- He loses the bowl cut in year seven, when Andre convinces Tonks and Diego to hold him down so Andre can fix his hair. Oliver ends up liking it and keeps it that way for years to come

#hogwarts mystery #oliver adams #character profile #hphm mc #zepeto

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themoonispurple7 · 4 years ago

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since i saw a few posts on your blog regarding jk showing "signs", i thought I'd throw in my own 2 cents based on my own experience as an introvert close to his age, from a place that's not very progressive in terms of lgbtq+ and having had realisations about my own sexuality in my late teens.

i apologise in advance for the length. also a disclaimer that I'm very well aware that this might be pure projection since no one other than jk can confirm any of the following.

i read and write a lot. books and writing have always been my outlet, my catharsis, the way i best connect with myself and the world. because of that, a big part of my coming out experience began with seeking out books that explored sexuality because i needed to relate, to feel seen.

i know plenty of people who identify as straight that like and listen to troye sivan or other gay artists from where i am now, but that was not the norm when blue neighborhood came out.

i was lucky enough to come across troye because I'd just gotten my own phone, and access to social media without much monitoring. seeking out books regarding sexuality turned into seeking out spaces with people who were actually part of the community, which included coming across youtubers like connor franta, tyler oakley and (you guessed it) troye sivan.

basically, it wasn't a coincidence that i came across troye sivan at the time (2014). he simply was not a popular figure where i was from or in any of my immediate irl circles. and when i was listening to one direction and justin bieber my youtube algorithm definitely showed no sign of him.

even then, i wouldn't have known about the blue neighborhood (2015) if i hadn't come across hailey kiyoko's girls like girls mv suggested somewhere and then seen troye sivan's blue neighborhood 3 part video series recommended under it.

now, i don't know how popular troye was in SK, i have no idea if he'd have popped up in their algorithm - at least on YouTube, since the video leaves nothing to the imagination as to what the song is about. i did see someone say on here that Bang PD said in reply to RM's tweet - where he was recommending 'fools' - that he was the one who suggested the song to him. it's still interesting, though, i think.

but this is why jk's love for troye sivan made me think, and why i do give it some weight even if other members have also expressed interest in queer media. it's very interesting to me considering his age, his being an introvert, and the situation he lived in then - primarily with people around his age and supportive of lgbtq+ community, with a boss who recommends queer media.

now this is why i talked about how books with lgbtq+ characters mattered to me. I'm an introvert myself, and there's a certain isolation you're going to experience as one, usually because you need the time to recharge but also because you take your time to feel out the people around you before opening up. when you add questioning your sexuality while living in a largely traditional society, you're more likely to look for support in art and other things that consume you first as opposed to, say, other people. no matter how close they are.

as humans in general we love the art that reflects an aspect of us and for the most part "relatability" is an important factor in media. this is why the she-ra reboot made me and several other people cry, and wonder how things would have been if it had existed when we were younger. yes, a lot of people consume queer media, but queer people consume it differently, and that will be the case until it's completely normalised.

since music is to jk (and more recently, photography and videography) what books are to me and movies and shows are to others - his catharsis, his way of connecting to the world, i think it's understandable that he'd seek comfort in it.

also, to see that he makes a point - consciously or not - to have gender neutral lyrics in the songs he works on, to recommend and cover songs with gender neutral lyrics, to using either gender neutral songs or songs with he/him pronouns in his gcfs, it affirmed something for me.

yes, these could just be the actions of an ally, a way of showing sensitivity to their sizable lgbtq+ audience (because bts's music in general has increasingly been more gender neutral and they've also been consistently collaborating with artists who are out) but there's a deliberation to it (i feel). and i think it means something that he decided to use troye's song as the music for his first ever gcf.

if you got this far, thanks for reading! hope i made sense in what i was trying to say 😅. i guess my whole point is that jk being a fan of troye in general doesn't mean anything, but i do think the timing of the start of his fanboying coupled with how important music as a medium is to him MAY mean something and that's all I'm trying to say here.

of course, we'll never know until he actually tells us but I'm tired of people acting as if straight is the default and that it's absolutely out of the realm of possibility for jk to not be that.

i just know I'll love him and support him no matter what and i hope others will too.

Thank you so much for sharing this. There’s so much I wish I could say, but I’m honestly speechless. I’m really glad you had books, music, and writing when your community wasn’t as supportive. I know I already sound like a broken record but I think it’s so important to find the right authors and musicians at the right time.

Art can truly inspire us, comfort us, and save us in so many ways. I’m with you on that! I agree, the choices you’ve mentioned are very telling. And what you said about BTS collabing with musicians who were out is also really interesting - I honestly never thought of it that way!

#asks

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sanstropfremir · 4 years ago

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please let me join the dance conversation since it's the form of art i am actually the most interested in. i've been dancing as a kid for 6 years, and i don't mean to say that that gave me any type of authority in the domain, but it did leave me with the slight ability to recognize a good performance (or whatever makes a good performance to me, personally) and a great appreciation for valueing dancing as acting, like you said. too often i've seen dance ranking videos from actual life-long dancers who value technical skill above anything else. even if they take into consideration the facial expressions, it doesn't hold much weight and that always lowkey pissed me off. because when i am watching a performance, i care way more about the emotional delivery rather than the technical one. of course, this is not to disregard skill, because emotion without skill just ends up messy. good enough to appreciate as a form of authentic self-expression, but still messy, and mess won't make you a good dancer.

i've really enjoyed seeing you say dancing and acting have a mutual component since i've always felt that way too but never knew how to put it in words. two groups that come in mind when thinking about this are blackpink and itzy, i have no idea how familiar you are with them so i'm sorry if the following come across as foreign to you. but i gotta say, regarding bp, i think there's always been discourse over lisa vs rose as the best dancer. technically, everybody knows lisa is miles ahead, and i have to say she has decent stage presence and some pretty nice facial expressions too (taking into consideration how limited bp's concepts have been so far). rose, on the other hand, has a certain style that appeals to a specific audience (which i am not a part of, her lack of body control is so irritating sometimes) but i can see why some would find her charming. i would say her stage presence is decent too, but i can't help but choose lisa over her, and not just because i'm biased. but because in order to be a true dancer, you need the right balance between technique and emotion that gives your performance that star-value and appeal. and let's be real, kpop is really lacking in that "true dancer" department.

another dancing discourse that goes on is in the itzy fandom, where fans are pitting yeji and chaeryeong against each other. their techniques are quite different but they are each very good in their respective style. now, i've seen people call yeji the better "idol dancer" since she has better developed facial expressions, and chaeryeong the better "overall dancer" since people value her technique more. and i'm just like, no. emotion makes or breaks a dancer. everyone can learn technique, but emotion is hard to fake, and when you do, the non-authenticity is very much obvious.

that's why i love san as a dancer. he might not be the most technically skilled, but he is skilled enough to hold his own. and his way of living in the performance, of just letting every feel of the song wash over him and show the audience 110% and more - nothing compares to that, no amount of technicality. stage presence is something you just have, and no matter how much you train for it, you will pale in comparison to a natural.

wow, this is really long so thank you if you take the time to read it all and respond. english is not my first language and sometimes i'm having trouble finding the right words to get my point across exactly how i think of it in my mind, so i hope the message is delivered accurately, haha :D also, i must add i love the way you talk, your speech has a flow and a uniqueness to it you don't find everyday. and we love a developed vocabulary<3 may i ask how old you are?

thank you for the compliment, thats very sweet of you! english is my native language and i have spent just as much time, if not longer doing academics as i have doing performance work so at this point ive developed a very specific style. there’s a joke that theatre design is 90% communication and only 10% design, and it’s not wrong. it helps that i like to talk and my brain works very fast sometimes.

im glad you took the time to write this out! and don't apologize for your english, it's excellent and very clear. you are correct i know very little about blackpink and itzy but i would likely agree with you, dance is equal parts emotion and technique and that is my preference in idols as well. but i don’t think that the kpop industry needs to have ‘true’ dancers, though. yes it is fun to watch those who are technically and charismatically gifted in dance, it is only a portion of the experience that they market. also i think we lose a bit of objectivity in kpop because all idols are required to dance, but i dont think ive seen one recently that's a legitimately bad dancer. even the ‘worst’ dancers that i can think of are still leagues better than the average person on the street, but we see them as ‘bad’ because they work directly alongside peers who are legitimately gifted and have a passion for dance as a form.

it's interesting to hear you say that everyone can learn technique but emotion is hard to fake, because i hear a lot of dancers say that. i think this comes from a misunderstanding of what exactly acting is and how it works. i would argue that a statement closer to the sentiment that you (and many others) are trying to get is ‘not everyone can do both at the same time.’ the average person is no more predisposed to acting then they are to dance, because acting is a skill that can be taught and exercised in the same way dance can. sure, there are people that have a higher latent ability, but if you put in the work, you can learn. why do you think there are acting classes and schools and conservatories? you can get a doctorate in acting if you really want to. the thing about acting is that in order to be good at it, you have to both understand and be able to implement the correct postures for mimicking human emotion. this is an insanely complex task when you get down to the brass tacks of it. just think about your face and body posture for a moment. why are you sitting/standing in that particular way? why is your face in that particular expression? what do you think your posture is saying to someone who is observing you? how would you change it if you wanted the person to start a conversation with you? if you wanted them to leave you alone?

there’s also a general assumption that acting comes from a place of genuine or authentic emotion, and this is the fault of modern ‘method’ film acting. i have a very long thesis about how much i hate method acting and i can make a separate post about that if people are curious. but suffice to say, acting very rarely comes from a ‘genuine’ place. it may be informed from a genuine place, but by nature it is not real. thats what makes it acting. and i think dancers seem to be under the impression that showing emotion while dancing has to come from the dancer personally feeling those emotions, when thats not the case at all. this criminal fancam is a perfect example of exactly how good taemin is at putting on a character for a performance. you can very clearly see him drop character after the main camera cuts, and pretty much any concert footage shows this as well.

now, being able to do both a complex system of physical movements with your body and also control the minute details and timing in your facial muscles and posture? thats pretty fuckin hard. not a lot of people can do that, it takes just as much practice as learning technique does, just not in the way that people might think. but it is possible.

#jaehyuntrack #kpop questions #oh and also im 25 #it says in my bio lol #i have SO MANY opinions on authenticity in art and performance i could literally go on for hours #im of the opinion that no art is truly authentic because if it was it would never reach an audience #this is a NUCLEAR grade hot take in contemporary art school trust me i have been in so many arguments at the pub about this #anyways if people want to hear more about that then let me know i guess #holy fucking shit i write so much i hope that the people reading these actually find this interesting #im assuming that people are reading these; i do not blame you if you do not #this is very long #and full of me dumping my opinions everywhere #im not gonna tag this as kingdom because its not really about that but maybe i should make like a general kpop opinions tag or something #for people to blacklist so they dont have to see my text walls #thats a later problem #kpop analysis #text #kingdom asks

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go-dark-turtle · 4 years ago

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(Warning slight swearing. Please enjoy this is my first attempt at an x reader fan fiction. Let me know your thoughts. I'd totally appreciate it lots 💜 Also if you draw any fan art of this I'd love to see it. Also I MUST add! Thanks to an ask I submitted to the lovely and wonderful @kakyoin-shades it gave me inspiration to write this.)

Free the Future

Kakyoin x fem reader fan fiction

Chapter 1: Convincing the Crusaders

The five men stood looking over the ocean, they finally made it to Eygpt. Polnareff walked over to the woman they just fought against to check up on her (and to see if she was beautiful or not) and was horrified by her appearance. She had no teeth thanks to Star Platinum. The men laughed at his reaction.

They knew time was short and they had to keep on moving they made it to a nearby town, and Joseph Joestar handed his wallet to Avdol entrusting him to get the best vehicle that would get them across the open desert areas. He and his grandson Jotaro looked for a nearby pay phone.

You just arrived in town in your dark blue, almost navy Ford Scorpio Mk I Saloon, you drove past Joseph and Jotaro while they were on the phone and you drove back around the side street.

"Thank goodness I made it in time," You said with a sigh of relief.

You parked up along a side street and saw the dune buggy drive past with the remaining of the Stardust Crusaders. Your eyes widen when you saw Kakyoin chilling in the back seat your vision went hazy and you held your face.

"There's no time thinking about that right now. Come on (Y/N) stay focused."

You shook your head and slammed your hands down on the wheel to get yourself to focus again. You slowly followed the dune buggy and they didn't stop rather they slowed down as Joseph and Jotaro jumped into the back.

"SHIT!" You yell you had to act quickly and stepped on the gas.

At that moment you drove along side them on the narrow road, Polnareff started to curse and swear raising his fist at you as you overtook them, Avdol gripped the handrail and hung onto it for dear life as Polnareff began to chase you down. The others in the back was flung to the right, to the left, bumping into each other as well as the doors and the boot.

"OH MY GOD! Polnareff slow down, what's got into you!" Joseph held his head before he was flung backwards again.

Polnareff grunted, "This damn driver what's their problem, I'll show them for showing off!"

You panicked as you were nearing the open desert area, you couldn't let them across it no matter what. You acted quickly Polnareff was on your tail and at that moment you drifted to the left and blocked the end of the street and you slammed on the breaks and you fell into the steering wheel your hands shaking your breathing heavy.

"Oh CRAP!" Polnareff slammed on the breaks and stopped inches from your car.

Jotaro and Kakyion fell into each other as Joseph slammed his head against the boot door. Avdol closed his eyes and awaited the impact. When everything came to a halt everyone had a sigh of relief all but Jotaro. He huffed in annoyance, adjusted his hat and vaulted himself out the back of the buggy. He stood on the road and glared at your car. Unfortunately for you the drivers side of your car was in front of his sights. He clenched his fists as marched up to the car. He gritted his teeth and he swung the door opened with one motion, he reached in and gripped your shirt, pulled you out the car and held you up so high you were practically dangling in his grip, you panicked as you saw the angry expression, it brought fear in your eyes.

"What the HELL is your problem. Do you have any idea how dangerous that kind of driving is?! HUH do you! I should teach you a lesson for almost wrecking our new ride we just-" Jotaro got interrupted

"Jotaro stop! Don't hit her!" Avdol ran up behind him and grabbed his shoulder

"Her?" Jotaro paused for a moment he then looked at you up and down and huffed.

He sighed and dropped you all while glaring at you. You landed with a thud and you started to rub your butt, but still looking at Jotaro's icy glare. Polnareff rushed out the car and rush up to you almost knocking over his younger friend.

"I am SO sorry mon chéri, my friend doesn't know any better. Are you okay?" Polnareff offered his hand to help you up.

Avdol sighed and face palmed off course Polnareff couldn't help himself when a girl is about. Jotaro gritted his teeth and approached his tall haired friend. Polnareff helped you up and he smiled as well as checking you out at the same time. You smiled, but then it faded as Jotaro brushed past him and glared at you once again.

"You better have a good reason for this you bitch!" Jotaro huffed.

You stared into his icy blue eyes, but then you noticed Joseph and Kakyion walking up to the others when you saw the young red haired teen you froze in fear your vision began to get hazy, your eyes began to lose focus.

"OI I ASKED YOU A QUESTION!" Jotaro pulled you close to him again.

You snapped back to reality and before you knew it an arm became between you both.

"Hey Jotaro that's enough, Don't really know what's going on here, but I want some answers." Joseph stood between you. You took a deep breath and folded your arms and closed your eyes to hide the fear and pain.

"I know where Dio's hideout is, I also know you are after him and you don't have much time left. I have a beach house nearby, we can stay at until tomorrow. Please. Don't cross that, desert." the last line had you slightly choked up and the men's eyes widen. (Apart from Jotaro that is.) You quickly wiped your tears and stood proud in front of them.

"Mr Joestar this is kind of a blessing don't you think?" Polnareff whispered to the older gent. "I mean, what luck, that someone knows the whereabouts of Dio"

"Hmm, I don't know about this Polnareff... She could be one of Dio's servants. And she happened to know we were in this town. Straight after dealing with another stand user..." Joseph folded his arms unsure what to believe.

"As much as I agree with Mr Joestar, we do need to cross the desert quickly and find Dio. But can we really trust this person..." Avdol looked down with concerned eyes.

Polnareff rushed to your side "Well, I believe her. If she was trying anything you think she'd blow up our car or even attack Jotaro. But she didn't." He winked at you and you smiled you were glad at least one of them was on your side.

Kakyion walked past Jotaro and Joseph and placed his hand on his hip and stood next to his tall haired friend and smiled softly.

"I also believe Polnareff, this is the turnout we are after. Think about it, no matter where we go we always get attacked. It's about time we have someone on our side and help us take down Dio." He folded his arms and gave you a nod to acknowledge you were on their side you quickly look to the ground as if you were shy from his gaze.

"Hmm... You do have a point Kakyion. Perhaps we should try and trust them even a little" Joseph held his hat trying to decide what was really the best option.

Jotaro pulled his hat down and smirks "Yare Yare daze, she might be helpful for now, but as soon as she double cross us, Hmph don't worry. I'll kick her ass I don't care if she's a girl, Star Platinum will make sure she thinks twice before dealing with us."

Joseph placed a hand on his grandson's shoulder and grinned " Ah yes, that sounds like a good idea, alright miss.... um uh-"

You glared back at Jotaro you didn't like his tone and how he was judging you when you were the one trying to help him and his fellow comrades. You look up at Joseph and you force a smile.

"Y/N but call me whatever you like." You respond to Joseph.

The Stardust Crusaders all take time to introduce themselves to you and after so long you finally get to know the name of the man that haunted your dreams. You smile softly and show gratitude to them all but Jotaro trusting you. He still glared at you, waiting for you to slip up at that moment.

"Well, since you have a beach house nearby I think it would be a good idea to have a bit of time to recuperate, Mr Joestar I think using both our vehicles would help with our luggage problem wouldn't you agree?" Avdol stood next to his older friend and extend his finger at both the cars still in the middle of the road.

"Hmm, yes that is a good idea, you don't mind Y/N you do have a bigger boot than ours." Joseph simply asks "I also think it might be a good idea to spilt up between the cars. Jotaro and myself will take the buggy. Avdol, Polnareff, Kakyion you take the um..." He walks around the back of your car to get the name of the model and his eyes widen.

"OH MY GOD! You have the Ford Scorpio Mk I! It's not even out in this region how did you get your hands on such a fancy classy car!" Joesph starts to gush over your car.

"Ah, I see you are a man that likes classy vehicles. You see I have a family friend called Tamsin..." You start to bond with Joesph telling him about Tamsin and that he's basically your version of Speedwagon (sporting a short ginger bowl cut, big moustache and 70's glasses.) in that if you need something he'll sort it out. No questions asked.

Polnareff walks up to the passenger side of your dark blue car and opens it and is about to place his buttocks on the seat only to be pushed aside gently by Kakyion.

"I call the front seat mon ami" Kakyion grins at him

"Huh? Since when? I got here first!" He stands in front of him and puffs out his chest.

"Since Mr Joestar said we should take both cars and besides..." Kakyion got cut off by Avdol

He pulled Polnareff's ear, dragging him to the other side of the car and opened the back door and pushed him in and sat next to him and folded his arms and huffed. Kakyion smiled softly chuckling to himself and sat down in the passenger seat. (Basically Avdol is sitting behind you in case you wondered)

"If you were to sit in front you would distract Y/N with all your flirting or trying to touch her knee and besides" He winked at his friend, " You wouldn't want me to be sitting all by myself in the back would you?"

Polnareff huffed and folded his arms for a moment, but then placed an arm around his Egyptian friend.

"Of course not can't leave my best bud all alone can I and besides," He grinned " We can stretch our legs more, too bad for you Kakyion." He giggled like a school girl while he extended his legs outwards.

"Hmm, is that so?" Kakyion smirked, looked into the mirror and shifted his seat backwards into Polnareffs knee before shifting it back to where it was, the Frenchman winced in pain and grabbed his knee.

"You did that on purpose, why you!" Polnareff leaned forward, but then you approached the car and he quickly sat back and pretend nothing happened he wanted to be on his best behaviour around you. Avdol softly chuckled and watched you wave to Joseph and Jotaro. He smiled out the window to his old friend and gave a small wave.

You got in the car and you saw Avdol and Polnareff in the back seats and you glance over to the passenger seat and Kakyion was sitting there giving you a soft smile. You immediately look ahead with a mix of emotions, fear, shyness and nervousness. Kakyion took note of your behaviour and wanted to reassure you.

"Please don't let what Jotaro said, get to you. He's been on edge for a while. He will warm up to you soon. But we all believe in you Y/N." Kakyion placed his warm hand on your shoulder and you look at him trying not to think of that horrible nightmare that keeps haunting your vision.

You swallow hard and let out a heavy sigh before smiling back at him, " I appreciate that lots Kakyion, say you guys have been travelling since this morning, haven't you," You slowly reach for the glove box and the men in the back moved forward and prepared for the attack. "I thought you'd appreciate some nice cold Coca Cola."

You turn with 3 Coca Cola bottles in your hand and see them with angry expression and you let out a shriek that you drop the bottles. Kakyion leans in close his arm brushes against yours in a swift motion and he catches the necks of the bottles in his fingers. He slowly sits back up and gives you a warm smile all while placing the bottles on his lap. A small blush grew on your cheeks, he was so close you could smell his scent, musky with a hint of cherry. You nod back in relief, but you turned your attention the gentlemen in the back seats with a raised eyebrow.

"Sorry miss Y/N you can understand our reflexes we haven't had it easy the past 40 or days or so" Avdol looks at you with a guilty expression.

"I'm sorry my darling its just anytime we've tried to relax something happens. I hope you can forgive us" Polnareff clasped his hands together, his eyes almost reduced to tears.

"It's okay, " You give a sheepish smile, "I understand I truly do and once we are at the beach house I'll explain..." You slowly sigh and close your eyes, "I'll tell you everything." You open your eyes with a determined look.

You see Joseph and Jotaro in the buggy and they have reversed out the way for your car to squeeze past. As the cars lined up just before you were in front you wind down the window and you lean outwards.

"Mr Joestar its going to be a 3 hour drive, it's just south of the border just follow my lead and if you and Jotaro need to make a pit stop anywhere, just flash your lights at me and I'll get the signal." You smile at him and beep your horn a few times " See you in a while"

"Right you are Y/N. To be honest, I'd rather wait until we make it to the beach house before we can take it easy. See you in a few hours." He gives a small wave to you and smiles while giving a big wave to Avdol and Polnareff in the back.

You slowly drove along the main road of the town, you look in the mirror and see Joseph is close behind you. You smile, knowing that everything was going smoothly. Kakyion smiled by you and leaned towards you as he leaned into the back to give his friends their bottles of Coca Cola.

"Y/N Thank you so much you have no idea how much I've been dying for a drink" Polnareff smiled as he gripped the bottle

"It is a very nice gesture Y/N so very thoughtful of you my dear." Avdol smiled as he raised his bottle to the mirror as his way of saying thank you.

Polnareff tapped Avdols arm and whispered "Hey Avdol I can't open this bottle you think I can use Silver Chariot to pry the bottle cap off?"

"Hmm, I suppose you could, but don't let Y/N see you" He places his hand over the side of cheek to hide his lips from your view "She might not understand stands as such, though if you were to open yours could you do mines also?" He brought his bottle closer.

You smile, taking in the hustle and bustle of the busy streets with vendors on both sides of the town, you realise about the Coca Cola bottles and you reach down to the side pocket of your door and you hand Kakyion a bottle opener not once taking your eyes off the road. You gasped slightly at his warm touch of his fingers as he slowly takes it from you.

"Oh, thank you Y/N. I was wondering how I was going to open this" He smirked and laughed slightly while looking at his friends in the back as Polnareff stuck out his tongue while aiming Silver Chariot's arm with such concentration.

Just then BANG Silver Chariot's sword flung both the bottle caps into the air and the pressure of the Coca Cola spouted upwards landing on the Frenchman and the Egyptian man leaving them with half of the liquid left in the bottle, other half soaked them. Avdol pushed Polleraff in annoyance before grabbing his bottle and laughing heartily. Polleranff joined him in chuckling loudly.

Kakyion smiled softly and grinned " I was going to offer this" waving the bottle opener at them "But you managed to open it all by yourself, I wonder how that is so, hmm?" Oh he very much knew how.

Avdol sat forward and grinned "Oh yes, that well, uh I used my super strength to open it." He chuckled loudly to hide the embarrassment in his voice oh Polnareff was going to pay for this later.

Kakyion brought the bottle to his lips and began to drink the Coca Cola while the gents in the back chuckled and drank theirs, just then Polleranff had an idea pop into his head. He tapped his Egyptian friend to get his attention and pointed at the back window and gave his Coca Cola bottle a shake, Avdol smirked and grinned as he knew exactly what he was thinking.

Joseph and Jotaro followed behind you slowly and Jotaro slumped more in the seat, resting his arm on the door and placing his chin on his hand as he took in the vendors as they drove passed.

"What the hell!" Joseph frowned, looking at your car in front

He saw his two friends shake their bottles of Coca Cola and Polleranff taking a slow chug and giving a satisfying "uh-huh" and a cheeky grin before shaking it again.

Joseph gripped the steering wheel harder and gritted his teeth "Son of a bitch! Do you see this Jotaro! They are having Coca Cola without me!"

Jotaro glanced forward and deeply sighed "What a pain.." before pulling his hat down to his face and adjusted himself ready for a snooze.

You look into the mirror and see Joseph with an annoyed look and you then see both the men in the back chuckling and giggling slapping their knees. You smile at how close they are as friends. Kakyion softly smiles and enjoys more of his Coca Cola and places the bottle opener into the glove box.

*********************

Two and a half hours had passed and the laughter had eventually died down from the back of the car both the men rested their heads against each other as they fell asleep with how smooth your driving was. Kakyion looked back at his friends and smiled warmly he looked at you while you gave the road all your attention.

"Take this a compliment Y/N Avdol doesn't normally fall asleep in our car journeys, the fact is that he must really trust you. It is warming to see him so relaxed." Kakyion rested his hand on his chin as he places his elbow on the door.

"I had no idea Mr Avdol was always cautious. I'm just glad he can get some rest and feel relaxed." You reply while looking out to the open road with the odd car passing you.

Kakyion looked at you curiously " Say Y/N you mind me asking and of course you will explain everything shortly, but could you tell me, why are you helping us?"

*Cue the start of Roundabout theme*

Your breath got shaky at him pressing you to talk, you gripped the steering wheel your palms got sweaty, your vision got hazy, but you shook your head to snap back to reality. He looked at you with concern his eyes fixated on you with how you are acting and shifted himself forward leaning towards you and awaited your answer.

"I'll just say these two words for now," you replied with a shaky squeak.

"Hol Horse..."

[<--------To Be Continued----------]

Chapter 2

#jojo bizarre adventure #jojo part 3 #kakyoin x reader #kakyoin noriaki #joseph joestar #jotaro kujo #jean pierre polnareff #muhammad avdol #fan fic

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riseofarmy · 3 years ago

Text

02 | SO THERE'S THIS MAGIC BOY

i can do this all day 02 | so there's this magic boy

author : @riseofarmy

pairing : kim seokjin x original character

words : 2343

i can do this all day masterlist

previous chapter

DARLING

What. The. Hell.

Before me stands a man I've never seen before in my life. He's barefoot, loose harem pants hanging low on his hips and an open vest doing nothing to hide his bare chest. The most startling thing about him though is his hair. It's purple, as in I Am The Love Child Of Amethysts And Lilac purple.

I don't get how I could've missed someone as stand-outty as him.

He leans down elegantly to pluck the lamp from the floor and my heart seizes up instantly. I have no idea where he came from, or how he got so close to me without me realising, but one thing I do know - this piece of shit is not getting away with my lamp.

With a swipe of my foot at the stranger's legs, I fell him like a tree. He shrieks, trying to pick himself up, but I pounce on him, sitting on the back of his thighs and twisting his arms behind him so he has to curl backwards to stop his arms from hurting. I pull out the twine I store in one of my pockets, intending to tie up his hands, but then...

He's gone.

As in gone-from-under-me gone, making me fall onto my back since the hands I was pulling have goddamn disappeared. Disappeared! Again: What. The Hell. I stare at the ceiling, trying to orient myself. He was right there and then he was... not.

"I can't believe you just did that to me, like surely you knew how that would make me feel."

The man stands next to my knocked-down body, bending over to look me in the eye. He flicks a lock of purple hair off his face with a lop-sided grin that might have been meant to make me feel at ease but instead makes me growl in irritation. I make a grab at his ankles, but I only touch them for a moment before my hands close around empty air.

That did not just happen.

Except it did. He's out of my arm's reach and fanning his face lazily as I get on my feet, eyes lasered in on the lamp still in his hand. He twirls it carelessly and I totally lose my mind, snapping forward to jump on him again.

This time, I manage to tackle him to the ground again and lock his head into my elbow before-

"Don't bother, you'll just tire yourself out." Suddenly, he's on the other side of the small room, a roguish curl to his lips as he lounges on one of the bigger chests of gold. He notices me twitch in his direction, and with a wave of his fingers, I'm frozen.

It's an awful feeling, like time has stopped, but only for me. There's an emptiness in my chest that takes me a second to place, but then I realise what it is - I can't breathe! Somehow, I know that my lungs have stopped working, my heart has stopped beating, that the only thing working in me right now is my thoughts.

And then he lets go of me. I suck in a grateful breath, flexing my fingers until I'm sure my blood's flowing again.

Holy shit holy shit holy shit literally what the hell.

"Please tell me you've calmed down." I flick my gaze up to find the strange man eyeing me warily. He has a better grip on the lamp now and isn't flinging it around like before, so I force myself to stay on the ground even though I was itching to take it from him.

"Who are you?" My voice cracks, but he didn't seem to notice. Instead, his expression clears up significantly into an overly bright beam.

"You know what, I have a song prepared for exactly that question, gimme a second to change." Before I can consider the ridiculousness of that statement, he snaps his fingers, and suddenly he's wearing...

Actually, what is he wearing?

He has on a startlingly white jacket, with odd, overblown shoulders, and a matching pair of breeches that were fitted to his body and made of a stiff material. The outfit was studded with what looked like diamonds, his hair was slicked back off his forehead, and the whole look completed with a set of short, silver boots.

I can't help it. Before I can slam a palm over my mouth, a snort slips out.

The man looks a little shocked, mouth dropped into a horrified 'O'. "Are you laughing? At me? Why are you laughing?!"

"You look... What are you wearing?"

He splutters, ears reddening so quickly they might just pop. "Do you not have any taste? This is high fashion, the result of a gorgeous marriage between class and art and I look stunning."

This man was serious! His hand was curled into a fist and he looked almost comically furious, but I just couldn't take him as anything but a joke.

Especially not when, a few seconds later, he lets out a scream and jumps onto a chest. It takes me a moment realises that the thing that had him currently shaking like a leaf was none other than... Yoongi.

Yoongi, my little furball cat, who slinks past the terrified man and curls into my bent form.

"Wait. Are you scared of cats?" When he doesn't reply, I have my answer. The man flinches as I stand up and step closer to him, eyes trained on the only-slightly-feisty ball of fluff at my feet. "How does this sound: you give me the lamp back, and I won't tell Yoongi to bite you."

At this, the man looks up. "The lamp is yours anyway! Take it! Just keep that thing away from me! WHY IS IT COMING CLOSER?!"

I stop moving closer to him, eyebrows furrowing - it seems too easy. I pat Yoongi's bum and direct him to the other side of the room before turning to address the man again. "You'll just... give it back to me? Then why did you take it in the first place?"

Now that Yoongi's further away, the man looks at me directly, throwing his hands up in what was probably frustration.

"Are you out of your mind? Seriously, did you get knocked on the head too hard before or something? Why would I take the lamp? It's literally yours? I can't? Do anything with it? Just? Take it?"

It was my turn to splutter. "Well- I- Alright then? I'll just? Take it?" It's strange to be talking in question marks, but everything about this situation is strange and I don't have the time to get hung up on the details.

I rush forward before he can change his mind, swiping the lamp from his hand. I cradle it to my chest, deciding right there that the next person to even glance at it without my permission is getting castrated.

"Can't you keep it away from me?" The stranger jerks his head at Yoongi, who was pawing through a pile of gold, completely unaware that he was the object of the man's derision.

"It isn't even near you and it has a name. Yoongi. He's not gonna hurt you."

"Mmm-hmm, that's what they all say before letting those monsters maul your face off."

"It's a little concerning how oddly specific that was, but Yoongi's not gonna 'maul your face off', he can't even catch rats. Anyway, can't you just save yourself by doing whatever it was you did before?" Before, when my body stopped but my mind didn't. "Um. What did you do before."

"Well, that's exactly what I changed into this incredible outfit to explain!" He gestures at himself, the diamonds throwing light around the room. "I literally told you I have a song prepared. You have a problem with that?" He adds in the question, probably realising that my face was twisted in disgruntlement.

"Can't you just say it?"

The man visibly deflates, and I almost take my words back. Almost, but not really. He clicks his fingers again and he's back in the harem pants and vest, then once more, and two plush armchairs appear. I think I'm already desensitised to things popping into existence.

"Sit," he gestures, plonking into the one opposite. "Since you want to do this the boring way. What do you want to know?"

I sink into the seat, half expecting it to disappear from under me, but it holds. Yoongi jumps into my lap, and I quickly look up at the man for his reaction, but he seems to have calmed down from his initial fear - he just purses his lips and avoids looking at Yoongi.

"I guess I'll start with... Who are you? And how did you get here without me noticing?"

He cocks his head. "Do you even know what the lamp is?"

I look down at my lap where Yoongi was batting at the purple gem in the lamp. I don't want to let on that I knew what the lamp can do, but something gave me the feeling the man already knew. "Yeah, it's a magic lamp. Makes all your wishes come true."

"Wow, it's so interesting that you think that because that's wrong."

Cue round two of me spluttering. This man did not just show up, out of nowhere, and deny what I have known for the last eight years.

"Wrong? What do you mean wrong, I'm supposed to be the only one left who knows about this lamp."

"And who told you about it? Actually, it doesn't matter, because sorry to disappoint you, honey, but whoever it was didn't have their facts straight. The lamp doesn't do anything, it's just a vessel for the real wish granter. That's me."

I blink, waiting for the punchline. It doesn't come, though, and the man cocks his head again, an amused smirk lifting his lips.

"Since you haven't figured it out yet, I'll spell it out for you. I am a djinn, a genie if you will. And since you freed me, you are now my master until I grant you your wishes." He furrows his eyebrows. "No wait, I've missed something. You know, my song was perfected to give all the information you need in the right order and now you've messed me up."

And then he starts humming something under his breath, bobbing his head to the beat in his head. "Oh! You have four wishes. And my name is Seokjin."

"What?!" Oh hell no.

"Yikes, what's with that reaction. Seokjin isn't a weird name or anything so-"

"No, what do you mean four wishes? I'm supposed to be able to make as many as I want!" If I can only have four wishes...

"I mean exactly that. I can grant you four wishes, no more, no less - not that anyone's ever wanted less. And before you even think it, you can't ask for more wishes." He looks at me sternly, as if it's something he's had to say repeatedly.

His words feel like a physical blow to my chest, winding me and making my brain blank. Four wishes. That certainly is less than I had planned for, but I guess it could have been a lot worse. I could have had only one wish, or I could have never found the lamp. Yes, thank goodness I have at least this many - I just have to make sure I make it count.

"Are you okay? You haven't said anything for, like, two minutes. I mean, I'm used to people becoming speechless in my presence, but you look more stressed out than in awe, so."

"Huh?" I shake myself out of my increasingly spiralling thoughts. "Yeah, I'm okay, I just... Wait, the ball!"

Only four wishes? This new stranger I'm apparently stuck with? Both of those I can deal with, I can find a way. But if I miss this ball then it doesn't matter how many wishes I have, I won't even be able to start with my revenge plan.

The ball, as in the prince's twenty-third birthday ball, which is only a week away. It was announced by the king when the prince was only ten: a grand ball open to nobility from all over the world. Even in Paaratham, the announcement sent tremors through towns because the prince was to choose his bride from among all the single noblewomen that attended.

I'm not from a noble family, and I'm definitely not a princess, but I'm determined to be the one the prince chooses.

The lamp was supposed to help me with that, and I had planned to wish myself into the kingdom after getting the lamp, but that's not an option anymore. If I wanted to get there in time, I need to leave now.

Immediately, I snap into action. I start stuffing my pockets with gold, since I don't have much more money on me, and packing into my rucksack the few bolts of fabric that were already tailored into clothes. The man - Seokjin, I tell myself - only stares at me, until I address him.

"Some of us can't magic up stuff whenever we want, so excuse me for snatching what the dead won't use anyway. Is there anything from here you want to take?"

"Me?" He looks shocked, probably thinking I must be dumb to ask a genie if he needs anything.

"No, the creeper behind you. Yes, you, is there anything you need from here? You have two minutes."

I go back to filling my pockets as Seokjin frantically rustles through the room. I don't see what he's getting but he seems satisfied when I call him to me.

Yoongi meows at him, obviously wanting to investigate Seokjin, but I pick him up and lay him on my shoulder. I kinda want to figure out this whole genie thing too, but I don't have the time right now.

Right now, I've got to get to the capital, Mansae. Everything else I can sort out later.

"Alright, magic boy. Let's get outta here."

i can do this all day masterlist

next chapter

#bts seokjin #bts #fanfic #fantasy

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bigskydreaming · 5 years ago

Note

What do you think of dick hability to read the body language in new 52 People act as it doesn't exist and it really bugs me because thats one of the few things i really liked from new 52

I actually really like it, and it fits with some longtime headcanons of mine, but it hasn’t been touched on enough that I can understand it rubbing some people the wrong way, due to Cass.

But its like I said in that post earlier this week, about how I think its pointless to be ‘possessive’ of character traits…..I think Dick is an expert hacker himself, but I don’t think he’s on Babs’ level. Nobody is on Barbara’s level. But his own expertise isn’t diminished because he’s not on the level of the pretty much undisputed best hacker in the DC Universe. Neither is Barbara’s expertise lessened by virtue of Dick, as well as Tim, Bruce and most of the rest of the Batclan, all being damn good at it in their own right.

I see it as being the same thing here. I like the idea that Dick is intuitive and highly capable when it comes to reading body language, for a number of reasons, but I don’t think it suddenly makes him Cass, means he’s as good at it as Cass, or that Cass being on a whole other level with that, being like…lessened or threatened because Dick’s own capabilities in that regard are touched on every now and again.

I’ve actually said this many times before, but I think this insistence so many fans have about their faves being the only ones associated with certain traits, stories or characteristics actually does them a disservice, because when you stop viewing things as a competition and instead look at it as a chance for common ground, you unveil SO many possibilities.

For instance, I’ve always felt, long before the New 52, that it makes sense for Dick to have a strong, unconscious understanding of body language….as in, he’s at the upper levels of what humans are naturally capable of having in that regard, which of course still puts him at an entirely different level than Cass, whose mastery of it is deliberately BEYOND peak human levels because of her own backstory.

But if you think about it, Dick having skills in that direction makes sense for him AND opens up a lot of areas for Dick and Cass to bond more AND have occasional conflict.

Dick is one of the only other Batkids aside from Cass AND Damian, who knows what its like to be raised literally from the time he can walk, to be a proficient athlete with complete control of his body as like…a lifestyle. The kind of demands that makes of someone, the way that instills certain work ethics and instincts in someone practically from birth, to such a degree that it probably NEVER becomes something he can wrap his mind around, that for some people, these kinds of habits AREN’T second nature, practically built into him….that’s something that I don’t think even some of the other most highly capable athletes in the DC universe are fully capable of grasping…like Bruce, Tim, Jason, Dinah, etc. Obviously this doesn’t lessen any of their skills or proficiency as athletes, just as professional athletes who don’t start training in their chosen fields until later in childhood can be just as capable as ones who started in early childhood. But it makes I think, for a slightly different mindset.

I think this is part of why Dick understands Damian so much better or more easily than a lot of others do. Because Damian was raised this way too, just with different end goals than Dick. Dick can’t relate to being raised to kill, to stamp down on his urge to show affection, the specific training methods of the League with someone as young as Damian, no. But that unconscious, built in awareness of his own body in ways that even a lot of other athletes or fighters never develop just because they approach their bodies and training so differently…that I think Dick gets, and because of that he gets Damian and his own work ethic, and the way that telling him to not push himself so hard or take it easy at times….like is going to be totally wasted on Damian, FOR THE SAME REASONS those things have so often been wasted on Dick.

Telling someone to be careful not to strain or overwork their body is not going to carry a whole lot of weight with a twelve year old kid who has spent ten of those twelve years being instilled with a greater awareness of his own body and capabilities than anyone else will EVER grasp….let alone someone who only met them a year or two ago (notice how this applies to both Damian AND Dick).

Similarly, causing people to worry when they go throw themselves into an extremely rigorous workout routine in the name of ‘relaxing or de-stressing’ is always going to be a thing, when other people just fundamentally don’t get that for someone raised from birth to eat, sleep and breathe their own physicality….this IS relaxing.

So IMO Dick and Damian have at least that much in common, which has given Dick particular insight into Damian that others don’t have, and helped him get further in reaching Damian and developing a bond with him. And extend this to Cass and her own backstory, and I think they all three have this in common, and thus could share this understanding between all three of them….thus giving Cass more opportunities and ways to bond with Dick and Damian in particular.

Continue on for ten thousand more words (lol, I wish I was exaggerating. Oh, me) of Dick Meta, Cass Meta, and Dick and Cass Meta, below the cut:

Now, add in the fact that Dick wasn’t just raised from birth to be a world-class athlete, like Cass was…..but as I often stress, just as important….he was raised from birth to be a PERFORMER. This is where I think his instinctive awareness of body language would have come from. Because he was raised to do all of his athletics with apparent ease, to show none of the strain it takes, to make it look like art, like the performance that it so usually was. And he was also raised to not just perform for a crowd, but to command their attention, to draw eyes, to feed off their energy and use that to tailor his own performances, his every action, to achieve maximum impact.

Don’t forget Dick was a world-class acrobat as a CHILD. He was quite literally a child prodigy….and people LOVE meeting a child prodigy. Something like the encounter with the Drakes’ that’s part of Tim’s own backstory would have been an every day occurrence to Dick. Which means it was every bit as likely a part of his early training to be able to glean from the rich strangers that wanted a photo op with the young, exhausted child performer that probably just wanted to go to bed now….exactly what would go over best with those strangers, expedite this encounter, and enable Dick to move on to the next one or better yet, out of the tent ASAP.

I’ve talked about the classism Dick endures just by virtue of being a circus performer…its never been about how much money he and his parents did or didn’t have, its about the fact that most people look down on circus performers as like…an amusement to enjoy, not athletes to respect. You can’t deny that people summoning to mind an Olympic level gymnast would view that gymnast in an entirely different way than they would a Cirque de Soleil acrobat they called to mind, even if they had similar levels of athletic skill….because as a society, we regard something like the Olympics as a WORTHY pursuit for an athlete of that caliber….whereas one might sit in the audience of a circus and enjoy the performance, but that doesn’t mean most people walk out of that tent thinking of what they just saw in terms of the SKILL rather than their entertainment, because there’s this unconscious bias that like….if one wanted to actually be respected for their athletics, they’d aim for the Olympics, not to wear gaudy costumes and face paint and travel around in a caravan and never put up roots in any one place, etc.

Our view of the circus goes well back before Dick’s creation, even, but its very much there. You simply can’t argue that most people give circus performers the respect their skillsets deserve and would merit in other situations…..and you bet your ass, someone like Dick who was raised as one, would have been instilled from a very young age with an awareness of how to glean when someone was treating him with disdain…and respond without offending them, but still not necessarily letting them impact him with their disdain.

Because one of the things I don’t think I’ve ever talked much about is how for as much as we talk about Dick’s self esteem issues and insecurities in regards to Bruce…..the boy Bruce first took in as an orphan was NOT overly insecure. If anything, Dick was the complete opposite. He knew EXACTLY what he was capable of, and was not shy about insisting upon it. I would say by all accounts and reading between the lines, the Graysons did a tremendous job in instilling in Dick from a young age an amazing degree of self-confidence….WHICH probably accounts for a LOT of the later conflict between Dick and Bruce, because it was never just a matter of Dick not getting the vocal or visible respect or appreciation from Bruce that he wanted….it was that Bruce wasn’t giving him it in the forms he’d been raised with, and grown accustomed to.

Its that disconnect that I think Dick has always struggled with…where he KNOWS, on some level, that Bruce loves and respects him, and holds enormous appreciation for Dick’s own skills….but Dick only knows this because of….well, what he gleans from Bruce’s body language and his own awareness of Bruce and his nature. He has to read between the lines, and still be left guessing (since Bruce is himself pretty much a master of obscuring his own emotions and body language, in as much as anyone is, to the extent that only someone like Cass can willfully pierce that shroud).

But my point is, there’s every reason in the world to think that Dick’s parents were very good at preparing their world-class prodigy son for the pressures of the spotlight he grew up in, and heavily prioritized making sure he wasn’t going to be diminished by the disdain of whatever snobs he encountered during the meet and greet portion of that lifestyle. And to be good at that, to know how to manage people who make you want to put your fist in their face while giving away nothing but a nod and smile, and still manage to seize enough control over the encounter to walk away with your head held high rather than feeling like you were just thrown to the wolves….that takes a high mastery of body language and an instinctive grasp of how to read people and put them at ease, to seize control of a conversation from someone who is used to having control at all times in all places. You have to know how to PERFORM, at all times. And in this regard, Dick was every bit as much a prodigy as he was in his acrobatics.

IMO Dick Grayson on his A-game could make Brucie weep in envy. I think this training, this ability to read people with just a look and adapt himself accordingly, to make the most of the encounter while giving up the least along the way….I think its absolutely nothing that Bruce himself taught him, that Dick already came to Gotham with, and its what ACTUALLY enabled Dick to survive the lifestyle and spotlight that Bruce’s lifestyle and spotlight made Dick grow up in. Its what enables Dick to handle the pressures of leadership and get along so well with his various teammates, coordinate dissenting personalities well enough to create teams that are famous for how well they gel and work together in battle no matter what they’re like when interacting in civilian arenas. Bruce, for all his skills, is notoriously not a people person. He knows how to manage people. He struggles with understanding them. And this has always been where in comparison to Bruce, Dick soars.

He didn’t learn any of what he knows about being a people person from Bruce. But he sure as hell learned it SOMEWHERE.

And I think that somewhere is in the circus, with his parents and whatever other various babysitters he picked up things along the way from. A kid as friendly and outgoing as Dick would have been soaking things up from all the circus performers like a sponge, I bet. Little tips and tricks of the trade from not just the knife-throwers, as is occasionally referenced….but also the fortune teller and ringmaster and clowns and magicians and escape artists. A couple dozen varieties of different masters of their own crafts, with one thing in common of all of them….all their crafts rely on performing. On reading an audience, even audiences of one. And selling that audience exactly what they’re looking for from that performance.

Let’s not forget that for all Dick’s insecurities and self-esteem issues as an adult….those almost unilaterally exist in regards to his family and closest friends. For the same reasons as he struggles with these things with Bruce….because they’re not great at showing Dick the respect and appreciation he needs from THEM, SPECIFICALLY….in the forms he would recognize, the forms he was raised since birth to receive and recognize as such, when his parents and circus family gave him these things.

Outside matters pertaining to just his family and closest friends, however, Dick is not remotely insecure. There’s a huge chasm between the former and the latter, in terms of how Dick acts and conducts himself. And its probably a large part of why Dick is so adept at not giving away to his family that he’s more in need of their acknowledgment and support than they realize….because Dick spends so MUCH of his life genuinely not giving a shit what most people think about him or say about him….he’s that much more proficient at wearing that as a mask when interacting even with his family of detectives, who are pretty good at reading even him in a lot of other aspects.

Because I maintain that Dick absolutely endured a hell of a lot of classism and racism growing up, and still does….which is not okay no matter how well he endures it….but he for the most part clearly doesn’t let this constant barrage effect his general self-esteem, and that is fairly important to note. Just as is the fact that like….he calls himself Dick, by his own choice, because its more important to him that he hold on to what he can of his parents, every last physical reminder he has available to him….and thus I think its especially shitty to write his second family using his parents’ fond nickname for him as a joke or insult, and probably hurts Dick when they do it….but the rest of the time? The general public making him a punchline for it? Dick could give a fuck. Same with general opinions of his costumes and what he looked like as Robin or early Nightwing, etc, etc.

Dick Grayson is not an insecure person overall….and that I credit entirely to his first parents, the Graysons.

All of this feeds into that overall awareness of body language, reading people for emotional cues and ways to survive a lifetime in the spotlight without being consumed by it…and without alienating people in the process, because a performer needs an audience, and growing up in a circus taught Dick early on that he had to find a way to end these encounters with asshole patrons in a way that kept his head held high but DIDN’T cost the circus - his family - their patronage in the future.

(Another reason I maintain Dick’s oh so infamous temper has been vastly more inflated than fits either canon evidence of it OR his overall characterization…..a man who has been raised from birth in the spotlight and constantly exposed to people who look down on him….like, KNOWS how to control his temper. I’m sorry, he just does, lol. This is basic understanding of human awareness. If your entire life is in one spotlight or another, be it the circus then Wayne Manor and Page Six, as well as being one of the most focused on superheroes in the entire cape community….and you’re somehow overall regarded in all public perceptions as charming….you do NOT have an infamous temper. You just don’t. People love to shove public figures off their pedestals whenever possible….and in both his civilian and superhero personas, Dick Grayson is on very high pedestals. There is no way in hell his general reputation in any of his communities would be anything close to what it is if he actually has as short and nasty of a temper as people love to spin him as having, because of a dozen scenes taken mostly out of context, over the course of 80 years as a high profile character. I’ll stop harping on this one when it stops being the first thing to come to mind when people cite a ‘flaw’ of his.)

Going back to reasons for him to have such a mastery of body language in his own right….Dick was also raised from birth to do his routines as part of a TROUPE, a group of athletes, not just singular by himself. Thus, a TON of what he was raised practicing every day….would have included reading his family’s body language for cues on what to do next. Watching for signs that something might be wrong or off even just by a second and requiring that he adjust his own movements to compensate for that, when they’re all fifty feet in the air and with the crowd cheering so loudly they couldn’t possibly communicate with words….this could literally be a matter of life and death for a troupe of performers whose reputation hinged on them being death-defying in their stunts.

Yes, in most continuities its stressed that his parents didn’t let Dick perform the most dangerous routines with them yet, due to his age…..but that doesn’t mean they weren’t preparing him for them as early as humanly possible, given that its never too early to start working on various skills that are integral to these kinds of things.

And with one of the most fundamental and essential skills needed to be part of a group of performers who excel at dangerous routines being communication, this is all the more reason to think they were probably teaching Dick from a very young age to pick up on body language and watch for even the slightest hints of different indicators of stress, fatigue, anxiety, fear, etc.

Because compensating for something going wrong with a partner’s part of a routine can be essential in matters of teamwork. (Again, just gotta give a shout out to the Flying Graysons here, because its not stated enough that everything Dick knows about being a solo vigilante, he learned from Bruce, but everything he knows about teamwork is either instinctive or built in, OR learned from his parents, part of a team). And most of the time, when we’re talking about shifting position just enough while fifty feet above a crowd in order to make a catch of a partner that launched with not quite enough momentum or is overshooting their mark….compensating or cheating one’s own routine just enough to be there for your partner is the kind of thing that needs to happen in a SPLIT-SECOND…..like, with you making the adjustment the micro-second you realize its necessary….which means you have to be picking up the slightest hint of it the second it shows up in their body language, like a….what’s the word…oh yeah. A pro.

And given that these acrobats were all performers as much as athletes, with it being a given that their performances needed to appear as light and carefree at possible at all times, for the sake of the crowd….they couldn’t afford to give away obvious tells of anxiety, stress or exhaustion, had to keep a performer’s mask of total poise and control at all times throughout their routines….which makes it all the more likely Dick’s own ability to read body language and instinctive or hidden cues is exceptional….as he had to be trained from early on to be able to see behind those masks and read his parents and family for tells even while they were doing their professional best to keep those very tells hidden so that nobody would pick up on them…unless they were a master of reading such things.

So all in all, I believe that among however many languages Dick Grayson was taught from a very early age as part of a globe-trotting circus….one of those was body language itself, even if it was never actually couched in those terms, as though it were an actual language being taught the way it was regarded as such for Cass….as for Dick and his family, it was probably just regarded as tools of the trade, a necessary component of the performer and acrobat toolbox Dick was raised familiarizing himself with from as early as he began walking and talking.

Which brings us back to Cassandra…..as stated, I think Dick is exceptional at reading body language, with as much mastery of that as is possible at peak human potential…..but, that doesn’t make him the equal of Cass, whose own skills in that regard are beyond even that, due to the precise and comic book nature of her own origin. And how her father did something similar but for totally different reasons and no regard whatsoever for Cassandra’s well-being.

So I don’t think there’s any reason that Dick being the next best at reading and reacting to body language takes anything away from Cass being the undisputed master of that, and interpreter of the Batfamily’s hidden emotional cues.

In fact, allowing Dick to be acknowledged as adept at reading body language benefits her character….as she’s so often solely used as the interpreter of the emotionally stunted Batfamily’s attempted repression of their emotional cues. Basically just being treated as a plot device rather than a character in her own right.

As much as I project onto Dick and thus talk about fandom’s neglect of various facets of his character, it can’t be denied that the same is true of Cass….times ten.

Fanfics spend WAY more time using Cass to establish or well, tattle on various Batfamily members’ emotions than they spend on giving Cass emotions of her own in regards to whatever situation is going on in a given scene.

And since Dick is so often used as the family mediator or peacemaker anyway, this doesn’t actually change anything about his own role in things….it merely supplies a concrete reason for why he so often is defaulted into that position, and so good at it, despite his family’s overall emotional constipation. He has to be amazing not just at teamwork, but reading hidden emotions as well, in order to manage his family and their various arguments even just as well as he does already.

(Just a quick clarification…earlier when I noted that Dick’s own insecurities largely stem from the Batfamily and not always knowing or trusting where he stands with them….its not that he has no ability to read them despite their own very well crafted performer masks. Its just that as good as he is, he’s still never going to be as good at this as Cassandra is, and there’s still going to be things he misses, or things he misinterprets. And additionally, the problem remains, that he shouldn’t HAVE to glean any hints of familial love, respect and appreciation from his family’s body language. When he’s constantly relying on subtext and body language to reassure himself that they really do love and appreciate him, its inevitable that sooner or later self-doubts and second guessing are going to start to creep in. So its not that Dick doesn’t ever see these things in his family’s body language. Its that over time, I believe this has progressed to the point where even when he sees these cues, he second guesses himself as to whether he’s actually seeing things that are there, or just seeing what he wants to see. And since none of them are exactly making a point to validate what he sees or thinks he sees with actual validation in indisputable forms, like verbal confirmation of this…eventually, Dick’s own skills reading body language become irrelevant here, since he himself is aware he’s an unreliable narrator when trying to narrate what his family’s body language is saying. He wants it to be saying all the things he uses to assuage whatever hurt he feels for not hearing them tell him these things…thus he’s too aware of his own bias when reading them for cues to actually trust any of the cues he reads, that could otherwise confirm this.)

Anyway. So acknowledging or even emphasizing Dick’s own exceptional abilities with body language would actually be to Cassandra’s benefit, I maintain. Because without expecting anything of Dick that isn’t already expected of him and his role in canon and fandom, it merely provides additional support for the idea he’s good at playing family mediator even with as emotionally repressed most of their family is. Thus freeing up Cass from constantly being looked to as the interpreter for all the things most of their family have trouble saying….and allowing for more focus to be paid to her own emotions. And letting her HAVE them, in the first place.

Because we have to talk about the elephant in the room here: racism in regards to Cass. The quiet, stoic, normally serene and beatific Asian martial arts master is a racist as hell trope, and its one that makes all too frequent an appearance when Cass is used at all in fics. AND canon.

Its not that Cass can’t be all those things at various times. Its that they can’t be ALL that she is. At ALL times. (And that, for the record, she’s not usually ANY of those things in canon that actually tries to develop her rather than use her as a one-note trope in its own right. Cassandra Cain…serene? LOLOL. Please, I don’t know who you’re talking about, but it ain’t the Cass I know and love).

First of all, give her a sense of humor, because she has one, and its amazing. You’ll note I make a point whenever I write her to emphasize her having a kind of dry, sardonic wit that is not at all opposed at being at her siblings’ expense, lol. I mean, its not like that’s the only take possible on her, or even just her sense of humor, I just mean…have one. Humor is one of the most telling representatives of a person’s characterization. By that I mean, a person’s sense of humor is one of the things we most initially associate with them in our mind, and a character having a distinct sense of humor is one of the easiest and best ways to develop them as having their own character voice, something that marks them as distinct in your awareness from other characters. Where if you close your eyes and picture them in a scene, what comes out when they talk, like, to make a joke….isn’t interchangeable with just any other character. It sounds or feels like them, specifically.

And just FYI, you might have an easier time writing Cass making jokes if you allow her to form full sentences. She can speak English, has been written speaking English quite well in the past, and the insistence on broken English when writing her that way in canon is shitty and racist in and of itself anyway, so those particular takes on her don’t need to be respected let alone emulated in fanfiction. Let Cass Speak English In Complete Sentences 2KForever. She’ll still be Cass, I promise you. But the changes made to her brain in canon that allowed her to finally learn spoken languages years after her brain had finished developing, like, that happened early enough after Cass’ debut that there’s really no excuse for writing fic where she’s been part of the family for years and still hasn’t picked up a strong grasp of English.

Y’know how I’m always saying the entire Batfamily are ALL Mary Sues, they are a family of Mary Sues, that is pretty much their high concept as a group, that they’re a composite of the most otherwise competent people in the world and completely emotionally incompetent at the same time? Like, it applies here, because as I also harp on a lot about, I think all of the Batfamily are actual literal geniuses, and I do mean all. Cassandra included. She’s a master of her own many areas of expertise and thus IMO more than capable of picking up languages fairly quickly once the canon barrier to her doing that earlier in life is removed. It just looks and sounds weird and suspect, to insist on writing her as never moving past broken English, IMO.

And also, like, she doesn’t need to ever be as talkative as Steph, nor do I think would it fit her to be written that way either, but there’s a very wide range of options between that and hardly ever talking at all. I do think she defaults to being one of the more quiet ones in a room, as in one of the last to speak….but give her reasons to be that way, instead of just more imitation of our media’s racist insistence on treating Asian characters as the quiet, all-knowing keepers of sage wisdom who only share their truths once you’ve made the trek up to their mountain top.

So again just in terms of my own personal take, I tend to write Cass as being one of the last to speak up when around people she’s not as familiar with, because its her version of keeping her back to the wall of a room so no one can sneak up behind and surprise her. She’s only quiet at first in my stuff because focusing on using conversations to glean as much information as she can about the people in them before jumping in is just like, a form of intel-gathering for her and her past left her with a tendency to be as overly cautious in her own way as the rest of her family, and this is what her way looks like.

(Dick puts on his performer’s mask, Jason blusters and leads with bravado, Damian adopts a position of superiority and will only climb down once you sufficiently peak his interest, Tim recites facts and trivia and likes to bore people he dislikes into submission so you give up and go away, Duke is the family member who really makes friends so easily that any time he makes enemies, his friends have already plotted to destroy you before Duke even gets around to trying to do that himself, Babs has already hacked your bank account and credit rating by the time you open your mouth and thus feels no social anxiety whatsoever as worst comes to worst, she can always just tank your credit score to make herself feel better, and upon meeting you for the first time, Steph either adopts you or punches you in the throat, depending on which way her gut is leaning. As for Bruce, well. He’s terrified of pretty much all social settings, but he’d have to actually admit to that for the first time in recorded human history before anyone could actually cite what ‘his way’ of dealing with social interactions he’s wary of might be. I mean, its basically just ‘Brucie’, but you get what I mean.)

So I mean, its not inherently bad to write Cass as being quieter than the rest of her siblings, and you don’t need her quoting Shakespeare back and forth with Jason in order to prove you’re not writing her speaking broken English. Its just. Do some digging in her head before settling in and writing what you’ve found there. Actually TRY getting in her head in the first place. Spruce it up a bit, redecorate your surroundings, make it feel lived in and homey. Give it CHARACTER. Whenever you write a character choice, in my personal opinion, you should, if asked, be able to back up that character choice by having a reason you feel the character would choose that.

For me, I write Cass being the quietest of her siblings in social settings simply because she’s doing recon first, and of her various skillsets, spoken language is the one she’s mastered most recently and thus she has the least familiarity with….and thus is the last thing she turns to in any given situation, because she’d rather go down the list and run through every other skill she has to see if it could apply here, before resigning herself to having to converse with the person in front of her because she doesn’t think Bruce would accept “I didn’t know how else to change the subject” as a justification for stabbing someone in a non-vital and easily healed location that had the fringe benefit of rapid bloodloss leading to them passing out fairly quickly.

And of course, none of this applies with Batfamily, because she is comfortable with her family for the most part, and thus when I write her being the most quiet in those group scenes, its because she prefers listening their just purely because she finds her siblings’ antics entertaining. And also because I view her as being as batshit competitive as the rest of them, so IMO she’s always plotting the perfect conversational one-hit KO to have at the ready before she wades in. Because in the Batfamily, even ordinary conversations are something you can and should win. Otherwise, what’s even the point? LOL.

Also in terms of my own stuff, I tend to write Cass and Tim as having very similar forms of wit, and my personal take on them is that they both have just slightly different degrees of that same dry, sardonic kind of commentary, as their primary display of humor. This doesn’t necessarily always match their canon characterizations and how they display humor there - but its due to the fact that they’re two of the characters canon most rarely allows to show a sense of humor in recent years, and it tends to be all over the place more often than not. This is a major departure from how they both were portrayed in the 90s, where Tim’s humor was much more consistently in line with what I’m describing…and thus, so was Cassandra’s, when she debuted and developed her own primary characterization.

So basically, I consider Tim to be a major influence on Cass’ humor….or more accurately, in the shape her own sense of humor more commonly takes. Because it was with and around Tim that Cass first started to pick up a lot of social cues and explore her own sense of self for pretty much the first time in her life.

Stephanie’s humor, by contrast is a lot more loud and gregarious and in your face….which when you put the three of them in scene together as a trio, like they once spent a lot of time as, positions her as an extremely different version of the ‘straight man’ to their comedic duo. Because Steph doesn’t need anyone to back up or appreciate her own humor, she’s already landing the punchlines way before anyone else has even had time to think of any, and she doesn’t care what the reception is, the lovable loudmouth goof that she is. Which allows for Cass and Tim to sigh behind her and exchange sidelong glances and kinda….narrate her theatrics in that ‘faces the camera like they’re on The Office’ sort of way, which I mean, I personally find hilarious when they do it, and she’s not remotely bothered by, because like, she’s fucking hilarious and anyone who doesn’t get that is simply wrong and needs to be pitied, if you ask her.

Anyway, that’s just why my own depictions of Cass and Tim share a lot of their humor in common and some of their other characteristics….they’re the ones Cass either consciously or unconsciously picked up from Tim, as he was one of the first people for her to genuinely feel comfortable around and thus someone she trusted to both have knowledge of and mastery over the various social cues she was now finding she needed to learn because of her new environments.

(Of course, this is one of the times where Cass was dead wrong about something, IMO, as she might have overestimated Tim’s mastery of certain specific social cues and her body-language reads have her aware people aren’t responding her own attempts at mimicking them in the way she’s fairly confident they should be, and she’s not sure what she’s doing wrong there. Oh well. She’s still better off than if she’d picked Bruce to emulate there. When she asked him, he’d stiffened and radiated such intense discomfort, even Steph froze in mid-ramble as she sensed it on even the complete opposite side of the Cave.)

ANYWAY. Wrapping up THAT particular tangent and cycling back around to Dick and Cass having skill with reading body language in common….I think this could also be a huge opportunity to write Dick having a dynamic with Cass that’s unique to just the two of them and distinct from the dynamics they have with the rest of their family. Not to give them a super special bond but just because I mean, all the sibling dynamics between the various individual Batkids should ideally have their own flavor, because nobody interacts with two different siblings in the same way. Each sibling is their own unique individual, and thus should have their own unique dynamic when interacting with them.

So I like to headcanon Dick and Cass in private being the family gossips. They love dishing on the rest of the family with just each other….and being the two most skilled at seeing behind their family’s masks (and thus what their family most wants to keep hidden, to varying degrees), they have more dirt on everyone else than most intelligence agencies have on their nations’ enemies. Of course, they’re both staunchly moral, so they would never ever use their powers here for evil, or to hurt or embarrass their family.

They would, however, occasionally indulge in snickers and giggles about it behind closed doors. Look, shut up, they’re BONDING, they have childhood trauma, its fine.

And if Cassandra’s superior skills with body language means she inevitably has more gossip to share with Dick than vice versa, that’s okay, she’s still more than happy to share. He’s the one who introduced her to the joys of gossip, after all, so if anyone’s entitled to it, its him.

I also headcanon that because they’re both the best at reading body language, there are occasions when in group environments or just at the dinner table with the whole family, they both happen to pick up on certain cues or be aware that a sibling is lying through their teeth about something or being full of shit, and then catch each other’s eye and give the faintest of eye rolls or ‘can you believe they’re falling for this.’ Which sometimes other siblings catch, because Cass and Dick have forgotten to be subtle about it. Or did they not forget anything, and are just being trolls and instigating shit for the giggles? Who can say. Probably just them, which they find quite fun.

In fact, its slightly possible that the rest of the family, ever since Cass joined them, have developed a slightly inflated estimation of Dick’s own skills with reading body language, and now credit him with more of a mastery of it than even he actually possesses.

See, I have this one headcanon that every now and then, just to mess with their family, Dick and Cass make a point to hold a silent conversation in front of them. You know that thing people who know each other really well do with just their eyes, like managing to convey certain impressions to each other just by being expressive enough in ways and about things they’re pretty sure the other person will get and be on the same wavelength about?

Yeah, that, but Cass and Dick do it without exaggerated facial expressions. And for like. Ten whole minutes. Meanwhile, Tim’s like: “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’m not buying any of this” and then determinedly ignoring them. Jason’s annoyed because he can’t actually ever seem to ignore them, and then this builds into something like: “You guys better not be talking about me behind my back. Or I mean, right in front of my face. Whatever. And you definitely better not be talking about Tim right in front of his face and not including me!” Steph just keeps continuing on with whatever she’s doing, entirely unbothered, because she knows if they’re actually communicating anything important (or even slightly of interest to her), she’s sure she can get Cass to tell her later. And she’s not wrong, of course. Duke just shakes his head and feels better about being slightly jealous due to how funny it is watching it get under everyone else’s skin, but in the name of not feeling left out, he joins in on shit-talking Dick and Cass in order to have Vengeance. “B, didn’t you ever teach them its rude to exclude people from your conversation? You know, some people would say its never to late to ground your children.”

Damian, by stark contrast to the rest, completely abandons whatever else he’s doing to watch them both as intently as he can for as long as they persist. As he’s probably third in line behind the two of them when it comes to instinctive grasp of body language, due to the whole ‘being raised to read/scan others for as much information as possible just from their movements. Y’know. In case you have to kill them.’ In his case, his full grasp of it was hindered by seemingly being taught to dismiss certain specific emotions as irrelevant or a weakness, and though Dick and the rest of the family have by now done a pretty good job at getting him slowly but surely past all of that, its like retraining himself, trying to consciously now pick up on cues that he spent a decade discarding and moving past the second he saw them.

But he’s determined to become as adept at reading body language now as even Grayson is, at least, even if his implicit acceptness that he’ll never have the same mastery their sister does is fully internalized and something he’ll never admit to, even on pain of death. Both Dick and Cass have at various times offered to help him with it, but he refuses as a point of pride….he wants to do it himself. So every time they have one of these ‘conversations’ in front of the family, he drops everything else he does and scrutinizes them for the whole thing like he’s a codebreaker sure that in time, he’ll crack the code and all its secrets will be revealed. (Mostly, its more like he dreams of the day he’s become good enough at it that he and Dick can hold silent conversations like this and he can rub it in Drake’s face. Hah! It will be glorious, Internal Damian insists).

Even Bruce himself isn’t entirely sure whether or not Dick and Cass are fully communicating the whole time they converse like this, or just faking it for funsies. It frustrates him to no end that he’s yet to figure out a way to just…ask them, without giving away that he doesn’t actually already know the answer, and that’s BUGGING THE CRAP OUT OF HIM, C’MON!!

(Of course, both Dick and Cass have fully picked up on his frustration and thus realized he’s as clueless as the rest of the family, and its this precise thing that they spend most of these ‘conversations’ silently giggling about to each other).

And in terms of fleshing Cass out…..part of what frustrates me so much about the excuse people give for focusing on certain negative fanon takes on Dick, that its done to make him more interesting, because no one’s perfect….

Its never been that this claim, in and of itself, is untrue. The problem I’ve always had with it is they add in ‘flaws’ in the name of making Dick more realistic, while at the same time ignoring plenty of material that’s already present in Dick’s character…but which focusing on, would require people spend more time and insight on him than they want to. Just making Dick angry and ‘remind people he has a temper’ is quick and easy, in comparison.

However, the other part of why this claim bugs me so much is because it IS valid and applies to fanon’s two dimensional takes of two other characters….who are never written with any kind of flaws which is part of why they come across as fairly superficial in a lot of works. And that’s Duke and Cass. When they show up at all, their usage is VERY superficial, and like….I don’t think I’ve ever read something with either of them, where they were written having a conflict with another member of the family, other than just sometimes Cass not liking Jason because of his stance on killing. (And usually this is in Jason-centric fics, so its not really in the name of fleshing out Cass so much as making Jason more misunderstood and Cass the bad guy for not respecting that okay he kills people, but only because he’s very sad, she should be able to see that, ugh have a heart).

So, I also headcanon there is a slightly negative dynamic between Dick and Cass specifically, albeit one Dick himself is not aware of.

(And also complicated by the fact that as much as I gripe about Dick being perceived as having negative dynamics with the rest of his siblings that are all his fault, Cass is the ONE sibling this is ACTUALLY true of, even if it was only really in one story, Redemption Road. I go into that in more depth in another meta, but long story short it was after she was brainwashed by Deathstroke and killed because he made her, and Dick was written as wary and untrusting of her return, not because he didn’t like her - they’d already spent a lot of time in years before this bonding - but rather because he didn’t trust that they could be totally sure the brainwashing was gone yet, and thought Bruce was being too relaxed about that. I maintain this is a callback to his own issues with that time he was brainwashed by Brother Blood and people were a lot less great at understanding in the aftermath that a lot of his choices hadn’t been his to actually make, and that there was bitterness here on his part for Cass getting the understanding and support from Bruce that we never saw Dick get when it was him in a similar position. Kinda a Prodigal Son type vibe. But point being, this was a brief period and it didn’t last, but it is there so there’s interesting potential to have Dick and Cass not DISLIKE each other by any means, but just at times be slightly uncomfortable around each other and trying their best to hide it...from the one other person in the family most capable of/likely to pick up on it).

So what I think it is on Cass’ part, the discomfort/slight ‘not quite sure how I feel about this’ aspect of things.... Like, its just a headcanon, and one where in my head she’s put a lot of effort into making sure he never ever picks up on this particular thing from her. Because she’s not proud of it. At all.

Even if pride is really the problem.

See, I’ve long believed that out of the entire Batclan, Dick is the only person who can ever beat Cass in a fight. Even compared to Bruce.

And to be clear, its not like Dick can always beat Cass. Or even often. At most, its still maybe like, two fights out of ten. And its not deliberate, like something he can do or capitalize on consciously.

But for someone like Cass, who otherwise is pretty much undefeated unless she’s going up against her own mother, Lady Shiva….even two fights out of ten is a lot.

And it bugs her, more than she cares to admit.

Because she is as competitive in her own ways as the rest of her family. She does have her own ego about certain things, like everyone else does. And David Cain, monster that he was, raised her to be the best there is, at one thing and one thing only: fighting. As much as she hates him, as much as she hates her childhood and what was done to her, how much she missed out on and the things she still feels left out for not understanding or grasping the way she thinks she should…..alongside all that has always been at least an awareness that at least there is one thing that came out of it: she is the best. Absent her mother, who one day she will fully and consistently surpass, everyone including Lady Shiva believes…as much as Cass hates her father and everything he did to her and why, she’s still at times taken a certain sort of pride in her skills in fighting. At least in that one slight respect, even if its not something she would have chosen, had she ever been given a choice….at least it had worked, had done what it’d been intended to.

Except for when it comes to Dick. Who will probably always be able to beat her, maybe two times out of ten. No matter how much more she grows in her skills. There’s that one or two times every now and then, where it will always be a toss-up, as likely to go to him as to her.

And its not something that Dick’s even aware of giving him a specific edge when it comes to fighting her, and its not something he could capitalize on even if he were aware of it.

See, as much as fighting is second nature to Cass, as instinctive as breathing…it goes hand in hand with her ability to read body language. That’s her edge, the one variable that no one else can compete with or match her on, the thing that will always put her in a class of her own…..the one result of specific training that was crafted specifically to create this one result.

You can’t separate Cassandra’s fighting prowess from her ability to read body language. They are one and the same, even if she can use the latter for other things too, and even if her fighting prowess isn’t JUST due to her ability to read body language. Which its not, by any means. BUT, regardless, she can’t train herself out of a reliance on body language while fighting….especially not to fight one person in specific, her own brother, and even there pretty much just out of pride.

Because the slight advantage Dick has over everyone else when facing her, is that like her, he’s one of the only fighters out there who was trained from birth to have an almost inhuman mastery of his own body, to be at the peak of human capability in specific regards. Even though his training wasn’t at all in the arena of fighting, at least not before he was taken in by Bruce. For Dick as well as Cass, there are certain things that are so fundamental to him, so ingrained into his movements because they were taught to him at the same time as he was taught to walk, the one being every bit as natural as the other.

And acrobatics was only one of these things. Performing was the other.

Y’see, the one variable Cass can’t totally account for every single time she spars with Dick….is that Dick’s body lies.

Like I said earlier on….its not just reading body language that Dick was likely raised to do, albeit in different, less rigorous ways than Cass. He was also taught from an equally early age how to DISPLAY body language. Or rather, a specific kind of body language.

My headcanon is that because as early as he began learning acrobatics, Dick was taught acrobatics with an eye towards performing, specifically. Since that was what his family did. And the one thing performers like the Flying Graysons always, always have to do…is perform with a smile.

So it was probably drilled into Dick from an early age, even if it wasn’t couched in these terms or even consciously thought of in this specific way…..but while taught the fundamental components of a flip, breaking it down into each individual micro-movement expected of his body in order to achieve the optimal flip for performing in front of a crowd…..one of those micro-movements, for Dick…was a smile.

Its as fundamental to his acrobatics as every other command his conscious AND subconscious mind sends to the various muscle groups he uses in his routines and now in his fighting even. I think its a large part of why quips and banter and grins are so intrinsic to his fighting as well. He doesn’t KNOW how to be anything else. Bruce probably tried to train it out of him before realizing or accepting that focusing on just making Dick not smile while backflipping over an opponent was detrimental, if not merely just unnecessary. Its just second nature to Dick, as much as reading body language is to Cass.

His own training from the time he could walk, put just as much emphasis on ensuring that no matter how he felt during a performance, no matter how exhausted he was or how stressed, whether he was having a bad day or was just cranky or mad at his parents or mad about something someone in the crowd said or just didn’t feel like practicing his routines today….he did it all with a smile, an easy, effortless grin, as though he was lighter than air and nothing he did was taking a toll on his body, it was all equally effortless.

Combine that with the fact that for Dick, because of what his training was FOR….because it was all done in the name of being with his family, being like his family, it was so he could do what nobody else could do, so he could fly….unlike Cass, Dick’s early training instilled in him an intrinsic pairing of movement and joy. To him, movement IS joy. Its essential to his core, to who he is.

Where other people see him throwing in unnecessary flips to his fighting to show off, Dick’s always just grinned and shrugged his shoulders at this, unable to explain what’s not even a matter of conscious thought….to him, saying he added an unnecessary flip is like saying to someone else they took an unnecessary breath. He can understand what they’re saying….just like you can take note of taking an extra breath that you don’t really need…but he can’t link that to the ‘show off’ part of things anymore than you could understand someone accusing you of showing off for taking shorter, quicker breaths than you need to.

Because Dick doesn’t throw in unnecessary acrobatics while fighting because he wants to show off, IMO. Who is he showing off for? The people he’s fighting? Why on earth would they be more impressed by him doing an extra fancy flip than they would just by virtue of knowing his reputation as a fighter and seeing it proven true as he kicked their ass? No, I think he does it because he’s not even thinking about it, and he certainly can’t think of a reason not to. Its just what he does. Flipping out of the way of an incoming punch in such a way as to make that flip as aesthetically appealing as it is functional, is every bit as instinctive to Dick as every other part of the flip.

Because that’s WHY he was trained to do all this. That’s what its for. Not fighting and superheroics. Those are what he adapted it to do. First and foremost, it was done, taught to him, perfected by him…..so he could fly. And show everybody just how much he loved doing that, when you get right down to it. Because he loves being able to do that. For Dick, the heights he can reach are his higher power, and every single movement he makes is like an individual prayer given in thanks of the gift given to him, that enables him to do that in ways nobody else can match.

But in terms of fighting, and in terms of body language that Cass reads on an equally unconscious level….this has the unexpected and accidental side effect where every so often…Dick’s body lies. At least, I imagine that’s how Cass would describe it, if she ever put it into words for someone. Because he links his joy, his happiness and pleasure at being able to do the acrobatics he does with the movements themselves, because its so ingrained in him to do it all with a smile, to sell for the crowd that its all done with the greatest of ease, and because its inevitable that on some basic level, there are some flips or techniques that the mere act of doing brings to mind - even just his subconscious - memories he associates with that movement, that are largely, more often than not, pleasurable memories….Dick’s body language every so often doesn’t quite read the way everyone else’s does. The way Cass expects it to, knows how to interpret.

And this is nothing deliberate on his part. Nothing he could capitalize on, even if Cass did ever tell him what it reads like from her perspective. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t train himself to use this to his advantage in fights against Cass, any more than Bruce for all his mastery of his body, can effectively train himself to not broadcast certain body language tells when sparring with Cass. Because Bruce’s training, as extensive and intense as it was, and as he commits himself to it, still only started later in life. When his movements and how they pair with each other and his emotional states, they were already set in stone. Because those things go deeper than conscious control….even if Bruce made an effort to hide his next punch from Cass, she’d see the indicators of him preparing to deceive and adapt just as instinctively.

But Dick, because his training began as early and was so 24/7 in its own way as Cassandra’s, when they were both just learning their basic fundamentals and their body was building connections between their muscle movements and emotions they felt when using each precise combination of each specific muscles to achieve each specific end result….with Dick, the times his body language misleads Cass is as unconscious as breathing to him, as instinctive as every other of these movements, and the urge to smile while doing it. He’s not aware of doing it, couldn’t consciously command himself to do it more without giving that away in micro-expressions in his face….but its there, nonetheless. Because its not like it was done or trained into him in order to lie to Cass or someone like her….that’s just an unanticipated side-effect. It was done for one reason only: to make even the most rigorous of efforts look as effortless as skipping.

And it being that instinctive is WHY Cass occasionally falls for it, every now and again. Even when she tries to prepare for it sometimes. Because its like a lie spoken in her own first language. Every so often, she misreads how exhausted or worn out he is while in the middle of a spar, because Dick’s body language while flipping around so often reads as easy, light-hearted, happy. None of the things associated with being on the verge of his legs giving out, even if they are. And every now and again, a punch catches her off guard, because its not telegraphed in any of the normal ways, his body language is too focused on what’s coming after the punch, the preparation to make a leap or a vault that its particularly excited for, that always paired with anticipation, from as early as he could attempt it. Every once in awhile she fails to capitalize on a moment of weakness he has or an injury he’s nursing…because she’s missed the signs for it, its so buried deep beneath the performance mask he was trained to wear specifically while continuing through a routine even while feeling an ache or pain in that particular muscle group.

Even if no one else entirely knows why, Dick can beat Cass every once in awhile, even more often than Bruce can. Because the LESS Dick focuses his conscious thoughts, the MORE instinctive he makes his movements, basically when he MOST relies on just muscle memory and lets his body take over on autopilot, trusting it to get him safely through a fight while his conscious mind and troubles might be otherwise distracting him…..that’s when Cass has the hardest time reading him reliably. Because when he gets like that, everything else vanishes. Its like no other emotions exist for him. Even while being otherwise miserable or unhappy or grieving or tired….when he just lets go and trusts his body to do what its been trained to do so often and extensively its just pure instinct at this point….all of her brother’s movements at that point just sing. The brutality of a fight gets lost in the beauty of his acrobatics, even on the very same level and in the very language she most relies on…because they were meant to be ‘spoken’ even that bone-deep, they were meant to look like and indicate pure joy of movement in even the most primal of languages.

On a certain level, Cassandra has always been the least surprised of any of their family, why people like Deathstroke and the Court of Owls and countless other villains have always been so intent, so focused on making Dick specifically turn to their side, become one of them…become a killer. She understands the draw they feel towards him perfectly, probably even better than they do. Because the language these villains speak most naturally is violence. And her eldest brother takes violence and makes it art.

And even villains are drawn to art that speaks to them in a language they can understand.

So, even though she doesn’t want it to, even though it shouldn’t bother her, even though it ultimately doesn’t even matter that much….it bothers Cass, a little bit. That Dick has just enough of an x-factor in sparrings specific to just the two of them, that no matter how much Cass tries to adjust for it, she can still be thrown or fooled as easily as anyone else can fall for a lie spoken in a shared language. Its actually probably for the best that her own unique form of Kryptonite belongs to none other than her very own big brother, protective to a fault. Someone who would never hurt her.

Except…

Even with all that, she can’t help herself. Every once in awhile, she looks at Dick and can’t help but be wary. She doesn’t like having a potential blindspot she knows full well is there and can’t do a damn thing about. She doesn’t like that it bugs her so much either, but it does. She doesn’t like that the fighting and body-language reading that are the end results of her father’s abuse have become in different ways just enough of points of pride that she finds her pride pricked at the reminder she’s still fallible. Still human. Can still be fooled, even if unintentionally, even if not that often.

Because given the price she paid - that she never asked to pay, never was asked if she WANTED to pay it - to be so foolproof, at least where everyone else is concerned, she at least wished the damn training had worked as intended, instead of one specific monkey wrench her father hadn’t accounted for. All because who was prepared for an acrobatic vigilante who’s happy and gleeful on a primal level even when fighting for his life, because his body can’t help but be glad it can fly?

So she fights that feeling down any time it arises, becomes all the more determined for it not to create a wedge between her and the big brother she honestly adores and she knows honestly adores her too.

But sometimes when he smiles at her, Cass hates the way she is. What it makes her. Because all of them by now are used to people like the Court constantly trying to repurpose Dick, turn him against everything he holds dear. And each time everyone else is reminded of that, they turn to cast glances at Cass, without even thinking about it. They’re all just as aware of Dick’s own fighting prowess, after all. And how deadly he could be if he ever put his mind to it and set aside his morality.

She knows full well that if that ever happened, if any villain ever did manage to get their hooks in deep, she’s the one it would ultimately fall to. The Break Glass in Case of Emergency, Plan Z, final failsafe. She was who they would sic on the big brother that’s always drawn the darkness like moths to his flickering flame.

And she alone nurses the knowledge that if it ever came to that….she’s not quite as certain as the rest of their family, that she could infallibly win.

It bothers her more than she can say, more than she will ever dare say….that one of her greatest fears wears her doting eldest brother’s face.

Because if the Court of Owls ever did make a Talon of him for real, there’s no one who could sink a fatal blade past her guard more easily than he. She might never see it coming, too busy looking at him and seeing nothing but poetry instead.

Dick held her once while she came down from a lungful of Fear Toxin. Even as she shook the last of it from her system and looked at him with fresh, clear eyes again, she couldn’t help but flinch. He asked her what she’d seen while under its influence. She didn’t answer, and hated how sad he looked while covering up. No doubt thinking that it was because even now she didn’t trust him, her own family, wouldn’t let herself be completely vulnerable with them.

Still, she’s certain he would have looked far sadder if she’d told him the truth.

So each and every time her big brother’s body tells her a lie, she tells him one right back.

After all, the flip side of being the two best truthseers in the family, is there’s nobody better at being lie-tellers at the same time.

Who else is ever going to know?

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