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lgcmax · 4 years ago

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hellooooo my legacy loves !! i hope life’s been treating you all well ! i know right now things are still pretty difficult ( as been all of 2020 tbh ), so i just wanted to flood the dash w a little positivity !! you know, sometimes i feel bad because it seems that i can’t connect with everyone as much as i’d like, and it sucks !! but between my spotty activity at times and bad response times i didn’t want you to think i loved you all any less. so !!! below you will find a love letter to all of you lovely muns as well as some individual comments about my favorite thing about your muses everybody ! also, if you have lgc friends who aren’t really dash scrollers feel free to share this with them so that they can see !! anyways, go ahead and enjoy 😇💖

dear legacy,

okay - let me start by saying - i care for you sooooo so much !! and that goes for ALL of you reading this !! even if we’ve never talked, or you just joined, or we talk like every other month but never seem to catch each other at the right time ? i care for you !!! and don’t you ever forget it. honestly, legay is one of the healthiest places i’ve been in to develop my muse in a safe space, void of any judgement or just weird vibes. and that has to do with all of you, and i’d like to thank you for that !! our mods, of course, get a special hug for all that you guys do - i know that things can get hard, and we test your patience sometimes ... i get it !! but to us, you’re kinda like our rp parents ?? we might nag, joke, and annoy but it’s all out of love, we promise ahaha !! anywho, once again everyone i’ve met in legacy, has no lie been so special to me ?? and i want you guys to know that !! literally all of you, even if it was just a quick message, have made an imprint on the great rp experience i’ve had here and i’d like to thank you for that ! and no this isn’t me leaving, i promise i’m gonna stick around for a loong time to come ahaha. but honestly, who would’ve thought ? i was bouncing around from rp to rp, and i didn’t recall, if i’m being hoenst, expect anything to come out of me giving this place a shot for the 2nd time ? but i’m so grateful to have gotten such a wonderful experience that made me not want to leave. there’s always things to do, muses to meet, and it’s crazy how well everyone keeps the dash flowing ! i’m always excited to look at what you and your muses are up too, and honestly i’m lowkey invested in all their little relationships lol ?? but that’s what makes this place so special ! the friendships, the enemies, the romance, and everything in between has made this into such a unique writing atmosphere to be a part of. so for that, i say thank you. and here’s to more legacy for years to come !!

now for the special portion of my letter !!! in alphabetical order, you will find a compliment of mine for your muse below !! phew, here i go :

( and pls ... if i forgot u ... i apologize 20000x !! PLEASE tell me lol !! obviously this is for muses who are here at the time of writing this 10/2/2020, and i may update ! but if your muse is here at that time and you don’t see them PLEASE tell me i want to write them something but i might have accidentally deleted someone’s in the process of writing so many ! )

phunsawat kannika first of all i have the fattest crush on her fc ojoijjoioij !! anyways, i love the commitment to all her pages, all her character inspos are my favorite, and i’m really interested to see her adjustment to korea ! i think she’s doing a great job already and will show that she can go even further !

yoon aria i haven’t got to say it yet but i LOVE how much of a meme she is oijoiiooij !! esp since she’s a model, it’s fun to have one who’s this cool model on camera but honestly so real and fun ?? like it gives her so much depth and i’m sure she’ll develop a loyal fanbase of like-minded goofs ? i want her and nari to interact tbh haha !!

lee benji my KING ! i love seeing benji develop his sense of purpose and try to see what he wants to become in the long run, and also how he’s stayed true to himself even after mocing to a whole different country ! and of course, his commitment to caring for others !

pongsak tee i ship jinseo and tee oijojoijoij !!!!!! anywho we love the thai representation, i really have enjoyed seeing tee’s progress over the past few months and how he’s adapting to slowly coming into the starlight ? it seems he’s still managed to maintain his kindness and i really enjoy that about him !

im nari is void because she is my muse but i love her very much hee hee !!

kang eunho first off as i’m writing this i see eunho’s first words for his babysitting solo is him flipping out over how cute babies are and i just think that’s adorable lol. but anywho ! eunho’s such a little sunshine and def gives me baby energy ?? light of my life. he’s like legacy’s daily dose of vitamins !

im bomi hana ... my favorite girl who i’m in love with ojjojjoijioji !! i think hana is so weird and goofy in the BEST ways and she’s an example of someone who’s not a famous girl, but a girl who happened to get famous ? i love her for her quirks and all her uniqueness, gamer girls ftw, 10/10 main character material !

hwang minjun i also love shinha and minjun too lmao !!! they are ... v cute !! i love how warm minjun’s heart is from what i’ve seen, and how open and accepting he is to all types of people and welcomes them to his warm fuzzy heart !!! also i would like to personally thank him for taking max in when they were in tokyo max DOES NOT deserve !

kim jinah ah i love her sm !! i know it sounds like max talking, but i love how she’s basically one of the bros lmao ?? but really ! i love her dually embracing of her cuter side and her more casual one, and how she just seems like the type of person you can have a drink and a good talk with ? and her interactions w junghwan stand out and give her an unexpected soft side !

lee yushin i feel like yushin is the younger brother we all wish we had but don’t deserve !! just a real fresh breath of air, definitely a little goofy but just as sweet ?? has the capability to win over even the coldest muses hearts ! and i am rooting for actor yushin 100%. you got this bud !!!!

kim nami somehow nami always pops up first on my dashboard but i’m not mad about it at all lol !! and i think nami is actually very multi-dimensional ! she already seems pretty sure of where she wants herself to go, and i think she’s going to make a really good senior to mentor junior trainees once she’s debuted for a bit ! she def will come correct !!!

lin yue the way i’m SO invested in guessing what she’s eating but never can .... ahh !! also she loves martial arts which means nari would love her if she knew her uwu. anyways to me she’s quite the baddie, i feel like she’s got her toes dipped in a lot of things and therefore will be very versatile in what she can do ? i really love that ( outside of her outstanding visuals ) she actually has a v good personality and niche interests !

ahn dohwan i have promised myself i wouldn’t put any emphasis on fcs but since vernon is one of my ults i literally have to say: TASTE. anywho lmao !! dohwan gives me cafe boy vibes ?? hear me out. could totally see him making someone a macchiato while listening to their problems and offering advice ? he just seems like a v good listener & adviser ! i think once he debuts for real for real he’s gonna have a lot of bf material made by fans haha !!

leong charlotte first of all i just need to comment i saw a while ago on the dash when charlotte covered i wait and that was ?? iconic ??? we stan ??? streamday6pls ahem anyways ! her being in a band itself makes her an instant baddie, but beyond that she also seems v kind & passionate from what i’ve seen ! she’s got the cute & the fierce, and because of that i think she’ll be fierce competition in the industry once she debuts !

choi max is my muse however as my first bb here i love him deeply heart heart !!

jung ahin i will not lie i did not know seungwoo before i saw ahin, then realized he kinda looked like wonwoo and started to simp ?? IOJOIJOJ anyway this is more of an ooc note but thank u ahin’s mun for bringing me to the light 😇anyways !! i want ahin to do more things to make himself happy bc i think he really is this close to living his best life !! i want something really really good to make him super happy yk ? also i support his english learning journey !

kang jaemin HI ME REALIZING I NEED TO MESSAGE U BACK I’M SORRY SCREECH anyway !! he has a very warm presence, i feel like even when he debuts he’ll be the approachable type ? but also he’s just so smiley and i love it !! such a little fuzzball !! i do feel like more is going on in jaemin’s head than people would think, though ??

lee jaewoo listen jaewoo is my baby ok ... and he’s nari’s too ! also btw did you ever get that birthday text from her own his acc ? anyways i’m going wayy of topic let’s regroup lol !! i honestly admire the level of passion and drive he has so young, and he’s already come so far ? jaewoo has a lot of love in his heart for people and i hope he keeps that even after years of acting ! he truly is the light of lgc agency uwu !

seo yura i feel like yura is v real ! i think she only hides the things she feels are nessescary about herself, but to me she still comess off as really genuine ? it seems she has many types of connections present in her life, which i really like ! i think she’ll do really good at holding her own once it’s time for her official debut and i’m excited to see what’s ahead !

kang jun i think jun doubts himself far more than he realizes just how much he’s capable of !! jun is so adorable and he might hate me for saying that but it is what it is !! i don’t think he’s recognized his true power yet, and though that’s sort of good at humbling him, i think he will be a beast when he becomes fully confident ?? and i believe he will !! i think getting a proper fanbase will show him just how much he can do !

ji haneul okay haneul made it to type zero, so tbh he already has his life together more than half of us ?? IOJOIJOJ no but for real i think haneul is a true ✨professional ✨even if he wouldn’t believe me if i told him ? although HE might not be so confident in it, i think haneul’s growing into his more mature self well and it’ll actually help him in the long run as he starts his journey in the idol industry !

kang jina you know what ? i think jina would be a really good leader in her group, if she were to debut as an idol ! i think she has really good communication skills and seems to just vibe with everyone around her ? which is important, as a leader ! but i also feel like she could lighten the mood and kay down the rules depending on which is needed ? that’s just how i feel ! i think she’d do well <3

seo geonwoo first of his theme is so aesthetically pleasing wow ?? anywho ! i do really enjoy geonwoo and honestly need to pay him more attention ! i honestly respect the fact that he knows his own power, and isn’t afraid to be confident in himself ? he just seems v sure of how he wants to live his life which makes him seem v stable, and def in the right direction ! i think he most often knows whats best for himself, and that’s a really valuable skill to have !

ok miyoung first off i DEFININTELY whole-heartedly ship miyoung and hunji, i do !! 😌 but yes miyoung def has romcom protagonist vibes, and i mean that in the best way possible ?? like she’s got quite a lot of things going on for her simultaneously, all while trying to discover things about herself too ?? i empathize with the level of chaos in her life but i think she’s handling it all very well and it’s exciting to read about !

son nabi nabi my ANGEL. i didn’t even know nabi too well prior to us plotting but now i’m so glad that i do !! she has the kindest heart and is willing to go out of her way, even for people she isn’t that close to, just out of the good of her heart ? and i think that’s so powerful ! she’s so baby and i vow to protect her from all the horrors of the entertainment industry because she’s a prime example of light amongst darkness !

ahn jaehwa you knowww jaehwa’s my girl 😚 i just love her adventurous spirit, and how she definitely is filled with more mischief than she may show on first impression ? i think she can use that to her advantage, and it will translate really well as charisma !! her and max’s first interaction showed me just how much of a daredevil she can be and i love it ! psa, we need to plot again !

lee yohan first of yushina nd yohan’s broken friendship is some .... tea 🍵 i’m intrigued ... really i am !! i kinda wanna give him a massage chair for his birthday because i feel like there really is a lot of internal conflict going on in his head ? def hoping he achieves the dream od getting famous before he’s forced to enlist and drop his dreams, and in return for my support i am expecting free starbucks coffee on him, lol !!

bae nathan i honestly didn’t even realize just how iconic nathan is until we started plotting ? him and max share a lot of similarities, which i love, but beyond that he just is such a real dude who kinda just seems ... ok with being not perfect ? and i enjoy that ! he’s accepting the fact that he makes mistakes and knows that that’s ok. i feel like in the future he’d have a fire podcast ?? like i just feel like it’d be so real and entertaining !

han allie first of all, happy ( belated ? ) birthday to allie !!! second of all, producers in general are always just so interesting to me ? i feel like even though she’s still finding it, allie’s rather focused on creating a sound for herself and making it different ? def has the drive to make her dreams a reality, and i know she’ll do well ! allie, fighting !

kim junghwan i think junghwan has a heart of gold ! he’s good at working with others and def would have nice personality to just sit and talk about life with ! i think he also has a lot of hobbies and interests that are v cute and soft boi, so he’s definitely gonna attract the soft stans !! he’s another person i feel would make great leader material some day. also ship him and jinah all the way 😉

kim alex first off i LOVE luna she is my pride and joy .... i feel v embarrased i think we were supposed to thread and i forgot ! but that beside the point !! i feel like he does have crazy duality ?? at some points it’s like “wow, nice man, pet parent of the year” and other times it’s like “wow this man is wilding did he just say that ??” but ... the way i love both !! it’s so interesting seeing his conflicts and how he deals with other people, but maybe that’s the messy mun in me 🙊

ahn jaesun jaesun !! a king. first off i said it to danbi’s mun before but i am just putting it out there i love him & danbi together i do, i ship it !!! secondly i think, maybe because he’s been around for a quite awhile, but you ( the mun ) seem to have a very good grasp on his character ? i think he’s had really significant but gradual development, sort of coming out of his shell and expanding the things he’s willing to take on ! and i love that for him.

yoon shinha let me repeat that minjun and shinha - i ship it !!! i don’t even know hwo to describe it but i just love the energy shinha exudes !! it’s fun, playful, and full of energy, and i think that’ll transfer really well on stage !! he’s the type of guy who’s just down for whatever and i feel like he could befriend anybody if he really wanted to ! i like that about him and think he’ll have no problem getting along w whoever he works with in the future !

kyo miyeon my queen .... oh how i love her ! 😣❤ i think miyeon’s got a cold exterior with a soft interior ?? like she’s sososo composed and a little cold on the outside, but in reality she’s just over here loving animals and the simple things in life ? i think once she debuts she’s going to have fans have v passionate debates about whether they like her cool or soft side more since they’re both so prominent and so good !!

løvehjerte emil first off emil being from denmark and his name immediately stood out to me when he was accepted, and to me makes him v unique ? also doyoung rights ;) i like how well he seems to adapt to the situations presented to him, even if they’re new and unfamiliar to him ! i think he has his ability to keep his cool, but is still learning a lot from being a trainee and proving he can definitely grow beyond what he’s already accomplished !

jung miso miso is the baddest b no one can change mt mind oijoijoijo !!!!! but no for real i always have admired miso even if i haven’t got to interact w her on my muses too much ? at first i def got vibes of the popular girl everyone wants to be just like ? but i’ve realized she’s a loot more ! she has ( shrek vc ) layers, and i think it’s good to see someone who has a lot of things people would see as ideal, but without being unobtainable !

nam yunho yunho intrigues me so much !! i’m sad max hasn’t gotten to interact with him yet lol !! i feel like in this i keep comparing muses to character types but - just take a journey with me ok soijioiofoijfio !! i so see yunho as one of those guys in the movies about small town who’s family has has a business there for years and he’s the chill guy who shows the main character around town ? AND THAT’S A GOOD THING LMAO ! i feel like he’s just immensly chill and always is just vibing and down for a good time ! <3

jo jiwoo i think jiwoo is so exceptionally cute !! but don’t underestimate her because to me she also does have a very fiery spirit ?? and i love it !! def would have the potential to be a maknae on top and i am here for it !! but since she wants to be an actor i def see her even stealing the hearts of the staff ?? the best example of a puppy in real life i’ve ever seen !

na sera first of all being a twin is automatically cool so there’s that ?? but also !! i like how hard she’s fighting to prove her own, individual self worth ! i’m definitely excited to see how she’ll find her “thing” that really riles her up and makes her feel passionate ? and that maybe she’ll decide the idol thing is for her and go forward with it as a career !

min soyoun i think soyoun’s definitely go the girl next door charm, she defintiely seems like the type who you could be friends with easily, and i think she’ll maintain that even when she’s more famous ! she gives me free spirit vibes, and i think that even if she doesn’t know how, life will somehow work to make sure she always does well ! she’s defintiely proved her individuality and i think she’ll stand out from most around her !

geum danbi ugh danbi ... the way i’m obsessed with her ! i mentioned this already but her and jaesun ? cute we ship it !! i am a stan, i am ! anyways i think that danbi is so powerful, and i don’t mean that jokingly ! she does hold a very commanding presence for me, and i really respect her resilience in continuing to fight for her debut, even after being discouraged numerous times in the past ! i think that’ll make her debut all the more worth it, as she has taken the time to get even better and improve her skills !

jang taesung taesung ... the way i really am fascinated by him ! i don’t even interact w him on my muses but he’s still so entertaining to me !! he’s so casual and i just enjoy seeing his interactions ? he isn’t afraid to be authentically him, and though he doesn’t really show it in his words all the time he’s got a lot of emotions swirling around there ! he do ... he do be messy sometimes i get it ?? he’s a lil problematic ?? but it entertains me so we will take it !

song ahri ok i don’t want to claim this bc i’m not COMPLETELY sure but do i have permission to ship her and geonwoo .... i saw their thread on the dash and they’re so cute what 😚💖 ( revision : they are together i can say this lol !!! ) anywho onto ahri things ! she just seems like the sweetest person EVER she’s v gentle with her words and actions, and definitely seems like a comforter of sorts ? i think that, whoever she gets close to, would def have her to lean on in hard times ! she’s like

son seolmi first of congrats on seolmi as the new musical actress !! we need more of them >.< but i feel like when seolmi looks back on her training experience she’ll be very proud of herself ! she has made a lot of improvements over her training period, found her passions, and worked to prove herself ! but i think, although she’s working v hard, she’s also doing twice as good at maintaining her friendships and being good to the people around her !

seo minseok minseok a true angel !! i know we haven’t gotten to write together in a while, but seeing his thread w nari we had i saw how kind he was ! he’s loyal to the people he calls friends, open to trying new things, and i think in the future when he gains experience he’ll be a really great mentor to the people who he precedes !

oh max ok first off i feel like i cannot not say this everytime i see him on the dash or a thread with him i’m constantly in a state of confusion about which max it is oijoioiiojaojoi ?? but !! i’m despite their names, they’re actually pretty different ! because unlike max choi, oh max is has a very loving and warm personality, and even though he comes from money you couldn’t really tell by his personality ?

park dohyun i def want him and max to interact together, side note !! because they’re both goofs and, of course, we need as many lgc boys connections as we can ! but anywho, i love dohyun, as i feel muses such as him are v necessary ! he definitely provides comic relief, and even though he doesn’t like to reveal his emotions, that just reveals another component to his emotional depth ! even if he isn’t someone who is vulnerable, i think it is great he does his best to make others happy !!

lee jiho i mean can i pls just adopt jiho as my child ?? he’s so cute oijjoijoij !! i think all though he’s ambitious and knows what he wants in life, he’s also realistic with himself and knows what he can expect and how to work toward a clothes ! it’s a trait not everyone has so i like that he does ! i think he’s also enough of a positive thinker that throughout any troubles he may have, he’ll get through it with a nice mindset !

lee hanbyul i think that once debuted officially officially, hanbyul will definitely grow in popularity almost immediately ! she’s already done well at gaining the hearts of fans even when she was a trainee, and with so many friends and opportunities under her belt she’ll get big in no time ! i think she’ll definitely be well known and that she’ll bring multiple fandoms together because it’s just hard not to like her !

jung jihye i love jihye !! she’s so raw and rolling with all the punches life has given her ? even after a rocky start to her career, she’s ready to give it a second chance, and although she went through a lot of bullying discovered a newfound love for acting ! i think that her dedication to being happy will show in her passion for whatever she acts in in the future, and i’m excited to see how the public perceives her !

tsai sunisa isa is the ultimate chill dude haha !! i think that he’s very calm and level-headed, while not coming off as careless ? although he’s very casual, he clearly does care about the other’s around him, and i think for him that shows in the little details rather than the big things ? i think he’s the type of person who does well at picking up on the energies of others, and noticing small details about them ! v v cool 💖😌

shin yeseo u KNOW me and max are collectively whipped for her oijoijoi !!! no but honestly, from what i’ve viewed of yeseo from an outside perspective, she’s goes beyond the socially required level of thoughtful ? she really does listen to everyone’s perspective and do what she thinks is best for everyone involved and i really like that ! i also like that the simple things are enough to make her very happy, and that she puts her all into the ones she cares for !

kang yonghwa i love how in love yonghwa is in with life, and how bright his spirit is !! he has such a ... sunshine spirit ? that’s the best way i can put it ! he’s just so positive the majority of the time, and i feel he has the ability to see the best traits of others and bring that out of them ! i also love his sense of adventure, and i think he’ll be a favorite for fans in no time ! kang yonghwa, 10 / 10, our best boy !!

kim hyunbin hyunbin reminds me of a cartoon character, in the best way ! he’s definitely very theatrical, and also has a more playful, teasing side to him ? i think that everyone needs a hyunbin in their life because he’s very considerate of the emotions of the people around him, and on top of that has a lot of interests and boosts any social scenario !

choi jinyoung jinyoung ... an angel ! it’s so my fault we don’t but we should plot more ! uwu anywho ! first off, happy belated birthday to him ! i noticed that during our to the max thread, despite being a little overwhelmed by human tsunami max choi, he stayed very polite and was open to trying a new experience out, and for that i really gained respect for him ! i think he’s a v soft boy but i don’t think he’s weak at all, in fact maintaining his kindness for others has shown my just how strong he is !! 😇😇

oh eunhye just like her article says, eunhye has a real knack for entertaining and i think it’s already begun to show ! i think her authenticity easily transfers to the camera, and that it makes people love her all the more ? she has the type of hypnotizing personality that makes people want to get to know her, and i don’t think it’s coincidence that she’s had the opportunities that she’s had already come to her !

oh gitaek congrats on becoming a producer gitaek !! clap clap !! hehee but i think gitaek is very adaptable ! even in environments when he doesn’t want to do anything, he’s going to push through - like dancing, for instance ! also him and hyunbin’s dynamic ?? v interesting. i’m invested on seeing where it goes ! i think gitaek has a lot of potential, much of which he’s already showing, and i think he’ll have no problem discovering himself fully and becoming big !

son alec just gotta say i always mix him and alex up on accident i wanna scream oijooi !! but also while scrolling his page and saw this: “ old people are amazing, is the conclusion he’s come to yet again ” and i just wanna say i love him for that ojojoioij !! but anyways, alec gives me the vibe of a young adult still sort of finding their way, and i really love that ! he enjoys what he does but still has doubts, and i think that little back and forths very important ! i hope he becomes a super famous actor and achieves all his dreams !

son jieun i love how much jieun cares for her friends !! she was bold enough to straight up call taesung out for mistreating allie and tbh ... kinda in love with that energy ?? i think her bravery goes beyond even just this though, as she’s already tried many new things that others may have strayed away from in fear ! her sense of justice and determination is something i admire and honestly i feel like if it wasn’t for her obvious career path she’d be a great lawyer haha !!

nam jueun it’s the way i want to claim that i indeed am one of seojin & jueun’s biggest fans ... i am 😌✌ but listen !! i have to respect jueun for the way that she’s managed to repair a damaged relationship AND work on herself and her career at the same time ? and both are going good ! she’s also got a real edge to her, and i feel like she doesn’t realize just how cool she is ?? we stan !

park seojin now we alr know ... seojin is one of the muses i am most whipped for in legacy i cannot lie i’m sorry !!! listen ,,, i love my tsundere !! he’s had exceptional development, but in really small yet significant ways, and he’s grown so much in the time he’s been here ! in terms of max, he’s definitely starting to take on a more nurturing role, and in term of himself, getting a better idea of who he is as an artist and a person and i think that’s gonna really show when his band debuts ! also think he’ll be a strict yet incredibly respected mentor when the day comes ? anyways i’ll just say i l*ve park seojin and go 😭💔

lee jiae lee jiae, the apple of my eye !! i was astounded how much kindness could be fit into one small body ?? even in situaitons she doesn’t like, she maintains her bright spirit that brings people to her in the first place, and i think that comforts the people around her if they’re having a hard time as well ! but i think she also does have a bit of a chaotic side when panicked and i do love it i do !! do not underestimate lee jiae everyone i am betting all my money on the fact that she can beat some ass !!

hwang sori first of all her theme made me gasp it’s literally so incredibly gorgeous omg ?? but !! the first thing i read was hwang sori is an ugly crier and that made ME ugly cry with laughter LMAOWAOOA !! even though she’s relatively new i’ve already come to love how out of the box and unapologetically her she is ! she has so much to offer, both on and off stage, and i know she’s destined to be a star ! i’m already so invested and excited to see what she does in the future !

lee aaron aaron !! our dad of the year sobs. of course, my favorite thing about aaron is how nurturing he is ! he has no problem taking care of others, and i think that although it’s easy for younger / less experienced trainees to be intimidated by those above them, aaron removes that stigma completely ! truly a gentle soul. my only complaint about aaron is that he’s so selfless that i feel he sometimes forget about himself, so aaron please eat more and take care of your health oijoijoioij !!

lee youngmin the way i love youngmin !! i was so touched by his patience when he helped my baby nari get herself together when it came to learning lines for cram school ! it proved to me that he’s a v caring person, and even if acting was sort of a sore subject for him, he still went through with helping her ! and that brings me to my next point - congrats for joining the actors youngmin !! i admire him for giving something he’s apprehensive about another shot, and i’m so incredibly excited to see how it goes for him !

song yifei ok even though i don’t know yifei too well yet seeing her intro did help me see why i’m going to love her so much !! i appreciate her adaptation to such an unusual environment like korea, and although i’m sure she’s homesick and a little lost she’s already doing her part to adjust to life in korea ! starting so young, i have to admire her work ethic and her strength by not giving up ! i’m excited to see what she can offer us all !

hwang minsik ok so !! even though minsik is quite the introvert, i think it’s v cool that he has worked past that, and although it may have been uncomfortable, got more comfortable performing in front of others ! i think that being in his head for the majority of the time will actually prove to work in his favor, as it’ll be easier to transfer all the emotions he’s feeling into his music when he locks down and pursues his dream of being a producer !

tsuchiya mitsuki from what i’ve seen, mitsuki seems to be very considerate of others, and i like that she celebrates other’s accomplishments outside of just her own ! the entertainment career can be a very risky and sometimes scary one, but i think that she’s doing a great job at rolling with it and putting her all into forming it into a serious career path for herself !

yamashita ichika i think she put it best - she’s new to korea, but not this world !! i love love LOVE how sure of herself ichika is, and though it may come off as blunt, maybe y’all aren’t just ready to accept the truth she’s spilling ... 👀 lMAO no but for real !! she’s a woman who knows what she wants and i never will be mad at that ! you can never say that ichika doesn’t keep it real and i think that’s something we need to learn from her !

hwang subin i think subin is incredibly self-aware, which really is such a super important trait to have ?? he’s had a lot of conflicts over his training period, but he’s overcame them, and to me he holds a lot of grace even in those scenarios he has this sort of ... calmness to him ? idk maybe that’s subjective but that’s how i feel ! i think in the end he’s going to turn the pain into power, and he’ll be one of the people really idolized for their resilience !

kim minjee i feel like along her path to fame, she’s learning all sorts of new things about herself in the industry, and that feeling of self-discovery is awesome ! i think she’s a really good example of the changes people go through throughout their path toward stardom ! i think she does her best to embrace both the highs and lows life brings her, which i think is preparing her to be a really steady person when it comes to being famous !

im hyunjin my baby !! the way i love him beyond measure !! he gets along with max so well and i love how well they balance off each other’s energy ! he’s got a boyish charm that helps me remember that yes, a lot of the trainees are still kids at heart, and that reminder is v refreshing ! though a lot has been thrown on him with this trimester, he’s been a good sport, and i think he’s such an accurate representation of someone who’s growing up in the spotlight ! i think it’s enough for me to excuse him mixing up the maxs. 😚😌

okamoto akira what a wonderful soul ugh !! he really did impact nari’s heart with his unconditional kindness. i think he’s grown even in his time in the rp alone ? he’s so kind to others, and i love how he holds interest in other people and their stories ! even though he’s still getting adjusted to life in korea, i think he’s doing a great job at getting his name out there while making a good impression of himself. but like i said about aaron pls, akira, take care of yourself more !! you deserve the best, heart heart !!

jeon haeun haeun has such an intense drive when it comes to her love for dance and performing, and i hope she never loses that ! it’s the most important thing, after all ! she’s got such a spunky personality, which will work in her favor as it will keep eyes on her even after she’s off the stage ! she’s a baby, being so young, but already has proved herself to have a worthy place in legacy, and i think she’s even got the capability to teach the older trainees a thing or two, haah !

park viggo i definitely respect viggo, because of the insecurities that have developed from his biological parents putting him up for adoption, he’s shone so brightly already at such a young age ! and i just read his solo w / his encounter with his biological father and - literal chills ?? but .... phew ! i’m so impressed by how he’s had so many horrible experience influence his life, but not let it overtake him ? he’s so strong and if he can handle what life has already thrown at him, i know he’ll have nothing but good to look forward to from now on !

techaapaikhun kit i don’t think i’ve had the chance to tell you yet .... but god i LOVE kit oijoioi !! he’s such a loveable ball of fluff ! he has a very big heart, and i feel like even when he doesn’t know exactly what to do or what’s going on he’s still very much 😊💖✨ ?? you would never think he’s a foreigner because he just seems in high spirits ! also him and daehyung’s interactions ? 10 / 10 in terms of entertainment, definitely deserves a read !

ahn yein i love the short queen energy this woman exudes !! her duality is already quickly becoming my favorite thing about her ?? she’s so this and this ! i truly cannot wait to see how she’ll let her musical style influence the type of music she produces, and i think she’s a producer full of energy who has the potential for being famous for her music and her own personality !

seo yumi though yumi did go through a lot of hardship with her first debut, i really respect her for fighting to prove she deserves a spot in a group for a second time, even if the first time wasn’t even her fault ! i think because of it, even if her light’s dimmed a little, her enhanced discipline will work in her favor, as well as her prior experience, and potentially give her a step up among others ! which, hopefully, will make the hardships she went through not to be in vein !

han insoo insoo’s gone through quite a bit, and though i’d imagine that to be incredibly tough on him, he hasn’t lost his shine ! he still has a brightness to him when interacting around the people he loves, and i think that’s what it takes to be in a band ! i wish nothing but the best for him, because honestly, i think he’s just trying to get by and have a good time, and i really have to respect it !

choi jongsuk okay so from what i see jongsuk is a tad manipulative in the way he interacts with people ... and yet ... i stan ? obviously this isn’t a very good trait, but it is entertaining, especially for a messy mun like me haha !! i think, if he wants to, he can actually use his particularly good social skills to his advantage, and become a charmer among his fans !

choi daehyun omg prince daehyun rise !!! i always love the spoiled rich boy types, because to me, they have the most room for growth ! if i’m being honest with you as ... awful as he might be i think he’s one of those trainees who would 100% give everyone a run for their money ? because if he doesn’t have anything ( beside money ofc ) he has confidence, and well .... confidence is a dangerous thing !! i’m really really anticipating seeing how he’ll get along with the other trainees, and his journey in legacy !!

chwe hunji phew .... my adoptive son !! i admit i am slightly biased to hunji i am i am what about it !!! 😌💖 i gush about him all the time so i’ll keep it ( relatively ) short - i don’t think hunji realizes, but given the whirlwind of events that’s happened in less than a year, he’s doing a fantastic job of both grieving and growing !! he’s been able to look out for those who need him most even in his darkest times, put up with max’s shenanigans even amongst trying to decipher his feelings for him, and adapted to a ever-changing climate that comes with being a trainee in his hardest year ! not to mention how much he’s grown since his arrival !! his development ?? chef’s kiss !

kang dongwon first of all already massive respect to dongwon for doing school and training at the same time ?? that’s already difficult in itself ! but i think he’s taken a lot of risks despite not necessarily wanting to, like expanding outside of activities he’d expected that he would do ! it’s good for him to dip his toe into numerous places, and he’ll be less thrown off if he’s asked to do something unexpected in the future. also him & his relationship w his siblings is the best haha !!

park sarang first off seojin and sarang together are such a cool duo !! the concept of siblings in the industry is honestly so cool ?? but anywho ! but i soso admire sarang !! even though she was initially was following her brother’s dream, it’s gradually morphed into her own, and she really has developed an individual name for herself, which shows her passion and determinism ! i also love how they have a healthy relationship, even with normal sibling fights, without getting into super super competitive territory ?? that just shows her capability to love & that’s great !

kim jinseo first off !! his familial relationship w shinha ? we love to see it ! cutest cousins on the block ! but what i admire about jinseo is how stable he is ! i think he can help people and handle his own problems without getting too stressed, he’s a good problem solver and i think he can calm down and figure out the best way to approach a situation ? also once again him & tee ? cute, we ship it 😊

kim ara first off, friend of the year award goes to ara for helping hanbyul through her breakup and working around processing her emotions ! and also that she’s pretty mature in handling her own breakup w / nathan ! that brings me to the point that i feel ara is a thoughtful person, who definitely sees the good even in bad scenarios and tries to think of the positives that come out of her life, even if it can be difficult to do so !

jin eunji now we know that’s my queen !!!!! i honestly love seeing eunji’s development, and she’s much more of a deep character than she shows on the outside ?? and there’s even more left for others to discover about her ! she’s trying to work through her shit but I like her because she’s the realest depiction of someone who’s growing - because it’s not particularly nice or cute ?? it’s rough but it’s real, she’s struggling to grow and move through her emotions but she’s growing nonetheless and i love that for her !!!

park seon seon is def the type of girl who is just sort of taking it day by day, and i respect it so much !! she has a lot to discover of herself and what she wants to do, but quite honestly i like that about her !! i think that she’s still young and def doesn’t need to stress about it, and i like that she’s just sort of flowing in whichever direction that life wants to take her ! i can only imagine how far she’ll go when she discovers her true potential !

lim sanghyun i feel like sanghyun really is prepared for any situation that’s thrown at him, even if he feels like he can’t do it !! i mean, since birth he’s had tons of bad cards thrown at him, and yet he always manages to turn them into something good ? although it may seem like he doesn’t have good fortune, to me, it seems he has the opposite, because he always finds a way out the trenches !! i think sanghyun’s legacy’s phoenix !

choi daehyung omg daehyung has been a favorite of mine since he came !! i love peeking at the many relationships he has bc they’re tbh so interesting !! he's honestly fit to be a main character in a show ? and i think, despite what daehyung thinks, he’s grown a lot in the time he’s been here ! to me, he’s more aware of his emotions, and more reflective of the choices he makes ! sure he’s got some things to work on but let’s be real .... don’t we all ?

lau mike mike is such a breath of fresh air !! def a roll with the punches kind of guy - reminds me of those popular kids where it’s just like ... dang, things always seem to be go well for them ?? i’m jealous ?? but i think more of that has to do with mike rather than him just having good luck ! he does good at adapting & working hard, from moving to korea, to changing careers, to now training ! he seems to excel and everything he does and i have no doubt that will help him out in the long run !

li zimeng meng is so pretty !! but she’s also SO much more !! this whole thing of her feeling average, and like she didn’t really stand out in comparison to the other trainees .... it’s so real !! and honestly, so good for her ! even though she doesn’t feel special always, i KNOW she is, but i think it’s also great she has this good foundation ? because rather than being good at only 1 thing and realizing in the long run she hates it, zimeng has the potential to be super well-versed and i think she’ll be more aware of what she needs to work on to improve !

tsai king truly our king ... and i don’t mean that ironically !! i looove king’s development, i truly love to see it !! though he’s still got his pride, i think he’s transformed his confidence from blind cockiness to a reason for him to want to work hard and succeed ?? king definitely had things to work on, but he has worked on them, and i think he’s truly proved his place in legacy in the long time he’s been here !! also thoroughly impressed w how much he’s done !

bae doha i think that if I had to describe doha, it would be “ proceed with caution ” !! he’s a cautious person, i feel, who wants the balance between having a good life and keeping himself grounded ? which is a really good type of personality, and I think it would make him a leader for those around him ! he’s also very observant, and i think that will make him much more meticulous of a person as an actor !

song shaun first of all i gotta still thank shaun for doing tiktok dances with max back in the day !!!! that was iconic and i will never forget it lol !! and i'm so glad he’s back. anyways, i think shaun is definitely the type of person that’ll stay true to himself even after becoming famous, he seems v carefree, but also w/o not losing that ambition to work hard ??

pongsak arinya arin is so freaking adorable !!! i think she’s like a puppy and I love it !! she’s so curious about the way around her, i think she just loves what life has to offer her and in turn life loves her ?? she has such a playful and optimistic light about her and to me, it’s impossible not to want to be her friend !! her fans will easily love her <33

jeon haru to me, haru seems like a team player !! he listens to the input of other’s, and i think before rushing to do what he wants to do, it’s in his spirit to think of how his actions affect other people ! and i think that’s shown in how he’s babysitting on the show, even though he’s a little panicked ! i also think he’s a good self-soother, he’s good at helping calm himself down and make himself feel better, and to me that’s so great !!

liu jiao I think she’s doing a great job at making her reality one she enjoys ! she’s struggling to find the differences between her dreams and her moms, what she wants and what she doesn’t ! and still, i believe that she’s doing well and spreading love to those around her despite ! i hope she finds full inner peace and that she can live a life of happiness ( and a little wrecklessness tbh ) without any worries !!

#this took SO LONG my arm hurts iojooijoi !!#anyway ... hope u all enjoy !! <33 #ily all sm !!! <33 #( as told by jada :: ooc. )#( this is our page :: bookmark. )#this is queued bc i'm not home but i'll be on later uwu !

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ts-unsolved · 5 years ago

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Final Wrap-up for Chapter One

((since chapter one will be coming to a close shortly and there is still an assortment of questions left over, here is a masterpost of responses to queries that couldn’t be addressed during the story!

[reminder: the ask box will be left open, however the characters are not available. please keep in mind that non-plot related questions will not be answered by the characters after this post.]

Anonymous said: ((Just wanted to tell you your drawings are so pretty and I love ur blog. That is all I have no braincells to ask questions))

Anonymous said: OKAY MOD I JUST WANT YOU TO KNOW I LOVE THIS AU SO MUCH AND ITS SO COOL AND GOOD AND YOUR ART IS TOO!! sorry for caps I’m just excited

Thank you! Sorry I didn’t always get around to answering asks like this, but for every one that was sent in, I appreciated it with all my heart. You guys are angels 💖

Anonymous said: What is one haunted location you guys would really like to visit someday?

Poveglia is definitely the highest on the list for the notoriety alone, although they would likely never get the permission to go (the history in general is almost excessively horrible and tragic, so nothing good would come out of doing an episode there. Maybe it’d be good as a final-chapter type location? 🤔).

@anxious-fander-bean said: Hey Logan, have you ever tried swing dancing? It's really fun and good excersize! There's also a lot of bouncing and upbeat music, so Patton might enjoy it as well! ((I'm doing it. I need the qpp boys to be happy and have fun, bc they deserve it.))

(LOGAN: I’ll...consider it.)

You did it, you got them to go on some good ol’ platonic dates! B)

Anonymous said: I feel bad that I don't have any deep question or something along those lines, but what's your favorite thing to bake, Pat? - 💐

That’s alright! Questions don’t have to be deep to be fun/interesting.

(PATTON: Cupcakes! You can make so many different flavors, and there are tons of fun ways to decorate them!)

@why-should-i-tell-youu2 said: Why cant anyone else see the seal?

You need to have The Sight to be able to see demon sigils. Patton has this ability naturally, and Dee has it because Elliott taught it to him. Otherwise, Virgil and Roman would be the closest in terms of gaining this ability, but a scared/skeptical part of them is holding them back.

Anonymous said: My good dorks, is there a way to, I don’t know, get a better/more effective charm for your office? One that costs more than $10? -🍁

Anonymous said: Hey, Logan, potential naturalistic explanation for ya: depending on what the charm was made of, shifts in ambient room temperature could have caused minuscule expansions and contractions in the material that would eventually crack the charm. Do I believe my own explanation? Absolutely not. Am I grasping at straws for a non-supernatural explanation? Absolutely. And ambient room temperature doesn’t even begin to explain the red symbol around the charm

(LOGAN: Our budgeting is already a mess as it is, the last thing we need is to waste more funds on decorations. And that theory seems much more reasonable than the contrary explanation.)

Anonymous said: Is the demon that Pavreen summoned the same demon that possessed Elliott?

Anonymous said: Welp Virge SUMMONED A DEMON- (Why do I have a feeling Remy was the demon that possessed Elliot-)

Nope, they’re all different demons! The demon that Parveen summoned is notoriously difficult to contact, so a bunch of teenagers wouldn’t have been able to do it. Likewise for Remy; you can only summon him once you have his True Name, and he’s already destroyed most references to that (sorry Patton).

Anonymous said: omg omg omg what part of mythology is remy part of???

He’s not from any particular mythology, but he is partly based off of Alps from German folklore and the general mythology around sleep paralysis!

Anonymous said: Can Patton see supernatural beings like ghosts and demons and stuff? I just think it would be interesting if his scars make him able to see them :3c

Anonymous said: If both Dee and Patton can see the sigil, and Dee can see ghosts, does that mean Pat can see ghosts too? With the whole red glowing thing (forgot what its called) it seems to be connected.

Yes he can see ghosts/demons, and you’re right that the scars (or rather the deal with the demon which gave him his powers and scars) are what lead to him being able to do it. The red is just a general indicator of something supernatural/not of our Realm.

Anonymous said: Wait so if Patton and his family all have that mark could that mean Patton is not completely human 👀 -🌈

I supposed you could say that Patton’s not entirely human because he’s a witch who was born without a soul, but he’d find that pretty offensive tbh.

Anonymous said: Are Elliott and Patton maybe related, even distantly? Also, roman needs to suck it up and have Feelings for the Snake Man

There’s no relation between Elliott and Patton. Elliott is the child of a seer and a psychic, Patton is the son of witches. They’re similar, but different. (Also you’re assuming that Roman hasn’t liked the Snake Man since high school, but considered him off-limits because he’s his brother’s best friend).

Anonymous said: Does Patton know that Dee can see spirits and does Dee know that Patton is protecting them all?

Anonymous said: Dee, pat, do you know that each other can see the sigil?

Anonymous said: is ... is patton a witch and dee a dee-mon and that's why they don't like each other.....?

Anonymous said: Pat what do you think about making deals with demons?

They’re both aware of each other’s secrets! Technically they’re both doing their best to protect everyone, but that doesn’t mean they agree with each other’s methods or bond over the shared responsibility.

Patton is indeed a witch, and Dee is a regular human who happened to summon a demon one time. Patton thinks Dee is the occult equivalent of a satanist, which he disagrees with because dark magic is unnatural/dangerous in his eyes (making deals with demons only leads to trouble!), and would prefer Dee not endanger his friends. Dee doesn’t like Patton because of his perceived moral superiority, and finds the way he can be so secretive and two-faced creepy

Regardless, they’re both sitting in glass houses and have more in common than they think.

Anonymous said: Patton Should Hug Dee *

Maybe. But he won’t. 8′D

Anonymous said: Since Dee has been able to see ghosts for a long time, was he an open believer in ghosts before Elliot died? Since it was mentioned that the reason he lies about his belief is because he knows that they're dangerous, he wouldn't have had a reason to hide it in the past. And if he did are any of the others aware of the belief change? Well, besides Remus. I'm guessing that one is pretty obvious.

He may have been more involved as a believer in the past, though that doesn’t mean he was ever super open about it. He was aware of how it would look like to outsiders (being genuinely skeptical at one point himself), so he wasn’t going to paint a target on his back by talking about ghosts and demons and things most people can’t see.

Of course, that didn’t stop people from stereotyping and making those sorts of assumptions about their friend group anyway, but no one besides them really knew about their secret-- not even Virgil.

Anonymous asked: What would happen if one time, the gang ended up getting something supernatural on camera?

The result of that would depend on the being. Ghosts can kinda appear on camera, although it’s very rare for them to appear as a full bodied apparition, which is why they usually only manifest in spirit orbs or light/shadows. Poltergeists are better since they’re able to interact with objects, but likewise since they can’t manifest into a physical form they can easily be brushed off. Demons and other miscellaneous creatures will straight up not appear if captured directly on film; you’ll simply get video glitches and distortions.

So essentially, they may technically have found something already, but capturing evidence that’s also compelling is a lot more difficult than you’d think. I imagine there’s a good chance that anything legitimate wouldn’t get taken too seriously because of how easy it is to fake evidence nowadays.

Anonymous said: Okay so a little bit of a rant but not really ig but imagine the ladylike and unsolved crossover for this AU like I can see it as like Thomas' friends dressing up Roman and Dee in style and seeing a blushing mess and maybe flirting going on because of how good the clothing complements each other but this is kinda a weak idea lol

It’s not a weak idea at it, it’s really cute! (though I may just have a soft spot for the Ladylike cast and crossovers).

The only thing to note is that I’ve chosen not to include Thomas’ friends in this AU because I personally weird about writing fiction about real people? (I was on the fence about including character!Thomas for a while too, tbh). So, apologies to anyone who’s sent similar asks or wanted to see any of Thomas’ friends; they wont be around!

Anonymous said: Did Dee and Remus ever have that talk Dee said he would try to have a while back????

They might have gotten the opportunity to chat back when Remus came back to help shoot the Room 1046 video. It wouldn’t have been a complete reconciliation by any means (dealing with years of baggage in one sitting is Hard), but now Remus is aware that Dee is open to discuss things again at some point in the future, so progress!

Anonymous said: wait wHAT?! When did he (Emile Picani) die?? Give us the deets oh wise one

Anonymous said: emile is... dead? what happened?

I see y’all, but unfortunately you’re not getting any answers from me just yet! You’ll have to wait until the next chapter~.

Anonymous said: Shit is about to go down and I am worried about the next ghost "adventure"

:) Don’t Worry About It.))

#OOC #((that should be all the big questions!#i'll update this later if anything comes up))

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kinetic-elaboration · 4 years ago

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March 15: Thoughts on Fandom

Not feeling too well this evening but hopefully a good night's sleep will make me feel better and tomorrow will be low key and chill. And my hot water will be fixed successfully.

I was thinking today about how I've felt for a long time that I'm 'between fandoms' even though technically, literally, I'm not. I continue to write and read for The 100 but I don't entirely feel like I'm in the fandom. Sometimes I think I should just leave officially, but then I think--but to go where? And "Star Trek" seems both an obvious and an incorrect answer. It's like I'm not truly invested anywhere, but in a sort of limbo-like space.

Anyway, so I broke it down like this.

I want 3 three things from "fandom," broadly speaking:

1. To engage with media that I really love.

Examples: waiting for new installments (for ongoing media); rewatching or rereading; obsessing over how great the characters or stories are, dissecting plot lines and themes.

2. To engage with a fan community that also loves the media I love.

Examples: reading fanfiction; reading meta; engaging in online discussions; reading other people's excited posts; following blogs relating to the media in question; reblogging gifsets/graphics/fan art

3. To engage creatively with the source material through transformative works.

Example: writing fanfiction.

Ideally, I'd have one piece of media that fulfills all of these purposes. That was T100 for me for a while. But then I stopped watching the show in late S4, and got farther and farther away from the 'current' fandom. And then the show ended, and on such a sour note, so that the fandom itself, the fan community, started changing. And at the same time, I started getting seriously back into Star Trek again.

So now I'm in this place, where I'm still at least kind of engaged in all three aspects of the fandom experience, but not in a unified way.

Star Trek is fulfilling the first purpose of fandom for me, right now. I'm loving rewatching TOS, and the AOS movies too, and I just have a lot of Emotions about the characters and universe. It's that good kinda excitement that a show (or book or movie or whatever) that you really love always gives. Like--ahh!!! I cannot feel anything else but just happiness because I love this so much!

BUT I'm not engaging with ST in either the second or third sense of fandom. I follow a couple ST blogs but there aren't many truly active TOS/AOS centric blogs out there right now. I don't read any ST fanfic because, well, first of all I never really did, and second, I'm far enough behind on my T100 fic! And I have rl people like my mom and B to talk about it with, but not really anyone on tumblr or wherever who's into it like I am.

And though I've vaguely plotted and poked at some fic ideas, I haven't done any real ST writing in a long time--again because I have ideas for T100 that I need/want to get to first, and I'm not writing so much anyway now in general.

On the other hand, T100 is definitely NOT fulfilling function (1) for me and hasn't in a long time. When I stopped watching the show, I still engaged with the canon a little. I watched other people get excited or debate or discuss. I noticed the patterns of fandom as the show went into and out of hiatus. Plus, I still enjoyed the early seasons and liked early-canon and canon-divergent fics (reading and planning/writing). But even that is largely fading for me. I've been trying to rewatch the show but it's not really doing anything for me... I have a hard time getting into it. The canon-divergent fics I'm writing for the collab are not interesting me in the least, either.

I realized today that most of my fic ideas, or at least most of the fic ideas I really care about in any way, are so far removed from the canon they might as well be original fiction with some familiar names thrown in. The one exception is the Ark AU, but everything else is some form of extreme AU, modern or otherwise. I don't even know that the characters make me feel much of anything anymore. I've been toying with how to explain this for a while but... I feel like both for me personally and the fandom as I perceive it, the characters are more like a shared vocabulary, rather than actual characters from a source material we all love. I think this is partially because the fandom is old enough now to have some very long standing shared headcanons, and either small enough or bifurcated enough for fanwork creators to influence each other more than the canon influences them, and partly because the show ending on a sour note for most viewers has left the people who remain in the fandom with a sense that these characters are OURS and that the value of them is in how we collectively decide to use them now, rather than in how they are tied to the universally derided source material.

I'm not saying any of this is BAD, I'm just saying, that's how it is now, from my perspective.

I'm sort of engaging with the fan community (2) through T100, but... it's a little weird. I have people I legitimately like and enjoy talking to on tumblr who I know through T100 and of course there are events like Troped that I really love. I have a ton of cool fic bookmarked too and I'm getting back into reading it. But my dash has a lot less T100 content than it used to and sometimes I'll find myself j-ing very fast through it because I'm just not in the mood. I know a lot of people are either semi-disengaging, like I am, or wholesale moving on to other things. So it's like... the community straggles on, but it's uncertain at best.

And as far as engaging creatively (3)--to the extent that I write or plan fic it's almost all T100. But I haven't... I haven't been finding it easy to write. In general. This is a little hard to explain but.. when I think "I need to leave T100 fandom and really force myself to go somewhere else" it's usually because I feel like I'm not really getting what I need creatively out of the fandom. I like a lot of my wips and unstarted ideas, in theory at least, but the closer I look at some of them the more... herculean the task of actually writing them starts to seem. And tbh I rarely just... tell myself little stories about these characters or within these potential-fic scenarios. Like in all my idle, free thought time--when I'm washing dishes or taking a walk or a shower or going to sleep, when I want to think about something nice and fictional and not let the worries in... when I'm really engaged with a fandom, I'll imagine little scenes and tell myself little stories during these times. Sometimes they're scenes I want to eventually make into or include in a fic. Other times they're not. But they're still an extension of my creative life.

And I haven't really done that for T100 in a while. Sometimes I imagine Star Trek scenarios. Sometimes I retreat into highly silly comfort scenarios with original characters. But I only think about T100 when I specifically need to brainstorm for a fic. And that makes the fic feel more like work. And that makes me want to do it less.

So... I'm not sure what that will mean for me getting back into my projects when I finally (FINALLY) finish the last of my obligations. Maybe when I feel like I can actually make progress on old wips or ideas I care about, I'll get more invested in them. I was pretty damn invested in Mountain Lion Mean and that wasn't that long ago, so it is still possible. But overall, T100 definitely doesn't have, and probably never will have again, a total monopoly on my brain the way it did c.2016.

Which is fine. Like... it's more than fine. I've been here a while. What I'm trying to articulate to myself with all this is that the dissatisfaction I feel with my fandom life is probably stemming from the lack of one, coherent obsession. I have stuff to read, stuff to write, stuff to think about, stuff to talk about, and even a small fandom community of people I like--so what's the problem, right?? It's because it's not all coming from the same piece of media and that's not as clear and coherent and nice for me.

Plus, it makes writing more difficult when I do want to write these particular ideas, but I'm only motivated by own desire to see the ideas realized, not my genuine love for the characters and the material from which they derive. There's a certain energy that fannish activity has... but T100 fic barely feels like a fannish activity to me rn. Just another type of work. It's a work I'm invested in...but I just so often don't have it in me to WORK at all, is the thing.

So that's the biggest annoyance about it. I haven't really experienced this before so even though this situation has been forming for a while, I still don't really know what to do with it.

#the year 2021 #2021: fandom thoughts #honestly i'm really proud of myself for articulating all of this #fandom

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lovelylunarwriting · 5 years ago

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Soonyoung College!AU

Dance Therapy Major, with a minor in Astronomy (Astronomical Sciences)

He chose dance as a major because it’s his life passion and something he genuinely enjoys, and more specifically dance therapy because he wants to share dancing with people in a way that can positively influence them and strengthen their quality of life through self expression.

If you ask him about it, prepare for a powerpoint presentation and fifteen minute speech because this boy will go off on how important it is to express yourself.

As for astronomy, he thinks stars are the shit.

At first he registered as an Astronomy minor because he misread it as “Astrology”

He has a tendency to read way too heavily into horoscopes and will explain in extreme detail how your horoscope relates to the stars.

One time he told he told Seokmin that he was going to “meet an untimely end” because it said so for Aquarius on the horoscope blog he checks daily.

Seokmin spent the rest of that day following Chan “for security reasons”

Also, anytime Minghao says something snarky, Soonyoung is like “Omg you’re such a Scorpio”

Soonyoung is very heavily involved on campus, especially with organizations revolving around volunteering.

He just wants to help out whenever he can and give back to the community, whether it be assisting the elderly, helping out with food drives, etc.

Although he enjoys volunteering, don't get the wrong idea- he’s no saint.

He’s the life of the party everywhere he goes, which is mostly,,,, parties tbh.

And that’s how he ends up fracturing his foot.

After a night of drinking with some of the boys, they were making their way back to the dorms when they passed through the main courtyard, resulting in Seungkwan challenging the group to do something pretty stupid.

Seungkwan : “I bet none of you will jump into the fountain”

Chan: “Of course I won’t, I just bought these shoes?? Why would I ruin them”

Seungkwan : “Because it’s a (dare)”

Soonyoung: “A DARE, YOU SAY??”

Seungkwan : “yES it’s most definitely a dare. Unless you're too chicken...”

Seokmin : “Ooooooo Soonyoung’s a chicken!”

Soonyoung: “Oh yeah? Would a chicken do THIS??”

The boys gather around the flowing fountain in the middle of the courtyard, leaving space for Soonyoung to jump in.

But he doesn't jump in. He cartwheels in.

And slams his foot right on the edge of the fountain.

There’s an unsettling crack and Soonyoung falls backward into the shallow water.

Seokmin and Chan pull him out and set him on the ground while Seungkwan calls an ambulance.

When the paramedics arrive, they haul Soonyoung into the ambulance, Chan and Seungkwan jumping in after.

One hospital trip and an unfortunate amount of medical bills later, it turns out that Soonyoung fractured a bone in his foot and won't be able to walk on it for at least six weeks.

Seungkwan feels terrible and literally w i l l n o t stop apologizing.

Seungkwan : “I'm so sorry about this. Had I known you would’ve gotten hurt, I never would have said anything-”

Soonyoung: “Dude it’s fine, it's not like you threw me in. I was the one being reckless”

Seungkwan : “So you're not mad? Our friendship is still going on stronger than ever??”

Soonyoung: “I'm not mad, but you do realize since it was your dare that got me in this position, you have to go explain to my dance instructor why I won't be able to participate”

Seungkwan : “...I guess that's fair”

Chan: “Didn't your instructor completely go off on a girl for walking on the dance floor while wearing stilettos?”

Soonyoung: “Yeah, she's terrifying. Which is why good ol’ Kwannie is going to be a dear and break the news to her for me~”

Seungkwan : “Can't you just break my foot instead?? An eye for an eye kind of thing?”

Soonyoung: “Nope. Next time maybe you'll watch your mouth”

Seungkwan: “And next time you'll watch your step”

Soonyoung: “I’m literally crippled dude, leave me alone”

The night ends with the boys taking an uber back to campus, and each person going to their respective dorms.

Aka Soonyoung hobbling on crutches into the building (somewhat literally, he almost slipped trying to scan his I.D. card) and then to his room.

The next morning he gets a text from Seungkwan being like “I’ll go with you to tell your dance instructor but I'm not going in alone,'' to which Soonyoung is like “okay that's fair”

They meet up outside the Fine Arts building and brave their way through the halls to admit that They Fucked Up.

When Soonyoung hobbles into the dance studio she’s like “YOUNG MAN WHAT DID YOU DO” and Seungkwan is like “uhh he tripped down the stairs yesterday… real sad”

Soonyoung is like “It-takes-six-weeks-to-heal-bYE” and tries to bolt for the door but forgets the whole,,,, crutches thing,,,, and they slip out from under his arms.

Let’s just say that's not the first time Soonyoung has face planted in the dance room and it definitely won't be the last.

The professor tells him that even though he can't participate, he needs to show up for class to watch and that he can make up whatever assignments he misses after he heals.

She’s surprisingly nice about it??? And is like “you’re dumb for getting hurt but take care of yourself, you’ll make us all worry”

Anyway, let’s move on to you~

You know who Soonyoung is because you've had classes with him before but you've never really talked to him??

He was always "that kid watching Netflix on his laptop in the back of the lecture hall"

Which is tempting but when you're paying to take these classes,,,, you don't wanna waste your money and time by not trying your best

His friends would frequently wait for him outside the building to grab lunch after their classes, since they all had classes in the same cluster of buildings at similar times

They're a difficult group not to notice,,,, such loud and rowdy boys are hard to miss

This semester you don't have any classes with Soonyoung, and don't think anything of it until you barely hear someone over the roar of your earbuds shout your name and to hold the elevator

Looking up from your phone, you're shocked to see Soonyoung on crutches furiously shuffling to get to the elevator before it closes

You wordlessly mash the "open doors" button a few times, and he sighs, slowing his pace and trudging into the small space.

You consider just keeping in your earbuds but curiosity gets the better of you

"So umm.... what happened?", you ask, popping out a single earbud.

Soonyoung's face goes from tired to panicked real quick and at first you regret asking, but then he explains how he fell down a flight of stairs and you're more at ease, but not completely.

Your dance major friends have dragged you to their showcases, and you've seen Soonyoung dance. it seems weird that someone so balanced and elegant could just fall like that.

You: "Were you drunk?"

Soonyoung: "I- what? Why would you ask that?"

You: "Ahh, so you're not denying it. That makes a lot more sense, you're much too graceful to slip out of the blue"

Soonyoung: "...you've seen me dance?"

You: "Yeah, I've got friends who dance and I go to their recitals to support them. You're really good, by the way"

With that comment, Soonyoung turns to face away from you and you think you may have said something wrong on accident until you notice the tips of his ears burning bright red.

"He's shy.... that's pretty cute", you think to yourself.

The elevator dings, signalling your arrival on the second floor. You step out and surprisingly, Soonyoung follows.

Apparently the "nani???" face you're making is a lot more communicative than you’d intended, because Soonyoung is like "I live,,,, across the hall from you...."

Now it's your turn to be embarrassed because,,,, how the hell did you not notice that

He goes on to ask you if you could help him get into his room- something about not being sure about balances crutches and keys, and before he can even finish asking, you’re like “yep! Gimme them keys” to try and move on from the “how could you not know I live right across from you” thing

You open the door and prop it open all the way so that Soonyoung can hobble on in, then you go ahead and help him get settled on the couch so he doesn’t topple over trying to stand.

You: “Okay, is there anything else you need?” you ask, handing him back his key and trying really hard not to blush when your fingers brush against his..

Soonyoung: “I mean,,,,, I don’t need anything, but if you want to stay and hang out for a while, that’d be nice. It’s no fun wallowing in self pity all alone and Seokmin won’t be here for like three hours”

Thinking about what day of the week it is and then checking your watch, you conclude that you don’t have any classes or labs left today and agree to stay for a bit.

You: “Actually, let me head to my dorm to drop off my bag and grab some snacks, alright?”

He nods his head vigorously at the mention of food so you make sure to come back with more than enough snacks for the both of you.

If someone had told you this morning that you’d spend your evening laughing and playing Wii Sports with Soonyoung of all people, you’d tell them they’re crazy, but here the two of you are, acting like old friends would.

After defeating him in tennis more times than he feels comfortable admitting, he checks the time on his phone and sees that it’s like,,, r e a l late.

Soonyoung: “It’s this late and Seokmin hasn’t come home yet?? What if something happened to him?”

Seokmin: “I walked in literal hours ago. I said hello to you. You said hello back. I’ve been in my room ever since???”, he says from the doorway to his room.

Honestly, you hadn’t noticed him either. Soonyoung is such a bright person inside and out that it’s easy to get caught up in him.

You: “Well since it’s getting late I should probably head back to my dorm. Gimme your phone real quick?”

Soonyoung: “You could at least ask me out before putting your number in my phone,'' he says, peering over your shoulder at the glowing TV screen.

You: “I’m putting my number in your phone in case you fall and need someone to help you. Since I’m right across the hall I’d be the closest person other than Seokmin who probably isn’t too pleased with you,,,, since we forgot he was here,,,,,”

Soonyoung: “Oh. Okay that works, too” he says sheepishly, hoping you’ll forget about the whole “ask me out” comment.

He has to hobble around for the next six weeks so saving any fraction of pride that’s left is his main objective.

That and not dying of boredom. He has a feeling that the two of you will be playing a lot of mario kart.

Maybe next time you’ll let him win?? Odds aren’t for it though.

Seeing his frustrated little pout whenever you pass him and getting to see him get all mad when you blue shell him is just too impossibly adorable to pass up.

And you refuse to lose. But anyway-

The next few days pass by as they normally do, not particularly eventful in any way.

That is until you get a text from an unknown number that creeps you out before you realize it's just Soonyoung.

Unknown Number: "hey boo are you home? ;)))))"

Your Phone: "I'm just walking in the building, why?", you text back, adding him to your contacts.

The Lovely Kwon Soonyoung: "oh thank goodness pleaSE come over, Seokmin put my laptop on top of the bookshelf as revenge and I have an essay due at midnight!!＼(;´□｀)/"

You Phone: "Okay, I'll be right there!"

The Lovely Kwon Soonyoung: "THANK YOU MY ANGEL!!!～(^з^)-♡"

Reading that last text jump-starts your heart, and you almost drop your phone.

Stepping out of the elevator, instead of taking a right into your room, you turn to the left and knock on Soonyoung's door.

The door swings open almost instantly and you're met with a very pouty looking Soonyoung.

Laughing to yourself but mostly at him, you step inside and peer around for the bookshelf.

Once you spot it, you drag a chair over and begin to step up on it when Soonyoung interjects.

Soonyoung: "What are you doing??"

You: "I'm getting your laptop! I can't reach it without standing on something"

Soonyoung: "But that's dangerous!"

You: "More dangerous than cartwheeling into a concrete fountain?"

Soonyoung: "..."

You: "Chan told me. He's in my Sociology class"

Soonyoung: "So you knew and yet still agreed to help me?"

You: "Of course! That's what friends are for, right?,” you say as you step up onto the chair once again, missing the falter in Soonyoung's smile.

He doesn't say anything but you can tell that he's hobbling over to you due to the distinct clicking sound of his crutches hitting the hardwood floor.

When his hands find your waist, you forget how to breathe for a moment, looking down to him as he gives you a reassuring nod.

"He's just helping you balance. It's not a big deal", you tell yourself, and yet the warmth of his hands on your hips has your heart racing.

Focusing solely on the task at hand, you reach up, retrieve his laptop, and take the hand he offers as you step down from the chair.

The two of you keep your hands locked together longer than necessary, but don’t say anything about it,,,,

"Is that all you need?,” you ask, dropping his hand and setting his laptop down on what has to be his bed (the Shinee posters are a dead give away)

You looking anywhere but at him, afraid that you'll accidentally reveal more of how you feel than you want to.

“That’s,,, that’s it. You can stay for a bit if you want, though? I found Seokmin’s snack stash”, he offers and as nice as it sounds, you decline.

“You have an essay to write and I have,,,, something I need to do so i’mgonnagonowbye”, you manage to say, power walking out of his dorm room and even more quickly into yours.

Your roommate takes one look at your wide eyes and obvious blush and is like “,,,,this is about a boy isn’t it”, to which you eloquently reply for them to “mind their own business and yeaH maybe it iS”

The next morning you jolt up in bed, breaking out of your dream somewhat forcefully.

It wasn’t even a bad dream- it was just you and Soonyoung hanging out like you did the other day but instead of being on opposite sides of the couch you were,,,, a lot closer, to say the least.

As soon as Dream Soonyoung leaned in for a kiss, your subconscious dragged you back into reality.

Why is it that dreams always end right before to good part?

Grumbling to yourself, but not too loudly so you don’t wake up your roommate, you grab your bag, swing it over your shoulder, and step into the hall.

So does Soonyoung. Who shoots you a smile and a wink, while you stand there looking like a deer in headlights.

“Something wrong?,” he asks with a confused tilt of the head.

“No no it’s just- those morning classes ya know? Getting up this early is rough, ahaha”, you say trying to play off your initial weirdness, and Soonyoung seems to take the bait, complaining about his early dance class all the way out of the building.

“I normally don’t mind getting up this early if I get my body moving but,,, having to watch everyone else dance instead is kind of torture”, he admits.

“That does seem like it would be tough. If it gets too frustrating and you need someone to vent to, send me a text alright? My next class is three hours long and super boring so I’ll definitely be on my phone anyway”, you say.

He agrees and the two of you go your separate ways, you heading to your class and him heading to his.

Throughout the whole dull lecture you can’t help but check your messages every so often, just hoping that he’s texted you.

1.) Because you enjoy talking to him and 2.) Because the class is really that dull.

Feeling your phone vibrate, you open the messaging app to see about exactly what you expected.

The Lovely Kwon Soonyoung: “It's been thirty minutes and I already wanna die”

Your Phone: “Please don't, who else would I destroy at Mario Kart??”

The Lovely Kwon Soonyoung: “(╥﹏╥)”

Your Phone: “I'm kidding~! And actually I have something that I think might help. When’s your last class of the day end?”

The Lovely Kwon Soonyoung: “Like 5:30 in the Science building. Astronomy lecture”

Your Phone: “I'll meet you there with take out, alright?”

The Lovely Kwon Soonyoung: “my angel leads me through these dark times once again (ToT)”

Your Phone: “stop with the crying emoticons or I'm not buying you dinner”

The Lovely Kwon Soonyoung: “SIR, YES SIR!”

You can’t help but let out a small giggle as you go back to playing solitaire on your phone.

Soonyoung’s gotta be the most beautifully ridiculous person you’ve ever met, but at least there’s never a dull moment when it comes to him.

A promise is a promise!! Which is why you find yourself sitting criss-cross on one of the benches outside the science building at about 5:30.

“What kind of person signs up for classes so late in the day,,,,,” you mumble to the bag of Chinese food in your lap.

“THIS GUY!!”, an all too familiar voice shouts from behind you.

You turn to glare at Soonyoung but find it difficult once you see his signature cheesy grin.

A brief walk and much too crowded elevator ride later, you and Soonyoung sit on his bed as you explain your idea to him (and break into the lo mein)

"You're frustrated because you can't express yourself, right?,” you ask.

"Exactly. I don't know what to do with myself if I'm not able to dance"

"That's exactly it- dance isn't the only form of self expression. There's singing, art, photography, scrapbooking, instruments, graffiti-"

"I can barely stand on these crutches and you want me spray painting under bridges,,,," Soonyoung complains.

"You know what I mean. There are other things we can do"

"We?,” he says with a playful smile.

"I- I didn't mean like,,,, you can do whatever you want on your own, you don't have to include me-"

"Hey! Hold up, I was just playing around. I want to spend time with you. Who else will make fun of me when my stick figures end up looking like a bunch of random lines?", he says.

"That's true. Alright, I'll be right back", you say, getting up and heading to the door.

"What? Where are you going?"

"I'm going to go get some glitter pens and paper from my desk, geez. Clingy much?"

"I can't help it, I just want to be with you,,,," he says jokingly, but you blush regardless.

That comment sends you flying out of the room before your heart beats out of your chest.

Being around Soonyoung goes from "we're comfortable friends" to "ahahaha yeah but I adore him" way too quickly to be able to cope properly.

Taking a moment to recover, you wander back across the hall with paper and pens in hand, plopping them down on Soonyoung’s bed.

The two of you spend the night doodling poor renditions of each other and drawing whatever comes to mind.

Honestly, you can’t imagine any other way you’d rather spend your time. With Soonyoung, you have the most fun and feel the most comfortable.

Your other friends are great, don’t get the wrong idea, but with Soonyoung there’s just something,,,, different.

Like if the people in your life were cupcakes, he’d be the one with sprinkles and edible glitter on top. He’s that special.

The next few days, and before you know it- weeks- go by with you and Soonyoung exploring new crafts and spending every free moment together.

Your usual table and friends that you eat lunch with have been bombarded with Soonyoung and his gang of hyper boys (Chan, Seokmin, Seungkwan, and the occasional Mingyu)

Luckily they all get along, and are enjoyable to be around. Even if the table is much more cramped and significantly louder than before.

Most of your time is spent with one another though, whether it be trying and hopelessly failing to fold paper cranes or even looking up YouTube videos of “How to Mime Like a Pro”

The more time you spend together, the more difficult it becomes to deny your feelings for him.

Especially because he’s prone to saying flirty things in such a deadpan tone that it’s hard to tell if he’s joking. But he does it so frequently that you’re pretty sure he has feelings with you. He doesn’t flirt with anyone else like that from what you’ve seen.

He may seem like an open book, but a lot of the time it’s hard to tell what he’s really thinking

So you do the Logical Person thing and vow to never talk about your feelings for fear of making it Weird

Which wasn’t too bad at first,,,, but after spending an ungodly amount of time together, you’re so smitten for him it’s all you can think about.

And you need to think about your GPA. Emotions are becoming genuinely distracting.

But alas, your persist out of sheer stubbornness (and fear of rejection)

One day, you’re doing your usual “out and about, creative task” with Soonyoung and it happens to be photography, one of your personal favorites.

The combination of doing things you love with the person you’re crushing hard on has you smiley the entire time, and Soonyoung notices.

“You’re in quite a good mood today? Something I should know about?”, he asks.

“Things seem to be falling into place, ya know? The beginning of the semester was so hectic but now that I’ve gotten into more of a routine, everything seems,,, okay. Better than okay, even”, you answer, snapping a few shots of Soonyoung dramatically posting on a bench.

“Yeah, I mean you didn’t have me at the beginning of the year”, Soonyoung comments nonchalantly as you almost drop your much-to-pricey camera.

“I,,,, I mean yeah,,, there’s other things too though”

“Another man? Hmm… so I’ve got competition, huh?”

Heart feeling like it’s gonna burst out of your throat, instead of amused and flattered with his usual flirty nature, you find yourself frustrated.

Unable to hide your change in mood, you lower the camera.

Soonyoung stands up off the bench and wobbles on over to you. Usually you’d try and meet him halfway but you’re too lost in thought. Perceptive as he is, of course he notices.

“Hey, are you okay? I’m just messing with you”, he says, probably trying to be comforting but it feels like you can’t breathe.

“Are you though? Just messing with me?”, you begin to snap, unable to keep how you really feel inside even a moment longer.

“What? I would never”

“Okay, then what’s your goal? To endlessly flirt with me but never actually make a move? What’s your end-game, here? To lead me on until you find someone better??”

“...there isn’t someone better. There isn’t anyone better”, he says softly, taking a few slow steps closer to you.

“Then do something about it”, you say quietly, looking up into his eyes with such ferocity it makes his own eyes widen.

“Fine! Maybe I will, then”, he snaps.

Soonyoung drops his crutches (practically throws them, honestly), swings one arm around your waist and pulls you towards him. More gently now, he cups your right cheek and kisses you with such passion that you kind of forget to breathe.

Much too quickly for your liking, he pulls away and lets you go. Neither of you say anything.

It’s the slightest bit awkward and a lot of things have been left unsaid,,,, but after that kiss you mostly get where he’s coming from

So you raise your camera and aim to take a photo of him. To your surprise, he bursts into laughter.

And so you do too.

For the next half hour or so, it becomes a game of camera tag essentially,

Soonyoung’s current state gives you an unfair advantage of catching up to him quite easily to try and snap unflattering photos of him.

At one point, he shuffles out of your sight. As you swing around a tree to continue your search, you end up crashing straight into him, sending both of you crashing to the ground.

If it weren’t for the autumn leaves, it probably would’ve hurt a lot more than it did.

“Oh my gosh, are you okay?”, you ask, laying on Soonyoung’s chest.

“Dude forget me- is the camera okay? It’s like 600 bucks!”, he says.

“I don’t care about that! You’re more important than a stupid camera”, you gripe and to your surprise, he starts blushing.

“I,,, didn’t realize I meant that much to you”

“More than 600 dollars?”

“No, I mean,,,,, I thought you were just spending time with me because you felt bad that I got myself injured”, he confesses.

“Wha- Soonyoung. We literally just kissed earlier today. I don’t kiss people out of pity”

Cue more blushing from both parties

“,,,well that’s good,,,, because I like you,,, and stuff”, he mumbles, making every effort to avoid eye contact (even though you’re literally On him).

“Well I like you too and stuff. So I’ll even consider helping you up”, you say, grinning so hard your cheeks muscles begin to ache.

The rest of the day with Soonyoung goes by mostly normally, not including the hand holding and even more blatant cheesy flirting.

You guys make it official a few days later after Soonyoung overthinks everything and texts you at 4 am on a Tuesday to Confirm that you actually wanna be his s/o

To which you reply “yea. now go to sleep loser<3”

Y’all have a very chill and sweet relationship.

You’re super duper comfortable, but like,,,, almost too comfortable in the eyes of your friends.

Soonyoung will let out the most mighty burp and instead of being grossed out, you just give him a score out of ten.

“Five”

“What do you mean five?! Did you hear that??”

“Five and a half. You can do better and you know it”

And after a little while, Soonyoung gets his cast off!!

He goes back to dancing, and every day you text him “be careful you f o o l” right before his classes. Because even though he’s healed, that isn’t gonna stop you from worrying.

You thought that once he got back to dancing, he might not wanna draw and take photos with you anymore, but honestly it’s the opposite.

He’ll barge into your dorm room and say something along the lines of “if I have to do one more pirouette I’m gonna do a stag leap off the roof of the student union” and then doodle various farm animals with you.

This happens more often than he’d like to admit, but you thoroughly enjoy his company regardless.

He also gets to vent while drawing, so that’s a plus, too. He’s the kind of guy that has trouble telling people when he’s feeling down, so you appreciate that he’ll talk to you about it.

Overall, y’all relationship is cute and goals, even if it began in the most unconventional way.

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makeste · 5 years ago

Text

BnHA Chapter 242: SANTA IS REAL

Previously on BnHA: We said farewell to the League of Pliff and were finally reunited with the kids of U.A., an institution which I would just like to point out is so diametrical to the League that they literally took the polar opposite route when choosing their name, and focused only on the acronym. I’m 100% sure U.A. doesn’t even stand for anything. Anyway, so Bakugou and Todoroki went on whirlwind press tour following their ch 219 antics, and the resulting interviews were so disastrous that Aizawa decided to bring in Mt. Lady to give the whole class a crash course in PR 101. Meanwhile All Might scoured Ancestry.com for info on the past users of OFA, and Rat Principal announced that U.A. was going to resume its internship program. This is great news for Deku, who’s been taking his sweet time mastering Blackwhip. Like, we’re not even talking baby steps here so much as little tiny flea steps. Kid’s going to need all the help he can get.

Today on BnHA: Horikoshi targets all of my weak points at once. The My OT3 Academia arc gets off to an incredible, award-winning start with a Christmas party and the announcement of Internships 2: This Time, it’s Compulsory. Highlights include: (1) Kaminari and Mina forcing Bakugou to accept the spirit of Christmas into his heart and soul, (2) Iida rocking a Santa beard, (3) Eri holding a giant sword, (4) Bakugou reminiscing about his internship with Best MIA Jeanist, specifically the part where Jeanist was all “A HERO’S NAME IS REALLY IMPORTANT AND SYMBOLIC AND MEANINGFUL, SO YOU NEED TO THINK VERY CAREFULLY ABOUT IT” and oh my fucking god, and lastly (5) Todoroki inviting Bakugou and Deku to come intern with him at the Endeavor Hero Agency (known for its famous business slogan: “Got Plot?”). It’s like I wished on seventeen different falling stars and they all came true at once. I still can’t even fucking process this. kfkdslgk.

(All comments are my unspoiled reactions from my initial readthrough of the chapter. I did a quick edit for grammar and clarity immediately afterward, and added a few ETAs in the process, but aside from that there are no changes.)

I just got like three excited-seeming asks (I haven’t actually read them yet) in rapidfire succession less than an hour ago, and my dashboard is now filling up with filtered “bnha spoilers” posts, so I took this as a sign that I should read the new chapter ASAP. oh gosh

(ETA:

(1) SAMEEEEEE, and (2) YEEEEEEEEP. listen I’m not religious you guys, but I said “oh my god” so much while reading this chapter that I wouldn’t be surprised if he or she finally answers and is like, “YES!? WHAT IS IT???”)

what new state-of-the-art tomfoolery will our intrepid heroes engage in this week. what novel hijinks will they commence. what frivolous escapades will they embark on this lovely Friday morn?

HOMGAAAHHHHHH

THE TITLE IS LITERALLY MY FEELINGS RN. MERRY FUCKING CHRISTMAS TO ME. YES GOD I LOVE IT. I’LL TAKE A DOZEN

okay. so today, September 6th, is officially Christmas. you heard the man and who am I to argue

so we’re opening with a teacher’s meeting! probably about the internships. or the fact that they’re all screwed. I don’t really know what their priorities are nowadays

okay yeah it’s about the internships. also Rat Principal is nested in Aizawa’s scarf for absolutely no reason, and Aizawa is disgruntled about it. heh. tomfoolery already and it’s only the first panel

oh shit, Nezu’s saying it’s now a government requirement. I got so surprised I actually forgot to call him RP

because ain’t nothing safer than hero internships. if the Basement arc taught us nothing else. it’s that

that was sarcasm in case that’s not coming across. this is clearly a baffling decision. but what are government committees for if not for making baffling decisions I guess

and now Midnight is coming to the same conclusion I was starting to wonder at

can someone please tell me what the PSC’s goals actually are, then? is this not the same group that recently changed the rules of the provisional license exam so that an even smaller percentage of people would pass? so do you want more heroes or fewer? which is it?

how do they cope with it? does anyone even have any idea?? it seems to me like they’re just throwing them to the wolves. we have this problem that we have absolutely no idea what to do about, oh I know, let’s toss a bunch of inexperienced kids at it. and hope that none of them gets murdered I guess

anyway so The Sheriff is speculating that the League must have been involved in the Deika situation, and he’s wondering why the PSC is trying so hard to keep it on the dl

oh yeah. friendly reminder that the PSC, thanks to Hawks, probably knows exactly how powerful Tomura and the League have recently become. so they know full well how shark-infested the waters are, and they’re making it mandatory for the kids to all take swimming lessons. nice

lol back when I was brainstorming ideas for future arcs, I seriously thought Horikoshi would have to go out of his way to come up with excuses for the kids to have future encounters with the League, because the school was so concerned with their safety that they wouldn’t allow them to leave the grounds except on rare occasions. well I sure got that one wrong. though to be fair, for once it isn’t U.A. that’s doing the child endangering here

(ETA: and actually, regardless of how insane it is, I do appreciate that when shit inevitably hits the fan again, at least it won’t be U.A.’s fault this time. I’d like to be able to continue rooting for them, and that can be difficult when they keep doing reckless things that needlessly put children in danger. at least this time they’re not the ones driving the Stupid Bus to Bad Decision School.)

a message to who? the League?? “we’re not scared of you”?? did they seriously not think of all the numerous ways this could backfire?

oh shit Aizawa even went and said the d-word

well there you have it. the government is drafting teenagers to risk their lives dealing with a crisis they won’t out-and-out admit they’re actually having. on today’s episode of “Oh Hero Society, You’ve Got Problems”

anyway so RP is making the admittedly good point that “we’re fucked and everyone is in terrible danger�� is hardly a new state of affairs for them these days, and so they’re all moving on. okay then. good talk. lol. gonna need my damn Christmas fluff after all of that

and also RP is mentioning some other mysterious new program to Aizawa too. I wonder what that could be

(ETA: oh yeah I almost forgot about this. thoughts??)

and now we’re cutting to “several days later” oh my god. it’s really happening. I need a moment here, I’m not even ready. gotta get all my Christmas headcanons lined up here. Satou baking cookies. Kaminari and Sero running around arm in arm singing “JINGLE BELLS, ALL MIGHT SMELLS” over and over at the top of their lungs until Bakugou screams at them to shut up. Mineta debating anyone who will listen over the merits of the song Baby It’s Cold Outside. the naturally Christmas-themed Todoroki savoring this, his time to shine

oh shit, we’re still with the fucking Rat Principal. for fuck’s sake

-- ooh but are they talking about the traitor??

will this put an end to the “Horikoshi forgot about it” rumors? several people have mentioned this to me here and there (sorry to everyone whose asks I still haven’t answered), but as far as I know, this was part of a fake interview with Horikoshi that was unfortunately circulated around as though it was the real deal. sometimes people are not cool and think it’s fun to take advantage of communities that are enthusiastic and trusting! always fact-check what you read on the internet just to be safe guys

anyway

so there definitely is one, then. got it

so the traitor is definitely a student in the hero class, then. got it

sob. I got an ask about the whole Kaminari traitor theory earlier this week, so I’m in the process of doing up a whole long post about that. but the cliff’s notes version is, it’s not him. it’s Hagakure. but I will actually go into detail in the post. it’s been a while since I’ve discussed the traitor thing in depth anyway

so RP is asking All Might if he’s coming back today, and All Might is immediately all “WHY, DID SOMETHING HAPPEN TO MY CHILD, OH GOD IS HE OKAY” which, omg. so much love for this man

and RP is like “geez relax” and OH MY GOD

[slaps on a paperboy cap and screeches at All Might in a bad cockney accent] TODAY, SIR?? WHY, IT’S CHRISTMAS DAY

OH MY GOD

I SPOT A GRINCH UP THERE AT THE TOP. SOMEONE NEEDS TO BE VISITED BY THREE GHOSTS FROM VARIOUS DIFFERENT TIME PERIODS

LITERALLY EVERY SINGLE CHILD (GREMLINS ASIDE) IS WEARING A SANTA CLAUS OUTFIT. DID U.A. JUST GIVE THESE OUT FOR FREE

AND IN THE TOP RIGHT NEXT TO SHOUJI, SATOU’S COOKIES! JUST AS THE PROPHECY FORETOLD

I SEE THEY HAVE THE REQUISITE KFC PLATTERS LIKE GOOD JAPANESE CITIZENS. WE SHOULD ADOPT THIS TRADITION HERE IN THE WEST TOO TBH

and last but not least, there are only nineteen children in this panel. it took me forever to figure out who was missing, but pretty sure it’s Iida. Iida where are you. clearly the traitor. certainly not off visiting his brother and the rest of his family, what kind of gullible fool do you take me for

looool

I love when the characters start to become self-aware that they’re the main characters in a story and that plot things keep happening to them at an unreasonable rate

oh my god they really are wearing the suits. it wasn’t just a title page gimmick like I half-wondered

ANSWER THE QUESTION, JIROU. INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW. do we even know where she did her first internship?? I suddenly desperately want to learn more about this

(ETA: she interned with Death Arms, the traffic cone-looking guy who notably chewed Deku out for trying to save Kacchan’s life in chapter one. Jirou my hope for you is that you find someone better this time around!)

also Tsuyu is observing that Momo doesn’t have a chair, and I honest-to-god was trying to count how much seating there was in the previous page. it seems to me like the common room got a lot bigger. it keeps adjusting to their needs like the room of requirement in Harry Potter

also does anyone else wish that Jirou would move her cup off of the armrest. IT’S GOING TO SPILL ffff :/ this is who I am at parties

oh shit wait, that was Iida with the beard?? I honestly thought that was Satou. well then Satou is the traitor. -- NOBODY TOUCH THOSE COOKIES!!

anyway so he’s all “well Deku not to bring up the elephant in the room but YOUR PREVIOUS MENTOR DIED A HORRIBLE DEATH so what’s your plan huh”

oh sweet god

listen, no offense to Centipeder, he seems like a really nice guy, but if I never see his repulsive face again I will count myself lucky

OH FOR FUCK’S

PLEASE GET RID OF IT IT IS CHRISTMAS!!! here I am trying to have a nice time and!!

god. and like, I feel bad, it’s not his fault he is A GIANT BUG and he has like, fucking mandibles and shit! but I can’t help the fact that my skin is trying to crawl off my body right now, and god but I can barely look at this panel long enough to read the dialogue sob why

(ETA: and now that I’ve forced myself to read it again, this doesn’t even make any sense lol. “we have too much work and not enough help, so we have to pass on you coming back to help us out. ...wait.”)

I want Iida to like. pat his lap and tell Deku in a big booming voice to cheer up and come sit and tell him what he wants for Christmas. not in a weird way you guys, come on. but just, he looks so forlorn. do you want Santa to bring you some cozy All Might socks

or wait, didn’t he want a PS Vita according to that one omake thing. what the fuck Deku. someone get this kid a Switch

anyway so Deku says that participation is mandatory this time, so the school will handle assignments if the kids aren’t able to find someone

meanwhile Kacchan is in the background accusing Mina of stalking him. I think she is trying to get him to wear his Santa outfit. doin’ god’s work

OH SHIT YOU GUYS I CLICKED TO THE NEXT PAGE, AND THIS. THIS IS MY CHRISTMAS OMFG

HORIKOSHI YOU DID GET MY LIST! BAKUGOU BEING TROLLED BY HIS SNEAKY DETERMINED FRIENDS AND MANHANDLED INTO A RIDICULOUS GETUP WHILST ANGSTING ABOUT BEST JEANIST BEING MISSING, YESSSSSS. IT’S SO SPECIFIC, I THOUGHT, “SURELY HE WON’T ACTUALLY DO IT,” BUT SANTA IS REAL, EVERYONE

HFMLSDKMGLKLKL!!!!!LKL:DSF

RED ALERT RED FUCKING ALERT PEOPLE!!! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!!! GET OUT OF THE WAY!!!!

AHHHHHHHHHH HOLY SHIT YOU GUYS

“MERRY CHRISTMAS MAKESTE HERE’S A WHOLE FUCKING CHAPTER ABOUT KACCHAN’S FUCKING HERO NAME COMPLETE WITH A BEST JEANIST META ON THE TOPIC” mother fucker I need to start reading these chapters with a goddamn life alert and a defibrillator on standby

“your name represents your wish.” ladies and gentlemen, introducing the new number one hero... Number One Hero!

heh. just kidding. “what do you want to become?” this, though. this right fucking here is why I’ve been dying to know what name he’ll actually choose. because it does reflect exactly what Jeanist is saying. whichever name he chooses will be an insight into who he is, and who he is trying to be

and this meta is making me rethink all my chapter 223 feels, and tbh now I’m back to thinking that it’s not going to be Ground Zero, unless he comes up with a cool reason for why that name ties in to the image of the person he wants to be (because right now, that particular name is tied more to the past than to the future). but oh my god, if he does choose the name Kacchan I am going to spontaneously combust. I will fucking do it. I will fucking die from being a dramatic excited bitch

(ETA: because. listen. there is one person who has always looked up to him in spite of everything and has always seen his potential. “in the end, in my mind, you’re the image of victory.” this, to me, is the meaning that the name “Kacchan” would have if he did choose it. it would symbolize him choosing to be his best self.)

don’t mind me I’m just stanning this child so fucking hard it hurts

(ETA: oh hey, and more feels on the reread because it looks like the reason he’s having this flashback is because he was planning to go back to Jeanist’s agency to do his real internship, and to show him how much he’s grown. but then The Thing happened. Hawks I just want to talk why won’t you answer my calls.)

Mina and Kaminari are the MVPs of this fucking chapter and I owe them my life omggggg. THEY’RE HERE TO SAVE CHRISTMAS

what are you thinking about there, Best Friend?

are you thinking about your daddy angst. penny for your thoughts

(ETA: “how can I cheer up my new best friend? I know, I’ll make him a lucrative job offer.” actually that’s a good way to cheer up just about anyone in this day and age, Shouto.)

okay, is there some sort of perverted context to Christmas that I’m totally missing here?? or is Mineta just really into the holiday spirit?

I feel like I missed something. eh

anyway Mr. Traitor himself is walking out now and HE’S BROUGHT THE CHRISTMAS GOOSE! or turkey! but goose sounded funnier

of all the things to be shocked about?? “SATOU CAN COOK!?!” like um yes hello you’ve been living with this guy for four months already? like the only thing more ridiculous than this would be, “TOKOYAMI IS A BIRD!?!”

(ETA: like I know baking and cooking are two different things, but in a manga they’re the same thing. fact.)

now someone is making a dramatic entrance! IS IT ERI I WILL DIE!!!! BRING IT

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

I HEREBY SWEAR FEALTY TO THIS PANEL OF AN ADORABLY AND FESTIVELY DRESSED ERI MIXING UP HOLIDAYS WHILE DADZAWA PATIENTLY CORRECTS HER. I WILL PROTECT IT WITH MY LIFE. SOMEONE PLEASE TELL ME WHAT DID I DO TO DESERVE THIS CHAPTER SO THAT I CAN GO DO IT SOME MORE AGAIN, OVER AND OVER AND OVER

Ochako is me

(ETA: DEMONS OUT! DEMONS IN!! THAT’S WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT!! YOU DO THE HOOOOOOOOKEY POKEY.)

and Kiri is out here asking the real questions, but sadly Aizawa says Mirio is spending Christmas with his own class. WELL FINE. I HOPE HE’S EXPERIENCING THE FOMO OF A LIFETIME. HOW DARE HE HAVE OTHER FRIENDS whatever I’m over it

sobbbbb

WELL HOW MANY FUCKING HOLIDAYS ARE THERE!? CAN SOMEONE HELP A GIRL OUT OR WHAT

oh my god I’m just going to reblog every single Dadzawa panel and none of you can stop me go on and try!!

impatiently waiting for fanart of Aizawa tucking Eri in and reading her A Visit from St. Nicholas. get on it, fandom

ohhhhhhhhh my goddddddd

I know it’s not a Christmas song, but I am this close to cranking up “I Gotta Feeling” by the fucking Black Eyed Peas. ya feel

do you guys see him sitting there next to Dadzawa. he finally gave in. Satou is feeding him chicken. his friends will not abandon him to be on the naughty list. motherfucker that’s it. I’m fucking doing it. fill up my cup. mazel tov

lol I don’t even want to click to any more pages because they’re all so happy and it won’t fucking last. :( noooo

good little boys and girls. noshing on that chicken. Kacchan continuing to be stalked by the Ghost of Christmas Friendship. Tokoyami what even is that. lol and is this their weird way of distributing random gifts. did Sero buy Jirou a scarf. did Deku buy Ochako a freaking All Might plush keychain!? FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, WHAT IS THAT THING AND WHY DOES ERI HAVE IT NOW AND WHY IS SHE MAKING THIS FACE

-- holy fuck, IT’S A SWORD. oh my god. THEY GAVE THE SEVEN YEAR OLD A FREAKING BUSTER SWORD AND SHE IS FEELING IT YESSSS THIS CHAPTER TRULY IS ALL MY DREAMS COME TRUE

“dad can I keep it.” Aizawa: [not even opening his eyes, all bundled up in his oogie boogie suit] “sure”

so now we’re cutting to afterwards and everyone’s cleaning up and Deku’s using his freakish super strength to lift heavy things impressively while Bakugou continues to stomp around with his hands shoved into his pockets waiting for someone to finally tell him he can go back upstairs

OH???

motherfucker. are you going to invite them to come intern with you and your dad!!?!?? I know I was all set on Bakugou interning with Miruko just last week, but I TELL YOU WHAT BITCHES, I’M FUCKING FLEXIBLE LIKE THAT

OH SHIT YOU GUYS!!!!

TODOROKI ARE YOU PLAYING THE OT3 SONG BECAUSE HONEY YOU KNOW THAT’S MY JAM, BRO

OH FUCKING SHIT YESSSSS

BAKUGOU DO YOU WANT TO INTERN WITH YOUR TWO BEST FRIENDS, EXCUSE ME, HATED ENEMIES. DEKU DO YOU WANT TO INTERN WITH YOUR TWO BEST FRIENDS. AND THE NUMBER ONE. WHO JUST SO HAPPENS TO BE BEST FRIENDS WITH THE NUMBER TWO. WHO JUST SO HAPPENS TO BE BEST FRIENDS WITH TODOROKI “I DIDN’T HAVE A FLASHBACK IN THE LAST ARC BECAUSE WE WERE SAVING IT FOR THIS ONE!” TOUYA? THAT’S RIGHT, IT’S BEST FRIENDS ALL THE WAY DOWN. OH MY GOD

it’s like Horikoshi made a long and detailed list of all of his regrets about the previous internship arc, and then said, “fuck it. do-over”

you guys. I’m all out of cans. we only have can’ts and cannots. I cannot

Christmas fluff. Dadzawa. Bakugou hero name meta. hints that the traitor plot will soon be relevant again. and the motherfucking OT3 of OT3s, MY SONS, MY THREE RESPLENDENT OFFSPRINGS, interning together at the motherfucking Endeavor Hero Agency because Todoroki is the sweetest most considerate angel, and because KNOCK KNOCK, IT’S ME THE PLOT, I’VE COME FOR YOU AGAIN AT LONG LAST AND I VOW TO NEVER LEAVE YOU ALONE AGAIN FROM THIS MOMENT ON

shit, y’all. I don’t know if it’s possible for an arc to become my favorite motherfucking arc only two chapters in, but damned if this sunnuvabitch ain’t trying

#bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha 242 #bakugou katsuki #midoriya izuku #todoroki shouto #eri (bnha)#class 1-a #best jeanist #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #makeste reads bnha #I gotta feelin'#that tonight's gonna be a good night #let's do it let's do it let's do it let's do it #JUMP OUT THAT SOFA #LET'S KICK IT OFF #lol you guys I am in a *good* freaking mood I tell you what

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anniebibananie · 5 years ago

Note

au where jaime is a photographer who wants brienne to model for him

tbh this got sort of wild. thank you for sending this in who KNEW this idea was sitting inside me.

There are, frankly, quite a few things Brienne finds offensive about Jaime Lannister. The list has been forming the last three days as he stalls her construction site for a photo shoot she wasn’t given an ounce of say in. The list itself has grown long and comprehensive.

One of the first reasons seems to be that the photo shoot concept doesn’t even make sense as far as she’s concerned. They’re all dressed in practically Cinderella-esque ball gowns and regal suits as they… mess up her construction site. It’s truthfully infuriating.

She just wants to get the building built, as she always does, and move onto the next project. Jaime Lannister is making that difficult as his demands grow larger (No, I know the crane is for professional use only, but I only want to borrow it for a minute), his photo shoot length keeps expanding, and the final thing. The real kicker.

“Tarth!” he calls as she walks by, plans under her arm as she’s trying to tell Podrick how he’s meant to divvy up the foundation tasks for the day. “You have to let me photograph you.”

Brienne thinks maybe for someone else this whole thing would be flattering, but she knows who she is, okay? She’s good at her job, hell she’s great at her job. Pretty much she’s been on a construction site her entire life, and by the time she’d hit 13 her father figured if she was gonna be around she might as well help. She knows the ins and outs, and she takes pride in her work.

She’s smart, funny if you appreciate a dry sort of candor that can be hard to understand, a good friend and loyal as all hell, but she isn’t pretty. She isn’t someone you ask to take a photo of for your weird, nonsensical photo shoot.

All she wants to do is tell him to fuck off, please and move right on, but she thinks Catelyn might have a problem with that. Brienne loves the matriarch of Stark Construction, Inc. so she doesn’t exactly want to upset her. Even if it means dealing with this highly inconvenient situation.

“No, thank you!” she calls back, a fake cheer evident in her voice. Another thing she’s not that good at? Covering up her feelings. She’s pretty much a completely open book, unfortunately. “Hurry up and get off my construction site.”

So, maybe she hasn’t really mastered any sense of being nice in dealing with this ridiculous joke of an experiment. Brienne doesn’t care if having a famous photographer use their construction company as a backdrop will get them more press. She’s not entirely convinced it’s actually going to help them land more big name clients.

“You will not elude me, Tarth.” He smiles at her in that wicked way that is definitely on her list of things she finds offensive about Jaime. It’s like he smiles as if he knows it wins people over, as if he thinks it’s some sort of magic spell to getting what he wants.

Maybe it works on other people, she isn’t sure, but she knows it doesn’t work on her.

When Brienne walks into her construction site the fourth day to see Jaime Lannister sitting in the chair behind her makeshift desk, she’s pretty sure she’s never been closer to murder than this moment.

“You were supposed to be gone,” she says, dropping her bag on the desk anyways.

If his legs, which are up on her desk may she add, just so happen to get hit with her work boots than that’s not her fault.

“You were supposed to model for me,” he replies. His eyes take their time looking over her, which she doesn’t understand because she’s in muddied jeans and a flannel, hair still wet from her morning shower.

“I get the joke, Jaime, but it’s gone on a bit long, don’t you think?” she falls into the only open chair besides her own because it’s way too early in the morning to be dealing with this without a cup of coffee, and she’s tired.

“You do know my first name.” He perks up at that, face looking genuinely happy in a way that isn’t manufactured. “I don’t get why you think there’s any joke about it. I’m a deadly serious man.”

“Yeah, I get that impression of you.” She rolls her eyes as her fingers twiddle in her lap. Really, she’s not sure why his presence is setting her on edge, but she can’t help but feel a little put off. “I’ve seen your models. I’m not a model.”

“Why?” he asks, and the only thing she finds tied to the word is curiosity.

“Lannister…” she trails over the word, elongating it so it’s apparent she switched back to his last name. Making clear she’s saying what’s to come next with complete factual honesty. “I’m not beautiful.”

He scoffs. “Since when has art had anything to do with being beautiful. Here’s the deal,” he says, leaning forward and capturing her eyes with his own.

Really, captured. She feels like she can’t look away. It’s intense and sort of terrifying. In this moment, she sort of does feel like art the way he’s looking at her.

“You take a single photograph for me, and I’ll disappear off your construction site today.”

“Deal.” She reaches across, not caring that her hands are forever scattered with dirt underneath the fingernails or aren’t painted and pretty compared to his clearly manicured ones. “To get you out of my life, I’d do just about anything.”

“Oh.” He smirks. “Who said anything about out of your life, Tarth. I just said off the construction site. I never make promises I can’t keep.”

She grits her teeth, hands clasped at her side, and keeps the frustration inside. She hates being teased, hates being treated like this by men like Jaime Lannister. He thinks he’s playing some new sort of joke she hasn’t heard before?

He’ll leave, she reminds herself. It calms her at least a little. “Let’s get this over with.”

He puts her in a ruffled skirt and a sleeveless flannel tucked into it, which seems not only ugly but also incredibly impractical. He allows her to stay in her work boots, which are worn and dirty and not at all classified as anything but practical.

Luckily, he agrees to let them do it somewhere her employees can’t see them (she’s pretty sure she’d never hear the end of it). Which leaves them in a back, unfinished room with minimal lighting. Jaime swears he can make it work (I can make anything work, darling).

She feels big and awkward. Usually, on the site, she feels like she was made for it all. It’s sort of her comfortable place, really.

His eyes, even behind a camera lens, make her feel bare.

“Just… take the picture already, won’t you?” She knows she sounds sort of frantic, which isn’t exactly a look she’s comfortable with in front of him, but she hates this.

“I only get one. I’m not going to waste it,” he replies, not bothering to pull away from the camera. With a huff, he pulls it back and looks over her. “Here. Sit.”

He pulls a flipped over bin near her and taps it, watching her with a raised brow until she follows the instruction and finally sits. It’s smaller than a normal chair, and she feels as if her legs are too long for the whole space. They stretch forward, the pale skin of her calves peaking out below the skirt.

“Can I adjust you, just a little?” he asks.

She nods.

His hands are gentle as he moves her, completely in his element. He adjusts one leg to rest up on a pile of wood, a hand to hold onto the bin behind her. He’s stretching her out, in a way, giving her the space to exist in the way she’s meant to.

“How’d you end up here?” he asks as he adjusts something on the camera.

She shrugs. “My dad used to be the site manager, and with no one to look after me when he was here I was just… always here, too. Got used to it, sort of like my family.”

Living construction site to construction site had certainly never done anything good for her reputation, and maybe if she had sought out popularity she would have separated herself from it more. But on the flip side she had always had a place to go where she was known, where she was given permission to be herself.

How many people had that? A place they knew their body and personality and strengths could be accepted, and so in turn she had just been left feeling bad for everyone else. Popularity be damned.

It doesn’t mean, though, that she isn’t still susceptible to the cruelty of others. She’s known Jaime Lannisters her whole life

Click.

She looks up, eyes wide and lips open in a small ‘o’. “You took it?”

He’s looking at the shot he captured, and his face is open and happy. There’s not a trace of humor there, and she stands up to go over and see.

There isn’t much light in the room, but the way Jaime had positioned her it seems almost as if it’s all on her. Her body is long and stretched, creating an arched line, and it’s like her body is somehow pulling the light in. Her face, caught in the moments after her admission, looks oddly peaceful.

“See,” he says, turning his stupid golden boy face toward her. “Art.”

She doesn’t know how to argue with that, so she doesn’t.

“Tarth!”

“I thought you were leaving,” she calls back. She’s three floors up, but there isn’t actually any wall up yet between the foundation beams so she can see him on the ground from here.

She moves toward the edge and stares him down.

“I am, see.” He points toward his car, which is shiny and new and somehow had managed to sit in this lot for three days without a single drop of dirt on it. “I want another shot.”

“I gave you one. One was the deal.”

He tilts his head to the side, and she can see his smirk form in its familiar place.

“Another shot with you. I’ve never had a muse before, it’s exhilarating.” He has a hand on his chest dramatically, somehow making his eyes sparkle, and Brienne hates him. She really truly, does.

Except she sort of doesn’t.

“This is just embarrassing. Stop yelling across my construction site, Jaime.” She scratches at the side of her face, doing her best to ignore the fact that she can hear Podrick and Gendry gossiping behind her. “Come back tomorrow, at the end of the day, and we’ll see what happens.”

“It’s a date,” he yells, already walking away as if he knows the chance might be fleeting.

“It is not a date!”

“A date,” he cheers, blowing the whole site a dramatic kiss as a few of them catcall and yell in excitement.

Brienne can’t help laughing so she lets herself. Even if she knows later this is going to be hell, or Jaime Lannister really is one of the most infuriating people she’s ever met.

It just so also happens… she might sort of like him. Hopefully, the two can cancel out.

#braime #brienne x jaime #jaime x brienne #braime au #braime fanfiction #annie writes #my fanfiction #prompts #braime prompt #this was #very fun #thank you for this #construction site brienne?#my new fave #ofhobbitsandwomen

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anonymoustalks · 5 years ago

Text

i'm like the laziest student there. and administratively, i'm not doing so hot at the church i'm interning at. so i've been asking myself what in the world it is that I really want to do

(6-20-20) You both like religion.

You: hi

Stranger: helloo

Stranger: how's it going

You: it's going fine

You: I'm not religious

Stranger: cool

Stranger: so what's your view on life. broad question i know

You: I thinkk there needs to be more love everywhere

Stranger: true

You: the world needs to be flooded with love

Stranger: were you religious before?

You: nope

Stranger: atheist? or something else?

You: I guess I'm kinda atheist

Stranger: why kind of?

You: I feel like atheist has the connotation of strongly rejecting the existence of god

You: whereas agnostic doesn't have that semblance of strong rejection

Stranger: yeah kinda

Stranger: so you feel in between?

You: well, I feel like I've leaned too much into science growing up

You: and there is no evidence suggesting or not suggesting the existence of god, therefore you can't reject it

Stranger: okay, fair enough

You: anyhow what's your view on life?

Stranger: i'm with you on the fact that there needs to be more love in the world. but i'd add that our definition of love needs more substance

Stranger: something needs to inform or understanding of love

Stranger: our*

You: mhm what do you mean by substance?

Stranger: weight, meaning, concreteness

You: ohh as in love is just too vague of a term?

Stranger: mm not exactly

Stranger: it is vague

Stranger: hm

Stranger: yeah i guess that is part of what i'm saying lol

You: lol

Stranger: we need to know what we mean by it

You: mhm I'd love to hear some examples of what you mean

Stranger: oh boy. i'm not prepared

Stranger: love is such a profound word

You: oh was it too heavy? ^^

Stranger: any questions about what life should be like is heavy haha

Stranger: at least for me

Stranger: they all got a lot of existential weight

You: mhm, well I guess I can start with what I mean, if that helps?

Stranger: hmm here's a start. at what point is an act not an act of love, or at what point is an act an act of love?

Stranger: or actually

Stranger: we could go back further. why love in the first place?

You: mhm I think love is a subjective feeling that a person feels for another

You: and many people define love for themselves in different ways

You: as for why love in the first place -- I think love is a natural human emotion

Stranger: but there's an objective side to love as well. it needs an element of selflessness in order to be love

You: mhm is there?

Stranger: greed and hate are also natural human emotions, but they're not something we should practice.

You: very true

Stranger: but love is different because it promotes corporate happiness

You: as for the selflessness, I think that a love a parent has for their child is commonly regarded as selfless, although a child's love for (idk their grandparent) isn't always perceived as selfless I think

Stranger: yeah, it's a different kind of love

You: are there any bad kinds of love?

Stranger: love for money?

You: lol

Stranger: i would call that lust

Stranger: a lust for money. lust is like a perversion of love

You: mhm

You: so I'm kind of a hippie

You: I think all (or most) expressions of love are pretty much good

You: although I think hippies have this perception of being sex-positive as well

Stranger: word

You: but I think offering love to people, no matter the kind, doesn't necessarily seem bad to me

Stranger: i have a Christian background

Stranger: but i try to be sympathetic (understanding) to other views. just to grow more as a human

You: mhm I think I'm really sympathetic to many christian values

You: but it's weird because I don't think I can really call myself christian

Stranger: offering love to others is great. i just have to make sure my understanding of love is informed by God

Stranger: christianity can get tricky with all the denominations and what not

Stranger: but once you learn to navigate the conversations, it gets better from there

You: mhm

Stranger: hmm

You: are you on this tag a lot?

Stranger: i actually just started using this tag yesterday. also just started chatting with strangers yesterday

You: ohh cool

You: did you have any good conversations?

Stranger: some interesting ones. all pleasant

You: it's nice that they're pleasant

Stranger: yeah

You: I like omegle because I get to learn about other ppl

Stranger: true. one of the reasons why i'm chatting here

You: yup

You: I think my best to like every person that I come across

Stranger: academics will make you arrogant if you're not careful, so i'm kind of using this platform to get better at understanding people

You: ahh are you like an academic?

Stranger: definitely not a scholar

Stranger: but i'm pursuing my masters in religion

You: ohh wow

Stranger: and majored in philosophy (doesn't really mean anything tbh)

You: that sounds really fancy haha

Stranger: it's just a lot of thinking and reading and being bored out of your mind

You: so when you study religion academically, do ppl normally focus on one religion?

You: or is it more comparative?

Stranger: hmm

Stranger: it's comparative to an extent

Stranger: so mainly i'm just studying reformed christianity

Stranger: but we'll interact with the quran. maybe read some articles written about/against the validity of the christian faith

You: right and is getting a masters in religion different from studying theology or going to a theological school?

Stranger: oohhh my bad

Stranger: i kept it general

Stranger: my masters is in divinity. i'm at a theological seminary

You: ahh okay

You: and are you thinking of becoming a pastor?

Stranger: i'll be honest, i've been asking myself that and have been struggling real hard cause of it lol

You: awww

You: what do most people do?

Stranger: most people will get ther masters in divinity to become pastors

You: mhm

You: do you need much of a degree to become a pastor?

Stranger: depends on what kind of church you'd pastor for

Stranger: lots of churches these days would want to know your credibility

You: mhm

Stranger: and make sure you don't come in with some hocus pocus shit

You: right

You: if this isn't too hard on you, if it okay if I ask why you have doubt about your career?

Stranger: a degree definitely helps

Stranger: oh yeah i'm open to questions

Stranger: my initial struggle was that i was torn between seminary and pursuing more of the arts

You: arts?

Stranger: yeah like dance, music, drawing

You: mhmm

Stranger: my passion has always been for the arts. but on the other hand, i have this strong conviction to learn more of the Bible and share it with other people particularly young inquisitive people

Stranger: learned that these two things aren't necessarily mutually exclusive

You: right

Stranger: so i went ahead and went to seminary

You: but you're still conflicted right now?

Stranger: but. i'm like the laziest student there. and administratively, i'm not doing so hot at the church i'm interning at. so i've been asking myself what in the world it is that I really want to do

You: ahh

You: that sounds difficult

Stranger: especially cause being a pastor isn't something i can put upon myself

You: hm what do you mean?

Stranger: i'm gonna use the language of Christian's for a second. you have to be "called" to ministry in order to do ministry

You: ahh

Stranger: i can't just casually pick it up as if it were a trade

You: you don't feel it?

Stranger: man idk. part of me feels like it's because i'm lazy and clouding my judgement.

You: right

Stranger: the other part of me just wants a good breather. just kinda want to live for myself for a second

You: it sounds really difficult

Stranger: not worry about anyone but me, just for a moment

You: is it overwhelming?

Stranger: but what excuse do i have when i've been fucking it up with my laziness?

Stranger: emotionally overwhelming

Stranger: since i internalize all my thoughts and try to process everything

Stranger: i've been holding out okay, but quarantine got me in my feels lol

You: mhm right yeah

You: it's a lot to go through

Stranger: anyway, that's a summary of my story

You: I want to say I support you but I don't know anything haha

Stranger: lol it's all good

You: maybe you need a morale boost?

Stranger: honestly, words of encouragement can go a long way

Stranger: maybe

You: like mean, it's easy to think we're not cut out for something

You: but having a little bit of support get push us there

You: and it's only at the end that we know that we're at someplace we're meant to be

Stranger: yeah amen to that

You: I mean, I assume that's what people mean when they refer to "my family's support" after a long road of things

You: but I think everyone experiences serious... even dramatic doubt at times

You: and sometimes you just need someone to tell you that you can do it

You: that you'll get there

Stranger: mhmm

You: sorry I don't want to spew too much haha ^^

Stranger: nah you're all good. i do it every sunday hahaaaa

Stranger: poor kids

You: haha

You: I think it's a really incredible profession (is that the right term) to be in

You: like it matters so much

Stranger: yeah it's a profession

Stranger: vocation w/e you wanna call it

You: so much responsibility

You: I guess to hold the people that you're guiding, right?

Stranger: yeah, there's a lot to it

Stranger: can be intimidating at times

You: mhm

Stranger: trying to make sure you're humble

Stranger: trying to love the little punks

You: yeah haha

Stranger: hoping to God your mind is in the right place for the sake of your group

You: right

Stranger: and the politics you gotta play with the older people in church. most exhausting part

You: mhmm the politics?

Stranger: some churches are a little two faced

You: meaning?

Stranger: kind of have to be socially adept to be aware of what might be going on between the elders of the church

Stranger: what the church might feel about the head pastor

Stranger: and what they might feel about you

You: right

You: it sounds really complicated

Stranger: and to be able to act accordingly. it's all real petty stuff. not all churches are like this

You: I think I saw a NYTimes article about being conflicted in a church ever since trump was elected

You: like about how some church goers switched to going to more conservative churchs

You: or things like that

You: idk if it's a common thing

Stranger: hm

Stranger: it's more common than it should be

Stranger: members leaving a church to go to another

Stranger: sometimes its justified, sometimes its a lack of commitment and care for the church

Stranger: but yeah, i think this is why i want to define love the way God would have us define it. If I can emulate that, I'm sure it'd help the church

You: mhm, I think I didn't totally understand your explanation haha ^^

Stranger: that's okay

Stranger: i'm just saying love is important and i need to be loving for the sake of the church

You: mhm

Stranger: anyway

Stranger: oh yeah

Stranger: i was curious earlier, what makes you reluctant to call yourself a christian?

You: oh I don't believe in god, really

You: it feels ungenuine for me to say a prayer when I don't believe in him per say

Stranger: makes sense

You: that said, I really support churches

You: I think it's a little bit sad when it feels like American is drifting less and less religious I guess?

You: or to be more specific, I guess it's just a revulsion towards religion

You: that I don't think is totally fair

Stranger: yeah, i feel that

You: because I think churches do great things for their communities

You: history aside

Stranger: haha yeah the history

Stranger: and the things we did in the name of god

You: yeah I hear that a lot -- "christianity is bad because the crusades"

Stranger: i'm sure you know, but it's such an unfair assessment of christianity

Stranger: since it was just evil men using that title to their advantage

You: yup ^^ or well I think all people are flawed

Stranger: yeah, the depravity of mankind

You: I think it means a lot to seek improvement for yourself

Stranger: yeah. not an easy task to do

Stranger: since you have to constantly point out where you are falling short

You: yup

You: sometimes I wonder if I should go looking for something like an interfaith church or something haha

Stranger: that would be interesting

You: idk what they're like at all though

Stranger: hmm

Stranger: this is probably my own biases speaking, but i'd imagine a lot of them would have trouble explaining their worldviews

You: mhm yeah I know nothing about them, so I can't comment

Stranger: i'm guessing they'd be very welcoming though

Stranger: given the "inter" aspect of the group

You: mhm inclusivity is one of my values

Stranger: it's so hard going into churches though

You: going into?

Stranger: like visiting them and trying be part of the community

You: ahh yeah

You: it sounds like a lot of effort

Stranger: for me personally, christian churches would not be my first thought for places to go to for healthy communities

Stranger: healthy, real, non-awkward communities

You: hm? how so?

Stranger: it's probably just because of my observation of churches around me though

Stranger: it's just that churches around me aren't really the greatest at welcoming outsiders

Stranger: they either overcompensate, or just can't interact

You: ahh

You: yeah I can't comment haha; I've never been in that kind of situation

Stranger: hm. as a pastor, i'm supposed to be encouraging you to find yourself a church, but here i am discouraging it lol

You: loool

You: ^^ it's okay, you mean well

Stranger: i mean. if you find a good church, you've found yourself a group of good people. if do decide to find a church, i wish you the best

You: mhm

You: do you find if I ask what denomination you're affiliated with?

Stranger: ask away

You: oh that was the question haha

Stranger: oh

Stranger: presbyterian

Stranger: i don't know if I want to be with the OPC or the PCA

Stranger: both presbyterians though

You: ahh are they very different?

Stranger: very slightly

Stranger: like it almost doesn't matter

You: would you say your church fits in the evangelical category or not really?

Stranger: hmm

Stranger: to be honest, i'm not all too sure what the evangelical category is

You: I was going to ask that haha

Stranger: i just know "evangelical" has been used as a broad term for christians

You: yeah there's an "evangelicalism" wikipedia article

You: it says that 1 in 4 christians in the world can be considered evangelica

You: was just curious if you had a more specific definition to it

Stranger: hm

Stranger: it's been used in more than one way i'm not sure how to define it

You: mhm okay

Stranger: probably not gonna say anything more than that so i don't spread misinformation

Stranger: i will say that they do seem very "spreading the message" oriented

You: ah okay ^^

You: I feel like I am clicking around a ton of random links now

You: what do you think of Liberal Christinaity?

You: or liberal theology

Stranger: oh liberal christianity

Stranger: oooh hot topic at my school. at least for the freshmen

You: ahh how so?

Stranger: some would say it's not christianity at all

Stranger: since it compromises some very important things about christianity

You: yup

You: what would you say is the majority view at your school?

Stranger: about liberal christianity?

Stranger: or in general

You: yup

Stranger: we're against it

You: mhm is that common at a seminal school?

Stranger: hmm

Stranger: some are more aware

Stranger: while others kind of just offer the view there

You: what do you mean by more aware?

Stranger: they might be aware of the discussions revolving around liberal theology

Stranger: but haven't been required to do the ground work to really see why or why not liberal theology is not christian theology

You: mhm

Stranger: while other seminaries (i can only think of one) are more open about liberal theology

Stranger: my school straight up rejects it

You: haha

Stranger: couple others in the area do too

You: is it a regional thing?

Stranger: hmm not really

Stranger: it just happens to be that professors in other schools studied at my school

Stranger: my school was founded as a response to liberal theology

You: ohhhh

You: wow

Stranger: the founder couldn't stay at his old seminary while at the same time teaching what he in his heart knew was wrong

Stranger: so he left

Stranger: and started a school with his own money

You: right

Stranger: took a few brilliant thinkers along with him

Stranger: boom

Stranger: the birth of a humble little seminary with a lot to say

You: yeah

You: I mean I know very little

You: all I know is that some churches are pro-lgbt and others aren't

Stranger: ah

Stranger: a complicated discussion for sure

You: are the pro-lgbt ones liberal christianity?

Stranger: it's usually that way

You: mhmm

Stranger: although, i don't know by how much

You: yeah I was curious about how much of it was geographic

You: like I'm from new england

You: and a lot of the churches in the big cities are pro-lgbt

You: like you can see it posted outside even if you don't go in

Stranger: ohh

Stranger: i guess geography has some correlation to it, but not a necessary correlation

Stranger: guess it has to do with culture

Stranger: and how certain regions are responding to cultural changes

You: mhm

Stranger: anyway, i should head out and get ready for tomorrow. it was awesome chatting with you

You: okay, have a great night!

Stranger: if you happen to look for a christian church

Stranger: try a presbyterian one. i mean, that's my "bias"

Stranger: but

You: haha okay ^^

Stranger: oh but if they're wack

Stranger: don't feel bad about moving on to the next

You: mhm alrightie

You: thanks for everything!

Stranger: thank you for listening!

Stranger: jesus loves you!

You: haha

Stranger: haha. peace

You: byebye!

You have disconnected.

#omegle #religion #love #seminary #christianity #presbyterian #pastor #liberal christianity #evangelical

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moldy-mold · 5 years ago

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Diary Post: My Thoughts and Processes on Making “Silent Strength” It’s lengthy, taking place over long period of time. Mainly written for my future-self to remember what I went through, but also for anyone who is curious. Now that the project is over, I can post without reservations. There are certain things I need to keep secret though, so if I’m vague I do so intentionally!

Basically, a lot of number-crunching, physical labor, and psychological labor.

It started off as kind of a joke tweet I made. I had enough content to make a Tales Of art book and people were receptive to it. So… I thought maybe I could go somewhere with this. A few weeks later, I suddenly had a lot of Kratos art. Like. 80% of all my Tales art was Kratos. It didn’t make sense to make a broad Tales Of book when really most of it was Kratos.

I hadn’t made a book since I was in college despite it being one of my favorite things to do. They were never art books, just some editorial design projects that totally didn’t count. This book… would be my first-ever art book.

Several times, I came close to having enough art to print a book - the last time was my large collection of Yusuke Kitagawa, but the quality wasn’t where I wanted. At that time, I was still experimenting with my iPad Pro and figuring out Procreate, so that was what I used him for.

NGL, I was pretty afraid of looking like a clown. After doing all this work, what if no one actually buys it? I was talking to some friends and they said they would buy it. It was enough for me. In the end, I’m creating something that I love. - The first thing I really wanted to work on was the cover. It needed to be epic but also mysterious (lol)… It was a good time to practice lighting and backgrounds. The cover had to be freaking Fantastic. I spent 3 days drawing nonstop. I was on vacation so I could spend full days just drawing. It was really intense. I would stop in the evenings to go for a run or else my legs would never get circulation again.

The hardest part was keeping it secret. I wanted to share it with the world right away bc I was so proud of it. Well, all I could do was show it to my parents and some close friends. They didn’t know who Kratos is, but it was obvious I was crazy about him.

Initially, I was doing some hand-lettering for the zine title instead of using a typeface. Tbh, I was so sure I was naming this zine “Blame Your Fate!” bc that is such an iconic line. But it just didn’t work with my cover, which looked… a little too serene for that. So… Silent Strength or Divine Strength? I asked around and got my answer.

But what size? All of my art has been on letter canvases. I wanted it to be large so you could see the details in the art. I’ll just start with that. - Luckily, I had all my Kratos-related art in one place. I started my InDesign file and threw everything in there just to see what it looked like. Man, I draw a lot of boxes… But I didn’t want them all next to each other. I also wanted to kinda organize it by the people Kratos hangs out with. There’s a Yuan section LOL… and a Lloyd section… and an Anna section. Idk, I tried to get some kind of order in there with a sprinkling of full spreads here and there to keep it fresh and interesting for the eyes.

I hadn’t worked with InDesign on such an intense level since college. I forgot all of the tips and tricks we learned in class. Spent some time reading on how to do things again… like adding page numbers. - I started drafting my pre-order form. It’s my first time making a google form like this. It’s kind of fun? I spent a long time on it, despite how simple it was. This was going to be my “Store” so it had to look and sound good. - My friend introduced me to charm-making. It seemed easy enough, and I wanted to give my zine more oomph. Besides, I’ve always wanted to make a charm.

I remember someone saying they’d buy a book of just the 4 Seraphim if it existed. I like them too and they lack art imo. In the end, I decided to do a polaroid charm. It’s not really that unique but I wanted Kratos to have actual friends to hang out with for once LOL.

She was going to do a group order to try to reduce the costs. I thought maybe 4 weeks would give me enough time. In the end she said I only have 2. I work well under pressure, so needless to say, I did make that deadline. I actually sketched the whole thing on the plane headed home. - After playing the game the second time, watching the OVA again, and reading “Offerings to a Star,” I have gained a real soft spot for Yuan. My friend once said, “If you weren’t stolen away by Kratos, you would be in love with Yuan.” Lol. I’ve been in a “Kratos and Yuan hanging out” mood lately, so of course I needed something good for the zine. They’re so cute together! Now… what is the bro-est thing I can draw?

I was currently in Florida for my friend’s wedding. I was friends with the groom and his best man since high school, so that makes it 10 years now. Seeing how they’re still friends after all this time, despite living in opposite sides of the country, was really moving to me. Of course, me being me, I could see Kratos and Yuan’s long friendship being similar to this, if they had gone to school together. I just had to draw it. - When I got back from vacation, I did some research on zine sizes. Mine was HUGE compared to others. I just didn’t quite realize it until I held a magazine in my hands. It really is huge…

I settled for a medium size. 7x9. I really liked how it looked. Petite but not too petite. Unfortunately resizing my book had messed up my artwork placement so I spent hours rearranging all the text and resizing my images. I found out afterwards that there’s a way to retain the format while changing the document size. Gee, that would have been helpful 4 hours ago.

Sadly, choosing a custom size booklet makes printing more expensive. But I wanted it badly enough that I’d be willing to pay for it. Letter size is just too large… - I decided to stop dragging my feet and post a promo. I just really needed a deadline for myself to get this all done before July ended. I’m happy it was well-received. A lot of people like Kratos huh…

Anyway, the pre-order is due in a week and I still don’t know what all the costs are yet. I need a physical proof ASAP to weigh at the post office! - Something possessed me one day to do another drawing. I don’t usually do painterly style (mainly because it’s really difficult and takes 10x longer) but I just REALLY wanted to push myself on this Final Piece to the zine. I wanted it to be… radiant. Almost religious. I worked on it obsessively. From breakfast to sundown. The only time I would stop was at 7pm to go running or else my legs would give out on me.

Call me crazy, but I would save my progress on my phone so I could examine it for errors during my warmup. I also spend an hour examining it for errors before going to bed. It’s a miracle I hadn’t dreamt of the painting. - I sent my files in on Sunday in hopes that they start working on it first thing on Monday…. and it HAPPENED! They finished before I even woke up. I think they start work at like 6am…

Of course, I drove over there as soon as I heard so I can get a look. “Please… please let the colors be okay,” I prayed as I was driving. I barely remember driving there, I was so lost in thought. It would be another long ordeal if I had to fix all the colors.

Thank the stars. The press proof looked BEAUTIFUL!! I was screaming to the client coordinator how much I loved it. I mean, I worried for a looooong time that everything would turn out too dark (it usually does) but it was PERFECT. I was especially worried about the cover, which contained a lot of yellow and I def did not want it to come out mustardy… But it was great in the end!

The press operator is a quiet man. He’s got a scary face and never smiles but I think he’s secretly nice. He has done a lot of favors for me in the past without my asking. He was the one to print, bind, and trim the book for me. Obviously he had to have seen what I was drawing. I wonder what he thought of it…? He walked away before I could express how happy and thankful was. He didn’t need to hear it. It was like he already knew. So cool…

I immediately took it to the post office to weigh it. I needed as much info as I could get and plus, I was dying to know for myself. This is the week I was supposed to open pre-orders and there was still a lot I needed to do. Take pictures, create mockups, pricing, etc.

NGL, all of these costs were building up fast. It was so darn expensive to make a zine while also keeping prices down. But I wanted so much more for my baby. Extra glossy cover, perfect binding!! I knew by the end of this, I probably wouldn’t make much money. It hurt a little, but I tried to think that it was for the greater good. Learning experience and all that. And creating something beautiful. Especially something beautiful of Kratos. - Pricing was really the hardest part. I pretty much threw profit out the window. However, I definitely did not want to be losing money. My dad and I had worked together to create a spreadsheet of expenses to make sure my head was above water. I followed it… loosely.

My friend came to talk to me at the right moment. I was sort of panicking at the prices. She made me realize I was thinking way too hard about it and gave me some tips based on her own experience. It really put my mind at ease talking to someone who understands my woes.

The truth of the matter is, the book is wonderfully made and has a lot of pages - countless hours of drawing. There is only so much I can do about pricing. It is what it is… I just needed to come to terms with my own worth. - Boy, what am I going to do once the zine is done? My friend says that I’ll be so over Kratos that I’ll stop drawing him (but the love remains). It’s like… all of the intense planning, working, struggling nonstop will just suddenly… stop. TBH, I’m running out of ideas. I spent it all on the zine. - Photoshoot today. I had to paint my nails purple for this occasion. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get the look I wanted in the apartment. It’s just so naked without props. I think I’ll take it to a cafe for some nicer backgrounds. I talked it over with my friend and decided to do a quick flip-through of the zine as a promotional video. I used the most professional video program I had on hand… Snapchat. It actually turned out pretty legit and of course I slapped stickers on there because it’s Snapchat.

I had to tape/hide some of the pages for the video because I wasn’t actually done with the drawings. I had the printers print it anyway so I could examine it for color accuracy.

I’m really stressed about pricing now. It turns out I had a lot more international fans than I anticipated. I wish I took notes on interest earlier in the game to cater to them. I had a list of “possible buyers” and I only just now decided to check where they live? Foolish.

I did another cost analysis on paper to figure out what my goal was to make up for the charms. Right now they’ve cost me a fortune for something that was supposed to be giveaway. Other things that rack up are packaging costs, PayPal fees, and some other supplies I needed for this project.

Maybe I shouldn’t have made it 40 pages. It is an impressive number, but no one is really paying for quantity. I think 25 is a better number lol. If I had done that, I could have had my super-gloss cover like I wanted. :’(

There is hope though. And I’ve placed it in the hands of my followers to come through for me. I think I’ll open pre-orders on Saturday or Sunday, depending on what I finish. - “Losing your cool will only lead to poor decisions.”  Thanks, Kratos twitter bot. You always know what to say.

I read this post today on what makes people buy zines. Very interesting!  https://twitter.com/andythelemon_/status/1141469048653398019 - Photoshoot part 2 today. My friend and I went to a cafe nearby that had some nice atmosphere in hopes of finding the right shots. I brought all of my Kratos merch just in case. I’m glad I did though, since the tables were pretty sparse and it was difficult to capture the backgrounds without getting a bunch of random people in it too.

I would have been the photographer, but I definitely wanted my hands in the shots. In a way, it was meaningful - to show that this was made by my own two hands. Plus, I wanted to depict natural interaction with the product. It made it feel real.

The photos were cute! I feared it would look a little amateurish with all the merch in there, but I think fun was what I was really going for, not “professional.” And plus the flip-through was a Snap anyway LOL. As long as the photos have good lighting and tasteful composition, you really can’t go wrong with “fun.”

Now that I’ve finished editing my photos, there really isn’t anything holding me back from opening pre-orders. I’ve pretty much come to terms with my pricing. If I fail to break even, I’ll just have to open commissions to try to make up for it. I was telling my friend on the way home, “I gave this zine EVERYTHING I had to give. So at the very least, I won’t be disappointed in myself.” No stone left unturned, no detail left unchecked. It was perfect according to my standards. I really love my zine okay?!

I thought I was crazy for not only choosing a small fandom, I narrowed it down even further by picking ONE GUY to make this zine about. She replied, “Even if it’s small, those people who love him now must be EXTREMELY LOYAL to still be in love with a character from a 15-year-old game. All of them will want your zine.” - I went to bed that night with the intention of making the pre-order post live in the morning. I was so nervous I couldn’t sleep. I was wide awake until at least 5 or 6 am. Luckily, I was able to doze off for a an hour or two before I would shake myself awake again. It was a mixture of anxiety and excitement. It was the moment of truth - to see if all my effort made a difference. Was it going to sell? - The pre-order post looked really freaking good. I’ll give it that. I even made a YT account just to post that darn preview video on tumblr lol. It was definitely fun seeing everyone’s excitement and we all just freaked out together.

I broke even! That’s what really matters. Honestly at this point, I couldn’t care less if I made profit or not. I now know how much people really like the zine and that alone made me so happy I could die.

I was particularly fascinated at Google Form’s ability to transfer all the data collected into a spreadsheet. That is extremely helpful. I spent hours organizing the data. It was really fun…?! Now I can tell who gets invoiced and who paid and separate them into categories. IT’S FANTASTIC!

Stayed up late researching how much adding tracking could be. I had a slight panic attack thinking “what if my books got lost in transit?” It would really hurt me to have to reprint books and ship them again. And then I realized I will need to fill out customs forms for all international orders. Yikes, I’m gonna be living at the post office lol. You can print them out at home if you fill out the form online but there are still some things I’m uncertain about. I may visit the post office later this week to ask all my questions. - This morning I sent out everyone’s invoices. I gave the international people the option to purchase tracking. It’s expensive… but I need to provide that option just in case.

I received a nice message from someone who offered to advertise for me on Instagram. Of course, I gave them the OK! I’m really so shocked they would do that… They said the liked the zine so much it deserved more exposure. My dude… I love you… T_T

I thought about advertising on insta myself earlier in the week. For some reason I felt it was going to be fruitless since I don’t have an art account on there with a following. So, I gave up on the idea. Hey it worked out in the end.

I’ve never been so organized in my entire life. I want this zine experience to be perfect. The people have placed their trust in me, so I cannot mess up. - Edited some pages in the zine. The typography must be perfect… It made me think back to undergrad days in graphic design school. Man, if only I can present this as a project - photos, videos, matching accessories and all. I’d probably get an A lol. - Orders slow down after the first day. The rest is just about getting new people to see the post and giving other people more time to decide.

I finished my Kratos stationery today. It’s going to be so cute. My friend said people would want to buy it but I don’t have it in me to do more products at this time. Plus, I want it to be a surprise.

Why make stationery? Well my real job (no, I don’t draw Kratos all day for a living) is a stationery designer! It would feel really wrong not to put into practice what etiquette I’ve learned in this business. Plus, I felt that it was necessary to properly thank all those who ordered. And it’s fun?

I started designing the shipping labels for the domestic orders since I don’t need to fill out a customs form for those. I wish I had sticker labels but… it’s okay. It will still look good in the end. - Every so often, I would get nervous at the amount of money I’m responsible for. Perhaps, if I had a store with existing products I wouldn’t feel this way, but the fact that the books haven’t been printed yet made me scared. I know, I need this money to even print the books in the first place, but I’m just baffled at my customers’ trust in almost a total stranger. I felt pressured that I could not let them down and lose that trust. It probably didn’t help that I watched a documentary on Elizabeth Holmes (Theranos) that day.

So, I prayed every single day that nothing would go wrong. I’d check my spreadsheet constantly for any mistakes. It was a little obsessive, but I would rather be that than overlook something.

I began collecting cardboard boxes. My plan was to cut them up to protect the books during transit. I would have preferred hard envelopes but they were a bit pricey. If I have to do more work myself, so be it.

I’ve been getting nice DMs from some buyers. I think my invoice due date scared them… I really did not intend to be strict, but I wanted people to pay now if they can rather than forget about it. This happens at work all the time, so the best thing to do is have it due immediately. It would not look good to have to wait on stragglers when I close pre-orders, so I’ll probably reach out when there is one week left. - My Kratos stationery arrived! Aww it is SO CUTE!!! My babies… I have a lot of notes to write so I got started right away. It’s going to be a lot of work trying to come up with creative ways to say “thank you,” but I don’t mind. I said I was going to put my all into the zine experience so I will.

At long last, the charm order has been put in motion. My friend said it could take a while… I hope it won’t be longer than 3 weeks. I really do not want to keep everyone waiting. I may ship out the ones who did not win a charm first. I mean, there is no reason to make those guys wait. I should ask the charm winners if they still want to wait and see if anyone wants to give it up for someone else who is more patient. Hm. - I finally stopped by the post office today to collect customs forms. I have my work cut out for me since I’m filling all of them in by hand. D:

I’m not used to international addresses so I think I’ll ask for help in checking them for spelling errors and typos. Heaven forbid I mess up on the very last part of the zine experience.

In my nervousness, I decided to reach out about invoices early on. If someone wanted to cancel, I would rather find out sooner rather than later. Everyone was really nice about paying and thank goodness they’re still excited.

Feeling kind of overwhelmed by all the things I need to do, but it’s a good thing. If I don’t know what to do, I can either: cut cardboard, write letters, type shipping labels, draw more Kratos for a… possible volume 2? Someone I talked to today already said they’ll pre-order a second book if I make one. Omg I think I’ll die. But we’ll see. It’s just a joke right now haha… - Preorders end today. I had another nightmare last night that the books could not be printed properly and there was nothing I could do. Why do I keep getting nightmares about the zine! I had one a few days before about people canceling their orders when I asked them about the invoices. I’ll take these dreams with a grain of salt. I’m probably just stressed/worried but everything is going to be okay. When I open my eyes, nothing is on fire.

I received my final proof a few days ago. With all of the artwork completed and changes applied. The book looks good, no doubt about it. There was only one thing I was nit-picky about but it can be fixed. The press operator offered to print another book for me to inspect. I’ll go see it on Monday and then submit the rest of the orders. I also asked to to have a meeting with the press operator so we are on the same page. It would be beneficial to have an understanding of how my book is made so that I may be more helpful to him.

I spent the day preparing shipping labels. I hate to admit, I am not too familiar with the format international addresses so I had an address validator open as I was typing them in. For the most part, everyone was helpful in already formatting their addresses in the preorder form! - My parents called me the day after preorders were closed. They wanted to say congratulations on my success. No one thought it would do this well. I couldn’t be offended by that since I was also guilty of it. I’m happy though. It feels like my love spread across the world and was contagious.

I tried to think of what advice I would give to others. Obviously, genuine love for the subject and hard work were a necessity. But it would be good to consider value. If I were selling it at this price, I had to make sure my pieces and presentation looked the part. I ask myself, if someone else sold it, would I buy it?

I sent out messages to all the charm winners in the morning. I wanted to apologize profusely at the ridiculous amount of time it has taken to get them made. But no, I’ve got to stop apologizing. I stated the facts and left it at that. Everyone was really kind and patient⁠—to which I was thankful for. I don’t usually get that when I’m working customer service. - All the books were done printing in one day. Wow! I went to pick it up immediately of course. I can’t believe all of this is coming to an end. I finished preparing the mailers. All that was left was to stuff and seal the domestic orders. They were the easiest to do so I’m going to ship those first. The rest will need customs forms, which I haven’t filled out just yet. It’s going to be a while for those…

The mailers were quite sturdy with the cardboard cutouts I slipped in them. I have nothing to worry about. I’m sure my babies will be okay! - I took a whole box of domestic orders to the post office today. Wasn’t sure what to expect. But my clerk had to input every single address one at a time while I checked for errors. Omg, why are the post office shipping labels SO HUGE. I thought it was going to be half the size. And they’re ruining my designer labels! Slight panic but oh well…

I had a long long line behind me. I’m so sorry, people. Luckily there were two clerks or I would be really sweating. Despite my intimidating box of zines, the clerk and I had Synergy and we managed to ship all of these in about 15 minutes. I received a very long receipt and quite the bill lol. - Shipped the international orders today. I was kind of a mess since I had no idea what to do. I keep wondering if I can help speed up the process in any way but I don’t think I have the option to ship first-class at home.

When shipping international, keep the post office copy of the customs forms together with the package since they use that to type the address info into the system. Also, we get free tracking, which I did not know about. The other clerk told me that we did not get tracking for international first-class but I guess he was misinformed. It’s good to know for next time. - The charms finally arrived!! And THEY’RE HOLOGRAPHIC?! It was pretty awesome, but it makes picture-taking kind of difficult!! Anyway, I was a tiny bit disgruntled that they got my order incorrect, and I even asked for a reprint. But they said no, so I left it at that. Besides, it seems the holographic effect was well-received.

I like this size that I made. It’s really cute! Larger than your normal charm but not too huge. It’s almost like an Instax photo! - There was one customer who I found lives near me! I asked her if she wanted me to hand-deliver it to her in a public setting and she agreed (to my amazement). We finally met a few days ago and talked for hours and hours lol! I’m glad to have finally made a new friend here in this town but of course she’s moving away in two weeks. <:��3

We’re going to meet again to make the most of her time left. - I shipped the rest of the orders on the following Monday. I HAD to get these out. The poor guys have been waiting over a month! I think I picked a bad time to go because I had a huge line behind me and only one guy working. People in line were getting antsy or mad. The clerk at the other post office was super fast but not this guy…

For some reason shipping to the UK and Japan nearly doubled in price since the last time I checked. RIP. T_T - Omg I finally made a mistake. I wrote a letter to the wrong person. And the contents of that letter are too personalized!!! I am dying of embarrassment!!!!! Screams!! Had to apologize to both customers too!!! Luckily they were good sports about it but I’m seriously kicking myself AAAAAAAA!!!! - The most rewarding part after sending all my babies away is seeing the commentary on my project. It is so so nice to receive positive feedback. People are happy! Happy with something I created out of thin air. Everything was worth it 1000 times over. I can die happy!

I’m especially thankful to those who show understanding for how much effort went into it. It definitely wasn’t easy and I poured way too many hours into it… not that I regret that.

I don’t want to jump the gun but I would really love to make a volume 2. Because I know I can do better than last time. New and improved art and comics! But we’ll see if I make enough pieces for another book. I was against printing 40 pages before but now I kind of like it. It feels more worth it than a 25-page zine. If i’m going though so much effort, might as well bring in the entire package.

I’ll be printing more of this volume for Aselia Con 2020. Now I know people will appreciate it.

#diary

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listoriented · 5 years ago

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“B”een There

done that.

So here ends my time playing games that start with the letter B. Thanks for reading! It's been three years plus change. Back in early 2016 when I pondered how the world might look when I finished another letter, I never imagined, even from that unsteady ground, just quite how different things would become (in terms of global political-psychological landscape) - though really all the top-down drama happened that year, and everything since then has just felt like the normalisation and ratification of it, this splintered-systemic madness, the post-parody, post-fake fake-real. Or whatever you want to call it.

Nor did I imagine that it would take me so long. But, life. I went overseas, moved houses, moved cities, went through a breakup, started a PhD, rode a bike, read some books, faffed around. I anxiously played hundreds of hours of Rocket League; I ticked off every achievement in Mini Metro; I spent too long trying to remember what I was doing in Stardew Valley. I reviewed some games over at Gamecloud, which wrapped up earlier this year. Time accumulated in a predictable but upsetting way.

Beloved demigod of gaming blogs RPS went through a full staff turnover, pretty much. It's weird, man. VR happened but remains a bit beyond my periphery, even if it gets brought up from time to time in the groupchat. Battle Royale games weren't a thing a few years ago, then they became everything, now they are still a big deal, the biggest deal, or maybe a large-medium deal, or just a large part of the background - I honestly don’t know how to quantify this. Steam's ubiquity has slipped markedly, through a mixture of managed negligence and increasingly aggressive competition. The inherent limitations of being bound to one commercial distribution system on one hardware platform have always been at the back of my mind, but I do increasingly wonder if my time would be better spent on a project that dug through other veins. The answer is, for now, that sometimes you've gotten keep doing the thing you said you were gonna do, if no other reason than because.

Tumblr, our home since 2016, has gone through its own shifts and controversies in this time too. They no longer seem to allow unencoded links (so no-one ever knows what they’re clicking on), it became less friendly to adult content, and as of today apparently Tumblr has been sold on to wordpress. I don’t really know the implications of this last thing.

Some Maths

I played fifty one games beginning with B. Of the forty-eight that I'd deem to have some notional metric of completability, twenty-four of those I (often in the most flexible sense possible), "completed". 50%: Not as bad as I'd expected, TBH, especially as that includes a couple of painful six/seven game streaks where I didn't finish anything.

Ceremonious Award Giving for Games Starting with ‘B’

It is always hard to pick favourites, and from any given vantage point they tend to change. Nevertheless, an act of self-canonisation is in order, as is tradition. Given the nature of this project, I do put a lot of value in titles that surprise me in one way or another. Batman: Arkham Asylum and Bulletstorm were equal Best Goofy Action surprises (it pays having low expectations, sometimes), with an honourable mention to Brigador. The Banner Saga was the most surprisingly thought provoking. Davey Wreden’s autoficitive The Beginners Guide gets the Anodyne Prize for Most Enjoyably Difficult To Put In A Box.

Botanicula was probably my Favourite (total) Revisit, or the best non-surprise.

B was a letter characterised by a few high-budget action series (of which my favourite part was Bioshock 2 (Minerva's Den)), held up by substrate of modest indie things of varying impact. My attention span was all over the place, too. We had a lot of short forays with little to say, but there was there were also more than a few wordier attempts at thought. I'm bad at judging what makes "good" writing, particularly of my own, which I oscillate between accepting and loathing, but I can tell you which games/posts took the cake for length and effort: Baldur's Gate for longest playtime; Burnout: Paradise for highest word-count (and longest gestation period); Battleblock Theater for the most time-consuming method of putting a post together; The Beginners Guide for the most times played through a game in order to try and parse it; Braid for the most external reading and referencing.

I think the most absurdly Expensive-at-purchase game here was Battlefield: Bad Company 2, which also gets the newly thought of I Can’t Believe It Still Has Functioning Online Multiplayer prize. I'm handing the Most Disappointing badge to Broken Age, despite (or because of) already having played it a bunch before attempting it for the list, though Before the Echo (fka Sequence) takes the Aquanox Award for game I inexplicably sunk the most time on trying to finish despite not really enjoying. I hold the Most Contempt for Breach & Clear. Black Mirror had the Worst Voice Acting, and it was also the Oldest Game here (2003), at least in terms of no-significant-alterations though depending on how you want to factor in remasters and remakes, you might alternatively give that prize to Broken Sword (1996) or Bionic Commando Rearmed (1988). Blueberry Garden was Purchased Most Long Ago, in 2009, though the Aquaria Trophy for Longest Unplayed Incumbent goes to Bob Came in Pieces, which I'd bought in 2010 then never installed (it's pretty good, it turns out!). However, the special Emotional Closure Award goes to Baldur's Gate, with which I already had nearly two decades of fond, scattered memories, before finally finishing for the first time during this project.

More Maths

When I started this letter I had 438 games in my steam library. Right now I have 1049 games, which is almost exactly three times the amount I had when I started this blog in October 2015 (~350). I've played 70 games total. A further 57 entered the list behind the marker, into the exempt scorched land of the already visited alphabet, which means we're at 127/1049 = 12.11% of the way through the list, which is a +7% increase on where we were at three years ago. That's not nothing. But at 2.5% per year, it's not a lot. Globally, the average human lifespan is 68 years.

Terrifying Implications For the Future

The maths says that the current terms aren't working, that I'm drowning in a heady mixture of my own relentless consumerism, hesitation, and procrastination from this task which is itself an avenue of procrastination - that at this rate I will probably die (or certainly give up) before even getting to the halfway point, and that we can't continue like this in good faith.

So I'm going to get a bit reckless, even change the rules slightly, in order to try and breathe new life into this thing. All games must still be played for at least an hour - yes, that one stands. But. BUT. I'm setting a hard time limit of one week, from one game to the next, post to post. For now at least. No more lofty words about striving to "finish" games as a rule rather than exception. It's quantity over quality (pretending for a second that quality was ever a concern) from here on out, business over pleasure, irreverence over lengthy considerations, scrapbooking over essays.

On the bright side, this means I can have a weekly posting schedule. Let's say Tuesdays? Tuesdays seem like a good day for posting.

A couple of other things:

List Oriented now has a ko-fi tip jar, just in case you, dear reader, enjoy this blog - or did before it went completely silent for the first half of this year - and feel like helping to pay for my caffeine addiction and/or encouraging me to keep going with this task.

Another thing I want to do is compile a list of links to good places for games-writing and other things that I like, because a) I feel like such a page would be helpful for me to keep a record, even if for nobody else; b) my conception of the internet is permanently stuck in 2008 but also; c) it's hard to remember where to look for good things on the internet, sometimes, these days, given our habitual over-reliance on various platforms to direct us to CONTENT. But one thing I want to include is a list of other places where people are doing this kind of list-oriented project thing. I remember a bunch of them sprung up a couple of years back when we gained a brief and relative flash of notoriety, though I’m not sure how many stuck at it. If you yourself are doing one, or you’re aware of any others who are, Let Me Know!

Anyway, looking ahead. C. An obtuse but interesting letter. Not so many of the big-hitters. A buuuuunch of city builders and management games, a few influential and/or janky platformers, more than a handful of puzzlers, some famed RTS series, a heap of question marks, a coupla interesting art things and a few uh *squints* Shooting Game. Happily for me, a lot of titles that I've not yet gotten round to giving a go, so this will be all...fresh.

I have a vague memory from when I got through A, of looking ahead to C and thinking at least it was a much more compact section than B, at the time, some light on the other side of what I'd already known would be a slog. But here we are three years later, and now there's fifty seven such games beginning with C, so there goes that thought. You'd think, having identified the consumerist-excess problem that catalysed this stupid thing, I would have stopped buying game bundles at some point, made this ridiculous project a bit easier for myself, a little more plausible for everyone else.

But, we must continue. It's a new day. A new letter. A new schedule.

The way is long and it is littered with videogames.

above: “celebrating” my “achievements” with a ‘b’eer

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the-amaryka · 6 years ago

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Unpopular Opinion: I enjoyed season 8

So first, I’m mostly doing this to sort out my own feelings, but I DO think there are some things worth considering here.

To be clear, Enjoying something and thinking that something was perfect are different. I enjoy plenty of things that are garbage and I do think this season had it’s fair share of flaws, but it’s not nearly as awful as some of ya’ll are ripping into it over. In addition, regardless of if it is bad or not harassment of the creators is never justified. EVER. So if you feel the need to take out your frustrations on the cast/crew stop what you are doing then DON’T.

Sorry in advance if you’re on mobile cuz this is a long one under the read more.

Why I was able to enjoy it:

Three major things I always keep in mind going into a new season:

1. Don’t watch it FOR the ship, enjoy the show for what it is. I think the primary thing that has allowed me to enjoy each season is I try to watch it without shipping goggles. At the end of the day, shipping is fun but it is for fandom and not the reason I’m watching the show, especially a show made for 7 year old boys.

2. I (along with most of the fandom on this website) am not the target audience for this show. Voltron may be an abnormally good kids show, but it is still a kids show. I have never walked into a season thinking that it is content made for me, and the things that are important to me just aren’t important enough to 7 year olds to have the time I want spent on them. I have to be okay with that because as much as I would love to have a whole episode of Shiro really struggling with what it means to be a leader, and the weight of Adam’s sacrifice, the 7 year old this show was made for is going to be bored shitless and decide “I don’t want that Voltron toy for my birthday after all.” So yeah, that is going to change the choices the crew makes when they create these episodes.

3. This is a reboot. Several different companies have BIG stakes in Voltron. Things like LGBT rep are only going to go as far as ONE important old white man who thinks (insert your fave here) is straight. Anybody who has followed me for more than 3 seconds knows I ship Sheith, but knowing how the entertainment industry works changed how I thought the direction of the series was going from day one. If it was so hard for them to get even ambiguous ‘Takashi, how much do I mean to you’ when both Shiro and Adam are legally original characters, there is NO WAY the powers that be will allow them to gay up big names in the franchise like Keith or Lance. For that reason I never expected a canon gay relationship between any of the main characters. No Sheith, no Klance, no Pallura, no Hance. I do believe it was important to the creators and they did they absolute best with what they had, but ultimately it was not their decision and a lot of ya’ll need to stop acting like you are performing some kind of holy service by harassing them about it. They did their jobs as best they could and the fandom was pressuring them the whole time to make promises they didn’t know if they could keep.

For these reasons I was able to enjoy the new season for what it was: a reboot aimed toward children that I shouldn’t expect a primary romantic plot out of. And honestly? Thats what I got. The only big romantic plot revolved around Lance and Allura and even that was only a handful of scenes. I think the main problem with this fandom has always been people putting unrealistic expectations on a show that wasn’t aimed at them. Why people chose to put all of their expectation eggs in the Voltron basket specifically is beyond me, and frankly a bit unfair to the people who made it. But we don’t have to get into that right now.

Things that I enjoyed:

1. Hunk is best boy. I loved his and Lance's friendship shining through and when he turned into team mom. Some highlight include: “It’s happening tonight, young man!” “I’m sorry I yelled at you. I’ll make you dog treats later.” When he made that Altean dessert because he is so sweet and knows how to bring people together. What a star, what a diplomat, what a fine, fine man. 2. BaBy LoToR 3. Seeing all the paladins in their under armor. I would feel robbed because Shiro was left out but the entire series has been Shiro fan service so I’m not even mad. 4. VERONICA AND AXCA BONDING? NICE. Didn’t expect to ship them? I do. Nice. 5. Everything about Day Fourty-Seven. A filler episode I genuinely enjoyed. MY only wish is we could have gotten Keith and Krolia in an interview together and she went out of her way to embarrass him like “while we were in the Quantum Abyss-” “Mom, why are you doing this to me?” “I have 20 years of Mothering to catch up on, young man.” 6. Shiro feeling like a bad ass and looking cool during the arm wrestling competition. What a good. 7. This was really Allura’s season, wow, what a queen. 8. Keith giving Lance a bunch of pep talks and opening up to become not only a good leader but a good friend. 9. Keith YELLING at the Zarkon mech because he had leadership responsibility feels. 10. I did not expect to have FEELINGS over seeing young Zarkon. 11. Honerva’s motivations were honestly....so honest. So realistically human, you know? It seems so fitting that this whole thing began with a rift into another reality, and a broken family. And it ended with a rift into another reality, and that family finally being able to be at peace. That is the theme that has been following us form the beginning: family. And even the final villain just wanted to fix the damage that had been done to hers. Though I do feel like her turnaround was a little quick, I can forgive it for kinds show reasons. 12. Allura getting to hug Alfor again. 13. Lance getting the stamp of approval from the dad. 14. Speaking of which, even I thought the Allurance scenes were pretty cute despite not being a huge fan of the ship. 15. The character development that is evident. If you compare all these characters to who they were in E1S1 they are all vastly different. The only exception to this is Coran, though I do feel like Allura’s is mostly internal and she has a way of conducting herself that can make it difficult to perceive. 16. I am VERY SAD about Allura dying...but you know what? I think this ending actually suited her. I don’t think she would be satisfied withotu making a grand reality wide sacrifice. She restored Altea, and returned into the fabric of space-time itself with her family. This has been being foreshadowed since Season 1 to be honest. She is always taking risks and wanting to keep moving and bettering things. She is perfect and we don’t deserve her and in my heart she is the goddess of reality itself. 17. The scene where the lions all came to life and flew away, and then that lovely art of them going into the rift. I really think they went back to Allura, and the next time the Universe needs Voltron, it will be her spirit leading the way. And honestly? I don’t think she would want it any other way. 18. The MFE Pilots grew on me... 19. MMMMMBIG ROBOT PRETTY 20. We got Shiro and the rest of the paladins piloting all together again. 21. ALMOST Galra Emperor Keith.

The things I didn’t think were great:

1. What the fuck happened to Ezor’s voice? She only said one word and I thought she was dying? 2. Keith and Shiro like...didn’t even talk. And even without shipping goggles that just seems wrong to me. Their bond has been one of the points the story has turned on. We got all the build up but none of the payoff. No shoulder touches, no ‘I’m proud of you, Keith’, none of the usual friendship or dynamic they usually have with each other. It felt kind of empty honestly :( And whats more is...Keith has been sacrificing and fighting and loving Shiro for 7 seasons now, and Shiro never got to repay him. Like he wasn’t in his hospital room when he woke up and nobody can fucking tell me when Shiro said “spend time with the people you love” Keith wouldn’t be spending time with Shiro. It just....feels so dissatisfying to see one of the major emotional bonds in the show not even be acknowledged in the end. It makes everything Keith worked for feel...not...there. Like what did all that mean in the end? As many times as it takes but he gives and gives and gives and the only one who returns what he gives is Krolia. It used to be Shiro returned it too, but now... Even without it being romantic, their relationship was done a dirty. I didn’t need canon Sheith I just needed some kind of acknowledgement that all the suffering they endured was worth it. I wanted to see them happy. 3. Despite what I said above I am sad Allura is gone. 4. Shiro was hardly in the season at all actually :((((((((((((((((((( 5. Yeah, as cute as the scenes were I’ve never felt Allura and Lance have a chemistry that makes their relationship sit well with me. But I guess it was necessary to show how Lance has matured as a person. I always thought they have the POTENTIAL for chemistry but it’s always fallen short for me. Allura just takes her life too seriously and her walls never actually came down enough for me to see a connection there. 6. James and Keith never like...talked? I would have liked for them to have had a reconciliation like Keith and Lance did. 7. Lack of Krolia. 8. Something was off about Kolivan’s voice 9. TBH, I feel like The real fulfillment for Keith’s arc would have been his teammates encouraging and lifting him up as well. Display his emotional availability which was completely closed off at the start. I feel like they may have just dropped the ball on a couple of character’s arc resolution but...eh. You gotta pick and choose what to focus on when you have an ensemble cast, and 7 year olds just aren’t always interested in that. 10. Woulda been nice to get a bit more detail on the nature of the rift creatures and some more clarity for a through line from the beginning thousands of Years ago to now. Along with that exactly what kind of entity IS Voltron itself? A lot of seeds planted that made a half attempt at being resolved but weren’t quite clear enough to create something cohesive. 11. I can’t put my finger on why but overall it just feels...Incomplete. Like there is still a pit in my stomach that doesn’t feel satisfied by the ending. I’m not sure how much of that is the season itself, and how much is I’ve been involved in this show for nearly 2 years and it’s hard to let go, especially on something that doesn’t quite feel like going out with a bang.

Highly unpopular opinion in my neck of the woods:

That wedding at the end? I’m happy about it. Do I think its bad writing to marry off one of your main five to a rando we don’t even know the name of? Yes. Am I annoyed that the fandom was SO awful and so accusatory toward the showrunners they felt the need to shoehorn in a last minute wedding because they honestly felt bad when the truth is this has always been a glorified ship war? MEGA YES. They shouldn’t have felt like they had to make this bad writing decision on the behalf of fans who have treated them and their efforts like shit. Shame on the people who treated them this way. They tried so FUCKING hard to give us something and ya’ll threw it away and called them evil. I get how you feel but damn why don’t YOU try to make social change happen in the entertainment industry and see how well your LGBT paradise vision goes over when there are dozens of other people with a say. (I could go on about how poorly that was handled on both ends, but that is another point altogether.)

More than anything, I’m happy that some 7 year old kid who LOVES the badass Captain Takashi Shirogane is going to see him get married on screen and kiss a MAN. Like holy shit, that is HUGE. Do I think it could have been written better? Absolutely. But This show wasn’t made for me it was made for the 7 year kid out there is going to think “Shiro kissed a boy, maybe I’m not weird for wanting to kiss boys” and THAT is what Representation in children’s media is all about. I’m going to celebrate this and everything else related to Shiro’s LGBT status because what matters to me way more than ships or satisfying romantic arcs is maybe when my little nephew sees his favorite character is gay he will be a little more open and comfortable when I bring my girlfriend to family dinner.

I think it would do the fandom (especially the Sheith shippers) some good to step back, take off their shipping goggles, and recognize this for the stride in Children’s media that it is. That being said I’m gonna be reading and writing the fix-it fics along with the rest of you, because fandom and how I enjoy the show can be whatever I want.

The conclusion and why I still love Voltron:

You know what? Yes I felt a little let down by the writing, but Voltron is one of the first fandoms I’ve been so involved in and I have had such wonderful experiences while enjoying this show. I’m never going to let some dissatisfaction ruin this for me. The nice thing about fandom, is I can enjoy my version of the show however I want it, and it doesn’t have to effect how I feel about canon at all. And when I take off my fandom goggles, this season was actually pretty enjoyable.

I encourage anybody who has enjoyed the show up to this point to put your bitterness aside and do what you’ve been doing from the start. Create some content, consume some content, ship what you want, and don’t you dare let anybody ruin this for you. You have good memories with this show, keep them good and move froward.

Peace out my dudes, I’m gonna be hanging out in Sheith hell for at least another 6 months.

It was an honor flying with you all.

#VLD #voltron season 8 #voltron legendary defender #Sheith #analysis #long post

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grayisholi · 6 years ago

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we just woke up and i dont wanna have to face the day yet, so heck it, imma procrastinate by doing @cantankerousintrovertedpumpkin ‘s tag game they tagged whomstever the heck in. so thank you you wonderful bean! keep kickin ass my dood.

NAME: Oliver, or more commonly “Oli”

ZODIAC SIGN: Libra yo ♎

FAVORITE FOOD: I’m not a big food person? Maybe nut roast?

FAVORITE SEASON: Autumn!!! It’s just the best.

JEANS OR SHORTS: Jeans, ALWAYS.

WHERE ARE YOU FROM: Ireland, I guess?

LAST BOOK YOU READ: For school? Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. For leisure? The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee

FAVORITE MOVIE: Top 3? I Love You Phillip Morris, Into the Spiderverse, and Bohemian Rhapsody? I’m a big film nut, so it’s even hard just to narrow my favourites down to those ones.

DREAM VACATION: Either Iceland to see the aurora borealis (and bc it’s a very pretty country) or just turning up slap bang in the middle of Europe with a van and a dog, with no plan other than ‘go’.

EYE COLOR: Grey/blue/green-ish? They’re very unremarkable.

NATURAL HAIR COLOR: I mean, it used to be properly in-your-face carrot-top ginger, but it’s darkened as I grew up, so it’s more like an auburn these days.

HEIGHT: 5′5 ish? I legit don’t remember the last time i measured myself.

INTROVERT OR EXTROVERT: INTROVERT.

TEA OR COFFEE: TEA!!! ESPECIALLY green tea with lemon and honey.

DO YOU WORK OUT REGULARLY: Yup, I usually use it as a procrastination method tbh.

FAVORITE BEVERAGE: This is an insanely difficult question for me, since I could live off beverages if it was an option. Green smoothies is high up there? (especially if there’s banana and ginger in there) The lemon green tea i mentioned earlier is GLORIOUS. I got this weird white tea with strawberry and chilli one time and it was GREAT. There’s this cocktail done at a bar/restaurant we frequent that I can’t remember the name of, but it’s kinda spicy and there’s coconut? It’s VERY good. I could talk about beverages all day, pal.

DO YOU HAVE PETS: I WISH FAM.

YOUR IDEAL DAY OFF: Playing DnD with the squad, ideally playing and not DMing, bc that takes WORK, and I’m probably playing some bullshit, home-brewed to hell and back PC. We’re not even at an actual table, just chilling on sofas or carpets or cushions or whatever’s there. It’s cosy and stupid and for fucks sake could you all stop trying to seduce the villain I swear to God...

IN A RELATIONSHIP OR SINGLE: Single, with a terrible habit of getting crushes on straight boys.

SOMETHING UNIQUE ABOUT ME: I’m building a universe rn for a comic book I’m writing in art and that was the only thing i could think of for this question bc it’s literally taking over my life.

IF YOU CHOOSE TO, POST A SELFIE: I don’t have my phone on hand so I can’t take one, and I don’t appear to have saved on my computer, so please enjoy this picture my little sister took of me last year when we were on a train in Spain bc it makes me laugh

I guess I’ll tag the usual suspects? @alex--blue @emolordisme @dead-men-disco @not-so-good-omens (I’m real sorry I’ve been so absent from you guys lately, I promise I’ll be back soon :’( ) And anyone else who wants to! Oh! and @theunconventionalking !! ( I just woke up sorry robin lmao)

#tagged #my dumb face #hhhh now i need to get up and do stuff #sounds lame

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haruki-ya · 6 years ago

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A Place to Crash (And Burn)

Summary: Kai and Kaneda yell at each other a little bit and cry over cry baby Tetsuo. There’s lots more to it than that, but like kinda a lot....so read on if you truly dare.

A/N: REPOSTING this cause fuck it y not I ain’t ever gonna be fully happy with anything I write and I must come to terms with that by EMBRACING the ART of IMPERFECTION. She a thicc one tbh, close to 7,000 words wow (do u see why i said read on if u dare), but from a new character perspective that I was hesitant to try writing in and have @fridge-04 and @totallylegitakirafic to thank for so hey! thank you ! I think my attempt turned out all right! also totallylegit, can you spy with your little eye the Makiko reference? lol enjoy my LOVES <3

Kai couldn’t really say the loud knocking on his door at one in the morning woke him up because he had already been awake, lying in bed in the dark thinking about things of the past.

It had been a rough week, a sleepless week. One spent mourning a death that others celebrated. One spent missing a friend who others considered an enemy. Kai doesn't think there will be any closure for the surviving townspeople any time soon, even three years after the great fall of Neo Tokyo.

Most of their homes are still in shambles and they like to be angry anyway. Kai will admit it’s a more fulfilling emotion than hopelessness.

Kai waits a minute before rolling out of bed. There are only a handful of people who would come knocking on his door at this hour, but that means they’re familiar enough to know he likes to end his night early to start his day earlier. So whoever this is must not care or must know that he’s not sleeping. Or it’s an important matter, but that’s pretty unlikely.

As Kai stumbles through the dark of his loft towards the door, tripping over stray clothes and a stack of old newspapers, he hears voices from the outside. Kei’s annoyed tone rings out strong.

“...come on, I can’t entertain this behavior tonight. I’ve got to meet up with Chiyoko soon, you know that Kaneda.” There’s a mumbled response that Kai doesn’t catch, probably from Kaneda, as he opens the door to a sight that he isn’t really surprised to see.

Kei is dressed in cool, neutral tones and struggling to hold up the swaying form of Kaneda, who reeks of booze and cigarette smoke under her arm, obviously more fucked up than he’s been in a while. Her face is steely with annoyance under the brim of her cap, but when her eyes meet his there is a poorly concealed concern that makes Kai sigh suddenly and drop his shoulders. There’s also a badly hidden plea for help.

“Hello Kai. I really hate to ask this, but can you look after him for a while?”

“Uh…what?” Is the most eloquent response Kai can manage. Kaneda’s stilted voice cuts in before Kai can properly respond, but to be fair he doesn't even really know what to say.

“M’fine Kei, I don’t needa be babysat by a kid.” And that kinda stings, cause hello to you too asshole, and he’s younger than Kaneda sure, but he usually acts more mature than his childish ass and the digs at his age have been few and far in between since Yamagata passed...since the Capsules fell apart. Kai only manages to be annoyed by the comment.

Kei swats Kaneda over the head and pushes him against the wall next to Kai’s door, anger bursting across her face. Kaneda rubs at his head and tries to straighten to his full height and glare at Kei, but his gaze is unfocused and more squinted in what Kai would assume is pain than anger. Kai narrows his eyes at them and stifles a yawn suddenly behind his hand, unimpressed with their familiar antics. If they came all the way here to bother him, they're off to a good start.

“Cut it out Kaneda! I’ve had it with your bullshit attitude this week. I know things are tough for you right now, but that’s no excuse to treat your friends like garbage just to make yourself feel better!” Kei turns on Kai before Kaneda gears up to answer and ignores whatever he mumbles under his breath. It sounds suspiciously like “bitch” to Kai and now he kinda understands Kei's anger. He’s never stooped so low as to glare so fiercely at her while saying that. Kai is becoming more and more confused.

“I need to meet Chiyoko and the others, an emergency meetings been called. Some cultists have been gathering around the old stadium and rumor has it they’re planning something there during daylight. I can’t be dragging his drunk weight with me, he’ll only slow me down and annoy me to death before we’d arrive.” Kaneda snorts and pushes up from the wall and brushes past Kai into his dark apartment, cursing when he trips over something that clatters loudly. Kei’s eyes don’t leave his face, but the sharpness of her gaze wavers.

This is gonna be fun.

“Uh… so your first thought was to dump him on me? ” Kai's response is more of a statement than a question really. He's still kind of lost to this whole situation. It’s been a while since he’s seen Kaneda or Kei, though they’re practically a package deal now a days, and while he is glad to see them, always, part of him also feels bitter for being left out of their orbit for this long and suddenly be expected to so easily be pulled right back into it.

Ever since the distance started growing between Kai and Kaneda, and subsequently Kei too, he's dedicated more and more of his time to volunteering around the city doing odd jobs for people: moving rubble, cleaning up trash, helping deliver food. He does it in the hopes that maybe his dedicated efforts as one will equal out to the prior three. Kai hangs out at a friend of Joker’s shop in his spare time too and does his best to learn from the mechanic, but much of the slang Joker and his pals use still goes over his head. His habit of journaling and note taking has helped greatly though, a by product of an overactive brain and an inability to keep details oriented. Kaneda could probably benefit from that too.

Kaneda and Kei used to volunteer with him, used to stay over all the time and help at the local shelter down the block from Kai’s apartment, but when the power was restored to all the remaining blacked out city blocks and a semblance of order returned to the city, Kei’s Rebel group was quick to get in touch and reignite their cause. Kei didn’t really ask Kaneda to join her, or become what many call her right hand man, but he rose to the occasion better than anyone could have expected. Kai never got a formal invitation to join their ragtag team of rebels either, but he would have politely declined any how. He’s had enough action for a lifetime thank you very much, and he knows he wouldn't have filled any shoes as well as Kaneda could. No surprise there. He's not really bitter about it.

Kaneda is hard to pin down these days, becoming more of a myth than a real man, but where Kei is he’s not far off. She got him involved with many of the old resistance outposts that double as relief shelters, not quite done with their original purpose. As Kei said, there are still people praying to the dead and gone “Lord Akira”. They’re desperate enough to believe that someone with the power to take so much away, to cause so much devastation, can just as easily bring it all back.

If only it were that easy.

They’re relatively harmless, just a scattered group of vagabonds looking for some kind of purpose in this fucked up place, but sometimes they get a little too close to things they shouldn't. Sometimes they wind up in possession of objects that three years ago were dangerous in the wrong hands, fatal in the right ones. The remaining resistance members, as well as the spirited youth who join the cause daily, have taken it upon themselves to squash any and all attempts to get too close to something that can’t simply be reburied in rubble. The emergency meeting must be important.

Today is the third anniversary of Tetsuo’s death after all and cults tend to believe in the religious power of symbolic resurgence.

Kei’s face softens as a light pours out suddenly from somewhere behind him, and her eyes follows suit as they both listen to Kaneda rifle around his fridge, probably looking for more booze. His attitude makes sense now that he's put two and two together, and Kai sighs again, sadly this time. He feels bad all of a sudden for being difficult.

“I’m sorry to come here like this Kai, with him, after we haven’t properly visited in a while...but I think it would be good for him to spend some time with an old friend. Maybe talk about whatever is making him want to drink himself unconscious with someone who can...better understand.”

Kai tries for a smile and it sort of works, despite feeling a little stiff on his face. He feel’s like there’s something else Kei isn’t telling him, another shoe that’s waiting to be dropped. There always is with these two.

Kei’s eyes narrow as the light from the fridge slowly shrinks and Kaneda moves onto his cupboards, opening and closing them a little too loudly for the time of night. Good think this floor of the building is mostly abandoned.

“I don’t trust him alone right now.” She says lowly, and there it is. Kai can’t really blame her and also can't turn either of them away even if he wanted to so he sighs, again, and braces himself against the doorway.

“Yeah, I understand Kei, last year was pretty rough too. We got him through it though, and we, eh...I'll do it again. We always look out for each other after all.” Kei looks relieved by his words but far from consoled. Kaneda trips again in his apartment but looks to have stumbled into a lamp as a minute later light spills out behind him once again. It highlights the conflict on Kei’s face.

“Thank you. I’ll be back sometime in the early afternoon. I owe you one Kai.” He shakes his head at that and sends her a smile.

“No you don’t. He’d do the same for me if he had to. Be safe out there Kei and kick some Akiraist ass for us. ” Kei smiles softly and puts a hand on his shoulder for a moment before turning and walking briskly down the hallway, gone from his sight in just four paces. Leaving him alone with a moody drunk in his apartment.

Right, he should check in on that.

Kai closes the door and takes a moment to brace himself before he turns around into the living room, finds Kaneda sprawled on the futon, one leg hanging off the back, an arm over his eyes. His boots are kicked off haphazardly by the lamp and his jacket a makeshift pillow under his head. His other hand holds a bottle of liquor Kai didn’t even know he had. Leave it to Kaneda to sniff out any hidden spirits.

“Hey. Welcome. Make yourself at home, please I insist.” Kai intones dryly and settles into a sitting position on the floor, back against his makeshift coffee table. Kaneda grunts in reply.

“Long time no see Kaneda. I thought you said you weren’t gonna be a stranger?” Kaneda makes another noncommittal sound before throwing his arm from his face to take a swig of, what is that, aged whiskey? Why does Kai even have that?

“That’s gross, dude. How much have you had to drink today?” Kaneda’s reply is wet and rough.

“Not enough.” And Kai sighs. It had been pretty much the same last year.

The previous anniversary, Kai had met up with Kaneda by chance at some back alley bar downtown. They shared a drink or two (or three) before Kai had managed to coax Kaneda outside for a walk, after letting the numbing buzz of booze kick in of course. While Kai counted that as a win, Kaneda had been plastered at two in the afternoon and adamant against parting with the bottle of brandy he snatched from behind the counter when the barkeep turned his back.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t so successful in coaxing Kaneda to leave the bottle behind.

Any other day, he wouldn't have minded indulging in their old ways of competitive drinking, but something about the idea left a bad taste in his mouth that day. Whether from the memory of vomit or just the thought of who would always be seated by his side for drinking competitions, Kai can't say.

They exchanged laughs and jokes for a while, aimlessly walked through the poorly reconstructed streets before they wandered along the memorial wall of pictures pinned up in the wake of so many deaths.

An unprecedented amount.

Kai had felt nostalgic all day, a heavy feeling that sat in his gut and curbed his smiles a little, and wasn't really bothered to wind up there. His mother had always taught him to pay his respects to the dead anyhow so Kai once again talked Kaneda into a walk, this time along the memorial wall where there was nothing to look at but smiling faces frozen in happiness, endless notes displaying declarations of love and everlasting peace. Vases of flowers, new and old, lined the base of the wall along with a few stuffed animals and makeshift shrines. He had idly thought about how nice it would be to stumble upon the picture he left of him, Kaneda and Yamagata a year prior. That would be something nice to smile about.

The memorial stretched on for what felt like miles, but Kai walked the whole length of it regardless, nodding respectfully to those who passed him by, not noticing Kaneda’s growing silence or the way he had started to slow down in front of Kai. It was easy to get lost in the sea of faces. He had figured Kaneda was simply being contemplative, and well, Kai wasn't wholly wrong.

He was jolted out of his thoughts when he ran into Kaneda’s back and almost knocked over a vase full of wilted flowers trying to stay balanced.

“Let’s make a toast. To those who aren’t here today to drink with us.”

Kaneda’s voice had been rough, almost choked, but Kai couldn’t see his face when he laughed a sour note, when he overturned his bottle of brandy carelessly onto the vase Kai almost broke with it’s sad, dying flowers. They still had meaning, a purpose though, something more grand than being doused in shitty booze.

A significance in their decay.

“A toast to all those sorry bastards who died for nothin’.”

A meaning still in death.

Kai had stood frozen for a moment, not really comprehending what he was seeing, what he was hearing. Looked from the growing puddle of liquor at their feet, to the back of Kaneda’s loud jacket as he suddenly jolted into movement and tucked into an alley off to their left. Kai didn’t move until the now empty bottle Kaneda had been holding smashed into the alley wall, breaking into shards of glimmering glass that crunched loudly under his feet. Kai startled and felt something unpleasant bubble hot under his skin, coil tight in his gut.

It was rage.

“What the fuck!” Kai had run after Kaneda when the cold disbelief drained from his body and the hot fury replaced it. He noticed, a little too late, the stagger to Kaneda’s step, the sluggishness in his pace. The tell tale signs of someone too far gone to care about their actions.

When Kai reached Kaneda, he had damn near tackled him in the back alley, furious and emboldened by his blatant disrespect, at being ignored, at the pain and anger that had been stewing within Kai for a little bit too long, released by the stupidity of Kaneda’s actions. He had thought that childishness was behind them.

“Kaneda! What the fuck was that? How could you be so disrespectful?” His voice had felt shrill in his ears, anger fueling the boldness in his words. Kaneda staggered under the weight of Kai’s body, but did not tip over. Only turned to glance at Kai over his shoulder before attempting to shrug off his hold and continue on but Kai held tight.

“Hey asshole! Stop ignoring me. What's your problem?” Kaneda’s shoulders had tensed at that and he spun suddenly on his feet, almost making himself and Kai topple over. His face was a mess of emotions and his breath reeked of brandy. Kaneda had always been taller than him, but now he absolutely towered over Kai, who recoiled slightly in disgust, slightly in discomfort.

“My problem? All those dead people. My problem? Knowing who killed em. My problem? Playin a part in it!” Kai hadn’t seen Kaneda like that in a while, that angry and upset, that ready to pick a fight instead of end one. The snarl on his face was pure malice and his eyes burned with regret, glassy and shining with unshed tears that Kaneda wouldn't let himself cry. Kai was suddenly at a loss for words as Kaneda continued, looking right through him.

“Fuck! All those dead people. All the destruction. All by the hands of a fuckin power crazy kid, God...what’s my problem? Hah, what isn't my problem.” Kaneda’s voice dropped in volume, trailed off into a mumble as he turned and started walking away from Kai, who stood frozen in the middle of the alley. What had that been? Where the hell had that outburst come from?

“Kaneda…” Kai didn’t know what to say, didn’t know where to start dissecting that obvious cry for help. Not even in their first few weeks after the explosion had Kaneda been so volatile and bothered. Not noticeably.

“Kai."

Kaneda’s voice rung out loudly in response a moment later, fell hollow on his ears. Kaneda shoved his hands in his pockets, and paused for one moment longer, before continuing on. “Sorry for scaring ya. Don’t follow me. And don’t worry either. M’gonna be just fine.”

And Kai really didn’t know what else to do but listen and believe as Kaneda disappeared out the mouth of the alley. He wasn’t sure he would want to follow him anyway with the unpredictability of liquor fueled sadness up his sleeve. Kai went back to the memorial after a long moment of consideration and did his best to clean up the puddle of alcohol Kaneda left behind.

It was the least he could do.

The next day, Kaneda hadn’t really acted any differently than normal. Aside from complaining about a headache and sporting some new bruises on his knuckles that Kai didn’t dare to question him about, he was relatively the same happy go lucky, good natured guy he had always been. Kai was relieved, but couldn’t help but think that wouldn’t be the last time he saw that side of Kaneda.

He’s sad to know that he was right.

“I heard from Tanaka that you’ve started your own kiddy care center at the Old Town base camp.” Kai does his best to try and lighten the mood, both for his sake and Kaneda’s. Get their minds off the pressing matter, the elephant in the room. Small talk, he’s relatively good at that.

“I gotta say, I’m not surprised. You always have been the big brother type.” Kaneda snorts a little at that, and glances at him out of the corner of his eye. There’s a faint smile on his dry lips.

“Yeah...m’not always so good at the ‘let’s-get-down-to-business’ and stay on the topic of business thing. Annoys the hell outta Kei as you know, but I help where I can and they’re good kids.” Kai smiles and opens his mouth to make a dig about Kaneda goin' soft on him when he’s cut off as Kaneda keeps talking.

“There’s a kid there that reminds me of Tets...when he was younger. Real shy, real sweet. Got lots of hidden anger. Her mom died in a building collapse a few weeks back and I was the one who found her afterwards...she’s got no one else. She’s all alone now.”

Kai’s words get stuck in his throat, and he swallows hard around the lump they’ve formed there. Kaneda takes another swig of alcohol, and Kai watches as a drop slips out his mouth and through the stubble on his chin, along the column of his throat. It glimmers in the light and catches on his adams apple that bobs with long gulps. Kai's throat burns just watching.

“How long are you going to blame yourself?” The words are out of his mouth before he can stop them, but he doesn’t regret saying them. It’s a question that’s been on Kai’s mind for a while now, one that’s probably lingering somewhere in the back of Kaneda’s own. His mouth barrels on before his mind can stop him.

“It wasn’t your fault. We did all we could for him Kaneda. You know that right?” Kai isn’t really expecting an answer, or if anything a response in the quiet, subdued tone Kaneda uses. His arm is back to shielding his eyes.

“No, I don’t think we did.”

“Well, I think you’re stupid for believing that. And I think it's disrespectful to Tetsuo to say that too.” And maybe he regrets saying that a little bit, but Kai has recently become less and less afraid to say what’s on his mind. Less and less afraid to express himself and assert his opinion. Kaneda doesn’t look impressed though, by the piercing glare he suddenly sends Kai’s way, arm resting on his forehead now.

“And I think you don’t know what the fuck you’re talkin bout Kai. Now shaddup, I came here to crash not to do couch therapy.” Kai usually isn’t so quick to rile, so quick to rise to the bait, but he’s played this game of intimidation one too many times to simply back down. To simply let Kaneda have the last word here. The topic is too important to brush under the rug any longer.

“You didn’t come here to crash, you were brought here before you crashed. Which is what you’re doing! Crashing! And burning too by the looks of it! Kei didn’t trust you enough to leave you alone, and I don’t blame her. You’re acting like a dumb reckless baby.” And that really ruffles Kaneda’s feathers the wrong way. He shoots up like a jackknife, eyes furious and focused.

“What the fuck do you know about anything, huh? What do you know about Tetsuo? You never really liked him anyway, you and Yama always thought he was a lost cause or some shit. Who are you to suddenly tell me what I did and didn’t do for ‘im? Fuck that! Fuck you!” But Kai’s still not backing down. In fact, he stands up so he’s looking down on Kaneda, a position he’s rarely been in even after growing a few inches over the years.

It doesn’t feel as good as he thought it would.

“No Kaneda, fuck you! You can’t keep acting like what happened is your problem and yours alone. Like you’re the only one who has a right to be sad, to mourn. I miss him. I feel bad for him. I feel bad for what happened because of him. And I feel bad about what happened to him, but Kaneda, we did our damn best to help him! To help the whole town! What point is there in wallowing in the past when it’s behind us? You know? What point is there in blaming yourself for his death when it wasn’t your fault!”

Kai pauses for a minute and his chest is heaving. Kaneda is looking at him with wide eyes, clouded with an emotion Kai can’t really decipher. He pushes on and hopes Kaneda will hear him.

“Everything that happened three years ago to the day, Kaneda, it was out of your control. Not your fault. There were bigger forces at work the whole time, strings being pulled and moves being made that we couldn’t even begin to comprehend. Not your fault! What is your fault is letting your sad, self deprecating emotions turn you bitter and unapproachable to your friends. It’s your fault for letting that anger and pain tear you apart and for letting it tear apart your friends too. I love you Kaneda, you’re my brother, you’re family and it sucks to see you so down right now but look around you man….you’re not the only one in pain. You’re living in a town trapped in anger and sadness, how much more do you want to keep contributing to that?”

After a long moment of silence between them, of intense unbroken eye contact, Kai turns away from Kaneda and heads towards the kitchen. He said his two cents, and if Kaneda is going to stonewall him and ignore what he has to say again, fine. So be it. He's dealt with that before. But Kai, unlike Kaneda, isn’t okay with holding onto those negative emotions until they tear him apart. He learned the consequences of that lesson a long time ago with his mother.

He fills up a cup with tap water and hears Kaneda clear his throat once, twice. “Kai…” Kaneda’s voice calls weakly to him from the living room, sounding worn and older than it is. “Did I ever tell you how I met Tetsuo?” He hasn’t .

“You haven’t.” He takes a big drink and waits a beat before making his way back towards the living room. Kaneda is still sitting up, but his head is cradled in his hands, shoulders slumped in defeat. Kai sits this time with his back against the futon, shoulder flush with Kaneda’s leg. Kai can feel a tremor run under Kaneda’s skin.

“We were kids when we met in some shitty school orphanage. He came a week or so after I did and I guess I didn’t really notice him at first, or care bout him. But one day...I saw some kids giving him a hard time. Pushing him around, laughing at him, calling him names. They stole his only toy and laughed when he cried. Real jerks those kids. The worst part though was how he didn’t even fight back. Just let em knock him around and push his buttons.” Kai listens in silence, gaze fixed on the glass in his hands.

Is it half empty or half full?

“I didn’t understand why he just let it happen until I saw his face, cause I sure as hell wouldn’t have let those jerks have their fun with me when I first showed up but...He looked so hopeless. He was such a sad kid, Kai, like...all his anger and all his pride, swap that with sadness and insecurity. I’m sure you saw it, he was shit at hiding his true feelings despite how tough he always acted...so childish.

“And I don’t know, I just...got so angry, seeing how little he cared to stand up for himself and how the kids just jumped on that weakness like a pack a wild dogs. I kicked their collective asses and got Tetsuo’s toy back for him. Took him under my wing after that and then we were Kaneda and Tetsuo, rulers of the playground…Kaneda and Tetsuo, founders of the Capsules. Kaneda and Tetsuo, brothers till the end...somethin in me just always wanted to protect him, cause he was so bad at doin it himself. I told him as much and he was glad for it at first, started to resent my help as we grew up though. I think he felt I was looking down on him or somethin', but I just...couldn’t help but want to protect that stupid, sad, reckless kid I always saw in him, crying all alone on the playground. Lookin like he needed help but not knowing how to ask.”

Kai still keeps quiet. Some part of him had always thought Kaneda and Tetsuo were actually brothers, or maybe cousins at the least despite not really looking alike. Their kinship and familiarity stemmed into something deeper than just friends, a fierce affection that Kaneda expressed in overzealous jokes and jibes, that Tetsuo showed in tolerant indignation and annoyance. Kai only understands it now, having a similar relationship himself with Kaneda. And he can kind of understand too where Tetsuo’s anger came from.

Kaneda is a great guy. Goofy, sure, carefree, considerably, but he is fiercely loyal and more clever than anyone gives him credit for. A natural born leader with his charisma, he’s always been destined for great things despite preferring to pop pills and joke around.

That’s where some of the anger comes into play.

Someone like Kaneda, someone who naturally exudes confidence and a strong presence, who makes standing up for himself look natural and effortless, he’s the kinda person Kai would be jealous of if he didn’t admire him so much, if he wasn’t lucky enough to call him family. Tetsuo always had a hard time being open, holding connections. Trusting that kindness wasn’t fueled by pity, and jokes weren’t sincere. Kai can imagine very well how hard it might have been feeling perpetually trapped in someone's else’s shadow, especially one as large as Kaneda's.

Kaneda sniffs suddenly and shakes his head within the cradle of his hands, rakes his fingers through his hair a few times before laughing wetly.

“Stupid Tetsuo, always causing me problems. Always leaving me to clean up after him even beyond the grave.” And Kai kinda cracks a smile at that one, glances up at Kaneda and blanches at what he sees. From his spot on the floor, he has a perfect view of Kaneda’s wrecked face.

There’s an impression of a smile on his lips, twisted into more of a grimace than anything. His eyes shine with tears that drip onto the floor like a waterfall, like rain in the desert after years of a brutal drought. He laughs again, or tries to, but it turns into a bitter sob that knocks him back into the futon with a sound of defeat.

Kai would normally jump up to offer comfort and words of reassurance at the sight of a friend in pain, but he’s sensed this coming for a long time now. Kei must have too. While surprising, it’s also completely expected and Kai knows that Kaneda is the type who needs to ride it out, needs to get to the bottom of his well of untapped emotions to move on from them. So he politely looks away as Kaneda proceeds to lose his usually cool composure and sits in silence as his heart aches for his friend.

For his friends.

“Fuck, I hate him Kai. I fuckin hate him. What a piece of work, a dumb fuckin asshole! I hope he’s rolling over in his grave right now, hope he hears me talking shit bout him from the great beyond. Because he's the worst ! A dumb, selfish, egotistical maniac! God, I’ll be living with his reckless messes for the rest of my life and he just got a free pass. Got a goddamn one way ticket far away from this shit circus of a town that he fucked halfway to hell. Left it all behind like it was the easiest thing, like it all meant nothing. What a jerk!” Kaneda is in near hysterics thanks to the combined liquor and outpouring of repressed emotions, caught between a mix of yelling, laughing, and crying. A truly impressive feat, if Kai says so himself.

“All those night we stayed up late talkin’ about how we were gonna change the world, how we were gonna, fuck, fix this broken town not-not break it beyond repair! In the end there wasn’t even a we anymore, not even an us. Just a -just him. Just Tetsuo. All that mattered to him in the end was his stupid, dumb self. Pathetic, he never even liked himself, that’s why I was there!”

Kai hands him his glass of water silently after Kaneda’s rant reaches an intermission and he downs it in three gulps. Takes a minute, thankfully, to dry his eyes and get control over his breathing. Kai just sits next to Kaneda and leans a little more heavily against his leg. Thinks about how weird it is to hear Kaneda sound so torn over someone leaving him behind for once. Kaneda’s scratchy voice speaks softly by his head.

“Fuck that... fuck him. Stupid cry baby bastard, can’t believe I had an ungrateful brat like that as my friend…but fuck, I still miss him sometimes Kai. Sometimes...sometimes I wan’t him back.” Kai sighs for what feels like the millionth time that night, but it’s equal parts sadness and equal parts relief. The air around them feels different suddenly, somber now instead of stifled.

Kai get’s where Kaneda is coming from, maybe not fully but well enough. He didn’t know a lot about Tetsuo before he became a wrecking ball to the town, didn't know much beyond what Kaneda would tell him or what Tetsuo himself would let slip when he was too drunk to know any better. He knows that Tetsuo was never all bad though, never quite the type Yamagata pegged him as either despite the shit he did, even to Yamagata himself.

Tetsuo too was a victim to something greater than himself, to a power larger than the confines of his earthly body. It’s taken a while to forgive his friends indiscretions and while Kai will never forget them, he thinks it’s past time to really start healing from them.

“So do I Kaneda.” Kai whispers the admission softly, almost hesitant to feel the things he does for a friend he too sometimes thinks he failed. “I know we never got along as well as the two of you, but I cared about him all the same and sometimes I wish things had gone differently. But what happened, happened, and I think he’s in a better place now, and us, we’re making the best out of what we’ve got...which, might I remind your stubborn ass, is each other.”

Kai picks himself up off the ground and plops down on the futon next to Kaneda, feeling a fatigue wash over him and settle bone deep. Kaneda radiates heat like a furnace and kinda smells bad, but his eyes are dry now, albeit puffy and red. His gaze is far away, stuck somewhere in the past, but he nods his head idly in response to Kai’s statement because they both know it's true. That sentiment has been the core of the Capsules since day one, ‘look out for our own, take care of our own: we’re all we’ve got’.

Always. No doubt about it.

“You look like you’ve got pink eye.” He says instead of just about anything else he probably should say, once again to lighten the mood, and Kaneda’s lips twitch before blooming into a wry smile.

“Well yea, I did just cry my heart out to you.” Kai can’t fight a smile either.

“Yup, just like a dumb reckless baby. No wonder the two of you got along so well, you weren’t so different after all. ” And Kaneda finally laughs something that doesn’t sound horribly bitter and sad.

They spend most of the night catching up and retelling stories about their childhood days, reveling in the golden light of the past. The usual hesitance to mention Tetsuo’s name is gone from their mouths, and they freely talk about all the stupid shit they did together, all the drunken times they had, all the recklessly childish things they honestly don’t know how they got away with. Kaneda maybe cries again once or twice, but Kai joins in and it’s a free for all of feelings, a cathartic visit for the both of them.

They collapse the futon and fall asleep right around the time the sun rises, and Kai doesn’t wake up on his own for once. The weight of another body settling on the futon jolts him into consciousness and he’s only slightly confused at the shy smile Kei sends him as she slips off her shoes and sets her coat on the floor. It’s a sight that’s very familiar to him despite having spent months alone in this apartment and he automatically scoots over some to make more room for Kei.

“You didn’t answer when I knocked, so I decided to let myself in.” Kai nods at her answer because it sounds plausible enough and he’s had worse people break into his apartment before. She stretches before lying down next to Kai, making him feel like a sardine squeezed in tightly between Kaneda’s back and Kei’s side. Kaneda snores suddenly and mumbles something in his sleep that sounds like “udon” to him and Kei rolls her eyes as Kai stifles a yawn, still closer to being asleep than awake.

“How did the meetin' go?” Kei hums to acknowledge she heard him before closing her eyes and sighing out her nose. She doesn’t respond for a long moment, but he doesn’t press it.

“Let’s talk about it later. Maybe over dinner?” Kai nods slowly. It must be the afternoon already if the light peeking in from the still closed curtains is any indication. Kei did say she would return around mid day. With the way she’s melting into the futon aside him, and Kaneda is snoring lightly on the other side of him, Kai imagines they won’t be moving until dinner time anyway.

“Sounds good....I can make udon ramen.” Kei hums again, and out of his peripheral he can see a slow smile spread on her face.

“Kaneda’s been talking about your ramen for months...I really am sorry we haven't been around lately.” If Kai weren’t so tired he would shrug, but his eyelids are getting heavier by the minute. If Kaneda is like a furnace, Kei is like a burning star, hotter than the sun. He’s starting to feel okay with being a sardine between these two.

“No worries. It was nice to catch up. Think we both needed to get some things off our chests anyway.”

Kai can hear the smile in Kei’s voice as she says softly, “Thank you, Kai. You’re really an amazing friend.”

Kai smiles back even though she’s probably not looking and responds, “Yeah, I am pretty great aren’t I?”

Kei’s pealing laughter (and Kaneda’s quiet snore of agreement) is the last thing he remembers hearing before falling back asleep.

#akira #heavy word vomit ughhh #i ain't even worried bout it #akira fanfic #my writing #kaisuke (akira)#kai (akira)#kaneda shotaro #kei (akira)

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potatogoon · 6 years ago

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Navinci’s workshop in Paris - Fan Account

I went to the workshop with a friend and we were meeting up with other participants we had talked with online an hour early. Everyone was so nice and so happy to be there! At one point, I saw Minsung going into the dance studio and started freaking out! So yeah, I made a great first impression.

We were then lining up to take the polaroids and group pictures. Polaroids were first to go, and I was at the front of the line. The staff asked us to think of a pose to do for the picture but I was freaking out so much my mind was completely blank and I ended up standing awkwardly next to him.

We I went to him for the picture, I said hi with the biggest smile so that he’d knew I was happy to be here and also to kind of make up for being a total groupie earlier. He said hi back (because he’s a very polite person) and gave me a tiny smile (He seemed kind of shy? Maybe because he wasn’t sure what to expect of us and how we were gonna act, and I can’t blame him for that tbh).

Once all the pictures were taken, the staff led us to the dance studio. My friends and I changed as quickly as possible so that we could be in front (lol). Before Minsung came in, the staff gave us a couple of rules (like don’t run at him, touch him, scream etc. and shout out to the French translator who was hilarious and kept making jokes, she really helped defuse the tension because we were all nervous as FUCK). Then Minsung came in, greeted us, introduced himself and then the class started.

SLUT LIKE YOU

Just so you know, Minsung is an AMAZING teacher! He talked mostly in English (credits to him for doing that because he did struggle to find his words but he made sure we all understood what he was telling us) and he would always take the time to help us understand what we had to do and let us take our time to learn and memorize the choreo. He was very patient with us and I love him for that!

He’s also the sassiest person alive. Especially during slut like you, showing us movements as “bitch slaps”, making faces and teaching us how to do his famous walk and even telling us, to boost our confidence: “who runs the world? Girls!”

At the end of the class, he separated us into three different groups to dance the choreo with him. At one point, he asked me and another girl to change groups and I kind of freaked out internally because he pointed at him and said “you go to group A” and in my head I was just like “omg he’s talking to ME!”

He then chose one of my friends and another girl to dance “Slut Like You” while being filmed by the staff and at the end, my friend went into complete freestyle mode and she was AMAZING!!! I’m sure she made Minsung very proud to have her as a student! He also danced to “Slut Like You” himself and it was AMAZING!! And everyone was hyping the shit out of him, which was pretty awesome!

Before we had to go change, Minsung asked us to sit down next to him. He started asking us where we were from, who was from Paris, how old we were and if some of us were dancers and whose dream was it to not be a dancer. A bunch of us raised our hands and he asked us individually what our dream was. At that moment, I was looking at him and I realized it was all real. He was there, in front of me and had just taught me one of his choreos, which has been my dream for 4 years. That’s when I started crying.

Minsung then turned to me and asked me “What’s your dream” immediately followed by “Oh, why are you crying???”, everyone around me went “Awe don’t cry!” (which made me cry even more tbh, I was a whole mess) and then Minsung threw his sweat-covered towel at me (which was hilarious omg thank you for making me smile). I then told him it had been my dream for 4 years to get a dance class from him because he was my favorite dancer and he was like “Really? Four years??”. He had a hard time believed I’ve been a fan of his and admiring him for so long. After that, I told him I wanted to be a nail technician and then showed my nails, since I had done a special Navinci nail art for the workshop. He took my hand, looked at my nails while smiling and then kept my hand in his a little longer. We looked at each other in the eyes and just kept thanking each other. That’s something I’ll never forget.

He went on to tell us that we needed to chase our dreams, to be prepared for the hardships to come and to never give up. In the end, we are all artists and need to be proud of our creations. Show it to the world, be proud of yourself and all your hard work. And if it breaks? It’s okay. Keep going, repair it so that you can make it even better.

Minsung truly is an inspiration and a few others started crying at that point. His speech really was beautiful and inspiring. I’ll never forget what he told us and I will always remember his words to keep myself going.

MOVE

Since there were a lot of new people for this class, the beginning was the same. Pictures were taken, we changed, staff gave the rules and Minsung came in.

For “Move”, we actually learned 2 choreos in one. The chorus was Taemin’s but the beginning was Minsung’s creation. And of course, it was voguing! While he was teaching us a particularly difficult hand movement, he went to every student to check how everyone was doing and took the time to correct us if we made mistakes and show us again how to do it properly. When it was my turn, I was thinking “don’t fuck up don’t fuck up don’t fuck up don’t fuck up” and I couldn’t look at him while doing it because I was so nervous. When I was done, I looked at him for his reaction and he looked at me with his eyes wide open and said “very gooood!” and I died a little bit inside.

His part was really beautiful and I was so happy that I finally got to learn some voguing (especially since it was taught by Minsung). It was pretty tough but I think I managed to do it quite well. Minsung apparently thought so too.

Just like for “Slut Like You”, he picked two students to be filmed dancing with him. And he picked me. He pointed at me, said “you go to the front”, picked another student to do the same and then played the music before joining us. I was sooooooooo nervous but I honestly think I did really well and I can’t wait for the video to be released! I was proud of myself and my friends were hyping me up so much, it made me really happy.

SCISSORHANDS

Yup. That’s right. We also learned the choreo to “Scissorhands”! I was so happy because I love this choreo soooooo much and have been wanting to learn it for a long time and I can’t believe I actually got to do it. It’s so hard though, the movements aren’t just difficult, you also need to do them very fast (I don’t think anyone managed to do it at full speed). We first learned the hand movements while sitting down before the steps and body movements. In the end, Minsung chose two students again to dance with him and he actually hesitated before deciding not to pick me, which made me feel pretty happy again (and I was also glad he didn’t pick me to be filmed dancing “Scissorhands” because I couldn’t memorize the choreo well enough, I would’ve just looked stupid).

He then danced to “Scissorhands” by himself and it was just beautiful. He is such an amazing dancer and we were so lucky to see him and learn from him.

After the class ended, I got to see him one last time in front of the dance studio building. My friends and I were trying to decide on where to spend the rest of the day when he came out. We said goodbye to him and he gave us the most beautiful eye smile I’ve ever seen.

That’s where it ends for me. I know what happened at the dinner event because my friends got to go but I don’t feel like it’s my story to tell. Just know that Minsung really does know all of us from social media; he knew the people going to the dinner because he had been stalking them for who knows how long! So if you’ve left comments on his pictures, he saw it. If you posted fanart, he saw it. So please, keep sending him love because he really deserves it, and I don’t think he realizes how much he means to us. We need to show that he is important and how he has had such an amazing and positive impact on our lives. He really deserves it.

This was literally the best day of life. I got to meet one of my idols and one of my biggest dreams came true. I also got to meet a lot of amazing people. It was so nice to see people that have been supporting Minsung and ToppDogg for so long and I got to meet people that I’ve only seen online, it was amazing! I will never forget them because they too, made this day beautiful.

#minsung #kim minsung #navinci #toppklass #navinci in paris #fanaccount

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kazamastar · 6 years ago

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Welcome to 2019

Version 3.0 : Final Version - Wow. February and finally, the 9th is here. All of you my 488 followers can finally enjoy it (372 by the end of 2017). I’ve never been that late to write a sum up but it’s pretty obvious that if it took me so much time to do it, then deep down I didn’t want to do it. Indeed I was about to let that sink in and leave this post with the version 2.0. But I remembered I had one person to honor. And this is what this year 2018 is about : focusion on the good actions and the good people. Because spoiler alert : this year 2018 have been on some other level of shit. More than 2013, 2014 and 2017 combined.

Pic : Plot twist. No more smile. No more bowtie.

Well let’s do some quickmaths : as i said we upgraded from 372 to 488 followers (and roughly 2,241 posts). For the 9th time I have to say that I have mad love for y’all (except fake pr0n blogs, y’all aint shit). For the humans that still follow me : thank you. And I’ll have even more love for the poeple who read this until the end haha. I have to apologize because these last months my tumblr looks pretty much like a mess, between the heartbreaking lyrics, quotes, passive agressive posts than only a few people can understand ... And that’s all because of that one follower I lost (y’all understood it was an euphemism). But to be accurate, I don’t want this post to become another heartbreak post : there are already too much of them on my tumblr. Indeed, it’s one of the main contraints I forced myself to write under. Because “l’art naît de contraintes” (Art rises from contraints) like Van Gogh said. So : not another heartbreak post where I pour my heart out for a girl who won’t even read it (guess I’ve done enough with the Helsinki post). But it’s kinda difficult because this break up is the main reason my 4 last months of 2018 (and on...) have been so so awful and so much things happened because of this. But nevermind I’ll do my best. I’ll do my best because like I said, this post is more about love. This break up surely made me less human, mistrustful, but still, I’m writting because I’ve seen beautiful actions that had to be honored. But we’ll see that later. What other contraints for this 9th sum up ? A young lady I’ve met this year challenged me to write 2 good things for 1 bad that happened to me this year. I’m sorry, I failed ahah. I found more good than bad, but that 2 for 1 ratio was a bit too much ahah. Désolé ma grande ;) And because of this, I had to have a kind of draft for writting, even though I always told myself these sum up needed to be written without drafts, to keep them kinda “natural”. Looks like I’m taking this more and more seriously haha. Well, when I say that this year have been worse than my 3 worst years combined this is not a joke. Have you ever told yourself for example “Wow I left all my stuff in the car, I would be deadly unlucky if someone would break into it and stole everything !” ...Yes, that’s that level of mischance. Because this happened to me btw. And that’s the spirit of this whole year. In “Welcome to 2016″ I remember talking about “mala suerte” ... that was bullshit, 2018 is the real mala suerte. The heartbreak of this year is the worst of my whole life by far, then I’ve been close to what I dreamt of in karate, what I fight for since 2011, had 2 chances to get it this year and I still not got it by a hair’s breadth. Dad got into a crash car, hopefully only the car got wrecked. (so sad it won’t take me again to Andorra haha) People kept on deceiving me. Close friends but also unknowns.

People close to me know how much I cherish friendship. If you’re my friend and you’re not doing well, then I’m already on my way to yours to fix you. No exceptions. Even faster if it’s because of a heartbreak, because heartbroken people should never feel lonely. It’s that simple. SO when I see fuckers I have been there for through ups, downs and heartbreaks and these people are not even able to give it back to me I can’t help being mad. And I don’t act like that in order to make people give that kindness back to me, that’s not the purpose. But I do hate ungratefulness. So, I had to go through a heartbreak again and I saw people disappear again. So that’s enough lines wasted talking about these people. I also have to talk about those who were there. In 2018 I also found an awesome training partner and got closer to her clan. That’s a positive energy I really needed on that 2nd half of 2018. Par ailleurs, tu liras surement jamais ça mais je me permets une parenthèse pour te dire encore une fois Merci Julie pour avoir sauvé ma vie. This kind of old friendship is priceless to me. We can also talk about some young friendship : in march I met someone (almost my best 2018, except I didn’t manage to define an encounter good enough to define it as the best of 2018) who made me go deeper into Tekken, making me getting closer to the Tekken community in Tls. Funny how I always dreamt of this when I was a kid and this is happening. Indeed I’m living the shonen life : I’m in a group (where I met some really lovely people), I’m not the strongest but hell I do what I can to improve and that’s begining to pay even if i won’t forget the 68-0 against sensei, and like in karate I still aim to the top. It’s funny to be inside another competitive world where people don’t have all the values we have in karate. Some of these Tekken people (in the whole country, not only in Toulouse) show off, are mean to each other etc ... And also like in karate, we admire asians for being the best to do it in the whole world. What else ? I became a karate teacher. Took me a bit of time, it wasn’t hard but just took me time and dedication. I still met some great people all along this experience. I made peace with the old pals, vacays together were really incredible. Some of the sweetest days of this year. One of the sweetest day this year was the day I worked hard as hell and went back “home” to the one I love. What a lovely feeling. But I guess we didn’t lived it the same way ... Then, I also had the chance to make a karate lesson in the 1st place I’ve been taught karate !!! This was outstanding because I love to give back to those who gave me, and I love to inspire people. So, it was such a pleasure to tell these kids “I was standing where you are now. I started like you and I’ve been getting stronger and stronger. If I did it you can do it too !!!”. I truly believe some of those kids are about to be deadly strong, hopefully I’ll be done with competition haha. Talking about competition, i sadly lost my title in Andorra by mid June. At the end of the competition, I promised to come back stronger and to revenge but there will be no revenge as this competition will not be repeated in 2019. Indeed, this Andorra 2018 was a great competition and a great trip. A cool trip, great team, great mates, a lot of alcohol, a good hotel room, and love ... so much love. A deadly hangover, but a lot of love. Sadly, there would not have been love again, as 1414 who was my coach for the weekend, my partner on the tatami and in life decided to take a different path from mine. Indeed, I promised to not talk too much about that but this is all the 2nd half of 2018 is about : me trying not to drown because of this heartbreak and it feels like everything is related to that. I got cocky and forgot the 1st and only love lesson my father taught me “nothing lasts forever, mostly in love”. Damn he was right. Even my mother was right for not trusting her at the begining, and God knows she’s never right usually. I won’t even mention what that break up costed me. But as the big bro says : there were no house, no kids, no joined bank account ... Only wasted times and dead dreams now. “La mort d’un rêve” ... it’s still something painful. S. is now a dead dream. I cannot imagine my own flesh meeting some destructive people like the ones I met and going through hard times like I’m going through. I wouldn’t be able to handle it. So no more S. and no more L., and it’s a hell of a problem as I’ve always built my life around the fact that I wanted them. And it’s painful because I wanted them with her. Nevermind, no one will ever know “what a great father I could be” as 1414 said. So much dreams. Gone. My 5 brothers took care of me as much as they could and they did amazingly great. I’ll never thank God enough for putting these guys into my life. Hope they know how much I love them. That was sad to see another one of them going back to his motherland but ... what an amazing last evening in Toulouse we spent. I’ll never forget this one.

Still talking about the break up and all the bad that happened this year : tbh I couldn’t draw good lessons from all of these bad things. Really. But like I said, I’ve seen good things coming from good people. So now I need to talk about 27. First of all, 27 was right on so many levels. (yes, I use numbers to not drop real names). Those who know me know that I love to experience, live everything. I would have been better without this heartbreak but still, it taught me new things. I could understand 27 better. When she talked about hell, she wasn’t joking at all. The doubts, the negativity, the hate, self-hate ... I think that’s too much to handle. But still, she still tried to help me when she saw me going through that hell. I couldn‘t thank her enough for this and that must be remembered. This is the whole reason I still wanted to write this sum up, in spite of all the bad things that happened. It was like : a soul lending a hand to another soul. Merci. Je ne l’oublierai jamais, je t’en dois une belle. Et toujours d’une âme à une autre. Tu dis le contraire mais tu as une belle âme et je suis sûr qu’il te reste beaucoup d’amour à donner. Tu as trop à donner à ce monde (en espérant que tu me lises un jour)

Also, I could understand 26 better. [...] And 26 still have the most beautiful smile in the whole world. No transition : Najwa Zebian said that « it’s unfair that new people in my life will have to destroy walls around me they didn’t even built » (btw I love this woman, she also had a big impact on my life through her reflexions) and I can tell she’s right but … trusting people is so hard these days. I really don’t know what to think about this statement. I think I’ve always been picky about who I let close to me and I still got fucked up by my ex-lover, my entourage … It’s all about who to trust, who to let in and who to cut … And it feels like I’ve been making the wrong decisions for years.

It’s starting getting late so let me end up with facts nobody cares. Neutral facts : I discovered lofi this year, my hero academia (FUCKING AWESOME !!!!), Tokyo Ghoul, 7DS, sword art online (great !!), la casa de papel, stranger things, sherlock, IP MAN 3, the good place, misfits, Juice Wrld blew up this year, NAV, Dosseh ... Funny how I discovered some of the saddest love song this year haha. Bad facts : I got injuried a lot. Females still played me a lot. Indeed I realized females are cruel but I still love them. This might be the proof we don’t chose our sexual orientation haha. Then, I couldn’t train properly from Sept to Dec. Oh, I can’t listen anymore to : Nicki, Kehlani, Rihanna or Cardi B. “More life” or “Views from the 6″ are albums I can’t listen to anymore. Well, GOOD FACTS now ! : Got a karate gi from J. (outstanding move), I put the young bloods in high school at Tekken and mangas haha. I met 80′s family and it was like a dream and I’m sure I got luckied in another dimension haha. 80 and 90 are still close to perfection in my eyes. 30 is still 30, with good and bad moods. I’m in peace with the sensei. I also received one of the best gift of my life. I learned that I was able to train by myself thanks to my power of mind ! To finish, I saw that I was able to forgive and still give love, even if it was pointless and too late.

Well, 2019 has already started and this will sure be a hell of a ride (January was ... special) as now I’m like on some quicksand shit. Let’s go ! And let’s not forget those 2018 that marked this year and I’ll surely be listening to in a decade (you need to know that I still listen to all the songs in the previous sum ups !). Enjoy :)

2018 Playlist

Dvsn - The morning after

Youv Dee - Opening

Tory Lanez - 48 floors

Roy Woods - Instinct feat MadeInTYO

XXXTENTACION - SAD!

Damso - Smog X Kyle - Ikuyo

Dosseh - Cœur de pirate X Guordan Banks - Keep you in mind

Marwa Loud - Je voulais (feat Laguardia)

Bazzi - Honest X Omar Kadir - The last thing I do

Oboy - Nuit X NAV - What I need

The Magician - Love break feat Hamza

Dinos - Les pleurs du mal

⚡ Dinos - Helsinki X Logic - The Glorious Five X Laylow - Digitalova ⚡

(Albums :6lack - East Atlanta love letter X Juice WRLD & Future - Wrld on drugs X Tory Lanez - Love me now & memories don’t die)

#sum up #resume #welcome to 2019 #2019 #welcome to

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