#i ought to do more with them but i focus so much more heavily on dear arden

[honeymongering]

An updated design of my darling Feardorcha, of whom I have now imposed the title of The Placid Larcenist.

(full drawing under cut for ever so slight nudity)

They are not normally under such a state of undress, but I thought it elegant of them. And revealing of their alternations.

[sleepynoons]

jing yuan x f!reader, nsfw, 18+, not beta read

cw: nudity, suggestive content

notes: pls lmk if i'm missing any tags or warnings. anyway, nothing explicit this time, experimenting more w/ pieces that heavily focus on sexual tension + build-up. anyway x2, not sure how to describe the setting of this piece. still uses some hrs concepts like aeons. jing yuan is rich, the reader is his maid, and both use more formal language. this was a fun exercise!

THERE ARE a lot of rumors surrounding your master. you hear them when you go grocery shopping, visit the tailor, pick up the dry cleaning, drop off lunches at the front desk on days that he’s busy. some of them are about you – who are you? his wife? mistress? there’s no way you’re just a friend, right?

you’re trained to maintain a stoic facade, but inside, you can’t help but be entertained. you are none of those things, and one can only dream of sharing such a bond with him. you’re content with simply being his maid – you mustn’t tread closer.

on a wooden tray, you neatly arrange a cup of chamomile tea, another cup of warm, honeyed milk, and a folded newspaper of today’s news. before you leave the kitchen, though, you make sure to drop a few treats into a feeding bowl and rub at mimi’s stomach, your master’s beloved dog.

“your father needs some time alone,” you say to the animal. seemingly able to understand your words, mimi’s ears droop at a slight angle and she licks at your fingertips, seeking consolation. “he’ll be out soon, i promise.”

you get back up, wash your hands, and pick up the tray, heading over to your master’s bathroom.

from the hallway, you can hear the sound of water splashing and sloshing. if you strain a bit more, you can arguably make out some humming, nonsensical and haphazard in melody. when you reach the door, you hear submerging, and you know you’re right on time.

you knock on the door twice. “master, may i come in?”

you hear a faint noise of affirmation, no doubt muffled by the wall, and carefully enter without spilling the contents of the tray.

you’re greeted with a dazzling smile and glimmering droplets of soap and water slipping down naked skin.

your master greets you, fine smile lines outlining his rosy lips and delicate nose. “how many times have i told you that just my name will suffice?”

“master jing yuan,” you say as you place his drinks and paper on a designated drawer beside the tub, “how many times have i told you that you shouldn’t ask me to join you when you’re in the bathroom?”

“but who else can help me with my unruly mane of silver?” he pouts, tone feigning innocence.

“your hair isn’t unruly.”

“did you not call it that last time?”

you click your tongue. your master chuckles and turns away from you to face the other end of the tub. you grab a stool, hand him his newspaper, and take your place behind him. with a brush in hand, you unravel the red ribbon tying his hair and, with quick, gentle strokes, run the brush through the thick layers. you didn’t mean to call his hair unruly before, but you think there’s quite a bit of truth to it anyway. you also note that his hair has gotten quite long.

“master jing yuan, perhaps it’s time for a trim?” you suggest.

your master hums and leans back so that your hands can reach the crown of his head. “you are right. i shall leave it to you, then?”

shaking your head, you respond, “you really ought to get it done at a professional salon. i can only do so much.”

“you are a woman of many talents. i am sure you will do just fine,” he reassures. you huff in protest.

as your master’s only taking a soak today, you plait his hair into a thick braid before tying it up into a bun. you hand him his cup of tea, which is no longer scalding, and stand up to leave.

“oh!” he suddenly exclaims. “i seem to have forgotten my bathrobe.” he looks up at you expectantly, and you nod in understanding.

“i’ll go grab it. i’ll be right back.” you bow quickly before closing the door behind you on the way out and heading towards the laundry room.

you take your time. really, you needed an excuse to leave the bathroom. you’re glad that your master’s such a big fan of bath bombs, or else you’d see everything… you pat harshly at your warm cheeks to break free from your reverie. don’t tread any closer. you’re behaving like a schoolgirl experiencing her first love, and you can only groan internally at yourself. but you can’t blame yourself either – anyone would fall in love with your master if they know him the way you do. he’s so irresistible, and having been his maid for so long has only enabled you to witness more of his charisma and charm. you sigh, sitting on the floor in front of the dryer as you wait for it to de-wrinkle your master’s robe.

you return ten minutes later, both for your own wellbeing and to also give your master some time to himself.

“master jing yuan, i’m back. may i come in?”

instead of a reply, though, the door cracks open, and your master, wearing nothing but a towel tied loosely around his hips, appears before you. you yelp and rush to cover your eyes. he simply laughs at your antics before grabbing you by the arm and leading you into the bathroom.

“what – what are you –“

“i hurt my arm today, so i will need your help putting my robe on. it is quite heavy, after all.”

you don’t know where to look. you certainly can’t look at the bathroom mirror that covers the top-half of one wall or the marble on the other that shines and reflects so clearly. you opt to close your eyes and hold the robe up by the collar.

“this is hardly appropriate,” you mutter, embarrassment and nervousness coloring your tone. as a result, you try to distract yourself with another subject. “besides, couldn’t you have told me earlier? i would’ve prepared something in advance had i known.”

“i just noticed the bruise as well. seems i was a little careless today.” he then chuckles – at himself or you, you’re not sure.

you remark, “you? careless? that hardly goes together.”

your master lets you know that he’s put on his sleeves, so you step away, eyes still closed. 

immediately, he hums with obvious disapproval. “hm? why are you backing away?”

you sputter, “m-master jing yuan, i should not be here! if you could just – i don’t know – turn around or something, i can –“

“i have turned around.”

you sigh in relief, happy that he’s obedient for once. your master is often relentless in his teasing and tricks, and you’re grateful that he’s granting you mercy in this moment. so you open your eyes, ready to find your way to the door –

your master is standing dangerously close, so that you’re eye-to-eye with him. from this view, you can also see that his chest is barely covered, knot slowly slipping undone.

“master!” you gasp. the proximity, the surprise, the challenging look in his eyes – they’re all driving you mad.

he clears his throat. “jing yuan.”

“master jing yuan.”

“jing yuan.”

“oh, for aeons’ sake, jing yuan! you’re not wearing your robe properly!”

jing yuan gloats. he then says in a low, low whisper, “my hands have cramped up. can you do it for me instead?” he speaks directly into your ears, and you want to scream.

shaking, you stretch out your trembling hands and take the ends of the belt. you can feel jing yuan’s hot breaths fanning your cheek, and you can even smell the faint trace of lavender from the bath bomb. your fingers are too clumsy, though, and you fail multiple times in properly tying the belt. after a few more fruitless attempts, jing yuan reaches down, softly grabbing your hands, and gently guides them.

“and… like this,” he breathes. even when you’ve secured the knot, though, he doesn’t let go.

don’t tread any closer. “j-jing yuan,” you whimper. “please…”

his hands inch up, gliding from your palms to your forearms to your elbows. he does it so slowly, so seductively, so intentionally. he tugs you impossibly a little closer, and now you can feel the heat of his chest through your uniform. then, jing yuan rests his head on your shoulders, and his lips ghost the sensitive skin of your neck, causing you to shiver and shudder at the sensation. the two of you just stand there, him taking deep breaths, you holding yours.

finally, after a few minutes, jing yuan breaks the silence. “i can no longer employ you, my dearest.”

you feel faint. you’re never escaping the gossip now.

[syoddeye]

kinktober - day 09 - anal

nikolai x transmasc!reader | 1.6K words cw: established relationship, anal fingering, rimming, anal (duh) a/n: the words cunt and cock are used to describe genitalia of a transmasc reader’s body. summary: nikolai had a good day. banner by @/cafekitsune | kinktober list

“Nikolai, you’re killing me—“

“Maybe. Dying men tend to squeal.”

You hear the smile in Nikolai’s voice, but you’re too far gone to even roll your eyes. All of your focus is dedicated to remaining still, an impossible task with your boyfriend’s hand on you. His fingers dig into a cheek, holding it open for his viewing. It’s slightly humiliating, not to mention torturous, knowing exactly what his free hand is doing. With your arms crossed and braced beneath you for support, your head hangs, forced to watch him leisurely touch himself. A shudder passes.

“I can’t, I can’t.” 

“Patience. You can.” Nikolai hums from where he’s knelt beside the bed. He kisses a thigh before his other hand joins its twin, tacky with pre-cum. You nearly sob when his tongue drags through your cunt with a broad stroke. He languishes over your weeping hole, offering it consolation, you think, for leaving it empty. His tongue darts in once and lingers, prying a sound from behind your teeth. He presses closer to lave over your cock, swirling around for a brief suck. He pauses to rasp a compliment straight into your core, and then his tongue returns, this time to your rim. You expect it, yet jerk backward with a choked cry, trying to meet his mouth.

Nik pulls away and you barely smother a whine. He brushes a cheek, breathing heavily. “You’re acting so spoiled. Are you in a hurry? Are you going somewhere?”

A few frustrated tears escape, mingling with the sweat on your forearms. “I-I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, be still.”

It takes a moment to settle, but Nikolai shushes you and caresses your sides. After gently patting your flank, he returns to his work, warning you with a squeeze.

You can’t hide a thing from Nikolai, in the bedroom and beyond. The second he walked in the door, he saw through your fidgeting and rushed greetings. He knew you were aching. Maybe once upon a time, you’d act more coy, deny it when asked, but no more. He trained that habit out of you, perhaps too well.

After he had dropped his bag, you panted into his mouth, pinned to the wall with his knee slotted between your legs. You told him you’d prepped yourself as much as you could. Now, his thumb tests and tugs your work, underscoring how little you’d managed on short notice.

> Home in 20. 

>> Did it go good or bad?

> Good.

You clench all over when his thumb slips in and saws slowly, and breathe deep to relax. The first hints of acquiescence, of your muscles giving him room, are rewarded with a rumbling groan. Nikolai plunges his thumb to the webbing. You risk another scolding by slightly canting your hips, seeking friction. He ought to withdraw, admonish you, but you don’t question it when he remains attached by the mouth. Every push of his thumb alongside his tongue elicits a filthy moan, each dirtier than the last, as you think about what’s next. You imagine Nikolai’s cock, swollen and leaking against his thigh, begging for his attention, too. 

By the time Nikolai’s satisfied, you’re a mess. Covered in sweat. The tears streaming down your face join at your chin like a faucet, and your thighs quiver, chilled from the amount of slick coating them. He keeps one hand on you, thumb buried to the hilt, and hooked into your stretched hole. It flutters around the intrusion, voicing your need before it spills out of your mouth.

“Kolya, please. Fuck, I need you inside me.”

He wiggles his thumb. “But I am inside you. Unless you mean my—“

“Cock, please. I need your cock inside me, please.”

“Good boy, asking so prettily.” Nik chuckles. His thumb pulls free with a pop. “Show me.”

You clumsily scramble further up the bed, barely coherent as you present, pressing your tear-soaked cheek to the mattress. You tilt your hips up as high as they’ll go, hands reaching back to part yourself, and swaying as if your man needs enticing.

The bed dips, and your eyes shut in anticipation.

The heat of his body radiates against yours as he shuffles closer, nudging your legs wider with a knee. A hand ghosts up your calf, then trails up and around to splay over your heart. He drapes over you, chest hair tickling your back, and kisses your shoulder. It makes your chest hurt. This big, solid mass of a man, whose name is uttered in equal parts reverence and fear on the block, and he’s yours. He’s your—

“Kolya…”

“I know, I know, hush, darling.” 

He lifts, weight disappearing, and his other hand maneuvers between your bodies. Your breath hitches as the tip of his cock brushes your rim, then exhales in a moan as he guides it slowly around your hole in several agonizing circles. The words please, I can’t anymore get lost in the linen as you bite into a fold in the sheets, but when he starts anew, you whip your head up before you can stop yourself. Indignant, an incoherent complaint on your tongue, but it implodes into a gasp as Nikolai chooses that moment to press in.

“Oh, f-f-fuck!” 

Nikolai’s laugh fizzles into a groan. Even after his mouth and fingers, it’s a tight fit. Liquid heat that streams down your spine, molten like a lahar, heavy enough to push your shoulders and head further into the mattress. Your nails dig into your sensitive skin and fat with a whimper. Spots dance behind your eyelids as the length of him rests, hands smoothing over your hips. After a minute of counting breaths, you let go and bury your hands into the sheets beside your head.

He takes it as his cue to slowly pull out to the tip, then pushes back in a single steady plunge. He fucks you open a little more, then grinds marginally deeper, hissing when you inch backward to chase more.

“Needy,” he sighs. “But if you insist…”

After that, it’s difficult to catch your breath. It doesn’t matter if Nik’s work went good or bad, fucking him always straddles the line between reward and punishment. He builds a pace that lets him bottom out on nearly every thrust, giving you something you’ll feel for the rest of the week. He’s got you moaning and babbling, forced to just take it as he loses himself in it. 

Drool saturates your skin, the snap of his hips rubbing your face in the puddle beneath your mouth. Your cock throbs angrily as he pistons in and out, begging to be touched, but the last time you snuck a hand down, Nik spanked you raw. You’re sorely tempted to try it anyway, fingers loosening their grip on the sheets.

As if he reads your mind, he tuts, voice gravel-thick. “Need something?”

You swallow, tasting salt from tears and sweat. “Need to touch—need to touch my cock.”

There’s a pause as he slows to shallowly rock his hips, his deliberation physical. You bite your lip hard to prevent yourself from barking something foolish and turn your head to peer at him over your shoulder.

“Fine. I suppose you’ve been mostly good. Touch yourself. I want you to make a big fucking mess.” He issues his decree with a loud slap of his thighs against yours, driving a sharp cry from your mouth.

Nikolai wastes no time in returning to his furious rhythm, and neither do you, wrapping your fingers around your cock. It’s soaked and aching, and the first few glides of your fingers make you sob. Between Nikolai jackhammering into your ass and your toying, you hurtle toward the edge in record time. You try to stay there, wanting the sweet torment to last a few seconds longer, but Nik adjusts, one of his hands slips around, and—

You come hard, cunt clenching around two of his fingers, your own curled around your cock, and holding him tight. The world burns away with a white-hot pleasure that reduces you to a lump of raw nerves with vocal cords.

Nik’s orgasm follows, heralded by a litany of curses, and his thrusts devolve into an erratic rutting. The sudden deluge of warmth filling you up reels you back to the present. You hiccup and choke on a sob, wanting to drown in how good you feel. His fingers retract with a lazy stroke around your twitching cock, but the thick of him stays buried as he drops more of his weight on you. He smushes you as gently as he can, sloppily kissing where his mouth can reach on your back.

“You still with me?” He pants against your damp skin, pumping the last of his cum in with a glacial grind.

“Y-Yeah, think so.” You hiss at his withdrawal, then flatten completely when he drops onto the mattress beside you. Your eyes are still stuck shut, exhaustion rolling over like a lead blanket, but the bed shakes with how deeply he exhales. You’re both well on the way to sleep.

“Good.” A hairy arm snakes over your waist. “Give me a moment and I’ll clean you.”

You struggle to push to your knees. “I can do it this time.”

“No, no…Can you even walk?”

“Not as fragile as you think.”

You’re glad his head is turned when you limp-waddle to the bathroom, anyway. Upon your return, you open your mouth to ask him for help changing the sheets—only to find him snoring and sprawled on the bed. Hogging the entire thing, both pillows crushed under an arm, and bare ass pointed to the sky.

Well. At least you’re not the one belly-down in the wet spot for once.

[variousqueerthings]

I'm intrigued...who is Sick Boy?

SICK BOY!!!!

@le-red-queen I'M BEING ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT SICK BOY WHAT A GREAT DAY!!!!!!!!!!

sick boy is a useless silly little criminal baby boy punk who's addicted to heroin

he's one of the ensemble of the movie trainspotting which i would recommend with a whooole bunch of content warnings if you have triggers or squicks

it's an iconic movie based on an iconic book, about a group of scottish addicts who rail at the nature of the world around them and the hypocrisy of 90s capitalism (ohhh sweet summer children), but also double-cross each other, have anger issues, drag each other down, and fuck up their own lives in various ways -- the score is also a work of art!

sick boy's character in this story is someone who pretends to be generally unaffected by the life they're in, obsessed with james bond, and on the whole the somewhat shallow it-girl of the team, if you will, but there are a lot of strong clues in the first film that suggest that he feels far more than he lets on, and he goes through his own personal tragedy in the movie as well

but yeah he's kind of head-empty bimbo too

in the sequel, x amount of years later, the writing decided to focus more on him and his dynamic with the lead character, renton (played by ewan mcgregor), and where their lives have ended up now they're no longer youths who can push away the accountability for their own lives and the world around them. it leans more heavily on them having a lot of homoerotic tension, and having had A Past in which they were best friends and how becoming addicts gradually pulled them from one another, but maybe they'll find their way back again who knows, which is a little different from the first movie in which the outlook is generally quite bleak (they're both quite bleak, but the first one is by far the more tragedy-based narrative)

all grown up sick boy, still a bimbo

the other two leads of this dynamic are begbie and spud, and they do have large parts to play in both of the stories as well. fun links, begbie is played by robert carlyle who's in plunkett & macleane with JLM and he's been very open about playing the former of these roles as a closeted gay man... the latter is my own imagination, but i see you mr robert carlyle (yeah I originally wrote richard idk why either, sorry i did that to u mr carlyle)

but yeah. trainspotting. amazing movie. unfortunately all your brother's edgy friends are into it too, it's kind of one of those "if your boyfriend's favourite films are american psycho, fight club, the matrix, and trainspotting, run" movies, but you know. don't hold that against it 😂

the sequel: a bit self-indulgent, but I'm the person being indulged and it's genuinely fun seeing these actors who've remained close throughout all these years return to some of their career-making roles, and explore a little more of the book lore + look, i read too much into it maybe, but both ewan mcgregor and JLM are recovering alcoholics, and seeing them as middle-aged men playing the parts of recovering addicts, it's... good. i think this movie is good, in a very different way to the first one. renton and sick boy do not make out, but there's a character who says they're definitely in love and ought to fuck, and she's so right for that

in conclusion:

highly recommend it

[gabessquishytum]

Dream is the Omega head of his Mob Family in a world where omegas are soft and willowy and "protected" by their Alpha family members until they are handed over to their Alpha husbands/wives.

Dream doesn't have time to be soft, to be incapacitated by heats - there are forces aligned against his family and he has to keep his younger siblings safe (especially given the state his parents left the family business in). He can't be an /omega/, he /can't/ have an alpha, and he certainly can't get pregnant.

Into this world of can't, comes Hob Gadling, a rough bit of tough alpha, who wants Dream right away. They have (what Dream thinks are) secret nights of passion together, but Dream doesn't allow Hob to /claim/ him, as if he would (as if he /could/). They both catch feelings,,,,,and Dream gets pregnant. The worst of all possible outcomes -- what causes Dream to walk away from Hob, leaving him standing in the rain, is not just Hob's assertion that he and Dream are friends, but that they could be a family -- if Dream would just let them.

While Dream is all emotionally compromised, the Burgess gang is able to strike at the family -- grabbing Dream and injuring his siblings. Dream and his & Hob's baby (a baby Dream not so secretly covets with all his heart) are in so much danger, kidnapped by the Burgess gang. At least he's not totally showing yet, but if he's stuck here much longer, he will be and he can't protect his new family from this cage.

Dream, at this point, doesn't even think anyone is looking for him, it's been months in this hole, and Dream doesn't know what he'll do if he has to give birth surrounded by Burgess goons, intent on taking his (/& Hob's/) child.

The relief he feels when explosions start going off and multiple gun shots can be heard even from his hole, can not be measured; when Hob walks down the stairs -- putting bullets in Dream's horrible guards, Dream is incandescent. He's never been happier to see Hob, even if he has to waddle out of this cage.

God, imagine the emotions that Hob goes through!!! He's full of adrenaline and murderous intent as he rescues his Dream, his omega - even if Dream won't say it or reciprocate, Hob will always think of him as his. He puts holes in the guards with a savage growl, but all of that melts when he finally sees (now heavily and unmistakably pregnant) Dream.

For a second, Hob fears the worst - that Dream has been claimed and forced to bear the child of his captor against his will. But he can see that Dream is very far along. More than 6 months, and he was kidnapped 3 months ago. So the baby must have been there before the kidnapping. But Hob still doesn't jump to the conclusion that it's his. In his heart, he doesn't want to get his hopes up, and he needs to focus on helping Dream.

It's not until Dream is safe in a private hospital room that they get a chance to talk properly. Hob has refused to leave, and Dream practically begged the staff to let the alpha stay. He's been checked over thoroughly and he and the baby will be okay, but he needs to relax and rest. He can only do that if Hob stays and keeps him safe.

Hob holds Dream's hand and continually scents his wrist, gentle and careful. He keeps looking at Dream likes he's going to disappear any minute. Dream is just relieved to feel reasonably safe for the first time in months.

He clears his throat and tries to slip back into his boss persona. "Well, since I am to bear your child, perhaps you should make an honest man of me." He says, primly, while Hob’s jaw drops. "We ought to be married and mated when our child arrives."

"You that's what I want. But what about you? The family? The fact that you don't want people knowing that you're an omega?"

Dream leans up presses his forehead to Hob’s. "Too late for that, I fear." He manages a tiny smile. "And I have learnt. That life is short. And I should take what I want, while I can."

Hob doesn't care that alphas aren't supposed to cry. He showers Dream in loving tears, and the very next morning, Death visits the hospital... and officiates the marriage <3

Dream fully intends to be the king of the city, and his goals haven't changed. But maybe it'll be all the sweeter with Hob and their child by his side.

[abeautifulblog]

UR TRANSLATION IS BAD AND U SHOULD FEEL BAD

A Shout Out To All My Homies

[a rant I wrote in grad school, reposting to tumblr so I can link it to people]

So for my thesis I've spent a lot of time wading around in the original text of these 1600-1850 stories, but premodern Japanese isn't exactly my native language, I read slow, so I also leaned pretty heavily on extant English translations to help me find the places I ought to focus my attention on.

They're kind of terrible sometimes.

I'm reluctant to call anybody out by name, because I know how much work goes into translation. It's not a lucrative field, the people who translated these books did it for love not money and I'm greatly beholden to them for it -- their translations made my research possible. Not to mention how much easier it is to nitpick a few points than it is to translate a dozen, or a hundred, or a thousand pages of neo-classical Japanese. And I also know that if I do wind up going into academia, it's not going to endear me to potential future colleagues to be on record shredding their shit.

...But on the other hand, you're accountable for what you publish, and some of these errors are pretty egregious.

**

Point the First: Grammar is fucking important

Okay, so Japanese is a null-subject language, which means that if the grammatical subject is clear from context, you can omit it. Basically, wherever we'd use a pronoun in English (because you know who's being referred to), they just drop it altogether.

English speakers see this and lose their shit. Particularly in translation, because when you have a null-subject sentence without a clearly-defined actor, as a translator it goes against everything in your soul to just make one up. Translators are understandably wary of inserting anything into the translation that wasn't in the original, something that they couldn't necessarily justify if challenged on it, and so the two strategies tend to be:

(1) Make it really vague. "Someone once wrote..." "They say that..."

(2) Make it passive. "It is said that..."

I object to both pretty strenuously. Preparing to address that in my paper, I wrote:

In the face of a context-less null subject, often the English-speaking translator's impulse is to render the verb as a passive (ie, “It is not known”)

I got the draft back from Professor Lady (who is a native Japanese speaker) with the comment "That is not a correct translation."

DON'T TELL ME, TELL THEM.

My hand to god, this is not just me being pedantic, not when the null-subject is "I" and some sloppy translator has just erased the first-person narrator that any native speaker would identify as such.

Or if you want something more meaningful, Jay Rubin points to the inscription on the atomic bomb memorial at Hiroshima:

安らかに眠ってください。過ちは繰り返しませぬから。

And its passivized English translation, "Rest in peace, for this mistake will not be repeated." When it actually reads "because [SOMEONE] will not repeat the mistake," which throws you face-to-face with the question of WHOSE fault it was, in a way that a passive sentence lets you sidestep. There's a reason politicians use passive sentences when they need to apologize for something.

Let's just say that MISTAKES WERE MADE in these translations, a lot.

**

"Mmm, yes, this is definitely a third-person narrative," Professor Dude 1 murmured, looking very professorial as he peered at Ueda Akinari's "Shiramine" over the rims of his glasses. "You can tell by the use of mi-mahoshi and the quotative particle. A first-person narrative would have used mitakute or something along those lines."

"Mmmm," I said.

"You disagree?"

"No. It's just that Zolbrod translated it as first-person."

Professor Dude 1 scowled. "...Zolbrod couldn't translate his way out of a paper bag."

**

Point the Second: Honorifics are fucking important.

I'm not just saying that because honorifics are what I wrote my thesis on, I wrote my thesis on them because they're fucking important.

In fact, they're often the vile enablers that make null-subjects possible.

Take the verb "say," for example -- default is iu. Honorific forms are notamau and ōsu. Humilific form is mōsu. All four of them mean "say," and the distinction gets entirely flattened in translation into English.

And because they don't need to be translated differently, a lot of second-language learners of Japanese just map them all to the same mental space. So then when they're reading Japanese and come across any of the four, they automatically think say, without registering which it was.

But it matters because sometimes it's your only clue as to who the fuck is talking. Prime example occurs in the Richardson translation of the Asai Ryoi story "Flying Kato," in which Kato, a sneak thief, is having a conversation with Uesugi Kenshin. (Yes, that Uesugi Kenshin.)

It's a conversation. Dialogue is set off by alternating inquit tags to iu (plain) and to notamau (honorific). Plain form "said”s are for Kato's lines, because he's a lowly thief; honorific "said”s are for Kenshin's lines, because he's a big famous warlord.

Richardson translated the whole damn thing as a monologue from Kato.

(Richardson... manages to mistranslate honorifics almost every time they appear. >_>)

"How did he mess this up??" I demanded, appalled. "He is better at Japanese than me. He translated the entirety of Otogi-boko, which I could not have done. He understands so many things that I don't. How could he have missed something so simple?"

"Well," Professor Dude 1 said, unruffled. "Richardson did learn Japanese from the CIA."

**

"I was talking with Royall Tyler once," remarked Professor Dude 2, meditatively. (Royall Tyler being the latest person to tackle translating the gargantuan Tale of Genji.) "He said it wasn't until the 'Wakana' chapter that he felt he'd finally grasped Murasaki Shikibu's use of honorifics."

I snorted.

The professor continued, "I asked if he'd, ah, gone back and fixed the earlier chapters, then...? He said no."

**

With a pencil, I strike through a line of the Richardson translation and write in the margin: "This is a causative, not an honorific."

Halfway down the page, I strike through another line and write: "This is an honorific, not a causative."

**

Point the Third: Werds are pretty important too

Perhaps it's not quite so damning a sin as outright mistranslation, but gawd, how some people have a tin fucking ear for language.

No sooner did he open the door of the sleeping chamber, than a demon thrust its head out at the priest. The projecting extremity was so huge that it filled the doorway, gleaming even whiter than newly fallen snow, with eyes like mirrors and horns like the bare boughs of a tree.

"Projecting extremity"? Really, Zolbrod? Really?

Or like this line from the cinematic opening of Kyokutei Bakin's Hakkenden, as the main character is fleeing a doomed battle and turns back, Orpheus-like, just in time to see his father die:

馬の足掻をとどめつつ、見かえる方は鬨の声、矢叫びの声かしましく、はや落城とおぼしくて、猛火の光天を焦がせば

He stopped his pacing horse and, when he turned to look back, he heard the noise of war and the sound of arrows. Knowing the castle was about to fall, he saw the light of a fierce fire burning the sky. (trans. Ellen Widmer)

"Sound" of arrows. Yes, I suppose screaming (sakebi) is a sound, one that is a hair more evocative. "Toki no koe" is not "noise of war," it is specifically the thing you holler as you run into battle -- the voice you give at the appropriate time, as it were. Not to mention the really terrible ordering of the whole sequence, and the bizarrely juxtaposed participle. I submit for your consideration:

He reined in his horse and looked back, toward the battle cries and the screams of arrows. He could see the castle about to fall, the light from its roaring flames setting the sky itself ablaze.

This is also the translation that gave us "They were defeated refugees with nothing left. Master and servant alike were extremely hungry and tired."

I think the words you're looking for are exhausted and starving.

Hungry, you say? Were they hara ga hetta? Onaka ga suita? A bit PEKO PEKO, perhaps?

Or were they -- as it says in the damned Japanese -- ueru, aka, literally starving.

This is like "sound of arrows" versus "screams of arrows" thing again -- why on earth would you pick the phrase that is both further from the original and fucking weaksauce? It's the worst of both worlds.

One more from this translation, because I can't-- I just can't:

"He ceremonially picked up the piece of dirt three times and inserted it into his breast pocket."

Inserted it

into his breast pocket.

I can't decide which is worse -- the weirdly clinical "inserted" instead of something like "tucked" or even "put," or how that makes it sound like the guy is wearing a sports jacket instead of a kimono.

(Then again, an anachronistic translation kind of suits the spirit of Bakin, who has his 15th-century Japanese dudes shooting each other with guns. 🤣)

**

Oh damn, I thought, comparing the Japanese text of Hakkenden chapter 25 to Donald Keene's translation of it, He didn't do the whole chapter, he just selected a part from the middle.

It's okay though! Because I remember seeing someone else's version of the same chapter in a different anthology. Yup, there it is, "Shino and Hamaji," translated by Chris Drake.

...which, curiously enough, begins at the same point as the Keene translation.

...and also ends at the same point.

You even read, bro?

**

Not everyone is terrible. Paul Gordon Schalow is very good at spotting the subjectivity cues of a first-person narrator even in the absence of first-person pronouns. (Although he does make null subjects overly vague sometimes.) Barry Jackman eschews false passives with the fervor of a convert. Anthony Chambers can make Ueda Akinari's creepy-cool ghost stories reach across the centuries to raise the hair on your arms.

THE END

(And I didn't wind up going into academia or translation, but I still have opinions about these things. 🤣)

[ask-andrew-montrose]

Mr. Montrose, good evening.

I have not had the chance or reason to introduce myself to you before tonight: my name is Elland de Strontium, perhaps William has mentioned my name before, he is a dear friend. This brings me to the point of this letter.

I have heard from multiple of my friends that you have been rather mean to some of the people in the castle, for no apparent reason. Your actions and tongue tend to take you places people don't want you wanderi—

*There is a huge line of smudged ink where the next letter should have been, and the following line is written in very neat and calligraphic handwriting. There is a pretty swirl at the beginning of the letter "M".*

Monty, hi~ Saw you by the lake today reading a novel! Did not want to interrupt then but do let me know what books you like to read, maybe I'll share some of my favourites with you, too~ Happy hunting! Your ginger prey ♡

*The writing returns to its original form, much simpler but clearly written by a steady hand.*

Please, excuse Will, he keeps hijacking my letters. The last time it happened with Garreth the poor guy assumed Will had a crush on him.

My point is. I do not want to have any arguments with you but if it does come to you being rude to my friends again, I will not hesitate to have a conversation with you. I am aware of your attempts to apologize but the girls are right, you ought to try harder. As for Will... If I ever see him crying — I will find you, and having a conversation would be the least of your worries.

Do not take it as a threat: be mindful of your own actions and words.

Sincerely hope you heard me out, Elland de Strontium 🌙

Good Evening Elland,

What a pleasure that the first time we are speaking, it is with an adorable scolding as if I am a first year. It seems I shall have to be on my best behavior now that the big dogs have been set out on me. And to avoid the possibility of further duress - I assure you the above is sarcasm.

I would like to amend your statement to say that rather than 'being mean' I was simply being myself, admittedly my personality is slightly rough around the edges at first. An unfortunate by product of being raised in a rather competitive household, I'm afraid.

It is possible that while I focus on the competition, I lose sight of my manners. For that, I do not disagree with you...it is a ghastly shortcoming I can and do work to rectify. Not so much in response to your scolding, mind you, but more so in respect to those I have offended. It just takes me some time to warm up at first....but I would never genuinely want to hurt anyone. The line between banter and offense is one I toe far too closely, and I am aware of that. And I suppose I could use less middle fingers.

Although my words can be sharp, I will try to watch the focus of their blows. I may have had to use them as weapons for far too long that It has become too second nature.

It is true...I may not be the best at communicating my admiration for others at first. This does not mean that I don't consider them in a high regard.

More like a shot of whiskey, than everyone's cup of tea I suppose.

Regardless, you shouldn't need to worry about an additional conversation unless it's one on more jovial grounds which I look forward to having with you. I promise....I can be jovial when the mood strikes.

In the meantime, take my ......*COUGHS, CHOKES, ROLLS AROUND ON THE GROUND* apologies to the girls. And then I will apologize myself.

I also do not mind your hijacker's note. *Andrew smirks to himself at the words, clearly Will hadn't told Elland about every conversation they had* And he did? A crush? Hm. I wonder how that happened...

Please tell William I'd never mind his interruptions and have attached a copy of the reading I had with me earlier today if he's interested.

Until the next scolding,

Andrew

[Attached is a copy of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, quite worn and heavily annotated.]

[blueboyluca]

(Just found your blog, you have some great posts about everything dog, definitely going through stuff!) I'm in a similar boat with a Third Dog potential, and needing neighbour approval, do you have any tips on making a lil proposal document? Did taking cookies help? I don't really know my neighbours, so I want to make the best impression possible >v< Thanks so much <3

Hello! Just noting that I don't have third dog yet, which means I don't have 100% approval yet as the dog needs to actually be here for that, but I don't expect anything to go awry now.

This got long, sorry. But hopefully it's helpful as it outlines everything I did.

To start with, I am friendly with my neighbours. When I first moved in I introduced myself to 6 of the other units as they were home at the time. Since then, I am cordial and wave when we pass by, and sometimes I chat to three of them if we are outside at the same time. The others keep to themselves, which is fine with me. Other relevant information is that I've never had any complaints about my current dogs and five other units have or have had dogs or cats (never more than two).

For my proposal letter, I kind of treated it like a job proposal and a cover letter. I put my personal details at the top. I titled it "Proposal for third dog at Unit X" and I added the date. I broke the document into sections with headings – Background, Council approval, Appropriate care, Impact and Conclusion.

In Background I talked about my history at the property, information about my current dogs and information about the proposed dog. I purposely downplayed some of the details, e.g. highlighted the dog would be under 10kg fully grown, called it a "papillon mix" instead of a "border collie mix" and focused heavily on the sporting dog angle. I also talked about my dog credentials, leaning on my current role as president of a dog club. If you don't have something like that to mention, I'd just focus on your commitment to training, accomplishments of your current dogs and a clear and concise explanation of why you want to add another dog, focusing on the positives and absolutely not adding anything that could be taken poorly.

In my area you need to register dogs to legally be allowed to keep them and a third dog requires a special registration. In Council approval, I briefly talked about how I would seek some kind of pre-approval registration and I also got to mention that I personally made five animal education videos for the council (I'm a professional video editor). For someone who doesn't conveniently have that on their resume, I would just talk briefly about the process you intend to undertake if registration or similar is required in your area.

In Appropriate care, I talked about how I'm a responsible dog owner, i.e. my dogs are registered, microchipped and up to date on vaccinations. I pointed out how often my neighbours ought to see me exercising my dogs, how I attend a dog club, that I utilise local parks (as my yard is small) and maintain an exercise schedule. I also have the benefit of a partner that stays home during the day. Basically this section is just to talk about how I'm good at owning dogs.

For Impact, I stated that I didn't think a third dog would make a major impact on the property due to the aforementioned appropriate care, and that my workplace is dog friendly and my yard is secure. This is where you could say something similar about what you intend to do to limit the impact on neighbours.

The Conclusion was just basically me reiterating that I'm a great dog owner, saying thanks for considering this, and please contact me if you wish to discuss further.

Then I printed out copies and put them in envelopes and bought a couple bags of cookies which I divided up into little party bags. Then I worked up my courage and knocked on their doors to chat. I started by apologising for interrupting, then briefly explained the situation (I want a third dog, this is why), gave them the letter (explaining it had more detail), handed over the cookies and thanked them for listening. My goal was to kind of get it all out before they could really say anything and then leave. This generally worked as most of them just took the letter and the cookies and said thanks. A couple of them said right away they didn't mind at all. One expressed doubts about barking. I asked if he had issues with my current dogs and he said no, so I just thanked him for his time and left it there.

A couple days later I went back to find out what they had decided (the ones who hadn't already told me) and they were all yes votes. I didn't approach one of the units because they're renting and I was socially exhausted by then and was happy with the majority I had.

I hope this helps! It can be really intimidating to do social things like talking to people about something you really want, but I like to rip the bandaid off and I wanted to know if it was going to happen or not so I just forced myself to do it and then it was over and now I get what I want!

[freeuselandonorris]

7, 14, 26, 64 for the fic writer asks 😘

7. How do you choose which POV to write from?

sometimes it just comes to me naturally, like i just have an idea for a fic and the idea is already from a certain perspective? but occasionally it’s a bit trickier and sometimes i will actually start writing from one POV and then end up rewriting it a couple of hundred words in (i did this with just found me a brand new box of matches after realising it felt more natural to write it from lando POV).

sometimes if i can’t decide the POV, it’s helpful for me to think about what i am trying to achieve in terms of character study, and whether i want that to be an exterior or interior experience. so for instance, i wrote all the blood runs hot before it’s cold from christian’s POV because i wanted to explore christian’s delulu personality (which required interiority (loool this autocorrected as inferiority)) and the way toto’s actions don’t always match his words (which can be done from an exterior perspective).

14. how do you write emotional scenes? Do you ever feel what the characters feel? Do you draw from personal experiences?

i definitely do feel what the characters feel! i get character bleed quite easily when i’m writing and can knock myself into an awful mood because i’ve been writing a difficult scene.

i think a lot about emotional scenes and often rewrite them a lot to better fit the characters. i consider how i feel this person would react in real life based on available evidence (heavily caveated that obviously this is all made up and i have no real clue!) so for instance i write toto as tending towards anger and emotional rigidity, oscar towards rationalising and compartmentalising, mitch as sensitive but fairly even-keeled, and lando and jev much more emotionally honest but prone to volatility.

i draw from personal experience a fair bit. not really for the actual situations or relationship issues, but certainly i’ve referred back to events in my own life for establishing an emotional tone (and also for a lot of the sex stuff lmao).

26. Which of your fics would you call your wildest ride?

ooh i dunno! i don’t really think many of my fics are a wild ride plot-wise — they tend to either be largely plotless unhinged porn, or fairly gentle slowburn friends to lovers stuff. i would say maybe born and raised for the job, or all the blood runs hot before it’s cold? definitely something featuring toto anyway lmao.

i think born and raised for the job is probably the wildest in terms of the kink content and particularly the psychological underpinnings of it (shades of daddy kink with all that implies given that it’s from mick schumacher’s POV) even though plot-wise it is…sparse.

64. Something you love to see in smut.

GROSSNESS. especially in kinky fic but generally in smut. now, part of this is because i have a pretty heavy kink for body fluids and wet&messy stuff irl. but part of it is because sex IS messy and gross, and so are bodies. sanitised depictions of sex, whether that’s in mainstream media (films, TV, whatever) or in fic, can have their place i guess — like, it’s fantasy and it’s nice to just imagine sex where everything is in soft focus and everyone has simultaneous orgasms sometimes, i get it! — but unless it’s done well, it just turns me off. i’m also not sure it does anything good for the mindset of younger people reading it who might not have much experience of “real life” sex (it certainly fucked me up for a good while and idk if that’s a conversation we ought to have more often in fandom and fic circles, speaking as, god help me, probably a fandom elder at this point), but that’s a whole other conversation.

ANYWAY, to get back to the point, i like smut that is filthy and messy and fumbling, sweaty and uncomfortable and sometimes it takes forever to come and sometimes you get a cramp and and it doesn’t matter! that’s what makes it hot! my landoscar fic playboy in the grotto is my favourite example of that: weird badly negotiated weird piss kink that takes place in a bathtub, covered in various bodily fluids, and nobody is quite sure why it’s hot but it IS.

thank youuuu 😘

get to know your fic writer!

[calumthetraveler]

So, as someone who writes habitual longfics as a matter of course, somehow... (I cite my doorstopper crossover works Stargate Alternia, and Mobile Suit Gundam: Curses and Witches, all parts of which can be found on AO3 under my handle "Calum Traveler") On the 'find a plot that interests you,' it helps to think of things overall in acts, or seasons, and have a general overall idea for that act/season. If you have a major plot beat for each arc/act/season that you want to build towards, think of all the little plot beats that are needed to build up to it, and give them the room to breathe. If you're writing a long fic, there's no time limit holding you to 'everything must be accomplished in such and such amount of chapters.'

Vague Spoilers for those fics beneath the Read More Cut below.

For an example in Stargate Alternia, I had the idea to explode a planet in a then uncertain someone's face in the finale of Act 5 Act 2, so I set up a lot of the pieces to allow that well in advance. For Example: Evacuating the planet in question and the reasons for that evacuation became its own entire little arc of its own that spanned multiple episodes across a season. And I had it set up and ready to go well ready in advance for the moment things finally explode, and in the process of knocking that out early, I was able to then focus on other plot elements and build up to their relevance properly. The trick really comes into play in figuring out what pieces you need to flawlessly pull off your major plot twists later, and how to make them seem like you aren't just pulling a power-up out of thin air. Foreshadowing is your friend, but the key is to not *overplay* the foreshadowing. When I feel like I've stumbled in managing this, it's due to changing my plots around spur of the moment, or that I've not planned well *enough* in advance of what I want/need.

It's tempting to blame myself for that, but I remind myself that I write for fun, and part of the fun is making sure that I can figure out where things went wrong so I can do it better next time. In retrospect I'd say Curses and Witches is a rewrite of Stargate Alternia, which itself could be considered a rewrite of Digimon XWAU02. At least, in terms of the same general 'throw things at the wall and see what sticks' method refining my writing process. Plot wise they're all very different, except on a surface level of themes. All three end up being takes on Parallel Worlds, Time Travel, Godhood and Deity Ascensions; giant robots of some kind feature heavily. Each features a bloated cast list of characters that requires careful juggling to manage right... and I HAVE failed at that across these stories. There are some characters that I wanted to write for that have just fallen by the wayside over the course of each story. My advice there is to try to keep your cast list focused down. XWAU02 had a massive cast list by nature of being a Digimon Xros Wars fanfic. Stargate Alternia also had a massive cast list by nature of being a Stargate and Homestuck crossover, but it was an expansion of the work I'd done in XWAU02. I tried to see how large I could make my cast and if I could manage it. In response, Curses and Witches was originally meant to just be G-Witch/The Owl House as the main focus, and the cast was meant to be narrowed down in scope by comparison. Of course, once Bionicle entered the mix, the cast bloat happened, and some characters whom I'd planned on focusing on just... failed to manifest. I'm still writing Curses and Witches, to be fair, so I can't say whether I've managed to pull myself out of that spiral yet. Can I manage to regain the narrative focus on these characters who ought to have proper focus on them still? Dunno. Guess we'll see.

As for The Writing Itself...

My method for writing is very much a 'write until a chapter feels done' but also 'sometimes a little scene can just exist on its own.' Think of them like deleted scenes, except they're still canon. I can't stress enough how many 'little scene' Intermission chapters I wrote for Stargate Alternia that existed in between larger chapters ended up doing wonders for the pacing of the larger chapters, as instead of having to force a scene into a larger narrative that didn't quite *fit* those scenes. I think exponentially speaking, a *lot* of tiny little scenes ended up being written while I was working on the larger chapters, and those helped me start to build up a buffer. Buffers are your friends, but so too are the side plot narratives that don't necessarily *fit* in the main plot. To use my recent work Curses and Witches, The main bulk of the story that I intended to write is *part 5 of 6* of the series collection. What else exists before it?

Two 'prologue' fics- one a single chapter standalone adaptation of Witch From Mercury's "Prologue" episode, and one 15 chapter fic adapting Bionicle's Legends of Metru Nui and Web of Shadows movies by crashing them into eachother- and two sidestory fics, "Amnesiac Heart"- which is is nothing *but* these little tiny side-bits put together in a collection of chapters- and "Leaving the Cradles"- which, you guessed it, is a single chapter fic that jumps between a bunch of different tiny snipit bits that form the core backstory of multiple characters, used for world building purposes before I got into the main fic itself. What comes after? A side story backstory used for more worldbuilding of background mechanics, "Of Silver Pools and Ghostly Things," which due to various reasons, I declined to include in the main thrust of the story as it didn't add *a lot* to that narrative's already packed and crowded pacing. The little intermission scenes let me focus on characters or tiny bits of plot that just might not get room to breathe in the main narrative. By letting them exist as their own things, they can be there, and add to the overall supporting structure of the story, without needing to be properly woven into a complicated episode structure.

All those little scenes you want to write out with character interactions? If you feel the inspiration for them, Write them. Write them and let them play out.

Do you have any advice and how to write a long fic?

I'll encourage long fic writers to add on in the notes, but as someone who tends to prefer short and medium-length fic, I'll tell you how I go about it.

Get a premise that you just absolutely love. You're going to be writing this thing for months, if not longer, so you want it to be something you're willing to spend a lot of time thinking about.

Embrace subplots. You'll have your main plotline that you want to see through from beginning to end, but you can also weave in some subplots here or there. The way I do this so that I don't get lost down a rabbit hole is that I always make sure that every chapter has at least 1 thing that moves the main plot forward and then if I want to spend 1-2K with some side characters doing something fun I can do that as well. Subplots can extend for the length of the full narrative, but they can also just last a chapter or three. If you're used to writing short fic, these might give you that familiar feeling of "completion"

A chapter is only as long as it needs to be. Don't get hung up on having a consistent chapter length. Don't get hung up on hitting some arbitrary number every time. Instead, figure out what the next part of your story needs to include and write however many words it takes to get that chunk across. Varying your chapter lengths is a normal thing to do and not something to stress about.

The next thing that I find important personally may or may not be relevant to you, but I find that I can't plot anything in much detail. If I get too into the nitty gritty with my plotting, it just feels like I've already written it. I need to keep it at the level of "And then A and B meet C and hijinks ensue." I can figure out the particular hijinks later. It's the characters meeting up that's the next important thing for me to figure out. Getting too far ahead of myself is a death knell for me in writing long fics, but there are other writers who swear by it. Test out different ways of approaching it and see what works for you.

As someone who tends to write more briefly, another feature that's common to longer fics is more extensive descriptions. People spend time painting visual pictures of the setting or the characters or the actions that are happening. Write the more bare-bones style that focuses more on dialogue (if you're like me) and then go back and read through what you've just written and see if there are opportunities to add in more detail. This can lead to some really interesting characterization choices and also help you out with worldbuilding.

When it comes to worldbuilding, you don't have to get it all on the page. You just need to share what's relevant for the reader in that moment and what is useful to lay out now so that it's already there in a future chapter. You can have an encyclopedic knowledge of how your world works in your head, but it's not actually necessary. No one is going to be quizzing you later - and if they do, you can always figure it out at that point.

Most important for me when I'm trying to get myself to the end of a longer fic, have a friend or a group of friends who are also into what you're writing - or at least willing to hear you get excited about it. Being able to get excited about your work is so important. It's like a bottle of water being handed to you on mile 10 of a marathon.

[porphyriosao3]

#29 Costumes/Cosplay

Bilbo cursed as he struggled into (yet another) layer of fabric.  How in the Green Lady's eternal patience the dwarves could wear all this...!  His feet felt completely trapped in the socks he was wearing, as he was told they were supposed to go on before the breeches - for this style of breeches.  Despite a few - ahem - adventures in unwrapping Thorin, the various layers were still a source of both confusion and annoyance to a hobbit born in the Shire.  A Shire, he would remind everyone volubly in his mind, where the inhabitants did not go around resembling ambulatory hillocks of cloth and metal, thank you ever so very much.  A thin set of cloth underleggings went on, then a heavier set of leather breeches.  And now the belt.  By the time he finished, he felt as though he were carrying Hamfast Gamgee on his back and he could scarcely move for the weight of the leather and metal overlayer.  Mother of Sorrows, my head must look tiny in all this, he thought in despair, peering around for a looking glass.  No, he realized grimly, I look more like a faunt playing dress-up in my father's clothes.  It may be a costume ball, but... well, I shall just look ridiculous, then.  It should at least amuse Thorin, and the rest of them can go hang.  Mouth a grim line, he went to the door and opened it.

And froze.

Standing in the hallway was a very unexpected sight indeed.  Apparently he was not the only one to have the idea.  Thorin was standing almost at the door, mouth lax and eyes staring, but Bilbo only had eyes for what his betrothed was wearing.  A laced white shirt was quite delectably tight over shoulders no hobbit since Bandobras the Bullroarer could claim, with a waistcoat of Durin blue that made him look quite... quite... Suddenly Bilbo felt a bit faint.  As if that weren't enough, the short pants revealed calves that made Bilbo feel quite, quite warm.  Yes.  Definitely too warm in the hallway.  Perhaps the forges...?  Slippers decorated to look like hobbit feet covered the king's bare feet, but that was only to be expected; dwarf feet were so absurdly delicate and fragile, Bilbo wasn't sure that he could focus at all if Thorin wandered about with them exposed.

"You look..." Thorin mumbled, looking lost.  Do I look ridiculous? Bilbo worried.  Of course I do.  "Amazing."  I know I will be... be... what?

"I feel ridiculous," Bilbo stammered, eyeing those calves - those calves! - again.  "You, on the other hand, look... like you ought to be on the banquet table."  The dwarf stepped forward so quickly he almost stumbled, seizing Bilbo's hand and pressing his lips to it.  This was considered quite racy in Erebor, in a 'public place' (as if they weren't in the middle of a heavily guarded royal quarter a mosquito couldn't fly into!).  Even so, it spoke volumes to a Bilbo who finally had learned how to notice such things.

"If you say things like that, my heart, we might not make it to the ball," Thorin murmured.  Bilbo glanced down and now he really did feel faint.  Thorin's erection was plainly visible.  It was obvious he very much liked the sight of Bilbo in dwarven apparel - that much was indisputable.

"Damn," Bilbo whispered, tugging at Thorin's hand.  "You would choose to say things like that - and look like that - when I was wearing more fabric than all of Hobbiton at Yule,"  the hobbit said softly.  "But come in the room with me, will you?  I find I need some help adjusting my garments."  The door closed behind the two.  The rest of the Company would have to excuse them if they were a few minutes late.

[noobsomeexagerjunk]

"MAKE THE SERVER BETTER. This is what I need to do."

An Analysis on Ranboo's Philosophy and Vision for the Dream SMP

One of the most consistent traits about Ranboo is his inconsistency, especially in his beliefs and choices, all influenced within the moment.

Now I was thinking back to when Ranboo had that explicit desire for a "happy family" when it became clear to us that he and Dream seem to share similar goals and desires for the server. It's been a few months since that stream, and Ranboo's gone through some changes as a character. Through experimentation, he relearns and rediscovers himself, most of it away from us particles. He now has the experience to choose people more discriminatingly, having a gauge on who still believes and/or benefits from his optimism and those who don't.

With a better grasp on his more persuasive and ambitious self, as well as a slightly stronger spine, I am going to attempt to make sense of what Ranboo's opinions most likely must be by now, having been in the server for half a year now.

1. "You have to think for yourself sometimes."

(from Ranboo’s first conversation with Slimecicle, 06/18/2021)

So you know how Ranboo is an anarchist, or at least identifies as such, at least within the context of the Anarchist Syndicate, right?

One of the most significant things we must pay attention to is Ranboo's anarchist tendencies. Based on his general experiences but particularly his conversation with Slime and his initiation to the Syndicate, Ranboo cares heavily about personal autonomy and the right to self-expression and self-preservation. His aversion to factional sides was initially derived from the existing factions he was exposed to being unfair and demanding of its members, as reflected in his experiences in New L'Manburg.

It's upon further inspection that these sympathies constitute his concerns over People. It's why he fights for and sides with People in general, as a concept and principle.

2. "Why can’t I have friends on opposite sides?!"

(from Ranboo’s Pre-Doomsday speech after the Community House confrontation, 01/05/2021)

Something Ranboo also believes in is the idea that everyone is valuable and capable of many things unique to themselves. Therefore, he recognizes and gives (as much as he could muster) care to Peoples' needs, concerns, and beliefs, most especially when he is demanded of it by whoever asks of him. He values loyalty toward friendships and relationships in their base form, as opposed to causes. (Especially relationships made from and because of causes.)

Another reason why Ranboo despises factional sides, especially the ones he was a part of, is that these sides' own beliefs and principles believe themselves to be above the other and vice versa. Ranboo's ability to recognize two (if not more) sides of an argument leads him to value both sides to such an extent that he believes one is not above the other. To him, People—individuals with inherent value and free will—are more than the causes—whose necessity changes over time and can only be a solution to specific, changing problems—they believe in.

3. "When the leader gets corrupted, then...we'll see what happens."

(from Ranboo's monologue after speaking with Ghostbur on the topic of killing Dream, 03/15/2021)

Something of particular fascination is Ranboo's dislike for leaders as a concept, a belief shared only by Technoblade and the rest of the Anarchist Syndicate. For them, and Ranboo, leaders are at the end of the day People. They are infallible and capable of making wrong choices. The very concept of a leader, too, suggests superiority in the ability and the dependence on only the causes of that leader, chosen or not. To them, no one should be above or below anybody. A leader creates that distinction.

An ideal SMP for Ranboo is one without leaders, where one's choices and manner of living, as dictated by their beliefs, is not above one or the other. In comparison, many characters who have expressed their visions of an ideal Dream SMP all have a leader in them!

We have Dream, who wants a server that fits his specific vision and needs and desires, a server that serves him, with his and only his vision of an ideal SMP—one where he has total control over all of the server. A less extreme version of this is held by the de-facto head of the neutral Badlands, BadBoyHalo.

Characters like Quackity, Schlatt, and Jack Manifold all believe in the concept of adherence and obedience to order and law as means to get something done. It also makes sense why these three also have a history of being quite literally Presidents of countries, whether corrupt like Manburg, discarded like Manifoldland, or ambitious like Las Nevadas.

There are also other leaders like Wilbur, Eret, and Tubbo, who have a partiality to order and leadership. The difference with them is that they believe in relative leeway in priority towards the ruled-over people. They believe in an SMP wherein a leader and their people share a mutual obligation towards each other's benefit and progress. Whether a cause that can help should be involved may be of consideration too, because as far as I know, these three mastered each of the 3 facets of the Greek art of persuasion:

Wilbur, in particular, is a heavy advocator of the use of cause in leadership, hence his use of speech to give rise to emotions, aka pathos.

Tubbo leans towards common sense and reason, having a tendency to use logos.

Eret is partial to a more general sense of righteousness, therefore basing many of his actions on the character of the people around him and having a strong focus on their and their subjects' own ethos.

4. "Who am I?" "I am somebody who stops conflict."

(from page 12 of Ranboo's current memory book)

Despite these differing ideas on what is good for the SMP, the one thing everyone has in common is that they all want a server where peace, to their standard and contentment, is achieved.

For Ranboo, this means no Conflict.

Bear in mind that he admits in his pre-Doomsday speech that Conflict can never be truly eradicated, acknowledging that personal conflicts between individual persons are still bound to happen.

Though, as stated in his various monologues in regards to killing Dream (particularly when he was grieving Tommy and after talking with Ghostbur) the Conflict he desires to get rid of is the big, overarching kind.

These are Conflicts that disrupt the happiness of, if not all, significant numbers of People. Conflicts that perpetuate a cycle of unnecessary violence, conflicts that escalate from the pettiest of disputes, conflicts rooted in a refusal of a person/faction/cause to simply coexist with everyone else.

This is Ranboo's major goal in reference to the whole of the server. This is a major motivation for all of his decisions and actions too.

5. “It should be all of us working together.”

(from page 14 of Ranboo’s first memory book)

When Ranboo explicitly repeated wanting "one big happy family," words that came out of Dream's own mouth, he's describing his vision of an ideal Dream SMP. It can be argued that he and Dream have the same goals, right?

Well, obviously, not quite.

Dream and Ranboo have very different visions for the server, the common thing being their determination to get everyone to cooperate with their vision no matter what. We see the vague and ominous actions of Ranboo while Enderwalking, how much bolder and aggressive he can get. He's seemingly more dedicated to this goal that way.

Based on the previous points, Ranboo's vision of a better Dream SMP is one where everyone exists as they are, freely and without division, where no one is above or below the other, and that they can put their dedications to causes aside for care and love for each other. People regardless of skill or situation just living together peacefully! where the Conflict is not big enough to harm but big enough to constitute what it means to be alive! No one's telling the other how to live because they understand and respect each other's choices and differences!

With how he approaches the fulfillment of this ideal, I dare say he does indeed fight for something, and it's the cause of all causes.

But what about those other people who aren't so compromising? Well, I wager those are the people Ranboo ought to snap against. Ranboo's ideal SMP is rooted in coexistence, therefore it demands compromise and tolerance. Funny just how many people on the server fight for causes that refuse to give that.

Ranboo definitely knows he can't achieve the server he wants alone, and knowing everyone else, he knows getting everyone to get along will be much harder in execution.

[robininthelabyrinth]

The Nie brothers time travel but something goes wrong and they end up in each other bodies. So now they have to defeat WRH, find a way to curb JGY worst tendencies, and hide (and undo) the switch before any cultivator decides they are possesed by evil spirits

“I can’t do this,” Nie Huaisang announced heavily. “I can’t. Nope. Cannot. No way.”

“You apparently found a way to time travel into the past,” his brother pointed out. He was taking this entire thing very calmly – or, rather, like he’d heard a really great joke. It wasn’t that Nie Huaisang had forgotten that his brother had a sense of humor hidden under the rage, especially in the earlier years before Jin Guangyao got at him, but he may have downplayed his memories of how annoying it was to be the target of it. “Your abilities are clearly well beyond what you’ve been leading me to believe.”

“I’m sneaky,” Nie Huaisang explained. “I can scheme and plot and play politics, sometimes, if I have to. But I cannot be a general!”

I cannot be you, he meant. He might currently be inhabiting his long-dead brother’s body – an unfortunate side effect of messing up the time travel array, he suspected, but then again experimental things were often imperfect – while his brother’s spirit had been cast out into his own former self, but he wasn’t his brother.

He could never be.

(But Nie Mingjue was alive, alive and well with bright eyes and that stupid smirk that didn’t fit right on Nie Huaisang’s smaller face except in the ways it sort of did, and that was all Nie Huaisang had ever wanted in his life, other than Jin Guangyao to pay in blood and shame for depriving him of it.)

“Why not?” his brother asked. He leaned back and stretched lazily. Nie Mingjue never did a lazy thing in his whole life, so it was deliberate. He was enjoying this. “We have a battle strategy, already decided; most of the rest of it is on-the-ground tactics, which can be done just as well from behind the lines as at the front of them. There’s a reason that no one ever settled on the best place for a war-leader to be – it comes down to temperament.”

Nie Huaisang threw his hands into the air. “I know that! I was sect leader for nearly two decades, da-ge; I assure you, I’ve heard all the sect’s philosophical musings by now. But I don’t have your temperament – there’s no way someone won’t figure out what’s happened, that we’ve switched, and that’ll be a disaster.”

“Two decades,” Nie Mingjue said thoughtfully, focusing on the entirely wrong part of the conversation.

“A decade and a half to avenge your untimely murder,” that got a flinch out of his brother and his focus back, just as Nie Huaisang had wanted, “and another five to find a way to come back and avert it entirely.”

Nie Huaisang had always been resourceful. Resourceful, and ruthless – sometimes to a degree that scared even him.

When he was younger, it was okay. After all, the only thing he used it for was sneaking treats and spoiling himself, and it didn’t really matter if he was ruthless about stuff like that. And then his brother died – was murdered – and suddenly he knew what it was like to be his brother: a young man suddenly shoved into the role of sect leader, and having to balance everything he now had to be against the overwhelming blistering hatred he bore for and the crippling weight of the vengeance he had sworn against a man who had taken away someone he loved forever for something as pointless and ephemeral as political advantage.

(He had to take a deep breath at the mere thought of it, the family rage spiking under his skin. It was a bit of a surprise, actually, to find that his brother didn’t have more of it - he’d always assumed that his rage was lesser, weaker, the way his golden core was, but no. It turned out their rage was just the same.)

“So what you’re saying,” his brother said, and he was smirking again, oh no, “is that you’re focused, efficient, and unyielding in pursuit of your goals, given the right motivation. That sounds like general material to me.”

“Not if the goal is to make sure no one knows what’s happened,” Nie Huaisang hissed. Had own face always looked so incredibly punchable? “Da-ge, it doesn’t matter what type of general I might be. What matters is that it’s not the same type of general you are – you’re always at the front line, leading the charge. I can’t do that.”

“Sure you can,” his brother said. “By the time you’re in the middle of a charge, you’re not really thinking tactics anymore. It’s all just fighting, and I know you know all the moves, no matter how much you bitch and moan about having to practice them.”

Nie Huaisang glared, crossing his arms over his chest – his brother’s arms, his brother’s chest, and this was still just too weird. He hadn’t even had time to properly weep and cry and hug his brother the way he’d expected to in the event the time travel array worked; they’d had to jump straight into explanations and strategizing because there was a pretty big battle happening in less than twenty-four hours and they needed to fix this first.

His brother rolled his eyes at him, and for the first time Nie Huaisang realized that his brother was going to have no problem at all pretending to be him – the acting problem here went only one way. “Just let Baxia handle the aggression part, okay? The rest is muscle memory, and I, at least, have done enough to build that in.”

“Letting the saber spirit in like that is dangerous, da-ge,” Nie Huaisang reminded him, eyes narrowed. His brother was also assuming that Baxia would agree to be wielded by anyone other than her beloved master, which was a stretch – she barely even agreed to be sharpened by someone else, resisting violently whenever someone tried. 

Jin Guangyao had died still bearing the scars from his attempt. 

“Well, apparently I get murdered before it becomes an issue, so why worry?” his brother cackled, and Nie Huaisang glared harder. It had no impact whatsoever: Nie Mingjue stood up and stretched again. “You know what, Huaisang, if you’re feeling the need to sit around and pity yourself, you’ve got at least a few incense sticks’ worth of time to do it in before actually doing something becomes necessary – I, on the other hand, am going to do something productive with my time.”

“Like what?”

His brother grinned at him with teeth. “Saber training. And there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

Nie Huaisang picked up a teacup and hurtled it at his beloved big brother’s head. Naturally, Nie Mingjue dodged, effortlessly, and left laughing.

“At least pretend like you’re going to behave!” Nie Huaisang bellowed after him, but his brother just waved at him, and – ugh. This was vengeance for a lifetime of laziness, wasn’t it? Coming to bite him in the ass.

After a few minutes, Nie Huaisang picked up another teacup – they always had dozens of them in the Nie sect, cheaply made in bulk and specifically designed to shatter easily because of the family tendency to throw stuff around and not calm down until something was broken, and better a cheap teacup than an expensive door or table, better something designed not to hurt anyone who happened to get in the way or didn’t know how to duck faster enough – and threw it against the door again.

It shattered beautifully. NIe Huaisang had only rarely been able to get it to do that, and never so effortlessly – the advantage of his brother’s strength.

Strength, and height. Nie Huaisang was tall now.

Okay, self-pity could wait until later. Nie Huaisang was going to go patrol the camp for a little bit and enjoy looking down at all the people.

It was going to be great.

It was, too. Even talking with people wasn’t as difficult as he thought it was going to be. Perhaps he shouldn’t be so surprised at that; he had been sect leader for years, so he was accustomed to answering questions and making on-the-fly rearrangements and responding to things with leading questions that made the other person come up with the solution on their own, not to mention saying encouraging things that made people feel better about things. 

He’d had to do a lot of that, being the Head-shaker, and even more afterwards, when he’d shed his disguise like a cicada shedding its skin.

It was easier now than it had ever been before, of course. The Nie sect was still strong, under his brother’s leadership; his disciples didn’t have that discouraged look lurking in the back of their eyes, the shame of being led by the disgraceful Head-shaker. It was easy to brighten someone’s day with a nod in their direction, disciples blooming like roses at the sight of their stern sect leader looking approving, and the questions he received were far more intellectually stimulating than the usual – less about making sure he knew what he was supposed to do and more actual puzzles, things that had really tripped people up.

Nie Huaisang tried at first to keep his answers short, tried to pretend to be more stoic and stand-offish the way the famous Chifeng-zun ought to be, except when he did everyone just smiled at him the way they always had when he’d been the Head-shaker – a little indulgent, a little pitying, a little “well he’s trying his best” – and after a while Nie Huaisang started remembering things he’d long ago forgotten.

Things like how his brother was actually kind of a mess sometimes, emotionally speaking – he was the sort of person who got weepy over dramatic literature – and how he’d never quite gotten the hang of people, how he valued his friends like gold and held grudges way too long and promoted people just because they seemed decent; how he sometimes spent his entire money pouch and more on buying Nie Huaisang stupid trinkets because it seemed to make him happy, even borrowing money from their escort, which would always be doubled over laughing at how their fearsome sect leader couldn’t bring himself to say no.

Like how Nie Huaisang’s sect was his family, aunts and uncles and brothers and sisters, whether born in or adopted or just part of the sect. The good type of family – not always the closest, not always your friends, not always even people you really liked, but still all predisposed to take your side in a fight if it came down to it.

These were the people who supported him and stood behind him – even when he was the Head-shaker.

He’d almost forgotten.

And so, despite himself, Nie Huaisang softened a bit. He stopped trying to respond to everything with a grunt or a huff, started asking about people’s families, making suggestions, telling them they’d done a good job.

“Glad you’re out of your mood,” Nie Yongbiao, who’d been quietly trailing him, finally commented, and Nie Huaisang blinked owlishly at him. “What kicked it off this time? You usually only get that closed-mouth after having to host guests.”

And that was true, wasn’t it? It had been such a long time, and after so much trauma, that Nie Huaisang had forgotten how his brother used to shut down whenever there was a discussion conference or an important meeting – how it took him longer and longer to get better on the other side as the qi deviation drew nearer, his meridians filling with Jin Guangyao’s spiritual poison. By the end, he had barely ever been open and free, barely seemed to remember how to drop his guard and relax, to act like a regular person with a sense of humor again, be the person Nie Huaisang knew his brother to be. 

But that was then, and this was now - war had been good for Nie Mingjue, in a strange way. Here in the camps there was a lessened expectation of etiquette, a great appreciation of strength, and his brother was more free to be himself, straightforward and blunt as the off side of a saber.

(Nie Mingjue had tried so hard to be a good brother to Jin Guangyao, Nie Huaisang abruptly remembered, but he’d shut down after every visit, worse than ever before. His heart had known the truth, even if he had allowed himself to be convinced by Lan Xichen and Nie Huaisang to keep giving Jin Guangyao second chance after second chance. He should never have listened to them.)

“Argument with Huaisang,” he said, a safe answer, and Nie Yongbiao nodded wisely.

“Can you say what it was about?” he asked, rather unexpectedly – Nie Yongbiao wasn’t exactly talkative, and no one ever pried about their family affairs. Catching Nie Huaisang’s surprised look, he shrugged. “He’s obviously very upset.”

“He is?”

“He’s at the training field,” Nie Yongbiao stressed, and Nie Huaisang had to choke down a hysterical laugh. Of course Nie Yongbiao would think that something must have gone horribly wrong to get “Nie Huaisang” to go willingly to train.

Nor was Nie Yongbiao the only one, for that matter: when Nie Huaisang arrived at the training field they’d set up in the middle of the camp, he saw an entire crowd of Nie sect disciples milling around at the edge of the field, bearing a suspicious resemblance to a flock of over-anxious quail.

He reached up to his face, pretending to want to pinch the bridge of his nose but actually to smother a smile, and luckily he had regained control of his features by the time he reached the edge of the small sea of disciples because they immediately all turned to him with relieved expressions, their cries of “Sect Leader! Sect Leader!” ringing in his ears like the coos of his pet birds.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, and immediately received the full story: Nie Huaisang had come to the field looking upset – one person insisted there had been tears in his eyes – and had set himself up against a practice dummy, and he hadn’t stopped whacking at it ever since.

Clearly, the world was ending.

“We had an argument earlier,” Nie Huaisang admitted, and managed, barely, not to laugh at how they all looked at him with disapproving eyes. “I’ll talk with him.”

Approving nods all around, although they didn’t disperse.

“Sect Leader,” one of the older generation said, very hesitantly. “If it’s about – the clan matter – if there’s anything we can do to help –”

Nie Huaisang shook his head, feeling touched. When it really had been him, his brother had kept the specifics of it secret – the tombs, the inevitability, the deterioration he was so avidly trying to put off – until it was too late, and he’d had to learn about it the hard way; it was nice, though, that they apparently all worried so much on his behalf about it.

“Thank you,” he said, and meant it. “But it’s a different issue.”

Namely, the issue was that the person doing the training wasn’t Nie Huaisang at all, he thought, but when the crowd finally started breaking apart, people going back to their assigned tasks, and he finally managed to make his way to where his brother was, he was surprised to see that his brother really did appear to be upset.

He wasn’t practicing any of his normal training routines, but rather wielding Aituan in the same way a novice woodcutter would wield an axe: repetitive strikes, made wildly and with too much strength, as if hitting the practice dummy was the only thing that could vent his feelings.

“Uh, ‘Huaisang’?” Nie Huaisang asked, worrying his lip as he came closer. “Are you –”

His brother dropped Aituan to the ground – which, hey! Watch it, that was his saber! – and turned, and Nie Huaisang had only a moment to see his glassy eyes before his brother threw himself forward, wrapping his arms around him and holding him tight.

Nie Huaisang automatically responded, wrapping his arms back around and holding Nie Mingjue close – it was nice, he thought, to finally have the reach he’d always felt he should have, big and tall and enveloping in its warm the way his brother had been for him.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, his voice low enough not to carry. “Did something happen…?”

“No,” Nie Mingjue said, but his lips were pressed together to keep them from trembling. Nie Huaisang’s body had always been free with his emotions, much to his annoyance; he’d learned to cultivate it into a disguise, but he hadn’t really liked it. Tears had never been a relief for him the way they’d been for his brother. “No, it’s nothing.”

“It’s obviously not nothing,” Nie Huaisang said firmly, and carted him off back to his tent. Being as worried as he was, he did his best not to be too smug about finally being the one who was strong enough to pick his brother up, rather than the other way around – not that he needed to, what with his brother following docilely along with him – but there was, perhaps, a little bit of smugness. “Okay, we’re back, silencing talismans are back up because we apparently have the nosiest disciples. Tell me what’s wrong.”

“It’s nothing, really…”

“Da-ge.”

“I left you alone,” his brother blurted out, looking up at him with tear-filled eyes. “For twenty years. Whatever I did, however I got murdered – some moment of carelessness – it doesn’t matter. I failed you.”

Oh, no. No, no, no– 

“No,” he said out loud. “No, da-ge, you were tricked – it wasn’t – it wasn’t your fault.”

“I always said I would hold up the sky for you,” Nie Mingjue said bitterly. “And instead I left you with the same inheritance that I received. I never wanted that for you, Huaisang. Never.”

“Da-ge,” Nie Huaisang said helplessly. “Da-ge, you don’t understand. You were trying. You wanted – you were doing everything you could. It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t fail me. I was the one who failed you. I’ve always failed you –”

“Never!”

“I’m lazy, I’m selfish, I’m good-for-nothing, a head-shaker –”

“So what?” his brother said, glaring up at him. His eyes were red, but with tears, not qi deviation. “Even if it’s true, which it isn’t, because no head-shaker could have avenged me, could have found a way to come back, could have become the Nie sect leader and kept it for two decades, even if it’s true – so what? As long as you’re safe, I don’t care. As long as you have a way to defend yourself, and you so obviously must have, then nothing else matters. Nothing has ever mattered but your happiness.”

“And yours,” Nie Huaisang shot back. “You have the right to a life too, da-ge! You – you should have had my support. You should have been able to share your burdens, I should have helped you instead of anchored you down –”

“Huaisang –”

Nie Huaisang pulled him in tight again. “It’ll be different, this time,” he promised, his voice rough. “I’m older than you ever go the chance to be, da-ge. This time, I can help you with the things you’re not good at – I can do the politics, the people. We can bear the weight of the sect together.”

He felt a whisper in the back of his mind that was strange and yet familiar, approving. Baxia, he realized. Baxia, approving of him; Baxia, who would let him wield her,   and he sensed her confidence that no one would get past her iron guard, together protecting his brother in both body and soul.

“All right,” his brother said. “Together. You and me – and the others.”

“Others?”

“After so many years, you must know who’s trustworthy,” Nie Mingjue pointed out. Already back to being practical, even if he was wiping his eyes. “If we tell those people, they can help us keep up the impression that I’m you and you’re me for as long as we need it.”

Nie Huaisang was nodding along, because that made sense, only then his brother said the last part and it was like a sunrise had opened up in his head, the way terrible and wonderful ideas always did.

“Da-ge,” he said, tasting the words in his mouth. “Da-ge, how do you like my body?”

His brother blinked up at him. “It’s fine, I guess? You’re actually in pretty decent shape, better than I thought, and your cultivation is – well, you could do a bit more with that, honestly, but it’s not uncomfortable or anything. Why?”

Nie Huaisang smiled. He’d always been remarkably resistant to their family’s cultivation curse, and not only, as he’d pretended to Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji all those years ago, because he didn’t practice - it was his temper, or lack thereof, that softened the saber spirit’s effects on him. 

Even if his body’s cultivation increased, he was far enough behind the curve, with his mediocre talent, that it would take decades for him to reach the level that it would be dangerous to him, while his brother’s prodigious talent, coupled with his inheritance of the family temper, made him even more likely to succumb – it was that prediction which had worried him so much that he had sought out treatment even before it had become a serious problem, the same worries that had driven him into Jin Guangyao’s trap.

What do you think? he asked the brand-new whisper in his mind. Aituan would probably bitch and moan about having to actually do things, but he’d secretly enjoy getting a bit more evil-killing in; the question was Baxia. What would she think?

A purr of agreement.

“I was just thinking,” Nie Huaisang said. “Chronologically speaking, I’m older than you are. I ran the sect for years – it might be hard to let go of that habit. How about we just…stay as we are, for now?”

Nie Mingjue frowned. “Baxia –”

“I’ll use her in public, and Aituan in private,” Nie Huaisang interrupted. He’d known that would be his brother’s first concern. “And you’ll do the opposite. And when we’re settled enough, we’ll come up with some excuse to switch.”

His brother hesitated. “But…you don’t like doing things. Responsibility. That sort of thing.”

“I got over it,” Nie Huaisang assured him. “Trust me, I have a whole system – I’ll implement it once the Sunshot Campaign is done; you’ll be amazed at how much easier it makes things, and then all the things that are left over are the stuff I actually enjoy. And this way, you could…I…”

He swallowed, and put his hands on his brother’s shoulders. He didn’t want to manipulate his brother into something like this – he didn’t want to manipulate his brother at all. His brother deserved the truth and honesty he had always freely given the world, and so Nie Huaisang could only offer up the unvarnished truth.

“I want to do this for you, da-ge,” he said. “I want you to have the life you should have had. I want you to have hobbies again, to make friends, real friends that will put you first. I want you to have fun with them without thinking of how people might think about it…please, da-ge. I came back here to keep you alive, but I want more than that. I want to see you live.”

“Okay,” his brother said, and he was choking back tears again. “We’ll – we’ll discuss it later, but I’ll think about it. Okay.”

“Good,” Nie Huaisang said. “Now catch me up on the tactics we’re planning on using in tomorrow’s battle, and I’ll let you know everything I know about what happens in the future…oh, and one more thing.”

“Oh?”

Nie Huaisang’s hand dropped to the table, parallel to Baxia; he could hear her purr in his mind whistling like the rumble of thunder. He smiled.

“Can you tell me where Meng Yao is?”

[zombieheroine]

Domestic Enemy

Pairing: MegOp Rating: G Word count: 2486

MegOP week prompt: Domestic * Optimus came to slowly. He had a vague recollection that he had been hit by something heavy, and as he regained consciousness he realized he was lying under some support beams in a half collapsed hallway. Little by little, it came back to him. A battle in a nebula, an old Cybertronian outpost in an asteroid field. Energon storages and a race for them against the Decepticons, who had the disadvantage of not having and up-to-date map but the advantage of natural scouts and experienced miners.

Structures built inside asteroids, metal merged into rock, and a network of bridges and flight paths between asteroids. Megatron. Optimus blinked and stared up to the half-collapsed ceiling. He wasn’t sure which one of them had made the mistake, but they had focused on each other and engaged in their own private battle so deeply they had gotten separated from the others. It had been Megatron’s fusion cannon that had brought the eons old tunnel down on them, but privately Optimus cursed his own foolishness just as much. It seemed that no matter how many times he repeated to himself that he shouldn’t lose focus in combat and be lured to Megatron alone, it still happened again and again. It had happened again, and now he was stuck alone in an ancient tunnel, laying over some rusted railway tracks that had once been used to transport minerals from the asteroid mines, and so far removed from his troops that he couldn’t even hear them anymore. But mulling over his past mistakes never helped, especially not when he had more pressing matters in the present. Optimus regarded the position he was in. There were some rocks on him and around him, but mostly he was pressed down by a large support beam that had been half torn, half melted off the ceiling. He cycled air through his vents for a few moments before wrestling his arms underneath the beam, then decisively pressed it up and off his chassis. It took him a serious, concentrated effort, but eventually the metal groaned and gave way, bending off his chassis, and letting him out of the trap. But as he rolled away, Optimus realized he was far from freedom. The tunnel around him was still unstable and he was technically buried in there, but getting to move was a good first step. Very carefully he pushed his way past piles of rocks and tried his best not to make his situation worse, and so he crawled through the tunnel towards the way he had been going for. The Autobots had had a few old maps about the mining colony, so Optimus knew the tunnel would eventually lead into a larger hall where freshly mined energon would be loaded for transport, but just knowing where he was going didn’t solve all of his problems. Megatron was still somewhere close by. There was a possibility that he could have died when the tunnel collapsed, but Optimus knew he wasn’t that lucky. After what felt like eternity crawling under rocks and boulders and dust filling his vents, Optimus finally made it into a room. It was a mid-sized loading station, the tracks ending at stoppers and large loading patches. There wasn’t that much in the room otherwise, simply loading stations, repair stations and a small break area, and – “Well look who made it after all,” Megatron grunted with a roll of his optics. “I expected nothing less of my luck.” For a moment Optimus was ready to fight, but Megatron didn’t seem to want to. He was seated against the wall at the break area, and just like Optimus covered in dust and dents, but also clutching his arm to his side. He didn’t seem too interested in continuing their rumble, so Optimus didn’t fire up his blasters, simply pulled himself back up to his pedes. “I could say the same to you,” he said, puffing air through his vents in an attempt to clear them. It felt like there was a persistent layer caked on the metal, and it didn’t come loose no matter how he puffed. He didn’t try too hard. It was dangerous to show any weakness in front of Megatron, even though right now he didn’t want to fight. It might change if he re-evaluated the situation and decided for example to use Optimus’ compromised cooling system against him. Optimus stayed well away from Megatron, sticking to the other side of the room. He took a look around in the room, searching for a way out while subtly using his comm system to call out to his troops. “Go ahead and call your pitiful little followers,” Megatron called from his spot. “No reason to be shy about it. I already called mine.” “I’m not shy,” Optimus scoffed, but he let his arm hang more freely by his side as he

clicked the cover plate over the comm system shut as if he had never tried to hide it in the first place. “Sure,” Megaton replied with a roll of his optics. “Whatever you say.” “What happened to you anyway?” Optimus demanded while measuring the Decepticon leader with his optics. With all his heavy armour and weaponry he was now sitting down on the floor, a position Optimus wasn’t sure he had ever seen him before, covered in a heavy layer of dust and dirt and splattered energon, his arm limp in his lap. Megatron’s expression didn’t even twitch when he replied through his sharp dentae: “Nothing. I’m fine.” His spinal strut was straight where he sat as he was there out of pure will of his own. To Optimus’ curious gaze he looked like a miner fresh out of a disastrous accident, and he wondered if this was more like Megatron’s original form he had only ever talked about and never shown. “No, you’re not. I can see that you’re hurt. Do you need help?” Optimus insisted, his gaze focused on the way Megatron’s powerful arm hung limp in his hold, the blaster cannon dark, and dust and dirt caked on it in dark clumps that must have been due to spilled energon. “No. Mind your own business!” Megatron snarled with bared dentae, but clutched his arms tighter, the limp movement highlighting how it couldn’t move on its own. The image of a wounded miner crouched on a floor made Optimus feel a pang of guilt over his previous failure over reforming Cybertron, partially in ways Megatron had held him up to, but the snarl and the personal wound from stellar cycles ago kept his mind cleared and irritation as the most seminal emotion he felt. “You started it!” he snapped back, perhaps giving away more personal investment that was proper for them, and Megatron responded with a disgruntled frown. “Don’t nag me,” he said in a put-upon huff once again rolling his helm like it was all a big, unimportant bother to him. “I am not nagging!” Optimus snapped, more slighted than he ought to be and more out of control than he usually allowed himself to come across. A moment of silence followed with Megatron seated where he was, gaze focused well past Optimus, and Optimus defiantly refusing any care or worry for his enemy, yet venting heavily and leaned forward in focused concern. It took a moment for Optimus to gather himself. He was a Prime now, there was no individual and no personal agenda, only principle, and that was what he focused on. He calmed himself, took a step back and lowered him voice. “Do you need help?” he offered in a voice full of his newly found confidence. Megatron barely spared him a glance of his narrowed optics, the red glow of them mean and uncaring. “No.” Optimus rolled his optics. It had been a formal question with the positive answer clearly within reach, and Megatron must have well known it, yet he still lied and refused. Optimus couldn’t care for the game anymore, so he cut simply to the core of the matter: “You need help. Let me.” Finally Megatron turned his gaze back to him, now baring his dentae at him in an open snarl and angrily demanded: “Why would you even do that? We are enemies, get that through your thick helm already, Optimus Prime!” All the anger and bitterness flew past Optimus. He had come to expect that, and now that he got more of that sour anger he felt barely anything. He simply sighed and stepped closer: “Just show me your arm already.” It was that push that was all that it took. Optimus stepped closer across the floor, and Megatron didn’t say anything more, simply watched him approach without mocking. He didn’t cover or dodge, and Optimus expected nothing like that of him, but he was still glad he was allowed to approach. It was a slow dance. Even though Megatron was wounded, he was still extremely dangerous as Optimus had witnessed multiple times himself, and just because he had his own stubborn idea about helping him didn’t mean he was ignoring everything he knew about his enemy and just barging in on danger. But nothing happened. Optimus approached, Megatron stayed

where he was, and finally Optimus managed to crouch down next to him on the floor. Just taking a look that close up made it clear that there was nothing seriously wrong with Megatron’s arm, it was simply dislocated, and Optimus knew how to hep him. It was reaching out and touching a wounded gladiator that was the problem, and Optimus bided his time well. “I’m going to set it back into its socket,” he declared, servos hovering over the wounded warlord’s limp arm. “It will probably hurt, but I’ll be quick.” Megatron didn’t reply and opted to look the other way, and Optimus took that as a sign to go ahead and do his thing. He grabbed a firm hold of Megatron’s forearm and with his other servo on the shoulder guard, then in one powerful move yanked them both in different direction while keeping them in firmly same level. Megaron didn’t even make a sound, just clenched his dentae and offlined his optics, until the mechanism locked down in its proper place. When there was a sharp snap of a joint in its socket, and he released the air he had been holding in a controlled exvent. With the joint in place, Megatron flexed and moved his arm. First the digits clutched together, then the whole arm rose from its delicate cradle, and he stretched it out and rolled the joint over a few times in gentle movement. Optimus saw his enemy regaining his senses and power, so he took a few careful steps back from him, even when Megatron remained seated. After a few stretches, Megaton gave him a hostile yet dry look, and muttered: “I hate when you do that.” Optimus quirked his optic ridges in disbelief and crossed his arms. He might have been disapproving, but he wasn’t surprised. “What, help you? I though you would be glad to take advantage whenever you could.” “Not when you act like you care about me like you used to,” Megatron growled, the earlier bitterness gaining more and more foothold in his tone. He didn’t sound smooth and aloof like when he taunted him, or enraged like he often did on battlefield. This bitter tone was mostly foreign on him, but also more close to the way Optimus thought about Megatron inside the privacy of his own mind. He tightened the lock of his arms in front of him. Optimus gave Megatron a flat stare and considered the words. It was yet another cruelly clear window to the way Megatron viewed the world: it was full of deceit and pretence, a world where no one did anything out of pure kindness or care but simply in order to take advantage. In his world there was nothing more expect abusers and victims, those stronger and cleverer than others and those left trampled under their pedes. Every time they had a chance to discuss anything personal, Optimus was bitterly remained that to Megatron he had always been only something to fool and use, not anything to appreciate or open up to. He scoffed, once again detaching himself and raising above all worldly grievances and burdens. “Think of this whatever you will. It has become very clear of late to me that you wouldn’t understand it.” Megatron was silent. He was silent for a long while in that thoughtful, genuine way that he often had been in a way Optimus had never heard from anyone mighty or powerful. Megatron’s silence was the type that opened up to the other and considered them seriously. Ironically it was on moments that he was silent that Optimus was transferred back to times when he had desperately voiced an opinion or a view of his own, something vulnerable and new and deeply personal, and then had it faced with this silence. It had always felt like he had gotten through to Megatron, like he was really listening and letting his voice in. Shockingly, it was like that now, in this foreign, long since abandoned mining colony at the end of a collapsed mining tunnel that Optimus felt it again. For a split of a klik he was hopeful. He felt heard and seen, his sentiment sinking into his counterpart, opening up something new and beyond imagining. Hope soared and got the better of him, just for a klik. Then Megatron closed off again, his

expression souring and helm tilting back against the wall behind him, his healthy servo absentmindedly rubbing over his set arm. His gaze slipped past Optimus again, indifferent and cold, and his upper lipplate revealed a part of his dentae as it drew back. “Our troops will come for us soon. This will be over then,” he remarked in a deep, dark voice without looking at Optimus. Hope slipped and shattered for the hundredth time in Optimus. “I am aware, and I accept it,” he replied, quietly doubting his earlier sentiment. He never knew what to make of these passing moments of connection and understanding. They were too sudden to be deception or imagined, but consistently they shattered and vanished, so they weren’t too real either. Glimpses of what once where, he supposed. Glimpses of something overdue and impossible. Optimus walked back across the room and wondered if Megatron even knew what his most devastating weapon against him in this war even was. He might have not, since after all he didn’t seem to appreciate finer things or matters of the spark that much at all. It was all the same to him, and he let them slip by him as if he was certain there was plenty of more of them to come. Optimus couldn't say for certain that he was wrong.

[yellowsuitcase]

The Niffler // Draco Malfoy

A/N: I’m really happy with how this turned out! It took me a good three hours to write and I hope you enjoy it!

Summary: A niffler got loose in the Slytherin common room. Draco and Y/N get into an argument. Angst and fluff follow.

Warning(s): Swearing

Word Count: 2.5k

Draco grabbed Y/N’s hand as they made their way to the Great Hall to get some morning tea as well as sausages, eggs, and toast. His ring brushed up against her middle finger, the cold metal shocking to the touch. She turned her head to admire her boyfriend’s handsome side profile. He sensed her eyes on him. Draco smirked and, without warning, went in for a sweet kiss. Y/N let out a small surprised squeal but eagerly kissed him back. Draco began to deepen the kiss, Y/N pulled away. 

“As much as I’d love to snog you all day long—” her stomach growled, “I’m starving. And you have terrible morning breath, love.” 

Draco sputtered, his soft expression turning into a perplexed and shocked one. Y/N simply giggled and dragged him to breakfast.

-----------

Y/N rushed into Greenhouse Three; she’d only just made it in time. As she took her spot at the table, she made a mental note to scold Draco later. Professor Sprout was going on about dittany, and Y/N was trying to pay attention, but a teary-eyed Pansy Parkinson was rather distracting. 

“Pansy!” She whisper-yelled. “Pansy, what’s wrong?”

“Ms. Y/L/N, would you like to tell me the three uses of dittany?” Professor Sprout called out. 

Y/N felt her face turn crimson. Luckily, her mother became a Herbologist after working at the Ministry in the Department of Magical Transportation. 

“Dittany can be used in potion-making, healing magic, and a dittany stalk can be used as a wand core,” Y/N answered. Professor Sprout simply nodded, “Correct, 5 points to Slytherin.”

With Professor Sprout off her back, Y/N was able to speak to Pansy. 

“My necklace is missing. It was a summer gift from my father,” Pansy said while wiping away a tear. Almost all her mascara had been washed away.

“A summer gift? Your father gave you a necklace just because it was sum—” Y/N stopped herself realigned her focus on the problem at hand. “Where did you last see it?”

“I put it on my nightstand last night, this morning it was gone. When I find out who stole it, I’ll hex them. I was thinking the horn tongue hex,” Pansy smirked, “That ought to teach them not to touch my possessions.”

Y/N rolled her eyes. She and Pansy weren’t really friends, but she still felt inclined to help her. Y/N knows that if her emerald choker, given to her by Draco as a birthday gift, had been stolen, she’d be just as upset as Pansy, albeit a bit less.

“Who would’ve stolen your necklace, Pansy?”

“I’ve got no clue, who would do that to me? I mean everyone loves me, I don’t understand!”

Y/N eyes widened as she stared at the empty plant pot in front of her. Surely Pansy wasn’t this thick, was she? If she genuinely believes everyone loves her, she’s got observation skills to develop.

Y/N inhaled through her nose and out through her mouth before asking, “What does it look like? I’ll keep an eye out for it.”

“It’s got three diamonds on each side, with a sapphire gem in the center.”

Y/N nodded and shifted her focus back to her Professor.

----------

Draco spotted his girl from across the hall. She was waiting in their usual meeting spot, the bench outside the Transfiguration classroom. Most of the time, Y/N would have her eyes closed and her head propped against the wall, trying to get in a few moments of shut-eye since she had likely stayed up a few hours longer than she should have the night before. But today, Y/N’s eyes were wide open and scanning every student who walked past her.

The blonde boy weaved his way through the crowd of students and walked up to her.

“What’s got you so tense, love?” he asked as he put his hands on her shoulders, gently massaging them.

Y/N let out a sigh. “Pansy has lost her necklace. She believes it's been stolen. I told her I’d look out for it, but it seems nobody’s wearing any jewelry today.”

Draco frowned. “Since when do you care about Parkinson’s problems? Didn’t she bully you in year 2?”

“Yes, I suppose she did. But it’s been years, we’re young women now, and women help women.”

Draco smiled at his girlfriend’s feistiness and placed a kiss on the crown of her head. “That reminds me, Bulstrode’s been interrogating everyone in Apparition class about the whereabouts of her bracelet.”

“Millicent? That couldn't have been fun.”

“It wasn’t.” 

Just then, Blaise Zabini walked up to the pair, making an effort to avoid Y/N’s eyes, “Malfoy,” he said while looking around suspiciously, “Have you seen my pocket watch anywhere? It’s been stolen.”

Y/N and Draco shared a look. “Haven’t seen it no. How do you know it was stolen?” Draco asked as he removed his hands from Y/N’s shoulders.

“I don’t simply misplace things, Malfoy. Someone had to have stolen it while I was distracted.”

“Well, we haven’t seen it, but we’ll keep an eye out.” Y/N said with a smile the quickly diminished when she heard Blasie’s next words.

“No matter, I’m certain it must’ve been one of your mudblood friends.” He glared at Y/N as he spoke. Very clearly conveying his disapproval of Y/N’s mingling with muggle-born Hogwarts students. 

Y/N visibly shrunk under his fierce gaze. “Watch it, Zabini," Draco spat. He was not enjoying the way Zabini was talking to his girl. 

Zabini said nothing more. He turned on his heel and walked off.

Draco sighed. “Sorry about him, darling.”

Y/N scoffed. “Why are you apologizing? Just a year or two ago, you would’ve agreed with him. Hell, you probably would’ve called me blood traitor every day; you were an arse. I mean, honestly, I still marvel at the fact you were able to stop being a git. What did make you decide to stop bullying everyone who didn’t think purebloods were superior? Huh?”

Draco stood speechless. Y/N was practically fuming, her pupils had shrunk, and her ears were bright red. He looked at her, his hurt expression catching her off guard. She blinked quickly as she realized what she’d just said to him. Her feet stumbled backward, and she took off down the hallway, leaving Draco standing alone as the clock tower bell rang, signaling the beginning of class.

--------

Y/N felt like utter, for lack of a better word, shit. She couldn’t believe she had said all those nasty things to Draco. Thank Merlin it was the last class of the day; after Charms with Professor Flitwick, she’d be able to take a relaxing soak in the Prefect’s Bath. One of her close friends was a Head Girl and would tell Y/N the password to the bathroom if she ever asked.

Y/N heard mumbles behind her. 

“I heard they got into an argument.”

“She really went in on him, he looked shocked, he did.”

“He deserved it that scum bag.”

Y/N turned in her chair, facing the people who were whispering, and twirled her wand between her fingers. Silently suggesting her capabilities. “Can I help you?” She asked while batting her eyelashes. The two Gryffindor students hastily shook their heads. Y/N nodded and turned back around, deciding to actually pay attention to Flitwick’s lecture on the Bubble Head Charm.

Soon enough, the bell rang, and Y/N dragged her feet, leaving the classroom. “Everything alright, Ms. Y/L/N?” Flitwick asked, concern lacing his voice.

“Yes, no need to worry, Professor. I’ll see you next week. I do hope you’ll allow us to practice the Bubble Head Charm in the lake.” 

Professor Flitwick didn’t look entirely convinced, but he smiled and nodded nonetheless.

As she turned the corner, Y/N could sense something was wrong. She surveyed the crowd, searching for someone she knew. A flash of red caught her eye. Fred Weasley. She ran towards him, the crowd whispering as she weaved through them.

“Fred!” she called as she waved her hand. “Fred!” 

He heard her call, “Ah Y/N, what’s up?”

Y/N breathed heavily, catching her breath before asking Fred, “Something’s wrong, what’s happened? Is Draco alright?”

“Take it, easy mate, he’s alright, he’s only lost his ring.”

Y/N felt her heart sink. Draco was quite fond of his Slytherin ring. He was likely not very happy to have lost it, especially after their altercation. She knew she needed to find her boyfriend.

“Thanks, Fred, got to go, see you!”

Fred chuckled as he watched her run off to the dungeons. “Good luck!” He called after her. But she was already out of earshot, adrenaline running through her veins. She was so focused on getting to the Slytherin common room, she hardly noticed she’d already run past it. Her feet skidded across the cold stone floor as she came to a halt. To her defense, it was easy to miss the entrance to the common room. It was a hidden passageway that only appeared when the password was said. Otherwise, it was a bare wall. 

Y/N stood anxiously outside the entrance. “Serpent,” she muttered. The wall moved to reveal a staircase leading down into the common room. Upon her entry, all eyes fell to her.

“Well, well, well. If it isn’t Y/N,” said Pansy, “Would you like to return our stuff, prat?” Some people snickered at her comment. 

“What do you mean? I haven’t stolen anything.”

“Of course, you haven’t. Draco, you agree with me, don’t you? It’s obvious she’s stolen my necklace, Millicent’s bracelet, Blaise’s pocket watch, and your ring. Is it not?”

Y/N’s eyes shifted to Draco. He was standing next to Blaise with his arms crossed, refusing to make eye contact with his girlfriend. 

“I can’t be sure,” he uttered.

“Draco, you know I wouldn’t,” Y/N said in desperation. She knew she looked bad.

“Prove it,” he said while lifting his eyes to glare at her.

 “Go on then, shake out your robes,” Pansy said. More laughter arose.

Y/N begrudgingly stripped her robe and held it in front of her. She pulled out the pockets, flipped it upside down. The only thing that fell out was two pieces of Fizzing Whizbees, a sherbet ball that made you float a few feet off the ground. It was her guilty pleasure. 

Pansy’s smirk lessened. “Well, you could have hid—”

She was cut short as Professor Snape and Hagrid came bursting into the common room. Snape looked very irritated as he glanced at Hagrid, who took that as his cue to speak. 

“I ‘ave reason ter believe a niffler ‘as gotten loose in ‘ere. I’ll need everyone ter help search fer the little guy.”

Pansy’s face turned red with embarrassment. It was apparent now who the culprit was. Nifflers were known for their excellent treasure locating skills. They’re always on the hunt for shiny objects, of which the Slytherin students had many. 

Y/N felt relief flow through her. Her name was cleared, but now they had a new task, find the niffler, as well as the items it stole.

They searched for what felt like hours. Millicent had found her bracelet and Blaise his pocket watch. Pansy’s necklace and Draco’s ring were still missing. Y/N was currently searching through a wooden cupboard. As she was lifting the random items within it, she came across something shiny. Upon further investigation, she realized she’d found the ring. Excitement rushed through her as she yelled, “Found it!”

Only she wasn’t the only one to have yelled. Turning around, she saw Draco holding the little niffler by the scruff of its neck. It was squirming in his grip. Swiftly, he grabbed its foot and gave it a shake, out fell his ring, which he quickly caught and pocketed.

Anger flashed behind his eyes, “I’ll kill this filthy rat,” he said as he raised his wand. Just as he opened his mouth to curse the niffler, Y/N shouted, “Expelliarmus!”

Draco’s hawthorn wand was ripped from his hand and cast across the room. Most students took this as their cue to leave; they didn’t want to be caught in the middle of Draco’s rage. On her way out, Pansy snatched her necklace from Y/N’s hand.

Hagrid stumbled over to him and gently took the niffler from him. “Thank yeh, Y/N,” he said kindly. Y/N nodded, sad to see the little guy go. She was rather fond of nifflers. A fact Draco knew of. She gazed at him. He was seething as he thrust his ring back onto his finger. 

“Go on then, yell at me, call me a git again. You said it yourself, I’m an arse.”

Her heart clenched. She really fucked up.

A few beats passed before she said, “Draco, I’m sorry. There’s no excuse for what I said to you. You didn’t deserve any of it. I was just angry at Zabini, and I took it out on you. He made me feel weak and stupid, and I was embarrassed. You only stood up for me. I had no place calling you a git and an arse. You’re not. You’re the complete opposite. You’re so much more than I deserve, and I’m so sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.”

A tear slid down her cheek. She knew his harsh words were coming. She closed her eyes tightly and bit her lip hard, bracing herself for it. But nothing came. Tentatively she opened her eyes. They were met with the sight of Draco’s chest. She tilted her head up, rubbing away her tears with her arm. Draco was looking down at her with an unreadable expression on his face.

A few moments passed, and Draco hadn’t said a word. Y/N thought it was over. This must be where he was going to end things between them. She began to cry again, burying her face in her hands.

“Oh sweetheart, come here, It’s alright, I forgive you.”

Draco’s arms wrapped around her. His hand came up behind her head and guided it to the crook of his neck. Y/N only sobbed harder. The weight of the embarrassment and stress endured that day finally crashing down on her. 

He began to stroke her hair. “I’m here, love, you’re okay.”

He held her in his arms for a while until gradually, her sobs turned to sniffles. She gently pulled away from him and peeked up at him. He smiled softly and pressed a tender kiss to her forehead and then to her lips. “Let’s get you some water, and then it’s off to bed. We’ve had an exhausting day, haven’t we darling?”

Y/N let out a chuckle. “We have.”

Draco’s eye’s twinkled with playfulness. Suddenly, he reached behind Y/n and scooped her up into his arms, bridal style. They both giggled like young children as he began to walk them up to their dorms. 

Y/N admired his side profile once again. “I love you, Draco,” she said quietly.

He looked down at her. “And I love you.” They shared another kiss. “Oh, and before you ask, yes, I’ll go apologize to Hagrid and the niffler tomorrow.”

Y/N smiled brightly. “You better,” she said with a stifled laugh. And off they went to get some well-deserved sleep.

[shihalyfie]

Ken and Osamu

In doing meta for this blog, I generally try and focus on things that aren’t immediately apparent, or things I feel haven’t been sufficiently talked about over the years, and so in the case of Ken I always feel at a bit of a loss with what to write about him -- in a series that could sometimes be frustratingly subtle about things, Ken’s character arc was very much not, and it all comes down to “what can I even add to the conversation that isn’t immediately obvious, or hasn’t been covered a million times already?”

But since I’m now on this trail of extensively covering the Tokyo Chosen Children in detail, I feel like I ought to do something, because, really, I love and adore him as much as the rest of us do, and after putting some extra attention I thought I should bring some attention to Ken in his backstory prior to the events of 02, and, more prominently, his relationship with Osamu, one of 02′s most enigmatic backstory characters.

What we know of Ken and Osamu’s early life is limited, and largely told through the mouth of Ken, whose view of the entire situation is heavily skewed (in multiple ways) -- especially since a lot of the drama surrounding the brothers happens specifically because Ken himself is only capable of processing his own perspective and not truly understanding what Osamu must have thought at the time. We also don’t really have a lot of content to work with, with the vast majority of what we do have coming from a single 02 episode (23), which means we’re really going to have to go through this with a pair of tweezers.

The very important 02 episode 23 starts off setting the tone for how Osamu was doted on by everyone, and it’s important to distinguish the expectations put on him as being distinct from one like Jou’s, whose family was deliberately aiming him for high status. In the case of Osamu, his being recognized as a “genius” seems to be somewhat accidental -- basically, at some point, people noticed he was a “smart, good boy” and started praising him for it, which caused the Ichijouji parents to also get in on it. In essence, the Ichijouji parents -- and, eventually, many other parents who started “noticing” similar traits in their Dark Seed-implanted children -- got a bit too caught up in “riding the hype”.

02 indicates that a lot of this kind of behavior is somewhat selfish on the part of the parents -- having “a kid you can be proud of” has a very blurred line with stroking one’s own ego, and both the above scene in 02 episode 23 and a later scene with the Dark Seed children’s parents in 02 episode 46 very distinctly involve “parents comparing their kids to other kids”. At the same time, however, it’s not like this situation is done entirely out of greed. It’s an unfortunately common situation that a lot of kids who have been labeled as “gifted” will testify about -- these kinds of parents also legitimately think that this is the best thing to do for their kid. They’re so proud of them! They have so much potential, it’s their job as parents to foster it! When the Ichijouji parents reflect on what might have gone wrong with Osamu and Ken in 02 episode 23, their conversation also carries a nuance that, at least, Osamu had seemed to like studying (or, at least, not dislike it) -- it was just that they weren’t paying closer attention what could have been his more silent pleas to be able to play more and be relieved from the pressure.

It’s like the story of the nine-year-old child sent to Columbia University that apparently freaked producer Seki Hiromi out enough that she told the story of how it influenced 02′s production at least five times and then made Kizuna 20 years later based on this same story. It sounds “glorious” for your super-amazingly-accomplished kid, but it also robs them of everything that lets them have a “normal childhood”.

Another interesting thing to point out about this whole situation is that it not only focuses on Osamu’s apparent smarts, but also on him being a “good boy” -- that is, well-behaved. This is important because “the pressure of being well-behaved” was also said to be another major theme behind 02, especially because the final arc deals very extensively with children feeling pressured and scored because their parents and society didn’t consider their dreams acceptable (Oikawa Yukio and Hida Hiroki being cut off from the Digital World in childhood by a well-meaning but overly strict Hida Chikara, and the Dark Seed children feeling that they’d need to crush all of their future dreams for being too “childish”.

We get a few shots of Osamu’s room in the episode (it’s apparently also Ken’s if Spring 2003 and staff notes are to be believed, but for some reason the episode itself fails to depict the bunk bed both refer to), and, interestingly, it’s filled with some rather high-end computer equipment and other electronics (especially high-end given the time period!) and a ton of books. It’s thus implied that the Ichijouji parents were happy to splurge on Osamu for “whatever he needed” to foster his talents further...but there are no toys or anything you would normally associate with an elementary school-aged child.

Again, since we only have the very skewed perspective of Ken as an unreliable narrator, it becomes difficult to tell what Osamu himself felt about all of this -- but we have a certain degree of evidence about what it might be.

When the Digivice emerges out of Osamu’s computer, Osamu exhibits some...interesting behavior -- he “looks sad” when he takes the Digivice, and starts getting suspiciously possessive of it, to the point he actually physically hits Ken and insults him as “the worst kind of person”. It’s tempting to think that these events might have been exaggerated by unreliable-narrator Ken, but in fact, the Animation Chronicle -- one of the only potentially neutral sources we have about Osamu -- actually corroborates this:

Ken was a Chosen Child. But jealous of this, Osamu takes the Digivice from him.

Osamu’s strange behavior, including the parts that even Ken himself doesn’t seem to understand, very likely has to do with this -- after all, Ken states that he was able to sense something about the Digivice that drew him to it, so it’s equally as possible that Osamu was somehow able to sense that the Digivice was not for him. He may not have psychically been told the full details of what being a Chosen Child meant, but he probably knew enough to understand it’s Ken and not you -- and thus possessively shut away the Digivice so he could deprive Ken of it, with his resentful feelings increasing even further when he later came upon Ken staring at it and clearly having fun.

In short, the reason Osamu lashed out so violently and coldly to Ken? Osamu was just as jealous of Ken as Ken was of Osamu.

In Spring 2003, Ken, having moved on past a lot of the situation and able to look back on it with a somewhat clearer view, starts somewhat tapping into what Osamu’s emotional problems were at the time:

Around 1999, you were still using the top bunk of our bunk bed. I slept on the bottom, even though I wasn’t happy about it and wanted to sleep on top. When it became spring and it got warmer, the room would get so hot that I’d often pull the covers off the bed in the middle of the night… but you’d gently cover me with them again. I knew the truth then. You were always in a bad mood and you were cold to me, but now that I think about it, maybe you really wanted to be nicer to other people. I don’t know what happened to you that made you act like you did, but now, I finally feel like I understand a bit. You were demanded to grow up fast, weren’t you, Brother? Because we were always being evaluated and compared by someone, we didn’t get a chance to have more freedom. We didn’t have any chances to run down an alley because we felt like it, or pull up weeds, or tumble around… meaningless things, things that didn’t bring any value to us at all. Just like the cat napping on the roof… we weren’t able to fully enjoy any everlasting freedom.

While both Ken and Osamu were under the pressure of “expectations”, Osamu had it much worse due to being doted on by so many adults as a “genius”, and therefore was crumbling under the pressure of “growing up fast” -- to be the perfect, well-behaved, smart child that society wanted him to be. All of that started eating away at his emotions as he started losing the ability to be “a normal child”, resulting in him becoming emotionally cold and taking out his frustrations on others. And so, when Ken -- someone who is much more able to enjoy that life of “being a happy, normal child” than he is -- got something for him and thus another amazing thing he could be happy about, Osamu spitefully tried to take it from him out of jealousy, because although he was seen as someone who “has everything”, he’d actually never truly been able to feel like he had anything for himself.

And in fact, that part about Osamu “wanting to be nicer to other people” is also corroborated in the episode itself:

Osamu is said to be the one who prepared the bubbles and cut straw for them whenever they blew bubbles together (possibly one of the only true kinds of “child’s play” we ever see him doing), but says that Ken is the only one able to blow them well, because his always burst. It’s a statement about Ken being naturally gentle compared to Osamu, but Osamu (almost self-effacingly) labeling himself as inherently unable to do it, combined with Ken’s observations in Spring 2003, carries another implication: Osamu knew exactly what kind of person he was turning into, and hated this about himself.

And before any kind of resolution could be made for him, his life was cut short.

The visual symbolism in the episode with Osamu being the spitting image of the Kaiser (or, perhaps, the other way around) was of course caught by nearly everyone, but in any case, Ken ends up modeling his Kaiser persona after Osamu, or, at least, his perception of Osamu as a “strong” kind of person that he felt pressured to emulate. Out of guilt over believing he indirectly caused Osamu’s death and the void in his family, Ken tries to force himself to fill it by becoming smart, well-behaved, and -- indeed -- emotionally closed off, because that’s a “strong, perfect person”. However, being cruel is not in Ken’s original nature, and while the Dark Seed ends up making it easier, he is, ultimately, forcing himself. His stint as the Kaiser is full of indications that he actually isn’t very good at being sadistic, as the series carries on and the facade comes to crack more and more easily, until finally his rejection of his actual self completely fails in 02 episode 21 and he becomes forced to accept everything.

The first bit of irony here is that the Dark Seed sending him over the edge ends up causing him to lose track of that original motive when he ditches his parents and the real world entirely, ultimately becoming even more of a child when he starts trying to treat the Digital World as a playground.

The second bit of irony is that, despite him trying to model himself after his perception of Osamu in the belief that this was what constituted more of a “perfect person who could do anything”, Osamu himself never wanted to be this kind of person, either.

In the end, because Ken and Osamu were never able to reach a resolution while the latter was alive, Ken’s illusion in 02 episode 49 involves Osamu being the one to deliver the message of Ken being “forgiven”, because Ken, who no longer has any way of truly verifying what Osamu was feeling and thinking at the time, desperately wants his forgiveness because he still perceives himself as being the one who “caused” all this, including Osamu’s death. But Osamu is dead, and Ken is never going to get that answer from him, and as Wormmon says: he can’t keep living in regrets about the past anymore. He has to move on.

Which Ken ultimately internalizes himself in Spring 2003:

There are still a lot of times when I think about how I should have “done this back then.” But I discovered that there are many things I can do over afterwards. I’ll stop counting the things that I can’t do. Because I’m sure there are many things that I can do.

As much as Ken could easily keep regretting everything he did or wasn’t able to do with Osamu, at the very least, the better thing for him to do would be to try his best to live the life that neither of them were able to have back then, but both desperately wanted.

Some random unrelated trivia

Adventure and 02 didn��t necessarily give everyone super-amazingly-meaningful names, but for years it was speculated by Japanese fans that Ken (賢) and Osamu (治) were named after Japanese author Miyazawa Kenji (賢治). This kind of “pair naming” was not unheard of in the series -- after all, Yamato and Takeru were pretty obviously named after legendary Japanese figure Yamato Takeru, and Sora and Mimi suspected to be a pun on “soramimi” (mishearing -- the series actually has a brief pun on this in Adventure episode 44), so it’s understandable that Ken and Osamu would seem to fall under the pattern.

As it turned out, they were named after Fuji TV producer Shimizu Kenji, and in fact Ken was originally supposed to be named “Ryou” before they realized it’d cause overlap with Akiyama Ryou. So in the end, it was actually a coincidence. (But this shouldn’t be taken to imply that the staff was thoughtless or anything, because while Shimizu’s name was certainly the origin, I’m absolutely certain the staff must have been aware of the irony of naming Ken with a kanji meaning “intelligence”.)

Still, while it turned out to be a coincidence, it’s fun to think about why people thought Miyazawa was the name source, because Miyazawa’s most famous work is a certain novel called Night on the Galactic Railroad, an extremely culturally influential novel that has very heavily to do with the themes of childhood, loss, death, the many meanings of “moving on”, and what each person considers to be happiness to them. The novel is in public domain and has been translated many times, so I recommend reading it if you’re interested in Japanese pop culture, because I seriously cannot stress enough how often it comes up.