#it’s an important facet it both stories

[jamiesfootball]

I wrote about 2500 words tonight, half for the post-season thing and half for the sleepy jamie Pavlov thing

Only problem is I hate everything I wrote today.

But at least I wrote something and there will be a better tomorrow where I can look at it with fresh eyes and go, ‘Oh, there’s the problem. Now let’s take a crack at it.’

[gooeykit]

the only IPs i want to play with are ben 10, reboot and popeye BASED ON THE FUNDEMENTALS of them being disrespected by their own continuations and reboots....... TEEN ERA BEN 10 WAS NOTHING BUT DC/MARVEL RIPOFFS TO THE POINT OF CHANGING IDEAS THAT ROCKED INTO SHIT THAT SUCKED. SEASON 4 OF REBOOT SUCKED NGL AND WAS CANCELLED MIDWAY THRU. POPEYE DESERVES TO BE IN THE MODERN EYE AND IT NOT BE LIKE YOIUTUBE KIDS BS.

[yuyusshinelight]

Dad thoughts feat ATEEZ

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♪ This post is about how I think they would be as parents; just that, some thoughts. This does NOT represent any of Ateez's members in any way.

♪ English is not my first language so sorry if there's any mistake.

Note: Hi my shining stars! Here I come with ATEEZ!dads because I have always loved kids (I have baby fever and Wooyoung being so extremely adorable with them doesn't help it) and I really like parenting headcanons. I hope you like it and enjoy your reading. Love you all!

SEONGHWA

✰ Proud dad of 'the cutest four years old girl in the world'.

✰ Seonghwa works so hard day by day to be the best father he can be to that little girl, strengthening their bond to the point that now your daughter is a daddy's girl who wants to marry her dad.

✰ Daddy-daughter time every day at 8 pm until bedtime when he's not on a tour or live in which they play with their respective Legos while singing whatever comes from the playlists on Seonghwa's phone.

✰ And talking about music, obviously his baby has a playlist with her favorite songs on his phone, and in yours too. Both you and Seonghwa have almost the entire Shinee and Mamamoo discography on your phones thanks to this girl. Although her favorite song is 'Star 1117' and she always asks both mom and dad to play it.

✰ Pajama parties every weekend, even if he has a concert the next day because spending time with the apple of his eye is much more important.

✰ Has it already been mentioned about incessant Lego afternoons that end in "A little more, appa" from his daughter that makes it too hard for Seonghwa to resist? But in the end he stands firm and does not give in. Schedules must be respected, routine is very important.

✰ One of his favorite parts of being a father is bedtime stories because Seonghwa has the pleasure of having his little star snuggled in the crook of his arm hugging her own Ddeongbyeoli while he reads her a story in the dim light of that little moon-shaped lamp.

✰ Seonghwa is at a crossroads. On one side, his concern for his daughter's safety and privacy prohibits his from uploading any type of content related to the minor's life, even minimal details like that time a butterfly landed on her finger while she was playing in the park; but, on the other hand, as the proud father of that beautiful little girl, there is a need to show the world the reason why he gets up every morning, the reason for his joy.

✰ In the end, his overprotective father facet has more weight so, although the world knows that he has a daughter, everything related to her is confidential, Atiny only knows that she is a four-year-old girl who likes lego like her father because once, while building a set in a live, he mentioned how his little girl had accidentally mixed up the pieces from both their sets the night before.

HONGJOONG

✰ It's not a surprise that Hongjoong doesn't like kisses, or at least that was until he started dating you. He would plant an innocent kiss on your cheek and didn't look like he was being tortured when you gave him one. Well now with your son he spends all the time giving him kisses on the cheeks, forehead or head and asking him for kisses too. Hongjoong loves when those little hands hold his face and those mini lips peck his cheek like a little bird.

✰ He gets emotional because his 'almost foud yeads old' boy wants to do everything by himself because he's already very old although he clearly has a different sock on each foot and one of them is backwards.

✰ Of course his son can record a song for their new album, but it's a very very exclusive song that only the family, and maybe his seven non-biological uncles if Hongjoong is feeling generous, can hear.

✰ Tours are always difficult. Leaving your home for so long... But now it's torture for Hongjoong. Seeing how his son's face turns red while it becomes wet from the exaggerated amount of tears caused by the fact that his father is leaving... Hongjoong tries to be strong for both of them, he knows that if his son sees him crying it only will get worse, but how can Hongjoong avoid it if his baby asks him not to leave between sobs? Hearing him say that he wants to be with his dad breaks his heart. There's nothing Hongjoong wants more than to be able to bring him to any travel he has but, bad luck, that's not always possible.

✰ Can be found sleeping on the couch with his son in one arm and a tiny blanket covering his chest in an ineffective way after coming home really late at night.

✰ His camera is full of pictures of his son doing literally anything. Eating a tangerine, looking at a snail, sleeping in his car seat, putting on dad's headphones. Anything.

✰ Hongjoong tries to hide his jealous side in front of his son after having been scolded by you several times because your child thinks it's a good idea to imitate dad. That comment about not looking at other children, too similar to the one his father usually tells atiny about not looking at other idols have you worried about his reaction if you bring him a sibling.

✰ And talking about imitating his dad, Hongjoong is also scolded for you and his mother for not being careful with what he says in front of the child. A four-year-old child swearing may be funny at times, but it is certainly not vocabulary for a kid.

✰ Obviously Hongjoong respects his son's privacy so he never publishes photos of his child but that doesn't stop the little boy from sneaking into the room when his dad is recording a video/audio for atiny so the fans end up hearing his little voice. Hongjoong is very quick when it comes to hiding his son from the cameras.

YUNHO

✰ There's nothing Yunho loves more than being greeted at home by that little three and a half years old photocopy of him jumping around him wanting to tell him everything he has done that day and that little baby girl with three hairs collected in two microscopic pigtails crawling to where her dad is just to sit on his foot and look at him with those big eyes she has.

✰ Those kids have his DNA, he knows their potential for destruction very well so no, they don't play video games with dad.

✰ While the eldest sleeps curled up in a ball between both his parents, the youngest decides that there is no better place to fall asleep than on her dad's neck. And don't get Yunho wrong, he loves that his daughter wants to sleep with him, it's just that he likes to breathe too.

✰ Of course his fans know about his puppies. Yes, puppies. Yunho has read a lot of interesting things about him for years so he calls them puppies on camera to see atiny's reactions.

✰ It's no mystery that Yunho has a passion for photography, and it only increased after the birth of his first child. Always with his camera or phone in hand ready to immortalize every little moment with his children.

✰ And talking about photos, he clearly has his phone full of photos of his children, photos that he goes through over and over again every time he is traveling or can't go home for work. The photos he like the most? When you or him have your kids in your arms. He can stare at them with that pretty silly smile for hours without getting tired.

✰ One of his favorite moments is family walks. Running with his children, playing airplane, ball, eating anything his son has begged him with those shiny eyes for, ending up in a park pushing the swings or helping them go down the slide because they are still very small... He tries to treasure and enjoy every second to the fullest for how rare these moments are due to his busy schedule. On the way home he always ends up carrying one of the children on a piggyback ride, in his arms or in his daughter's baby stroller together.

✰ He usually admires the size difference between him and his children, their little hands look even tinier between his own. Many times he ends up crying with the memory of how those same little hands surrounded his finger for the first time.

YEOSANG

✰ He is the last of the group to be a father, his little princess has resisted a lot but he has her in his arms already.

✰ Yeosang is at a very big crossroads. On one hand, he can't wait for his little girl to grow up so he can do with her all those things that his friends do with their children but, on the other hand, he doesn't want her to grow up that fast because that would mean that she would stop being his baby.

✰ At first he was afraid to pick her up, she looked so small and fragile that he was afraid of hurting her in any way. Six months later Yeosang has become a kangaroo dad, he always carries her in the baby carrier or in his arms.

✰ Yeosang is very innocent, he doesn't find any malice in all those questions he receives on lives from his fans about his daughter, so he ends up answering the most general ones such as "Has she started walking yet? " or "What was her first word?".

✰ He's going to go from driving drones to driving remote-controlled cars for when he goes out for a walk with his daughter and she can sit alone. Now she's too small for that.

✰ If not spending the night at home with you and your daughter is really hard for Yeosang, he doesn't want to think about his first tour far away from his lovely little bird. He has seen how sad his friends get when they have to go on tour, only being able to talk to their children through a screen, without being able to hug them and give them kisses. And what about those tearful "I miss you" from the kids? Thanks but no thanks.

✰ Yeosang is usually quiet and calm, something his daughter has inherited. Good and bad. Good because she makes the task of parenting not stressful or exhausting but... a six months baby who makes no noise and barely moves? Yeosang is always worried. What if something has happened to his little bird? But when he checks on her, he finds the baby looking at everything with those big shiny eyes while she eats her little hand or sucks her pacifier with overwhelming parsimony.

SAN

✰ He may arrive exhausted after a hard day of training, tired from an event or sleepy, but as soon as San crosses the door of his home and hears the voices of his two daughters and the babbling of his son, happy because their father is home, all traces of fatigue disappear. At least until it's time to relax on the couch with the three kids on top.

✰ San really appreciates that his children want to support him as an idol, but no, he doesn't take them to concerts or let them watch videos of ateez either, not after hearing his eldest daughter confessing him how much she liked uncle Seonghwa in certain performance with certain bandages in his mouth or after finding his middle daughter on a chair in the middle of what he though was an attempt to imitate certain dance step of his. They are children, they don't have to see those things yet. Much less from their father.

✰ San is a permissive, understanding and very attentive father, always smiling at them and treating them with all the love in the world; his face shines with pride and happiness every time he is with them. But, even if San doesn't want to get serious with them, he has to do it sometimes; when his two eldest don't want to do their homework, when it's bedtime and they don't want to get in their beds, when they act capriciously... They are kids, he understands that these behaviors are normal, and it is not like he yells at them or speaks badly to them, never... San simply explains things to them a little more seriously than what his children are used to.

✰ He can't help but laugh when he gets home and sees that his two youngest children are arguing with you because they want dad to bathe them, but, as I mentioned before, he gets serious with them because they have to understand that they can't wait for dad to get home to shower them every night. You already have had problems with your kids when San have spent the night away or is traveling.

✰ Atiny knows about his children and they know about dad's fans but there is no contact between them as the children of the other members because San is a very protective father that would never expose them to the Internet where a thousand of dangers lurk every minute.

✰ He may have uploaded in his Instagram stories a photo holding hands with his children but never more than that.

✰ San always tries to come home as early as possible to do all kinds of activities with his children and fulfil his duties as father of those kids.

✰ One of his biggest fears as a father is to end up being an absent father, one of those who apologize with a gift because they have missed an important event in their children's lives because of his work while all the responsibility of parenting falls on you. Many nights you have had to console him for it. 'Magically', the next morning your children appear jumping on him to give San lots of kisses and hugs while they tell him that he's the best dad and how much they love him.

MINGI

✰ Mingi loves his twins but he can't hear another of their incessant questions about everything that crosses their little minds "Why parents can't choose the color of their children's eyes? How do you know there isn't a chick in that egg? How does the music come out of the cd? Are we going to be tall like you or short like mom? Do Martian parents force their children to eat vegetables? Who do you love more of the two of us?".

✰ One of the most common things in the Song residence is to see Mingi sleeping with both kids because he can't let them sleep alone, without their dad to hold them through the night. More than once you have found your 1'84 husband sleeping with them in one of their tiny beds with his feet out and one child in each arm.

✰ When he's at home, Mingi and the children are the ones in charge of cooking because he thinks it's an entertaining and beautiful way to strengthen their bond.

✰ Mingi feels betrayed because his son is Carat and his daughter is a Stay madly in love with 'his future son-in-law ' Lee Know. She is five years old. Isn't every girl's first love supposed to be her dad? And if he also asks them who their favorite Ateez member is, his son says Yeosang and his daughter San.

✰ In Mingi's eyes, his children are growing up too fast and he doesn't like that. Two days ago they were new borns wrapped in their blankets between his arms and look at them now, fighting to make room on daddy's lap because they are already too big to be both at the same time, although they fit perfectly together, it's just that they want more space than the other.

✰ As his best friend, this man loves to see the size difference with his kids. It's common to hear Mingi talk proudly about how cute his twins look when they fall asleep on his lap or get emotional and ask daddy to hold them, also looking tiniest than they already are.

✰ It's not strange at all to see how one of his children's heads comes out of his hoodie while he's wearing it.

✰ Mingi may be one of the few members who does post photos with his children but always covering their faces or in strategic poses so that they remain anonymous. Atiny couldn't miss how adorable his kids looked following that duck or the smallest fix-on's in the history of his iconic phrase on his children nails matching with his.

WOOYOUNG

✰ This man was born to be a dad.

✰ Kisses are the order of the day. On the forehead, cheeks, head, hands... Before going to work, when they get up, when they go to sleep, when they show him their drawings, while helping the eldest with his homeworks, while they bathe with him, while they watch a movie, while he feeds the youngest... Wooyoung can't and doesn't want to stop giving his babies kisses all the time.

✰ Cooking time with his six year old son where Wooyoung teaches him small kitchen basics, always supervising that everything is safe and ensuring that it's very entertaining for both of them.

✰ Cooking time with his two year old son where Wooyoung cooks while having his kid in one arm away from fire, knives and other dangerous things; dancing and playing with the kid from time to time.

✰ Always, always, always has one of his kids in arms if not both. Wooyoung is dependent on his children, he needs to have them with him all the time.

✰ Wooyoung loves his job but since his eldest was born he no longer likes to go on tour because that means he can't be with his children. If he hasn't managed to bring his family with him, then he spends all his free time making video calls to talk to you and your children or looking for gifts for the three of you.

✰ He takes many photos with his children but only publishes those in which their faces do not appear, he wants his little babies to stay anonymous yet. Obviously he lets them record audios for atiny.

✰ One of his favorite activities to make his children laugh is to jump on the bed hard but carefully to make them fly. The laughs of both children often makes him have to take a few seconds before doing it again because of the laughs that it takes from him.

JONGHO

✰ Have you seen those videos of babies running around in cute sleepers like bears, stars, dinosaurs, etc...? Well, as soon as his son started walking, Jongho started uploading videos of the intrepid adventures of his little bear.

✰ There can't be apples in his house because his son loves to see how dad breaks apples with his hands. It seems to be so funny for the little boy that when they go to the supermarket he manages to pick up an apple to give it to his father to break it.

✰ OBVIOUSLY Jongho is the one who sings your child to sleep, not because you don't sing well or you don't like it, both your child and you prefer to listen to him sing for obvious reasons.

✰ Like happens with Hongjoong, his dislike for kisses ended when you started dating and now you and that little bear you have as son are the only ones Jongho lets give him physical affection, except those slobbery kisses every child usually gives, he leaves those for you. Jongho really appreciates that his son wants to leave his mark on him to show the world that he's his dad, but that's what the random bites he gets or the tiny nail marks are for.

✰ They are accomplices in crime, the moment Jongho appears in the kitchen with your child in arms you already know that whatever you are preparing to eat is going to reduce if not disappears like usually happens with your sandwiches, drinks or fruit.

✰ Jongho has bear-shaped a full body pajama that match his son's, and so do you. The very first moment he knew about your pregnancy he got the idea, wanting to be a bear family.

✰ People may think that now that he is a father Jongho handles his fear of bugs a little better, but no, if he sees a bug near his child he is not going to throw it away, in fact, he is not even going to go near that bug. He calls his son to go with him and runs away with the kid as far as possible. The problem comes when the child is sleeping. In that case, Jongho bites the bullet and, avoiding the bug as best he can, grabs his son and, again, runs away.

[lillymakesart]

mizu's origin story in ep5 can have multiple interpretations

mama and mikio betrayed her - this is the one that the writers are pushing, and it's honestly already great. mizu's turmoil is grounded in internal chaos and her immediate connections. her onryo is fueled by self hatred and the reality of the world that she will never be accepted, not even by the only two people closest to her that know her as her full self. she has no paths left here. her only path is violent revenge and self annhilation.

mama betrayed her and mikio is innocent - this one fuels her onryo via external influences. mama's only M.O. is her opium addiction, which was introduced by the white men that poisoned the country with their opium imports. it shows that even here, in the countryside, away from everything and everyone that would hate her as a half breed, bridled next to her first love whose relationship is only just beginning, even here she cannot escape the white man's influence. her onryo is fueled by hatred of the white men that ruined her life so thoroughly and completely, even when all odds were in her favor.

mikio betrayed her and mama is innocent - this one fuels her onryo via self hatred. mikio, her first true love and guardian of her trust, tosses her aside and means to kill her after seeing the last facet of her identity as a warrior. here, she has failed so astronomically as a woman that it brings her life to ruin, shattering her heart into pieces and leaving nothing left of her. she hates herself, hates that she was born this way, and embarks on a grandiose suicide mission to end the white men that created her, but the underlying motive is simply self destruction (but make it fashion)

bonus interpretation:

mama and mikio are both innocent, but both are useless in her time of need - maybe a passing messenger saw her and took the opportunity to turn her in for a quick buck. the experience is traumatic, but no one is helping her. mikio runs because he is a coward, mama can only think of herself because she is narcissistic and can't spare any empathy. they are both squabble among themselves but no one is raising a hand to hold her, love her, care for her in the way she needs to be cared for. her onryo is fueled by nihilism and silent betrayal. what's the point of living when this is as good as it gets? why play into the charade of society when there is simply nothing left for her? might as well exercise her artistic capability to its highest form of expression (fighting, killing, exacting revenge) and call it here.

every interpretation is sad, there's no respite anywhere for our mizu send post

[gffa]

Here's why I enjoyed this scene so much: there is so much mutual respect going on here. There's teasing that is good-natured and makes people laugh, there's consideration and compliments being made, but most of all, everyone is listening to each other. They might rebut a point here or there, they discuss it a bit, but they're honestly and genuinely listening. This scene also comes with the context that, even though it's Qui-Gon who issues a "challenge" (and ultimately the scene where Qui-Gon explicitly admits that he did it to prod the Jedi Council members into taking a vacation), it's the Council themselves who come up with the idea to go to Kwen and have an outreach celebration on a personal level. This scene comes with the context of how an earlier scene had a callback to mentioning that Qui-Gon was asked to join the Council, a plot point from Master and Apprentice where they directly said they wanted him for his different point of view on things. But mostly it's a scene where both the members of the Council and Qui-Gon very clearly respect and like each other. The Qui-Gon of this book, the Council of this book, point out that they are thinking about others, just on a bigger scale, and that that's important. That that is helping the galaxy be better, lighter, more balanced. That this isn't about the Council not caring, it's about the Council being so busy saving entire planets that they don't have time to do something smaller scale for themselves. And that it's not about a lack of care or that Qui-Gon cares more, just the direction of that care. I can vibe with a Jedi who had gotten caught up in helping people on a galactic scale (that it's better to help a thousand people than just one person, if you can) because that's what this is. Not a lack of care, just a gentle reminder to get back to one-on-one helping, not because it's somehow "better" for the galaxy, but because both are good. Honestly, I've always been on the hill of, "one of the Jedi's biggest problems is that they believed their actions would speak for themselves and thus had absolutely terrible PR because they thought people would look into the truth of the situation" and I think that's one facet of what's going on here, it's about PR and getting the stories of their good work out, more than it is saying that the Jedi weren't doing good work. Of course they were, but this was a nudge towards spreading the word of that. This scene felt honestly good faith addressing that to me. It took care with understanding why each side's motivations were valid and important, along with making it clear that this was coming from a place of community and love, that Qui-Gon respects his Jedi family and they respect him. So I was totally down with this. (Star Wars: The Living Force | John Jackson Miller)

[inbarfink]

I wanna go a bit full-circle with a post I did right after the first two episodes of ‘Fionna and Cake’ dropped - about the nature of Simon Petrikov’s sense of identity. And more specifically, with how his titular episode centered around the ways his deteriorating mental state and the new context of his life has really torn away at everything Simon used to define himself as. 

Because Simon Petrikov used to be a lot of things. He was an antiquarian and an archaeologist, a man deeply fascinated by the concept of Magic and the supernatural in a mundane world that ridiculed him for it at every turn, an adventurous outdoorsman, and a deeply caring and fatherly man.

But when we meet him at the start of “Simon Petrikov”, he has lost all the passion for his job - especially as he now has to perform it basically as a living museum exhibit. He is now stuck in a word filled with Magic and feels like the only mundane thing in it. He is unable to handle the sort of dangers you would find in an Oooian camping trip. And he made a little girl cry.

And there’s one more thing Simon used to define his identity as, and that is the one he ended up clinging to more than anything in that one episode, even though it was just as decimated as every other facet of his old identity, and the one that ends up jump-starting the plot. And that is being Betty Grof’s other half.

So now, looking back at this second episode at the end of the series, it really feels appropriate that throughout his adventures Simon managed to rediscover these old elements of his personality, that all these aspects of his identity managed to get reinforced and validated…

For most of the series he was basically doing his old job again - travelling around, trying to discover and uncover an ancient artifact.

And you can really see how he regains his excitement for research. 

And by the end of the show, he ends up really rediscovering a passion for his work (and also realized that this Living Museum Exhibit set-up is not conducive for his mental health, which is also a step in the right direction).

 

And he gets to show-off his understanding of Magic

And by the end of the show, Simon doesn’t feel like such an outsider in Ooo anymore. Probably helped by the fact his cellphone connection with Fionna gives him that little connection to 'normalcy' he was missing.

And he got to go on an adventure again, and handle it better than his Camping Trip Funtimes with Finn. Probably because he was around Adventure Novices Fionna and Cake, who were a bit closer to his ‘level’ than a crazy-seasoned adventurer like Finn

And by the end of the show, you can see him seeking thrills on his own terms.

And his ability be kind and fatherly and comforting was validated both by his constant interactions with Fionna - who isn’t a child, but is still a younger person who often needed his emotional support

And also by a very grim reminder of how truly important he was for Marcy.

And by the end of the show, he has managed to make a connection with Astrid, despite them starting out on such a sour note.

But 'Simon Petrikov, Betty Grof's beloved'? That aspect of himself did get some validation, via him getting to share their love story with Fionna

But it was not entirely validated, was it? That was the one aspect of himself that was actually challenged - the one part of himself was clinging to like a lifeline when he felt like he was falling apart, that was the one part of himself that he had to both recontextualize in his head and eventually realized he had to finally let go off…

[sweetteainthesummerx]

THE LOVE LASTS SO LONG (9)

In which Aubrey gets interviewed...

series masterlist

★・・・・★・・・・ ★・・・・★

ellemagazine posted

ellemagazine Our June edition features Aubrey Yang on her directing debut, the trajectory of her career and new friends in Formula One. Full article linked in bio.

tagged: aubreyyang

liked by formula1, olliebearman, mckennagraceful and 80,944 others

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user1 ON MY HANDS AND KNEES BARK BARK SHES SO FINE

aubreyyang thank you for having me Elle! always a blast 💋

-- aubberieloverss MOTHERRR

dior.n.goodjohn ILY UR SO BEAUTIFUL AND ETHERAL

-- aubreyyang stawpp ur making me blush

formula1 thank you for the shout out! hope to see you in the Ferrari paddocks soon 🏎️

liked by aubreyyang

-- f1wagsupdates BAHAHA f1 admin ur brave for that one

lilymhe prettiest girl

-- aubreyyang me and dior miss u tons! can't wait to see u soon

mvertsppdudu can ollie fight ill catch him in the paddocks

ELLE MAGAZINE

NEW ISSUE

INTERVIEW WITH AUBREY YANG

Aubrey Yang, the multi-faceted actress debuts her talent and grit for directing and screenwriting in her short film Pelt, winning the Best Screenplay and a notable nominee for the Best Film during London Film week. Since we've last seen her at Elle New York, she has turned 18, nearing 19 now, and made some drastic changes to her life.

Since her film, Yang has not been in any other production as talent, but teases us with a new project "that's coming soon, don't worry". She adores her new found love for being a creative, and is scouting to get her hands on more projects in Hollywood on that side of the camera.

Her studies continue at New York University and she is set to graduate early, next year. When asked about her ability to balance school and work, she smiles knowingly and tells us that "it's important to take breaks, but more importantly, I've chosen things I love to do".

During these breaks, Yang is often seen with fellow young actress Dior Goodjohn and international pop sensation Olivia Rodrigo. But 18 has brought a new hobby: Formula One.

"I met Lily [Muni He] and Alex [Albon] at a gala, and we hit it off. They're like my parents" she answers adoringly. She has been seen multiple times in both the Williams and Ferrari garages visiting with fans and learning about the mechanics of racing.

"I've met some wonderful people; I never really got to be a regular teenager because I was working and going to university early. They've really helped teach me about having fun and letting loose."

Next year when we inevitably feature her lovely face again, we'll see the new changes to her life.

MESSAGES

ollie

I read ur article it was great

sad I didn't get a shout out tho :(

aubrey

sorry boo

PROMISE TO GIVE YOU ONE NEXT YEARR

ollie

okay :)

anyways r we still on for the trip?

aubrey

yes mr. bearman

ollie

I was thinking Charles and Alex might want to go w us

aubrey

YESSS MY FAV MONAGESQUES

ollie

gotta go but talk later? ☺️

aubrey

kk cya bearman

ollie

bye yang :)

MESSAGES

alex 🖼️

cou cou chérie!

(hey dear)

aubrey 🎬

AHH ALEX J'avais l'intention de t'envoyer un texto ! On part en voyage en Europe ?

(I was meaning to text you, are we on for the Europe trip?)

alex 🖼️

yes but I have smth to ask

aubrey 🎬

um not the English what's wrong

alex 🖼️

DO U LIKE OLLIE

aubrey 🎬

UM BYE WHY

alex 🖼️

bc I have to watch him text u and its dégoûtant

(disgusting)

aubrey 🎬

bro idk

dior thinks we like each other

its just hes becoming such a good friend

he makes me smile

and hes so sweet and kind and gentle

hes not like any other guy ik

alex 🖼️

its going to be such a long trip 😔

aubreyyang posted on their story

olliebearman replied to your story

cute 😊

aubreyyang

ikr shes my cousins baby

olliebearman

oh

very cute

wanna play 9 ball on message

aubreyyang

YOURE ON

bearyfast_04 posted

bearyfast_04 I think im ready to be a father

liked by alexandrasaintmleux, leosdad and 10 others

leosdad fatherhood is hard

-- landoakabob u have a dog

-- leosdad u take that back hes my son

pastryboy SIR U ARE 21 WDYM CHILDREN

-- bearyfast_04 but look at her 🥰

-- arthuranddw another fallen soldier

★・・・・★・・・・ ★・・・・★

Taglist: @callsignwidow @iloveyou3000morgan @honethatty12 @taygrls

© sweetteainthesummerx.tumblr. all rights reserved. unauthorized copying, translation, or claiming of my writing or any works as your own is strictly prohibited.

[physalian]

Writing Exposition (Or Turning a Textbook into a Story)

Exposition concerns every facet of your work from character descriptions, backstories, and relationships, to world history, geography, religions/faiths/superstitions, politics, and current events. Whenever the author takes an aside to say “Joe, Bob’s second cousin, said ‘hello’,” the exposition is establishing that Joe is Bob’s cousin.

So shaming a story for its poor handling of exposition is like shaming a movie for bad visual effects. Yes, some of it is probably bad, but I guarantee that you did not notice every single VFX shot in the movie, and you weren’t supposed to.

Most examples of bad exposition occur when the following happens:

Informed Character A exposits to Informed Character B and tacks on “as you know” with full sincerity

Random Important Detail gets dropped in conversation that does not fit the tone or direction of conversation

Character suddenly monologues about The Thing unprompted

Convenient Breaking News Alerts

Character, out-of-character, begins monologuing about The Thing even when prompted

The pacing screeches to a halt so the Exposition Train can thunder past

Exposition exists to give information, and in order for a reader to understand a story, not all of it can or should be agonized over making perfect. Settings have to be established. Character names and relationships have to be understood. “Telling” over “showing” is, in my opinion, perfectly fine when the “showing” would take more lines, effort, and priority over a single inconsequential sentence. Heck, sometimes the “telling” is better than the “showing”. The trick to understanding when, how, and to what degree to give exposition is making it motivated.

What is motivated exposition?

See this post about character descriptions and the plight of the cliche “mirror” trope for unmotivated exposition.

Motivating your exposition means giving it a reason to exist where it does, prompted by the story you’re telling. Citing the “mirror” trope: I can have my character wake up and describe themselves to you, but in doing so, that rarely tells the audience anything more than just what to picture as they read. Or, I can have my character description spread out as those details become relevant. They’re describing their hair color and texture as it begins to irritate or distract them, telling us both what it looks like, and what our character thinks of it, and a little bit about their personality in how they treat it.

I can open the first chapter with a long-winded editorial about the long lost king destined to unite the shattered kingdoms, or I can wait until the tale becomes important to my characters to tell.

I can spin tapestries about politics before you’ve even met your hero, or I can wait until those politics begin to cause the hero problems and then invite the hero to talk about why those politics cause problems.

See this post about pacing and ensuring your scenes always do at least two things at once. Motivated exposition takes bland information’s singular purpose (to inform) and gives it flavor in coloring the personalities of the characters who give and receive it.

When to give exposition

Caveat: Not all front-loaded exposition is poorly-handled. Everyone loves the Star Wars title crawls because they’re a part of the episodic movie experience. Whether it’s a cheap way to deliver information is irrelevant.

Most prologues exist to front-load exposition and, because I love using Lord of the Rings as my shining example in every post, the trilogy opens with a lengthy speedrun of the main villain, some of the important pieces on the chessboard, the importance of the ring, the smeared reputation Aragorn must live up to and repair, and an idea of the stakes should the heroes lose. Not only is it a prologue, it’s a narrated prologue. There’s an impressive amount of information given in not a lot of time.

Last Airbender begins every single episode with a reminder about the 100 year war and the aggression of the Fire Nation and the purpose of the avatar.

With that said, prologues and title crawls are their own tangle of weeds.

As I said above, exposition should be given when the story gives it reason to exist. Don’t talk about the politics until you have a scene where discussing politics is relevant.

If you need to establish your cool, unique magic system, wait until you have a character using that magic and give it in little chewable bites. That character likely isn’t using every trick in the book right then and there. If they wrote Last Airbender as a novel and started explaining the other three bending styles the second Katara levitated some water, it would read sloppy and slog.

Or, leave the exposition as a mystery to be told later. Make your audience crave the hero’s backstory, piecing together little hints throughout the narrative until just the right moment comes along where your hero would realistically start spilling the beans about themselves. Have other characters frustrated at the lack of information. Have other characters missassume and be wrong about the information they think they know.

Have your characters crave knowledge about their world as much as your audience does.

How to give exposition

Exposition can be given three ways: Via the narrator, via dialogue, or via images or texts observed by the narrator (think news broadcasts or the front page of the paper, books, letters, videos, diary pages).

No matter which avenue you give exposition through, the less random it is, the less “hand of the author” the audience sees. Characters given a lucky break by a convenient breaking news alert is a mini deus ex machina —- the heroes do not earn their victory, it’s just given to them. They are not active in the plot making decisions, they are being railroaded by information as it falls into place before them.

Narrated exposition

The narrator’s internal monologue will interrupt the story to explain whatever needs explaining in that moment. The difference between it reading like a textbook and reading like a story is whether or not this information is important to the narrator.

Meaning, what does my hero feel about this new information? Katniss Everdeen in Hunger Games exposits the entire book because she’s alone for a fair chunk of it with no one to talk to, and she’s no stranger to the politics and history of her world. And yet, she has such strong feelings about everything she says that it doesn’t feel like she’s just giving information for the sake of informing. Everything she says and how she says it reflects on her personality and how she views her world.

Dialogue exposition

When Katniss is clueless about the tribute parade process and all the nuances of Capital life, how she asks about this information and how Effie, Cinna, and Haymich tell her also speaks to their personalities and biases about what they’re saying. In essence: Their exposition is in-character, and, thus, services their characters.

This is the complete opposite of when two informed characters exposit to each other information both already know for the sake of the audience because the author has no other way to give said information. A prime example is the hero happening to overhear two minions discussing The Plan dropping lines like “as you know” (which makes it worse every time).

The only time “as you know” works is when it’s in character. As in, the villain expositing to their minion they think is stupid and the minion reacting to that assumption appropriately. Or, the heroes are gathered to discuss The Plan and the leader of the meeting goes “as you know” because that happens in the real world. Bonus points if some characters are irritated by the redundant recap.

Exposition via dialogue also opens the door for lies, half-truths, and characters simply being wrong or blinded by their biases. Or, characters simply being ignorant of the world they live in. In Lord of the Rings, Gandalf is like 3,000 years old and has been all over Middle Earth. It doesn’t break the plot to have Gandalf exposit because he would realistically have witnessed or have deep knowledge about historical events and politics. Aragorn, too, is 87, and has ranged all over the place. He’s the future king and thus had better know his history and politics. Aragorn expositing makes sense.

Say what you will about Last Jedi but it has a prime example of nuanced exposition: Kylo Ren and Luke Skywalker have incredibly different perspectives on if/how Luke attempted murder on his nephew. There’s 3 sides to every story and the audience is never shown the truth. Had this been given in the title crawl, it would have lost much of its potency.

Dialogue also nurtures the relationships between the characters talking. Telling stories brings people together. If a character is sharing their backstory, why are they telling the narrator, and what does this mean to them as they tell it? If a soldier is sharing his grizzled leader’s backstory around a campfire, how does his relationship with his leader impact how he tells that story, what language he uses, how he sounds, the expressions on his face?

Third party exposition

Information given from an object can be incredibly hit or miss, depending on how hard the heroes worked to obtain it, and whether or not the object in question is meaningful to the heroes.

In the Assassin's Creed games, you abandon the gameplay in whatever historical era you're playing in to watch cutscene after cutscene of exposition (specifically referencing the Ezio Trilogy) by characters no one cares about, giving information that no one cares about, when we'd all rather just keep playing the game.

You can literally have a character read from a textbook, logbook, or daily minutes. What matters is how that info reads, and how the character responds to it. Is the information prejudiced or saturated with bigoted language? Is the mere existence of it where it is horrifying?

In the Mines of Moria (Lord of the Rings) Gimli learns that all his kin have been murdered by goblins once he sees their corpses all impaled with goblin arrows. Later, he finds his dead cousin’s crypt containing a dead dwarf cradling a book that tells of the downfall of Moria. The log entry isn’t finished, and the penmanship rapidly degrades as the dwarf writing it likely dies from his wounds, ending with the ominous, “We cannot get out, we cannot get out, they are coming.”

Had Gandalf warned Gimli ahead of time that all the dwarves were dead, or had they never found the crypt or figured out the owners of the arrows and simply were told “oh yeah we’re about to be attacked by goblins, I suspect they’re the reason Moria is a ghost town” that would have lost all emotional impact, and character development for Gimli.

This doesn’t have to be just objects, get creative! Have the hero watch a parody retelling of the Big Event. Have someone tell it like a ghost story around a campfire. Have it be a crazed rant all across live TV that no one takes seriously. Have six different characters remember it differently and all argue over who’s right. Have someone tell it poorly, thinking it “just a stupid rumor”.

When to withhold exposition

Satisfaction is the death of desire and sometimes uncovering the details of an enticing tidbit of information ruins whatever the audience had imagined to fill in the blanks. In terms of “showing” vs “telling” concerning worldbuilding, deciding whether to have a character speak about the information, or actually writing the scene they’re referring to, is entirely dependant on the story you’re telling.

If you are going to write a flashback, or describe a video of the event, that flashback and video has to be *packed* with as much information as you can cram in there as artfully as you can. Flashbacks and dream sequences take up space and entire scenes and settings need establishing so the audience isn’t floating in the ether trying to follow along. Which tends to mean that the meat of the flashback is barely half of the words you’re now forced to read.

Decide how important it is that the audience sees the incident as it happened, versus told in the aftermath through the biases and flawed memory of another character.

Sometimes the fewest amount of words pack the biggest punch. You can have a shattered soldier describe the battle of which they’re the last survivor in gory detail, or you can have them simply say “it was hell” and let the oomph hit in their expression, how their voice cracks, how vacant their eyes look. The injuries they sustained, the traumas visible in how they hold themselves. At that point, the audience can imagine whatever hell they want. At that point, what you are "showing" (the emotional and physical toll taken on the speaker) is likely way more important than the battle itself.

Concerning pacing — no matter how hard you worked on designing your politics and royal lineages and fantasy geography, odds are if that information isn’t important to your characters, it isn’t important to your readers. It’s not motivated.

I love trivia and fantasy maps as much as everyone else, but I like them on the wikis and next to the table of contents, not interrupting an engaging story.

And, give your audience credit where credit is due. How many fan theories stand on the basis of a few scant lines of narration or zoomed-in snippets of background characters (R+L=J anyone?) and pieces of costume? The mystery is what makes it fun, and I just watched the criminally disappointing second adaptation of the Lightning Thief completely robbed of that mystery every chance they had.

—

In short, the amount of exposition isn’t what makes it well or poorly handled, it’s how and when it’s delivered. Inception is my favorite sci-fi movie and the entire script is exposition, but the way it’s given is entertaining. Motivating your details to exist for a reason, to be given exactly when the time is right and not a moment before, is the spoonful of sugar helping the medicine go down.

Make it timely

Make it relevant

Make it important to the cast

Make it earned by the cast

Make it entertaining

[lolli-popples]

The Missing Link in Scott's Characterization

(Wrote this in a random document and I think it's good so I'm loosely transcribing it here)

These are some of my thoughts on a crucial facet of Scott's character in the Life Series that I think is overlooked by the fandom.

From my personal viewpoint, people put a lot of emphasis on Scott's caring about his allies over everything else. I think this is an important characteristic. However, I think this being shown as the most central trait is a detriment to how people read his involvement with the overarching narrative. It might be less of a problem if he wasn't directly involved with the final fight of nearly every Life Series.

Because of this combination of things, his main interaction with fans' reading of the final fight is being willing to do anything to make sure his friends win. It gives people the tendency to attribute some victories partially to him, which upsets people who want main read of the story to focus entirely on the winner. But this also has meant that one of Scott's main traits is overlooked.

Just as much, and often, more than Scott values his allies, he values fairness. To showcase this, let's look at Limited and Last Life, where he had the most control on how the final fight took place.

In Last Life, when it's down to the final four, Scott *could* have teamed up with Pearl, his ally all season, to kill Martyn and Ren. That aligns with wanting either your or your allies to win, no? But he doesn't. He suggests they split to the 4 corners of the map and have a fair fight on equal footing. Very fair.

With Limited Life it's even more apparent. Scott and Martyn have an impressive amount of time. They could both still die multiple times. Impulse is running out, and there's a numbers advantage. They could have killed Impulse and Scott could have let Martyn win, or Scott could have given Martyn his time to fight Impulse alone. But instead, he suggests they all go down to the same amount and have a fair fight.

In both situations, Scott puts fairness *over* an alliance victory. Even though Limited Life didn't end up ending fairly, that had nothing to do with Scott.

Double Life certainly has the strongest claim on Scott "letting someone win". That his death is an apology for abandoning Pearl.

But if you listen to what Scott says in the finale, he never apologizes. He says he didn't think they'd get this far, he says she deserves this more than him, and then he says the iconic "Tilly death do us part."

Scott didn't fight Pearl. But I don't think it came out of remorse. I think that too, came from a sense of fairness. Which is that Pearl, by all accounts, DOES deserve this win. If they fought it would basically be up to a draw. To chance. Scott has every chance of winning. But if you go over the events of Scott's final episode, he mostly runs. He survives. While Pearl 1v2'd two separate pairs and won! The only reason Pearl hasn't killed Scott already, who has been her enemy all season, is because they were randomly assigned to be soul-linked. A concept Scott has fought since the very beginning. He knows that while he never hurt their chances, Pearl is the reason they are here, and Pearl is the reason he is here. It wouldn't be fair for Pearl to lose to what is basically a coin flip. So, he doesn't leave it up to random chance.

So yes, Scott is loyal and does care about his allies, he proves that again and again. But the way he is involved in how the series end shows that his sense of order and fairness are equally important. Also, I think viewing his contributions from this angle help remedy some of the reasons people don't like his usual characterization because of how it effects the agency of other characters.

[lazy-sixteen]

I was thinking about the themes of One Piece, and what differentiated out characters we see as good versus bad, especially in a work that takes a really accepting view of different moral standpoints and values (Coby and SWORDS's justice is very different from Sabo and the RA's justice but they are both presented as good guys we'd want to root for).

So like, why do we root for Luffy following his dream to be Pirate King, but not Teach?

What about hating Crocodile who wanted to create an ideal society free of the WG but not the RA who want something similar for whole the world?

Big Mom who wants to create a place where all sentient are equal and get along versus Koala and/or Otohime who dream of that same thing for humans and fishmen?

I mean the obvious answer is that protagonists and their allies tend to be likeable - they are usually drawn prettier, have less kick the dog moments, and we get more time with them as an audience. They have to be on some level, or no one would read the manga.

But from an in-story perspective, I think its a an under looked facet of Luffy's character, for him chasing his dream is more important than obtaining it. It's why he turns down Rayleigh straight up offering to tell him where Laugh Tale is, and what is on it. What is important to Luffy isn't so much becoming Pirate King, it is being free, having fun, sailing with his friends on the journey to be Pirate King.

It's why he helps Vivi in Alabasta, Cricket in Skypiea, Shirahoshi in Fishmen Island, and the Wano crew in uhh Wano (the journey wouldn't be fun if he'd abandoned his friends to do it)

It's why he takes dangerous detours to places like Little Garden or Sky Island or Punk Hazard(the journey wouldn't be fun if he didn't get to explore)

It's why he risks his life against Arlong for Nami and declares the entire world his enemy for Robin and literally threatens to starve to death to get Sanji back ( the journey wouldn't be fun if he can't do it with his crew by his side)

All of this is why, Luffy isn't afraid of dying either. He can die at any point on his journey to being Pirate King, and feel no regret because the journey itself was the important part.

Compare this to two other D.'s Law and Blackbeard.

Law's also relentlessly pursuing his dream when we meet him (stop Doflamingo to avenge Cora), and he is miserable.

Law in trying to achieve his dream whatever the cost keeps putting himself in situations he hates.

He leaves his beloved crew behind because the mission is basically a suicide run. He cozies up to the Government he hates and hands his heart over to a morally bankrupt mad scientist he's obviously disgusted by. He plans to get Doflamingo in trouble with Kaido, which mean 1) he likely won't get to punch out Mingo himself, 2) there is a high probability of civilians getting caught in the crossfire/dying horribly.

This journey sucks. If Law had died during any point of this he would have been the world's most pissed off ghost.

It's Luffy and the Strawhats busting in and transforming that journey that puts Law on the path to success with his dream and with not being so goddamn miserable.

Like screw Caesar, let;s have Luffy kick his ass and then you fix the children he was experimenting on. Screw playing nice with the government, do what you want and call us your allies instead. Screw Doflamingo, you and Luffy go beat him up and the rest of us will pull his government/crime family down around his ears.

And it works! Law's grumpy and annoyed and cursing Luffy out, but he tells Mingo he believes Luffy can pull out a miracle and looks more at peace watching Doflamingo and Luffy brawl - knowing that he'll die or succeed with his ally/friend - than he ever did with his fool-proof plan.

The journey before destination thing is also why Blackbeard feels like a special type of evil in OP despite there being technically worse/more evil villains, because Blackbeard always prioritizes his dream over how he gets it.

He'll stay in the shadows for 20 years to increase his chances of success (wouldn't it have been more fun to be a captain like he obviously wants?)

He'll kill his crewmate, turn his commander in for a reward, then kill his captain (wouldn't it have been more fun to stay friends, he never indicates he hates/dislikes them?)

He invites strong people - and strong seems to be the only criteria - to join his crew, though tbh their personalities often suck. I don't recall any panel of his crew just hanging out or joking around which even Baroque Works, Buggy's crew, and Kaido's Beast Pirates get (wouldn't it have been more fun to recruit people he can befriend, not just people he can use)

Like obviously Blackbeard feels like the antithesis of Luffy - even though they are both all about chasing their dreams. Luffy's all about the chasing, and Blackbeard only cares about the results.

[windienine]

the best game of 2024 was an hour-long visual novel demo, and i can't tell you how it ends

attack and dethrone god.

okay. oh my god. soul of sovereignty by ggdg (of lady of the shard & deltarune fame) is discounted for only a few more days, so i need to get this one out while the iron's hot.

so: i'm inviting you along on another journey. we're following a polite gentleman of the wizardly inclination (loïc) who is approached by a sickly woman in dire need (ysmé). all she requests, in her plea, is an escort to guide her to the nearby temple. his decision to support her may turn out to be the most important choice he ever makes.

... have you ever enjoyed the kind of narrative that traps two people with heavily contrasting motives and personalities together in an unbreakable contract? do you like stories of absolute devotion?

i could look at this shot forever ngl

... are you compelled by immersive speculative fantasy worlds where the use and study of magic heavily influences the rhythm of people's day-to-day lives?

(really intriguing magical linguistics system going on here)

... do you ever promise too much of yourself to others, sometimes, even when it's a bad idea?

... if it was possible -- if you could -- would you abandon your humanity for the power to change your world forever?

and, whatever you may feel in your heart about the above...

do you want to see behind the eyes of a hot trans girl as she bullshits her way into a truly volatile level of power and influence and gets everything she wants?

(+ her pet dilf lovely assistant)

if even one of these elicited a "yes," i think you'll love this story.

i'll go out of a limb:

i think, if you open up your heart, you'll find yourself falling for both of the leads. It's a game that really wants you to look at it from every angle, take it apart, and ask questions about loïc, ysmé, their stories, and what they believe to be true about the world and one another. subtext -- especially the charged subtext this story throws at you and hopes you'll piece together -- is a beautiful thing.

the number of talksprites in this demo is kind of staggering

the jrpg-inspired world of the mosaic and its surroundings is as vibrant as it is profoundly lonely, color folded into every facet of its character as you move through it. appropriately, it's really invested in a lot of questions that arise not just from high fantasy as a genre, but from the modern fantasy sensibilities of jrpgs and the interrogation of what divinity even means in a world where the gods are forces you can interact with and draw power from, however indirectly.

what can i even say? that gg and toby fox's collab score for the prelude is downright heavenly and made it onto my work playlist right alongside the deltarune ost the day it came out on bandcamp? that gg's art, especially their use of light, conveys every scene with vivid beauty?

i wouldn't be posting so much of it if i didn't want to eat every CG. oh my god. he's so pretty. it's not even fair

beyond all of that, i think the game's main resonance point with people is that gg's writing is genuinely thoughtful. they use art detail and deft character writing to convey everything about the leads, using the limited time you get with it to paint layers and layers of information on who these people are and why they make the decisions they do. soulsov's roughly an-hour-and-change of text, expressive talksprites, and lush CGs is infused with so much heart and so much horror and so much intrigue that it leaves you feeling like you're a part of this world, carried along for the ride right alongside the two leads. gg clearly really adores these two, and that level of passion makes everything loïc and ysmé do shine even brighter. in spite of (or perhaps because of) all their friction and flaws, they're easy to love.

(it's really fun to read aloud as a script, too! ysmé's a hoot.)

i hope you experience it with high expectations and an open heart. i don't think it will disappoint. it is, perhaps, just a little bit magical.

i hope you see it through to the end!

[wingedblooms]

How do you interpret "A thing of secret, lovely beauty" in the bonus chapter? The first time azriel used it to describe the necklace. But the second time it was used to describe gwyn's happy smile.

Hello there! I feel like this is a trap. But as I’ve discussed before, readers interpret this differently and that’s wonderful. Interpretations can also evolve over time after rereads and new information. Mine has mostly remained the same (except for some specifics surrounding the second usage 😆). Part of my interpretation drifts into theory. As a reminder, theories are predictions of what might happen based on patterns of evidence in the text. No theory is guaranteed and it’s important to read any new books in the series with that in mind.

That said, Sarah is a fairly predictable and repetitive writer, so I try to pay close attention to her patterns. Many of my theories are based upon those patterns. For example, one of the most apparent patterns is that fate comes in threes. There are three faces of the Mother. Three sacred sister peaks that are barren and thrumming with power. Three stars that shine above Ramiel, the heart of the Night Court, each spring. Three blessed sisters who have been marked by fate and Made fae. Three winged males who found each other and are drawn to the three blessed sisters. There’s more evidence, but I think you get the idea. It can be helpful to use patterns to interpret and predict what Sarah has planned (e.g., the first and second sister have had their stories told, so it would follow that the third is next; there is also strong evidence that what she contributes to the narrative is needed next).

You’re probably wondering how this relates to my interpretation of the phrase secret, lovely beauty. Before I connect it to another clear pattern, I want to put it in proper context. When we first see the phrase, it is used to describe the necklace Azriel gifts to Elain. The setting in which this occurs is romantic: faelights dimming to cast little pools of gold amid the deep shadow of the longest night of the year. Put plainly, this is Sarah setting the mood. 😂 Azriel, who feels lonely despite the company of his shadows, finds himself suddenly moving into the foyer and there she is:

The Faelights gilded Elain’s unbound hair, making her glow like the sun at dawn.

On the longest night of the year, Elain glows golden like the sun at dawn. Like a pool of gold amid the deep shadow. This description follows a pattern in their imagery together, and it is lovely.

Their interaction is also raw and vulnerable, and therefore distinct in this bonus. When they come together, Azriel allows himself to feel and those feelings run deep enough to question his people’s traditions later on. Unlike every other interaction in this bonus, he doesn’t feel the need to put on a show for Elain (i.e., a cold mask, fake smile, or lying repeatedly to avoid emotional topics). In other words, he is himself with Elain. They share a quiet understanding and powerful attraction.

Now that we have this context in mind, we can move onto the the necklace and its chaos-inducing phrase:

The golden necklace seemed ordinary—its chain unremarkable, the amulet tiny enough that it could be dismissed as an everyday charm. It was a small, flat rose fashioned of stained glass, designed so that when held to the light, the true depth of colors would become visible.

A thing of secret, lovely beauty.

“It’s beautiful,” she whispered, lifting it from the box. The golden faelight shone through the little glass facets, setting the charm glowing with hues of red and pink and white. Azriel let his shadows whisk away the box as she said softly, “Put it on me?”

Notice something interesting here? Both Elain and the necklace glow with their true depth of color—golden and rosy, like the dawn—when faelight shines upon them. Dawn is when first light appears (pun definitely intended) and the world reawakens. Elain is linked to the rose amulet, and that follows a pattern of imagery she has already established in the text. This is the pattern I mean:

“I painted flowers for Elain on her drawer,” I said, sawing and sawing. “Little roses and begonias and irises.” (acomaf)

She was a rose bloom in a mud field. Filled with galloping horses. (acowar)

Even in the middle of winter, she was a bloom of color and sunshine. (acofas)

She plucked another figurine from the mantel: a rose carved from a dark sort of wood. She held it in her palm, its solid weight surprising, and traced a finger over one of the petals. “He made this one for Elain. Since it was winter and she missed the flowers.” (acosf)

Her gaze shifted to the carved wooden rose she’d placed upon the mantel, half-hidden in the shadows beside a figurine of a supple-bodied female, her upraised arms clasping a full moon between them. Some sort of primal goddess—perhaps even the Mother herself. Nesta hadn’t let herself dwell on why she’d felt the need to set the rose there. Why she hadn’t just thrown it in a drawer. (acosf)

This gift not only reinforces the pattern, but it also holds a secret message that has become central to Elain’s arc: the rose (like Elain) has hidden depths. The Feysand bonus echoes this theme. Elain’s outburst stunned her family and Rhys suggests there is more to her than they’ve seen thus far.

“I think she’s kind, and I’ll take kindness over nastiness any day. But I also think we haven’t yet seen all she has to offer.” A corner of his mouth tugged upward. “Don’t forget that gardening often results in something pretty, but it involves getting one’s hands dirty along the way.” (Feysand)

Feysand then agree to help Elain after Nesta, which is Sarah’s way of reinforcing the other pattern she put in place (fate comes in threes—first Feyre, then Nesta, and now Elain).

With Elain’s character arc in mind (and the fact that she herself has suggested she doesn’t feel seen), Azriel’s gift is actually incredibly insightful. He gave her something that says, I do see you, and he knew she’d be able to appreciate its meaning. Even the words that describe her gift—secret, lovely beauty—refer to specific things we learn about Elain in the text.

Secret: Feyre compares Elain’s ability to learn and keep secrets to Azriel’s own secrecy (one of many parallels). She is a seer, after all. What other secrets might she know and keep hidden from others?

Before Feyre could reply, Azriel said, “What about Mor?”

Feyre smiled. “Elain was the only one who guessed. She caught me vomiting two mornings in a row.” She nodded toward Azriel. “I think she’s got you beat for secret-keeping.” (acosf)

Lovely beauty: We learn from Nesta that their mother predicted Elain would marry for love and beauty, which I think @juusworld5728 observed sounds a lot like lovely beauty:

My Nesta. Elain shall wed for love and beauty, but you, my cunning little queen…You shall wed for conquest. (acosf)

This last phrase, love and beauty, is connected to the rose Papa Archeron carved for Elain. It is a symbol of love and beauty and goodness in the world, and for such a simple carving, it has unexpected weight just like the rose amulet has unexpected depth (Sarah hit this theme hard).

Her father had died for her, with love in his heart, and Nesta held love in her own heart as she pulled the small, carved rose from her pocket and set it upon the gravestone. A permanent marker of the beauty and good he’d tried to bring into the world. (acosf)

Why does this little rose matter? It is also linked to Wyrd. In acosf, Nesta felt the need to place Elain’s rose next to a figurine of what we now know is farseeing and benevolent Wyrd. Wyrd, the higher force of the universe, found Elain so lovely that she gifted her such powers and purrs like a kitten in her presence. They even share the same blooming imagery. Over time, Wyrd became known as a goddess (probably because she uses female forms as vessels, if I had to guess based on the evidence), but she is in fact a force, a mother to all, a cauldron brimming with creation. Now, where have we heard those terms before?

Gwyn huffed a soft laugh. “In part. We honor the Mother, and the Cauldron, and the Forces That Be. We have a service at dawn and at dusk, and on every holy day.” (acosf)

Gwyn’s words nearly echo the Under-King’s in hosab and hofas. The priestesses worship Wyrd. Let’s look at the description of their worship:

The music was pure, ancient, by turns whispering and bold, one moment like a tendril of mist, the next like a gilded ray of light. It finished, and Merrill spoke about the Mother and the Cauldron and the land and sun and water. She spoke of blessings and dreams and hope. Of mercy and love and growth. (acosf)

Elain’s strength lies in finding beauty even in dark chapters. She is a rose bloom in a mud field—the embodiment of blessings and dreams and hope and mercy and love and growth. The priestesses, including Gwyn, honor that benevolent force and seek to bring it into the world with their services. They are the voice of the Cauldron. And in this world, we know like calls to like. Now that we’ve read hofas, it’s highly likely that the ancient, spell-like music the priestesses perform is ancient summoning magic, which is magnified by the properties of the cavern (ahem, witch glass) in which they sing. So, is it a surprise that Azriel had every intention to return Elain’s rose amulet, a symbol of love and beauty, and found himself at the library during their worship of such things instead? No, it actually makes a lot of sense.

Azriel expressed no forethought in giving the necklace to Clotho for Gwyn. He did not select it for her and did not intend it to be a romantic gesture, which is why he tells Clotho to give it to Gwyn or any other priestess who might appreciate it. The setting and interactions in this part of the bonus are not described romantically because they are not intended to be romantic.

Clotho, who is observant like Elain, can see the shadowsinger’s sadness despite his deflection and offers him comfort in a dark moment:

Clotho’s pen moved once more. She deserves something as beautiful as this. I thank you for the joy it shall bring to her.

Her words spark hope in him and for whatever reason, he is able to picture Gwyn’s eyes lighting upon the rose amulet in his mind. The vision is a thing of secret, lovely beauty.

Some interpret this moment, a vision of Gwyn described as a thing of secret, lovely beauty, as an indication of Sarah shifting romantic pairings. I think this interpretation falls short of the full context, especially since days (in acosf) and months later (in hofas), Azriel is still upset and refuses to even discuss the topic of mates.

Rather, I think that—like the sister caverns, which are linked in song and dreaming—Elain and the priestesses (especially Gwyn) are also connected. They are part of the solution to the problem that was introduced in the first half of this bonus as well as the overarching plot. Like @silverdreamscapes, @silverlinedeyes, @offtorivendell, @willowmeres, and others I’m sure, I believe Elain—a seer chosen by Wyrd—will work with the priestesses that worship her (the most logical partnership in the series, when you think about their respective powers). It wouldn’t surprise me if a dawn service, especially if it involves groundings, helps Elain push the limitations of her powers like the dusk service did for Nesta.

I also agree with many (notably @silverlinedeyes and @merymoonbeam) who think Gwyn’s voice holds magic and, depending on what we learn, relates to being a lightsinger. That is likely the hidden depth (a thing of secret, lovely beauty) that was hinted at in the image since her eyes light upon Elain’s rose amulet. I believe @silverdreamscapes and @silverlinedeyes have suggested her voice, which summons and pierces during the dusk service, could clear mist and shadow in a vision if needed. I also think it is interesting that Gwyn is the first to sever the Valkyrie ribbon, a string tied not to a rib, but a post. Perhaps she and the priestesses could help Elain sever an unwanted bond and weave a different fate for herself, one that binds her to someone she loves? That would be the most epic end to the near-constant arguments over ships.

[fl00mie]

tw: suicide

thinking about how The Truce comic is not simply a self-discovery of error and ink and a primary introduction to xtale, but explores other facets of the characters such as hopelessness to the point of wanting to end their lives. i've known about this comic for years but i never paid enough attention to this type of topics and i just used to interpret it as fun interactions between these two idiots (i don't want to proclaim this as canon, i'm just looking to analyze jakei's interpretations of these characters)

on the one hand there's ink, who clearly looks more desperate than error and externalizes it in order to control it

although we can know more about his perspective of the situation by being the narrator of the story, i feel that "talking to himself as if he were writing a funny diary" fits perfectly, in addition to staying calm by doing any type of activity or physical movement self-talk helps him with this

of course it would be much better for him if he had someone to talk to, and he does! but it's error we're talking about so thinking about it, ink probably bothered him to feel company by getting scolded by him (unintentionally or not)

on the other hand there is error, who, as we know, is completely accustomed to the void so it's easy for him to stay calm at first. what seems to make him lose his mind is not having the freedom to move (much less with ink, or in general another person next to him) or to leave that place, so he chooses to try to have it all to achieve a minimum of satisfaction or self-sufficiency

we notice how ink is losing his sanity more as time goes by, he notices error is also having an internal struggle but knows how to hide it (this really says a lot about the character, whether due to pride, trauma or any other reason, he doesn't like to look weak under any circumstances)

i always find the interpretations that many give to the emptying ink vials quite ingenious, in this situation it clearly represents the loss of hope and the no escape from the mental and emotional hell in which they find themselves

they both seem to regain some consciousness as they literally see their reason for existing in front of them

but are totally incapable of doing anything about it

this, in a subtle way, ends all the hopes that could still exist within both of them

error makes the first move and, strangely, is "cordial" with his companion for the last time before literally ending his life, they start a small conversation in which they say goodbye (in a way). it's interesting how this situation seems to be of no importance to error, he knows what's coming next and yet he doesn't seem upset at all

as well, error does not seem to have incited ink to do the same as him (on the contrary, it's as if he stopped him from doing it in case he had considered it but said it in a very crude way), however, ink takes it as a free pass to "catch him later"

this is how ink gives his last message to those who once helped him, to those who allowed him to continue living in the first place. he tries to call them for help (it's important to emphasize that he also, consciously or not, sought to help error, whether for "selfish" reasons such as staying active and energized in his multiversal journey, having a purpose in his fight more than just protecting, or any other)

and instead of an answer to his prayers..

the only thing he achieves is witnessing a nightmare incarnate, his world shatters in a couple of seconds with no chance to stop it

it's a mix of feelings unique to him, something he's never experienced before, everything he longed to protect all this time didn't seem to have borne fruit, what kind of torture was that?

that was the straw that broke the camel's back

error, having witnessed this, feels fulfilled at first, without lifting a single finger he has achieved what he had always (from what he remembers) longed for.. and still, he doesn't seem to care about the situation at all, what good is a small drop of satisfaction in a sea of ​​hypocrisy?

the roles seem to have reversed, and even though error wasn't that hopeless anymore, he continued with his initial idea and this time, both of them say goodbye, ready to proceed and "get this over with"

[piratecaptainscaptainpirates]

Regarding this post (https://www.tumblr.com/piratecaptainscaptainpirates/750832838350340096/okay-so-theres-one-thing-that-im-kind-of-tired), the racism of Stede having the crew members of color acting as servants was clear, but I always thought he did that because that's what Badminton and his officers would expect. If he had had everyone sit at the table, or even if he'd had the "servants" be both white and PoC, that would have given the ruse away. I saw it as Stede pulling off his first fuckery before he even knew what a fuckery was, and creating what he thought would appear to Badminton as "a bunch of upper crust lads trying their hand at the seafaring life". In other words, he was well aware that it was racist but asked his crew to go along with it so they could get Badminton and his officers off the ship as quickly as possible. Had Wellington not been such a blatant racist prick, they might have succeeded, but Jim was never gonna let that behavior slide. Quite right too.

Now, in S1E2, him and Pete thinking that the tribe were cooking and eating their hostages was incredibly racist and they absolutely deserved to be called out on that. But I never got the sense, even in those early episodes, that Stede treated his PoC crewmembers any differently or worse than he treated his white crewmembers. And especially with Olu and Jim, he valued their advice and counsel, and Olu had no issues speaking his mind to Stede, which to me meant that he never felt threatened by Stede or worried that Stede would abuse him or anyone else on the crew.

If I've misinterpreted Stede's actions, please let me know. I'm white, so I know I don't see a lot of the micro aggressions that you see every day, though I have been working on actively listening and learning.

Hey there! I don't disagree with any of your points here, but I think there are wrinkles!

Was Stede just falling back on the easiest option to allay suspicion? Absolutely! Was it still a racist move? You bet!

See, I think Stede's first fuckery is the "ghost of the forest" bit in s1e2, and this is more...him leaning back on established social hierarchy. He fails to think outside the box in a way that would allow all of his crew members to feel respected. Think about how Frenchie gets himself and Olu onto the party boat - by thinking up a creative story. Stede thought up backstories for his white crew. His crew members of color could have been African royalty, rich benefactors, envoys from distant lands...the possibilities of avoiding suspicion are endless, and they could've even used these exoticizing tropes their guests were unlikely to see through as a way to boost the Revenge's apparent prestige for their guests.

The important thing to remember here, I think, is that Stede's plan in the pilot fails not in spite of the racism of it but because of that. If their guests had known that it would be not only inappropriate but a social faux-pas to insult the crew members of color, then there never would have been a need to fight back against an escalation in racist language.

And I don't disagree that Stede doesn't treat his crew members of color differently! My point is rather that his racist biases are an important facet of his general ignorance of the lived experiences of others - like, he genuinely doesn't really get that most people are pirates because they have no other choice (there's a huge racial component there, no coincidence we hear it from Olu), he doesn't realize most of his crew will be illiterate, he fails to account for the differences in lived experiences he's enjoyed thanks to his relaive privilege. In these early episodes, he talks at the crew, not with them.

I love Stede and his journey so so so much! And every time I rewatch the show I love seeing all these ways that he's grown and learned.

[tcvsfiredemon]

Platonic Narumayo and Romantic Tension

I was originally gonna post this as a twitter thread, but it started getting really long and that toxic sludgepit doesn’t deserve that kind of effort. Get yourself a snack or something, it’s gonna get rambly.

I think people who go out of their way to shut down the possibility that there could be any romantic attraction between Nick and Maya are missing out on a really cool aspect of their platonic relationship.

There’s a lot to be said about the many facets of the Narumayo friendship, from their bonding through shared trauma, to their building a found family with Pearl, to their effortless ability to trade off being the straight man of their comedic duo. But I think a lot of people miss how much of their friendship is informed by the fact that they both kinda want to kiss each other.

First off, Maya is constantly teasing Phoenix, and often in a weirdly flirty way. Just a few examples off the top of my head. She says Max is dreamy with stars on his face and immediately suggests Nick put stars on his face. She acts like a spurned lover when Phoenix is talking to Adrian, specifically in an attempt to get him flustered. She explicitly compares Phoenix rescuing her from being kidnapped to the DeLites’ love story. 

There’s quite a few moments like this throughout the games, and coupled with a lot of Maya’s actions and reactions, I get the sense that we’re supposed to believe that she has a thing for Nick. Maybe that’s just the shipping goggles talking, but it really does feel like the intended subtext. I mean, look at that what she instinctively drew when she was in 

(You’re probably wondering when the platonic part comes in. We’ll get there.)

But even if Maya does have a crush on Phoenix, does he return it? Obviously she’s very important to him, but is that really as a romantic interest? We often see him get flustered or stunned into silence whenever people assume he and Maya are dating(which happens a lot), but I feel like that can easily just be read as him being uncomfortable with people assuming he’s in a relationship with his assistant.

In general, Phoenix’s feelings for Maya are fairly ambiguous and probably not something that he’s thought through too much himself. That is, of course, until the waitress scene. That scene, in my opinion, is the single hardest thing to justify if you’re trying to deny any romantic tension within Narumayo. I’ve seen people say that it’s just Phoenix giving a compliment to his best friend/sister figure, but is that really the tone that’s being conveyed there? 

That initial comment on her voice. The pregnant pause when he sees her. The weird pick-up line that probably just came out of his mouth without any thought. That’s not the actions of a guy innocently complimenting his friend, that’s the reaction of a guy who just realized that he finds his friend hot. I’d argue that the case can’t even proceed the way it does unless Phoenix thinks Maya is attractive, because that’s what gives him the idea to try to get her to seduce information out of Kudo.

So between Maya and Phoenix we have two best friends with a lot of chemistry who are probably into each other, and whose friends definitely think are already togeyhet, but we never actually see them take that step into romance. And you know what? It fucking works!

(See, told you we’d get into the platonic stuff eventually.)

One of my favorite movies of all time is When Harry Met Sally, and while the titular couple does get together in the end, most of the film is about the two of them navigating being best friends while obviously having romantic feelings for each other. It’s a beautiful story of these two people building a wonderful platonic relationship and then very nearly ruining it when they try to turn it romantic. 

That’s the dynamic I see between Phoenix and Maya. They love each other and are probably in love with each other, but they insist on keeping things strictly platonic because to change that could mean to destroy what they’ve spent years building up. It’s an underlying tension that underscores a lot of their actions.

It’s the dynamic that the two of them still have almost a decade later in SoJ, where they find immense comfort just being in each other’s presence, investigating cases like old times. And no matter how much Phoenix gawks at Maya like a sun fish, no matter how many times Maya teases Nick while they’re investigating a wedding-based case, no matter how much they may or may not want to kiss, they’re so happy just to be friends.

(Not that I’d be mad if they did end up kissing…)

Obviously there’s nothing wrong at all with seeing Narumayo as siblings or as purely platonic friends who would never in their wildest dreams be romantically interested in each other, but I do feel like something is lost in that interpretation. 

Like, I’m not the biggest fan of romantic Narumitsu, but I don’t think you can truly appreciate their friendship while ignoring that those guys have a weird pseudo-romantic tension going on. Without it they’re just two dudes who used to be friends and don’t have a whole lot of chemistry but would still for some reason die for each other. Once you acknowledge that “oh, they’re kinda in love, aren’t they” it all makes perfect sense.

I don’t think platonic Narumayo exactly falls apart if you ignore their romantic tension. They still have all that other stuff I talked about, but their relationship loses a lot of richness if it’s reduced to just “besties” or “siblings”. Even the games themselves took a little time to explore the potential romantic tension between Phoenix and Maya, and I think that’s been pretty instrumental in making them one of the coolest male/female friendships this side of When Harry Met Sally.

[idontknowreallywhy]

Resurface 35 - Reappraise

Story to date in order (Tumblr / AO3)

ART!VIRGIL KLAXON

Perhaps if you hadn’t read them before these two chapters (here and here) may make more sense of what Virgil has been drawing.

And if you missed the wee!Earth&Sky flying machine adventure, that is contained in this one and this one.

But now, onwards! Virgy-boy still has some demons to exorcise and needs Scooter to help him. Points to whoever spots the cameo from an old friend 😈

💙💚💙💚💙💚💙💚💙💚💙💚💙💚💙💚

The view from Virgil’s balcony was very similar, but subtly different. They weren’t adjacent - both John’s often-empty and Dad’s always-empty room lay between - and the shift of a few metres to the left meant the light reflected off different facets of the damp rocks of Mateo and the shadows changed shape. The sea met the shore at a marginally different angle, the light refracting through the shallows and hitting the greener end of blue. Two of the trees visible from Scott’s were hidden by the curve of Roundhouse Peak.

Scott hadn’t noticed any of this before Virgil pointed it out. What he did know was that on his own the breeze was stronger and there was fractionally more sky. On a hot day he’d always advocate for the cooler, more exposed position. Where he could see as far as possible. Where he could breathe.

But on a cooler evening, there was something comforting about how the sun’s residual heat radiated from the stone and bathed Virgil’s preferred haven in a warm glow.

Virgil had added to the warmth that evening by opening a bottle of Scott’s favourite scotch which he’d clearly stashed away at some point. Had it been one of the others who produced such a thing, Scott would be waiting for ‘The Favour’ or ‘The Difficult Question’. In Gordon’s case, quite frequently ‘The Confession’.

Virgil, however, often just did it to be nice. And Virgil knew that, unlike Dad and himself, Scott preferred his liquor without rocks. He took another sip and rested his head back with a contented sigh, allowing the liquid to rest on his tongue.

“Scott?”

“Mmmmhmm?” The heat spread through his sinuses as he breathed over it.

“Can I ask you a favour?”

Oh!

The whiskey hit the back of Scott’s throat and his eyeballs burned. Virgil seemed hesitant which mean this was going to be important! He coughed and croaked out a hurried confirmation:

“Always.”

Virgil, staring out to sea, appeared not to notice his brother’s nasal passages vaporising which, again, indicated something was Up. Scott scrubbed at his eyes with a sleeve and with an iron will, forced himself to get a grip of his respiratory system. He was about to say something else encouraging when Virgil suddenly spun to face him and in a voice of utmost seriousness stated:

“It’s a weird one.”

Scott raised an amused eyebrow.

“I can do weird.”

“Would you wear it again?”

The other eyebrow joined it with vigour.

“Wear what? If you’re asking about Halloween and that cursed Superman costume, Alan beat you to it and it’s a hard no. I might be persuaded to consider Batman but only if you’re Robin.”

Virgil snorted and swirled the ice in his glass. The not ungenerous measure he’d poured himself having already disappeared.

“As you very well know I don’t do tights. Not after the Christmas debacle.”

“I think you made a lovely elf.”

“You’re deranged.”

“Yeah but you love me.”

Virgil threw an ice cube at his head before conceding: “I do. Yes.”

He then frowned.

“Scooter, are you CRYING?”

“Nope. No no I’m just… enjoying this with ALL my senses.” He raised the glass and winked.

Virgil narrowed his eyes as if invisibly scanning his brother, then with a quirk of an eyebrow seemed to conclude there was no sudden emotional devastation and released him from scrutiny. He looked back out towards Mateo and tracked the petrels swooping to and from their rocky nests.

Scott followed his line of sight and started a little. There was a small cave at the base of Mateo which was invisible from Scott’s balcony. How had he never seen that before? He was about to point it out when he realised he’d distracted Virgil from his question.

“If you didn’t mean Halloween… what are you asking?”

“Your uniform. The, uh, air force one.”

“Hell no. I’m planning to burn it. That’s not part of my life anymore.”

“That doesn’t sound very environmentally friendly…”

“Alright bury it then. Shred it and bury it. No… shred it, dissolve it in acid then bury it.”

Virgil blinked. “Have you been watching murder mystery reruns again?”

“They’re relaxing.”

“Riiiiiiight.” Despite the feigned disbelief, Scott knew that Virgil had been the one to add three hundred and thirty-six hours worth of ‘A Century of Detective Classics’ to the family server and he knew Virgil knew that he knew that he’d done it as a cunning way to tempt Scott into some downtime. Devious little brothers… who… needed reassuring, immediately.

“It hurt you so it’s got to die. Don’t worry. I don’t even want to touch it again. If Grandma hadn’t spirited it away somewhere to clean it would be gone already.”

“Oh.” Perhaps imbibing scotch straight into his brain had slowed him down, but Virgil didn’t seem as reassured as Scott had intended.

“Don’t you need it for Ash’s dinner? You should go to that, it’s important.”

“I’ll work something out.”

“Oh, ok.” Virgil went quiet again and Scott realised he’d given the wrong answer somehow but wasn’t quite sure how to change it.

“What’s on your mind, Virgil?”

He sighed and cracked his knuckles one by one, making Scott cringe.

“Would you… um, would you wear it once more if… I… for me to… uh…”

“For you?! But… I don’t understand! It made you so unwell? I thought you hated it?”

“I did. I do. But… I don’t want to carry that fear anymore, I can’t be scared of CLOTHES. It’s… I just can’t. It’s ridiculous. And, well… and I was thinking perhaps if I was prepared… if it wasn’t a surprise… it might… I might not react quite so badly? My last memory of it wouldn’t be… uh… so heavy? And maybe I could finish my book.”

“Your book?” Now Scott was really bewildered.

Virgil put down his glass and disappeared into his suite, returning swiftly with one of the large black ring-bound pads of thick art paper the like of which Scott had seen many times. This one was more battered than most and his little brother clutched it to his chest for a moment then cleared his throat awkwardly as he sat down.

“I found it when I was hunting for a sketch I wanted to work up for the exhibition next month. Some of them aren’t… very nice. I was going to just throw it away but Gordon thinks I should complete it… finish the story.”

“Gordon’s seen it?” Scott wasn’t actually jealous, he was relieved to discover - the little snakelike green monster’s appearance seemed to have been limited to the ‘other’ version of himself. But he found himself kind of intrigued that their fish brother was apparently giving art advice these days.

Virgil rolled his eyes and growled quietly. “You know what he’s like… I foolishly tried to hide it when he burst into the room and of course he noticed and he wouldn’t let up until I showed him.”

“May I see?”

Virgil chewed his lip and nodded. Scott shuffled his lounger closer such that they were shoulder to shoulder and felt his jaw drop as Virgil opened to the first page and he saw a vivid recreation in pastel of his toddler self proudly holding a tiny baby Virgil, Mom and Dad hovering in the background. The baby’s fingers were wrapped tightly around his thumb and Virgil had sketched several enlarged views of their chubby hands in pencil along the bottom.

He turned the pages slowly and Scott saw several scenes he definitely recognised from childhood photographs and some he thought must have come from Virgil’s memory. They paddled in a watercolour sea together, rode their bikes in oils, Scott dangled upside down from a charcoal tree with chalky Virgil underneath, arms stretched upwards. There was a cartoon school bus with a dimpled stickman waving from the window.

He smiled as he recognised the two of them with the flying machine on the roof, although he remembered it as much sturdier than the painting suggested. The faded but detailed cross-section taped in to the next double page disabused him of that impression. This one was covered in his own scrawly handwriting. Scott chuckled and raised a hand to the scar on his jaw.

“Oh DEAR, I’d thought it was a much better design than that!”

“Hmmmm.” Virgil rumbled “The basic concept was sound but the materials and our duct tape-biased construction methods left something to be desired and yeah… your “math” was a touch… shaky…”

Virgil smiled and turned over to another cross-section, only this time of a much more elegant design which was surrounded by small sketches of joints and diagrams showing balanced forces, each with the appropriate calculations painstakingly recorded in Virgil’s neat handwriting.

Scott gasped as he realised that this… this could work. Who was he kidding - it was Virgil’s design - of course it would work.

“You fixed it!”

“I did. I felt… bad that we never tried again and you didn’t get your moment.”

“My moment?! Virgil! I nearly killed us both!”

“You were only eleven.”

“Even so…” Scott tried very hard not to think of all the occasions since then when he hadn’t had ‘being only eleven’ as an excuse but the more he tried the more of them bubbled up in his memory like some kind of noxious gas polluting his only fresh water source. No. They were past this now… it was better. Things were changing. He was changing.

“I guess I had this idea that I could build it and if… if you ever came back…” he shook his head “it was just a silly…”

“No.” Scott interrupted, grabbing his arm and pressing his forehead into the side of Virgil’s head. “Not silly. Thoughtful. Ingenious. Seeing the potential in an idea and making it work? Very… YOU.”

Virgil gave a small smile and turned back to the book. Scott felt himself blush at page after page of sketches, all of himself - as a wide eyed child, a cocky teenager winking, a laughing adult flipping pancakes… even a few where he had apparently sprouted falcon wings, one where Virgil had them too.

Scott couldn’t imagine how many hours these must have taken to create

“When did you do all this?”

As soon as the words had left his mouth he knew it was a stupid question. Virgil shrugged and turned the page.

“When you were gone.”

Scott put his arm around Virgil’s shoulders and squeezed as he turned again, seemingly keen not to linger on any one image.

A blazing sun burned out of the page, the wall of colour marred only by a silhouette of the falcon-winged man, clearly falling, curled in on himself as the wings trailed limply behind, the dark shapes of lost feathers becoming larger and more detailed towards the top. No prizes for spotting the reference there. The real sun, heading swiftly towards the horizon seemed to lose most of its heat and a modern day Icarus-but-for-Many-Miraculous-Escapes wondered yet again how he could have been so blind.

If that one gave him a chill, the next made him shiver, the warmth from the whiskey had now entirely dissipated - a faint pencil outline Scott holding a heavily shadowed Virgil in his arms. Then… there was that same Air Force Grad photo, reproduced in a dozen different styles. The last one almost photo-realistic but crossed through in heavy red pen.

Virgil tried to skip several pages but Scott gently took his hand and turned back. He recognised the image of the crashing jet, over and over… pencil drawn, painted, scratched with a blade into a thick black layer of wax crayon. There followed a page solely of fire. Skeletal outlines of fighter jets. Storms. Crowds of agonised faces. An incredibly detailed map of Bereznik decorated with vicious-looking black insects.

The last few pages shocked Scott the most - all the pictures were drawn on scraps of paper, and then glued in. The largest was a drawing in black ballpoint pen of an almost unrecognisable bearded stranger in a hospital bed, covered in bandages and tubes. There were smaller pencil studies of bruised hands, a foot, an ear, eyebrows over sunken eye sockets, a nearly skeletal chin with a scar… his scar. Scott swallowed hard - he’d looked that bad?

One smaller image stood out as it had clearly been screwed into a ball before being flattened out to stick on to the page. Scott’s younger self winked and laughed up at him from behind the creases, one arm wrapped around a huge box of popcorn, the other hand reaching out of the page towards him. Virgil had clearly got hold of a blue ballpoint pen for this one and had skilfully used it to produce a rainbow’s worth of blue shades. The picture somehow gleamed at him and Scott felt the green serpent stir in his gut. He bit the side of his tongue and motioned for Virgil to turn over to the next.

The very last page contained only the sky in vivid shades of blue with light wisps of cloud: Virgil’s starting place.

Scott swallowed hard as he realised Gordon hadn’t been giving art advice at all.

“I put it away when dad brought you home.”

“It’s… Wow…”

“It was an outlet.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Scotty.”

“Not all of it. Some things though.”

He pulled his brother close again and planted a kiss in his hair.

“So how do you want to finish it?”