#in my actual dream i saw the above clip on tumblr | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

sessrin-eternity2 · 3 years ago

Text

Yashahime Second Act Teaser PV

Yashahime The Second Act is almost here and we have a wonderful yet mysterious new teaser? This is definitely showing some clips from the Second Act preview but we've got some new ones as well because I really don't recall seeing some of these clips in the first preview, so this is interesting. We have Towa here holding the tenseiga above her head while many demons are flying upwards... not sure how they got there... from what I'm thinking someone or something may had summons them possibly for Towa to absorb demon energy to the tenseiga or something. There is still no full confirmation that Towa will keep her father's blade, she may give it back to him or he'll request for her to return it to him since he may need it for another situation. We'll have to see what really happens. I do hope we get some interactions between Sesshomaru and his beloved daughters and hopefully his cinnamon roll niece, Moroha. I'll fangirl so hard if that happens.

Moroha looks like she's ready to take down a foe of some kind, it could be those demons or another rival has arrived to the scene. She looks quite frustrated here, and who could blame her? She's also still furious about Setsuna's unexpected death, they're all family after all. I wonder if she'll be getting new power upgrades like Towa and Setsuna. I hope her parents will be able to see her in action soon.

Setsuna is looking more and more like her father Sesshomaru, this is one of his signature expressions, the eyes, the mouth and the look, definitely Sesshomaru. It appears Towa has been either knocked out or blacked out from something, you can see her down on the ground just a little bit in the top frame of this set. Is Setsuna protecting Towa while she is down and out? I want to see more scenes like that. We've mainly seen Towa or Moroha protecting her the most, now it's time for Setsuna to help protect her big sis. Her new blade is so uniquely designed, I just love it to pieces.

Wow, Riku?! We can already see him here in his newly designed attire, and I love it! Not only he has new clothes, he also has a new earring accessory or possibly the same one and he has added an intriguing sword charm to it. I really admire the style of it... Hm, that's odd to have in the federal era though, unless they did make such charms in that time. We also see some ice or crystal debris flowing around... what happened here?! Did Riku obtain new skills or did he always have these? Is he breaking something? Just what is he doing? Can't wait to see how this unfolds.

What has happened to Kirinmaru?! I don't know why but he looks like he's in deep grief or in some kind of depression... Is he remembering something disturbing of his past? His past wife? His daughter Rion? Things his sister, Zero may had done? Toga perhaps? He looks pretty distraught, almost the way Sesshomaru has been looking lately. I wonder if Zero has messed with his memories... and I do often wonder was she the one involved in causing trouble in Kirinmaru and Rion's relationship as father and daughter. I really want to know what happened with them too. There's not much new with Rion but she seems to have a hand gesture of prayer or begging... She's very beautiful, I love her design, very cutesy.

Oh my flipping Mokomoko! Zero what have you done now?! The pure look of evil and hate in her eyes... who the heck is she even trying to burn in this house?! She's certainly talking and looking down at someone. There are so many theories of what could be going on in this scene...

①️ Many have pointed out that this is Lady Izayoi's mansion and Zero may had contributed in trying to kill her and baby Inuyasha on the same night Toga died. That's a big possibility because Zero can use puppets of herself, we saw that in episode 15 of Season 1. And she may had helped kill Toga? But there was two people in battle, Toga and Takemaru... wouldn't he had of interrupted Zero to stay out of their battle? Or did Takemaru die by Toga's hands immediately... and Toga was able to survive, tried to make his escape but Zero decided to take his life away due to pure jealousy... Oh that would be such a big fat shocking twist if she really was the one who really slaughtered Toga...! Think about how even more infuriated Sesshomaru would be with Zero, he'll have more reasons to kill her... But remember this too, Zero had her other demon markings when she found out about Toga's death and they faded away after making her wish. She don't have those markings in this scene at all.

②️ Could this be Zero on the night she may had of killed or tried to kill someone else? Like... Kirinmaru's Wife? (Don't know if we'll find out about his baby mama and such, plus we don't know if Kirinmaru got married or it was one of those one night stand sort of things.) Was it another character we have no idea about? A familiar character? Or is it Rion? Or worse... possibly Rin?! Girl! You better not be trying to burn Rin after you tied your sorry tail to her beautiful soul, get a life will ya?

③️ Could this be Sesshomaru and Rin's mansion Zero is burning and she trapped Rin inside while doing so? I know there's a lot of us who really want to believe this is the mansion of Sessrin and there's some of us who really don't wanna get clowned but this is a possibility it could be true... because not so long ago Sato gave us some new artworks of Sesshomaru and Rin... and they were in a house together, it's very rare to see them in such places. I often wonder if Sato is telling us stories about Sessrin's life before Rin got into the tree through their art. The artworks they released came before the new preview and not so long ago either... could this house been a spoiler? What if this house or mansion could of been a safe place before the fire in the forest? Did you notice that the walls are almost the same as the ones from Sato's picture? Let's all wait and see if it comes together as these things.

I know for sure this scene of Sesshomaru slashing a butterfly in half has a lot of people worried and pondering about what is going on in this clip... Yes, it is just like the purple dream butterfly, they look the exact same but are colored differently. Not sure if this is the present or just a flashback. This scene actually makes you wonder are there two dream butterflies? One is good and one is evil? The purple could mean Kirinmaru's butterfly or the green one could mean Rion? Her aura is the same color as the green butterfly... however this could be just a spirit like a Japanese user mentioned on their Twitter. Is it a puppet? Is it a ghost? Is this dream butterfly dangerous and has other meanings to it that would cause Sesshomaru to slash it in half? Was it going after Rin? The girls? Inukag? Or Sesshomaru himself? And Sesshomaru, he looks extremely upset in these frames... oh no... what's happened? Please don't be anything bad about Rin, she's dealing with enough as is Sesshomaru.

So much stuff going on, I can't stop processing everything and I can't stop watching the teaser over again. Season 2 please hurry up! *Waits patiently* We're getting closer, just need to keep waiting. (Had to reupload because the other is not appearing, so I take it as one of Tumblrs issues sadly. And sorry for taking long been moving and unpacking a lot. (つ﹏<。)

#sessrin #Yashahime thoughts and theories #sesshomaru #rin #towa #setsuna #moroha #Kirinmaru #yashahime #inuyasha

35 notes · View notes

angryschnauzer · 4 years ago

Text

Superior Specimen - Chapter 1

Summary: One night when you are following the Archaeology tag on instagram you stumbled across a fun looking dig... and an even more interesting Paleontologist who soon follows you back. Over the following weeks you start chatting and a friendship soon grows.

Relationship: AU Henry Cavill x Female Reader (No race or body shape mentioned)

Warnings: Slow Burn, NSFW, 18+, Mutual Masturbation, Phone Sex

I do not operate a tag list, but please follow @angryschnauzerwrites and put that blog onto notifications, as you will then be notified whenever i post something new.

I don’t have a masterlist, but all my works are on AO3, link here. Usually i post oneshots to Tumblr and AO3, and multichapters exclusively to AO3, but as this is my first henry story and its going to be a short series, i’ll post to both places.

Superior Specimen – Chapter 1

It had all started innocently; you’d been cruising the paleontology and archaeology tags on Instagram, checking out the progress of the summer digs you were unable to go on, one in particular catching your interest. The dig in the Siberian summer desert was posting some fascinating photos and clips, and you were following them avidly from that point on.

A week later when you got the job at the Natural History Museum and you proudly posted a selfie in your uniform, you saw some familiar accounts like and comment, one in particular leaving a chain of hearts, and when you clicked on the profile you saw it was one of the palaeontologists from the Siberian dig. Hitting that ‘follow back’ button you didn’t think much more about the account.

It was your first day and you couldn’t have been prouder of your own achievements. You knew that jobs within the archaeology and palaeontology fields were few and far between, and unless you were blessed with some very rich parents or managed to snag some sort of sponsor or bursary, actually following the dream and getting in at the upper levels was almost impossible. You’d worked your socks off, volunteering on domestic digs during breaks from university, taking jobs after your degree to advance your language skills, and now it had paid off; the front desk at the most renowned museum in the country, perhaps even the world. Now as you stood beneath the skeleton of the Blue Whale in the giant atrium of the gothic building, you adjusted your name badge, polishing the three flags that were adorned on the bottom of the badge to show the languages you spoke, and watched as the security guard unlocked the doors for the days visitors to excitedly rush in.

The following weeks rushed by, you thoroughly enjoyed your role and settled into it quickly. You were called upon to help translate for confused visitors from overseas, held a level head when people got out of hand, had met all the staff - it surprised you how small of a number of staff there actually were - and above all you felt completely settled.

At the end of a long day you finished up your shift and clocked off, grabbing your bag from the staffroom lockers before stepping out into the warm summer evening. Checking your notifications you saw a DM, and smiled when you saw who it was from; the guy from the Siberian dig that over the last few weeks you had started chatting to casually.

@Kinghenry; “Looking beautiful as always. How was work?”

You smiled where you could see he’d replied to an on-the-way-to-work selfie you’d posted that morning;

“Good. Tiring. And thank you <3”

You saw the little notification that your message had been seen, and paused as you saw that he was writing, meaning he was online right at that moment;

“What are your plans for the rest of the night?”

“A scented bath, then I’m ordering takeout and bingeing Netflix”

“So, no-one to take you to dinner?”

You smiled at his sly way of asking if you’re single;

“Nope. Why; are you asking?”

“Absolutely. Plus, I brought you a gift back from the dig”

“Oh yes? What’s that, a bunch of bones?”

“Just one. A big one. Wanna see?”

You laugh-groaned at his innuendo, before another message came through with the icon that the user had attached a photo. Your thumb hovered over the icon, hesitating. Had this casual flirting advanced to dick pics? And more to the point; did you actually want to see what he was packing? Hell, you’d seen the crew shots of the dig and had seen him tagged, the guy was built like Hercules. Taking a deep breath you looked up and noticed you were almost at the entrance to the tube station. If you didn’t tap it now you wouldn’t have enough signal in the underground train tunnels to download it, and you knew he would have had the notification that you’d gotten the message. You tapped on the photo… and waited…

The laugh you let out once the photo loaded bubbled from your throat; there he was, stood in the Siberian desert, chest bare, and holding what must have been a femur from an enormous bi-ped as it was well over 4ft long. You knew that fossils were incredibly heavy, so for him to be holding one of that size you felt a tingle in your stomach at the thought of how strong he was. Screenshotting it your phone buzzed where he sent another message;

“So, what do you think? *wink*”

“That’s an impressive bone”

“Heavy too”

You felt a bead of sweat slowly make its way down your back, the heat of the summer evening still intense in the city, and you knew if you stood outside the tube station much longer you’d melt;

“I’ve got to get on the tube, talk later xxx”

Later was quite a few hours later, and as you sank into the scented bath, you’d indulged yourself with oils, petals, candles; the whole nine yards. The obligatory candle-lit shot of your legs peeking out of the water headed to your grid, before you settled back and relaxed.

Your phone propped up in the wooden bath shelf playing your music, and a glass of wine half-drunk as you let the feeling of the waters soothe you. After a couple of songs you heard the chime of a notification, peering out of one eye to see that he’d sent you a message. Wiping your hands on a towel you opened it and smiled;

“Sorry if the tease was too much earlier”

“Not at all. I opened it, didn’t I? *wink*”

“That you did… you curious little thing. How’s the bath?”

“Warm, wet, and relaxing”

You knew you were being a tease, but you’d had a glass of wine before you’d even gotten into the bath so you were a little emboldened by the alcohol. Your phone chimed and you saw another photo notification, tapping on it and letting out a ‘ouff’. He was standing in front of a full length mirror, wearing just a pair of running shorts that clung to his sweat drenched body and left absolutely nothing to the imagination, the clear outline of a heavy cock resting against his thigh to the point you were surprised it didn’t peek out from the leg hole.

“I could do with something warm wet and relaxing right now… got all worked up at the gym”

Your jaw literally dropped; you couldn’t tear your eyes away from the screen as your entire body shuddered with lust. Turning onto your side you flipped the camera to selfie mode, and snapped a shot of your body; doe eyes, the swell of your breasts glistening in the candlelight, down to the curve of your hip as it emerged from the cloudy blue and green water. Not a single thing was showing - nipples and pussy just hidden by the water - but it was obvious you were completely naked. You hit send and settled back into a more comfortable position, watching the screen as it changed from sent to seen then the little notification to tell you he was typing;

“Look at what you’ve done to me”

The photo that loaded was taken from chest height, and he caught his stomach and Adonis belt, and his shorts were obscenely tented. He was typing again, and much to your surprise it was a phone number;

“Here’s mine, or you can show me yours… number that is…”

Taking a deep breath you hit the number and raised the phone to your ear, hearing it ring before a deep voice answered;

“Henry?”

“Yes, is that you Princess?”

“It’s me” you found your free hand had slid down your body to the juncture of your thighs, just his voice was turning you on.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m touching myself… your voice… fuck…”

“So, if my voice is turning you on so much you must touch yourself, taking you out for dinner will be an interesting experience. Will I need to slide my hand under the table and pet that little pussy of yours?”

“I guess I’ll have to skip wearing underwear then…”

The groan that you heard down the line sent sparks to your clit as you rubbed figure eights over the sensitive nub, and you longed to hear it in person, whispered against your ear, his hot breath fanning your skin.

From that point the conversation entered the gutter, Henry had the dirtiest mind and the deepest voice, his words wrapped around your brain like it was enrobed in salted caramel, and when you came you called out his name so loud your neighbours probably heard. As you came down from your orgasmic high you heard a quiet chuckle;

“Feel better now Princess?”

“Hmmm yes, thank you”

“I need a shower now… somehow I’m even more worked up than before the gym… Hmmn I wonder why?” he mused down the line

“Shame I can’t lend a hand to help out” you countered, and the sharp inhale of breath told you he’d liked what you’d said.

“That can be arranged… anyway, I have an issue I now need to take care of, and as you’re not here I need to take the matter into my own hands”

“Both hands?” you asked coyly

“Jesus woman… you’re gonna be the death of me, I’m so fucking hard I could burst right now”

“Well I’ll let you go, but I’ll say what I said before, shame I can’t lend a hand. Speak soon Henry”

“Absolutely, take care Princess”

Chapter 2 >>>

#henry cavill #henry cavill x reader #henry cavill smut #henry cavill x you #henry cavill x female reader

588 notes · View notes

juuls · 3 years ago

Text

This was a comment left on chapter 11 of my fem!Tony Stuckony time travel/soulmate fic, Hanging From a Cross of Iron, and I just wanted to put a couple things out there.

First of all, I’m not mad. We’ll make that clear. I’ve received variations of this comment before and it’s rather on the mark. But sometimes both sides can be correct in how they interpret a piece of fiction, and I wanted to show that.

So… yeah. This is something I get every so often on this fic, especially around this chapter (10-12ish) and I just… really wanted to post my reply to it, if for nothing other than explaining the way my brain works and WHY I hate Captain America: Civil War so much for ruining so many good things in fandom.

I’m not putting this out there for sympathy or agreement or to start a fight or stupid shit. It’s more like a… “I’m tired of explaining myself, let me post something I feel is a semi-eloquent response to someone who was at least mostly respectful and got some things right, who I know does represent a fair portion of people who may be interested in reading this fic,” which I could then just point/link to the next time I wake up to things making me sad in my inbox on top of me being sad and feeling guilty at not having written for a while.

Stupid covid. Stupid life being dumb and depressing and draining energy and happiness from many. Just you wait. I’ll be back soon with Codega and this fic, Cross.

But here. This is my reply to the above comment:

So I don’t normally reply to critique such as this because this IS fanfiction, but you are at least part right: it IS supposed to be unfair.

This is me working out my issues with Civil War, because boy that sure as fuck pissed me off. I love Stuckony, but after CACW it was really hard to reconcile that love anymore. So this was my way to do that, and I 100% wanted to bring in the unfairness, the distrust, the favouritism, the… meanness that I saw and felt after that.

It’s also a way for me to work through my issues at the injustices I suffered at the hands of my ex-husband—I started writing this shortly after packing my bags and leaving.

I wanted a slow, somewhat realistic, non-fairytale path to even partial redemption, shared pain and circumstances and experiences, and to show that things CAN work out as long as certain lines are not crossed. I skirt the line sometimes, definitely on purpose, but that’s for ME.

I wanted to turn the tables: Steve (and Bucky) were out of their time and comfort zone in the future—Toni, in turn, needed to be out of her time and comfort zone in the past.

Plus, can you imagine a soulmate world where you’ve had a partner and you think “this is it”? Then bam! Suddenly someone’s suddenly thrust into your life.

And I wanted to play on every single issue Toni would have experienced with her family, friends, “friends”, enemies, Obie, her company, the world, etc., post-IM2.

None of them have had an easy go of it and war is goddamn hell. They ALL have PTSD. (But also, lol, the Howlies start laying into Stucky about what you’re getting mad about here too, so I’m way ahead of you!)

From the beginning, this was as much a psychological setting as a romantic one: way more so in the beginning. But it slowly crawls its way out of the murk. I wanted a soulmate story where it wasn’t all sunshine and roses. I wanted a story where they had to fight for it… or where they had a choice, shitty as it may be (they’ll NEVER choose not to have Toni, that was never going to happen). I wanted something… realistic, even amidst super soldiers, super tech, an almost unbelievable war, and soulmates existing.

I wanted it to be a fight. I wanted rejection… then them, ALL of them, to choose each other despite that, despite their past, and despite fate.

That is my goal with this fic. And since I take my own sweet time, that’s really not readily apparent so soon in this fic, even at chapter 11.

The love will be there. The unconditional love, the equal triadic love. Not just Stucky plus Toni. Because believe me, Stucky is probably one of my least favourite ships that include some of my favourite characters. Sounds ridiculous since I write them here, but as a historian I wanted to take that, take some realism, with a dash of ridiculous and hurt and pain and anger, and see what I could do with that.

The entire reason this story exists is because of a scene idea I had that doesn’t come about until the future in the 20s chapters. Leaning on each other and trusting each other because one of them was lost. Well, technically, that happens twice.

But the point is: this is a long as fuck story towards a love they have to (and WANT to, eventually) fight tor.

This fic is for me. It’s for people like me. It’s for people who don’t want an easy love story. It’s absolutely okay that you don’t like it! There are SO many fics that I dislike for a variety of reasons, and I simply close it, mark it as Did Not Finish, and don’t return. I recognize not every fic is for me.

This one’s for me. I may have sort of stalled out where I’m at in the 20s chapters, but it’s left at a pretty good place, and I’m looking forward to this dumb pandemic so I can get back to forging this love between these three idiots, as well as pick up an old Star Wars story I left 4+ years ago due to the abuse at the hands of my ex. But I’m ready to return to it now. Well, after the world calms down a little.

It’s okay if you’re done with this story—that is 100% your choice and I will never begrudge you that. I’m glad you gave it a try though! If you’re interested, you could skip ahead and see how the dynamics have changed, or I could give you clips and examples too.

My one wish (though I understand it completely) is that you had not done this on Anon. For a few reasons:

1, I would never hold this opinion against you, especially because you got tons of it right! Go you!

2, I’d love to understand you better and discuss this with you. No recriminations whatsoever.

3, But I do wonder who of those who have read my other writings left me this message. It makes me a little sad, and I will wonder which of the people I talk to have this negative opinion of me now, but that’s also my own past issues rearing their ugly heads. You have every right to remain on Anon, though it’s not so nice when you wake from a nice dream and discover anon ‘dislike’ in your inbox on a work you slaved away on, and that the dislike is specifically about the things you wrote about deliberately, hah. Sorta funny, actually, so I’ll let that one go. xD

Thank you, though, even if I disliked reading this words: it helps me to look at my own work critically and to better understand how to frame and write things going forward.

Not every fic is for everyone, and that’s okay. I’ve encountered mine, you’ve encountered yours, but I think we’ve both learned from this interaction.

Whoever you may be, even if you divulge your handle to me, my respect for you wouldn’t diminish. It’s good to have healthy discussions and to look critically upon your own work—even if I am a sensitive bean and it hurts a little, I’m fine. :P

I think the lesson to be learned here is: fuck everything after CACW!!!! Grrrrr xD

Take care,

Juuls

P.S. I may post parts of this on my Tumblr because I do occasionally encounter similar complaints about this story, and I think maybe this is the most coherent and respectful enough comment-reply response I’ve had on this topic. Thank you.

P.P.S. Happy to talk privately too!

P.P.P.S. And the offer still stands for some lovely clips from future chapters, especially if you’re not considering continuing reading this story anymore; it’ll at least show what I’m talking about and what I’ve been working tirelessly towards. It’s hard—fucking hard—work to get past CACW and still like these characters together (my fic Paper Boats is probably one of my bigger testaments to that, oof) and I admit it’s still really really hard and I struggle with it. Covid isn’t the only reason I’ve sort of stalled out on that. But that’s more because I’m like “now what?” than not seeing any love between these three.

It’s a long journey. I knew it was going to be. But I like a challenge. :)

Take care, be well, stay safe, to you and all of yours.

And may you find many fics you love!

#fanfiction #comments #commenting #comment replies #stuckony #hanging from a cross of iron #my writing #i know i don’t need to justify my writing but i am rather lacking in confidence most days #so stuff like this does suck #but it’s also helpful y’know?#not mad! not sad! seriously #i like engaging in conversations about WHY we write what we write #:)

15 notes · View notes

emptymasks · 4 years ago

Text

If You Kissed Me I'd Be Happy Enough to Die

i'm so happy to have finally written something for these two, but not at all the versions of them i expected to write about

this is based on ramin karimloo's enjorlas and hadley fraser's grantaire from the 25th anniversary concert, and also ramin as enjorlas in the 2004 west end production - this clip in particular where instead of how most enjorlas are annoyed at grantaire during red and black, ramin's grins at him. i saw someone on tumblr say aaron tveit's enjorlas is a gryffindor and ramin's is a slytherin and that feels very accurate.

read on ao3 and support me over there (and my other les mis fic that has like zero notes on here and i’m not bothered at all about it pfftt) (link to ao3 in the replies to this post so tumblr doesn’t block the post)

He'd done it. He'd finally cracked and done it.

Grantaire had kissed Enjolras.

What had he been thinking? He could blame the drink, of course he could always blame the drink for his actions, but he knew deep down the drink wasn’t to blame. Not for the desire anyway. He was a sorry, sad man, pining and in love with someone who would never see him as more than a friend.

And it was hard. It was so hard when there was those nights where no one wanted to hear him, no one wanted to sit near him and his nihilistic poetry, and yet Enjolras would look at him. He would notice him. When he'd get rowdy for a little too long and the others would drag him to his chair, Enjolras would give him that small grin. And it would give him hope. Because, perhaps that grin meant something more, perhaps Enjolras didn't even realise he was grinning and it was just slipping out without him realising.

But, Enjolras had to know, right? He had to know how Grantaire felt. He knew a couple of the others had noticed how deep his affections went and he silently thanked them for only teasing him about how much he liked Enjolras when Enjolras wasn't around. No one wanted everyone to fall out, and certainly not kicked out of the group.

Grantaire had long ago resigned himself to merely watch and never touch, for Enjolras was untouchable for him, untouchable to all but the sun ray's and the dawn's determination. His flushed cheeks and his raven hair and his wild eyes. He was everything Grantaire was not. What could Enjolras possibly want with him?

It had been just the two of them in the room. The others had already left and Grantaire often hung around until Enjolras resigned himself to sleep, sometimes just to make sure he actually got some. Some nights it was nigh impossible to tear Enjolras away from his maps and plans.

Tonight the papers were scattered haphazardly around the desk as Enjolras moved around the room, talking animatedly with his hands. He'd had an idea, an epiphany, and he was talking so fast Grantaire could barely keep up with him. He always felt as though he was barely keeping up with him. But the idea was good, they always were.

They were lucky to have Enjolras. Too often those with wild determination are blinded by their optimism and dreams, but not Enjolras. He was smart and cunning and knew when to be calm. And he cared about them all.

He'd spun around the room in almost a dance and when Grantaire had stood, he'd grabbed him, clasped his hands against Grantaire's upper arms. And he had smiled a smile so full of glee and joy and he was so close and Grantaire hadn't had any more to drink than normal but he felt light headed and heady and he could feel Enjolras' hands burning through his shirt and he smell him, was close enough to taste him.

He couldn't even remember moving forwards. He remembered what happened once he did, though. How could he not? Enjolras' lips had been so soft against his own. Soft, but unmoving.

Grantaire had snapped back to himself quickly, nervously laughing as if perhaps it could be played of as a show of brotherly love. He took a glance at Enjolras' face, but his expression seemed frozen. He's stumbled out a goodbye and out of the door, returning to his run down and barren apartment.

God, he wanted to drink until he passed out. Drink until he couldn't hold onto the realisation that he'd just ruined the best friendship, the best relationship of any kind, that he had. It would be so easy and the bottles were so close and tantalising.

But what would he do in the morning? He couldn't show up half way through the day, his head roaring like a beast, for Enjolras to pause and stare at him. Would he go on and act like nothing had happened. Would he let him stay? But ignoring him wouldn't be acting like nothing had happened. The others would notice. So what then? He'd be asked to leave. That seemed better, if he was being honest. Not being able to see him again rather than live by his side constantly ignored, loved even less than he was, if he had ever been loved at all.

He hugged the bottle to his chest and wept. His head fell to the side against the splintering walls. He'd go out with some dignity, at least, even though he didn't deserve it. Enjolras was always the first to arrive, so he'd arrive there before him and wait and if Enjolras didn't force him out he'd tell him he was leaving. He couldn't do this anymore, not when he'd pushed them over that fine line.

Sleep didn't come to him, and why should it? He stared at the clock across the room, though he couldn't read it at all in the darkness, and waited. The bottle stayed against his chest, but he kept his grip on it tight. The least he could do is save Enjolras the job of having to beat down a man who could already barely stand.

As soon as the run speared through the thin curtains, he unfurled himself, wincing as his body complained about being in that same position all night. He made a point of putting the bottle down on the floor and almost having a staring contest with it. He closed his eyes. He wasn't strong enough for this, but it had to be done.

The cafe was empty as he'd been sure it would be. He realised he'd never been in it while it was empty before, well not when the sun was up and shining through the gapes in the walls and through the window. The room was warmed as the light shone through the red flag Joly had hung up above the window, blocking out the rest of the world.

His hands were shaking. His legs were bouncing. God, why did he leave the bottle at home? There was alcohol hidden here of course, but no, no. No, he couldn't. He could just sit here and if need be grab one of the books that cluttered the room, everyone was always getting their textbooks and notebooks that is was normal for there to be piles of them around the cafe now.

There was a law book inches from where his fingers rested against the table. It was probably Courfeyrac's, he tended to leave things there the most. He wasn't sure how long he'd already been sitting here, and who knows how early Enjolras would show up. Perhaps he'd show up later to try and avoid dealing with him.

Grantaire reached forwards across the table.

"You're never usually the first one here," Grantaire jumped, standing up so he didn't fall out of his chair onto the floor. He'd been so engrossed in his thoughts he hadn't heard Enjolras opening the door.

So this was the end then.

"Yes, well, I thought... If you're going to kick me out I'd rather save myself the embarrassment of it not being in front of everyone else. And then you don't have to explain anything to them either."

"Kick you out?" Enjolras' brows furrowed slightly.

"However you want to call it. I know what I did... I crossed a line and I..."

Enjolras looked away from him for a moment. "Had you been..." It wasn't like him to pause mid-sentence. "Drinking too much yesterday?"

There it was, an out. Enjolras was giving him an out! He could just say yes and they'd laugh about it and everything could go back to how it was. But he looked at Enjolras’ eyes, eyes full of some emotions he'd never seen on his face before. Was he apprehensive? Did he fear Grantaire saying no? Dare he hope... that he would be disappointed if he said yes?

What a stupid, slim, impossible chance. No. No, that could never be it at all.

But he looked in Enjolras' eyes again even though it hurt and he knew what he'd always known if this came out: He couldn't lie to him.

"No." His voice echoed back at him in his ears. Enjolras just stared at him. "Does that surprise you? Does it truly? Some part of you must have... Enjolras, you must know. You are not blind. You notice things all the time no one else sees, and yet have you not seen me?"

Grantaire always dreaded opening his mouth. Once he started he often seemed unable to stop. And this, this had been bottled up for so long he couldn't stop himself and he could feel his throat closing up around his words and the corners of his vision turning wet.

"Do you know how I feel? Perhaps you were trying to be kind, perhaps you'd hope it would pass. But it can't... I can't... I would follow you forever, wherever. I have accepted my death and I wish for it to happen by your side. And I know what a folly it all is, I know that... For even if you wanted to love, even if you could love another man, what would you see in me? You haven't ever had a use for a drunken fool, and allowed me to stay anyway. So, I ask you now, if you would allow me to leave."

He took steps backwards until the table bumped against him and he slumped onto it. He couldn't raise his head nor his eyes.

How pathetic was he? Even now he was still asking for Enjolras' permission for things.

It was staying quite for too long, but he supposed that was better than Enjolras just walking out.

"You're..." Enjolras eventually spoke. "You're in love with me?"

And he asked it with no hint of disgust in his voice and it made Grantaire want to cry harder still.

All he could do was nod.

Black shoes came entered his eyes.

"Grantaire," Enjolras' voice was so soft, a siren's call that Grantaire couldn't refuse and though he feared it, he meet his eyes. "You're in love with me?"

Enjolras emphasised the words as though he needed to be sure, needed to double-check.

"Yes. Are you happy that you have made me say it. I'm in love with you. I love you. I have for so long and I think I will until I die. If I could ask for you not to hate me... But I do not deserve that. I don't... I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," The words spilt out of Grantaire's mouth as a river would burst through a dam.

His voice gave out to a whisper as he repeated his apology over and over again.

"Grantaire, stop. Stop it, hey," Enjolras' hands came up to his shoulders, brushed up and over his neck. His thumbs dug under Grantaire's chin, forcing him to look at him again. "I should apologise to you, I think, not the other way around. I had... suspected that you might... I couldn't be sure until last night and I was convinced I wouldn't see you at all today. We all have our worth, my friend, and I would not put any of us above each other, and I would be sad to see you go."

His thumbs softened against Grantaire's skin. "You ask for my permission to leave?" Grantaire nodded, ashamed. "I refuse to give it."

Enjolras' eyes were twinkling and there was a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth and Grantaire didn't understand. He didn't understand.

"What worth do I see in a 'drunken fool' as you call yourself? I don't think I've ever met someone more loyal than you. You doubt some of the beliefs shared here and yet you stay... You've stayed for me, yes? And when you come out with your ramblings, it makes me want to fight harder, even if just to prove you wrong. I think it makes the others feel that way too. I think there is something wicked in me that likes to see you get them riled up."

"I noticed you... don't seem as annoyed as anyone else does. You're always... I keep looking up and finding that you're watching me."

"Oh, do you?" There was Enjolras starting to grin again like he was waiting for Grantaire to catch up with him.

"Would you stop?!" Grantaire pushed himself off the table and into Enjolras. "My heart and my feelings are not a game. Stop being cruel and just tell me whatever it is I should know. You couldn't understand what it is like to love you. To love something so beautiful and loved by many and unattainable."

"Grantaire," Enjolras seemed exasperated and he didn't get to do that. He didn't get to be tired of Grantaire's feelings when he bearing his soul open to him.

"Am I anything to you at all?" Grantaire puffed his chest up, his nose now brushing against Enjolras'.

"How can you ask me that?" Enjolras' voice murmured between them. He reached up and put his hand against Grantaire's cheek, the way Grantaire had often done to him when they said goodbye for the night when he let his emotions take control a little too much. "You think you know so much about how I feel, about how I can love..."

"I wonder if you even feel love at all."

Enjolras' eyes flashed something hot and sharp. A dangerous sharpness that had Grantaire wanting to clutch back at the table behind him less Enjolras would throw him over it.

And Enjolras did move, pouncing forward and pinning him, trapping him, between the hard edge of the table and his own warm body. Grantaire didn't have time to take in the feeling before there were two hands on his face, one on either cheek, and a soft, burning mouth pressing against his own.

Alright, so he had drank that bottle last night until he passed out and this was all a dream. There you go, now it all made sense.

But... But the table pinched at the backs of his thighs, and Enjolras was pushing his legs open and his fingers were gripping tighter and tighter on his face and his mouth was hot and wet and parting and moving against his own and oh dear lord.

God, if this was his reward for not getting drunk again then he would never drink again. He wouldn't need to when he was so easily getting drunk of this instead.

They had to part for air eventually, and Enjolras rested his forehead against Grantaire's.

"Not only," Enjolras panted into his mouth. "Do I not give you permission to leave. I absolutely forbid it."

"I don't understand," Grantaire tried to plead at Enjolras with his eyes. It had been hard enough to think through the desperation and the guilt, and even harder now he was trying not to lose himself in the feeling of having Enjolras so close... And Enjolras had been the one to cause the closeness.

"Yes, you do. If everything you said was true, and I do not doubt you, then yes you do."

Grantaire's heart threatened to tear out of his chest at the implication that Enjolras could return any of his feelings. That his kiss hadn't been purely out of instinct or anger or frustration of pent of urges.

"You're not allowed to leave," Enjolras leaned back and let Grantaire try to right himself.

"I..." He looked up at Enjolras. His hair was pushed out of place, the flush on his cheeks spread down his neck and his eyes were burning differently. It was a subtle difference, but a difference all the same. "Alright."

With that one small world Enjolras' face lit up, that grin breaking out. "Good. So, you'll still stay behind tonight?"

Grantaire tried to blink the room into focus. "Like usual?"

"Well," Enjolras' grinned turned. "Perhaps not completely like usual."

"What-" Grantaire didn't have time to pry further into what that meant before the front door opened and their friends started to spill into the hallway.

Enjolras moved to go and greet them as he always did, but not before pausing next to Grantaire and sliding his hand around his wrist.

"I think that was also proof that you don't need the bottle with you, and besides," Enjolras' voice brushed against his ear as he whispered. "I'd rather not be able to taste it on you in the future."

The grin was clear in his voice and he clapped Grantaire on the shoulder before bolstering out into the hall, enthusiastically saying good morning.

What had Grantaire finally gotten himself into?

also i spent too much time compiling all my favourite enjorlas/grantaire moments from various productions of the musical, because a friend hadn't seen any clips from the west end versions and didn't know they hugged in it, so if anyone wants to watch that here’s the link (please look at it i totally shouldn't have spent an entire day on it)

was working on something else and started thinking of them and had to pause what i was doing to write this oops

#les mis #enjoltaire #exr #grantaire #enjorlas #mine #mywriting

25 notes · View notes

rigelmejo · 4 years ago

Text

Just a bit of a self reflection:

Studying Multiple Languages at Once:

French and Japanese were generally easy to keep separate in my mind, because they are quite different, and also because I had a good 6 months of French study to the point where I was in the A2 area of using the language before I started Japanese. So, they were at different levels - my french was getting close to intermediate when my japanese was starting at bare bones beginner.

And that is a tip polyglots have often given, if someone plans to study multiple languages at once: to get some level of skill in one language before starting another, and/or to have each language you’re studying at different levels. In this way, you’re rarely studying the exact same skills in both languages at the same time. For example, when you’re first learning japanese pronunciation, you are well past basic pronunciation in french and more focused on intermediate grammar. When you are learning basic everyday conversational skills in japanese, you’re learning how to write letters and essays and talk about special topics, etc. When you’re learning how to read kana in japanese, you’re already past basic reading in french and moving onto slightly more difficult reading etc. And then theoretically, you’d wait until you’re japanese (or equivalent 2nd language) is past those beginning learning tasks before adding another language to study.

For a short time I did have a 3rd language I was studying - Russian. At that point, my French was pretty solid, my Japanese was in the “starting to struggle to read manga” stage lol (but that was beyond absolute beginner, since I already knew many common words, basic kanji, all of Genki 1 and some of Genki 2, some other grammar etc). So Russian was the only language I was an absolute beginner in. I only needed to learn Russian because I was dating someone who spoke russian, who’s roommates all spoke russian, who’s family and baby brother all spoke russian, and it was helpful for me to be able to understand basic russian so I could understand all the daily household conversations I ran into. Also, so I could understand texts, and help babysit their baby brother. So I really just focused on basic everyday conversation skills. I learned high frequency words, words they used, the writing system, glanced through a summarized grammar guide, and listened to a podcast focused on speaking conversationally (and some basic grammar I’d need to speak/listen to others). In a few months I got where I needed to be. I ended up dropping Russian when that relationship ended later, since I didn’t need Russian anymore (although one day I might study it again so I can read, since I’d just started managing to read stories in Russian toward the end). My point though is, it was not hard to study it in addition to the other two languages.

I think that is because: Russian’s different enough from both French and Japanese in order to not cause confusion, I was not a beginner in either other language so I was never studying the same level or topics in two languages at once, and my French was advanced enough that I could put it on “pause” or only study 20 minutes every few days for some moderate improvement over time. Most of my French study at that point was just immersion reading/watching. Japanese in contrast was more difficult, I had to spend either most of my time on Japanese or on Russian to see significant progress in either - so of course both were slowing the study of the other down. I didn’t make significant gains in Japanese until I dropped Russian. So ultimately, I think it’s easier to study multiple languages, if only one language needs large amounts of study for improvement - and the other language(s) just need maintenance and improvement through immersion (so improving listening skills, or reading skills). I once had some success just working on French grammar, while more actively studying Japanese - but that was because the grammar study was mostly review and me formally filling in “blanks in knowledge” so it wasn’t very intensive.

Another tip polyglots tend to give: try not to study two similar languages at the same time. And, if you do, see the above point about AT LEAST making sure those languages are at significantly different levels so you don’t further add to your own confusion by studying the same “level” similar pronunciation/grammar/writing system topics etc at the exact same time. So like, do not start French and Spanish at the same time. You certainly can - and I think any progress is good progress. But I have tried to do this, and it definitely made everything more confusing for me. I tried to start Spanish after a year of French study. That was TOO SOON for me to try. I still did not have a solid grasp on French pronunciation, because I hadn’t studied it enough. Likewise, I had a vague recognition of French spelling but could not really easily differentiate it from Spanish or Italian. So when I started studying Spanish at that time, everything just meshed together in my head and both languages confused my understanding of the other. I did not make much progress. So I put off Spanish for another time. The upside of that experience is that I definitely realized where I should be focusing my goals in French - I read a lot more grammar at that point paying much more attention to conjugation endings and spelling, and I made listening a main goal of mine and did listening/shadowing practice regularly after that until I improved a bit. I still think my French listening, and pronunciation, is pretty basic at best. But I’m a lot better at differentiating between French and Spanish and Italian now. I am much better in my own internal mind voice, at sounding out words differently depending on the language - they’re no longer one “meshed” sound in my head, but very distinctly different sounding languages. A lot of that had to do with lots of French listening practice, and then when I started Spanish again I did a lot of Spanish listening practice to really hammer home how different they sounded. At 2 years, Spanish was a lot easier to start studying. I no longer ran into the confusion issue between the languages nearly as much.

At that time, there was no great concrete need for me to progress in Spanish - I was not trying to read, watch, or speak with anyone in Spanish regularly. I had mostly been studying out of a simple broad desire to learn some Spanish. So I ended up putting that off for a later time - for when I’ve got more concrete motivations and goals for the language. Meanwhile, at that point, I’d been doing French mostly just through immersion and comprehensible input - very easy to do or not do, just over time picking up more words, and since i’d accomplished my goal of being able to read the novels I wanted to read, I was fine with that “mostly maintenance and a bit of listening improvement/vocabulary improvement.” I had also been doing Japanese - as usual, intensively, as either 30% or 70% of my time depending on the day or my goals for the month (versus spanish for the other portion). I’d been doing Nukemarine’s LLJ Memrise Flashcard Set, still chipping away progress at improving my reading comprehension. Eventually I got burned out from flashcards (because I TRULY hate flashcards, and while I APPRECIATE how much SRS seems to help people learn, I deeply desire a spaced repetition study method where I don’t have to touch any flashcards at all...)

So I paused my japanese study a bit, moving it to just ‘immersion’ like french - every once in a while playing Kingdom Hearts in japanese, and slowly chipping my way through some of my simple manga.

Then Chinese came in like a surprise. A big megalith of a surprise. Weirdly enough, I had deja vu of seeing a clip of Guardian, in a dream I had, like a month before I ever actually saw or heard anything about it in real life. Then I got into SOTUS and the thai drama community on tumblr by extension, and Guardian popped up occassionally as a show mentioned - which I had zero recognition of. Then, one day, that video clip from my dream was on my tumblr dash in real life, and I felt mega deja vu upon seeing it. And I played it, and it was just like my dream. Which was bizarre. So, since I’d seen this show name dropped a few times, and it’d been in my dream before I ever knew about it, and deja vu finally happened as I ran into the exact same thing in real life - I decided I might as well check it out.

So I did. And it was exactly, specifically, everything I love in a story. It also immediately reminded me of that one semester in High School I took of Chinese - because when I was watching the show, the words learned back then were all I recognized (the numbers, ni hao, xie xie, zai jian). So while I watched I picked up some words, since it was frustrating (and a disappointment to my old Chinese class and teacher’s efforts) that I clearly knew so little. I used google translate to look up some characters and phrases. I looked into the hanzi a little in my spare time. By the time I finished the show, I was aware there was a novel for the book and at the time it was only 1/3 translated into english. So BAM - there was one giant motivation to learn chinese. So I could read the book.

Nothing interests or motivates me like characterization and stories, and the details that build those things. Nothing in my whole life, for any of my life, ever captures my attention and my passion like these topics. So yes, wanting to learn to read in a language JUST to read a novel and get the full story, the characterizations and metaphors and themes the author originally intended with their creation, is exactly the kind of thing I do.

(Incidentally, that’s also what drives me to study Japanese - some of my favorite artists and writers from childhood to adulthood create japanese stories, and at some point in my life I WANT to experience them in japanese with their most authentic intent and delivery... because often nuances are changed from a small to quite large degree in translation, and I want to also get to experience the original story closest to how it was intended.)

So with Chinese, once I was sure I wanted to learn, I made myself a somewhat solid study plan - since I’ve studied languages enough now to have a rough idea of what helps me most. I stuck to it. And I dropped all other language studies, except as passive immersion (on occasion I pick up a French or Japanese book and just read a bit to make sure I’m retaining what I know passively, even if the ability to actively recall words is fading a bit). I have been intensively studying Chinese.

A great thing about Chinese, is it has so much art - shows, novels, music, active fandoms, communities around the world. The chinese internet feels as vast as the english one, with just as many endless things to discover. Even if I only ever had wanted to read priest novels - Priest has written a TON, and a TON are going to be adapted into dramas, and MANY have audio dramas if I ever want to listen to them! That’s years, decades, of content I already know I’m interested in! Then if one expands the content they explore, like I did, there’s so many other artists to run into and fall in love with! I ran into MXTX’s The Untamed, then mdzs, and that’s yet another megalith of content and fan communities and other novels by that author! That’s also an intro into a genre I didn’t even know existed, and there is SO MUCH MORE in that genre to be discovered! It’s an endless treasure trove of fantastic beautiful breathtaking creations, and efforts, and art. It’s bottomless, and once it caught my interest it ensured I’d have ample motivation to keep studying, and knowledge that whatever improvements I make will pay off for years and decades because I’ll have all of this content to enjoy over time. I’m guessing... for english learners, a similar thing is experienced. I would imagine, if I’d been as passionate about Japanese content, then I might have experienced this with Japanese. (However, for me, I’m not actually interested intensely in very much content in japanese except for my specific lifelong favorites... I imagine that might change if my ability to read improves, then maybe I WILL discover jdramas and jnovels that capture my overall lifelong interest more overwhelmingly... another big difference between my interest levels surely has to do with me being able to usually find english translations of the japanese stories I love, whereas with Chinese probably 40% of the things I’m interested in have no english translation - some of Daomubiji, some dramas with actors I like, some audiodramas, many novels, and FAN CONTENT which is HUGE is often untranslated like amazing fanvideos and fanfictions and fancomics).

I knew based on my Japanese studies, how long I should estimate it was going to take to do absolutely anything BASIC in chinese. So I dropped any other intense language studies, focused all my attention on chinese, and am still doing so. I knew both Japanese and Chinese are considered Category 5 languages by FSI, taking a minimum of (88 weeks) 2200 hours to learn. I knew based on my personal experience with Japanese, just how long it took me in that language to hit what I consider milestones for my personal goals.

Like: how long until I know the 1000 most common words, how long until I understand past/present/future tense, how long until I can parse what sentences mean if I have a dictionary (recognizing the different sentence components), how long until I can understand the gist of short captions and lines in daily life situations, how long until I can watch short basic videos for the gist of meaning, how long until I can read very simple stories like short daily life comics, how long until I can read straightforward summary texts (like wikipedia, news articles), how long until I can read Graded Reader stories for gist meaning, how long until I can read short stories in general for gist meaning, how long until I can read short things for complete/near complete comprehension, how long until I can read a page of a novel for gist meaning, read a page of a novel for near/complete comprehension, then a chapter, then a book, how long until I can watch a show in the language for gist meaning, how long until I can navigate a game menu screen or website navigation in the language, how long until I could talk about basic A1 topics, how long until I could discuss most any topic on a basic level, how long until I could start discussing topics more in depth, etc.

In French, I had the “easy” baseline of how long these things took me. In Japanese, I had a “hard” baseline - because these things took YEARS in japanese and I only ever reached a few of those milestones in japanese. I still have a long way to go in Japanese. But, for the milestones I did reach in Japanese, I had an example of how long it took me in a Category V language to reach them.

I planned my Chinese study accordingly. I knew what helped speed me up in Japanese the most, so I added those study methods to Chinese immediately - learning common characters, listening. I knew what helped with all my language studies and added those too - learning most common words, past/present/future tense, reading a grammar guide, and READING/consuming target language content frequently. I immersed myself in French often when I’d studied French, but with Japanese I rarely did that until 2+ years into studying the language. I knew it was a good way to gauge my progress, and suspected I’d improve in reading/listening faster than I had in Japanese, if i DID IT MORE this time around for Chinese.

---

Reading Specific Tangent:

I was right. My Chinese has been steadily improving about half as fast as my French. The slower speed is to be expected, since Chinese generally takes much longer for native english speakers to learn than French. But my Chinese is also improving significantly faster than Japanese - twice as fast so far. Which is extremely motivating for me, and exciting. I could not be more grateful. I am so absolutely ecstatic that I can currently watch Chinese tv shows without subtitles if I want to and follow the gist - I still can’t do that in Japanese! I’m so excited I can read Chinese sometimes without a dictionary, and often with a dictionary - my Japanese lags behind at basic-reading-with-dictionary and absolutely NO ability to read complex text like paragraphs or light novels or news even with a dictionary.

I plan to keep focusing a lot of structured study on Chinese until I can read Priest novels comfortably with a dictionary. Right now, I can read them with a dictionary, but the speed is so slow because I have to look up too many words per page, so it’s not comfortable. I think, if I’m being optimistic, I’m about halfway there. As long as I keep studying consistently. Measurably, I’m in the middle of HSK 4 knowledge wise, and while I think getting to HSK 6 will only make me ‘intermediate,’ I do think that should be enough knowledge to be able to read what I want with the help of a dictionary a bit more comfortably than I am doing so now. If I’m supremely lucky, all the reading I’m doing right now will pay off, and maybe reading will be very comfortable with occasional dictionary lookup once I get to that rough HSK 6 goal. (I definitely think personal ambiguity tolerance matters - in Chinese, the statistics I’ve often found indicate readers at HSK 4 go in generally knowing only around 50% of words in target language texts, which is brutally low compared to the statistic of 98% comprehension to comfortably read extensively. Now... when I was first starting to learn French, I immediately dived into reading when I had pitifully little comprehension, like 50%! So I’m used to it feeling brutal at first, and still trying to do it! Then as my French improved, I experienced 70% comprehension and up as so refreshingly easier, that I didn’t personally see it as a slog (even though it very much still is a slog of ambiguity, dictionary use, and accepting you can only understand the gist usually and only occasionally specific details).

With Chinese, pessimistically you hit the 70s percentage of comprehension in HSK 4 - HSK 6, and don’t get to the 90% at all. Optimistically, you hit the 70s% in HSK 3, and by HSK 5-6 you’re at 95-98% comprehension which is MUCH more comfortable for pretty much everyone. Which.... I can say from my own personal experience, that lines up. Once I passed HSK 3 knowledge and in the middle of HSK 4, I feel much more comfortable reading anything I want. Yeah, it’s still BRUTAL. But it’s more the slog French was at 70% comprehension - it’s hard to read for more than a few pages if the material is difficult, and its easier for me to read difficult materials for ‘gist meaning’ rather than precise details, and it’s easier for me to read simpler-materials for longer periods of time. But I can, technically, read any material with a dictionary without feeling lost and incapable of comprehending the main ideas. So if this trend continues, by HSK 6 I should actually be closer to the 90s% comprehension wise, if not well into them, at which point reading will genuinely feel comfortable in comparison to the difficulty of it so far. In contrast, if someone has a lower tolerance for slogging through ambiguity than I do, they might find 70% comprehension absolutely unbearable and give up.

According to studies (one is “The Percentage of Words Known in a Text and Reading Comprehension” by Norbert Schmitt, XiangYing Jiang, William Grabe), people generally do not feel comfortable reading to learn new words/for enjoyment until around 98% comprehension. Even in the 80s% and low 90s%, often people will find it too frustrating. So for a language like Chinese... where often the official study levels like HSK may theoretically get you to the 90s% but not always the high 90s%... then even after the highest HSK level some people will find it too frustratingly ambiguous to read! And with the pessimistic estimate, HSK 6 will only get them to 77% comprehension - so if they’re uncomfortable with a level of ambiguity I am used to, they’re going to hit a wall at how frustrating it will be at first to start reading! And all these percentages are based on spoken language comprehension - its likely all novels/long text are going to be at least somewhat more difficult, further lowering the % likely comprehended.

So... for a Chinese language learner, it is beneficial to either have a high tolerance to consuming content despite high ambiguity, or else to get yourself used to it. Because no matter how high an official level like HSK you study to, you’re likely to have to start off at a frustratingly low comprehension level when you first start diving into target language content. A comprehension level low enough that it’s expected for you to be frustrated. I... already went through this kind of intense frustration and just kind of slogged my way through it in French, and thankfully I studied French long enough to see what the payoff down the line was for such an attitude. I personally think my reading comprehension in French improved as rapidly as it did, precisely because I did start reading immediately (even when I was reading stuff I only comprehended 50-70%). I was fortunate to experience in real time that comprehension % increase through the months as I read more. This gives me an example of how the process should work with Chinese and other languages eventually, if I do the same thing.

With Chinese, my comprehension % has increased half as fast, so the difficulty is harder for longer, but ultimately I’m still seeing the difficulty slowly lessen as my comprehension slowly improves. In my own experience, I also feel I had to consume a lot more chinese content than I did French content, in order to see my comprehension increase. So: Chinese is taking 2 times as long to improve, and also I am consuming content almost every day in comparison to about half with the once-or-twice-a-week French content I used to consume. So not only am I bearing the less comprehensible % levels longer, but I’m also dealing with it more often with more content regularly. Of course it is going to take a tolerance to bear ambiguity... in order to make yourself do this the way I did. A tolerance where, even if you had it for another (in theory easier) language, you will have to exercise that tolerance more for Chinese. At least, once you’ve decided to start reading.

My point is that... one should try to be willing to tolerate to a higher degree of ambiguity when consuming content in Chinese, then they would normally tolerate in their native language. Because it seems like whether one starts at a low level, or a ‘high’ level, they’re going to eventually have to dive into content with a higher ambiguity than they’d probably prefer at first. And it will take practice building up that comprehension level through consuming real content, until that level finally gets up to what is considered more universally ‘comfortable.’ And if you, like me, can view what’s less comfortable as ‘more comfortable’ in comparison to where you started, that perspective has made the experience feel more bearable for me. It might help make it more bearable for others?

When I browse Chinese learning forums, I usually see a few kinds of approaches to this steeper comprehension percentage, in comparison to say a language like French. 1st approach some people do is to learn ALL the characters they can beyond HSK (usually 3000-4800), and learn 5000-10k most frequently used words (if 5000, then some words outside of what HSK covered) - before they dive into reading. 2nd approach is those that decide to dive into reading at HSK 4-6, and make flashcards for the new words they come across - deciding that they’ll have to keep learning new words/characters anyway, for a significant amount of time, until they can read comfortably. This 2nd approach further splits into people who use software to make unknown-word lists ahead of time and pre-study all of them, and people who use SRS flashcard software to either pre-study those words or study while reading. The SRS flashcard crowd usually either also bases their cards on all the new unknown words they’ll need, or at least the words that pop up frequently in the new material they’re reading. A 3rd approach is people who rely on graded readers and learn words mostly through reading (outside of focused HSK/course/other study), then eventually get to the HSK 5-6 level and get frustrated by the low comprehension % they have of native target language material, so they move next to drama subtitles/comics/simple novels and either bear through the low comprehension for a while, or also use approach 1 and/or 2 above once they branch into the more complicated stuff.

These approaches all overlap each other a bit. The big differences are just how some people deal with the low comprehension % by pre-studying huge amounts of material (to boost their comprehension at least for the one material they’re trying to consume) - like pre-learning all the new words in a book before trying to read it, or learning all the new words in the first chapters of a book so that in the future your comprehension % of the book is a higher level then it was at the very beginning. And the other people, who decide they’re going to bear with lower comprehension % for the sake of wide exposure and volume of material consumed. This second group would be - people following the Massive Immersion Approach, people who read for gist comprehension of main ideas rather then near/full comprehension of text (so 2nd approach SRS people who might add new words to study if they pop up frequently, but will also skip studying a lot of unknown words they run into), 3rd approach people who generally don’t make pre-study lists or plans and just kind of brute-force consume the content until it gets easier, etc. While I’m sure there’s MANY arguements out there about which way works better, which ways are more ‘efficient’ - I personally think either way eventually results in improvement in comprehension. The big difference is a decision on trade off: do you decide to study much bigger BULKS of information upfront, in order to temporarily make comprehension % higher for a specific new material you’re trying to comprehend, or do you study nothing upfront and bear with lower comprehension % for a longer duration of time as you consume a specific new material? Over time I would assume both approaches will result in future content eventually being more comprehensible, until it eventually becomes a high enough comprehension % that the learner no longer feels it requires bulk study ahead of time or high tolerance for ambiguity.

I feel that, at least with studying Chinese, that question above about trade offs is relevant for a longer duration of time than it is for languages categorized as ‘easier’ for a learner to study. Like, French? I would guess, that if UNLIKE ME, you learned the 3000 most common words immediately, then started with graded readers (either during that word learning or after to increase vocabulary level more), and worked your way up to native target language content, you would generally find reading to be a comfortable level of comprehension all the way through. 3000 high frequency words in many languages gets you to about 95% comprehension. That’s still a little under the 98% comprehension you need to start reading and picking up most new words comfortably from context. But the 95% would get you close enough that graded readers, and simple texts would be easy to read extensively. And hopefully eventually, even more complex texts would be bearable with a dictionary and you’d quickly get to a point where your comprehension eventually increased to that comfortable comprehension % level.

#rant #language study #japanese #chinese #french #if u ever read my long rants let me know #i realize they're way too long and a little weirdly structured #since they're mostly notes for later #but yeah #if you're trying to study multiple languages maybe some of this is useful #also if u study chinese just like #be aware the % unknown words is just kind of #steeper when learning chinese compared to a language considered 'easier'

2 notes · View notes

let-it-raines · 5 years ago

Text

Catch Me If You Can (3/?)

298 days. That’s how long Killian Jones was away from a baseball field. It’s less than a year, only part of a season for him, but it might as well have lasted a decade as he alternated between physical therapy and spending an excessive amount of time sitting on his couch.

But then he came back and won the World Series.

It’s something no one saw coming, and it’s certainly not something anyone who knows about his arm would predict. Now it’s a new season with new possibilities, and anything could happen. On-field reporter Emma Swan will be there to cover it all even if she is not his biggest fan right now.

Asking her out live on-air will do that.

Rating: Mature

A/N: Shoutout to my spectacular beta @resident-of-storybrooke 🧡 I’m the worst writer and send her multiple chapters at a time instead of just the one, and she gets things back to me in record time!

We get some background information on Emma in this chapter to further set up the story, and I thank you for reading! I’m really, really excited about a lot of the things I have planned for this story!

I promise they interact in all chapters after this

Found on AO3: Beginning | Current

Tumblr: 1 | 2 | 3 |

Tag list: @sals86 @iam2307 @ashley-knightingale @snowbellewells @karenfrommisthaven @skyewardolicitycloisdelena91 @scientificapricot @captswanis4vr @emmas-storybook @ultimiflos @jamif @idristardis @nikkiemms @resident-of-storybrooke @tiganasummertree @wellhellotragic @bmbbcs4evr @onceuponaprincessworld @jennjenn615 @mayquita @captainsjedi @teamhook @kmomof4 @ekr032-blog-blog @ultraluckycatnd @cs-forlife @andiirivera @jonirobinson64 @mariakov81 @galaxyzxstark @qualitycoffeethings @thejollyroger-writer

-/-

“What are you getting David for his birthday?”

Emma looks to her right where Ruby is stretched out on her yoga mat, doing a stretch that definitely isn’t anything that’s taught in a certified class. She can’t tell if she’s gotten stuck that way or if she’s simply given up on getting some early morning exercise. They really have to start going back to spin class sometime soon. Maybe tomorrow.

“I bought him some new dress shirts.”

“That’s boring.”

“Have you not gotten him anything, Rubes?” She swipes her blush against her cheek waiting for Ruby to answer. She doesn’t. “The party is tonight. You know that, right? And we’re about to be at work all day editing.”

“Why do you think I’m asking so that I have time to get Graham to go get something on his lunch break?”

“You have no shame.”

Ruby falls onto her mat, star fishing out on the floor before propping herself up on her elbows, her bun coming undone so that it hangs messily on her shoulders. “I know. So, what should I buy him? He’s turning forty. Is he having a midlife crisis? Should I get him some hair dye?”

“Only if you want to be murdered.”

Ruby grunts before rising from her mat and stretching out. “Eh, it might be worth it. I think I’ll just get him a Shake Shack gift card. I’m not his sister. I can get away with a semi-shitty gift.”

She chuckles as she grabs her brush for her bronzer and runs it across her cheekbone, blending it in. “It’s not semi-shitty if he takes us to lunch with it.”

“True. Alright,” Ruby claps, picking her mat up, “I’m going to go shower, and then we can go to work. Ten minutes tops.”

It’s twenty minutes, which is actually less time than Emma was expecting, before she and Ruby walk out of their apartment, walking the three blocks to their train station and swiping their metro cards to get through the gate so they can take the ten-minute ride to the studios. They rarely have to go into the actual offices before ten. The only time they have to be at work earlier than that is when there’s an early game and they have to make their way across Manhattan to get to the fields. That’s a bit of a bigger commute. But this morning the weather is relatively nice, the trains aren’t crowded or full of people in T-rex costumes, and she and Ruby get to the office and through security before they have to be there.

She leaves Ruby on the seventh floor before going up to the tenth to the editing room, her eyes having to adjust from the brightness outside to the dim lights inside the room that’s really only lit by screens.

“Anton, how the hell do you live in the sunlight after staying in here all day?”

Anton twists in his chair to look at her before turning back to the screen that he’s working on, clicking on a few keys as he speaks. “It’s only dark right now because I’m trying to get the lighting right on this edit. Something is wrong with the shadows. Get Ash to set you up. You’ve got over eight hours of footage to go through, so this probably isn’t going to get finished today.”

“He’s only talking in about an hour and a half of that.”

“Yeah, but you’ve got to get the filler and then your notes. It’s a whole thing when you have a big segment like this. You’ll get used to it.”

She nods even though Anton isn’t paying any attention to her, before stepping into the room and around some of the editors she’s never worked with until she’s sitting down at Ashley’s workstation, picking up the pair of headphones that she uses and rolling up to the screen as she watches Ashely piece together several clips to promote whatever tennis tournament is going on right now. She thinks it’s the one in Palm Springs, but she hasn’t really been able to keep up with things lately.

“Sorry about that,” Ashley apologizes, flashing her a smile. “Alexandria had a late night last night, and I didn’t get into work in time to finish this up until you got here. But now my attention is all yours.”

“Is she okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. She’s teething is all. It’s miserable for all of us.”

“I bet. I remember when Leo was teething. David aged about fifteen years.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better.”

“Sorry, sorry,” she laughs, patting Ashley’s arm. “I won’t tell you any other stories about miserable babies. Let’s talk the interview.”

Ashley nods and clicks around on her computer until she’s pulling up Emma’s file, all of the hours of footage broken down. Emma has a basic understanding of how all of this works, but it’s mostly above her knowledge and paygrade. That’s why she’s glad to have people like Ashley and Anton, especially when they can easily throw out shaky or unusable footage to narrow things down even more. She tells Ashley that she wants to work on the main interview first, to make sure she can show all of the pieces she wants, and then they’ll work on finding the filler footage and the music to be played in the background. This is the first time Emma has ever worked on an edited segment that’s more than one minute, so it’s all a whole new world to her.

“This is good,” Ashley murmurs, her voice a small whisper outside of the headphones. “Like, really good. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him be this open before.”

“Jones? Jones is an open book.”

Her brows raise before settling back down at a regular height. “You are literally the most knowledgeable person on this subject in this building, and you think that Jones is an open book?”

“I mean, yeah. He’s baseball player, first and foremost. He’s young, hot, likes to spend his money and go out with every woman with big boobs and a pulse.”

Ashley actually laughs at that, rolling back in her chair before rewinding the video to a part where Killian is talking about his nieces and how they collect bobble heads, particularly his, and scatter them throughout their house for their parents to have to pick up. Emma remembers laughing at that, remembers thinking it’s sweet, but she’s not entirely sure why Ashley is showing it to her again.

“I know you probably hate him for asking you out like that, which was kind of a dick move, but anyone with eyes can tell he’s a sweet guy. I mean, he spent his injury break learning how to bake and sitting with his nieces so that they didn’t have to go to daycare. Yeah, he kind of had a period where he was pictured with a lot of girls, but that was when he was twenty-four and on top of the world. I mean, when you were twenty-four, you’re telling me you wouldn’t have been all over a pretty baseball player if you met him in a bar?”

“I hated all men at twenty-four.”

Ashely shakes her head from side to side, chuckling at her again. Emma hates to admit it, but Ashley is right. She knows that he’s not a bad guy, that’s not some sleazy player. No, he did not make the best decisions in asking her out last year, but in a move that surprised her, he very kindly apologized. And she really should not judge him over that time when he was pictured with girls all the time. For one, he probably dates as much as every other guy, but his dates happen to be publicized. She hates when women are shamed for dating, and here she is judging someone else.

His incessant flirting in all of his interviews and him asking her out have likely framed her view on him when she should know better than to judge by what appears on the surface.

She should also know better than to let a few pretty words make her trust someone.

“I met Sean at twenty-four.”

Emma sighs, curving her lips into a smile before patting Ashely’s arm. “And you two are wonderful. Let’s keep editing before we get distracted by you showing me a million baby pictures.”

“Dammit, Emma,” Anton groans from his seat, “the first rule of the editing room is that you don’t talk about baby pictures.”

After letting Ashley show her new pictures of Alexandra and those adorable chubby cheeks, they finally get around to some more editing, cutting questions that have repeated answers and editing out Emma’s laugh or weird coughing sounds so that she doesn’t look like a total maniac. There’s this part in the film where Killian is standing with his back to the camera and in front of a large set of windows that show off the field, and it looks like it could be a part of the Hall of Fame. It’s a gorgeous shot, and it’s where he’s talking about his hopes and dreams for baseball as well as wanting to get to live a normal life full of everything that his brother has.

Frankly, it’s beautiful enough to make her tear up.

They may just be her, though. As much as sports are about the statistics, about the executions, it’s also about the emotions. In the grand scheme of life, a baseball game doesn’t matter. These men getting paid millions of dollars to play a game don’t change the world. Except that they do. People live and die by the game, by the unpredictability, by the fact that it’s human beings out there pushing their bodies to limits that most people can’t reach. It takes everyone away from the world for a bit, lets them cheer for a happy ending, and even though the losses can be crushing, for just that little while, people feel hope.

Killian Jones coming back from injury, no matter how minor, to win the World Series, gave people hope.

It’s that thought process that guides her in helping Ashley and Anton edit the segment, and even though they only get about halfway through editing, they stop for the day so that Ashley can go home to her family and Anton to his while she walks down three flights of stairs to get to her office shoved into the corner of the corporate floor. There’s literally not even room in there for her to have an extra chair for someone to sit with her, but considering how little time she spends there now, that doesn’t matter. And it’s a step up from the cubicles.

Damn, her segment is going to be good.

This is…she knows she complained about it, and for the right reasons, but this is huge for her career. Right now, she’s more than happy doing post-game interviews and the occasional mid-game updates, but one day she might want to commentate or have her own show. One day she might want to move onto things other than sports. She’s getting ahead of herself, she knows. She simply can’t help it.

She’s excited, and she actually can’t wait to come into work tomorrow to get it all finished.

After sending a text to Ruby asking her if she’s almost ready to go, she logs into her computer and waits for her email to load, figuring she might as well get some more work done while she waits. Ruby’s timing at work is always so unpredictable when they’re not working together, so she has absolutely no idea when they’ll be able to leave to get on the train to Astoria. If only David was in the office today.

She doesn’t have much to sort through, just a few emails asking about the segment, another few talking about food that’s available in the office (she really hates that she missed those), and then another two from Walsh that she immediately deletes. They could be work related, but they’re most likely not.

Dating someone she works with was an absolutely horrible idea that she’ll probably never do again. Walsh is definitely an asshole, one that’s worse than all of the others, but he kind of ruined that workplace peace that she had for awhile. They’d both been stat checkers together, spent their days going blind reading spreadsheets and becoming friends, and when they both got promotions to journalists (ones who actually got to write articles) at the same time, she was pretty sure that it was fate or something crazy like that. They got to have the same job, the same schedule, and she was in that phase of infatuation in a new relationship that it made her stomach constantly feel like it was in those pleasantly painful knots.

Then she interviewed and auditioned for the on-air job to work with the Yankees.

It’s a moment that’s changed her life in an immeasurable amount of ways, but the first and most obvious – before Killian Jones 2k18 – was that her boyfriend of over a year resented her. He resented her, belittled her for what she did for a living, and it all felt so painstakingly familiar that she had to break up with him before he damaged her beyond repair too.

The fact that he was cheating definitely helped that decision.

So for him to still work under one hundred feet away from her in the office and still send her emails on a regular basis is a pretty big sting.

There is no one who got more enjoyment out of her being asked out on live television than Walsh Osborne.

Ruby: I am in the bathroom curling my hair. Meet you by the seventh floor receptionist desk in ten.

Emma: Where did you get a curling iron?

Ruby: The makeup room in the studio.

Of course she did.

Closing out her computer and slipping her booties back on, she leaves her office and locks it up before making her way through the cubicles, specifically going out of her way to avoid Walsh’s desk since she knows he’s still in the office, and waits by the receptionist area with David’s present in her hand. There’s no one sitting there, all of the calls being forwarded through the machine, and she idly wonders where in the world Jacob is.

“We have got to get whatever curling iron it is they use in hair and makeup,” Ruby sighs as she walks into the room, heels that she was not wearing this morning now on her feet and her hair curled into perfectly styled waves. “Seriously, it’s fantastic.”

“It’s, like, over three hundred dollars.”

“We can split it. You ready to go? Graham is going to meet us there.”

“Does he have David’s present?”

“Yep.” Ruby loops her arm through Emma’s elbow, pulling her closer, before walking toward the elevators. “He wins the award for the best boyfriend today.”

“Who is he in competition with?”

“Your non-existent boyfriend.”

She pinches Ruby’s arm, but she doesn’t say anything as the elevator opens and they walk inside. It’s always such a pain to go to David and Mary Margaret’s townhome from the office, if only because of the amount of times they have to switch trains, but it gives she and Ruby time to talk about their days and scroll through their phone, checking up on everything that they’ve missed while working.

(She usually finds time to look while at work. Knowing what’s happening in baseball players’ lives is important to her job, right? It doesn’t make her creepy if they put it online.)

Plus, it’s a Friday afternoon, and that’s always the best time to see people dressed in odd costumes and eating full on turkeys on the subway.

Seriously. That happened once. It wasn’t even Thanksgiving.

By the time they get to the townhouse, it’s past six, and she can see cars parked up and down the street, Mary Margaret’s SUV sitting right in front of their home. She insists on driving everywhere, even when she comes into Manhattan, and Emma will never understand that. But she guesses that they live a bit outside of the most crowded parts of the city and the Mary Margaret is always toting Leo around to school and soccer practice or moving all of her crafts that she takes to her classroom. Emma loves her sister-in-law (it’s easier to say than foster mom’s son’s wife), but she is one of those people whose entire life could be found on a Pinterest board where Emma is more thrift store mashup even with her life being more established lately.

Not that there’s anything wrong with living life like that. It’s simply not Emma’s cup of tea.

“So, how many fortieth birthday themed things do you think Mary Margaret has in their house?”

“I mean, obviously forty.”

“Obviously.”

Graham is sitting on the front steps when they walk up, a small envelope in his hand as he stares down at his phone, and Ruby whistles, making him actually jump from his seat.

“What the hell?” he grumbles, clutching his hand and the envelope over his heart. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

“It depends. Am I the beneficiary of your life insurance plan?”

“Oh my God,” Emma chuckles, shaking her head from side to side as she adjusts the box underneath her arm. “You two are disturbed.”

“Only my girlfriend is.” He stands from the steps and moves closer to quickly press his lips against Ruby’s. “You two ready to go inside?”

“Were you too scared to go inside without us, babe?”

“If I’m honest, yes. I’m not entirely sure what kind of party awaits us.”

“You and me both.”

Emma steps up the stairs and opens the door, knowing that it’s unlocked and that she can just let herself in. She immediately hears the sound of people talking, most noticeably Leo in his high-pitched voice, but everything looks as normal as it always does. The living room is still neatly arranged, a mixture of white and gray furniture, most of it antique, all scattered throughout. The dining room has place settings arranged, but no one sitting there, so she walks to the back of the home where the kitchen is to find everyone all standing around the island eating off of the veggie place that’s set out.

Huh. So maybe David turning forty means that everything is low-key. That’s a refreshing change of pace.

“Emma,” Leo screeches when he sees her, hopping down from the countertop and running toward her, pushing her back with the force of his hug.

“Hey, kid,” she laughs as she moves David’s present so that she can hug Leo back. He’s getting so big, is nearly as tall as she is now, and he’s only ten. She can’t imagine what he’s going to be like when he gets older. She doesn’t really want to. She’s that aunt who gushes about remembering the day that her nephew was born and grossing him out by talking about it. “Why are you letting all of these people eat my food?”

“Because you don’t like vegetables.”

“I definitely do.”

“You never eat collards, and I always have to.”

“Well, that’s because I don’t like collards.”

Leo scrunches up his nose, his face twisted in disgust like he’s eating those collards, before he grabs her hand and starts trying to tug her back to the entryway. “Come on, Emma, I want to show you my new Captain America shield.”

“I’ve got to go say hi to your parents, but why don’t you go get it and bring it down to show me?”

“Okay.”

He nods his head and then runs upstairs, his footsteps loud, and she turns back toward the kitchen to start talking to people who most likely don’t have Captain America shields in their bedroom. Well, they could. He’s kind of a big deal.

America’s ass and all that.

David is swiping a carrot through a bit of dip, and she takes the opportunity to put her present on the table before wrapping her arms around David’s stomach. He’s so incredibly warm, as always, and she appreciates the solid nature of him as his hand comes up to cup the back of her head, his lips pressing into her hairline.

“Happy birthday, old man.”

“Excuse me. I am in the prime of my life.”

She rolls her eyes, unable to help herself before pulling back and patting his chest. “Sure, if you think so.”

“I do. I’m glad you made it today.”

“And miss your birthday so that I have to hear it every day at work? Never.”

“That wouldn’t happen.”

“It would,” Ruby adds in. “It would be one of those things that you’d bring up every opportunity you get. You’d feed it into her earpiece while she was on air so that she’d do that thing with her nose where it scrunches up all weird to make her look like a mouse.”

“I do not do that.”

“You do, sweetie,” Mary Margaret adds in, opening up the refrigerator and grabbing a bowl of what Emma sincerely hopes is Mary Margaret’s pasta salad. “It’s so, but it does make you look like a mouse. Or like you smelled something bad.”

“Well, I am next to a bunch of sweaty men. I could smell something bad.”

“True.”

“And Ruby, you can’t say anything. You talk in my earpiece all of the time.”

“That’s my job.”

“It’s not your job to talk about assess in pinstripes.”

“Eh,” she protests, clicking her tongue and tilting her head to the side. “I think it might be.”

“I’m sorry,” a woman Emma doesn’t know says, breaking Emma out of their little bubble to remember that there are other people in this house. “What is it that you do?”

“Oh,” she sighs, her mouth suddenly dry. She’s not conceited, she doesn’t think, but it’s been awhile since she met someone who wasn’t in her circle and didn’t know about her job. “I’m a reporter for the Yankees. Emma Swan. It’s nice to meet you – ”

“Jasmine Anwar. I teach with Mary Margaret.”

“She’s my teacher,” Leo adds in, running back in the room with a shield that’s nearly bigger than his body. “But I get to call her Miss Jasmine when she’s here, which is super cool because my friends don’t get to do that.”

“That’s our secret, though, Leo.”

“I know, I know. Emma, look at my shield.”

“Leo, it’s time to eat,” Mary Margaret says. “You can show off your shield afterwards, okay?”

“I thought we were eating cake afterwards.”

“We are.”

“So, when can I show off my shield?”

“After the cake, Leo,” David sighs before clapping his hands together. “Let’s eat.”

Inside the bowl was, indeed, Mary Margaret’s pasta salad, and in the oven was a tray of baked chicken, rolls, and macaroni and cheese. It’s the kind of meal that Ruth would make on the weekend or whenever David came home for a holiday, and for someone who eats cereal and Chinese takeout when Graham doesn’t feel like cooking, this is absolutely the best case scenario for her.

Thank goodness for David turning forty and Mary Margaret deciding to keep it low key with just a few friends instead of everyone from both of their offices.

(His thirtieth birthday was insane, especially when she thinks about the fact that Mary Margaret planned it while seven months pregnant.)

Most of the conversation halts with everyone eating, just a few murmurs here and there, but then Ruby gets a glass of wine in here – possibly two – and while Ruby can deal with liquor no problem, red wine gets to her. It’s the strangest thing, but Ruby’s already loose filter becomes, well, looser.

“No, do you guys remember the time,” Ruby hiccups, sipping on her drink while Emma very gracefully shovels more macaroni and cheese into her mouth, “that we were out in LA for work, and David nearly got arrested for walking out of a Walmart with a boxed fan because he threw away the receipt at self-checkout and they checked him at the door?”

“This is not that great of a story, Ruby,” David huffs, crossing his arms over his chest and tipping his beer bottle up to his lips.

“But it is,” Graham protests. “It was a twenty-dollar fan, man. All you had to do was pay for it again, but instead you were one more protest away from getting taken off to jail.”

“I paid for the damn fan. It was on the security video.”

“Yeah,” Emma sighs as she slides her plate onto the coffee table, “but we only know that because you literally demanded to speak to the manager, had to sweet talk your way into the security office, and we spent three hours inside that building all because you can’t sleep without a fan in the room.”

“To be fair, you and I did have a great time while we were waiting. We bought that purple hair dye and streaked your hair.”

“Which was really dumb because I had to be on camera the next day.”

“It washed out.”

“Really? Because I swear I still have purple in my hair if it’s in the right light.”

She tugs at strands of her hair to prove a point while laughter bubbles in her stomach. God, she loves her friends. They’re the actual best. She doesn’t know how she got lucky enough to have them in her life.

“Your purple streaks are probably what made Jones ask you out. He saw that you had a wild side and couldn’t pass that opportunity up.”

She takes that thing about loving her friends back.

She groans, sinking down further into the couch and wishing that she had Leo’s Captain America shield to hide her face so that no one can see the blush that’s rising from her cheeks. Today is apparently a day to bring this up once every hour. It might as well go on her grave stone at this point.

Okay, that’s a little dramatic.

It can at least go in her obituary.

That doesn’t make it any better.

“Emma, can you get me Killian Jones’s autograph?” Leo questions, looking up at her from where he’s very enthusiastically scarfing down another plate of macaroni. He’s not going to have any room for cake at this rate.

“I’m not sure if I can, kid.”

“But you know him! He asked you on a date!”

She’s going to dye all of her hair purple, change her name, and move countries. That’s even more dramatic, but she seems to be on a role with being dramatic tonight.

Italy would be nice. There’s lots of pasta there.

“I’ll ask, kid.”

“I want it on a hat.”

“Leo,” Mary Margaret scolds, “use your manners.”

“I want it on a hat please,” he corrects before shoveling more food in his mouth. “Can we have cake now?”

#catch me if you can #cs fic #cs ff #Captain Swan #captain swan fic

76 notes · View notes

indic0lite · 5 years ago

Text

someone probably made this post in 2017 but oh well I wrote the most of this when I was probably supposed to be sleeping so here we go

I was going through the WKM tumblr and some image of the detectives wall caught my interest so here’s some things I wanna point out(these might not have any meaning but they’re still interesting)

IMAGE 1:

- (in red) A picture of Damien, Celine and William, most likely after Celine and Mark break up since Celine and William seem rather close

- (in pink) ‘celine is a qt’ mood

- (In blue) ‘What kind of name is Markiplier anyways?’ Abe asking the real questions

- (In orange) ‘when’, ‘where’, ‘who’ and ‘what’ all visible questions on the desk

- (In purple) ‘Police remain following celebrity death’ Last word isn’t shown here but is shown in a later image

- (In purple) ‘Fallen movie star’ This also brings up the fact that this murder wasn’t exclusive to what we saw, people outside of the manor know about this

IMAGE 2:

- (in red) Nothing to much of note here, but something worth noting about the news article is that the headline above is ‘City mayor is secretly a demon in disguise?’ which brings up a common thing in these newspaper clippings where Damien is in some kind of legal trouble with Mark or just the mayor’s actions being questioned

-Interesting photo where it’s all blacked out, I can’t make out anything in it

IMAGE 3:

- Three notes

- ‘who had eyes on the chef between 11pm-3am?’

- ‘Research locations of the colonel’s travels’

- ‘where did it all go wrong?’ The last word is blocked by the lamps shadow but brightened up it shows up

IMAGE 4:

- The same newspaper clipping from the first image

- Second newspaper clipping is another article about the mayor being in legal trouble ‘Mayor in legal trouble’ Can’t make out what’s being said in the article though

- Two pictures of the colonel and Celine being romantic, which is interesting, there’s a lot of images which we haven’t seen before

- The napkin might say laundering (which is basically concealing the origins of illegally obtained money by transferring it through foreign banks or actual businesses)

- ‘men... why?” God that’s a mood

- Three different papers documenting crimes and the person investigating

- The chef’s: Four different names under who was investigating ( Simmons, Myers, Simmons, Lady(??) ) so 4 different crimes, the actual crimes are unknown, blocked out by a sticky note

- The colonels: MANY names and repeated crimes (Dickens, O’Brien, Franklin(???), Bernard(???), Nelson, Dickens, Simmons, last is unknown) He’s committed poaching 6 times, has resisted arrest and apparently murdered someone before all of this(or was at least accused of it)

- Celine has committed two crimes (the names being Harvey(??) and Rose)I believe the second crime is theft, but I can’t make out the first one

- The napkin with the kiss mark, ‘call me’ and the phone number on it might be from Celine, but her lipstick doesn’t match up with the shade she wears during WKM, which means this happened before, so Abe somehow got a hold of it

IMAGE 5:

- Abe also has a paper but has crossed out all boxes, probably because he’s the one putting all of this together

- There’s a closer look of a newspaper we saw in the last one, the transcript of what I can make out is:

Multiple officers with the city police department are investigating a crime scene at Markiplier Manor on the northside of town.

A spokesman with the CPD said a 911 call was received around 8:30 am reposting a case of possible foul play. When officers arrived to investigate, they discovered a young man on the floor of the manor unconscious. He was ruled dead at the scene

The city police department held a press conference on Tuesday regarding the incident.

Chief of the police force says that the man, identified as Mark Fischbach, was found dead on the floor of the entryway that morning. Police believe that the child was there since 9 am, but that will not be confirmed until an autopsy is complete on the body. The Chief also said that the butler admitted to not doing a headcount of the party guests arriving at the manor the night prior

The press conference also revealed that the mayor was involved in shady business practices with mark which may affect his dealings leading into the election happening next January. Criminal charges may be placed against one of the partygoers after the autopsy is completed or if any new information arises

IMAGE 6:

-ANOTHER news article about the mayor doing something with Mark ‘Celebrity actor in cahoots with beloved mayor’ I mean at least they know we all love Damien

Image 7:

- A weird photo of the butler, Abe, the chef, and William, it’s weird and I don’t like how dark the image is

- ‘Spotted Mark in the study @ 5 pm(last seen?)’ Who spotted Mark in this study? Was it Abe? I’m guessing the house either let Abe see this room and see Mark in it or it was an eyewitness account from another one of the guests

- ‘Is he a secret’ who’s a secret? Is it William? Is it Mark? Is it Damien? Who is I t???

IMAGE 8:

- Again, another paper for the partygoers crimes and Damien has only one, investigated by Meyers, but what he did is aggressively crossed out, someone is trying to cover Damien tracks and what he did, though we do know it involved Mark, also there’s a good picture of Damien, at a party, I don’t think it was the one we were at, I think it was another party he was at.

- Under all that is a list of dates Damien was at the manor, he was there a lot, though he wasn’t there in June at all, but came back in July, the list is longer, but Abe’s picture blocks out the bottom dates

- The butler has a crime paper and the only crime he committed was public nudity, Benjamin what were you doing, what happened dude

- ‘what is a lets play?’ what is a lets play indeed dude

IMAGE 9:

- Just says it straight up ‘Mayor in legal trouble’ Damien what did you do, what did you and Mark do that got you in trouble, what happened

IMAGE 10(this ones from a video but shhhh):

- The sticky note reads ‘Dream? Hallucination? What is it?’ (that last part is obscured Im just guessing)

TLDR:

Abe was keeping track of everyone, yes, but specifically William, Damien and Celine, most likely because they’re the ones closest to William, hell even William shouts about Abe taking Damien and Celine from him in the final episode.

Damien got into some kind of legal trouble involving Mark, we don’t know what he did. He’s a dumbass so I’m not too surprised, it might’ve been laundering money, but I don’t know why Damien and Mark would be involved in something like that

Everyone in wkm besides Abe it seems, has committed at least one crime

#markiplier #who killed markiplier #wkm damien #wkm celine #wkm actor mark #wkm abe #wkm the colonel #I didnt expect to be even more confused but here I am #again this might not have any meaning but oh well #long post #Watch this kid with ADD ramble on

82 notes · View notes

deanmon69 · 7 years ago

Text

Tumblr Prompt

@kasbiel Here you go, hun! I have to admit, I struggled with this. Making these boys Talk is like pulling out a tooth. Hope it’s to your liking. Ask box is open for more prompts, folks! Just hit me up!

Prompt: Cas finds out all the scary violent and John-like things he’s been doing and they Talk.

Pairing: Dean/Cas

Rating: T

Warnings: Mild language, fluff, slight angst

He was supposed to be

The first male love of your life

You still search for him

Everywhere

-father

(poem by rupi kaur)

Castiel stared up at the old and somewhat yellowed ceiling of Dean’s bedroom. It was crumbling in the corners and a few mysterious stains spotted the area just above the door. Castiel thought it was one the most beautiful things in the world.

He breathed in deep, taking in the old and musk, the leather and gunpowder, the freshness of laundered sheets, and the underlying scent that was Dean. Not because he needed the oxygen, but because he wanted to savor this. All too soon after escaping the Empty, Cas had found himself locked in a cage with Lucifer, with no way to reach out the Winchesters. To Dean. All he could do was wait, search for weak spots, build up his grace. The longing he’d felt from Dean was painful, a knot in his chest that tugged at his wings. They wanted to spread, fly, carry him back to the soul he’d branded long ago. The soul his grace ached for, reached for every time they were in the same room.

Finally, he was back. He was home. His grace sung, content and warm, with his human lying next to him. Dean’s soft breathing tickled his ear, his scruff scratching against Castiel’s shoulder as the hunter slept. An arm was slung possessively across Castiel’s chest, calloused fingers clutching at his side almost desperately. Castiel understood this. He’d been torn apart from his hunter too many times, and he wasn’t stupid enough to believe the debacle with Asmodeus was the last.

Cas instinctively tightened his hold on Dean, causing the man to grunt in his sleep. Castiel frowned and loosened his arms only a bit, that feeling of contentment rapidly fading. What he’d learned after he finally reunited with Sam and Dean was rolling around in his head. Sam had pulled himself aside once they had gotten back to the bunker, expressing concern for Dean and his behavior as of late.

Admittedly, Dean was not the most stable person. Well, neither of them were. It came with the life. Dean had to grow up at the age of four, after watching his mother burn on the ceiling. Sam had no childhood to speak of, and when he tried to have a normal life it was always snatched away. In a bloody, violent way. And after a few ‘end of all things’, well you couldn’t really blame Dean for being a little rough around the edges.

But what Sam had confided in him was, Cas thought, just a little alarming.

“Mngg,” Dean snuffled up against Castiel’s neck, eyelashes fluttering across the skin there. “Wha’er you thinkin’ about so much?”

“Hm?” Castiel licked his lips, running his fingers through Dean’s hair. It was sticking up at odd angles from Cas’ constant need to touch it.

“Cut the crap,” Dean huffed, finally shifting to look up at the angel. “You’re all tense and broody, and it’s messin’ with my nap. What’s up?”

Castiel hesitated, fingers stilling. If there was one thing he learned from running with the Winchesters it was that one didn’t talk about one’s feelings. Especially with Dean. Often times when attempted, it ended in a yelling match and someone storming off. Nothing solved and everyone involved either hurt or angry.

“…Sam and I talked,” Cas finally murmured, closing his eyes when he felt Dean stiffen almost immediately.

“Yeah,” Dean clipped. “So.”

“He…made me aware,” Castiel continued. “Of some of the difficulties you’ve been having.”

“I’m fine, Cas,” Dean huffed, already trying to pull away. Castiel let him go and sat up as the hunter rolled over to show him his back. “Sam is worrying over nothin’. He thinks he’s a damn therapist or some-“

“You pulled a gun on an innocent girl,” Castiel interrupted firmly, eyes trained on the back of Dean’s head. “That is not ‘nothing’, Dean.”

The silence stretched out, tense and thick. Castiel waited, not sure if he’d made a mistake to bring all this up now. Sometimes he wasn’t sure where he stood with Dean. Their history was messy at best and old wounds tended to flare up from time to time.

“I wasn’t gonna…” Dean started, voice wavering. He swallowed and tried again. “C’mon, man…you know I wouldn’t have actually hurt her. It was a bluff. I needed-“

“I know, Dean,” Cas said gently. “But it doesn’t excuse-“

“I know, damn it!” Dean shot up and twisted around, his green eyes dark with anger and regret. “Fuck, Cas, I…” He stopped and scrubbed a rough hand over his face. “You were gone. Again.”

Castiel winced and looked down at the sheets.

“And I was tryin’ not to worry about it, but I did, okay? I hadn’t heard from you…I thought…” Dean shook his head and fisted his hand into the blankets bunched around waist. “And then I find out mom could be alive, and this girl could help us get her back and I just…” He took a breath. “We needed her, Cas. If there was even a slight chance of getting mom back…I had to take it. Damn the consequences.”

Dean snarled and ripped the sheets off his body. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and made to stand. Cas was quick, reaching out and wrapping a firm hand around Dean’s wrist. The hunter tugged, but Castiel shook his head and slid up behind him. Cas looped his arms around Dean’s waist and rested his chin on Dean’s shoulder.

Dean turned his head, refusing to look at the angel. Afraid of what he might see. Disgust. Anger. Rejection. Neither of which Dean could take from Cas right now. Or ever.

“Your father did you a disservice, Dean Winchester,” Castiel said solemnly, not at all surprised when Dean jerked in his arms and turned an angry stare on him.

“What the fuck, man-“

“Let me finish,” Castiel sighed, placing a soft finger over Dean’s lips. The man glowered, but fell silent.

“I understand your need to stay loyal to your father,” Cas murmured. “I do believe he did his best in an impossible situation. I don’t mean to insult his memory, but just because he was your father doesn’t mean what he taught you was right.”

“He taught me how to survive,” Dean bit off each word with barely controlled fury.

“He taught you how to be his soldier,” Castiel said, slowly, carefully. He watched the emotions flicker in and out of green eyes, saw the muscles tightening, jaw clenching. Cas didn’t have to be an angel to feel the resentment, the bitterness, coming off the other man. He could see Dean shutting down, the walls coming up, and Cas thought maybe this was a huge mistake. What right did he have to bring this up, to lecture him?

Castiel tore his gaze away to settle on the desk pressed up against the wall. He pointedly ignored the picture of Dean’s mother, opening his mouth to apologize and beg forgiveness.

“…What else was he supposed to do?” Dean’s voice broke through Castiel’s mental berating, rough and low. The angel snapped his head up to find Dean’s eyes on him. They were glossy, which Castiel was sure he supposed to ignore, with a desperate sheen.

“Be your dad,” Castiel sighed, daring to reach out and grasp Dean’s hand. “Not a drill sergeant.”

Dean’s face was always an open canvas for the man’s emotions and thoughts, and Cas watched it closely now. He could almost see the internal battle, one he recognized in himself so well. The need to be a good son. To perform and obey without hesitation. And the desperate blind eye to how wrong it all felt, because the ends always justified the means.

“…I felt sick, pulling that gun on her,” Dean swallowed thickly. “Getting her into this mess. I…” He closed his eyes and shook his head, voice dropping to a near whisper. “I don’t want to be John Winchester, Cas, but…I’m so afraid that I’ll…”

Dean never finished, because Castiel didn’t let him. He moved forward, placing a firm kiss on slightly parted lips. Dean sucked in a surprise breath, this thing between them so new and fresh still. Even Cas sometimes felt it all a dream and that he’d wake up from it. Cold, alone, unwanted. But Dean pressed back, fingers clawing through Castiel’s perpetually mussed hair.

When they eventually pulled apart, Dean was breathless and Castiel was hungry for more. But he refrained and smiled softly, a hand sliding over Dean’s jaw to his chest, where a strong heart beat just below the surface. And just below that was the brightest, most beautiful Castiel had ever seen. The soul he touched years ago, in the deepest pits of hell, and in so doing had been lost ever since.

“I have held your soul, Dean,” Cas spoke low, voice of gravel and whiskey. “You have nothing to fear.”

Dean exhaled sharply and fell back easily when his angel pushed him down. Castiel lost himself in the Righteous Man once again, and Dean followed him gladly.

#kasbiel #prompt #ask me #destiel #talking of the feelings #drabble #fic

24 notes · View notes

thestoryofme13 · 7 years ago

Text

Consequences

Concept: The sides were turned into children, around seven years old. Thomas then must take care of all four as well as deal with whatever the consequences that come with the aspects of his personality are youngins. The original tinysides concept I believe started with @mewsicalmiss

also Pairings: As adults Roman/Patton

Warnings: Death, anxiety, I don’t think there are more but if there are please let me know!

Roman had just come back from the dreamscape world. He had felt pretty good about what he had done today, he decided to finally face the Dragonwitch. It had been a long day of sword fighting, he was not going to leave the cave until they were finally vanquished. Eventually, he finally got one good sword jab in that killed that mean Dragonwitch. Little did Roman know that the Dragonwitch had a son, Peter. Upon seeing his mother vanquished this boiled his blood, he vowed revenge on this Prince! Peter followed the Prince and realized Roman had other duties he had to attend to before leaving. Peter took this time to sneak into the mindscape.

Once in the mindscape Peter was a little disoriented, he looked around the room and found a large bed with a canopy above it. He found someone was still sleeping in that bed, it was Patton. Peter had time to think about what would be a suitable way to avenge his mother. Eventually, he decided that turning Roman’s friends and boyfriend into children would have to do. Peter had heard Roman scream that “This is to keep Patton safe!” before he killed the Dragonwitch. Before leaving the dreamscape Peter had concocted a potion to turn all four to children. He knew there were four because he had seen all of them roaming about the dream world at some time or another. He approached the sleeping side cautiously and sprinkled the potion on Patton and watched in delight as the side became a small child. He looked relatively peaceful, Peter was surprised that Patton had not woken up. Deciding that his work was done in that room he moved on to the next victim.

Peter then moved into the hallway. He heard some mumbling so he walked in the direction that he thought the noise came from. Eventually, he approached a door that was slightly cracked and he found Logan. Logan was sitting at his computer trying to make a detailed schedule for Thomas to follow. Peter couldn’t really understand what the logical side was mumbling but it sounded like, “The others better appreciate all the work and time that goes into this schedule. So help me if Patton or Roman try to change anything.” The door was slightly ajar so Peter slowly crept through the doorway and approached Logan. Once close enough he took some of the potion and chucked it at the side and watched as he began to decline in age. Figuring that he should not take any chances he had a sleeping potion, that was only temporary, five minutes at most, to sprinkle on this one to not interfere with the last side or the trap for the prince. With the logical side soundly sleeping in the computer desk chair as a small child, Peter moved on to the next victim.

Peter returned to the hallway hoping he chose the right way to find the last one, Virgil. Peter actually sort of related to Virgil in the way that other people and new situation made both of them extremely nervous so they avoided it at all costs. He approached the common room and found Virgil was asleep with Tumblr open on his laptop. Verge was sleeping on his stomach with his laptop in front of him on the couch. Peter was apprehensive about changing Virgil just because he connected with the anxious side on a level no one else had. He then thought about how Roman killed his mother and how proud she would be for avenging her. He wasn’t worried about Virgil waking up so Peter just poured the potion made for this side on Virgil and watched in amazement as the side shrunk down to being seven years old. He had wished they would be younger but seven was a good enough age.

Peter was making his way back to what he assumed was Roman’s room when he heard a noise from said room. He wasn’t sure exactly what was happening but wanted to be prepared so upon hearing the noise he grabbed the sleeping potion and the deaging potion and approached the room with caution, upon entering the doorway to his horror he found the Prince had returned early. Roman was looking in wonder at the tiny child sleeping in his bed. He wasn’t entirely sure but the child looked like Patton. He kneeled down next to the bed and started to attempt to wake the side. What Roman didn’t notice was that behind him Peter was approaching the fanciful side from behind ready to douse him in the potion. Roman could sense a presence out of the ordinary so he turned around. Once Roman turned around he was met with a face full of potion and Peter said, “this is for my mother.” Peter then returned to the dreamscape feeling proud of everything he had accomplished

Thomas was trying to make a video and needed input from his sides. He summoned the fanciful side in order to think up an idea. Roman appeared in his usual clothing but smaller.

Roman, “you called?”

Thomas obviously was taken aback by the seven-year-old, “What happened!”

Roman, “we aren’t really sure but it may have something to do with the dragonwitch”

Thomas “Did you say WE?!”

Roman then summons the other traits. Logan appears in a button-down shirt, khakis, and a clip-on tie. Patton appeared next in his cat onesie. Finally, Virgil appeared in an oversized hoodie to the point that you could only see his ankles.

Thomas squealing, “What the heck! You all are so small!!!!”

Virgil recoils at the loud noise, Thomas notices and tones it down slightly. Thomas looks at Logan for clarification.

Logan, “Well it seems we are all small, it’s Roman’s fault, and this is not good.”

Thomas stopped listening and had started playing pattycake with Patton.

Logan and Virgil both seemed very annoyed with this turn of events. Thomas stopped playing pattycake and decided to listen to the logical side.

Thomas, “Well obviously you guys can’t go back to the mind palace so I guess we are having a sleepover here!”

Roman and Patton begin squealing, while Logan and Virgil both glare at the other more outgoing sides and cover their ears. Thomas makes a mental note that Logan and Virgil are very sensitive to noise. Thomas starts to set up the living room for the sleepover but it can be difficult to prepare one room for five people to sleep in while also having the tiny sides going about their normal stuff. Logan had found crayons and decided to try and make a schedule for tonight’s festivities on the wall. Thomas upon seeing this had to stop putting down an air mattress to remove the crayon from the little logical side’s hand. “Logan, what made you think writing on the wall was a good idea? ” Thomas said. The little boy looked up at Thomas with the most innocent pair of brown eyes and his bottom lip started to quiver. “I was just trying to help! I wanted to make sure that our time is spent well tonight so that we can work on the video tonight” the tiny side said with a slight sadness in his voice. He was unsure of why the tone or the words that Thomas said made him so emotional. Patton upon hearing Logan’s voice walked over from the other side of the room to give him a hug. Logan still wasn’t terribly fond of human contact but somepart of him just wanted to be held, he became angry at these conflicting feelings. At least when he was an adult he could push his feelings down and tell himself that there is no rational reason to want human contact. The minute Patton’s hands were on Logan’s back he just found himself wanting to sob because he wasn’t sure if he wanted to be hugged or pull away. Thomas saw that Logan was in distress but for some odd reason couldn’t bring himself to help because the closet behind the two hugging tiny sides may have a monster in it. Virgil was sitting on the couch watching everything unfold when he brought his attention to the mysterious closet, he had never seen anything inside there and was worried that there may be a monster in there who could hurt all three. This led the anxious side to influence Thomas that the closet and anything near the closet was a bad idea. Virgil could remember to an extent that monster did not exist but being seven and unsure made this more difficult. He began to pick at his nails and Thomas started to mimic the action. Thomas had decided that the two hugging sides could figure it out on their own while he sat on the couch staring at the closet. After a minute or so he remembered that there was no such thing as monsters and decided it was acceptable to go try and pry Patton off of Logan. At that moment Virgil had found his headphones and decided to put on My Chemical Romance which helped elevate the anxiety.

#i can't write #i tried #tinysides #consequences

76 notes · View notes

firehawk12 · 7 years ago

Text

A Silent Voice (Koe no Katachi) (2016)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7utbHbxDAM

Cross posting from Medium. (I keep forgetting to update Tumblr...)

Koe no Katachi is a bit of dream project for me. I enjoyed the source material written and drawn Yoshitoki Oima, so I was confident in the actual story being told, and the film adaptation would be produced by Kyoto Animation, reuniting the Naoko Yamada (director)/Reiko Yoshida (writer) team that elevated K-On! beyond its simple 4-koma origins.

Perhaps I was a bit naive in thinking that Yamada/Yoshida team make lightning strike twice, particularly given the uneven nature of Tamako Market, but I assumed that being constrained by an adaptation would provide them with more focus. What I didn’t take into account was that it would be near impossible to take a long running manga and turn it into a 2 hour film. It’s a problem that I saw before in the Kids on the Slope adaptation, which suffered greatly by trying to fit a long running story into a short 12 episode run, but I just assumed that the Yamada/Yoshida team would have been able to make it work.

While I was quite disappointed in the film as adaptation when I first saw it back in June, I’ve softened my stance since then. I do think the film is still problematic — many, if not all, of the secondary characters should have been cut — but knowing that I could safely ignore all of the side plots the second time around allowed me to enjoy the “heart” of the story that much more.

That heart of the film, of course, is the relationship between Shoko Nishimiya and Shoya Ishida (they’re both Sho-chan, as the film points out). The first act of the film takes place in grade school, where we are introduced to the cast of characters as young children. Nishimiya is a girl who is deaf and is unable to properly communicate with any of the students around her. She makes up for this shortcoming by being overly selfless, trying her best to be helpful and not be a burden to the class (we see how much of the work she did when she leaves the school and the teacher wonders why none of the classroom chores have been done). Eventually all the students begin to resent her, culminating with Ishida actively bullying her by stealing and destroying her hearing aids. When Ishida points out that the rest of the class was just as complicit in bullying Nishimiya, the class ostracizes him as quickly as they ostracized Nishimiya, and he’s begins to see his isolation as a form of penance for his previous behavior.

As a teenager, Ishida comes to hate himself and decides to take his own life — but only after he finds Nishimiya and properly apologizes to her. After he meets her, he realizes that suicide is not the way out and he decides to try his best to live his life. It’s from that moment that the film takes off, and we see the awkward attempts that Ishida makes to try to connect with Nishimiya and the other people who come into his life.

The second act is where the film flourishes, with a lot of visual sequences to depict the social isolation that Ishida experiences in his life.

The Xs over the faces of the people around him is perhaps the most obvious visual indicator of Ishida’s psychology, as he externalizes his social isolation from everyone else by trying not to make any human connections. It’s an indicator that pays off at the end of the film when he learns that he shouldn’t isolate himself and the Xs fall off everyone’s faces.

What I found the most enjoyable about the film was how Yamada used framing to show isolation, both from the point of view of the external audience and also from the point of view of the characters.

For example, the film often frames the characters off-center, creating sequences with a lot negative space:

Even without context, the fact that Ishida is in the corner of the frame instead of in the center of the frame is enough to show how he feels in this scene.

Several sequences showing Nishimiya and Ishida interacting with each other are framed in a similar manner.

When the characters reunite and connect with each other, we can literally see the characters bridging the gap between them (and on a bridge, no less) by how the framing pushes them together. They are still somewhat separated from each other, because there is a tentativeness in their interactions, but we subconsciously see that the characters are having a shared moment.

The film uses this type of framing at the end of the film:

You would expect the characters to be really close to each other at this point, but the framing suggests otherwise. Unlike the scene above, the negative space literally pushes the characters apart from each other and we understand why — Nishimiya has resolved to commit suicide, and Ishida has no idea that Nishimiya hates her own life as much as he hates his life. In fact, this moment probably represents the biggest gulf between them in their entire relationship.

The film also borrows the visual language of objectification through framing to help illustrate how the characters see the world around them:

Here, Ishida is unable and unwilling to meet Ueno’s gaze. It’s an effective use of objectification to illustrate the way that these characters look at the others around them. In the Mulvey sense, scopophilic objectification is meant to produce and reproduce sexual desire, but here Yamada turns this objectification into a revelation about the characters — that they think so little of themselves and of the others around them that they can only see people as a generic mass of body parts and not as individuals with unique motivations and desires.

It’s also not just Ishida, since the idea of the story is that everyone has their own personal issues to deal with. Here’s how Sahara sees the people around her when she reunites with the main group after their big fight:

Yamada also uses objectification when the camera isn’t necessarily depicting a specific point of view. In the big confrontation where Ishida calls out everyone’s personal issues, we don’t see any of the characters as people:

Even Nagatsuka on the left, who is too short to be cut off by the frame, has his head obscured by the tree to make the point that the characters are being reduced and essentialized to their particular character flaws in this scene. Again, even without context, you can get an impression of what Yamada is trying to convey in this scene. It’s a technique that she uses fairly often in the film as a way to show how Ishida sees the world. It’s both a sad outlook, because is isolated from society, but it’s also an enlightening one because he’s the only one who can see these people for who they truly are.

Incidentally, the film has a scene where the characters watch a video clip that reproduces the male gaze:

There’s something clever about having the audience experience the objectified gaze mediated by the characters watching a video, considering the fact that the entire experience is mediated. The interesting part is that this scene is an important moment of character development between Ueno and Nishimiya, when Ueno confronts Nishimiya over her passive personality. It’s a dramatic moment where all you can really see are the two characters’ legs, which makes the confrontation somehow more personal and cutting than if we were non-diegetic observers able to see the characters’ faces.

There are also visually striking sequences that made the film pop. In this sequence of shots, we get a clear understanding of how Ishida sees his relationship with Nishimiya:

We can see that Nishimiya casts a shadow over Ishida — of course, it’s a literal shadow in this scene, but we know that she has loomed over him since the very beginning of the film. The fact that she is bathed in light and is almost ethereal and angelic when he looks up at her only reinforces how highly he sees her. But soon after we see that her view of her has been all wrong, that in his own self-pity and martyrdom, he hasn’t been able to see her for who she is — a person with her own flaws and insecurities. It’s a mistake that is nearly fatal, because, as discussed earlier, he isn’t able to see that she has her own suicidal thoughts.

There are many more visual moments in the film that I could talk about. Yuzuru, Nishimiya’s younger sister, is a photographer and we see the world mediated both through her camera lens and through the morbid photographs of dead animals that she collects. Nearly every interaction uses framing and editing in some way to show isolation and internal psychology, which gives the film as a whole a much more “novelistic” feel than one might find in a typical movie. Of course, the fact that KyoAni produced the film is also a guarantee that the animation will be top notch, and on that level the film certainly does not disappoint.

But as I mentioned near the beginning of this review, my biggest issue with the film is how it adapted the source material. The heart of the story still works — Ishida and Nishimiya’s relationship, and the relationship between their families — and is enough to carry the film to its inevitable conclusion where Ishida and Nishimiya find in each other a partner that will help them cope with the realities of life.

The film opens and closes with a shot of two figures creating light in the darkness, and we understand that they may have a long way to go to heal, but that they’ll be able to cope with whatever happens to them as long as they have each other.

The problem is that the adaptation lets down all the other characters in the film by virtue of not having the time to properly develop them. Ishida’s childhood friends and grade school teacher, for example, play a much bigger part in the manga and become important parts in Ishida’s journey of healing and self-discovery. In the film, all of that is boiled down to a quick reunion with Shimada at the theme park and a brief note at the end that Shimada and Hirose were the ones who saved Ishida after he fell into the river near the end of the film.

Sahara, Kawai, and Mashiba are also underdeveloped as well and Mashiba’s role in the group is so marginalized one wonders why he was even part of the friend group in the first place. The fact that Ishida calls him an outsider somewhat “lampshades” his inclusion in the friend group, but it highlights the problem as well. In the manga, Mashiba has his own issues that he needs to deal with, like everyone else in the story. But the film doesn’t have any time to bring that story up, and so we’re left with a character who is there only because he was in the manga and not because he’s integral to the film’s version of the story.

Ueno is perhaps the biggest victim in the process of adapting the manga to film, because her motivations are completely unclear. While I’m fine with her story being softened, and she still has time to explain why she hates Nishimiya, it’s not clear why she cares about Ishida — particularly years after they presumably drifted apart after elementary school. When Ishida is hospitalized, we see Ueno visit and stay in his room every single day that he is in a coma, but we’re never told why she cares so much about him or why his mother would even let her be with him when she is essentially a stranger. The manga version of Ueno is caught in a love triangle with Nishimiya and sees her as a rival, and while one might argue that it’s better that the film version of the character isn’t trapped by that cliche, one can’t avoid the fact that in the film she has no motivation whatsoever to want to be involved in Ishida’s life. If she’s around only because she hates Nishimiya, it just makes her even more petty.

Perhaps the biggest problem I have with the film is that it shouldn’t have been a film. This story should have been told in a 12–13 episode season, if not a 24–26 episode season like K-On!! or Hyouka. If they were able to fully adapt the manga and it’s various story arcs, we’d have a more complete picture of all the supporting cast and be able to understand one of the bigger themes of the film — that everyone, whether the bullied or the bullies, has their own issues that they need to overcome and that shutting one’s self from the world is not the solution. Alternatively, Yamada and Yoshida might have considered condensing the film even further by removing characters like Shimada and Mashiba entirely and just focusing on the more “important” characters like Ueno and Sahara. Instead we’re left with an adaptation that is compromised, neither fulfilling the narrative arc of the source material nor fully succeeding as a film on its own.

Don’t get me wrong. I still like the film for what it is, but I can’t help but see the flaws in the story. Considering how well the K-On!! and Tamako Marketfilms turned out, I can’t help but be disappointed that this film isn’t as well written as those ones.

Before I end this review, I wanted to at least bring up the fact that mental health issues — at least as depicted in anime — are always problematic for me because children are essentially left to deal with their own traumas on their own. The parents do the best they can, but the children are essentially left to process their own negative feelings and discover by themselves that suicide should not be considered an option.

The fact that there are no authority figures to speak of — the teachers don’t intervene in the bullying, for example — is something that I also find unusual as well. This year in a school district in Nova Scotia, three teenagers committed suicide due to bullying, so this isn’t something that I think is strictly confined to Japan, the Japanese school system, or how the Japanese treat mental health problems. But it’s a bit sad that the lesson of A Silent Voice is that you have to learn to overcome your own problems — that you have to reach out to others for help, when maybe, others should be looking for people who are vulnerable and helping them out as well.

Now maybe it would be silly of me to expect all teachers to be like Onizuka from Great Teacher Onizuka, but there has to be a balance between asking kids to stop crying and get over their mental health issues and having teachers smash down walls in order to save their students from bullying/family issues/gang members/etc.

I also wanted to acknowledge that localization is a hard business, and while I don’t blame the dub producers for ignoring the homophone joke that comes in the middle of the film when Ishida mistakes “suki” (love) for “tsuki” (moon), they could have at least tried to do something with that scene to make the misunderstanding make sense in English. This is an issue in Your Name as well, with the gendered first person pronouns that simply have no equivalent in English. It’s a relatively minor quibble, because again I understand how difficult it can be, but if you’re watching a dub of the film the joke falls completely flat because of the localization.

As a final note, this film closes out the “trilogy” of prestige Japanese anime films released in 2016. While I think all three have their merits, In This Corner of the World is my favorite of the three, with Your Name being second and A Silent Voice coming in a close third. Of course, the Kantai Collection film gets an honorable mention because it’s Star Wars mixed with Apocalypse Now (and no, I’m not joking!).

#a silent voice #film #review #anime #2016 #kyoani #koi no kotachi

2 notes · View notes

petrichorblue94 · 7 years ago

Text

Kdramas I’ve watched this summer (meaning: at all) UPDATED LIST

This summer I fell in love with kdrama. They’re cozy, they are focused on traditional values, they are non-cynical, they are romantic, they are light-hearted, when they are sad, they make you cry with them but it sortta has an emotionally cleansing effect, they make your day, they make you hungry, they have innocence in them and copious amounts of food porn to compensate this - they are like a foodie’s dream.

To top it all, they are short - usually about 16 episodes with no second season so you don’t feel like you’re in a committed relationship.

Here’s the ones I’ve watched since this July, which means - at all.

My only love song - first k-drama I watched, it all began with a tumblr gif post where a period drama girl made fun of how small a guy’s dick was and I was intrigued. The female lead was such a badass character, she’s still my favorite female lead.

One More Time (netflix series, also called The Day after We Broke Up) - Ah, L, my first kdrama crush, looking like a Korean James Dean, ridiculously in love with his gf, I sobbed my eyes out during the whole series I binged watched- it was the longest time I’ve cried ever. If you wondered why I’d be crying in the first episode, it was because this guy was so handsome I leggitly started crying, I kid you not- it was so weird.

Bride of Habaek - based on one of my fave mangas (manhwas), I hesitated on starting this one because the posters made it seem like this would be some gothic remake, but actually the show is pretty sweet and naturally Bi Ryum/ Gong Myung grew on me (if you’re following me, you’ll see a trend in my fictional crushes, and if you knew me in rl, you’d see it there too). Loved the finale!

Reunited worlds - I just saw it on the suggestion page on quickdrama when I was bored and got hooked. Favorite character is the female lead’s bamf and slightly slutty friend.

The Happy Loner - got into it b/c of Gong Myung.

Drinking Solo - got into it b/c of Gong Myung, my love, and stayed because it was interesting even if I had the second lead syndrome (the main male character was a stuck-up ass, I can’t believe she fell for him and not for the hot, protective, happy ray of sunshine that was Gong Myung).

Goblin- One night while being bored I wanted to watch something good and remembered that this show was something everyone praised. I was not disappointed (I watched all of it in 2 days). This was the best thought-out story I’ve seen on TV, each scene was so well-crafted - it was a 16-something hours of art. The idea of the Angel of Death living with the Guardian Angel of humans and them pulling pranks on each other and drinking beer was the best part of the show. Hell, this was the brOTP of brOTPs.

Also their “nephew” was the most precious of them all, he was so young and innocent and good-hearted - fuck, Korean dramas changed my type? Before I was all into “dark” and seemingly steel-hearted guys but now I’m all into innocent, good-hearted, loyal and protective and pure (while remaining boyishly handsome, strong and occasionally dirty minded??)

Let’s Eat - okay, you probably don’t know much ‘bout astrology, but as someone with Cancer dominant, this series was an actual heaven. I binged-watched it when I was on my period and was feeling really moody and had terrible cramps and this made me forget everything and feel at ease. Not to mention that the main male lead was literally the same above-mentioned type of dreamy guy (WHERE ARE THOSE GUYS IN EUROPE, I WANT ONE)

Also, I tried season two, but it just lost me om the second episode b/c the dynamic of the show was so vastly different. I’d have watched for the food porn but I found those clips on youtube.

UPDATE:

Let’s Eat 2 - So I gave the season a second go and actually liked it more than season 1. It spoke of very realistic things and I identified with the writer girl more than the lawyer one. I also liked the fact that the guy fell in love with the girl first, because that’s my new kink. Some of the dishes there seemed pretty fast food to me, no matter how much the characters defended them as healthy, but most of them were swoon-worthy. I actually got turned on by Dae-young eating, he does it with feeling, with such passion. :P

Also: Strong woman Bong soon and Lingerie girls generation 1978

#kdramas #bride of habaek #let's eat #goblin #the day after we broke up #my only love song #reunited worlds

10 notes · View notes

todokori-kun · 7 years ago

Text

For

the queen, I’ll try my best (seriously tho why are you so nice? Like ???? how ??? Queen Luna is so freaking amazing)

AND NO IT’S REALLY NOT YOUR FAULT ADS:DLFJK omg

That really does sound fun! (lowkey jealous lol) hope you have a fantastic time!

Thanks! And, well, I was thinking of a very neutral blue-grey color scheme because it’s Ilumi, but then that also feels weird because of his green outfit? (like sure he has different oufits too but that weird green needle suit is the most well-known. Like, it’s the thing cosplayers always wear, the one he’s drawn wearing in most of the fanart…)

Illumi has his eyes on you

(this is probably true)

Do you think Kikyo and Silva (Mr. and Mrs. Zoldyck) ever bothered to teach that to him? They must have encouraged it. From a clip I watched recently it seems that Silva knew about the needle Illumi put in Killua’s head and was pretty much cool with it(…)

He’d drag Armin along with him. If Armin’s genius somehow wasn’t enough to put him into the top ten, Illumi’s really not above using Dead Eyes Intimidation + Zoldyck connections to make sure he’d get there…and then the needle would make sure Armin would never, ever dream of joining the Survey Corps or the Garrison.

That’s extremely accurate XD

Also, look at this cut exchange from Cabinet Battle 2:

Jefferson: Can you do me a favor?

Hamilton: Depends. I can try.

J: Can you tell Angelica Schuyler I said hi?

H: She’s never mentioned you.

J: She’s not the type who shares. But since you’re so interested in foreign affairs…

(Ouch.)

Yes, Eliza’s awesome ;-;

Well, the word got around, they said, ‘This kid is insane, man!’

Took up a collection just to send him to the mainland

‘Get your education, don’t forget from whence you came and

The world’s gonna know your name.

What’s your name, man?’

Kuroiwa is very much dead. Wonder how Takeomi’s gonna feel about this…first Yoriko, then his dad…;-;

Awww, at least you have tumblr friends? *hugs* and tbh I don’t have any fellow manga/anime fan friends over here either (though maybe that’s just because I don’t have any friends here at all lol)

Please join me in HxH hell. Please. I- I need someone to sob with me because I’m only like seven or eight volumes in and I just met Chrollo and omg please I have literally 0 friends in the HxH fandom (jk jk, just the fact that you listen to me rant out my favs is enough for me. TYSM for being such a queen <3)

And actually, it’s nowhere near as bad as TG or AoT! Like, it has emotional moments, but there aren’t that many character deaths? Like, sure, people die, some favs die, but so far it’s still reasonable and nobody seems to be rage-quitting the manga because of pointless angst.

Chrollo always looks good but yeah, that last style does uit him really well :)

Ging is horrible, but like you said, at least he tries and acknowledges that he’s a bad parent. In his own way. I mean, the whole journey to find him was something he designed himself to help Gon grow as a hunter (though that also connects to Ging’s slightly problematic habit of treating Gon more like a hunter to train than a child to raise…)

Excuse me Queen Luna do not compare yourself to this trashcan. He doesn’t deserve it.

I haven’t even met Pouf in the manga yet and I kinda love him.

ALL THE HAM/ELIZA FEELS.

I’m sad to say I did not cry at all during Hughes’ death/funeral. I felt a lot of pain but the tears just didn’t come OTL

I’m glad you appreciated the puns ;) (Seriously though seeing the blog back is so exciting <333)

Also: I will now send you some pics of Chrollo’s troupe members (AKA his loyal fellow criminals he’s so proud of them all), and of Ging’s student (Gon’s father figure), if that’s ok?

And I might gift you a surprise fic soon…I promise that it won’t be too angsty. Really. I would never lie to the queen :D

Last thing- is it ok if I rant more about OCs sometime? Mainly about the Love Interests for that Otome Game I mentioned a while ago (the thing I was trying to write a script for)…I’d just like some opinions on the LIs *Lenny Face*

Hi i’m back and ready to die.

I hate school, have I ever mentioned that?

Anyway, lately I’ve been losing my motivation for everything basically and that includes coming onto Tumblr, and I was wondering, do you have any app that has an instant messaging system? This is nothing against you personally, but my replies will be really slow, since I don’t even turn my computer on much these days… In fact, I feel incredibly guilty that I take so long to answer, I just don’t have the motivation…

On a happier note, I finally watched Civil War! And I ship Stony. My heart is not okay.

Um what else happened… Norway is absolutely beautiful? It’s a place where fairytales would take place, especially the fjords. And I also saw a ton of Thor statues lol

I’d scream if Illumi had his eyes on me. If I’d have the time to before dying that is.

While we’re on HxH, that picture of Hisoka you sent me is just mmmmmm nice abs He looks less trashy with his hair down.

well fuck kuroiwa is dead…

oh god trust me id be a shitty parent. a very very shitty parent. there’s a reason why i don’t want kids and the pain of giving birth is only a small part of it. not to mention i don’t have the patience to deal with a small human who can only shit or cry.

gah i know there was something else i wanted to tell you but forgot hnnnngh

uh well, ive returned to tg, so much about quitting. as long as my sweet sunshine is present, I’ll come back at any time. i just sincerely hope it is actually him and not a fake.

oh yeah, ive started rereading soul eater! it’s a good manga, you just have to get past the first 2-3 volumes for it to get good. the initial parts are pure ecchi.

i might spam the blog w some pictures of norway later ^^;;

sorry for the short&all over the place response, I’m just so so tired, even tho it’s only been one week of school. I blame my period.

Anyway, the next one will be longer, I swear! I hope you’re not too mad…

[edit:] I REMEMBERED WHAT I WANTED TO SAY

I SAW BOOK OF ATLANTIC. LIZZY. MY BABY. SHE FINALLY GOT HER SCENE IT WAS BEAUTIFUL ALSO UNDERTAKER. DAAAAAAAAMN

oh and i’ve gotten around to watching Death Note and it casually broke my heart. good to know, good to know.

#evans #submission

1 note · View note

mr-beebleboose · 7 years ago

Text

UNDERTALE FANFIC/NOVEL/THING

Adventurer by Name, Adventurer by Nature - Chapter 1

A/N: So this is basically an interpretation of the True Pacifist Route of Undertale, based on @therealjacksepticeye ’s playthrough of the game. The protagonist is my own character, not Frisk (no offence to them, I love the smol bean) but it follows the events of Jack’s playthrough and the dialogue is a word for word transcript from Jack’s videos. I started writing this about a year ago, if not longer, and I think it’s finally time to share it. If people like it, I’ll continue to upload it as I write it. This is just chapter 1, ending just before you enter the ruins, after your encounter with Flowey. In my word document, the characters’ dialogue is actually in the Undertale font but it doesn’t translate over to Tumblr so you’ll just have to imagine it’s in that awesome font.

SPOILERS FOR THE WHOLE OF THE TRUE PACIFIST ROUTE OF THE GAME ‘UNDERTALE’ BY TOBY FOX. I DON’T OWN THE PLOT OR THE DIALOGUE IN BOLD OR ANY OF THE CHARACTERS EXCEPT THE PROTAGONIST, KIT. I AM NOT MAKING ANY PROFIT FROM THIS.

They zipped up their jacket, laced their shoes and donned their backpack before grabbing the rope and harness.

Approaching the cliff edge, Kit Ross stared down into the deep, dark depths of Mount Ebott.

Legend has it that, hundreds of years ago, the village had been inhabited by a coven of witches and warlocks who had taken a drastic step in the monster vs human war, banishing the monsters underneath the mountain with a magic spell.

It was rarely taught in history classes, though, so it’s more like a myth. Either way, Kit was going to find out soon enough: they’d gotten bored and decided to go camping in the caves for a few nights.

They secured the rope around a boulder and clipped their harness to it. After a double check, they turned on their headlamp and climbed down into the abyss.

Wait, wasn’t it supposed to be getting darker the further they descended…? Yet, the cavern was strangely light at the bottom. Kit turned their head round to try and get a better look at whatever was emitting the mysterious glow: big mistake. In taking their eyes off the rock face before them, they failed to notice a particularly sharp, jagged rock that jutted out from the wall. It snagged on their rope and, before they knew it, snapped the rope and sent them plummeting to the rocky floor below.

Heart in their mouth, Kit squeezed their eyes shut and braced themselves for the painful impact of their body on the ground. Luckily for them, the rope had snapped just short of a dozen or so feet from the floor, meaning they landed with a heavy thud and a bump to the head, but otherwise relatively unscathed.

Sitting up and brushing off the dust from their clothes, Kit noticed that they had landed in a luminous bed of golden flowers. Odd; there was no one down here to tend for them.

Gingerly rubbing their head, they removed their abseiling gear and packed it into their bag. Walking for a bit, they inspected the nearby area (just rocks and darkness, nothing of interest) before stopping to pull out a water bottle from their bag. Just as they unzipped the rucksack, they heard a voice:

“Howdy!”

Instincts fuelled Kit and they turned, quickly withdrawing their pocket knife. Then it registered- they were stood in front of a yellow-petaled flower…with a face. That apparently just talked.

“…what the fu-”

“I’m Flowey! Flowey the Flower!” exclaimed the plant in a disgustingly sweet voice.

“I… I can see you’re a flower…”

‘How hard did I bang my head?’ they thought, holding the knife tightly.

“Hmm, you’re new to the underground, aren’t ya? Golly, you must be so confused!” cried the shrill voice with a shit-eating grin.

“Yeah, no kidding…” Kit mumbled. They kept the knife raised as they inched closer.

“Someone ought to tell you how things work around here!” Kit rolled their eyes, already sensing the craziness of the situation.

“I guess little old me will have to do! Ready?” Kit nodded hesitantly. “Here we go!”

Suddenly, the room went dark and two spotlights fell upon Kit and ‘Flowey’.

“See that heart?” asked the flower. Kit felt a heavy weight on their chest and looked down to see a red, heart-shaped pendant hanging from their neck on a gold chain. “That’s your soul; the very culmination of your being!”

Yeah, Kit was calling bullshit on this so hard. Nevertheless, they politely signalled for the yellow flower to continue.

“Your soul starts off weak, but can grow strong if you gain a lot of LV!”

Kit glanced down and noticed the pendant was surrounded by a mere layer of glass. They frowned.

“LV?”

“What’s LV stand for? Why, LOVE, of course!” the flower cried.

Kit resisted the urge to cringe.

“You want some love, don’t you?”

“Uhh…” Kit didn’t think so, anyway.

“Don’t worry, I’ll share some with you!” the flower winked and five…blobs appeared around it. Kit’s eyes widened in shock as they started to question life and their sanity.

They were dreaming, right? This couldn’t be real…they pinched themselves just to make sure, but nothing happened.

“Down here, love is shared through little white ‘friendliness pellets’.”

Okay, that definitely sounded fake; “friendliness pellets”? For a split second, Kit could have sworn that the flower’s face switched into a malicious grin, if only for a mere moment, but it could’ve just been a trick of the light. When they blinked, it was smiling, just as before.

“Are you ready? Move around! Get as many as you can!” Suddenly, the white ‘friendliness pellets’ were moving towards Kit.

Now, Kit didn’t make a deliberate move to grab them, but curiosity got the better of them and they didn’t move away from one headed for their arm.

They didn’t know what they expected to happen, but searing hot pain and an open, bleeding wound certainly wasn’t it.

They cried out and grabbed their arm before noticing the flower’s face: a terrifying evil grin.

“You idiot,” came the distorted voice. “In this world, it’s kill or BE killed.”

Kit sneered at the two-faced dick of a plant before them.

“Why would ANYONE pass up an opportunity like this?!” The face turned into a smug smile as the five orbs multiplied into hundreds and encircled Kit, leaving no gap for escape, except…

“DIE,” screeched the monster-plant, and the trap started to close in on Kit slowly. Unfortunately for ‘Flowey’, it wasn’t a very well thought out trap; the orbs hovered at Kit’s waist level, which just happened to be about 3 feet above the ground.

They brandished their knife and, in a very Indiana Jones style move, rolled forward under the bullets. They stabbed the blade through an exposed leaf, pinning it to the floor. The plant released a high-pitched shriek as the trap faded into nothingness.

“I don’t know what the fuck just happened or what the hell you are, but you leave me alone y’hear?!” Kit demanded angrily. ‘Flowey’ nodded (if plants can nod…) and tried to retreat underground again but was hindered by Kit’s knife.

They removed it mercifully, letting the flower go: they never were the one for killing. It quickly disappeared back into the soft earth with a squawk of fear, leaving the cave silent.

Kit sat back, staring at the bleeding wound on their arm. They put the pen-knife back in their bag and went to stand up when they came face to face with a purple fabric and a white insignia, surrounded by white fur. Shocked, they fell back and landed on their arm, inhaling sharply in shock and pain.

“What a terrible creature, torturing such a poor, innocent youth…” came a soft, warm voice from above them.

Kit scrambled back, getting to their feet and pulling their knife out again. They were certainly more scared now; there was no adrenaline, no fear or pain fuelling them now. This was a…a creature at least 3 times larger than Kit, not just some stupid plant. God knew the damage that could be done to them in this moment.

“D-Don’t come too close, I’m not afraid to use this!” they stammered unconvincingly, pen-knife trembling in their hand. This…being…was at least 6 foot tall, if not taller, and resembled some sort of bull or goat. It had small horns on its head and wore a purple…dress? Soft white fur encompassed its whole body, and although it didn’t appear threatening, Kit was extremely on edge.

“Ah, do not be afraid, my child,” said the being, kneeling down to match Kit’s height more, smiling a sincere smile. “I am Toriel, caretaker of the Ruins.” It gestured to the surrounding cave that was a lot less scary in the presence of this…woman? It appeared female, but who was Kit to judge someone’s gender…do animal-monsters even have genders? Either way, this being was no more threatening than a bumble bee bumping into a window on a hot, summer’s day.

“I pass through this place every day to see if anyone has fallen down,” she continued, standing up again. She had to be nearly 7 foot in height, towering over Kit’s tiny 5’6” frame.

“I came here to camp,” they explained, realising how dumb that sounded compared to the fact that the monsters from the legends actually exist. “I was abseiling down when my rope snapped and then I ran into that…thing,” they said, pointing at where the plant had appeared. “I didn’t…expect anyone to be down here,” they admitted, looking back up at the goat-woman-being.

“You are the first human to come here in a long time.”

“Makes sense,” nodded Kit. “No one believes in the myths and legends: they just think this is a normal mountain. When that kid fell down here and was never seen again, people started to avoid it like the plague. Now it…sort of makes sense.” Kit put the knife away in their pocket for easy access and hissed as their burnt arm flexed. As they looked down, they saw something odd – the heart pendant had a small crack in it and was glowing a little less brightly than it had been before. “Huh…guess that weed was right,” they mumbled, fingering it curiously. But…how could a simple necklace actually represent their soul? Kit hadn’t even been aware that souls existed until now.

Toriel gasped when she saw the wound, putting a gentle hand-thing on Kit’s uninjured shoulder. “Come! I will guide you through the catacombs,” she said, leading Kit to a purple archway that they hadn’t spotted before. It appeared to be made of marble, consisting of two huge pillars and a curved segment joining them at the top. Within the curved arch was a strange symbol that sort of looked like wings, in Kit’s eyes.

“This way.”

Kit grabbed their bag and shouldered it, Toriel leading the way further and further into the mountain…

#Undertale #Toby Fox #Undertale fanfic #undertale fanfiction #fanfic #fanfiction #toriel #flowey #Undertale AU #AU #OC #Undertale OC #jacksepticeye #therealjacksepticeye #jse #jack

1 note · View note