#it’s straight up said how his spirit would break because getting involved would make things worse

[smilesrobotlover]

Obi Wan deals with so much emotional turmoil 💔💔

[roanofarcc]

SCHOOL GROUND BASICS

PAIRING: Pope Heyward x fem!reader

SUMMARY: Pope was a smart kid, which made needing a tutor feel utterly humiliating. To make matters worse, you were enlisted to help, the girl he’d been crushing on since he could remember. 

WARNINGS: Pope is the definition of gifted kid burn-out in his story.

masterlist

“My life is over. I’ve officially hit rock bottom,” Pope complained, sprawled out on the sand. His surfboard lay untouched and stuck in the sand a couple of feet away, lined up with the rest of his friends who had spent the afternoon enjoying themselves while Pope wallowed in his own self-pity. They took a break from surfing to join him, snacking on sandwiches and trying to act sympathetic to his cause, even though school wasn’t any of their first priority. 

That was fine for them, they all had their own set of skills outside of school that would do them just fine when they had to enter the big bad world. Pope didn’t feel like he did, though. A couple of treasure hunts and near-death experiences wouldn’t shine too bright on his college applications. 

Never in his life had his grades dipped below exceptional until he got involved with all of the gold bullshit. Did he regret it, no, of course he didn’t. But he was stuck between a rock and a hard place. He had a failing grade, a blemish the size of a crater on his record that he needed to scrub clean. To some, maybe that didn’t seem like the end of the world, but to Pope, a failing grade felt like someone had wrapped him in barbed wire. 

To make matters even worse, he was no longer neck and neck to be number one in his class. Since he discovered class rankings in elementary school, he was determined to be number one. His only competition came in the form of a girl who matched his intelligence in every way. They had a friendly competition, a back-and-forth battle for the number one spot. But he was way behind, and she was leagues ahead. 

“You’ll still graduate, right?” Sarah asked, ringing the salt water from her hair. 

Pope stared at the sky, the pretty blue mocking him. “Yeah.” 

“Then what’s the problem?” 

JJ answered for him. “Pope has a surprisingly competitive spirit. Number one or nothin’.” 

“Did Ms. Wright say anything about how you could get your grade up?” Kie asked, forcing a sandwich into Pope’s hand to get him to eat something. 

He reluctantly took a bite before he replied, “I think she wants to publicly shame me.” His friends looked at him, confused. “She suggested a tutor.” 

JJ laughed loudly, earning a quick slap on the arm from John B. “Sorry! I just ever thought we’d live in a world where the man himself needed to be tortured.” 

Pope groaned in pain, his ego more bruised than anything. Since middle school, Pope was the one tutoring people. He helped JJ memorize his times tables. He got John B. to read Of Mice and Men in its entirety and write a B paper over it. He even helped Kie pass chemistry. And now look at him, a disgraced once straight-A student fallen flat on his face. 

A warm hand patted his shoulder. He lulled his head to the side to the sympathetic smile of Sarah. “Getting a tutor isn’t so bad, Pope. I had one to help me pass algebra.” 

“You guys don’t get it,” Pope sighed. 

“Because we’re all dumber than you?” JJ asked, his eyebrows raised. 

“No!” Pope quickly said. “You guys aren’t dumb, I’m just…school is my thing, all right? Or it was. It’s what I was the best at. Now what do I got?” 

He missed the slightly worried expressions his friends shared with each other. A beat of silence passed before Kie broke it. “School is still your thing. You just need a tutor that’ll get you back on your feet, right?” 

“Yeah! Did Ms. Wright suggest anyone?” John B. asked. 

Pope groaned once more like he was physically ill. Maybe he was being extra dramatic, but it was just how he felt. “She gave me a couple of names. None of them I want to sit in a room with and listen to them try to explain this shit to me, though.” Because they were his classmates, and having to sit in a room with them knowing that they knew he was failing was humiliating. 

For a moment, Pope thought JJ caught a glint of sunlight in his eyes, causing him to squint, but that thought was quickly erased when a smirk fell across JJ’s lips, and he scrambled up from the sand. As he hopped over Pope’s body, he said, “I’ve got you, man.” 

Pope didn’t really want to know what he meant by that, but he was forced to when you were suddenly peering down at him. Pope thought he was hallucinating for a moment, but water droplets from your hair sprinkled his skin and he was suddenly very aware of your presence. 

Kildare was small, and the attendees of his school he knew almost as well as the back of his hand. You, he paid more attention to than most. If he was being honest, your intellect was what drew him to you. The way you’d always raise your hand in class, beating him to the answer or the way you spoke with much thought and care. To Pope, you were admirable, but he never worked up the courage to talk to you. Before the sharp turn of his life and grade point average, he told himself he’d get to know you before you graduated, but it seemed null and void. He needed to focus on his studies, not on his stupid crushes. Besides, Pope never had the best luck with girls.

But then JJ somehow got you to take a break from surfing and dragged you over to the rest of the group. He had seen you at the beach before, but up close you were even more stunning than when you were at school, more carefree and relaxed in a swimsuit that complimented your body and the rays of sun illuminating you in a glowy wonder. 

Kie kicked Pope’s leg, prompting him to clear his throat and sit upright quickly. 

“W-What’s up?” Pope managed to get out, cringing at himself as the words tumbled unsmoothly from his lips. 

“You need a tutor, and I found you one!” JJ said, proud of himself. 

Your lips quirked upwards in a light smile, but a confused one too. “You need a tutor?” You didn’t sound judgmental; your voice was kind but questioning, but Pope wanted to bury his head in the sand and disappear. 

“Kind of,” he admitted, scratching the back of his neck. 

You seemed to contemplate it for a moment, even though he hadn’t asked you because he was all too embarrassed. Yet, you nodded. “Okay. I’ll do it.” 

JJ clapped you on the shoulder, a cocky smile on his lips that Pope was tempted to smack off of him. “See? Was that so hard?” 

Pope was sweating. His hands were clammy, and he felt like he was on the verge of passing out. What was wrong with him?

“What is wrong with you, dude?” John B. asked, eyeing him from the couch. 

“I don’t know, man!” 

“I think someone’s nervous,” Sarah said with a teasing smirk. “That girl JJ found to tutor you, she’s pretty, huh?” 

Pope stopped his pacing to wipe his hands off on his shorts. “JJ hates me.” 

JJ objected. “No, I’m doing you a favor. Killin’ to dogs with one stick.” 

“Birds,” Kie interjected. “It’s ‘kill two birds with one stone.’” 

JJ furrowed his brows. “Why would someone throw rocks at birds?” 

“Why would someone kill a dog with a stick?” John B. retorted. 

“Guys!” Pope yelled, drawing their attention. “Can we focus here, please? I’ve been trying to talk to her all year, and now she’s gonna think I’m an idiot.” 

Kie rolled her eyes. “You’re not an idiot, Pope. It’s one class. Besides, this gives you the perfect opportunity to talk to her, alone.” 

“Exactly,” JJ said. “You’ll make the grade and maybe some action!” 

John B. must’ve noticed the stress clearly painted on Pope’s face. He pushed himself up from the couch and said, “Let’s start with a phone number, okay?” Placing his hands on Pope’s shoulders, he shook him slightly. “You’re overthinking all of this. Just be cool.” 

“Be cool,” Pope repeated, taking in a deep breath. “I can be cool.” 

Cool had varying definitions, but Pope was sure that he missed the mark on every one. He had moved from being nervous about talking to you, to being nervous that his brain couldn’t pick up on simple themes in the novel he had read just the night. He hated being less than perfect in anything school-related because that was his strong suit.

“Are you okay?” you asked, setting down the novel on the tabletop of the quiet beachside picnic table. The sea breeze ruffled the pages of your notebook, prompting you to place a small rock from the parking lot on the corner to keep it down. 

“Oh, yeah. I’m good. Just…thinkin’ about the book,” he replied half-heartedly. 

Your eyes narrowed for a moment before you reached across the table, gently took the book from his hands, and closed it. “I think you’re too much in your head.” 

Pope laughed, void of amusement. “Isn’t that where I’m supposed to be for this stuff?” 

You shook your head, fingernails tapping against the glossy book cover. “When you overthink it, you second guess your gut, which is usually right. You need to loosen up a little.” 

Pope was wound tightly because, up until that point of his life, it had worked for him. He was the voice of reason, sometimes, for his friends' wack-ass ideas that more often led them into dangerous situations. If he acted too carefree, where would his friends be? They all were shoe-horned into a role and that was his, the tightly wound brainiac who was failing English. 

“I don’t think that’s possible,” Pope said. You smiled, thinking he was joking, but he was dead serious. 

“Come on,” you said, shoving your books into your bag before you slung it over your shoulder. Pope opened his mouth to ask what you were doing, you had agreed to tutor him for another hour. But you lightly pressed your hand over his mouth and said, “Don’t ask questions, just go with it.” 

He followed you, not listening to the troublesome voice in the back of his head. You led him down the beach to the water, where waves lapped in the setting sun. The air was cool but comforting, paired with the sounds of the ocean For a long moment, the two of you just stared out at the water, the sun shimmering over top as the sky was painted an image of melting colors. 

“JJ said you were embarrassed to have a tutor,” you said, breaking the silence like a wave crashing into him. Pope hung his head, his chest tight. 

“A little, if I’m being honest.” 

You nodded in understanding. “You shouldn’t be, you know? You can’t be good at everything.” Your tone caused him to turn his head, meeting your gaze. 

Pope scoffed. “Right. School’s the one thing I’m good at. And clearly I’m not even that good at that.” 

You looked at him bewildered. “You can’t be serious?” He said nothing, very serious. “Please, Pope. You are good in school. If you weren’t Mr. Clemmons wouldn’t brag about your science project every single week that he displays on his desk. Your picture’s still in the hallways because no one has one a national spelling bee since you had. And I’ve seen you surf. I see you helping out your dad, talking to customers like they’re your family members. I know you’re good at fishing and all of your friends seem to love you.” 

Pope felt as hot as the red sun sinking in front of him. His lips parted, but nothing came out for a beat. He could only look at you with a funny feeling wrapping his heart in tangled strings. 

“How do you know all of that?” 

You’re gaze fell onto your feet buried in the sand, suddenly sheepish, but Pope wanted you to look at him again. There was something about your eyes on him that made him feel…nice. Just nice. “I notice you.” You paused, your face scrunching up slightly. “Not in a creepy way. Just in a…an observant way.” 

“You notice me?” Pope repeated, chewing on the words slowly. It was hard for him to put the feeling into words, which may be linked to the fact that his English grade was suffering. He liked the feeling though. He wanted to sink into it a little more and ‘just go with it’ as you had said mere minutes ago. 

You looked back at him, and he felt his lips curl upwards in a small smile. “Yeah. And I’ve always wanted to say something to you, other than asking to borrow a pen, but I always chickened out. Then JJ came up and asked me to tutor you, and I figured that was my shot.” 

Pope didn’t know how to react. The fact that you had wanted to talk to him, maybe not as much as he wanted to talk to you, made his head spin. He felt giddy and like he could throw up at the same time. He had to play it cool, though, as John B. had said. 

“Cool, cool, cool,” he repeated himself, nodding and making himself look very uncool. He then took a deep breath, letting the sea air fill up his lungs. “I noticed you too.” 

Somehow, you smiled even brighter, it shined even in your eyes. He tensed up as you took a step closer, making the distance between the two of you mere inches. Pope could see the finer details of your face he hadn’t noticed before. He realized you could see him up close too. His forehead was sweaty and the way he had sat made his shirt wrinkle. His lack of sleep from worrying about school probably showed in his eyes and he feared the scar across his nose from when Rafe and Topper jumped him was off-putting. 

You tilted your head just slightly and said, “You’re still overthinking things.” Your voice was just above a whisper, carrying across the empty beach by the wind. 

Pope swallowed thickly and shrugged his shoulders. “Habit.” 

Reaching up, your hands smoothed the collar of your shirt, raising goosebumps along his skin. You leaned in and Pope felt like he was going to pass out. But he quickly tried to steel himself and not screw up the position he, by some miracle, found himself in. Despite his racing brain and racing heart, he leaned forward and met your lips in a quick but nice kiss. Your lip gloss tasted like strawberries, and you smelled like sunscreen. 

After you pulled back, resting your arms around his shoulders. All he could mutter was, “Wow.” 

You wiped some of your lip gloss off of the corner of his lip with your thumb. “And that, Pope, is what happens when you follow your gut.” 

He choked out a laugh. “Are you still tutoring me right now?” 

“No,” you replied. “But just really good at my job.” 

As the sun sunk fully into the ocean, Pope felt himself shine in tune with the twinkling stars. He followed his gut again, kissing you for a second time without his own pestering voice in the back of his head. He just heard you and the ocean ringing in his ears. 

[screeching-bunny]

for yandere general, what if their darling doesn’t follow the routine because they just don’t like it ? Like, he wants them to wake up early but they really like sleeping in and when he gets mean about it (even just saying no ) they start to cry

Yandere! General Asks 1

Warnings: Obsessive Behavior, Yandere Thoughts, Bad Writing, Stalking, Possessive Behavior, Reader is Referred as ‘You’

You hated everything about the lifestyle Yandere! General forced upon you. It was all so restricting and you barely had any say in what you wanted to do. You were almost at your breaking point. You’ve just recently gotten married to him and the rules that you were given were just so stupid in your opinion. Like why did you have to wake up so early just to please him? So you decided that instead of listening to him, you’d just sleep in. Which is exactly how your mini revolution and protest had started.

At the start, Yandere! General didn’t mind it too much. He just figured that since you recently got into married life you’re just testing the waters and will soon come to understand his routine. However, this behavior of yours over time had gotten worse and most of your behavior was seriously starting to irritate him. It was due to this that he started to become meaner and stricter with every little thing that you did. Every mistake you made was met with criticism from his behalf and a sterned look at.

In his mind this was technically his fault for not making you understand that you didn’t have a choice in this. The whole idea of rules and order were something that should be obeyed. He may have a soft spot for you but at this point into the relationship he’ll happily punish you. Things like decreasing human socialization from others, forcing you to be near his side at all times, and etc have become the norm for you. These punishments mostly involved you being near him 24/7. He holds you to a higher expectation than others so he expects only the best from you.

You are however, very resilient and no matter what he throws at you, you won’t allow him to break your spirit. Right now, you were in your shared bedroom and absolutely refused to get up. It was your precious beauty sleep and you weren’t going to let anyone stop you from having it. You were about to go deeper into dreamland until you heard a loud bang from the door which caused your body to boot up straight.

In front of you stood the tall body of Yandere! General who loomed over you. “Why are you still in bed?!” When you heard this you weren’t immediately alarmed you assumed that after a few moments he would let you off easily like all the other times. What you didn’t realize was that his face looked different today, one that looked like it would take no for an answer and wouldn’t listen to your demands.

“I’m just sleeping in.” With that response he starts to make his way out of your room and lock the door. “Since you like that room so much, let’s see how long you can spend in it!” Rushing towards the door, you try to pry it open to no avail. No worries, he’s never been away for longer than a day, he’ll be back, right? Yeah, totally not.

It’s been about a month since that incident occurred and you could not handle it. You needed some form of human interaction. He’s isolated you before but not from him! This was seriously getting to you. You were getting fed but none of the maids would even look or acknowledge you. You’d honestly kill for a conversation right now. With teary eyes, you have up and banged on the door. Tears blasting down your eyes you scream, “Yandere! General please let me out!! I’m so sorry, I promise I’ll follow the routine! Please, just let me talk to you!!”

As soon as those words were said the door immediately opened and he stepped in. His large hand whisking away your tears as they fell from your cheeks. He said with a gentle voice, “Did you learn your lesson?” You nodded your head as fast as you could. “Good, because the next time this happens I promise I won’t be as nice!” Flinching at the time of his voice you then begin to calm down. “Everything that I do is for your own good. The sooner you realize that, the better.”

With that out of the way, he brought you to his office where he forced you to sit on his lap while he did paperwork. The sound of paper being flipped over caused your eyelids to slowly fall as you began to take a nap on him. What you didn’t notice is that if you look up, you’d see the victory smirk on his face as he grinned at you. Watching you cling so tightly to him caused him to basically almost coo. Maybe he should isolate you in a room more often. It wouldn’t be so bad if you acted cute like this everyday, now wouldn’t it? With that, he gave you a small peck on the forehead and continued on with his paperwork.

Asks 2

[xiaoddexingjiutang]

03. Megatron: Megatron Is No Mere Subordinate

In this film, Megatron's character is entirely crafted as the opposite of Optimus Prime: Optimus plays dumb while Megatron provides the snarky commentary. He doesn't resemble any previous version of Megatron at all.

He gives off a vibe of having a very weak spirit. When circumstances favor him, and Optimus takes him to participate in the Iacon 5000 race, he has a great time. When he's happy, he and Optimus become like brothers—"you're good, I'm good, everyone's good." They exchange heartfelt lines and high-fives. But the moment he's asked to take on some responsibility or when things aren't going their way and they have to face adversity, he immediately starts complaining, accusing Optimus of only thinking about himself.

Personally, I feel that when making friends, one should focus on the big picture and not be petty about small matters. You enjoyed the perks of breaking the rules and had your fun, but then you start blaming others, saying, "Oh no, we're definitely going to get caught and demoted." Then why did you do it? Why befriend him in the first place? You can't deny your involvement when things go wrong, right? Even though you did help clean up the mess—that's Optimus's problem, which I'll discuss in his section next.

After learning the truth, he actually said weakly, "If only I didn't know the truth, if only I had always strictly followed the rules. Why did I have to find out? Now I don't have a cog, and I'm powerless to change anything."

Then he becomes weak and later turns extreme. After killing the first person, he immediately starts yelling at Optimus, giving him attitude—as if he suddenly grasped the secret that violence equals power.

Some people who dislike Megatron might think he's selfish, someone who only enjoys the benefits of friendship and kicks you aside when he's uncomfortable. Whatever, that's not the point. The point isn't whether he's self-serving or altruistic; his character inherently leans toward self-interest. That's really not the issue.

The issue is that he absolutely shouldn't be portrayed as someone who is both weak and critical, narrow-minded, lacking independent thought, blindly following rules, a fair-weather friend, and passive yet extreme. In all previous works, Megatron has his own charisma and character foundation; he's not just a subordinate used to elevate Optimus Prime.

Writing Megatron's character this way is just a means to pin all the blame on him. This way, issues like class, social background, and even Optimus Prime can bear less responsibility. He inherently has personality flaws, so who can you blame? Sacrifice one so we can all relax.

Moreover, it's laughable how Megatron can't compete when it comes to "background". Megatron installs the cog of Megatronus (which he took from Sentinel Prime's chest) and becomes a leader-class body, but he still can't defeat Optimus Prime, who received the Matrix of Leadership. His gun gets sliced by Optimus's axe—Optimus summons an axe, but Megatron doesn't bring out his flail; I guess we'll have to wait for the next installment. "My backing can't beat your backing, so the righteous you defeats the evil me"—utterly ridiculous.

Additionally, I suddenly realized that if Megatron were replaced with a female character, these criticisms would have a new explanation: "Oh, women are just emotional, women are just troublesome, women can't see how much men have done." All those negative personality traits—if a man has them, it's just his individual issue; if a woman displays them, then it gets blamed on her gender because "women are all like that."

Straight male writers wanting to hype up the Megatron x Optimus Prime (MegOp) pairing feel the need to eliminate female characters or feminize male ones, insisting on using traditional heterosexual models.

[6okuto]

If it's okay could you please say your thoughts of Vere and Ais (separately) with someone that is insecure of not being good enough for them after learning they are with each other before?

AIS & VERE WITH AN S/O INSECURE OF THEIR RELATIONSHIP

gn!reader | meeoewww. their overarching reactions are similar imo which is why i got. stuck. trying not 2 be repetitive. But that's just how the cookie crumbles...! they love u and only u

AIS

ais has a pretty good handle on having conversations and reading moods, both from leader experience and Boyfriend/You experience. he'll have noticed something's off, but won't bring it up until you're home. he asks if you want to talk about what's bothering you, whatever it is.

if you try to brush him off, he won't directly say Bullshit, but he's quiet for enough time that you know he isn't calling you on it on purpose. he'll wait as long as he needs to

lets out a deep breath when he realizes how he's been making you feel, even if he wasn't aware of it. you apologize sort of as a default reaction and he immediately says you don't have to

i think he would talk about his relationship with vere and how and why it ultimately didn't work out. and how you were different from the get-go with how you met and your relationship developed in comparison. ais would also bring up how he thinks their relationship wouldn't have worked out in the long run, and how he likes to go do mundane chores with you, but wouldn't have with vere in the past

^ the chores thing i'm seeing said as a lighthearted joke, maybe about never going grocery shopping with vere or something, just to lift your spirits a little before he reassures you that you have nothing to worry about.

once you've talked about it, ais makes an effort to spend more time with you and be more affectionate! showing up wherever you said you'd be going the next day instead of waiting for you to come to the seaspring, having his arm around you when possible, etc. he'll also relax with his,, Attitude for a while.

the attitude one might be a little subconscious.. he still teases you, but seeing you upset and knowing he was part of it kind of affects him, even after you've talked through it. once you're back to, for lack of better wording at 1 am, fucking around with him,, so is he!

you notice how he invites you out more than usual, and he says it's because he doesn't like being lonely, you know that. you're both aware of the underlying reasoning though.

he'd like if you and vere were able to get along, and he's always there wordlessly reassuring you that he's unapologetically yours, but if you want to take your time, he's okay with that too

VERE

he almost immediately notices something is off when you don't return his teasing comments or fluster from his flirtation.

Calls you on your bullshit. with a little more tact, depending on how you'd react. if he doesn't straight up say "bullshit," he might say something like "are you really trying to lie to me?"

after you've explained how you feel, he stays quiet for a while, both to think about what to say and to give you some time before he responds

direct with his words. things like "i don't like him like that anymore." and "i'm with you for a reason, you know. i don't just date anyone."

the kind of guy to make sure you're looking at him when he reminds you that you're lucky special enough to get his attention, and to break down his walls.

he tells you about how different your relationships are objectively and to Him. how none of his past relationships affect how he feels about you, the same way he wouldn't expect yours to (if you have any). and vere can't deny or ignore his relationship with ais, how close they are compared to most other people—really, he won't. he thinks it'd be shitty to everyone involved if he tried. but he wants you to know that doesn't affect how much he cares about you in a much more intimate, long-term way

in general, vere doesn't act too differently from usual once you've talked about your feelings. he might relax on the innuendos, but you can never take his wittiness away from this guy. he ends up choosing some more sfw teasing/flirting instead.

at some point in the week after, whenever you all meet up, vere makes a point to stick by you and to think of a comment related to You being the one person in this place he'd go home with, even without

ais would do the same thing, but if there were any random reason where vere had to choose between the two of you (for something silly and fun ! perhaps a game team) he won't even make a joke about not choosing you.

well. at least not for a While,, like when he's confident you're both in a good place he might tease you again. but not any time soon !

[peachypede]

Battle Theme: Battle! Bug Type Expert by Maxo

Height: 5'6" (167 cm)

Birthday: May 5th

Current Residence: Nacrene, Unova

General Backstory (mentions of abuse and neglect in first bullet)

Pecha was born in Nimbasa, Unova to her father, Calhoun Webb, and her mother whom shall not be named. Her mother often would neglect Pecha and her younger sibling, Rawst, when their father was working or on work trips (which he tried to keep seldom). Her parents' marriage would end when Pecha and Rawst were left in a car alone on a sweltering summer's day when Pecha was 5 and Rawst was 3. Calhoun managed to get full custody of his children. After this, their maternal grandparents became a bigger presence in their lives as they stepped up to help their dad raise them. All five would live in the same household for the rest of Pecha's childhood.

After her parent's divorce, Calhoun would take Pecha and Rawst on many of his work trips which involved lots of camping and bug hunting. Pecha was a child prodigy when it came to bug pokemon catching and battling, winning many tournaments in different regions including the famous Bug-Catching Contest in The National Park in Johto. Her lifelong passion for the outdoors came from the many adventures she had with her father.

Once the kids were reaching their teen years, their grandmother, Leppa, would press Calhoun to enroll his children in school instead of just traveling with them around the world. Naranja-Uva Academy, being one of the best schools and in their grandparent's home region of Paldea, was the one Leppa pushed for and Calhoun decided was best for his children. Their cousin, Aman, also attended the same school and both got close to their cousin as a result.

Pecha, ever the people pleaser from a very young age, became a bit of an overachiever. Her track in school was Battle Studies and she not only made it through the gym challenge during her first year's treasure hunt, but also would beat the elite four and champion to become a champion trainer. She prided herself in having straight a's, being elected as class president, and winning any and all battle tournaments the academy would hold.

Pecha finished her schooling at the age of 18 and would spend a lot of time making her team top-notch. She had the dream of being a bug-type gym leader due to being a life-long Galar League Fan and being discouraged at seeing how the bug gym leader failed to use bug-types to their true potential. However, when the time would come for the Gym Leader Tournament in Castelia City, Pecha was in a relationship with someone who wasn't very supportive of battling (basically having Team Plasma ideals) and the gaslighting and stress of wondering if she was hurting her pokemon would ultimately lead to her failing to become the gym leader of Castelia, losing her childhood dream to Burgh.

After breaking up with her partner, Pecha entered a dark period of her life where she felt aimless. Her whole life she had a goal and yet suddenly, that was gone. In an effort to help her out of her slump, Calhoun, her father, would take her on a trip to Galar to explore the cities and clothing shops (something they never did when going to other regions as Cal usually would only camp with his children). the trip helped reset her, but her spirits were lifted more when Cal offered a job at his Bug Sanctuary as a research Assistant.

Feeling like she was more back on her feet, Pecha began to explore hobbies of hers. She’s become rather popular on social media, known by her simple username pechabugg, where she shares her love of exploring nature, bug types, and also beauty products.

Miscellaneous Info

Due to being around bug types her whole life, Pecha smells like bugs to pokemon. This attracts bugs but also flying bird types.

The most embarrassing thing that can happen or be said, will happen or be said by Pecha (Pecha’s law)

Pecha is terrified of bird like pokemon because of a bad experience she has as a small child where she was carried off by a corviknight. She still has scars on her abdomen from the ordeal.

Pecha has been diagnosed with ADHD since she was 10.

Pecha can hold grudges for a very long time when she feels like something unfair has happened. She is very quiet and verrrry petty when angry to the point that Aman land Rawst steer clear of her if they see that she's in a bad mood.

[hythlodaeus-mynewoldfriend]

📥👖🧠✨️ for the fic asks!

Thank you Liz! More centered on my ffxiv stuff since this is the blog for that haha. Anyway! Let's get right to it starting with the last question!

FanFic ASk Game

✨ Choose three adjectives to complement your own writing.

Emotional, tongue-in-cheek, free-spirited or at least so I hope!

📥 What is your fave fic to receive comments/messages on?

Is it cheating to say any of them? Because I love seeing what people have to say on what I write and put out there! Among my ffxiv stuff I always love seeing comments on things that involve Stasia and Carly (which is mostly wips i know) as they are the ones that stray from the general story and aren't always likable so I like being able to see how they come across and make sure that its the way I intend to and think I'm doing when writing. A more specific piece it would have to be this piece with Anthea and the final days. I feel its one of my best works posted in completion and I like seeing how an event like that comes across to others especially given that much of that time period is up to interpretation of an individual.

👖 Are you a planner, plantser, or pantser? Is it consistent?

No planning we die like men! jk jk I am more of a plantser in that I go into a wip with a general idea in my head on what I want the main focus of a piece to be, the intention of it, and any specific lines or actions that inspired it. After that I just write it out and see what happens! A lot of times I get to where I was planning and in ways I didn't expect, other times I end up somewhere different but it felt so natural writing it that I had to leave it. There are the rare occasions I don't do any planning and just get the urge to write and so I do just that and will come back to it if I get stuck, this happened recently with a piece where I had very little in mind other than knowing Phobos is reading various letters Deimos got, but who they were from and what they said and going back home were all things that I came up with on the spot.

One thing I really let free and hardly put any thought into ahead of time is the formatting of my writing though. I like to at times be a bit of a visual writer in that I will use breaks, bolds, italics, lack of spaces, etc. to convey something that I probably would take too long to write out in any other fashion. Besides how else can I best describe racing thoughts and anxiety than putting a bunch of words together without any space between them haha.

Also will mention that much of my stuff looks like panster writing because I was writing it as I was actively playing the story so I had no idea how it was all going to end and what I wanted to do with my kids as Sib and Demos started in two different universes.

🧠 What’s an idea you have that you can’t quite call a WIP yet?

This would depend more on what you would call a wip. I tend to count anything that's at least a few paragraphs or dialogue long, which there's quite a bit of that. If we're talking just straight ideas then there's plenty of moments that I would love to write but I don't have a way to write them quite yet. Things like the last conversation Carly and Zenos have, the conversation Demos has with his mentor after the Vault, lighter moments like Sib trying to tackle Emet in ShB or the montages of the gang waking up at first light to get moving with a frantic Sib trying to catch up anime style getting ready. Hell the time that Deimos believed he could randomly tame a unicorn resulting in him, Emet, and Hyth being chased by a herd of them. Or the start of Etheirys' Worst Girls Trip with Sib and Stasia landing on their guide. I just have a lot of little things or big moments that I'd love to write because I can see them in my brain and how they play out but it can be so hard to translate that. I feel this is also why gposing has become a way for me to tackle these ideas as I plan as if I'm watching a show or movie so I can better get the angles and descriptions without having to actually describe anything haha.

[pleb-the-original]

Day 1: Jersey Devil

(Back at it again. Like I said before, the Catalog is now a separate project which will be started after this challenge. Which I guarantee will not be finished by the end of July. But I'll try not to take like how many months this time. As for the actual story, a regular interview seemed like a good entry point. Also being able to explore the fact that technically according to the rules established in my world, The Jersey Devil is legally not a cryptid.) Alright are we rolling? Ok. Hello, I am the Jersey Devil and a lot of what you have heard about me is probably wrong. Let’s get one thing straight: I am not a cryptid. Well not when you get into the schematics of it. By definition, a cryptid is and I quote “a monster or creature formed out of the belief of humans and who’s perpetuated existence is dependent on said belief.” I was not formed out of belief nor do I need it in order to live. In fact, I don’t even have a monstrous soul. By all accounts, I’m a regular fire demon. How’d I end up as a cryptid? Long story, and no it does not involve Mother Leads. So my mom is actually an incubus. Calls herself Llawes Goch. And apparently her kink is talking animals because one day she decided to go find herself a magical goat and…Well she called it “living up to my stereotypes”. Nope, not even a sapient goat. Just a random goat on a farm that so happened to be magical enough to be intelligent. She said she came back to the farm to give birth to me since even in her sick twisted mind she wanted “the father” to be able to see the baby. Guess she made too much of a ruckus because apparently the farmer found out and shot at her which scared her off and left me in that sheep pasture. I crawled my way into those woods where I lived and grew. That’s just where I stayed, eating whatever I could find and occasionally running into and scaring off humans. I had no clue about the Mother Leads legend but apparently one human decided to weaponize it. He literally called me out from the woods with a sheep carcass and summoned her spirit right in front of me. I guess it was some kind of bid to get me to become his slave? I dunno. We were both just standing there confused. The guy literally has to explain to both of us my legend. I of course ate him right then and there, but Leads stuck around. I guess she appreciated the break from hell and kinda took it upon herself to try to escape and take care of me a little. She’s a nice mom, way better than my real one I gotta say. Why’d I never go back? Well first of all, I never learned how. It was only after some guy called the Cryptidmaster came around that I learned that I was a demon and that I “belonged” in hell. I liked it better up here so I stuck around. I mean I doubt anyone would want me to leave the mortal realm anytime soon, too good for merchandising. Does that make me an aswang? Maybe? I mean I did accidentally get invited to one of their gatherings once, it was cool. Us demons up here just gotta keep in touch y’know. Sometimes they come around and we have spaghetti and venison together. Speaking of, I could use a snack. Thanks for the chat. 

[iwadori]

Haikyu boys when they take a joke/prank too far (Iwaizumi,Daichi)

Word count: 1.9K

Genre:angst,fluff

AN: In the spirit of April Fools I tried to make my first work based on that I hope you enjoy!! (LOL I can’t actually believe this was the first thing I’ve ever written)

Iwaizumi:

“Okay so it’s April Fools Day who are we going to prank?” asked Makki “One of the first years?”

“Do we have to prank someone this year..” replied Iwaizumi “so childish”

“Iwa-Chan!” Oikawa said “Don’t be such a spoil sport.”

“Anyways, it can’t be a first year they’re boring to prank a first year coach will be mad at us, we need someone else.”

Just then, you enter the gym, catching their eye as you approach the group sitting on Iwaizumi’s lap “Hey babe, I can still come over to yours to study right?” you ask.

“Yeah of course, practice finishes early so I'll be there before you.” He said

“Alright, see you then bye babe, bye guys” you said, giving Iwaizumi a kiss on the cheek sauntering off and waving at Makki, Mattsun and Oikawa.

“bye Y/N!” They teasingly responded in unison making you laugh.

As they watched you leave, it seemed as if a lightbulb pinged off in all of their heads (besides Iwaizumi) realizing who would be a great person to prank.  

After a lot of convincing, they finally got Iwaizumi in on the ‘harmless’ plan, all they needed to do now is wait on your arrival.

You’re finally done with school after a long and tiring day of exams upon exams and wanting nothing more than to cuddle with your boyfriend (after he teaches you Pythagoras theorem of course.) You did think he was acting weird when you met him this morning in the gym and throughout break and lunch but you just concluded that it was because he was having an ‘off’ day.

You reached his house and used a copy of his key that he gave you to enter we just enter houses up in this bitch  calling out his name “Zumi-babe, I'm here...”  

“Lets get this shit over with” you said tiredly

Upon entering, you notice none of the lights being on or curtains drawn ‘odd’ you think. You go upstairs going straight to his room hopefully to find your boyfriend in his bed or on his Xbox or something. To your surprise his bedroom door was somehow locked shut (even though not having a lock on his door anyways.) Suddenly, you hear creaks slowly trailing up the stairs and an eerie feeling surrounds you... now you start to feel pretty panicked jiggling the door handle to Iwaizumi’s door as it’s practically the only place you can go.

AN: I hate what I’m writing rn but onwards we right

The footsteps on the stairs start to quicken, and you almost certain that you felt something brush pass your shoulder only adding onto the panic and anxiety that you already feel. Ok, the footsteps on the stairs are basically right near you, so doing the only logical thing you can do you body slam the ‘person’ on the stairs as you motherfuckin should  as tears fill your eyes and you pick up bag bolting through the front door, slamming it shut now in full tears and shakingly scared.

You look behind you and see Iwaizumi’s front door re-open and out comes the ‘iNFaMouS sEiJOh fOuR’ in tears... of laughter. It seems that the boys were in laughing fits that their prank ‘payed off’ getting a reaction out of you. You couldn’t see Iwaizumi’s reaction, but you didn’t care you were hurt, annoyed and wanting to get into your bed.

Once you get home, you decide to block your so called ‘friends’ who decided to make you scared shitless and ignored Iwaizumi’s messages asking “where were you today”.... the AUDACITY.  

The next day, the boy’s seemed to realize the consequences of their actions after spending the whole day trying to get your attention only to be straight up ignored. Iwaizumi is immensely regretful after all his efforts to try talking to you were denied, he decided after his practice he was going to get you to talk to him or at least get you to listen to his apologies on what happened yesterday evening.

You left your clubroom and made your way to the school gate to go home.

“Y/N!” shouted Iwaizumi touching your shoulder making you flinch ‘wow did we really scare her that bad?”  

“What do you want iwa?” You asked very agitated

“Y/N I just want to apologize for yesterday, since it was April fools day and all the boys really wanted to prank someone and I-it just happened to be-”

“It just happened to be me. Right?” you interrupted “Gosh Iwaizumi, I was really scared.. I already had a tiring day and all I wanted was my boyfriend to teach me the stupid Pythagoras Theorem and cuddle me afterwards, but no you and your friends just had to be dicks for a day” you turn around planning to walk away before he grabs you again  

“Wait! Just wait y/n, im sorry and I wont ever prank you like that again” he pleaded

“.. and i’ll help you study?” he added pulling the sweetest face of all time to try and convince you  

“ugh, fine stop pulling that face... and you better teach me Pythagoras Theorem” you said rolling your eyes

“yeah yeah whatever you say y/n” he said pulling you under his arm and walking in the direction of his house.

A/N: WOW I DID NOT like the way this turned out but its my first official thing that I wrote hopefully HOPEFULLY MY WORK IMPROVES (I THINK IT WILL) SO please join me on this ‘ride’ in improving my work  

Daichi:

You decided this morning that you were NOT going to participate in your annual April Day Fool’s prank with Tanaka and Noya... only because of your not-so new boyfriend Daichi saying he didn’t need his teammates corrupting you any longer so you decided to not get involved. With that being said you wouldn’t even think of your boyfriend pulling a prank on you so you didn’t think you’re getting pranked today.

In the gym, the boys were doing the usual: Hinata and Kageyama running after eachother, Tanaka and Noya oogling Kiyoko, Tsukishima listening to music, Yama and Yachi going over club schedules whilst Daichi sat with Sugawara and Asahi.

“So are you pranking anyone today?” sugawara asked

“Pranking someone, isn’t that a bit too juvenile suga?” Asahi replied

“Not you silly, Daichi” said sugawara “With Y/N on his arm they always have to stay on eachothers toes right..she’s a ‘jokester’ right?”

“...right?” Daichi hadn’t thought of it that way, he did know of all your joking escapades before you even got together and how you still liked to joke around now as you date.. He didn’t want you to think that you thought he was too boring for you ?

“Ok. What type of prank should I pull on her..”

Daichi, Sugawara and Asahi (who didn’t really contribute to Suga’s scheming) made a plan for you to meet him at the gym locker with the claims that he had a ‘surprise’ for you .. oh how he was wrong.

Daichi: meet me at the gym locker I have something to show you  

Y/N: Ok!! I’ll be there in 5 minutes

Daichi was nervous, and that was an understatement he didn’t want things to go left and have you thinking he couldn’t even do a simple prank. Once you got there, he saw heard you talking to Sugawara and Asahi outside the door about him wondering where he was in which Suga told you inside the locker room.

“Hey babe” you greeted “what's the occasion in why we’re in here?”

“I...uh..um I need to get something one second” Daichi spoke quickly and rushed out the room closing the door leaving you confused. Minutes passed, and you were now impatient and kinda scared since the room was dusty, dark and cold definitely not your place to be in. You tried texting Daichi but just your luck you have no service ://  

As time went on you tried opening the door but it was jammed shut no hope opening at all you forgot you left your bag outside which of course had your inhaler which did not help the sudden shortness of breath you started to get because of your asthma and claustrophobia. All you wanted was to get out of this room and talk to … Daichi.

Daichi. How convenient that he manage to slip away before the door got closed hmm but he wouldn’t intentionally prank you after ALL the lectures he gave you about not doing pranks this year right?

You didn’t notice how you started to cry and whimper wanting to leave.

On the outside, Daichi heard your cries and ordered Sugawara and Asahi to find the key to immediately get you out which it seems to take a while because Daichi has now stopped hearing your tears making him gulp in fear thinking something bad has happened to you in there.

Sugawara comes to you handing Daichi the keys, his handing shaking as he tries to unlock the door when he eventually does he finds you passed out on the ground of the dusty storage room. Very cliché I know ://

You wake up in the Nurses Office a bit confused on how you got there until your eyes land upon Daichi, remembering how you locked you in the Storage room where you had an asthma attack and passed out. You turned your body away from Daichi not wanting to talk to him right now after the hypocrisy he did.

“Y/N.. Are you alright?” He asked

“Do I look alright?” You responded in a bored tone

“I am really sorry Y/N... I know what I said to you about not doing pranks this year but Sugawara roped me into this and I didn’t want you to think I was too boring for you so I thought doing this prank would make you see me in a different light” he said

“yeah i saw you in a different light alright” you sassed, you then realised what he said ‘too boring’ kind of feeling less mad and more sad that he feels this way “Dai, you’d never be to boring for me … you’re one of the most funness is that a word? guys I've ever met.”

“really?” he asked  

“Of course! I’m kind of still mad at you for letting this happen but I do sort of understand why” you said giving him a hug.

You were eventually cleared to go home and as you left the clinic you saw Asahi and Sugawara standing at the door.  

“Y/N WE’RE SORRY” they bowed to you waiting on your responses

You chuckled slightly at their cuteness and ruffled both of their hair “all is forgiven, just make sure there’s ‘pranks’ this year “

Which they agreed upon.  

A/N: WOW I DID NOT like the way these turned out but its my first official thing that I wrote hopefully HOPEFULLY MY WORK IMPROVES (I THINK IT WILL) SO please join me on this ‘ride’ in improving my work. Feedback is VERY MUCH APPRECIATED and request too since I will literally write whatever...

I may do a part 2 … any particular characters people want?

[zealoushound]

My Hero

Summary: You and Kal have a movie night!

Pairing: Henry x reader, Kal & reader

Word Count: 1,300

Warnings: RPF All fluff! Scary movie, mentions of horror movie monsters.

A/N: @iaalien asked for more Kal content so of course I had to provide! Hope you enjoy it babe!

Disclaimer: This is purely fictional. I don’t own Henry Cavill or Kal, which is really sad if you think about it. Do not copy any part of my material to use as your own. Do not repost my work, or any portions of my work on any site and claim it as your own. Like all my other fics, this was written on my phone and not beta’d.

(pic from @kalcavill-fanblog)

***

You only started watching this because your best friend, who had just finished it, told you it was such a good movie. You had wanted to wait, and watch it while Henry was home so you wouldn’t be as scared, but he was away for the weekend on business and wouldn’t be home until tomorrow night.

Against your better judgement, you decided not to wait on his return. Patience never had been your strong suit. You settled in on the couch beside Kal, who had stayed behind instead of going Henry.

Albeit, a considerably hairier replacement, Kal makes the perfect movie companion. He never complains about watching a chick flick, makes you watch any boring documentaries or hogs the popcorn like his human counterpart. Pulling your blanket up for extra security, you wrapped an arm around the gentle giant to your left and hit play.

Thirty minutes later you had gotten so interested in the movie that you were on the edge of the couch, unable to look away even as it got scarier, and scarier. With widened eyes, you leaned closer as if somehow leaning forward would help you see what was coming.

“Oh, Kal! This is too scary.” Putting your hand over your heart, “how did I let you talk me into this?” Looking away for a send to glance at your furry companion. Kal looked up at you, giving you a little head tilt.

Something crashed down then a loud scream ripped out of the television. “OH! No. I’m turning this off!” You said defiantly as someone was killed on screen.

As you were picking up the remote again someone else came into view on screen. “Oh, don’t go in there! Don’t do it!” You looked down at Kal, “She’s about to get it!” You stated matter of factly. Kal’s tongue lolled out of his happy mouth as you scratched his head, more for yourself than him. Touching him grounded you in the present. You weren’t as scared then. It also helped that touching, petting, playing with him made you feel closer to Henry.

As you looked back, the killer jumped out at the woman on screen. “Ahha! See! I told you! I gotta turn this off before I pee my pants.” You paused it. “Ok, a quick bathroom break and then we’ll restart... maybe.” You were a glutton for punishment, of course you’d come back! “I’ll be right back buddy.” You patted Kal on the side as you got up to run to the bathroom.

Opening the door you looked down, “Honey you didn't have to get up!” Of course Kal had followed you down the hall to the restroom. “Come on, baby boy, let's finish this.” You wiped your clean hands off on your pants. I’ll get you some snacks. How about that, huh? Yeah, is that my good boy? Yes sir, you are!” Kal pranced around loving all the praises from his mumma, as Henry had begun calling you.

You pulled a few Milk Bones out of the box in the kitchen, tossing one to him as he caught it midair. “Good boy!” You exclaimed excitedly. He crunched on it all the way back into the living room as you resettled onto the couch with your favorite pillow, just in case you needed to cover your eyes.

Kal hops up right next to you letting you drape an arm over him again while you rub the soft, fluffy fur on his chest. “Ok, now. Where were we?” You hit play, jumping right back into the story. Kal eyes the treats in your other hand. Seeing him in your peripheral vision, you put the bone shaped treat out in front of him for him to take from your hand while not looking away from the film.

Forty five minutes later, you’re so involved in the twisted story you don’t even realize that you’ve sunk down so much that you’re all but lying on Kal. He’s raised up, but still seated beside you, sensing the fear in you and keeping a vigilant eye on the monsters that intend to do you harm.

“Oooohhh nooooo,” you whisper, hiding your face in Kal’s fur as the music begins to swell. Henry cautiously walks into the living room, then stands perfectly still, watching you quietly. He’s careful not to make a sound; convinced that he would frighten you to death if he so much as breathed too loudly right now.

Just as you look up from your furry shield the beast leaps into view, growling, snarling, covered in carnage, looking like something straight out of your worst nightmare. You jump a foot off the couch, and let out a terrified scream. Kal springs into action.

He’s instantly up off the couch, and down to stand in front of the tv. Feet planted, ready to attack, fur bristled, growling at the beast that scared his mama so badly that she’s crying now.

He begins to bark until Henry’s soft soothing voice picks up from the kitchen behind him. “Easy boy, good boy. Relax buddy.” Kal backs down, walking over to see his dad. “That’s a good boy. Good work protecting mama like that.”

You’ve huddled into yourself, crying on the pillow waiting for the coast to be clear so you can dive on the remote, and turn the tv off. Then suddenly you hear Henry’s voice behind you. He’s home early. Oh, thank God!

Henry walks around the couch with your scary movie partner-in-crime following close behind him. He sits down behind you. Kal comes to check on you sitting beside the couch, watching you intently.

Henry picks up the remote, looking at you while he holds his hand up to point it to the tv as he turns it off. You’re still hiding behind the pillow you’d grabbed earlier, taking in the blissful silence that falls as soon as he shut off the tv. See? You knew you’d need that pillow.

“You ok?” Henry asks quietly, running his huge, warm hand up your thigh, his fingertips resting just underneath the hem of the shorts you’re wearing.

“Yeah,” you reply sheepishly. “I’m sorry.” You sit up, sniffling. Your face red, and streaked with tears. You only glance at him, ashamed of how he’d found you.

“Why are you sorry, my love?” He opens his arms for you. You pounce on him like if you didn’t he would disappear; float away like a beautiful, soothing, dream.

“I knew better than to watch that dumb movie while you were gone.” You mumble into his soft, grey MuscleTech shirt, breathing in his scent. His scent, his arms, his voice, they always calmed you. Instantly. He had some sort of power over you, not that you would ever complain about it.

“You would have still been just as scared if I had been here.” he said, rubbing your back just the way you liked. He could have sworn he heard you purr.

“Yeah... I’m just embarrassed now though,” you spoke so softly he almost hadn’t caught that last part.

“It’s ok to be scared, darling.” He assured you.

“I know it's just... when I screamed I know I scared poor Kal.” You looked over to him sitting in between Henry’s feet.

Henry laughed. “Honey! You did not scare Kal. He was protecting you! He stood between you, and that thing! He was ready to destroy it!”

“Oh buddy, you did?” He sat up taller, and looked to be puffing out his chest like a superhero. “Oh, Kal! You’re my hero! Thank you buddy! You’re amazing, you know that?” You petted him all over while praising him. He blinked his eyes slowly, panting softly as he let his tongue wag, along with his tail! “Kal you are the BEST!” He was in absolute Heaven!

***

Tag list: (As always if you want on or off please let me know!)

@foodieforthoughts @wendimydarling @littlefreya @nuggsmum @killjoy-assbutt-1112 @summersong69 @oddduckthatgirl @winter2112rose @ysmmsy @christhickevans @ladycavillry @mary-ann84 @twhstuckylover @cavills-little-princess @luclittlepond @beck07990 @eldarwen333 @littlebirdofrivia @themaskismyface @enchantedbytomandhenry @supermamabear123 @diegos-butt @atomicsoulcollecto @alexakeyloveloki @kebabgirl67 @cynic-spirit @cavillsharman @littlewrenofrivia @viking-raider @iaalien

[fics-n-stuff]

Home - Pt 2

For @glowstick-lesbian, request here

Pairing: Kaz Brekker x Reader

Summary: After Y/N finally gets out hiding, it's time to sit down with Kaz and talk through whatever it is that's going on between them.

Word Count: 5.1k

Warnings: Brief talk of Jordie and Kaz's trauma and touch aversion

A/N: Wow this ended up being longer than I intended! I'm so sorry it's taken so long, I was focused on The Bastard's Shadow and Affluenza pts1 + 2, and then I started picking up more shifts at work and got writers block at the same time. I really hope you like how it turned out!! ❤❤

Pt1 here

After the very enlightening visit from Kaz, the days seemed to drag on even slower than before. The next two months went by in a crawl, and no matter how much you buried yourself in work you couldn’t distract from the longing you felt to get out of your apartment.

When your messenger came to deliver the news that your pursuers were willing to come to a truce you had been so happy that you’d gone straight to pour yourself a glass of whisky to celebrate. From then, you counted down the days until the meeting that you set up, the result of which should mean that you were free to roam the city again.

Inej had shown you how to get out of the window and onto the roof months ago. It was your escape route in case of an emergency, but you had used it every now and then just to sit on the roof and enjoy a taste of the outside world. That night, you had climbed out with intention and dressed in your finest coat.

You travelled over the rooftops towards the Government district, where your meeting had been arranged to take place near the Stadhall. The presence of the stadwatch would serve to protect you in case the deal went south.

You had been jittery with a mix of anxiety and excitement when you descended to street level and wended your way through the streets to find three men waiting for you at the Stadhall, all of them tall, broad and commanding. Barrel businessmen that you had crossed one too many times, and no doubt they had been angered that forcing you into hiding hadn’t put a stop to your business.

You were too smart to have not found a way around it; you had to be to run the business that you did. You owned three boarding houses and two bars in the Barrel and two ships that brought in imports from Ravka and Novyi Zem, a squaller as a permanent fixture on the crew of each to whom you paid a fair salary. You’d had Kaz put them under the protection of the Dregs to keep them safe from slavers. On top of all of that, you used your contacts in Ravka, Novyi Zem and other parts of Kerch to help get kids out of the Barrel and into honest work elsewhere. You might operate from the criminal underbelly of Ketterdam, but you made a mostly honest living.

The meeting took longer than you had anticipated. The three men were eager to negotiate territories that you couldn’t conduct business in and items that they didn’t want you to import because it was cutting into their own business. You held firm, you knew what was fair and you would be damned if you let anyone bully you into submission.

In the end, you essentially just agreed not to get in their way, which was easy enough to do. You wouldn’t actively compete with them in the sale of imported goods, and you wouldn’t try to convince any of the lads that they used as runners and grunts to get out of the Barrel. As long as you kept your distance from them you’d be fine, since they were clearly tired of chasing after you.

“Alright then, the deal is the deal.” You said, holding out your hand. All three shook hands with you in turn, echoing the phrase as was customary. When the man in the middle – clearly the leader and the last to shake with you – took your hand, you tightened your grip and leaned forward. “If you try to cheat me after this deal, you will have Dirtyhands to answer to.” You said lowly. He tried not to show his reaction but the fear in his eyes betrayed him, and you released his hand. It wasn’t often that you involved Kaz and his reputation in your affairs, but sometimes it paid to be friends with the most ruthless man in Ketterdam.

You left the meeting with your head held high and took a gondel back to the Barrel. You were approached by a few people who stayed in one of your boarding houses or drank in one of your bars on your walk to the Crow Club, telling you that they had been curious or worried about having not seen you around for so long. You didn’t engage in any conversation beyond polite acknowledgment, too eager to get to the Crow Club.

Inej was the only one that knew that you were getting out tonight. You had told her when she had come to deliver your food for the week and she had promised to try and keep everyone corralled at the Crow Club so that you could make a big entrance, but the later it got the less likely it was that she could keep them all there without raising suspicion.

You practically ran down the last street towards the Crow Club, bursting through the open door and searching the crowd for your friends. Jesper caught sight of you at the same moment that you spotted them all at the bar, and you saw his jaw drop in shock. A huge grin spread on your face as he set his drink down, his sudden change in demeanor getting the attention of the rest of the group and causing them to turn to follow his gaze.

“Y/N?” Jesper called, prompting you into as much of a sprint as you could manage across the crowded floor of the gambling hall. You vaulted yourself into him, wrapping your arms tightly around his lanky frame. “You’re back! How?” He exclaimed, and you laughed as you felt him hug you back and sweep you off of your feet.

“I had a meeting to call a truce. As of tonight I am a free person!”

“We missed you so much!” Nina grinned, prying Jesper’s arms off of you so that she could pull into a hug herself. “Why didn’t you tell us that you were finally coming out of hiding?”

“I wanted it to be a surprise.” You grinned, pulling away so that you could move to hug Wylan next. “I missed you guys so much too, you have no idea.” You caught sight of Kaz over Wylan’s shoulder, his eyes wide as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. You pointed your smile at him and his lips twitched upwards before he cooled his expression and gave you a simple nod.

Your reunion was spirited to say the least, even Matthias couldn’t help but smile at the fact that you were back. You made them tell you about all of the most significant things that you had missed in the year that you had been trapped inside and update you on any power shifts between the Barrel gangs. Jesper wouldn’t shut up, Wylan was excited to tell you about all of the new explosives and weapons that he had developed, and Nina was making a list of places that she wanted to get lunch together to make up for lost time. It felt amazing to be with them all again.

“Okay! I want to play a few hands of Three Man Bramble before I go.” You announced, pushing your glass away from you after downing the last of its contents.

“Don’t have to ask me twice.” Jesper grinned, slinging an arm around your shoulder and guiding you to a table.

It seemed apt that fortune seemed to be in your favour, winning so consistently that you continued to play even though you knew that you shouldn’t. It felt like every time that you looked up from the table you caught Kaz watching you, and his unashamed gaze made your heart flutter.

After a while you saw him give a slight nod towards the door, an action that meant that it was time to go, and you tucked you lip between you teeth as you gave a subtle nod back and turned your attention back to your cards.

“Unbelievable!” Jesper exclaimed upon seeing that you had won again. “I guess you’re catching up on a year’s worth of luck.”

“Perhaps, but I’m going to quit while I’m ahead.” You smiled, gathering up your winnings. “I need to go and breathe some more fresh air.” You pocketed half of your winnings and pushed the other half around the table to Jesper. “Not too much fun.”

“There’s no such thing as too much fun.” He beamed and pulled you to him so that he could plant a kiss on your cheek. “Good to have you back, Y/N.”

“Good to be back, Jes.” You winked before bounding back to the bar to say goodbye to the rest of your friends. Kaz had already disappeared, no doubt in an attempt to avoid drawing attention to the fact that you were leaving together.

“We’re going to get waffles tomorrow. I will break your door down if I have to.” Nina asserted, practically crushing your ribs in a hug. “Inej, you’re coming too.”

“What about me?” Wylan pouted, and you laughed.

“Everyone’s invited.” You replied, holding his face and turning it towards you so that you could press a soft kiss on his forehead before pulling him in for a hug. “I just got out, I want to spend time with you all!”

You kept your hug with Inej pretty short, considerate of the bad feelings that too much contact could stir up in her, and even managed to coax a hug from Matthias before you headed out. Kaz was waiting not far from the entrance and you smiled as you quickly made your way towards him

“Hey.” You chirped.

“You wanted it to be a surprise, huh?” He questioned, starting towards the Slat. You chuckled.

“I know you’re not a big fan of surprises, Kaz, but I thought this might be a fun one. Why? Were you offended that I told Inej and not you?”

“Did you have anyone go with you to your meeting?”

“No, I didn’t need any backup.”

“Things could have gone badly, and you didn’t tell anyone about it.”

“Well things didn’t go badly.” You rebutted. “I’m here, I’m fine, and I surprised you all.”

“You shouldn’t put yourself in danger like that.” Kaz said flatly, ignoring your point, and you groaned loudly at his stubbornness.

“If it makes you feel better, I made sure to drop your name in to intimidate them. But I can handle my own business.”

You hopped along the cobblestones playfully, irrationally happy to be back out on the filthy and foul smelling streets of the Barrel, but even the stink couldn’t dampen your joy at finally being free. You were sure that you and Kaz probably looked like a bizarre pair walking together now, him with his stoic exterior and identifying limp next to your childlike joy, though you had taken after him fashion wise with your smart attire and well-fitted, black coat.

Walking back to the Slat with Kaz took you in the opposite direction to your home – now that you were out of hiding you could finally return to where you actually lived in a house on the boundary of East Stave and the Zelver District – but you wanted to talk to Kaz, and he wouldn’t have asked you to leave with him if he didn’t want to talk to you too. Nevertheless, you continued the rest of the walk in silence.

When you got to the Slat, Kaz continued straight up to his room while you lingered on the ground floor to say hello to some of the Dregs that you were more friendly with. The noise of the Slat was unfamiliar to you after so long, but you had kind of missed the rowdiness of it.

You followed upstairs shortly after. Kaz had left his door ajar for you and you could see him sat at his desk through the opening.

“Shut the door behind you.” He said as you slipped inside, and you heard the door click as you push it shut after yourself.

“You wanna talk to me?” You questioned, walking over to lean on the side of the desk casually. “Or did you just want some time to look at my gorgeous face?” He did look up at you then, his eyes darting around to take in the entirety of your face, and you felt your heart flutter.

“How did your meeting go? What deals did you make?” He asked. You sighed. It wasn’t new that Kaz was asking about your business, he liked to know about what you were doing the same way that he liked to know about literally everything else, but you had hoped that this conversation would be a little less mundane than that. You had hoped that he might express an iota of joy that you were back.

“I can’t dock my ships in 3rd Harbour anymore.” You shrugged. “So I’ll stick to 2nd for imports going into the morning market, mostly 5th for everything else. There’s a few streets that I need to keep my business off of, and obviously I can’t try and undermine their operations anymore. That doesn’t mean that I won’t, it just means that I’ll be smarter about not getting caught.”

“And what do you get from them?”

“They leave me alone. I don’t need more than that. I mean, their terms are hardly going to impede my business anyway.”

“And your insurance?”

“You.” You smiled sweetly. “Very few people are bold enough to cross someone that has Kaz Brekker on side.”

“I thought you prided yourself on running an honest business.”

“I do. My association with you doesn’t make my business any less legit. I’m more honest than most of the Merchant Council anyway.”

“That’s fair.” He conceded with a slight nod.

Kaz had visited you a few times since the night that you had both let on about how much you cared about each other, but you hadn’t talked about it. It felt like the tension between you had been building and building like an elastic band ready to snap. It was driving you crazy.

“Anything else that you want to talk about?” You hinted. Kaz let out a long breath, his eyes sliding away from you for a moment. You could tell that he wanted to talk about it but he was struggling to get it out. “Because you haven’t told me that you’re glad I’m back yet.”

“I am glad that you’re back.” He affirmed, then he took a hard swallow. “We all missed you.” You smiled brightly at that.

You could hear the crows moving around on the half-roof outside of Kaz’s window and crossed the room to perch on the windowsill. There hadn’t been anywhere for the birds to land in the apartment that you had been cooped up in.

“Can I stay here for a while? I don’t want to be alone again just yet.” You said softly, tucking one knee up against your chest as you watched the birds through the glass.

“Sure.” Kaz answered.

You sat in silence for a while after that, which wasn’t unusual for you two. Before you had gone into hiding, you had spent many evenings with Kaz in his office just like this. Tonight felt different though. Something had opened between the two of you and now you couldn’t close it. The feeling permeated every corner of the room until you felt like you might explode if you didn’t break this silence, but, to your surprise, Kaz spoke first.

“I’ve been thinking about that day that I saw you outside the Crow Club.”

“Why?” You asked, blinking in surprise. Kaz was still facing forward at his desk, back turned to you, but his pen had stilled over the page.

“I watched you for a while, deciding whether to chase you off or recruit you for the Dregs.” He continued, ignoring your question. You were used to that too. “You were good at pickpocketing – you could spot a good mark, distracted them by pretending to beg for pennies – but you stayed in one place for too long.”

“I know, you told me at the time.” You smiled amusedly.

“I was just planning on telling you exactly that, but after I got your attention and you looked at me I knew that I had seen you before. It was in your eyes.” He turned around to look at you then, his gaze finding yours immediately. “Your eyes never changed.”

Kaz’s eyes had. Maybe that was why you hadn’t recognised him. Kaz Rietveld had eyes full of wonder and warmth, that were curious about everything and shone when he was happy. Kaz Brekker's eyes were cold, they held secrets. The curiosity had become analytical, and the shine had turned into a devious glint. Kaz Rietveld didn’t exist anymore, the R tattoo on Kaz’s bicep was the only relic of him, and you were the only one left to remember him.

“Crows remember the faces of those that are kind.” He finished softly.

“And that’s why you took me in? Because I was kind?”

“Because we were friends. We are friends.”

“Just friends?” You murmured, a challenge in your eyes. It wasn’t a provoking challenge, more of an encouraging one. You wanted to know where he stood and you wanted him to be able to tell you. He was silent for a long stretch.

“Would we ever be able to be more?” He asked. You knew what he meant. Kaz had built up so many walls that he didn’t know how to let down, and he knew that about himself. It was how he had survived, but it was a way of being that wasn’t very conducive to relationships. He didn’t think that he could do it.

“That depends on you.” You answered with a soft smile. “Because I’m not looking anywhere else.” Kaz swallowed and looked away quickly, but you swore that you had seen a hint of a blush in his cheeks.

A knock came at the door, and you cursed whoever was on the other side in your head.

“What is it?” Kaz called.

“There’s a man downstairs says he has a job for you.” Specht’s voice came through the wood. “Won’t talk to no one else but you.”

“I’ll be down in a minute.” Kaz replied, then muttered something under his breath bitterly. You heard the creak of Specht's retreating footsteps and Kaz turned to you. “Will you wait until I get back?”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

You watched Kaz leave the room and let out a long sigh once the door had closed behind him. You were finally talking about whatever it was that was between the two of you and you just had to get interrupted.

You shed your coat, dropping it lazily on the floor next to you, and rolled up your shirt sleeves. Despite the pressure put on you from some members of the Dregs, you had never gotten the crow and cup tattoo on your forearm. You had known from the start that you didn’t want to belong to the gang, no matter how thankful you were for the help that Kaz had given you.

When you had realised who it really was that had approached you that night outside the Crow Club, you had been shocked. He knew your name when he spoke to you, though he had seemed unsure of it, and you had furrowed your brow and asked if you knew him.

“It’s Kaz.” He had said, and you had blinked.

“Kaz Rietveld?” You had whispered in disbelief. His jaw had clenched, his shoulders stiffened.

“That’s not my name anymore.” He snapped. “It’s Kaz Brekker now.”

When you asked him why he had changed his name he had simply told you that it was easier that way. When you asked him about why he was in Ketterdam he had answered that his father had died and they had sold the farm. When you asked about Jodie he didn’t answer.

He had walked you to the Slat, told you not to talk to anyone, and brought you up to this very room. You had trusted him enough to follow. Despite his proud presence in the Barrel, despite the fact that he was walking you into the den of a gang, despite the fact that he was almost unrecognisable from the Kaz that you knew as a child, you had trusted him. And in the years that followed, he had never broken that trust.

He had helped you pay for the first boarding house that you purchased, come with you to the bank when you took out the loan to buy your first ship, had come to the harbour to see you off the first time that you had gone to Ravka.

Kaz had once reminded you of something from your childhood while around the other Crows, and once it had slipped that you and Kaz had been friends when you were young, people were constantly asking you about what he had been like. He never told anybody anything about himself and people had been eager to find a source of information on him, but most people had quickly come to realise that you weren’t going to say anything either. Kaz had never thanked you for your discretion, but you knew that he was glad for it.

If you were honest with yourself, you had found yourself drawn to him ever since you got your first glimpse through his cold and uncaring exterior and saw his loyal and protective nature. The pull had only grown since.

Your thoughts were broken by the sound of the door opening, and you looked over to watch Kaz enter. The door clicked shut behind him and he moved to the wash basin directly across the room from the window that you were sat in, set down his cane and pulled off his gloves .

“A good job?” You asked. He shrugged.

“A job that I’ll do.” He answered and began unbuttoning his shirt. You tried not ogle as he pulled it off and picked up the washcloth from the basin, but you caught sight of a reddened stripe of raised skin across his side and furrowed your brows.

“When did that happen?”

“A few days ago.”

“How deep did it go?”

“Not too deep.”

“It doesn’t look like you stitched it up properly.”

“It’s fine.” He dismissed. You rolled your eyes and got up from the window ledge. Kaz never took proper care of himself but he was always too stubborn to admit it.

“Let me see.”

“I said it’s fine, Y/N-"

“Kaz.” You interrupted sternly, meeting his eyes in the mirror. “I said let me see.” He held your gaze for a moment before letting out a huff and raising his arm so that you could get a better view of the wound.

You kept your distance as you looked over the injury, but you could clearly see that the stitches were sloppy on the end of the gash towards his back; the side that he couldn’t reach easily himself.

“You’re keeping it clean?”

“I know how to treat a wound.” He grumbled.

“I know that you know how, that doesn’t mean that I actually trust you to do it. You didn’t even have it bandaged or anything, what if it gets infected?”

“It won’t, Y/N, stop worrying so much.”

“Well, if you’re not going to worry about yourself then somebody else has to.” You exasperated. “At least bandage it.” You didn’t wait for a reply before you crossed over to the cabinet where he kept his impressive stock of medical supplies and grabbed a roll of gauze. Kaz caught it grudgingly when you tossed it to him and set it to the side while he finished washing his torso.

“You worry too much.” He muttered.

“It’s good for you.” You smiled.

You watched him as he unrolled the gauze and wrapped it around his body, carefully laying it over the wound with pale fingers that you rarely saw. He was precise, but he couldn’t see his back and the bandage twisted as he moved it between his hands.

“It’s folded.” You told him softly, taking half a step towards him. “I can fix it... if you want.” There was a beat of silence before Kaz nodded slightly.

You moved towards him slowly and reached for him even slower, your eyes constantly flicking back to the mirror to gauge the reaction on Kaz’s face. Your fingertips barely brushed over his back as you unfolded the downturned piece of bandage and you immediately stepped away when you were done. It took no more than a few seconds, but you could hear Kaz’s short breaths and when you looked at him in the mirror you could see that he had paled.

You picked up the clean shirt that was laid on his bed and held it out to him at full arms length. His hand shook as he took it from you. He pulled it on quickly, making short work of the buttons, and pulled his gloves back on hastily.

“Sorry.” You mumbled, though you weren’t exactly sure what you were apologising for.

“It’s because of Jordie.” Kaz’s voice was hoarse when he spoke, his eyes trained on his shoes. “Why I can’t touch anyone. It’s because when he died...”

“You don’t have to tell me, Kaz.” You said softly when he trailed off. He shook his head slightly and cleared his throat, squeezing his eyes shut for a few seconds.

“When Jordie died, I was sick too. It was the Queen's Lady plague. One night, I fell asleep in an alley and woke up on the Reaper's Barge.” He swallowed thickly, wringing his hands together thoughtlessly, and you could see sweat forming on his brow. “When my fever broke, I had to swim back to the harbour, and Jordie... whenever someone touches me, all I can feel is those corpses.”

Silence hung between you as you tried to find the words to respond. It was a lot of information to take in, but suddenly things made sense. Now you understood why Kaz had become the way that he was; why he was prone to shutting people out, why the light behind his eyes had dimmed.

“Kaz, I... I’m sorry, I don’t know what to say.”

“That’s okay.” He muttered. “I have work to do. You’re welcome to stay as long as you’d like.” He crossed the room to sit down at his desk, his movements tense. You watched him for a minute, unsure of what to do. It felt wrong to leave him alone right now, but you didn’t know if he would want you to stay.

“I’m sailing to Novyi Zem next week.” You said. It was the first topic that you could think of. “I’d really appreciate it if you could look over the rent ledgers while I’m gone.”

“Sure.” He replied flatly. Silence again.

“Will you come with us all to get waffles tomorrow?”

“I have work to do, and Nina didn’t invite me anyway.”

“Yeah, well, the celebration is for me and I’d really like for you to be there.” You smiled slightly. “She probably didn’t invite you because she knew you’d say no.”

“Smart of her.” Kaz responded, and you let out a frustrated huff.

“Don’t do that, Kaz. Don’t shut me out.” You complained. He didn’t answer at all. You folded your arms over your chest and went to stand beside his chair. “I don’t care that you can’t touch people, it doesn’t bother me. You went through trauma and that’s not your fault. What is bothering me is that you’re choosing to stay closed off to everyone. You can’t keep your walls up forever, you’ll kill yourself trying.”

“I can’t handle it, Y/N.” He snapped, his voice low. The gravel in his voice might have intimidated you into backing off if you weren’t so adamant on getting through to him.

“You’ll never be able to handle it if you don’t start trying.” You insisted. “Maybe if you’d just admit to yourself that you care about people it wouldn’t be so hard to see that we care about you too.”

Kaz pinched the bridge of his nose, his eyes shut tightly, and released a long breath. You watched him, waiting for a response, not backing down. After a moment of silence, he glanced up at you.

“I can’t need anyone.” He said slowly. “Not after Jordie. I can’t let myself need anyone else.”

“You don’t have to need me, Kaz. You just have to want me.” You replied softly. His head snapped towards you and you actually saw his pupils dilate for the few seconds that he held your gaze before quickly turning away again. You hadn’t meant it like that, but you weren’t upset that he’d heard it that way.

“I don’t deserve you.” He muttered. You leaned against his desk, a sympathetic smile on your face even though he wasn’t looking at you.

“I’ve been around this long, I’m not going anywhere.” You promised. “There’s more to love about you than you think.”

Kaz tapped on his desk with a finger, a nervous action that he would usually suppress. Then, he took a sharp inhale and turned back to you.

“Okay.” He breathed. “I can try.” You bit down on your tongue in an attempt to suppress your grin, but you couldn’t stop the smile that stretched across your face.

“That’s all I ask.” You lilted. You stood up straight, pushing off of the desk and starting across the room to the window. You rolled your shirt sleeves down and snatched your coat up from the floor. “I’m going to head home. I expect to see you at my door promptly at eleven bells tomorrow morning, ready to get waffles.”

“Alright.” He nodded, breathing a single light laugh.

“Perfect. I’ll see you then.”

“Here, Y/N, these are for you.” He said quickly, picking up and couple of envelopes from his desk and holding them up for you. “You’ll have to make sure to notify your business partners of your change in mailing address.” You chuckled, going to take the letters from him, and he gave a small smirk as he handed them over.

“Thank you.” You smiled, before turning and heading to the door. “Eleven bells, Brekker. I know you’re a punctual man.”

“I’ll be there.” He affirmed. “Goodnight, Y/N.”

“Goodnight, Kaz.” You echoed softly before stepping out of the room and shutting the door behind you, a fond smile on your lips.

[oscopelabs]

Isn’t Everything Autobiographical?: Ethan Hawke In Nine Films And A Novel by Marya Gates

When asked during his first ever on-camera interview if he’d like to continue acting, a young Ethan Hawke replied, “I don’t know if it’s going to be there, but I’d like to do it.” He then gives a guileless shrug of relief as the interview ends, wiping imaginary sweat off his brow. The simultaneous fusion of his nervous energy and poised body language will be familiar to those who’ve seen later interviews with the actor. The practicality and wisdom he exudes at such a young age would prove to be a through-line of his nearly 40-year career. In an interview many decades later, he told Ideas Tap that many children get into acting because they’re seeking attention, but those who find their calling in the craft discover that a “desire to communicate and to share and to be a part of something bigger than yourself takes over, a certain craftsmanship—and that will bring you a lot of pleasure.”

Through Hawke’s dedication to his craft, we’ve also seen his maturation as a person unfold on screen. Though none of his roles are traditionally what we think of when we think of autobiography, many of Hawke’s roles, as well as his work as a writer, suggest a sort of fictional autobiographical lineage. While these highlights in his career are not strictly autofiction, one can trace Hawke’s Künstlerromanesque trajectory from his childhood ambitions to his life now as a man dedicated to art, not greatness. 

Hawke’s first two films, Joe Dante’s sci-fi fantasy Explorers with River Phoenix and Peter Weir’s Dead Poets Society with Robin Williams, set the tone for a diverse filmography filled with popcorn fare and indie cinema in equal measure, but they also served as touchstones in his development as person drawn to self-expression through art. In an interview with Rolling Stone’s David Fear, Hawke spoke about the impact of these two films on him as an actor. When River Phoenix, his friend and co-star in Explorers, had his life cut short by a drug overdose, it hit Hawke personally. He saw from the inside what Hollywood was capable of doing to young people with talent. Hawke never attempted to break out, to become a star. He did the work he loved and kept the wild Hollywood lifestyle mostly at arm’s length. 

Like any good film of this genre, Dead Poets Society is not just a film about characters coming of age, but a film that guides the viewer as well, if they are open to its message. Hawke’s performance as repressed schoolboy Todd in the film is mostly internal, all reactions and penetrating glances, rather than grandiose movements or speeches. Through his nervy body language and searching gaze, you can feel both how closed off to the world Todd is, and yet how willing he is to let change in. Hawke has said working on this film taught him that art has a real power, that it can affect people deeply. This ethos permeates many of the characters Hawke has inhabited in his career. 

In Dead Poets Society, Mr. Keating (Robin Williams) tells the boys that we read and write poetry because the human race is full of passion. He insists, “poetry, beauty, romance, love—these are what we stay alive for.” Hawke gave a 2020 TEDTalk entitled Give Yourself Permission To Be Creative, in which he explored what it means to be creative, pushing viewers to ask themselves if they think human creativity matters. In response to his own question, he said “Most people don’t spend a lot of time thinking about poetry, right? They have a life to live and they’re not really that concerned with Allen Ginsberg’s poems, or anybody’s poems, until their father dies, they go to a funeral, you lose a child, somebody breaks your heart, they don’t love you anymore, and all of the sudden you’re desperate for making sense out of this life and ‘has anyone ever felt this bad before? How did they come out of this cloud?’ Or the inverse, something great. You meet somebody and your heart explodes. You love them so much, you can’t even see straight, you know, you’re dizzy. ‘Did anybody feel like this before? What is happening to me?’ And that’s when art is not a luxury. It’s actually sustenance. We need it.” 

Throughout many of his roles post-Dead Poets Society, Hawke explores the nature of creativity through his embodiment of writers and musicians. Often these characters are searching for a greater purpose through art, while ultimately finding that human connection is the key. Without that human connection, their art is nothing.

We see the first germ of this attraction to portray creative people on screen with his performance as Troy Dyer in Reality Bites. As Troy Dyer, a philosophy-spouting college dropout turned grunge-band frontman in Reality Bites, Hawke was posited as a Gen-X hero. His inability to keep a job and his musician lifestyle were held in stark contrast to Ben Stiller’s yuppie TV exec Michael Grates. However in true slacker spirit, he isn’t actually committed to the art of music, often missing rehearsals, as Lelaina points out. Troy even uses his music at one point to humiliate Lelaina, dedicating a rendition of “Add It Up” by Violent Femmes to her. The lyrics add insult to injury as earlier that day he snuck out of her room after the two had sex for the first time. Troy’s lack of commitment to his music matches his inability to commit to those relationships in his life that mean the most to him. 

Reality Bites is also where he first positioned himself as one of the great orators of modern cinema.” Take this early monologue, in which he outlines his beliefs to Winona Ryder’s would-be documentarian Lelaina Pierce: “There’s no point to any of this. It’s all just a random lottery of meaningless tragedy and a series of near escapes. So I take pleasure in the details. You know, a quarter-pounder with cheese, those are good, the sky about ten minutes before it starts to rain, the moment where your laughter become a cackle, and I, I sit back and I smoke my Camel Straights and I ride my own melt.” 

Hawke brings the same intense gaze to this performance as he did to Dead Poets Society, as if his eyes could swallow the world whole. But where Todd’s body language was walled-off, Troy’s is loud and boisterous. He’s quick to see the faults of those around him, but also the good things the world has to offer. It’s a pretty honest depiction of how self-centered your early-20s tend to be, where riding your own melt seems like the best option. As the film progresses, Troy lets others in, saying to Lelaina, “This is all we need. A couple of smokes, a cup of coffee, and a little bit of conversation. You, me and five bucks.”

Like the character, Hawke was in his early twenties and as he would continue to philosophize through other characters, they would age along with him and so would their takes on the world. If you only engage with anyone at one phase in their life, you do a disservice to the arc of human existence. We have the ability to grow and change as we learn who we are and become less self-centered. In Hawke’s career, there’s no better example of this than his multi-film turn as Jesse in the Before Trilogy. While the creation of Jesse and Celine are credited to writer-director Richard Linklater and his writing partner Kim Krizan, much of what made it to the screen even as early as the first film were filtered through the life experiences of Hawke and his co-star Julie Delpy. 

In a Q&A with Jess Walter promoting his most recent novel A Bright Ray of Darkness, Hawke said that Jesse from the Before Trilogy is like an alt-universe version of himself, and through them we can see the self-awareness and curiosity present in the early ET interview grow into the the kind of man Keating from Dead Poets Society urged his students to become. 

In Before Sunrise, Hawke’s Jesse is roughly the same age as Troy in Reality Bites, and as such is still in a narcissistic phase of his life. After spending several romantic hours with Celine in Vienna, the two share their thoughts about relationships. Celine says she wants to be her own person, but that she also desperately wants to love and be loved. Jesse shares this monologue, “Sometimes I dream about being a good father and a good husband. And sometimes it feels really close. But then other times it seems silly, like it would ruin my whole life. And it’s not just a fear of commitment or that I’m incapable of caring or loving because. . . I can. It’s just that, if I’m totally honest with myself, I think I’d rather die knowing that I was really good at something. That I had excelled in some way than that I’d just been in a nice, caring relationship.”

The film ends without the audience knowing if Jesse and Celine ever see each other again. That initial shock is unfortunately now not quite as impactful if you are aware of the sequels. But I think it is an astute look at two people who meet when they are still discovering who they are. Still growing. Jesse, at least, is definitely not ready for any kind of commitment. Then of course, we find out in Before Sunset that he’s fumbled his way into marriage and fatherhood, and while he’s excelling at the latter, he’s failing at the former. 

As in Reality Bites, Hawke explores the dynamics of band life again in Before Sunset, when Jesse recalls to Celine how he was in a band, but they were too obsessed with getting a deal to truly enjoy the process of making music. He says to her, “You know, it's all we talked about, it was all we thought about, getting bigger shows, and everything was just...focused on the future, all the time. And now, the band doesn't even exist anymore, right? And looking back at the... at the shows we did play, even rehearsing... You know, it was just so much fun! Now I'd be able to enjoy every minute of it.”

The filming of Before Sunset happened to coincide with the dissolution of Hawke’s first marriage. And while these films are not autobiographical, everyone involved have stated that they’ve added personal elements to their characters. They even poke fun at it in the opening scene when a journalist asks how autobiographical Jesse’s novel is. True to form, he responds with a monologue, “Well, I mean, isn’t everything autobiographical? I mean, we all see the world through our own tiny keyhole, right? I mean, I always think of Thomas Wolfe, you know. Have you ever seen that little one page note to reader in the front of Look Homeward, Angel, right? You know what I'm talking about? Anyway, he says that we are the sum of all the moments of our lives, and that, anybody who sits down to write is gonna use the clay of their own life, that you can’t avoid that.”

While Before Sunset was shot in 2003, released in 2004 and this monologue refers to the fictional book within the trilogy entitled This Time, Hawke would take this same approach more than a decade later with his novel A Bright Ray of Darkness.

In the novel, Hawke crafts a quasi-autobiographical story, using his experience in theater to work through the perspective he now has on his failed marriage to Uma Thurman. Much like Jesse in Before Sunset, Hawke is reluctant to call the book autobiographical, but the parallels to his own divorce are evident. And as Jesse paraphrased Wolfe, isn’t everything we do autobiographical? In the book, movie star William Harding has blown up his seemingly picture-perfect marriage with a pop star by having an affair while filming on location in South Africa. The book, structured in scenes and acts like a play, follows the aftermath as he navigates his impending divorce, his relationship with his small children, and his performance as Hotspur in a production of Henry IV on Broadway. 

Throughout much of the novel, William looks back at the mistakes he made that led to the breakup of his marriage. He’s now in his 30s and has the clarity to see how selfish he was in his 20s. Hawke, however, was in his forties while writing the book. Through the layers of hindsight, you can feel how Hawke has processed not just the painful emotional growth spurt of his 20s, but also the way he can now mine the wisdom that comes from true reflection. Still, as steeped as the novel is in self-reflection, it does not claim to have all the answers. In fact, it offers William, as well as the readers, more questions to contemplate than it does answers.

The wisdom to know that you will never quite understand everything is broached by Hawke early in the third film in the Before Trilogy, 2013’s Before Midnight. At this point in their love story, Jesse’s marriage has ended and he and Celine are parents to twin girls. Jesse has released two more books: That Time, which recounts the events of the previous film, and Temporary Cast Members of a Long-Running But Little Seen Production of a Play Called Fleeting. Before Midnight breaks the bewitching spell of the first two films by adding more cast members and showing the friction that comes with an attempt to grow old with someone. When discussing his three books, a young man says the title of his third is too long, Jesse says it wasn’t as well loved, and an older professor friend says it’s his best book because it’s more ambitious. It seems Linklater and company already knew how the departure of this third film might be regarded by fans. But it is this very departure that shows their commitment to honestly showing the passage of time and our relationship to it. 

About halfway through the film Jesse and Celine depart the Greek villa where they have been spending the summer, and we finally get a one-on-one conversation like we’re used to with these films. In one exchange, I feel they summarize the point of the entire trilogy, and possibly Hawke’s entire ethos: 

Jesse: Every year, I just seem to get a little bit more humbled and more overwhelmed about all the things I’m never going to know or understand. 

Celine: That’s what I keep telling you. You know nothing!

Jesse: I know, I know! I'm coming around! 

[Celine and Jesse laugh.] 

Celine: But not knowing is not so bad. I mean, the point is to be looking, searching. To stay hungry, right?

Throughout the series, Linklater, Delpy, and Hawke explore what they call the “transient nature of everything.” Jesse says his books are less about time and more about perception. It’s the rare person who can assess themselves or the world around them acutely in the present. For most of us, it takes time and self-reflection to come to any sort of understanding about our own nature. Before Midnight asks us to look back at the first two films with honesty, to remove the romantic lens with which they first appeared to us. It asks us to reevaluate what romance even truly is. 

Hawke explores this same concept again in the 2018 romantic comedy Juliet, Naked. In this adaptation of the 2009 Nick Hornby novel, Hawke plays a washed-up singer-songwriter named Tucker Crowe. He had a big hit album, Juliet, in the early ‘90s and then disappeared into obscurity. Rose Bryne plays a woman named Annie whose longtime boyfriend Duncan is obsessed with the singer and the album, stuck on the way the bummer songs about a bad breakup make him feel. As the film begins, Annie reveals that she thinks she’s wasted 15 years of her life with this schmuck. This being a rom-com, we know that Hawke and Byrne’s characters will eventually meet-cute. What’s so revelatory about the film is its raw depiction of how hard it is for many to reassess who they really are later in life. 

Duncan is stuck as the self-obsessed, self-pitying person he likely was when Annie first met him, but she reveals he was so unlike anyone else in her remote town that she looked the other way for far too long. Now it’s almost too late. By chance, she connects with Crowe and finds a different kind of man.

See, when Crowe wrote Juliet, he also was a navel-gazing twentysomething whose emotional development had not yet reached the point of being able to see both sides in a romantic entanglement. He worked through his heartbreak through art, and though it spoke to other people, he didn’t think about the woman or her feelings on the subject. In a way, Crowe’s music sounds a bit like what Reality Bites’s Troy Dyer may have written, if he ever had the drive to actually work at his music. Eventually, it’s revealed that Crowe walked away from it all when Julie, the woman who broke his heart, confronted him with their child—something he was well aware of, but from which he had been running away. Faced with the harsh reality of his actions and the ramifications they had on the world beyond his own feelings, he ran even farther away from responsibility. In telling the story to Annie, he says, “I couldn’t play any of those songs anymore, you know? After that, I just... I couldn’t play these insipid, self-pitying songs about Julie breaking my heart. You know, they were a joke. And before I know it, a couple of decades have gone by and some doctor hands me... hands me Jackson. I hold him, you know, and I look at him. And I know that this boy. . . is my last chance.”

When we first meet Crowe, he’s now dedicated his life to raising his youngest son, having at this point messed up with four previous children. The many facets of parenthood is something that shows up in Hawke’s later body of work many times, in projects as wholly different as Brooklyn’s Finest, Before Midnight, Boyhood, Maggie’s Plan, First Reformed, and even his novel A Bright Ray of Darkness. In each of these projects, decisions made by Hawke’s characters have a big impact on their children’s lives. These films explore the financial pressures of parenthood, the quirks of blended families, the impact of absent fathers, and even the tragedy of a father’s wishes acquiesced without question. Hawke’s take on parenthood is that of flawed men always striving to overcome the worst of themselves for the betterment of the next generation, often with mixed results. 

Where Juliet, Naked showed a potential arc of redemption for a father gone astray, First Reformed paints a bleaker portrait. Hawke plays Pastor Toller, a man of the cloth struggling with his own faith who attempts to counsel an environmental activist whose impending fatherhood has driven him to suicidal despair. Toller himself is struggling under the weight of fatherhood, believing he sent his own son to die a needless death in a morally bankrupt war. Sharing the story, he says “My father taught at VMI. I encouraged my son to enlist. It was the family tradition. Like his father, his grandfather. Patriotic tradition. My wife was very opposed. But he enlisted against her wishes. . . .  Six months later he was killed in Iraq. There was no moral justification for this conflict. My wife could not live with me after that. Who could blame her? I left the military. Reverend Jeffers at Abundant Life Church heard about my situation. They offered me a position at First Reformed. And here I am.” How do we carry the weight of actions that affect lives that are not even our own? 

If Peter Weir set the father figure template in Dead Poets Society, and Paul Schrader explored the consequences of direct parental influence on their children’s lives, director Richard Linklater subverts the idea of a mentor-guide in Boyhood, showing both parents are as lost as the kid himself. When young Mason (Ellar Coltrane) asks his dad (Hawke) what’s the point of everything, his reply is “I sure as shit don’t know. Nobody does. We’re all just winging it.” As the film ends, Mason sits atop a mountain with a new friend he’s made in the dorms discussing time. She says that everyone is always talking about seize the moment—carpe diem!—but she thinks it’s the other way around. That the moments seize us. In Reality Bites, Troy gets annoyed at Lelaina’s constant need to “memorex” everything with her camcorder, yet Boyhood is a film about capturing a life over a 12-year period. The Before Trilogy checks in on Jesse and Celine every nine years. Hawke’s entire career. in fact, has captured his growth from an awkward teen to a prolific artist and devoted father, a master of his craft and philosopher at heart. 

[sugar-petals]

♡ måneskin scenario: getting to know ethan 

↳ NOTE. by popular demand and because i’m entirely enthralled by the phenomenon that is ethan torchio myself, here we go givin’ the gorgeous drummer some love.

word count. 5.5k

TAGS. no warnings all fluff, fem!oc, slice of life, photographer!reader, first date-ish, shy flirting, ot4 is part of the plot, ethan being sexy in heels

Jacob had enough of that twilight bullshit and joined a glam rock band. At least that’s what you thought seeing Ethan around for the first time. Setting up the kit, carrying his whiny band members around, fixing his ruffle shirt, chugging some water: Big gig tonight, extra long setlist. Five minutes later, complaining about his brocade shoes being hard to kick the bass drum with. Even later, silently nodding along to an impassioned Damiano speech crafted to boost the morale, and posing for your camera in his silver jumpsuit. Friendly to approach all the way, but without initiating stable eye contact even once.

One thing’s for sure. As your favorite professor said back at university: Someone may be photogenic and unearthly as hell in terms of looks, and even be intimidating — but also so damn shy, you won’t see their eyes a single time. „Gotta work with it and not against. Then it gets interesting“. In essence, the takeaway from that course. Which does come in handy now. Ethan seems like the kind of guy you really have to get into for a more intimate-feeling picture.

Sure, many people in front of your camera have all kinds of introverted personalities anyway, wearing sunglasses in particular. So much about eye contact in the first place. And the aesthetic is priority, not studying character. Although you really are a fan of that, it’s a huge part of photography if anything. Alas, you’re here to „capture nothing more but the spirit of italo-rock, the attitude, the hedonism!“ (the exact words of your boss) for a music magazine after all. Really, nothing more? You paid attention to how he worded it. Fair enough. Rock spirit, that’s all, the exciting parts.

Ethan surely has it. Drumming on everything he can find during rehearsal breaks („music is everywhere“) with his sticks, even Thomas’ amplifier. He’s actually dorkier than you thought, less composed when he’s in his element. First impressions do deceive. The hair’s hard to miss, too. It’s the central motif that attracts you. You may or may not have taken over 50 shots of it just because. Ethan is a bad bitch and he better know. You climb around the venue to get any salient angle of Måneskin you can think of. Even from all the way back, last row. You don’t want to annoy them being all up in their face constantly. You’re hired to get all the good shots, they’ve been a band for seven years already, professionals in the making. Doesn’t mean you have to stand below the edge of the stage and never change position.

Even from back there, the silver reflects beautifully at the back of the stage. The fashion’s all designer and it shows, but Ethan couldn’t look bad in any of the shots even if he tried or wore the plainest black suit (hell, that would be just as beautiful in fact). Just how long is that hair anyway. All the way down to the solar plexus, must be 24 inches or more. 25, even. Many rockers would wear it that way, but Ethan seems particularly interesting with how he touches it, how he behaves with it. There we go again with the character study, you can’t help wondering.

But really. It’s any photographer’s dream when someone moves their hair around so damn naturally. Gives a great variety to how it frames and shades the face. You like to play with light all the time. And hey, why ask for eye contact when he does even better posing in other ways. The body, too, Ethan’s posture is great. Victoria and Thomas often bend to really get into their power chords, Damiano frequently hunches forward for a belt. But Ethan’s throned at his kit like some royals taught him to be a good boy. Back straighter than a pole, how the hell.

No glance in your direction still, even if you return from your last row spot to move around on stage with the camera. Which gives the band a motivation boost and chances to try out gestures up close, too, so even better. Hey, maybe it doesn’t annoy them. You can actually get used to it, this way of photographing them is all dynamic. Nearing the end of the first rehearsal, you’re all busy maneuvering between Thomas and Damiano to get a nice semi-profile from Ethan’s left side. Gotta work with it not against, you chant to yourself as a mantra, and it seems easier to stick to than you thought.

How glossy all that hair is commands all the attention of your shutter release in and of itself. That he takes good care of it and has been growing it since forever shows a dedicated guy. It’s actually quite wavy. The band arrived in the pouring rain and Ethan’s curly strands at the crown and nape of the head were definitely showing — super cute. An army of stylists took on the resulting humidity frizz. They whipped out the straightening iron and protective spray, and even now before the big performance, Ethan brushes his hair out in front of you, and sweeps it around with his fingers anyway. You take pictures of the bits you find most candid, and decide to rather perfect single shots instead of making several in a row. The more you photograph him, the more you want to discover his essence in one picture. His sheer presence almost begs for it, it’s ridiculous.

Victoria on the other hand has no problems with rapid-fire releases and comes close to your lens to pull funny faces. She’s got some of the coolest poses you’ve ever seen with her bass, and hops around the stage like a bunny to the beat. Thomas is a virtuoso and pro who keeps on doing what he does when you make him pose, and Damiano can flirt with any camera ever. He even lowers his red leather jacket off his collar bones for you to have a great shot. He’s promising and most definitely a born divo, your boss will be happy with those pictures most definitely.

Then again. Behind that supposed hedonism is so much hard work and thought. Damiano even gives you ideas for angles during the second rehearsal. „Hm, maybe stand on the amplifier?“ Eagle perspective, not a bad idea at all. After trying out said suggestions with the help of triggered stage security making sure you don’t fall off the construction („eh, Damiano always suggests the most reckless things to staff, don’t mind him“), you find yourself concentrating on what goes on at the back of the stage all over again.

Ethan is busy practicing a new solo which has you curious about whether it’s for an upcoming album. Though again — the shoes cause trouble. Ethan complains again, the music stops. That could very well be the reason why he seems so preoccupied today, or is it? The manager tells the stylist, and the stylist hurries, voilà, Ethan has a new pair of shoes brought in. Ones with a thicker sole, bit of a chunky heel, and laced up rather than being slippers, a drummer’s worst nightmare as you have learned today.

You wait until he changed. Then snap some more pictures how he continues practicing calmly, and the sound did improve since he can kick the bass drum better now. Now you position yourself across the stage all over, in the empty audience ranks. Ethan is the most radiant and confident when you just take a step back. But well, he still sweeps his hair around a whole lot and looks even more tense-looking than Damiano who’s doing vocal warmups and jumping jacks, „Come on guys, come on, we’re starting in 30 minutes!“.

You can tell he does it more often when he’s nervous. And that means he does it very often. People would probably assume it’s vanity, or the fact that the hair gets in the way. You can see that for him it’s a place of distraction, maybe safety. A gesture like an anchor. He’s used to it being long just like his eye shadow being dark and smoky all day. He knows the drums by heart, if it falls in his face no need to shake it away. And besides. The strands reach below his shoulder blades, it stays down his back if he doesn’t move around too much. He could easily tie it up as well. All those things go through your mind without you even knowing why.

To switch things up a little, you photograph Thomas fooling around with Victoria at the snack bar, stuffing fries up their noses, and already see the lighting technicians do their final check. Some of them you know briefly, you made shots at this venue before, last year for a Shakespeare theatre play. You did some freelance work in the scene, but now you’re put to the test for more involved jobs. Hard to complain though, Måneskin are amazing in front of the camera. If Damiano is not the ideal Hamlet, you don’t know anymore.

Something new happens all the time, the expressions are priceless. Ethan’s in particular, when he does his wide-eyed surprise faces learning that there’s actually healthy food at the snack bar. „Vitamins, how nice.“ — Thomas, pokerfaced, reacts with eating a mayonnaise-dripping sandwich. Ethan, unfazed. Headed straight to the fruits. You’ve never seen a tall silver glitter tower like him walking around biting a bright red apple. Well, you can take Jacob out of twilight, but not the twilight out of Jacob. Snap, another picture. Clash of words, that’s a nice theme.

The concert of this evening seems particularly energetic and leaves your camera roll with some brilliant, tweet-worthy material. Damiano covered in confetti, eyeliner running. Victoria on the shoulders of Ethan while he’s playing her bass.  Thomas, stagediving. Fans waving banners and chanting along to Seven Nation Army. Your ears are ringing when the light technicians close down the stage two hours later. Thomas really played his soul out with the solos, and your feet seem to vibrate. That’s your body thinking Victoria’s bass is still playing, but the magazine is very happy with how the pictures turned out after you send the whole batch to them as soon as you can.

Little to no retouching, zooming, or cropping necessary. Ethan is just perfect as he is, you feel like you captured him well. After swiping through the gallery on your tablet, you think Victoria has some great ant’s eye perspective shots as well. Those go right on your own blog, she’s just amazing. The magazine has an enthusiastic article typed out already. Damiano’s mid-air split on beat for the final song makes the cover story on Monday, and Måneskin’s manager comes back to you a week later. „What would you think about doing some behind the scenes stuff for us? We’re planning a music video!“

And that’s how you end up in a Sicilian restaurant with Måneskin and crew a week later, stuffed with Calzone and mind filled with Damiano’s inspiring words (and the occasional catchy freestyle rap). The MV is as good as finished. Thomas had shown you around the mansion they were shooting at, and you could convince a taciturn  Ethan to walk between the marble statues and boxwood trees in the garden. With his black cape on, a rhinestone choker, and the low-cut lacey blouse that the MV director was obsessed with as well, asking you to focus on it. Your best shot even ends up in the thumbnail of the Youtube video without you even expecting it would.

All the garden pictures turned out mindblowing. If not iconic, the best project you had so far. Gets to show you the best things are often improvised. Ethan, stoic as always, sat at the base of armor-clad Emperor Augustus twisting into the blue sky in a large gesture. The marble was a perfect contrast. Ethan ate a ripe pear from a tree, even that was aesthetically pleasing, then leaned against a hunting Apollo, and you also framed him from the back next to Aphrodite and Cesar. He put on his sunglasses underneath Achilles, and knelt at the feet of a Pietà replica. Marvelous panorama shots, with him the shining center. Well, we know since Queen that the drummer is the unrealistically pretty one.

The whole picture series is blowing up on your blog for the whole afternoon. „Count Dracula on a stroll in Versailles — eugh, begone sunlight!“ is what a comment neatly sums it up as. People seem to especially like the shot where Ethan playfully put his cape over Pallas Athena’s spear with a blurry Thomas having a laughing fit in the background. Well, even Count Drac gets photobombed sometimes. Your phone buzzes with notifications every other minute, you do notice it against your thigh. But the insalata of the restaurant is good and the night is young. Victoria and the manager tell old stories of Thomas snapping a guitar string while he was trying to serenade a highschool crush. Ethan scolds them for making fun of it.

Damiano gets drunk and dances on the table, the MV director discusses new ideas, some walk-in fans take pictures. The temperature is still unbearable. You order a dessert to share with Victoria and Ethan. A large tiramisu that the waiter cuts in three pieces, and it’s truly delectable. The chocolate, so crunchy, melty. The cream, fluffy and cool, making for a funny white beard that makes Ethan look like an arctic scientist returning from an expedition.

Of course, you take pictures, all the food is documented. As are late night restaurant shots with Damiano’s heels peaking into the frame when you photograph the band’s friendship bracelets, hand-made by Victoria on a tour bus last year. Damiano’s back down on the table soon, singing, while Ethan creates a beat with two forks. Thomas also agrees to take your camera for a while so you’d be in the frame for a change, too.

You pose for a group picture, or rather a group hug, and being in the middle …Ethan’s arm wraps around your shoulder loosely, hair dangling into his face, but also brushing yours. He focuses on the camera, facing away from you. The schooled eye could catch you breaking a sweat in the resulting photo. Ironically, the tiramisu doesn’t cool you down the way you thought. Thomas is too busy trying to figure out your camera dials and yelling „hey eyebrow king, smile!“ at Ethan.

A round of even more gelato goes down in spoons and spoons. The band members eat like they ran a marathon. Ethan clinches a third round because he can, unhealthy be damned, he needs some sugar and refreshment. And it’s true the MV shooting was strenuous in the heat, and had lots of intense performing parts. Even an invisible rope suspension were Thomas would descend from a ceiling during the chorus with little cherub wings attached to his back because why not. If the manager agreed to recreate this on tour some day, the pictures would be amazing.

You can’t help but think what kind of special effect would suit Ethan the most, and you come to the conclusion that a bridge lift would be the coolest thing ever. A rising part of the stage letting him emerge like an elevator from the underground.  Maybe using smoke machines, too. The idea twirls around in your mind so intensely, Damiano asks if you’re wasted. You’re always getting carried away with all kinds of fantasies like that for over a week now. A dreamy photographer? Not unusual, but it’s seriously distracting you from the present moment.

The crew slowly heads home, and the band decides (translation: Victoria’s mood is) to head to the movies. Just when the waiter arrives with the bill, Damiano spills panna cotta all over Ethan by accident. So bad he’s all sticky from the shoulders down, making Ethan opt for the hotel instead. Besides, he’s been drumming his soul out, sleep is so needed now. Since the group is already gone and there’s still a forgotten cymbal left to carry back to the equipment bus by the hotel, you help Ethan maneuver it around. The heat is making either of you sweat, even with the full dark of the night coming up.

The gaffer lady you’re sharing a hotel room with is already fast asleep. Damn it. You want to cut a video and make screenshots with the laptop being decently bright. And with some volume if possible, you don’t find headphones in the darkness of the room. Ethan clears the desk in his own room for you after removing his make-up. He looks so young and beautiful and tired.

You type and drag and double click yourself through the video and do some last blog updates to deal with all the notifications. Ethan lends you some headphones, but you only keep them on one ear. The humming is too nice to ignore. Nor do you know what to even expect. The bathroom door is open, Ethan is topless washing the lace blouse by hand. Only wearing bellbottom pants and his lace choker — nothing else. He’s fully immersed in his task. He even adds some other shirts and silk scarves into the soap water along the way while he’s at it.

You’ve never seen someone do their own laundry so systematically. Ethan looks like Prince Caspian at the sink, wielding the almond soap bar like his weapon of choice against the enemies of Narnia (the devious panna cotta that’s still sticking to everything). He might be all mysterious, but he’s well able to curse all kinds of things. You tease Ethan for dropping his gentlemanly behavior for a stain of dessert. Ethan insists you sound like Thomas trying to test him with his slick comebacks, which makes you laugh. The blog has calmed down a little and your eyes hurt from editing, so you call it a day and send one last e-mail.

Ethan is drowning in bubbles at this point. The whole room smells like fabric softener. He thanks you for helping him carry around the equipment earlier. In return, you say grazie for him being your perfect muse in the garden today. Philosopher he is, Ethan remarks how Måneskin is usually the one searching for muses, now he ended up one himself — „Maybe not a bad thing, eh. Become the thing you want or something.“ That’s way too deep for a summer night in Sicily, and both of you need a huge portion of sleep. Tomorrow, lots of schedule. You do find yourself wanting to help lick that dessert off his chest. No way you’d tell him.

Ethan waddles off to shower after a crooked, reserved smile for a good night departure. When you close the door to your room and start brushing your teeth, the other members’ voices emerge in the hotel corridor — they’ve returned from the movies. Damiano is even more wasted than before and audibly sings. „You’ve looked at the photographer lady in a certain way earlier, huh. I saw, I saw!“ Victoria does a loud ‚shh‘ noise, and the stoic reply is a simple „Sleep, Damiano, you’ve had too much.“ Thomas giggles, and four doors click shut. Damiano’s singing is now muffled for two minutes until it’s silent. How the fuck can you even sleep after hearing that.

You assumed that Ethan would treat you differently the next morning, in whatever shape or form. But he doesn’t. The greeting is short as it would always be, and he informs you that he did manage to wash out the sugary clay from his clothes as he puts it. Damiano says nothing, adjusts his rings. Thomas randomly pulls zippers at his packed-up equipment. Victoria headed to the car already. Downtown to a studio it goes. The group gets styled to perfection, twenty minutes later they make a reaction video to the newly released MV teaser. Ethan talks about enjoying the sculptures in the garden.

Three hours down the line, you shoot some promotional pictures of them at a pool. Thomas has the time of his life perfecting his diving board skills, and Damiano creates the musical background, singing and prancing. The aerials would make literal perfect editorial-in-VOGUE material. In the meantime, Victoria dozes in the sun. Ethan dives. Sometimes just sitting at the bottom of the pool, othertimes swimming back and forth. The art director suggests you to go into the water, too. He’s right, the perspective works out well this way.

You’re basically standing in there with your flowy pantalon pants and camisole, using a waterproof camera. Your bikini is back at the hotel. It doesn’t matter, everything will dry quickly, the others went in the pool with clothes as well. And you’re all too wrapped up in your passion in the first place. You marvel at how fun the whole scenery looks through your lens. Their outfits are cropped and luminous, today’s color is bright red. You order the lighting assistant back and forth, get some more great Thomas frames where he tosses around a volleyball that the manager brought along. Less rock than usual, but it works. Måneskin at a pool in Sicily.

Damiano splashes water around like crazy. Victoria joins the fun as well, splashing right back. It’s infernal. Well, those are going to be dynamic pictures, you think, and the cameraman never dies, so. Ethan resurfaces every other minute, wiping the chlorine from his eyes. He slicks his hair back with both hands, looking down his body learning how his shirt has become completely transparent. He covers his chest with his hair, quickly, then submerges again. It’s strange. Being topless is usually no big deal in Måneskin.

Almost 12 o’clock. Thomas and Damiano wander off to work on some lyrics, probably the title that the drum solo is part of. All top secret. Victoria returns to her sun lounger, checking her phone. The crew heads for lunch, but you stay in the water, gladly you put sunscreen on earlier. You ask Ethan to try some seated or floating poses at the bottom of the pool that you saw him practice earlier. „No worries, keep your eyes closed.“

What unfolds before you is the most beautiful thing. Ethan’s shirt fans out like a red jellyfish underwater, playing around his body. His figure is just enviable. He gets the hang of it and knows quite how to move. Or rather, to remain stable when the pose is perfect. Hands above his head, horizontal, or seated, only one foot  lightly sweeping over the pool floor, or on one knee, as if he proposed.

Raising his arms helps him sink down and settle, as if he immersed himself in deep meditation. Although the purpose of meditating is to be present, isn’t it. And that’s what he feels like. Ethan would normally switch on autopilot for most of his public interactions, now he’s alive and fully in the concentrated movements of the photoshoot. So much about improvising all over again. The hair creates the most incredible shapes like a black, wide brushstroke, clearly outlined. Thank god you have the waterproof camera. These are moments you’ll never forget.

Your blog notifications keep on bleeping throughout the afternoon. The promotional pictures are a hit. Måneskin’s manager is basically waving five new contracts in front of your face at dinner, but you’re kind of spaced out again. The cozy, rose-ranked atmosphere of the street café you went to is inspiring, and the members dressed up in the most fancy suitwear. Men in Black? Måneskin in Black. It’s almost as if fate read your mind. Ethan is looking at you very intently from across the table when the minestrone is served.

Pasta shells, parsley, vegetables and basil leaves. The scent surrounds the entire table. Damiano, in serious mode tonight, is too busy finding new rhymes and an alternative chorus with Thomas who wildly brainstorms. Victoria drinks, loudly chats with the gaffer lady that you share a room with, and they use a leaf of a palm tree pot plant to tickle Damiano. Thomas plays the acoustic guitar. Ethan and you end up smiling briefly at another. „Bon apetit,“ you say. It’s almost 34° celsius. That’s going to be an entire pile of cheesecake gelato tonight.

Five signed contracts later and halfway through a hefty caprese cake, the title song is finished. An ode to Marlena, fierce like the Mediterranean sea. The piece certainly sounds exactly like this place. Strangers listen to Damiano performing bits and pieces, but you decide to disperse when too many cellphones come out. Damiano wants to go to a bar, Thomas and Victoria carry home their guitars, or to the hotel to be exact, and bags of newly shopped vintage clothes. You ask Ethan if there are any cinemas around the area. „We missed out last time, remember.“

The Palazzo Theater is a small and hidden insider tip far from the main street with its busy beach tourists. Under bulbous metal balconies and peach-colored facades, a small entrance with lanterns on each side guides you inward. Ethan almost hits his head, it’s so low. He’s wearing glossy red bottoms under his suit pants, you’re out and about with a 6’2 giant after all — a statue by himself. A small man with a pipe sells you cheap tickets for a Mads Mikkelsen movie and lemonade, Ethan picks up an XXXL caramel popcorn bucket. You think he’s flexing, but you get a sudden heureka by looking at it twice.

Unlike the S, M, and L bags, it’s thick cardboard and drum-shaped. Oh my god, obviously. Which fine percussionist could ever resist such temptation striped in red and white, the sound deep and dull? It makes you smile how Ethan pursues his instrument even when he seemingly doesn’t, it really has to be a hobby at heart. That’s how a job becomes a profession, and a profession a vocation, your uni professor’s other favorite words all over again. The latter’s words have gotten you far so you again trust the insight that came to you through that quote.

Seeing Ethan standing there, you can almost see the childlike joy at imagining it being empty and ready to get turned around. A tuxedo Italian with Louboutin heels and a ginormous popcorn drum, half past eleven somewhere in Palermo: Ingenious combination, you snap a picture. Ethan makes a cute face, posing like a pinup of the 50s. Who knows how many vintage store posters he’s seen during tours, he must have picked it up there. And— Is he blushing? Must be the dim lights in here.

Off you go to the auditorium. Ethan, who balance the popcorn with all care in the world like it’s his baby, walks the aisle slower than you. The slim steps don’t have any floor lighting. Not very heel-friendly, but since it’s not a huge budget theater and few people dare spike heels on those cobblestones outside anyway, the stairs shall be forgiven. You take out your phone and offer your arm. For every gentleman it takes a gentlewoman, duh. Like rock’n’roll and the camera staff, chivalry (or shevalry as Damiano calls it when Vic holds the door open) never dies. He mumbles a thanks, you climb upward to the fourth-last row, Ethan holds on tight.

No ankles twisted and not one popcorn spilled, you get seated on red velvet. The chairs are dated, but nevertheless ultra comfortable. Nobody else is here. The adverts roll, Ethan cracks open the lemonade bottle caps with his chunky golden lighter because he can. You toast to Mads Mikkelsen’s bone structure and good minestrone, Måneskin’s finished title track, the promo pics, and the discovery of Ethan’s favorite new drum. A whopping five things to toast about? The night’s going to be great.

Damiano catwalking across the screen, wearing a Versace skirt in the middle of otherwise-boring commercials does shake you up. He was picked as a testimonial recently. Though, your pulse is high enough. Ethan’s hair is brushing against your shoulders, not to mention his goddamn massive arms. He can’t get out a single word either for the entirety of the ads, avoiding eye contact all over again. Just how much suspense can starting to eat the first popcorn have. Well, you pick two  from the very top and start munching.

Mads does a great job opening the movie as one would expect, but you just can’t concentrate. Instead, you stress-eat popcorn. Which makes Ethan do the same thing, at least he’s somewhat fixated on the screen. After the first ten minutes, he shakes his head. „That makes no sense at all,“ he clears his throat. „Yeah, yeah it  clearly doesn’t,“ you agree, basically on Torchio-autopilot yourself for the lack of a better reply. You were too busy figuring out the components of his aftershave rather than the thin plot. Shifting in your seat, chugging lemonade…

The air conditioning is scarce, but at least the screen is quite large and proper. You try to focus on the cinematography and do small talk about it. If there’s something you can comment on without having followed the string of action, it’s at least this.  You might be nervous, but you’re still a photographer. „Um, isn’t this chainmail nice in the closeup?“ — „Hm, I guess it works. We should ask Damiano to request something like this from Versace.“ — „Medieval Måneskin Rockers?“ — „Something like that.“ — „Hilarious.“

By the twenty-minute mark, the popcorn drum is almost empty. Gladly, that stuff just shrinks to bits in the stomach. The lemonade just has to galvanize it. You might be able to distract yourself with the camera shots and the last caramel chunks, but that doesn’t change Ethan’s long legs and Acqua di Parma perfume next to you. Yep, you finally figured out what it was, it wasn’t the aftershave. And well. Ethan smells like hotel soap from Milano to Napoli and back.

That scent basically dominates all the others besides a hint of cigar and basil and citrus-y deodorant mixed with runny sweat. God fuck, you can barely stand it. And the almond scent. You take a chance to at least jokingly point it out to him. The random movie flashback sequence is boring — and just as nonsensical as before, no offense to Mads though, he’s just walking around in chain mail — enough to deviate from whatever choppy convo you had going on before.

„I actually washed it twice,“ Ethan pulls off the silky scarf that functions as his current tie, and you recognize it. „The strawberry sauce was hard, but the cranberries… God no, I’ll never go near pana cotta again. Nothing against cream desserts.“ You take the scarf, smell it. Did he literally just hand it to you? Figures, he’s sweating bullets, too. And oh shit, he hasn’t talked that much all evening.

You slowly shift from bodies turned to the screen to facing each other. So up close, so up front, only God can help you know. His eyes are dark and reflective of the film’s flickering lights and changing scenes. You wish you could photograph them on sight. It would be as glimmering as your view from the hotel room, overwatching the unobstructed stars of the Mediterranean bay down the boulevard.

But it’s like you’re stuck in your position this way, feverishly thinking about a reply. What to pick up on, what to pick up on. You think about today, the evening where you edited things in his room. „Uh well, drop your laundry in the pool next time,“ you laugh, more than tentative, with your fingers randomly curling around the scarf. „The chlorine stuff will do the job for you. It’s so aggressive, it bleached by pants one shade lighter.“

Saved. Smooth transaction. Phew. „Oh, the pool was horrible. Not the photos, I mean… I don’t know how you can poison water that way.“ — „I know right? It’s still in my nose. But yeah, was a good idea with the underwater thing. The photos turned out really well.“ — „I really haven’t done something like that before but I guess it turned out hm, nice?“ — „Come on! Nice is understated. Are you fishing for compliments?“ — „No no, by all means!“ — „The one kneeling. It’s my favorite. I don’t even know what to do with all these pictures.“

„I don’t know. Maybe keep them?“ — „Keep… for what?“ — „It’s a separate series, right. The art director didn’t request it. Maybe they can be used for something later on during promotions.“ — „Yeah. We’re always a little extracurricular,“ you laugh again, tense in your voice, and empty your lemonade completely. „This, too,“ Ethan points at the theatre in general. „You’re good to talk to. The better version of alone time.“ — „Thank you. You’re great to go out with. I… really like it.“ Beautiful nature scenes show on screen, but they’re nothing but a blur. You take Ethan’s hands in the dark and smile. „Maybe we should do it more often.“

masterlist | bookmark/read it on ao3

© submissive-bangtan 2017-2021. all rights reserved. do not repost or translate. all depictions fictional.

[commander-diomika]

[Image ID: Screenshot of a tumblr reply from user @weareallfromearth ​​ saying “Holy shit I would V much like to know what you’d do with ZolfWilde.” End ID]

This was in response to me tag rambling that if Alex “I don’t Actually Have That Much Experience in Courtship” Newall and Ben “I just Realised I’m Too Straight For This” Meredith don’t know what to do with Zolf/Wilde, they should hand the ship over to me. 

*rubs my gay little hands together.*

I initially characterized them offhandedly as Enemies-to-Lovers but that’s not quite it, is it? On reflection I would say it’s more of an Opposites Attract situation.

Oscar Wilde, as re-imagined in the RQG universe, is a homme fatale; a dangerous, attractive man, skilled in encouraging people to underestimate him, wearing different masks, never quite being able to trust or be trusted by anyone.

There is NO personal/professional line for Wilde. He lives his work, and his work is subterfuge and interpersonal manipulation. (whether or not he started this way in his field as a journalist, or was forced to become this way by the changes in his world, is another post.) He is a person who either cares very deeply what people think of him, or is has decided that manipulating what people think of him is the way to get what he wants, and from the outside it makes no difference.

Zolf Smith does not care what people think of him. He isn’t even skilled at being kind and empathetic to people he cares about; he has no time for emotional manipulation or genuine charm. He doesn’t even have a fantastic grasp on his OWN feelings, let alone other people’s. He’s grounded, disinterested in frippery or appearances. Which is why Zolf and Wilde started out so deeply at odds with one another.

Despite the differences in the interpersonal approaches, they have plenty of common ground.

They are both deeply dedicated to a cause. They care about their work to the exclusion of all else. They are both pragmatists who have their own internal moral code, and are willing to bend or break other people’s rules in order to get the job done. They are fundamentally good people. Despite their rocky beginnings, they can respect each other because of these things.

And they might have maintained their mutually disdainful, begrudgingly respectful working relationship and that could have been the sum total... Except then the world fell apart. The Meritocratic organisation was initially compromised, then disintegrated. The blue vein plague isolated everyone and made it even harder to trust supposed allies. The Cult of Hades was on everyone’s ass making their life difficult, the other PCs disappeared off the face of the planet. Zolf and Wilde ended up in a situation where they had no one else they could trust.

Familiarity breeds contempt, but maybe if the contempt is already there, it builds Something Else. Wilde was stripped of his magic in a way that made it much harder for him to keep people at a distance and (pardon the pun) project the illusion of the debonair playboy. Zolf would have had the chance to see through Wilde’s masks, and get a better understanding of what parts of Wilde were a calculated tactic, and what was his genuine self.

Whatever betrayal transpired that gave Wilde his scar and hardened him, Zolf was privy to. He was either there and saw it happen, or he was close enough in the aftermath to see Wilde properly vulnerable for the first time in their friendship. Hell, maybe Zolf was the one who rescued him and patched him up. That was a chance for Zolf to realise that this insufferable man is a friend who he cares about deeply. At this point, he’s cared for awhile, but has been too wrapped up with his own spiritual difficulties to have space to admit that to himself.

And Wilde, oh Wilde, he’s desperate to be seen and known and loved, but he’s never allowed himself. He’s never felt SAFE to. He doesn’t let people get close, treats every conversation as a battle to be won. His safety and his power lies in being admired, but never loved. So even as trust and fondness for Zolf blossoms within him, he won’t for a second allow himself to hope that the fondness is reciprocated

With all that out of the way, this is my version of events.  

Wilde is a slut (affectionate), and Zolf is gray-ace, so if there’s any bridging of that gap in terms of physical intimacy, it has to be from Zolf’s side. Giving canon a tender massage into place, that first instance of Zolf grabbing Wilde by the collar changes. (This happens on the Vengeance after Zolf has taught Wilde to steer the ship). Zolf drags Wilde down to say “I’m glad to see you perked up.” That moment now involves a whiskery kiss on Wilde’s cheek, and the man would be absolutely FLOORED by it.

I’m talking slow-mo glittering lights as Zolf stomps off blushing, unsure what just came over him; Wilde touches his cheek in bewilderment for a stretched moment before realising he’s completely agog, and he let go of the wheel for a dangerous length of time. Every interaction, every moment they’ve spent together over the last two years is flashing before Wilde’s eyes and a new context is being applied rapid fire. I’m talking the italacised oh kind of moment.

(on top of Zolf being witness to The Betrayal, throw some other moments of almost-intimacy into said flashbacks. I’m talking late nights, Zolf doing his gruff-yet-kind caretaker thing, cooking for Wilde, maybe sharing quiet and rare downtime with Zolf reading a Campbell novel on a couch in Wilde’s office)

Wilde is realising, “Oh this is allowed, oh this is reciprocated, this is possible.”

And of course they don’t talk about it, because what’s a slowburn if they immediately go and TALK about their feelings? No, the kiss goes completely unremarked upon, and Wilde continues to needle and tease and get under Zolf’s skin, except now with an added warmth in his eyes because he finally gets it. He finally understands that Zolf cares, that Zolf loves him, he’s just not the kind of dwarf that knows how to express it.

And Zolf, frustrated by feelings he can’t express but is beginning to understand, can hear the undertone of “haha, you looooove me,” shining through Wilde’s deliberate antagonism. They continue their time on the Vengeance just a little easier and closer to one another.

And we continue on to the death/resurrection arc, and Wilde’s spirit pushes for Zolf to open up about his feelings, because if not when he’s literally past death’s door, then when? When Zolf finally manages his “I need you,” it’s like a dam has broken for both of them. The second collar-grab and “We’ll go on a holiday or somethin’,” is now followed by a full kiss on the lips, not particularly erotic but passionate, (it’s the epitome of kissing someone to shut them up) and Wilde makes a surprised and delighted squeak that he would be glad he can’t quite remember when he returns to land of the living.

Once returned, Wilde might not remember everything that his spirit said or did, but he remembers the kiss. The comfort and ease that the two of them share in 179 (Eat Drink and Be Merry) is there, only instead of the two characters still being in a place of questioning their feelings for one another, it’s been answered.

Whether or not this relationship is sexual in nature is kind of up to you and what kind of fan works you like to read/write. I think there are wonderful scenes to be written an explored in many directions.

Wilde allowing himself to enjoy sex for intimacy and closeness instead of using it as a tool/ Zolf not being one for sex but Wilde’s never slept more soundly than when he’s being held in Zolf’s arms/ Zolf realising that the unfamiliar feeling he’s been struggling to express is the desire to rail Wilde til he cries/ Wilde realising that if his partner doesn’t want it from him, he’s actually quite content without sex/ The two of them being mean, antagonistic bastards to each other while fucking but Make It Kink (of the trusting and RACK kind). There really isn’t a single bad interpretation.  

So really, I’m not doing anything different with them other than reading between the lines, giving canon a little nudge, and sticking the landing. This isn’t to disparage the concept of queer platonic partners. (I’ve got one!) or to talk shit about Ben or Alex (I DO respect their craft).

It’s just to say I find these two characters , and everything they’ve been through, PAINFULLY romantic, tropey, and delightful. I’m looking forward both to how Ben and Alex play the QPP, the fanworks I’m gonna read and hopefully write, and the inevitable tragedy that you KNOW Alex is gearing up for.

[mxtantrights]

past lives | 3

a/n: Ok this is like the pre-climax? is that a thing? no well I'm gonna make it a thing right now! time to meet more of the family!!  enjoyyy <3

Fallon nudged your shoulder to get your attention. Previously your focus was on the champagne flute, and before that the odd waiter who served it to you with an old scar straight through his mouth.

“I brought you here to snatch and grab stuff, where’s the team spirit?” they ask.

You make a face, “You brought me here because you didn't wanna go alone. And I can’t blame you if I had to come here alone I would-”

“Definitely throw myself off the balcony. Running start.” a voice adds.

It was neither yours or Fallons. So the two of you turn around and find the culprit. And just like destiny or fate or something, you see the guy you handed off a letter from your dead parent a few days prior.

“I mean isn’t it kind of your party?” you ask.

Tim shrugs a bit and sips the drink in his hand. It’s a non verbal answer that gives something away. Maybe it’s in the 

“If you think that, then think about me. I’m the plus one.” you say.

He chuckles, “It’s nice to see you again.”

“Same”

“Again?” Fallon asks.

You nod your head, “I had to drop something off at the Wayne building not too long ago. To Mr.Drake actually.”

“Oh it’s just Tim.” he says and holds out his hand.

You quickly take it and shake as instructed. Then Fallon follows the action, along with an introduction. Tim smiles and it looks like a genuine one.

“Well when I said we were gonna smooze I didn’t know you pre-planned.” they say.

You nudge them as they snicker. 

“I’d probably be the wrong Wayne to smooze. My hectic schedule allows for no free time.” he answers.

Fallon laughs at this. “Oh, well you’re kinda on the younger side too.”

You can see Tim’s check taint red. His eyes dart away from the both of you. You still couldn’t believe that a young man like him was in charge of Wayne enterprises- or enterprise, however that worked out. 

It probably felt like the world was on his shoulders.

The phone in your cocktail bag buzzed. Even though you didn’t know who it was, you had a very high suspicion that it was the league. What they wanted you to do at tonight’s event was still under wraps. But you knew that whatever task it was, wasn’t going to lead to a happy ending. 

It never does.

You open your bag and take out your phone, “I’ve gotta handle this. My Aunt.”

Both Fallon and Tim nod as you walk away from your table and out into the balcony. It was a bit chippy outside so it wasn’t really of use to anyone. The rich don’t like the cold you guessed. Makes sense, heated floors and sidewalks. 

The cold air reaches your skin. You don’t shiver. Growing up in Gotham until you were eighteen you hadn't gotten used to it. It was no Antartica but then again that Icicle man did like to rein terror sometimes. It was like practice.

You open the text and sure enough,

tonight you act as transport. 

when you get handed a package deliver it here: 

45 Gotham Harbor 

Great. You were acting as a convoy tonight. It shouldn’t bother you that much, but it does. If whatever they were planning was something real and dangerous and they were keeping you low on the food chain, that mean you were expendable to them.

It hurt. 

It wasn’t like you ran away from them. They gave you an opportunity to leave after a couple of years being one of their fastest rising recruits.. At first it felt like a sick test. Like one final trust fall before they could actually believe your unwavering loyalty. 

You sat with the decision for days. It was a whole week before you decided to get out of the league. You thought that as soon as you stepped food out of the place they would kill you. But you walked out the front door and kept walking.

Oddly enough they had even given you a ride to Gotham. 

But you being a convoy tonight? This felt like a test. One you needed to pass. If not for your life, then to find out what they were really planning. The league never takes care of things so out in the open like this. 

“Did you just get dumped or something?” another random voice.

You turn off your phone and turn your head to the left. In the dark corner of the balcony is a guy. You can only make him out because of his lit cigarette. If it weren’t for that, you probably wouldn’t have made him. 

Have your senses and training begun to fade? Ra’s is probably somewhere vibrating off the walls.

Sure enough he comes out of the dark and you can see him fully. He’s not in the night standard uniform. Instead he's in a dress shirt underneath a brown jacket. He did try with the black slacks you see. 

Was he security? No he looked a bit familiar. 

You think you should probably say something before he thinks rudely of you. 

“No, just an interesting text.”

He hums some sort of sound. And then he walks a bit closer. You notice its not close enough to reach out and touch him. He’s really careful. He must be some type of security.

“You were talking to Tim, you one of those Gala Groupies?” he asks.

The shock that falls upon your face can't be helped. It instantly turns into sourness at the implication that you were a groupie. First off, Galas are boring. Second you’d more likely be a groupie for a rockstar than a rich old man- let alone a younger guy like Tim.

You hiss and cross your arms against your chest, “That was bit presumptive wasn’t it?”

“I didn’t mean it as an insult. Presumptive to think that I did.” he bites back.

You nod you head along with a grin. 

“Didn’t know the security detail came with snobbery. How do I know you’re not a groupie for Tim?” you ask.

He looks like he wants to hurl. Then he beings to laugh. His laughter fills the balcony a bit and you just watch in interest. He calms himself and then places his hand over the railing to rest.

“I would not, it’d be weird.”

“Not your type?” 

“My brother will never be my type.” 

Ah.

You look at him for a second more and then it clicks. This was Jason Todd, the black sheep of the Wayne family, you are talking to. You thought he looked familiar you just couldn’t place him earlier. Even though the white streak through his hair should’ve gave it away. 

“My apologies.” you say.

He fakes wiping a tear from his eye. “no worries, you gave me a laugh tonight. I should be thanking you.”

“I am not gonna be your groupie either.” 

“Presumptive, but okay.” 

“Have a good night.”

-

Bruce finds Tim in-between mingling and cuts in. 

“Oh thank God, I thought for another second my head would burst.” Tim says.

Bruce smiles, “Saved you then.” 

“Have you seen Dick anywhere? I wanted to get his eyes on a case of mine.”

“No night work at the Gala. Take a break.” 

Bruce begins to look for Dick within the crowd of people. His eye bounce from person to person. Effectively he’s glanced over you without a second thought. Or so he thinks.

When he does finally find Dick, he calls for him. This makes his son stop in his tracks. He comes to a stop and you were right behind him as he did. You aren’t quick enough to stop yourself and so you go colliding into his back.

-

“So sorry about that.” he says.

You shake your head, “It’s fine. No drinks spilled or whatever they say.” 

He throws out a laugh so easily. You smile quickly and make a B-line for Fallon. As you make your way to where they have taken new residence, you see their face change. More specifically their eyebrows go up in the way that says ‘oh?’

“Cut it out, he bumped into me.” 

“Maybe you guys can do some more bumping. Later on, if you-”

“I know exactly what you mean and I’m not entertaining you.”

-

Dick makes it over to his father and his brother. When he does Tim claps his back with his hand. It makes Dick wonder where the time went. 

“Nice to see you brother.” Tim says.

“You too. Bruce.”

Bruce just nods. A man of not many words for those closest to him. He sure did know how to entertain guests though. It was all a mask anyways. If anything he was doing them a service not using it with them.

“I almost ran into someone. Thankfully there was no drinks involved, I would’ve ruined a whole outfit.” Dick says, pointing back to you.

Tim follows his finger over to where you and Fallon are standing. 

“Oh, that’s who delivered me that letter the other day. Speaking of which, there was another one addressed to you Bruce.” he says.

Bruce nods his head once, “I know I saw it the other night when you passed out on your desk. At some point we’re gonna have a conversation about your sleeping habits.”

Jason walks up to the three men. 

“You’ll never correct it. He’s more of a bat than you.” he says.

Bruce is doing double the work. He’s listening to the conversation happening in front of him about Tim’s horrible sleeping schedule or lack thereof. While he looks over at you. The person Tim said delivered the letter.

His child.

[theyarebothgunshot]

jib 7 breakdown and analysis 

a little while ago i said that i am open to requests for making analysis posts when it comes to cockles panels and just cockles in general, and i got quite a few responses. the first person who asked me was my lovely tea anon, and the panel in question is jib 2016 aka jib 7. 

first of all i want to give you my take on the overall vibe, and then second of all i will get into the details and link to certain timestamps in the video. 

standard disclaimer: i am not gonna be linking to every single thing i talk about, but i will try my best to link to the moments that stand out to me the most. my recommendation would be to watch the panel in its entirety alongside my comments. i have read long posts about this panel before, so not everything in this post is gonna be original or said for the first time ever, simply because there is a good chance that information has stuck in my mind and has subconsciously formed my view of this panel. this is also in no way, shape or form gonna be coherent, unfortunately. i’m just gonna hope that the cockles hivemind will be able to make sense of this regardless. love and light. and lastly, this is all in good fun, so don’t come at me if you think this is too out there please and thank you.

the overall vibe that this panel gives me is that jensen and misha are a unity at this point. they are in sync with each other, and this whole panel is very relaxed and in good spirits. there is also the fact that their outfits match very well. and with jensen ross ackles involved, that cannot be a coincidence, so i love that a lot. 

another thing that i cannot ignore is that it’s also a very sexual panel, with a lot of double meanings and innuendos and remarks that can be read as sexual if you are as pervy as me. 

now let’s get into the specifics. 

although i am sure this is not going to be news for any of you, i feel like a little background knowledge is in order. before this panel, misha had had a panel that day with j*red. the mishalecki panel was really fucking funny and filled with sexual innuendos. 

between these two panels, it appears that there was a break in which they all had nothing to do (i am basing this off other people’s experiences and reports that i have read in the past, as i unfortunately wasn’t there myself).

considering how this panel goes, i think there is a good chance that jensen and misha just had sex beforehand. and based on both of their demeanors, one could draw certain conclusions about who did what (i honestly don’t like talking about who tops and who bottoms because who gives a shit and things are rarely that black and white, but all i’m gonna say is that even though jensen has joked about his asshole before, jensen and misha clearly said switch rights).

from the very first second. the VERY FIRST SECOND. jensen is sauntering on stage like he is thee man. then the crowd is cheering ‘one more time’, and jensen looks at misha, starts cheering too, and makes a movement that is bordering on obscene before waving it away. conclusion: ‘one more time’ could also mean ‘one more round of hot steaming sex’ and he still had sex on the brains, so that was what he was thinking about. 

ahhh, the intricate ritual [1m34s] of greeting each other on stage as if you haven’t spoken to each other all day, even though you probably just had sex….. jensen ackles, i wanna study you. i wonder what the deal is with that. does he just like to pay misha extra attention on stage? does he revel in the fact that he knows that fans like this sort of interaction? can he just not help himself? questions that keep me up at night. 

also, there is just SOMETHING about the way jensen says ‘i’m doing well how are you?’ it’s almost flustered? borderline shy? and then he goes on to say that he did an impression of misha earlier, in a manner that’s just so flirty. idk guys. it’s flirty. kindergarten flirty, but flirty nonetheless.

misha, of course, immediately turns his entire body towards him. almost as if they both already forgot there is an audience in front of them. then he just gets closer and closer to jensen, for no reason whatsoever except for the pure magnetic pull they have on each other. pray4misha.

i think it is a testament to how in sync they are that misha immediately realises that jensen mentioned bicycle touring during his ‘impression of misha’, and i love the moment where jensen puts on an accent (something that misha normally does) and goes ‘is like sport’ and misha laughs and goes ‘is very similar to sport’ and they both lose it. idk, i feel like that might be a sort of inside joke to them as well. 

this might be slightly reaching, but hear me out: right away, jensen goes: ‘oh by the way, sore?’ why would he say ‘by the way’? what is he thinking about when he says that? is it about ‘is very similar to sport’? because i could totally see them having sex and refering to it as ‘well that’s kind of like a sport’, as an inside joke. it works. i’m just saying!!! 

look. i know this back and forth has been discussed to death. we all know that the implication is that jensen fucked misha and misha is kind of stunned that jensen actually goes there. so stunned that he repeats it: ‘sore? am i sore?’ almost as if to stall a bit in his response. yikes. 

i think that it’s fair to say that this is something jensen enjoys doing: riling misha up on stage. because a lot of the time, misha has the upper hand on stage (probably also in the bedroom but that’s another conversation), but sometimes. sometimes jensen just can’t help but throw a lil oil onto the fire. (see also: underbear panel, throwing himself on stage to get straddled, etc). 

misha goes on to say that ‘after the panel with j*red’ he is quite sore. you can take that at face value, and think ‘oh so he is joking around that the panel with j*red made him sore haha’ or you can see a little bit of the truth shine through: literally after that panel, something happened that made him sore. it’s always easier to lie when you are bending the truth.

i actually can’t believe i never connected the dots before, but when misha deflects and says ‘oh you’re talking about the bike riding’ jensen is quick to say: ‘oh no i was talking about what just happened’ but instead of pointing at the stage (which is where the previous panel took place) he is gesturing to backstage. i mean…. way to feed into my ‘they just had sex backstage’ theory, jackles. thanks for that. 

i cannot get over the way jensen is looking at misha throughout this whole ordeal, but especially when he goes ‘you heard it here first, folks’ and misha walks up to him. THAT FACE. fuck him. he’s so gone. 

sidenote: i have never wished to be able to read lips as much as i have since i have stumbled upon these two morons, because i WISH i could see what misha is mouthing to jensen. i know there is some spec that he might have said ‘i am a little bit’ (aka he is a little bit sore) and i could see that, but i just want to know for sure. and even though i have seen people state that jensen would have already known about the panel with j*red, i think it’s possible misha hadn’t filled jensen in yet, seeing as they probably were doing something other than talking. 

let me take this moment to tell y’all about one of my jenmish theories, and that is: i think that jensen sometimes is overprotective of misha and that can come across as jealousy when it’s actually just worry. and i think this panel is a good example of that.

misha says [4m25s] that in italy they call come influence and jensen just. straight up looks at misha like ‘what the fuck did you do, what mess did you get yourself into this time?’ this is another reason why i believe he actually didn’t know about what happened during that panel yet: the reaction looks very authentic. you see his eyes shift from one side to the other and back again, as he is trying to process it. and honestly when you look at misha, his face goes through this journey of ‘this is funny’ to ‘shit is this maybe going a bit too far?’ and ending on ‘okay wrap it up wrap it up’. this is further solidified by the fact that jensen starts to mime digging a grave (aka ‘digging your own grave’).

misha tries to ‘change the subject’ by saying cas is the bottom in the implied relationship with sam and jensen immediately brings it back to sports. see what i meant when i said that they are tying sex and sports together? here jackles goes again, doing exactly that. for no reason whatsoever. (except to once again proof my point). 

WHY [5m50s] do they both burst out laughing at ‘tight end’ why why why i don’t wanna know but why why also quick reminder of ‘are you sore at all’ help i am just. EVERY DAY they are making me perceive things and connect dots and i do not like it. anyways i’m not saying that this is all very graphic stuff about their sex lives but i’m also not not saying it, you feel? jensen’s face says it all tbh. on a more wholesome note: i love the fact that they basically wanted to say ‘we should take questions’ at the same time. again: in sync. 

when the first person to ask a question said ‘this is a serious question’ misha goes to explain to jensen that that was a joke during his panel with j*red, another reason to believe that he hadn’t told jensen about the panel yet. jensen’s face there…. heart eyes motherfucker. 

i really don’t see enough people talk about the ‘safe word’ [6m38s] bit. jensen is the one to bring it up ‘so we should probably establish a safe word at this point. mine is keep going.’ misha laughs, and then realises what jensen has said, and (here comes my dom/sub truthing) teases jensen by saying ‘what is your safe word?’ to which jensen replies ‘keep going’ but LOOK at jensen’s face after he says that. he shakes his head with a little smirk and looks at misha with such a knowing look in his eyes that says ‘you fucker you know damn well what my safe word is’ and he actually does a double take and immediately rolls his eyes at himself after that. it’s all very quick but it’s far from subtle and i am here for it. 

i fucking love this next part because when the person says ‘a real story about the real jensen and the real misha’ they both are just like ‘yes okay’ but as soon as they say ‘that you have never told anyone before’ jensen just looks down and moves his head as if to say ‘what the hell am i supposed to come up with then’ lmao it’s really funny, and they end it with: ‘to know you a little bit better’ and guys (gn) i beg of you to look at the way they look at each other here. [7m24s] jensen is just like ‘help wtf should we say to this’ and misha just smiles down at him fondly like ‘sigh our fans really want us to talk about our relationship and as much as we would love to share stuff we just can’t’.

when misha says ‘we have to dust off some of those stories that we usually try not to tell other people’, something comes to mind: the ‘3 least ordered items on the menu’ story, that jensen shared a year after this at honcon. i honestly think that maybe they started to talk about what else they could share with the public, after this panel, because they get similar questions like this one all the time. either that or jensen just thought about what he felt comfortable sharing, without talking to misha about it, and decided to tell that story. 

i also absolutely love when they say ‘this is a serious question’ at the same time. AGAIN: IN SYNC!!!

‘i actually have a voice for you’ jensen can you please tell me why this sounds flirty and charming while you are actually about to make fun of your husband? i hate you (no i don’t) the fact that misha immediately knows what will happen, says a lot.

then jensen says: ‘dust off an old story for uhh..’ and burst out laughing. i swear to god i’d give my left pinkie to know what came to mind and what he whispered into misha’s ear. and i’m left handed. but i think we can all agree that whatever jensen said, it was something sexual, seeing as misha goes ‘nope’. those fuckers (affectionate).

something that i have mentioned in the past is that jensen always sort of ‘jokey’ goes ‘oh shit’ whenever misha says he’ll share something personal/private about them. i mean. jensen, it would be less sus if you didn’t respond. just giving you some pointers here, bro. because misha almost never shares something strange, it’s actually your reaction that makes me go ‘hmmmm.’ this time he even gets kind of elaborate breathing?? [10m27s]

oh to be a fly in clif’s car… honestly, the things clif must have heard and witnessed lmao. he clearly knows what is up between them (has made enough remarks about thinking that misha would be the bottom and that misha on his knees was nothing new for me to see that he absolutely knows.) 

this isn’t really important when it comes to cockles but they talk a bit about j*red’s internet dispute with at&t and jensen goes ‘oh they know’ gesturing to the audience. so clearly, jensen is well aware of the fact that fandom gets involved whenever something happens online with any one of them. just. thought that is an interesting fact. just in general. also love how i can tell that they both think j*reds crusades are bullshit (as they should). 

there is something really cute [14m13s] about the way misha goes ‘do you want your apple juice?’ and jensen goes ‘yeah!’ it sounds so domestic and mundane and i just. god i love them so much. 

i know we talk about jensen’s heart eyes a lot. but y’all. look [14m52s] at misha right here. he’s SO in love.

the thing that strikes me about jensen putting on ‘that voice’ for misha is that misha is honestly not bothered by it at all, but i think if the shoe was on the other foot, jensen would definitely be bothered. i don’t know what conclusion to draw from that but i just thought that is interesting. i always laugh at that bit, though, they seem to have so much fun.

i REALLY wanna know how jensen got from ‘will you dance for us?’ to ‘no but i’ll tell you what, misha and i will write a song for you real quickly.’ it’s such a fast transition that i am tempted to think that this was something he had been thinking about for a while now. he just wanted his mish to sing a song. and that warms my heart.

if you think i will ever get over how soft jensen is here… ‘you’re smart, you think on your feet, you make brilliant videos, put them on facebook, write amazing texts (*coughs* poems) and tweets and stuff, go ahead. spit out some lyrics, big guy.’ there is not one single thing about this that i do not adore. an ode to misha!!!! so casually!!! fuck. it might be true that if you want jensen to do something, you get misha to ask him, but it’s certainly also true the other way around.

the way jensen just. stares [19m02s] at misha, trying to get inspired by him, trying to feel out what cords to play. yeah. the way misha stands up but instinctively turns to jensen when he starts to sing. yeah. and then during the remainder of the song, he keeps on turning to jensen even though he faces the audience. and jensen loved it all. it’s so sweet. idk why but it just is. jensen just wanted his babe to thrive and get the love he deserves. 

aaaand in comes the dom shake [20m37s]. we love to see it. jensen just keeps on looking at mish. almost gets lost in it. touches his inner thigh (one of his habits, which he does a lot around misha or when talking about misha). 

i think it’s very interesting that jensen’s reaction [22m11s] to the question if he thinks dean will ever find a way to have a romantic relationship and to find himself in between normal and supernatural, is to immediately looks at misha. like? what was the reason? did he expect misha to answer a question that wasn’t about cas but about dean? did he think he should maybe answer it in a destiel-like manner? was he worried that the fan was hoping for a destiel-like answer and was he looking at misha to gauge what he thought was a smart way to respond? so many questions. 

i think it’s pretty interesting that jensen was very aware of the fact that people did not wanna see dean end up with a huntress lmao. he absolutely was aware of so many fandom things.

when jensen said that misha just crossed the line [23m40s], it’s another example of how jensen is ultra aware of what misha says and how it could get him into trouble and by the sounds of it, misha knows that as well but he just can’t always stop himself in time. from what we can see, he often realises just after he has already said something (when it is already too late).

listen. the fact that misha says ‘when harry met sally’ BEFORE the question was even finished, and jensen LAUGHS, like??? that panel was 5 years ago at that point. it clearly made a lot of impact on the both of them (jeez i wonder why, could it be because misha faked an orgasm and jensen got excited? hmm. who knows.) 

i think the dance portion is so fucking hilarious i’m wheeeezing. literally. they are just moving randomly AND YET THEY STILL SORT OF ARE IN SYNC? amazing.

you wanna know what i find really cute? the fact that jensen has such a soft spot for the resume off. part of me thinks it’s because they had a resume off in both 2012 and 2013. 

and jib 2012 took place during the famously rumored break up period. i wouldn’t be surprised if jib 2013 was that much more special to him because they finally got to make it right again. don’t look at me i’m getting emotional (on that note…… i might wanna write something about the break up period at some point. but idk. i mean. it’s a lot to delve into especially since i wasn’t in the fandom back then but. it compels me. we’ll see i guess.)

okay i know i keep saying this but they are SO in sync, as soon as they talk about photo ops and jensen goes ‘and to dab a little salt in the wound’ misha knows what he is gonna say, and they stand up together to demonstrate what happened. AND they both go ‘that’s not the punchline’ they are husbands. 

misha and jensen have both “twirled away laughing” in the EXACT same manner during this panel: misha when jensen starts to read the script, and jensen right here when misha says ‘what’s it like to be in a successful long running show’. they are mirrors. listen. listen. i know my mind is in the gutter a LOT of the time but like. uhm. there is this moment where they recall a woman saying in the photo op to ‘eat it’ (the string candy she gave to them) and misha says ‘and so we did’ and jensen looks at misha and it is SUCH an incriminating look i mean i don’t wanna be that person but 5 bucks he was thinking about eating misha out i am JUST SAYING. LITERALLY LOOK AT HIS FACE. [28m55s]

misha teases [7m02s] jensen by saying ‘what did you do? did you actually do it on purpose orrrr’ and i think it was to make jensen elaborate on it. which i think is a fucking good way to pull that off when it comes to jensen. cause jensen doesn’t like to brag, which misha knows, so by making that joke he is essentially trying to get jackles to tell the audience more about what he did, without him feeling like he is boasting about himself. and misha looks so pleased when jensen starts talking.

fuck i literally had to pause just now because. jensen says: ‘one of the characteristics of dean that i love to play is that he can bottle those fears up, stash them away, and just go. and uhm… sometimes i wish i could do that.’

this is actually making me a bit emotional because. he took his time saying this. it was a very deliberate move. he wasn’t sorry he said anything or regretted it. he wanted to get that out there. and i just. it makes so much sense if what we all think is actually true. he wishes he could just ignore all his fears and go for it. and it’s not hard to imagine what ‘it’ could be: coming out. whether that be just about his relationship with misha or being attracted to more than women in general, just in any way shape or form. it’s poignant. and misha turns away, but you can see him sigh a little bit. 

the whole bit about “apple juice” is just very cute and i enjoy it a lot. one thing i will say though is that i can kind of spot two tells of jensen: the way his face scrunches up when he is telling a lie that he thinks is clever, and the way he always leaves his chair to pour a drink when a question becomes difficult/hard/too funny to face head on. he has done both of those things time and time again, during panels with misha. just an observation. 

there is this little moment [10m13s] where misha tells the story about how he used to make apple cider with worms and dirt in it and in the end he goes ‘anyways. new england apple cider everyone. highly recommend.’ and jensen echoes that, ‘highly recommend. yeah.’ and of course that could just be a way to joke around and play along with misha but i’d like to think that he has visited misha and they had some apple cider together. just because i like the thought and i can, so. 

how CUTE is it that jensen remembers ‘i’ll just wait here then’, a line cas spoke 7 years prior to that panel, in a scene jensen wasn’t even in. i love it.

jensen slowly shaking his head when misha says ‘fuck’ and apologizing for it has SUCH major ‘excuse my husband’ energy. i love it.

‘i’ve got an idea’ [14m13s] ‘what? let’s do it’ misha imMEDIATELY regretted that lmaooo they are always so aware of double meanings and yet they cannot seem to help themselves. we love to see it. 

can you BELIEVE jensen ‘dance monkey dance’ ackles OFFERED to shamelessly promote a movie they have nothing to do with??? jensen, who hates the fact that they have to play some sort of show on stage, actually wanted to do that with misha??? i’m just- something something if you want jensen to do anything ask misha, but apparently also: if you want jensen to do something get misha involved and he’ll love it. 

and then he has the audacity to say ‘over to the wheel of love.’ i mean. i can’t.

(i don’t necessarily understand what is happening btw but that’s okay, because it leads to champagne. which is fun.)

okay so again apologies for my mind being in the gutter but jensen’s face [16m33s] when he says he is going to explain what [the champagne] tastes like……. hm. help. 

 honestly i just love the whole champagne bit because i love it whenever they get so playful on stage, and them “presenting” the bottle and going all ‘we know what we’re talking about’ ‘we’re kind of connaisseurs’ and the whole english accent bit. say it with me…. in sync. 

jensen popping a champagne bottle is something that can be so personal…. (i’m touch starved and going crazy, leave me alone)

i absolutely love the fact that jensen notices that misha is miming taking off his pants and misha immediately runs to him to explain and jensen just goes full on protective husband mode (YET AGAIN) ‘i turn my back for 2 minutes’ lmao it’s just such old married couple behavior. an old married couple that is horny and deranged, but still. 

i’ve seen the gifset of this moment [24m52s] many a times but i still think it’s so intimate. the way misha looks at jensen and walks backwards with him, for no fucking reason at all. sigh. misha’s hand clenches a little, and honestly i think he would have wanted to reach out to jensen in that moment. pat his arm or his back. and something happens a little while later that only proves my point even more…

that caress [60m5s] is probably one of the most intimate gestures i’ve seen between them. it’s so familiar. so natural. it says a lot.

and that’s the end of the panel. all in all i have to say that i enjoyed rewatching this panel with the analysis goggles on, because it’s really a very different experience and i picked up on a lot more than i did when i watched it just for fun. i think this is one of my favorite panels of theirs (at least until my next analysis lmao) because of the fact that they are so in sync with each other, which goes to show that their relationship was in such a good place (mind you i am only using past tense because i am describing a past panel, not because i think they’re not in a good place right now). this was a lot of fun folks, if you actually read all of this, god bles, you’re the best. see you next time!