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isabearies · 3 years ago

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Haunted By You

The Voice {part 1/?}

Summary: You move into a big, 120-something-year-old house that was converted into apartments and is suspiciously cheap. Everything seems normal until you realize that the original owner never moved out, or rather, moved on.

Pairing: ghost!Loki x f!reader

Word Count: 3.1k

Warnings: none really in this chapter, but there will be horror elements and death mentioned. angst later on for sure. Loki being Loki because his emo ass is a warning in itself. This will 100% turn into something smutty so like yeah -- 18+ minors DNI ya dummies

Masterlist

The city was a big place. A big, scary, expensive place. Finding an affordable apartment to live in that was close to work? You had to take what you could get. A place you could afford by yourself at that? No way that was something a person fresh out of college could pass up.

The pictures online made it seem a lot darker than it actually was. The actual building was an old Edwardian-style house built in 1900. It had three stories and a basement, but sometime in the last 120-something years, it had been converted into apartments. Almost the entirety of the house was original besides some small elements and it had been obvious as to why it was cheaper. Not only was it in a slightly thicker wooded area, but from what you could see it was not maintained as well as it could have been. But hey, neat place, right?

You knew it was big from looking at the photos on Google Maps, but yeesh, this place was insane. You looked up to the towering castle-like structure. The roof was abnormally shaped, with a cone style roofing you saw in a drawing of Rapunzel’s castle roof as a child in one section; scalloped roofing and stone walls pivotal to its gothic design. The rest was tall and had different roofing sections depending on what you assumed to be the inner layout. Half of the wall was stone, the other an aging horizontally-layered wall that was a dim mustard yellow. The burgundy roofing and brown-ish gray stone meant you didn’t automatically dismiss the yellow. The lower perimeter walls on the outside were clearly worn stone with jagged teeth. The only windows that were uncurtained or not stained glass were the second story, which was clearly vacant.

That must be the apartment.

Your eyes switched between the windows, clearly detailing the kitchen, to the main room of the unit, and back a bit was-

A dark figure. It surprised you at first since you were sure that was the vacant unit that was being offered. Maybe they were just checking everything out before you showed up? You were a bit early. It seemed that the figure had long, raven hair and a gaunt, pale white complexion. You were far enough away, but you could tell the person had a faint beauty to them. Maybe a sexy neighbor? How fun.

You heard a car pull up in the gravel driveway. A light gray car from what looked to be 2003. The landlord.

She was a small Asian woman, with a kind smile but stern eyes. Seeing how she drove here, you presumed she lived somewhere else. Not a bad thing, to you. It wasn’t like you were going to be hosting any parties but hey, you liked your privacy all the same.

“You were the Ten o’clock wanting to check out the second-floor apartment right? Come on in.” Her slim fingers hooked through some jangling keys from her pocket. She had to have had at least fifteen keys on that keyring.

“Yes, Ms. Dee I presume?” you tried to sound the least bit frightened as possible. You had found this place while driving by randomly after taking a wrong turn you didn’t remember taking. There was a large sign out “APARTMENT FOR RENT” on the lawn and you thought it was fate. You called the number and scheduled a meeting with this woman, who identified herself as simply ‘Ms. Dee,’ for the next day at 10 AM. And here you were, 9:58 AM on a Wednesday.

“Indeed. I am glad you called, that sign has been there quite a bit. The market here has…changed.” You walked up the ornate porch, the cement stairs at the bottom leading to chipped wood ones under the protection of the porch roof. All of the beams connecting the railing to the top of the gutter were carved and there was a certain whimsy to it. The gold details with the weathered paint and deep stained wood gave the front a certain charm that you found many older buildings to have. Ms. Dee pulled open the large mahogany door that had to be at least 8 ft tall and had a bulbous, black knob. It was heavy but unlocked. The sound of jingling keys returned as Ms. Dee attempted to unlock the second set of doors after the darker doors.

“It snows a lot up here, you see.” Her voice was quiet but controlled. “The second door is just to prevent damage.” She pointed a long, wrinkled, slender finger to her left at a wall that had about nine slim boxes with keyholes. “Those there are the mailboxes. Yours would be D2.”

She ushered you into the main room of the house, although it didn’t give off that vibe when you stepped in. It was obviously the main room, but it was completely empty. An old, 30s style chandelier hung overhead as the main light source. In front of you were two different dark oak doors, one labeled 'A1' and 'B1.' To your direct right was a large set of beautiful dark stained glass doors. You could not see to the other side despite seeing some light shine through and the doors seemed locked.

“A couple lives there, Kristen and Richard.” She motioned towards the A1 apartment and the stained glass doors. Then she swished her hands towards B1, “That’s where Mark lives. He’s the handyman of the house. Ask him if you need anything looked at.”

To the left of B1 were the dark mahogany stairs that wrapped up the outlining light beige walls. The lower walls, up to about your waist, were a dark mahogany paneling that matched the stairs and railing with dark turquoise carpets lining the floor. However, just under the stairs, you noticed a smaller, more plain door with a single frosted windowpane with what seemed to be scratched-off copper letters. Ms. Dee caught this.

“Just a utility closet, nothing to see.” Her dismissal was sharp and she made her way up the stairs. Clearly, she was a woman of few words. You glanced up the walls to see a painting of a Spanish Conquistador whose eyes seemed to follow you. Your steps behind Ms. Dee were calculated as you concentrated on how you were to move furniture up here.

As you got to the top, you could either go straight into a doorframe to a hallway or turn left and continue up the stairs to the third floor.

Ms. Dee pointed up, “Above you is Lisa and Scott, they’re a younger couple like yourself. Then Wyatt next to them.” She went straight through the doorframe before pointing left down the next hallway. “That door down there has Michelle. She moved in a couple of months ago. And below her is an older man, Albert.”

She jingled her keys once before opening the pale beige door ahead of her that had 'D2' written on a small piece of paper with a small copper frame below the peephole. The black, bulbous doorknob was even different from the lower apartments' smaller bronze handles on the first floor. The age was even more apparent on the inside than the outside, you realized.

“Well, here it is.” The squeak of the door echoed through the empty apartment as you entered. It was bright inside despite the overcast day and no overhead lights. The space was large, open as you eyed the ancient eggshell-painted radiators and tri-angled windows to the right. The ceilings had to be 15 feet at least. As you turned the corner, you saw the kitchen was much smaller, the tiles along the walls a sort of salmon color with some black tiles lining the outside. There was no dishwasher, barely any cabinet or surface space, and the refrigerator looked like it was from the 70s.

No beautiful neighbor, you thought.

As you looked up, you realized the ceilings were painted the same off-white as the walls, and what would have been a sharp 90º angle as the wall meets the ceiling was instead a softly rounded curve of a transition. It reminded you of a mental hospital from the 20s. The floors were definitely original, a darkly stained oak that showed their age in texture.

“It’s a studio one bath, perfect for one…or two people.” She tacked the end of that on. She probably hoped you would get a boyfriend so she could raise the rent. You’d had plenty of other landlords before.

“It’s gorgeous, Ms. Dee. Maybe I can see the bathroom?” You turned towards her before she shuffled towards the left of the front door – towards the rest of the unit. As you turned into the doorway, you were assaulted with bright colors of amber and turquoise shining in abnormal shapes. There, parallel to your doorway was a large stained glass window in the most Winchester way you could imagine. The sink to the right, which had to be at least from the 30s, stood underneath an art deco-style mirror. The bathtub to the left behind the door was metal with white porcelain painted on top, you’d seen the same type in the retro 70s style house your grandparents lived in as a child.

Still no raven-haired person.

The tiles on the wall were the same salmon color as the kitchen, the tile on the floor was a dark burgundy and a familiar dim mustard yellow, and the hexagonal shaped tiles faintly reminded you of the carpet from The Shining. How odd.

“The lock on the bathroom door doesn’t work, but it shuts just fine.” Her eyes lingered on the broken turning key to the bathroom, something you weren’t sure was still even manufactured today. “So, what do you think?” Her dimly cloudy brown eyes bored into yours very intensely suddenly, taking you back a bit.

“Well, it’s a beautiful building, but what’s the monthly rent?”

“$700 including utilities monthly.” She seemed to be looking for something in your reaction, which she might have been looking for regarding the price. Obviously, you were shocked, this had to be, what, 900 sq feet? And that price was INCLUDING utilities? What was wrong with this place than what was surface level? It was close enough to downtown that it should have been one grand without utilities. Easy.

“That sounds very reasonable. My new office is just a few minutes drive from here as well.”

“Great, then let’s start on the paperwork.”

–

It took about an hour to fully settle everything. Credit score checking, previous records, etc. Ms. Dee also showed you the basement that was found at a door around the back entrance that could only be entered from the outside of the house. The door was clearly much more weathered than that of the rest of the building, missing the distinct detailing of the rest of the doors. It seemed like this door was merely an afterthought compared to the rest of the architecture, but sure enough, it had the same kind of weather-proofing as the front doors.

Going underground, it seemed like a completely different place than the rest of the house. While your apartment and the main room and hallways had a dry, sort of stale air; this basement was humid, wet. Somewhere where the creepy crawlies would hide away from the outside world. The ground was completely concrete; the smooth, dark, uncracked kind that you know has never seen the sun. after walking through a cobwebbed, empty room with only a string light, through another doorway as a quarter-based washer and dryer. A dusty pool table with a brown tarp sat to your right. Deeper into the basement, you could see there was one more room even further that was shadowed from the light. From what you could gather, though, there was some sort of chain-link fence back there.

“This is the laundry room. It’s the small silver key I showed you. Each of the machines is $1.50 each and only takes quarters. Don’t forget to turn off the light when leaving and never, ever forget to close and lock the door.” Her emphasis on not only closing but locking the door seemed heavy-handed, but fair since it led straight into directly where the outside was, not just within the locked doors of the house.

“Sounds great, Ms. Dee. Just asking, but what is back there?” You tilted your head to the very back towards the floor-to-ceiling fence.

Her face fell and her voice wavered slightly. “Ah yes, that is for residents who have any extra…belongings. A storage area, of sorts.” She was quick to change the topic. “So, you’ll email me your documents as well?”

“Yes, you have my signed copies too. When is the move-in date?”

“As soon as possible. If you’d like to move in today you can.” Her voice deepened, apathetic, seemed more distant as if she had just taken two steps away as she saw a bus coming right for you.

“Oh. Oh! Okay, great. I can rent a U-Haul today and start bringing stuff over then.”

“Splendid.”

Her answer was curt and that was the end of the discussion. It was only hours and a few calls later that you had the basics moved into the second-floor apartment.

Your queen bed sat in the corner next to the window and across the tri-angle window…wall…thing… where your small black dining table with two chairs sat. Your couch was against the wall with your TV angled to where you could be at both your bed and couch and still see the screen. Your stuff was already packed a while ago, but finding a place had been a tedious and long task. You were lucky your previous roommate was nice enough to let you stay a few days after your original move-out date so you could find a place. After moving in the majority of your stuff with some help from some of your older college buddies, it was past sunset as you started to settle in.

You had already said thank you and goodbye to your old friends, promising to let them visit once you had at least gotten settled a bit and maybe set up your decorations. You were sweaty from the constant lifting and traveling up and down the stairs. Honestly, you loved the building. Older buildings were your thing as a kid, and even as your friends joked with you saying stuff like “So did the spider webs come with the place or was that extra?” you still couldn’t help but feel like this place was your dark academia dream.

You decided to take a bath to wash off all of the dust and sweat that accumulated on your skin, and hell why not test out the bath?

Turning it on to a hot temperature, the steam slowly overtook the small bathroom. The large 20’s style mirror was completely fogged over, and the stained glass dripped from condensation. You turned on your Bluetooth speaker to play some nice jazz while your tub filled.

Fuck it, it’s my first night.

You poured some of your fanciest lavender bubble bath soup and matching lavender scented Epsom salt into the bath before going to the kitchen to pour yourself a glass of wine. Lighting some unscented candles also seemed appropriate.

You were going to enjoy your first night in this big creepy house where you now lived.

You slowly stripped off your clothes, peeling some sections off as you remembered the humidity of the basement. Slipping into the warm water, your playlist playing some new lo-fi jazz you’ve never heard before, you felt your bones slightly succumb to the relaxation that threatened to overtake you.

In the soft quiet of the night and through the brass instruments permeating from your speaker, you could hear a soft, melodic voice. It was just a sound in the wind, not even eligible to be a voice at first. But its sound started to materialize in your eardrum, dancing around the outskirts of your skull. It sounded like the soft ocean waves of the sealine, rolling and pushing from whosever vocal cords like the pulling shore. Like the black driftwood that smelled like salty earth that sat on the grey-white sand. Like the prickling feeling of briney, misty air being sucked through your nostrils.

“Who are you?”

A small bit of cool air surrounded your upper shoulders, the parts that did not plunge into the warm, soapy waters. Goosebumps lined your skin, but it seemed so far away as your eyelids fell heavy. Your neighbors were probably just talking upstairs, you reasoned. I mean, there did seem to be a ventilation grate just feet away from you, maybe they connected the floors. It wouldn’t be unheard of in old houses like this.

You started to smell evergreen, maybe some Eucalyptus, as the feeling of being caught between the beach sand and the rustic, earthy woods. It smelled like…green. Like green and black rolling off of ice into your senses. Did you even own those types of scented soaps? It was such a neutral yet slightly masculine smell that it seemed unbecoming, but that seemed so far away right now.

A small purring sound was heard as the goosebumps traveled up the back of your neck to your lower hairline that was pulled up into a messy bun. It seemed this purring came from the same oceanic voice from earlier, as it had the same deep, expansive sound.

In your daze, you chuckled slightly, thinking about answering the detached voice.

“I am your new neighbor.” You replied dreamily, care not insight as your eyes glaze over the shimmering bubbles that barely hid your nude body.

“Ah, a new pet.” the voice seemingly ghosted over your ears, leaving cold trailing breath onto your cheekbones. This wasn’t upstairs, it was behind you.

Now more aware and slightly more startled, your eyes focused back to the present. It responded, you realized. The disembodied voice you assumed was your upstairs neighbor talking to someone else had responded to your quiet answer. Not only that, but it sounded so close. Felt close.

You straightened your back and neck, taking in your surroundings. The fluorescent bar light above the mirror illuminated the entire bathroom, the colorful glass window behind you looking bleak in the dark night that loomed outside. You were alone, you were sure of it.

As you looked to your now empty wine glass and pruned fingers, you decided to leave the bath. Clearly, you’d had enough and soaked long enough. Your exhausted brain probably just needed to rest. I mean, you just finished your Master’s in Psychology. Starting in a few days, you would be a practicing psychologist in an office downtown. You just moved into your new apartment. You deserved to sleep well tonight.

That would have been, if not for your very strange dream that night.

AN: I hope y'all like this first part, it took a while to write lol. if you have any suggestions or anything, I'd love to hear it! x

part two

#loki laufeyson #loki odinson #loki x you #loki x reader #marvel mcu #mcu fanfiction #mcu x reader #mcu x you #ghosts #ghost and hauntings #supernatural #ghost boyfriend #dark academism #dark aesthetic

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dwellordream · 3 years ago

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“...First, let’s talk about materials. We can rule out a Steppe Nomad inspiration for any of this right off. The Eurasian Steppe is very large and covers a range of arid climates (that is to say, parts of it are colder, parts of it are warmer), but they all have spinning and weaving technology, by which the supple hairs of woolly animals, or plant fibers like linen, or cotton, or even natural protein fibers like silk can be fashioned into fabric which is more flexible, comfortable, breathable and temperature controlled than the raw leather we see in the show.

...there is a distinct lack here of lots of leather, except in the sort of things that lots of cultures use leather for (boots, fittings, saddles, bags, tents). Instead, clothing is mostly made out of nice, comfortable, breathable textiles, because of course it is. That is not to say, to be clear, that leather or hides or fur were never used – fur especially was used; merely that they were generally used to supplement clothing primarily made out of textile.

...Now Plains Native American clothing does make much greater use of animal skin as a clothing material, but there is an important distinction to be made here. The problem here is with the plasticity of the term ‘leather’ which can technically include a wide range of products, but in practice is understood to mean exactly what the Game of Thrones costume department and literally every piece of official artwork of the Dothraki understand it to mean, which is the product of tanning processes.

I am not an expert, but as far as I can tell, Native American clothing was not made in the same way; animal products were used in a process I have seen described as ‘brain tanning’ (rather than using chemical tannins) and the final product was then smoked. The result – which is often called ‘buckskin’ regardless of the animal source for the hide – is very different from the leather we see in the show.

This is, in terms of material, very clearly not what the ‘vests’ the Dothraki in the show are wearing. Buckskin would also be used to make trousers, as opposed to the “horsehair leggings” of Martin’s wording, which also strike me as deeply improbable. Haircloth – fabric made from horsehair (or camel hair) – is durable, but typically stiff, unsupple and terribly itchy; not something you want in direct contact with your skin (especially not between your rear end and a saddle), unless you just really like skin irritation. It is also a difficult material to get in any kind of significant quantity – and you would need a significant quantity if you intended to make most of your trousers out of it.

...Well that’s for materials, what about patterns? Once again, we can quite easily rule out anything steppe inspired. Again, the Eurasian Steppe is big and has lots of variety, but relatively long robes are generally the norm in terms of dress; where long robes were not worn (see our Scythian above), the common pattern was heavy sleeved garments and trousers with very complete coverage. A common example of the type of long robe-like garments is the Mongolian deel, a long sleeved robe or tunic which provides a lot of protection against the elements. In the case of elites – and Daenerys is, initially, mostly around elites – these could be made of expensive silk or brocade – but poorer versions might be made of wool.

...And there is good reason for these relatively high-coverage garments. Plains or Steppe peoples naturally tend to live on, well, plains and steppes – that is large expanses of semi-arid grasslands. The very nature of that terrain configuration produces fairly extreme seasonal temperature variations (that is, very hot summers and very cold winters) as well as extreme daily temperature variations (that is, hot days and cold nights) because such places are far from large bodies of water and also don’t have tree-cover, both of which serve to moderate rapid temperature changes.

Consequently, as anyone who has lived in a plains state in the USA (or on the Eurasian Steppe, though that is fewer of my readers, but for my brave handful of hits from that part of the world, hello and welcome!) can tell you, you need clothes that can be layered and which can be both warm in the winter and cool in the summer. For us moderns, we mostly do this by owning multiple season-specific wardrobes, but clothing is expensive in pre-modern societies, so multi-purpose garments, or garments that be layered, to turn a warm-weather outfit into a cold-weather outfit are important!

There’s no reason to suppose the Dothraki Sea would be any different: it sits at about the same latitude as King’s Landing so there is little reason to assume it would be warm all-year-round. Parts of the Eurasian Steppe stretch decently far south, sharing a latitude with northern Italy and Spain; nevertheless they do not enjoy the same Mediterranean climate because they don’t have the same exposure to the weather patterns created by the sea. The southern end of the Great Plains stretches down all the way into Texas, but still gets properly cold in the winter with temperatures regularly dipping below freezing in the winter despite the latitude. For a people who are camping and working outside all of the time, warm clothing is going to be a must.

...There is tremendous variety here, but I don’t think any of it could be aptly described simply as “Men and women alike wore painted leather vests over bare chests and horsehair leggings.” Now, if you looked hard enough could you find something that resembled Martin’s leather vests, bare chests and horsehair leggings somewhere in the clothing of Native Americans across two continents? Probably, but among the specific Native peoples that Martin cites as inspiration, it does not seem to be at all common. And if that description was wholly unconnected to anything in the real world, we might well stop there and conclude that, well this is just the ‘dash of pure fantasy’ that Martin was talking about (although as we’ll see, it is going to be quite a bit more than just a dash). But I don’t think we can stop there, because (removing the medallion belts) Martin’s description does adequately describe something that exists in the real world: Halloween costumes purporting to depict Native Americans.

...The vest-and-pants style of Native American Halloween costume seems to be rather rare now, but it was, at least to my memory, much more common in the 1990s, when A Game of Thrones was written (initial publication date of 1996). You can see them, for instance, on many of the background extras in the famous Thanksgiving scene from Addams Family Values (1993) and that vest style was also a part of the outfit for the also-quite-unfortunately-branded YMCA Indian Guides/Indian Princesses program (rebranded as the ‘Adventure Guides’ in 2003 after decades of Native Americans complaining about it) which was also fairly popular in the 1990s.

Now, I am not saying that Martin planned to construct his Dothraki out of Native American stereotypes and bad Halloween costumes. In fact, I am fairly confident he intended nothing of the sort. But in the absence of doing some effective research (and it is going to become increasingly apparent that at least effective research was not done) there was quite possibly nothing else to inform the effort other than what was ‘in the air’ of the popular consciousness. Of course the danger of those often simplistic public stereotypes is that people often do not know that they have them, assuming instead that the vague impression they have is essentially accurate (or at least, close enough for a regular person). And that’s a real problem because it reinforces the popular stereotype, especially given Martin’s reputation for writing more ‘historically grounded’ fiction. And that is a problem because…

The clothing that the Dothraki are described and visually shown wearing is clearly intended to convey things about their society. Returning to our visual comparison above, it is easy to see that the actual clothing of both Eurasian and American ‘horse cultures’ was often bright, highly decorated and generally eye-catching, featuring complex patterns and shapes. It was both nice looking, but also spoke to the humanity of the people that made it and their very human desire to look nice and have nice looking things. By contrast, the clothing of the Dothraki is presented as simple, rugged and unadorned.

...I want to stress this to make the point clear: people in the past liked to look nice! Much of the popular perception of pre-modern clothing assumes lots of dull, drab colors, undecorated or merely adorned with rough pelts, but this is almost entirely a Hollywood construction. The Romans didn’t exclusively dress in white (indeed, the toga candida, the white toga, was an unusually formal thing to wear, like a politician’s suit-with-flag-pin), medieval peasants didn’t wear drab brown (they dressed in bright primary colors mostly), and as I hope the historical pictures for this essay show, both steppe nomads and Plains Native Americans wore nice clothing with lots of patterns, color and decoration. These men next to Khal Drogo are his elite guard of ‘bloodriders,’ the companions of a ruler who wields tremendous power and wealth! And yet they have opted to wear mostly undecorated bland brown leather.

Just to underline this point, think about what a fine set of clothing communicates to an observer (for instance, one of Khal Drogo’s thousands of mounted warrior retainers who are present at this event). Imported goods, like metalwares (which nomads won’t generally be able to make themselves) or fine imported fabrics demonstrate not only trade contacts but also often that the leader has useful ties to foreign leaders (since such things were often gifts or tribute from foreign courts). Garments whose production, due to fine patterns, complex weaves, intricate beading or quillwork, would take many, many hours of production demonstrate that the leader has a lot of subordinate people in their household (in many cases, that would mean women), which both implies the ability to give these people as gifts (either in marriage or because of their non-free status) and also the access to resources (in this case herds of animals) needed to sustain so many people – in short, the sort of leader who can reward faithful warriors richly.

And of course a leader who outfits his closest retainers – his bloodriders, in this case – with such wares (especially expensive foreign metal military equipment) demonstrates both access to military capital and also the ability to reward his trusted lieutenants. In short, the Khal whose person and immediate retainers are decked out in finery looks like backing the winning side, which is a very important thing to assess as one of his warriors. So even if not one of Drogo’s men cares about their personal appearance at all, it is still politically important for them to dress for success.

Which then demands the question, looking at the very fine clothing of historical horse cultures that supposedly provided the inspiration for these Dothraki fellows: Where is the exquisite bead work? The fine quillwork? Where are the carefully made fringes? Where is the silk brocade? Where are the detailed, complex patterns?”

- Bret Devereaux, “That Dothraki Horde, Part I: Barbarian Couture.”

#the dothraki #bret devereaux #history #fashion #grrm critical

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shihalyfie · 4 years ago

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Adventure and 02′s production philosophy and its impact on the storywriting (or: “a series made with love is best understood with love”)

It’s hard to really judge a series too much by its production details, but Adventure and 02′s staff has been very open about discussing background and production to the point we’re able to involve it in discussions. In fact, to a certain degree, we’ve gotten rather reliant on said production notes to explain too many things that weren’t clearly depicted or stated in the series -- I’ve spent a fair share of time complaining about how frustratingly subtle this series is -- and you see a lot of strange conspiracy theories or myths about production that circulate in all sorts of different directions. Undeniably, it’s a series that spoke to a ton of people, but there are still so many things that have perplexed people over the last two decades, and when you ask someone “what’s good about this series?”, people struggle to say it in clear words, often only able to resort to a rather oversimplified explanation like “the character development is good” (but what is character development, anyway?). A lot of times, some small things that initially don’t seem to track have led to some pretty wild, far-reaching fanbase-endorsed theories, when in fact the actual reality of the situation is much more mundane.

I think, in general, the best way to “understand” Adventure and 02 is simply to have an open mind about everything in regards to it. This is something I can only say because we currently have more than enough evidence, given production testimony, that this is the kind of series that was made with that kind of philosophy -- I will not shy away from the fact that there are things in this world that are made maliciously, meant to “one-up” the audience or using half-baked explanations as a way to cover up the fact that it wasn’t well thought-through. But in the case of Adventure and 02 specifically, almost everything we have heard about it is to the contrary, and, in practice, I find one can get much more out of the series by adjusting one’s mindset to think about what they’re looking out for and not, because once you have, the beauty of the series opens itself up even in places you’re not looking for it.

Let’s talk a little about the production philosophy behind Adventure and 02 and how it shaped a series that left such an impact on so many kids, and what we can learn from it!

“Something important that we wanted to tell the kids who were watching”

The two most important figures to know when it comes to Adventure and 02 production are its producer, Seki Hiromi (who would eventually go on to produce Tamers and Frontier as well, along with being supervising consultant on Kizuna), and its director, Kakudou Hiroyuki. I would say that both of these figures are probably the most influential people in shaping the series as we know it, but in different ways -- Kakudou was the one most responsible for building the world of Adventure and 02 and setting up the standard for having all sorts of background worldbuilding details that weren’t shown in the series, whereas Seki was the one who pushed for them to include family backgrounds and things that ought to be relatable to the average kid, so that they could empathize with the problems shown on screen.

Both of them had different ways of going at it, which is all for the better because it allowed the story to be enriched from both sides, but the common thread between the two was that they wanted to use this opportunity to “show the kids important things”:

Kakudou is the kind of person I would say is very “media literate” -- he was very well-read in books and well-versed in cinema, not just Japanese but also internationally, and also very in-tune with the Internet by the standards of a director in 1999. (Part of the reason we know so much about Digimon production now is that he still keeps up with everything on social media and throws in a few comments here and there.) His comments on the final episode of Adventure include a list of all of the things he credited for inspiring him during this series, and he later stated that he had a goal of conveying all of those “interesting things” to the kids watching, so that they could also find it interesting. So in other words, Adventure and 02 were basically his love letter to everything in media that he’d come to appreciate.

Seki was the one who pushed for humans to be involved in the series so that the audience could empathize with them, and for all of the “real world worldbuilding” like the kids’ family backgrounds. She’s also functionally responsible for the base premise of 02 at all, having been thoroughly alarmed by the story of a young boy skipping grades into university (to the point this plotline resurfaced a whole 20 years later in Kizuna). It can be said that the heavy “human drama” elements and family background emphasis continuing into Tamers and Frontier are probably her doing, and in terms of Kizuna, she also was responsible for personally vetting the dialogue to keep the kids in character, and it was said that it came off like she loved the characters as if they were her own children.

The result is that, firstly, Adventure and 02 is a series that is very well-thought through. Ridiculously well thought-through, in both background lore and character backgrounds and mentality. So many surface-level criticisms of Adventure and 02 come with an accusation that the writers were “lazy” or “did a writing cop-out”, but we actually have more evidence that the Adventure and 02 staff thought out so many details in the background that they kept forgetting that they hadn’t actually told the audience about it yet. (No, seriously, there’s a thread of official staff repeatedly forgetting that they may not have actually outright mentioned one of the background details they’d planned out in advance.) Even despite all of the extra information we’ve gotten since in the drama CDs and Animation Chronicle and such, it seems there’s still way more information that was planned out that we still haven’t learned about, and it’s presumably why there are so many little things that are too consistent to be coincidental and yet were still never actually stated. It may have been awful at communicating those details well, but those details were most definitely there, and both series have a shocking amount of consistency in adhering to them.

The second is that not only did the producer and director want to convey those important things, they also encouraged the rest of the staff to do it too:

One of the concepts behind the prior series was for us to pack in as many interesting things that we’d seen, heard about, or read about as we could into it, so for 02, we thought, what else could we put in beyond even that?, and so we looked over what we needed to have, and put in all the things we could so that they wouldn’t be left out, and the story became a multi-layered one, overlapping and accelerating. It was to the point that, after we’d gone through 02‘s story, the scriptwriters told me that they’d worn everything they had out to the ground.

So in other words, Adventure and 02 were basically a sort of potluck where they encouraged everyone on staff to come up with interesting things that they wanted to show the kids, and throw it all in -- and it’s presumably why the second half of 02 is so “crowded” (more on this later), because you had everything from all of the writers on staff adding another thing into the potluck, until everyone could get it out of their system. Yoshimura Genki, one of 02′s head writers, said outright that she used the famous 02 episode 23 to convey her concerns about some very real and horrible things happening to kids at the time, and it’s easy to imagine that all of the other writers and staff members were given similar encouragement to do so. Even the (in)famous 02 episode 13 was something originally created from Kakudou seeing Dagomon, thinking he was really cool and wanting to make an episode about him, and remembering that Konaka was good at Lovecraft and basically going “he’s gonna love this, we should get him to do an episode.” In fact, it’s said many times that a huge attitude behind production was to “not be ashamed of anything” and try whatever they wanted.

Which means that the result is a series that isn’t actually all that well-organized in plot or structure -- 02′s plot writing is of course an infamous pile of knots, but even those who are willing to be a bit more critical of Adventure often point out that its plot is simply more linear, being basically a video game-esque boss rush of “evil enemy, followed by even more evil enemy”. Most people do not watch Adventure or 02 for the actual plot writing. What they do watch it for is all of this stuff mentioned above -- that all of these different people on staff were given the question “what do you want to say to this audience of kids?” and took the opportunity to say something fun or meaningful. And, hence, why it’s best to understand Adventure and 02 not necessarily by the minutiae of its plot, but rather, “what was this series trying to say?”

Writing the series as it went along, under massive constraints

In general, Japanese anime is produced as it goes along -- even the character writing is subject to change depending on the voice actors’ performance (this was cited for Adventure specifically, but it’s well-known common practice for non-adaptation anime in general). That said, Adventure didn’t even have a guarantee of how long it was going to be at first -- it was generally expected that it’d be a one-year series (like most Toei series), but they weren’t even sure about it. This resulted in a very “loose mindset”, in which they decided to basically wing it, and the only thing determined for sure was that the epilogue (that we now know as the 02 epilogue) was going to be at the end of it.

As I mentioned above, scrutinizing the plot of Adventure too closely reveals that it’s not actually that coherent of a narrative, just more linear -- and, even by official admission, Hikari wasn’t planned to be the eighth child at first nor was the Tokyo arc of episodes planned to be that long, and yet this entire section is one of the most famous parts of Adventure. A lot of the best parts of Adventure and 02 seem to be the result of sheer accident...

...Or was it accident? Can you say that “going in with a positive mindset and a desire to do something meaningful” is accident? Even if you didn’t plan things out from the beginning, if you go into everything with an attitude of wanting to make the best out of something and make the best out of opportunities you see and hear about, is that really an accident? Couldn’t you perhaps say that this kind of thing is why Adventure and 02 hit so well with people to begin with?

By the time we get to 02, 02 started off as a very different series from the get-go, and it’s always struck me as very odd that people act like 02 was tacked on and didn’t have nearly the exact same staff. It was Kakudou himself who petitioned for 02 to start off with a light atmosphere, and the series itself was fundamentally meant to be addressing the new concepts of “relationships” instead of Adventure’s “self-assertion”, and explore concepts that hadn’t been covered in Adventure. The reason 02 is so different from Adventure is exactly because the staff didn’t want to rehash things for another year, and instead wanted to take the opportunity to cover stuff Adventure didn’t. And the fact that 02 is lighter than Adventure at first, but quickly gets darker, is also by design:

The story had gotten rather heavy by the time of Digimon Adventure, so we decided to make it come off as brighter. And then, it actually ended up getting even heavier somewhere down the line, but there was no way we could just avoid depicting important life problems.

Which is also a similar sentiment reflected by Seki herself, when thinking about how her suggested plotline ended up making the story darker:

An overly intelligent child, prone to falling into loneliness, cut off from his friends and family, and with a Digimon slowly coming and staying close to him…I remember that kind of image forming. We were supposed to have been aiming to have them going to the Digital World with the mood of a picnic, but the fact it didn’t end up so easy for them may have been my fault…or so I remember thinking as I reflected on it.

02 didn’t get dark for the sheer sake of getting dark, and in fact it’s not like the staff necessarily wanted it to get that way, but there were so many meaningful things that they wanted to tell the audience of kids that they allowed it to. It’s also kind of odd how the fanbase has this idea of there somehow being staff conflicts or people bickering in order to produce 02, but there’s no indication of this at all -- at most, 02 unusually had two head writers instead of one, Yoshimura Genki and Maekawa Atsushi, but it was even said that they had a clear division of roles, with Yoshimura on the “villains” side and Maekawa on the “protagonists” side, and there’s no sign of conflict.

(A lot of people also tend to give more credit to Yoshimura since the villains are some of the most masterfully crafted part of both Adventure or 02, but this is still somewhat reductive; Maekawa is very open about the fact that he was rather inexperienced during 02′s production, and considering the fact that the 02 protagonists aren’t nearly as underdeveloped as the fanbase claims they are, and Maekawa would later go on to write a PreCure entry that basically saved the franchise and a very well-acclaimed Super Sentai entry, both with many parallels to 02, his role should not be discounted, especially since 02 is often liked by its fanbase for the duality between both its lighter and darker sides.)

So we had the staff basically on a roll of throwing in everything important they wanted to say to the kids, both “fun” and “meaningful”, and then, two things impacted the way it ended: firstly, they weren’t allowed to go with their initial proposal for the final enemy because it was too gory, and secondly, the decision was made midway through that they would not be making a third Adventure series, and would have to end more quickly than expected.

I think, whenever you hear stories of “we were originally going to do this but couldn’t,” people generally tend to assume that they should have done the original plan (especially if the original plan was particularly gory or brutal, because everyone loves to think that edgy is better), but, perhaps fittingly for a series that’s about not drowning in past regrets of “what should have been” and learning to move on, the staff has never really shown any indications of really, thoroughly regretting any of the decisions they made for 02, even if the second half came out messy. If you look at that original proposal they had for 02′s final enemy, in which it would be an enemy “reduced to an idea”, it certainly explains a lot about why BelialVamdemon was defeated by the power of sheer positivity in the final ending -- obviously that would make a lot more sense with a conceptual embodiment of malice, instead of a returning enemy from the prior series -- but at the same time, that loss of that concept led to the creation of Oikawa, Archnemon, and Mummymon, which have consistently been praised as one of the most compelling parts of 02 and its finale, and Yoshimura herself even gushed about the concepts they got. So it’s not “we couldn’t do what we wanted,” it’s more “we couldn’t do what we initially wanted and made something out of it, arguably an even better something in certain ways.”

And as for the lack of the third Adventure series, all indications point to the fact that this was something by personal choice of the staff, not by higher-up mandate -- not that I enjoy speculating about other people I don’t know, but if you actually follow what Kakudou has said about his work on Adventure and 02, and the fact that he considers his later work on X-Evolution to functionally be getting everything else out of his system (even saying that he liked Bandai doing a lot of the work for him), Kakudou doesn’t seem to want to be the main leader of his projects for the most part, mostly seeing Adventure and 02 as the one time he got to dump all of his one-time ideas that he personally wanted to accomplish, and otherwise being satisfied doing episode direction work for others -- testimony as to the handoff between 02 and Tamers consistently depicts him as expressing sentiments similar to “please let me have a break.” (As of this writing, he still does work for Toei, but has never been lead director on a full series since.) Kakudou didn’t like having to deal with a bunch of increasingly canon-contradictory works because, as an infamously detail-oriented and consistent person, dealing with that kind of thing didn’t really seem to agree with him, and moreover it’s understandable that he (and the other staff) would feel that it was better to end it there instead of overstaying its welcome and stretching things out.

Certainly, when you look at the second half of 02, its plot is “crowded” in nearly every direction (not as incomprehensible as people like to claim it is, but definitely going in a lot of places at once). The infamous 02 epilogue is probably the biggest example of the disparity between staff thought and how it came off; remember that it was one of the first things decided about the series at all, meaning that the staff was deliberating over it and under the impression they were building up to it for a whole two years, but when it finally dropped everyone was blindsided and even often made accusations of the staff coming up with it at the last minute while drunk or something (not helped by the staff clearly being so fixated on their own production that they even included details that were completely incomprehensible to anyone not aware of the potential third series plotline). Yet, ever since then, many people who have sat down with it have figured out that it’s not that incomprehensible and that many of the aspects of it make sense on a theoretical level or are foreshadowed in the series -- it’s just that they tacked it onto the end of an excessively crowded finale with no warning and didn’t sufficiently communicate their reasoning for it, requiring people to spend the next 20 years puzzling it out and Kizuna to come around to drop even more clues, and also failed to realize that one of humanity’s most die-on-a-hill issues about media (shipping) would make people a lot more offended than they likely intended. (PreCure has successfully pulled off “adult timeskip” epilogues in recent years, and they’ve all been received well, but the difference is that they actually pad out the episode with a proper lead-up instead of just chucking it in your face right after Oikawa dies.)

And, ultimately, the staff has never shown any signs of having regret over this. Kakudou takes the stance that they were able to close out 02 in a good way, despite all of the circumstances. The rest of the staff, including Seki herself, and overall Toei as a whole, has doubled down further on the latter half of 02′s plot events and the epilogue’s place in canon despite the infamous controversy around it, and I have to say that I do at least understand why they’re like this when you consider the circumstances and their likely feelings on it -- regardless of everything, they’re proud of the work they did on it, and even if not everything went according to original plan, they loved taking the opportunity to use the sandbox to express things they may not have been able to in their other projects, and the epilogue was their baby that they’d been raising for two years. It’s the ultimate question of “satisfying the creators vs. satisfying the audience” -- not to say that I completely agree with the call to be this unaware of how people were going to read this, because it’s not good to blindside your audience or hurt their feelings, but at the same time, it’s said that you will never be able to satisfy an audience at all if you’re not satisfying yourself first. And in the end, despite everything, that something in Adventure and 02, built out of that earnest desire to say something, came across in some ways and touched the hearts of kids all over the world.

So the result was that the Adventure and 02 staff did everything they wanted, got it out of their system, and handed an imperfect but carefully-crafted baton to Seki, who decided that it was a good opportunity to do something completely new, and deliberately picked Tamers’s director Kaizawa on the grounds that he’d had no experience with the series before. Remembering that Seki was on Adventure and 02 and was clearly happy with it, her decision to do something new with Tamers was just that -- to do something new -- and it’s honestly kind of saddening that the series’ respective fanbases treat each other with significantly less respect than their actual creators do, since both series still shared a lot of staff, Kakudou went on to be an episode director for Tamers (and even calls it a “masterpiece”), and Konaka clearly has a lot of respect for his predecessor series as well, with Tamers being its own product made with conscientiousness and a desire to make things meaningful for kids (Kaizawa himself has expressed a lot of strong opinions on this topic). A lot of anti-02 folks have often spread a conspiracy theory that Tamers came out of a “writer revolt” because they hated being “restricted” by 02 and wanted “more freedom” -- but that is completely contrary to the above evidence where 02′s production process arguably gave the writers too much freedom, and Tamers head staff was picked deliberately due to their lack of connection to the prior series so that they could do something conversely new and fresh...

One thing that’s interesting about Kizuna is that its director, Taguchi Tomohisa, has spoken very often about his love for the original series, right down to respecting its ability to cover very serious topics. His recruitment philosophy for the movie also seemed to have “being a fan of the series” as a big plus factor, and he moreover shows a lot of respect for the staff members involved in production, both the people he recruited and the long-timers like Seki. “Being a fan of the series” doesn’t necessarily constitute skill by itself, but there’s a lot of similar sentiments in “let’s make something that shows respect and does something interesting and important” and “let’s make sure the staff gets to do something without regrets” also seem to be pretty huge factors in consideration here, rather similar to the original series...

What this means in terms of understanding the series

I do not think that, just because a creator clearly had good reasoning for putting in what they did, the audience necessarily has to accept that. It may have had good intentions, but "intentions” don’t justify things coming off the way they do, or at least, the 20/20 hindsight can make us all get together and think “if that was your intention, there were probably a million better ways to execute that.” And, as someone writing this blog, there are times I really think “if you could have please just thought a little harder about making those ideas clearer so we wouldn’t have to have these arguments...”

However, I do think there is something illuminating about the idea of “adjusting one’s mindset” in response to the above revelations, and going in with an open mind when trying to get something out of the series for one’s own sake. I mean this truly in the sense of encouraging others to find something interesting and new -- this is not a blog I write expecting people to see things the same way I do, as much as I like encouraging people to look out for things they might have not noticed beforehand.

I started writing for this blog regularly last year (I hadn’t even planned to start regularly doing it) after a rewatch of Adventure and 02 with some friends and some honest discussion about the series after it, and one thing we all agreed to do when we did that rewatch was “we are not going to go in with the intent to criticize it.” That is to say, we decided to throw out all of those sentiments that you have to “admit” everything wrong with any series when even bringing up its name -- which is not to say that we’re glossing over potential criticisms or their validity, just “we’re doing this rewatch to have fun and to enjoy and appreciate things, and that will be our priority going in.” After making that agreement, something really magical happened, and it was that we started catching things without even looking for it, things that had clearly been planned but hidden in the background, or things that were caught by one person in the group watch chat and pointed out to the others, and it turned out that a huge chunk of the “criticisms” we might have originally gone in with actually did have answers, we just hadn’t realized it because we were too brainwashed into the mindset of dismissing things as “well, that part’s just bad writing.”

Of course, we’ve seen bad writing -- it’s not like we were going out of our way to absolve everyone for every mistake -- but that base mindset allowed us to better appreciate things we might have missed earlier that weren’t immediately apparent. I’ve said many times that I don’t think the things I write on here are that huge speculation -- in fact, in writing meta, I often throw out a lot of stuff because I think “yeah that’s too absurd, let’s just stick with the simplest explanation” -- as much as I just thread things that are in the series but are frustratingly subtle, because I’m taking things that seem like throwaway details and going “hm, well, instead of just dropping it the first time like ‘probably bad writing’, let’s maybe look at this one more time and see if there was a reason?” And those reasons present themselves surprisingly easily without even that much effort, and after a while you come to realize: this is a really consistent series!

It’s actually very rare that things outright contradict themselves, because it really does not take long to piece together a rational explanation (because those things are in the series, just buried)! This was a detail-oriented series that had a ridiculous amount of attention paid to it, even if it didn’t communicate that! Whenever I post meta, I often get comments from people who say outright that they’d had the same impressions, they just didn’t know how to put it in words! There’s been multiple cases of people independently coming up with readings of the series that the fanbase historically dismissed as a reach, only for official to come out and confirm they were absolutely correct, and a common thread between all of these is that they were referenced in the series, it’s just that people kept wanting to dismiss them because “there’s no way they’d be that detailed”! A truly contradictory series falls apart when you subject it to higher scrutiny (even when you’re being optimistic about it), but there’s a strange thing about Adventure and 02 in that they actually fit together even more when you look closely -- and, again, things start coming in when you don’t even expect it, just because of your mindset.

I suppose the take-home here with all of this is that a series like this is best understood when you have an open mind and a desire to listen to what it has to say. As I said before: Adventure and 02 (and especially 02) are not series that most people watch for the plot, and, to be honest, it’s clear that plot wasn’t even a priority for all of the staff in the first place as much as it was about conveying important ideas and sentiments. And I’m not going to say whether not prioritizing plot or not is a “good” or “bad” thing -- for some people, that kind of thing is understandably very important, and a series like 02 can be very frustrating to deal with as a result! -- as much as, for those who have a genuine interest in sitting down and understanding these series, I cannot recommend scrutinizing the plot too much simply because it will not get you very far, and, to be honest, whenever I see a lot of analyses of Adventure and 02, I really do often wonder if they actually understand the core of the series and the sentiment and emotion behind it, or whether they’re just doing it on a technical surface level so they can say they did (which is usually partially as a bid to passive-aggressively dunk on later series to prove Adventure is superior). The entire concept of objectivity is a lie in itself, but this is not a series that you can get much out of if you try to evaluate it with that kind of detachment; it’s a series that spoke to you through theme and passion first and foremost, and to receive that message and “enjoy” the series is most effectively done when you detach all of those doubts and approach the series without malice.

(By the way, this is not me claiming I’m inherently a “better” analyst just because I also prefer to use this mentality when approaching it; it’s just that I’m a bit frustrated that this kind of approach is so hard to find, despite Adventure’s popularity, because losing out on the heart causes so much rich potential to get lost. This is also the reason I recommend @analyzingadventure‘s work so much -- I’m so sorry about tagging you for the third time here! -- because they’re as positive about Adventure as I am about 02, and their insight and thought into the series coming from the angle of “appreciating” it with genuine positivity is something I believe is truly valuable in a climate where this is very hard to find.)

And this is what I mean, “to approach it without malice”. I don’t mean that you should go in prepared to never have criticisms of it ever again, nor that you should just absolve everything and assume that everything is fine, but rather that going in with a mindset of “we’re going to look for things to love” instead of “we’re going to ‘look past’ the bad” alone has the magical effect of shifting your entire view of the series, way more than I would say with any other. And, again, that’s only something that can happen when the base product was made with this much sentiment and honesty to begin with, and moreover fighting against the mindset to criticize is tough when we’re dealing with a fanbase that’s acted like being “fair” requires “acknowledging” the faults of everything in the same breath you praise it until the horse is beaten for two decades and everyone’s exhausted. (And then yells at you if you dare criticize anything that’s put on the fanbase’s pedestal.) It’s kind of the question of: should this really be about media criticism and whether it’s “objectively” good or bad, especially since this has been brought up so often for two decades now, or might it be better to think about how to have a more positive experience with something that you may not have had before?

Once you get rid of that mindset of “critical by default”, you start to realize things that the series did knock out of the park, or were exceptional, that got too obscured by the distractions of fixating on its plot -- 02 is a plot mess for sure, but I have never seen any series that is so sincere and earnest about its actual themes and things it wanted to say, and it’s something I love it even more for. And buried under that criticism of everyone not getting “equal attention” from an evolutionary forms perspective is the fact that, from a story perspective, they deliberately went out of their way to make sure everyone gets mostly equal focus, which is something that sticks out especially when you start watching other long-running series that aren’t as good about this, and although it’s not completely perfect by any means, they do a damn good job keeping everyone in the 8- and 6-person groups relevant to the very end, which is pretty impressive! And, in the end, you end up having a much healthier relationship with the series -- again, it’s not glossing over everything to pretend nothing is wrong per se, but rather, you’re able to appreciate it and love it for what it is, instead of constantly feeling like you’re making up for its “mistakes”.

#digimon #digimon adventure #digimon adventure 02 #digimon adventure last evolution kizuna #shihameta

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iamacolor · 4 years ago

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fashion queen! which nct era has the best fashun in ur opinion?? and if u were a designer which neos would u pick as ur models?

I was so excited to answer this that I wrote several pages and it basically turned into a style analysis for each unit so I sure hope you have some time on your hands to read everything I’ve just written! (I did not reread so sorry for any typing mistake)

NCT is known to be experimental in their music and that’s also the case in their styling so there’s a lot for me to get into even though sometimes it’s a miss. One thing I will say though is that when it comes to the styling in mv/teasers, what’s around the clothes is super important because if you have a very specific styling concept, your set design or graphic design needs to complement that and give the audience more clues on how to read all these elements together (the cherry bomb era is a great example of that with all the added graphic elements and the predominance of the colour pink) and recently I’ve found that the creative team has not really gone further than just putting nct in an outfit in front of a basic background so it makes for a pretty underwhelming result

But let’s move on to my favourite styling eras. I’m going to do this per unit (I’ll finish with NCT U) and define an era by its teaser pictures and the mv (and not go through all the performance looks during the promotion period)

I’m putting this under a read more because it’s reaaally long (I put pictures so that it’s not just one big chunk of text)

NCT 127

Easily the most experimental unit when it comes to fashion, especially in their first years where they would wear mix of sportswear, grunge references, avant-garde fashion and a lot of layers. When it comes to their debut “Firetruck”, I think it fitted the song really well but that it didn’t fit all the members equally (especially the younger ones, for me Taeyong and Taeil pulled it off the best – it’s expected of Taeyong but I also think that Taeil always stand out when they go for edgy/unconventional look, I think it really suits him).

Anyway, just to say that they were off to a very strong start and then I’m just going to kindly ignore the Limitless styling and move on to Cherry Bomb!

One thing nicely done for CB is how when you look at a group picture they’re clearly all following the same concept but they’re not necessarily matching or giving off the same vibes if you take them individually. I love the use of the colour pink which brings a) a great visual impact (you don’t ever see that much pink at once – especially on men) and b) an harmony despite the shapes and styles of their outfits being so vastly different, you’ve got ties, tousled, shirts, little frilled collars, stripes and all-over prints, sportswear and formal wear… (ex: taeyong’s short jacket is reminiscent of something a little luxurious, even maybe historical/noble with the little added embroidery-like details, it reminds me of these boleros jackets worn by toreros that are often red/gold VS doyoung’s overalls is an outfit that has a much more recent origin as it was first worn by factories workers, it’s usually blue or grey and is meant to be practical rather than pleasing to the eye -> here it fits very well with the general setting of the mv in what looks like an empty industrial storage space)

This second look is more of a game on how to deconstruct formal wear (there are less prints and no bold colours, their hair is less messy…) but they don’t just add sportswear like the bomber jacket, you can find rock or more “modern” elements with the leather jackets or the jean jackets. All in black and white so great contrast with the previous looks, although that mix and match concept is still there. My favourite elements are the checkered ones (worn by taeyong, taeil and haechan) as it reminds me of the strategy element of the chess game which fits pretty well with all the weapons and other arms visible in the mv (a bit like a nod to the game battleship)

This one I love that they developed their own print, especially since it’s another graphic element used elsewhere (see their album cover), because it’s a great way to really introduce their identity as a group, through the different visual elements they put out in a comeback, it’s like a logo but as a print. And all the teasers and the mv did a great job at mixing 2D/3D contents so that’s another nice way to be cohesive. It’s not my fave look out of the 3 (especially because I do not approve of that belt-suspenders-bag they gave Johnny, it’s like everything you don’t want to put a dancer in and it’s ugly as well) but I still like the fact that’s it’s another nod to the battle/strategy aspect of this comeback, like they’re on a mission to hit the stage and conquer it

Then fast forward to my other favourite one, Simon Says! (No teaser pictures here because they don’t show anything or they show not enough lol)

First of all THE MASKS

Oh how I wish they could’ve been shown more (imagine teasers with the members wearing them!!! I would’ve loved individual teasers based on each of the masks concepts) Once again, a great to have group concept without making everyone wear the same thing. They’re all super different and full of details. Haechan’s is the only one from what I could who’s mask is actually a mask and not a fully covering hood. The materials and techniques used on these are either evocative of “fragile” things like glass and flowers but theses elements have their own hidden strength. Some others are covered in lace, pearls, fringes or fur…all these things are usually considered to be precious or even luxurious but it covers their faces and their identity and they throw it away in rebellion (and I think it’s also super interesting how Taeyong who takes off his mask first has the least ornamented one)

Then the outfits themselves. Simon Says in an interesting MV because unlike most others they wear one outfit for most of the MV (the second one appears quite late in the mv and is lit and staged in a way that makes it less visible). It’s a mostly grey/white set of outfits which is usually a colour combo for office wear or maybe factory workers, it’s not something that can seem very exciting or edgy. The styling in these outfits reminds me of the works of Japanese designers who came to Paris in the 80’s and kind of shook the whole high fashion system by bringing a different type of shapes, aesthetic and purpose to fashion (Rei Kawakubo, Yohji Yamamoto…). These designers went on to become super successful and inspired another wave of “avant-garde” designers nicknamed “the 6 of Anvers” (Anvers is a city in Belgium), this group includes Martin Margiella, Dries Van Noten…And to me the outfits in Simon Says really fit into this aesthetic. Unconventional fits, various layers, it’s not so much mix and match than a work on contrast between structure and fluidity (Yuta’s half skirt with un-trimed edges, Haechan’s long shirt with the long bow and the fitted jacket, Mark’s top with the various see-through layers of different lengths…).

An other interesting details (which to me calls back to the mask and that tension in the song/concept of letting go/being free of expectations), is the way they all have thick strings tied on their feet/ankles. Not holding them back because their feet aren’t tied together but there’s still this clear restriction of the garment itself, a reminder that there are tied to something and not completely free (also an interesting choice when dressing dancers who would need to have no added weight or discomfort in their outfit to dance but visually something is holding their ankles)

Honorable mentions:

Kick It– they managed to create very memorable outfits while taking inspirations from already well known elements (both for the fighting/training outfits and the bomber jackets). The black and white outfits especially are very original as performance outfits/dancing clothes since the og garment they’re inspired by has already such a strong identity outside of the performing arts and I don’t think I’ve ever seen it be used as a stage outfit? Or concept? It’s a nice exemple of how you can take inspiration for something designed to be useful and to be efficient (in fighting) and turn it into an aesthetic.

Truthfully, martial art training outfit was already an “aesthetic” on its own but they made it a performance costume and now I do feel like it’s one of these looks that everyone will remember (like if there was a “most memorable kpop outfits” list it could easily have kick it’s black/white fits). The rest of the outfits for that concept weren’t as memorable/original to me although I feel like it showed a new approach to the styling of nct 127 as a group since they all had very similar outfits this time (especially when wearing the jackets).

Also, interestingly, that shot of Jaehyun that had everyone go “wow” ? Well it’s impactful because it’s him and he looks like that and it’s shot in a very specific way, but it’s also even more impactful because he’s the only one who gets to wear that kind of outfit in the mv. Everyone else has 3 sets of outfits (black and white, shiny black, red jacket and black pants) but he has 4 and that suit is only used in that shot which makes for a greater impact!

And I feel like Kick It in terms of styling opened a new era for NCT 127 has it kind of broke their usual mix and match/edgy concept. This time they were clearly referencing something already well known (either martial arts, the 90s…), and the members were all matching and they kept on doing that with the military jackets in punch, the other 90s concept in nct 2020…

Touch – for the way the outfits match the sets (in all their individual sets their outfits have a detail in a matching colour), the focus on colours !!! You can see that this whole concept was designed with this colour game/colour progression between the outfits and the set in mind. It’s just very pleasing to the eyes and a great contrast to their usual stuffs (also I wrote my graduation paper on colours so I am really into creative use of colours like this)

OK now moving on to Dream!!

The interesting thing about Dream compared to NCT 127 is that from the beginning although their outfits had to match the song an the concept of the comeback it also had to match their age. Dream’s a group that had to look young when debuting (to the point where they wore outfits that made them look even younger than they were which is rarely done for boy groups) and then they had to transition into adulthood, and all of that had to be made visible. In that aspect, I really like the styling for We Young and Boom (especially when you look at them at the same time).

For We Young, the styling is meant to be reminiscent of school/boy scout uniforms but with a marine vibe. It makes for playful outfits that aren’t too childish but that also aren’t grown up. I prefer the “seaside” outfits as I don’t really like school uniforms as a concept for styling and I think it’s really a choice that suited them and the song so well, it really fitted their energy. It’s playful but it also has a vintage touch to it as these outfits with their stripes and their squared flap at the back date back to the XIXth century (I just found out that it all started with the queen Victoria dressing up her kid in an outfit inspired by the royal navy uniforms for a painting after a cruise ).

Boom on the other side is their first proper “grown-up” concept. We go up was already more grown up but still very “teenager-ish” and although they were mostly teenagers when they did Boom it was clear that this was supposed to be their first entry into “adulthood” as a group at least. And although they did wear a sportswear/casual outfits which is something that isn’t related to age (and I really like the black and white “skeleton” set which already feels more grown-up and more “stylish” than the other casual outfit) , they wore two other “grown-up” elements: suits and all-jean outfits.

And yeah teenagers, and kids wear jeans too but a full jean-on-jean outfit is more of a “grown-up” fashion choice and it makes them look like young men rather than boys. As for the suits, I just really love when stylists play with the codes of that garment (length of the jacket, tightness of the pants, the way the shirt is tucked in…).

Notice how Renjun has a really short jacket, Chenle’s pants are wide, Jeno has a tail…Once again, a really interesting aspect of Kpop is the variations of the same concept based on the members. In the mv, there is a tension between their more grown up selves (the one in suits, the one with a craft/a path) and their young selves (the one running around in the field, the one laying down in the flowers and eating a cake). And there is also in these outfits and the contrast between them this tension, this contrast…which path should they go? The jeans are the more laide back, innocent outfits, whereas the suits come with responsibilities and status (and you’ll notice that in the scene where jisung is left alone to blow his candle it’s when he’s wearing jeans not when he’s in the suits).

Now on to WayV!!

WayV are different from the two in the sense than when they debuted they couldn’t have an “age” concept or an edgy concept because 127 and dream had already taken those and I feel like for that reason they’re still looking for what makes them stand out visually from the others (and in my opinion it’s not in whatever they were wearing for turn back time!). WayV’s concept is space and time travel, it’s building a new life, a new worl, going beyond anything! In my mind, they’re either supposed to feel a bit “otherworldly” (either spectacular or literally like they’re from another world/another universe, a little bit futuristic maybe?) or to look like explorers/travellers (they have a lot of travel/transportation “gears” references in their outfits). Their MVs also have a very different production than the other nct mvs (the scale and the way it’s filmed, the sets…it’s a different approach and it’s usually much more “grand” for their title tracks). The great thing about WayvV styling is usually that they match the outfits well with the world that the mv is set in (like in Moonwalk for example you get a sense of the world they’re in and the fact that it’s not ours or at least not as we know it now through the way they dress – you can’t really say oh it’s inspired by this era or by this or that because -at least- to me it immediately gives me a vibe of something that could be worn in a sci-fi movie, almost like a costume) or that they allude to travel in their styling.

When they debuted with Regular they went for a very sleek and high fashion look which worked really well for them! Even their more “casual” looks were a bit striking and I think that’s very “wayv-like” to me.

Same goes for Take Off where they mix the individual styles (and I don’t like ten’s leopard fur sleeveless jacket at all) and the group concepts – the “flying” outfits and the “racing” outfits (that last one is my favourite! I love the silhouette it creates with the tight pants and the larger tops with an emphasis on the waist).

There’s something a bit extra to WayV - which is why some of their outfits remind me of costumes more than fashion while at the same time they’re the most “high fashion” unit– like the “flying” outfit in Take Off are recognizable as “flying gear” but you can’t really tell what they’re flying, it feels once again like something that they could wear in like star wars or a similar kind of story.

Imagine a movie about 7 men on another planet trying to come together to overcome the dark forces or whatever’s bad on their planet in a futuristic society with a mix of “traditional” and “trendy” outfits? That’s WayV. The movie the 5th Sense? That’s WayV but on steroids. They’re also the only group with actual characters in their mvs, they’re all supposed to have a backstory or an individual setting and find a way to get together in their mvs.

Anyway all that to say that it’s hard for me to pick an era for them because they’ve only had a few and they still feel like they’re looking to solidify their concept, and since moonwalk and turn back time really set the styling in different worlds than ours, you have to look at how they fit in that world rather than ours and I think Moonwalk does it best since it’s the most cohesive one visually. But then I think Regular had the best individual styling!

Okay this is super long but we’re finally getting to NCT U!!!!

Number one favourite:

The Year Party outfits!!!! I’ve already talked about this but I love when they say we’ll put them in suits and then since they have to make a different one for each of them they cut bits an dpieces of the suits here and there, play with lengths. It’s not a revolutionary concept but in terms of searching for a shape, searching for variations of an already so famous, so well-known garment (everyone has seen a suit, and so many designers have already deconstructed it and then put it back together and so on) it’s so nice, it’s almost like a full collection given how many members there are and it’s just a good tailoring work.It almost feel like an exercise of how many variations of an outfit can you think of? And it looks fun to do! It’s all about the details and the way the layers are set together.

The accessories add to the “formal attire” aspect of it. It almost has a ceremonial look to it. A bit of royalty with the futuristic vibe usually associated with WayV. The dark blue suits were pretty classic, the most interesting details (for me at least) were on the light blue ones. Especially since it’s a rare colour to find in formal wear or in ceremonial wear. In general, I feel like it’s a pretty rare colour in fashion outside of like shirts and baby clothes? I think it was a great styling choice for a content like the year party although I do wish they (either NCT or WayV who’ve touched upon this kind of outfit a bit already) would do a full comeback with this kind of styling (like the lighter version of the black and green outfits in SuperM’s One). It’s not revolutionary but it was something new for NCT and I really hope they use that elegant/futuristic concept once again.

Also in these outfits, the jewelry is super important and adds to the “grand” aspect of these outfits. The concept is that these aren’t ordinary outfits for ordinary men, we’re witnessing something “special” and so they aren’t wearing their usual jewels either (of course the big chains are still there but differently look at that necklace jaehyun is wearing)

Honorable mention:

Boss & Baby Don’t Stop (they’re different but they go together in my mind lol). Look at them in their uniforms! And also they had doyoung wearing these sunglasses

Ok I think I’m done, if you’ve made it this far thank you so much and I hope it was a nice read!!

As for who would I chose as my models…it really depends on what I’d make them wear tbh for menswear the things I’d like to design would either be something like formal wear or knitwear – I’d pick Lucas, Taeyong and Doyoung (I think they’re the most model-like members and could pull off pretty much anything even my non-edgy concept because I can’t do that lol and they pose very well) and then depending on the concept I’d pick between Winwin, Jaehyun, Kun, Jungwoo, Taeil, Haechan and Shotaro (the way I struggled to remember all the members at once…there are too many really)

#this is soooo long omg I didn't know I had that much to say wow #I hope you've managed to read it all and that it was somewhat coherent and clear #now it's time to eat #nct #nct 127 #nct dream #wayv #nct 2020 #fashion #leemarx #I've got mail #vinformation

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stellahibernis · 4 years ago

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Lan Wangji: the Worst of Times

AKA Lan Wangji’s costumes in the Untamed, part 6/9

This is actually my favorite out of his outfits (by a very small margin, since I think they did an outstanding job throughout, but still), both aesthetically and thematically. It was also a horror to capture, because he’s either moving or we only see his face😤. Also, the filenames of four of my caps are some variation of oh no, since I was going through it while capping. (Did you know, the devastated expressions are so much worse at quarter speed?)

This costume is seen in the prologue of episode 1, in episodes 30-33, and in the flashback in episode 46. He’s having a horrible time throughout, but at least he looks good. As usual, I’ll talk first about the costume and then the context.

(Warning for some blood in one of the images, and there’s some discussion about the canonical character death.)

The Costume

On the scale between formal and informal, this costume falls right about in the middle. There are several layers with a robe over the sash which is more formal for him, but the sleeves are narrow which is on the informal side of things. There is a very obvious practical reason for the narrow sleeves, and that is the cliff scene. It really would have taken from the impact if Wei Wuxian had had his face full of white fabric half the time.

Despite the amount of layers, there is lightness in this outfit achieved with the fabric choices. The two top layers are very sheer, and it really adds character to this otherwise fairly simple outfit. Also the movement of it is absolutely gorgeous, which gives him a flair during the fight scenes. Another thing to note, due to the sheerness of the white layers the blue layer underneath can be seen through (the thematic significance of this is discussed in the second section).

One of the things I really like about his costumes is that there are repeated elements like his criss-crossed sash and the wrist wraps that we see with several of his outfits. I like that all of his outfits are distinctly his style, they’d feel wrong on Xichen for example, as would Xichen’s outfits on him. Both of their outfits are very much in the Lan Sect style, but also their own, which is really good design.

I think the robe on top has the same cut as the one in his Sunshot campaign outfit, especially the shoulder line is similar, but it has a different air since the fabric is lighter and it’s worn over the sash.

My favorite detail in this outfit is that the cloud embroidery is present but barely visible since it’s on the collar of the blue layer, partly (sometimes even mostly) covered with the white robe. There’s an interesting progression if you look at his three latest outfits; from the very prominent embroidery in the Sunshot outfit to the relatively understated one in the blue outfit before this, and now almost hidden.

In general, there are relatively few details in this outfit, and the fabrics are fairly simple. The only texture is the square pattern on the top layer, everything else is just even weave. Lan Xichen also has a robe made of the square patterned fabric, btw, it’s the one he wears in the last four episodes. I like the shared fabrics, because it's a plausible thing that would happen in-world.

The Context

Here he is judging all the Jins except maybe Zixuan really hard, as usual. Also the only good (although retroactively less so) moment for him in this outfit, since he got WWX invited to Jin Ling’s celebration.

Anyway, back to the white/blue color theory from previous installments, which in a way culminates here. This outfit is predominantly white, which signifies his dedication to his duty to his sect, but the blue layer underneath is very visible, the color a symbol of his dedication to WWX. This is a sign of conflict in him, which makes complete sense if we think back.

The last time we saw them together was at the Burial Mounds, and the whole sequence was about the push and pull between them and how they both wanted to make things work between the two of them but ultimately couldn’t due to circumstances and their personal issues (LWJ and his strict upbringing that he can’t get away from, and WWX with his fairly arrogant belief in his own skills and the “if you’re not with me you’re against me” attitude. They both do better in the present timeline). This outfit says LWJ went back to his duties and outwardly performed them, but his heart is still leaning toward WWX. And as we know, he ultimately chooses to discard what others consider his duty, and pays the price for it.

Same with the hidden embroidery, we could interpret it as a sign of his doubts about everything he’s been taught, because it’s no longer so obviously on display on him. It is still there, because there is no shedding his connection to his sect and his upbringing, but he is very conflicted.

Things are really not going well for him (or anyone else, for that matter).

Sometimes I wonder at which point did LWJ start to think there might be no way of actually getting WWX out of this pickle. It might be this one, where he’s momentarily so worried and distracted that he gets injured. I definitely think that when they stand at the cliff he already knows losing WWX is getting extremely probable explicitly because he can tell WWX himself is giving up.

We’re steering away from the costumes now, but since it’s my post, I’m just going to take a moment to gush about the acting in this scene, by both of them. They only have a few lines of dialogue (“Wei Ying, come back” / “Lan Zhan, let me go”), and yet we know exactly how they feel and think. LWJ has exactly the right kind of mix of fear and despair of losing WWX and the determination to try to hold on, and furthermore to try to get WWX to want to hold on in turn. And WWX is in peace with his choice to end his life, but in agony over the pain (both the heartache and the physical from the injury) LWJ is feeling. This is the first time he’s seeing how far LWJ would go for him, and there are a few more in the present time (I think it finally sinks in episode 47).

This drama is so pretty even when breaking everyone’s hearts.

Next, we get to the present time and the outfit he wears the most in this series (with a brief detour to the barely glimpsed costumes from the flashback in 43). One of the fun things to talk about is how they subtly use the silhouette to make him appear older.

You can find the other parts of this series on my blog’s “lwj costume series” tag or via the blog contents page. I’d link for convenience but *gestures at the whole site*.

#the untamed #the untamed meta #cql #cql meta #lan wangji #costume design #lwj costume series #cql rambles

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fashionandbunny · 4 years ago

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The Kimono and It’s Development

“To think of clothes only in terms of efficiency is to disregard the human element. If people have to work, they also have to play.” - P.12

Causes of Early Development

Climate

As an island nation, Japan suffers from extremely hot and humid summers, thus the need for something that wouldn’t cause heat exhaustion was dearly needed

Constructing wooden-framed buildings

This is linked to the Japanese tradition of sitting on the floor, which arose a need for something that is easy to sit on the floor in.

Side Note! There is evidence that in early Japanese times, there was a period where it was common for everyone to wear dress consisting of separate upper and lower garments like in the West.

Early Influences: The Chinese Hanfu and Juni-Hitoe

China’s T’ang Dynasty (618-907) had a big influence on Japan in terms of fashion during the Japanese Nara Period (710-784)

Japan really liked the Chinese ‘Hanfu’ and used that style of dress. Japanese nobility grew out of the style slightly around the 10th century during the Heian Period, but the commoner class would continue to dress in a ‘Hanfu’ like garment until the Kamakura Period (1192-1333)

Interestingly enough, the hanfu is making a come back in current Chinese fashion

Roughly what a hanfu would look like. Photo pulled from here. If anyone knows of any museums with public photos of extant hanfu please message me so I can change this picture.

The Heian Period brought about the style of ‘Juni-Hitoe’ (“twelve robes”) which only high ranking noble women wore for specific occasions. This style, though only worn by a small number of people, and only during certain occasions, is essential to the development of the kimono, as we shall see later.

[talking about the robes used] “Each one was simple in color and design, but the aim was the complex beauty at the collar and sleeve openings, where the color of all twelve robes were visible.” -P. 25

Photo pulled from here.

Kamakura Period: Politics enters the world of fashion (unsurprisingly)

The Kamakura Period marked a big political change for Japan. The Taira Family, which had been running the court system of Japan, had been taken over by the samurai class, marking the end of the Heian Period. The samurai, now in charge of the nation, were looking to separate themselves from what had come before. They wanted to create their own culture.

Kamakura Period women, looking to separate themselves from the previous Heian noblewomen, slowly changed from wearing multilayers (“kasame-gi”) to a single layer (“hitoe-gi”).

Enter the Kosode

The Kosode was originally the undergarment robe worn when a lady wore the Juni-Hitoe style. Now that women were only wearing one robe, the kosode transitioned from an undergarment to an outer garment.

“Kosode is an old name for the form of dress that is now usually simply called kimono.” - P.13

A Necessary Side Note: Characterizing Kimono Types

I find it easiest to think of kimono as an umbrella term, because kimono have different names depending on the type of sleeve it has and/or the type of material it is made of and/or the occasion it would be worn on. This is important to note when looking at extant garments to understand who would have worn it, when, and why. The different types of kimono covered in this book are…

Kosode (“small sleeves”)

Oftentimes sleeves are totally sewn shut; looking to the picture we see there is no gap between the torso section and the sleeves. Also we see that the sleeves are a bit short.

Ended up being associated with the lower class for a while

Photo Source Second half of the Edo Period Silk and metallic thread embroidery with resist dyeing on satin damask Cherry blossoms, a fence, and carriage wheels The Met

Hirosode (“wide sleeves”)

Wide as in arm to floor length

Sleeve end left open

Worn by the upper class for a while

Osode (“large sleeves”)

Large as in shoulder to wrist length

Furisode (“swinging sleeves”)

Only a quarter of the sleeve is open

Considered a special type of kosode

Photo Source 1912-1926 Silk crepe; freehand paste-resist dyed, embroidered in silk and metallic threads with applied gold and silver Boat filled with flowers on swirling water, pine tree, plum blossoms and maples The Khalili Collection

By this point (end of the Kamakura Period, beginning of the 13th century) we essentially have today’s kimono. This garment will not be seeing any more physical alterations. However, the kimono will go through many design/patterning/technique shifts from this point forward. The book continues to refer to kosode specifically, so I shall as well.

“Again, however unique it may be, unless it is also aesthetically pleasing, it is not worth the nation’s pride.” - P.10

Azuchi-Momoyama Period: When Color Filled the Streets

Up until this point (~1300 all the way to ~1573) the kosode would remain frugal and simple so as to adhere to the samurai way of life until…

The period of 1573-1603 (Azuchi-Momoyama Period) had a strong focus on abandoning the old and letting in the new after years of warfare. Class was ignored and creative freedom reigned. There was a large focus on personal freedom.

Men began exploring more color and design in their clothing

Photo Source Late Azuchi-Momoyama Period Plain weave with un-glossed warps and glossed wefts silk Paulownia leaves and arrows Dofuku worn by Toyotomi Hideyoshi Kyoto National Muesum

Better pictures here.

Red light districts and theaters went crazy with their fashion during this period

“Prostitution was a way of keeping alive for women who found themselves in reduced circumstances as a result of the wars… the women wore kosode of striking design. Most of the kosode of that period left today are garments once worn by members of wealthy families; no example of kosode used by courtesans is extant. Perhaps such garments were used until they were completely worn out.” - p.32

Sadly this period only lasted from 1573-1603 and then…

Edo Period: The Lame People Take Over

During this period the shogunate emphasized people acting within their class status. There were many new rules created desperately trying to regulate fashion. However, as many rules as they made, rules can never stop the creative flow of fashion.

There would actually be a shift away from the kosode to focus on the obi and what a person could do with it creatively.

The licensed district (approved red light districts) and theaters became hot spots of fashion.

“The fact that the licensed quarters acted as a hothouse for the development of the impractical hairstyles of the time, with their ornamental combs and hairpins, is an indication of how eagerly personal adornment was pursued in the island of freedom.” -p.39

It was during this period that the theater truly began to change the fashion world…

Part 2

#kimono #historical fashion #japanese historical fashion #fashion #research #research notes #historical #japan #kimonos #kosode

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void-galaxy-shenanigans · 3 years ago

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History of Capes & Cloaks Infodump

Intro & Disclaimer:

This is not a perfect, exhaustive collection of all the possible history on capes & cloaks. It’s a one-day curiosity search, and a collection of what we found. We aren’t experts & this information may not all be 100% accurate since it was just a quick search. But after the last post on capes & cloaks blew up, our curiosity was piqued, so a few of our formal-research loving headmates banded together with curious people at front (Spirit, Nico, Alyosha, & others) to make this.

——

Capes:

They were created to offer a layer of protection (from the elements/weather mostly).

Some sources trace the word back to ancient French (cloke) and Latin (cloca), and suggest that might hint at its origins. (During medieval times, capes were often referred to as “mentels.”)

The earliest recorded instance of a cape dates to a 1066 illustration of a soldier or shepherd that had a cape draped across his shoulder. Another one in the 1300s depicted a woman with a cape attached to the collar of her dress.

Early capes used to be just round pieces of cloth that were attached to someone’s collar. Over time, they evolved into more complex styles that demanded tailoring and intricate stitching.

Eventually, capes and the like were used to signify rank/occupation (e.g. monks, royalty). Higher ranking people were given more complex, better stitched, and often fur lined capes.

In the Victorian era, cloaks became popular in the fashion industry and exploded in popularity. Colours and styles signified standing in society and sometimes occupation; for example, scarlet red (which was considered a “powerful colour”) indicated “good breeding and a high standing in society”. Capes were also worn as rainwear/raincoats in the European military in wars up to & throughout the 1900s (in the U.S., capes are still authorized as an alternative to trench coats for army officers).

As capes became more and more popular (into the 1920s), they started becoming less useful for actual weather protection and more cocoon-like, paired with “stylish evening looks”. In the 1950s, designers turned the cape into what resembles a modern “figure 8 scarf” and completely eliminated its original functionality and weather protection, and that caused capes to fall out of fashion.

In the 1970s, ponchos made to look similar to capes blipped into popular fashion temporarily. Ponchos and long coats have since basically replaced true capes, and true capes slipped out of popular fashion.

——

Cloaks:

The first cloaks were used as a blankets/bed coverings worn as clothing. The earliest recorded cloaks were made of piece of cloth with a hole cut in the center for the head (they looked somewhat like a poncho). Early indigenous peoples in the Americas, as well as Ancient Romans, Scots, and Arabs (throughout the middle ages) often used cloaks as a bad weather covering, sometimes (or often) with no other clothes underneath.

Roman cloaks had many different styles. There could be short shoulder length styles, hip-length, knee length or ankle length; style depended on the the class & status of the Roman wearing the cloak. Different styles had their own names: a unisex/gender neutral simple cloak was called paenula; Roman Soldiers & Roman officers wore cloaks called sagum (soldiers wore red ones; officers wore scarlet ones); Roman generals wore a purple cloak fastened by a large brooch on one shoulder (to help others spot & identify generals from a distance) that was called lacerna; Roman Emperors wore an expensive ankle length cloak fastened with a gold or jewelled clasp or brooch that was called paludamentum; Roman priests wore a thick, round woolen cloak that was called leana; & a colourful decorated cloak called palliuim was reserved for the wealthy. All cloaks were simply designed; it was not until the Renaissance that tailored cloaks were worn. Some cloaks had hoods, & some cloaks buttoned in the front like a long coat.

18th century Britain brought cloaks back in the form of cardinal/scarlet hooded cloaks made of wool that was double milled to make it weather-resilient. (Scarlet was just a name for a cloak; it was available in other colours too.) Cloaks were made to be shorter over time, inspiring a “hip length mantelet” in the 1890s. By the 1890s, wool, satin, silk, pleated chiffon, velvet, lace and taffeta fabrics were all options cloaks could be made from. By the 1900s coats almost completely replaced cloaks as all-purpose weather protection, & cloaks became fancy evening wear. In 1950s they briefly become day wear again (made out of tweed & mohair), but they fell out of fashion again to become “special occasion” wear.

——

Why Are Witches Usually Depicted With Capes/Cloaks?:

Historically, cloaks & capes offer a layer of protection & sometimes indicated high status; witches are also often associated with protection spells and being older than they look (& powerful in some way), so it became popular (especially after the play Dracula (with performer Bela Lugosi) came out in England) to include capes & cloaks as a part of witch costumes (as well as vampire costumes & some other fantasy costumes). Also, capes & cloaks give them a dramatic flare & might have been used to make them seem more magical/more than (or above) human.

#capes #cloaks #cape #cloak #history #infodump

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winterrose527 · 4 years ago

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I’m voting early tomorrow in Texas bc it’s my birthday and I wanna give my vote an extra oomph. I’m gonna wear blue since can’t wear specific political stuff and go with my friend.

I’d like something with a supernatural element for Myrcella and Robb, please. Maybe a ghost story.

Oh my goodness, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DARLING! So so happy you were born, and so happy that you are taking the opportunity to do that most important thing - vote!

Here you go, it may be a bit different than you were expecting...

Only Sansa Stark could make enough friends in a week and a half to fill the entire bottom floor, and part of the grounds, of their new home.

Home.

Robb looked around the grand room he was in, completely with coffered ceilings and marble pillars. It didn’t look like any home he was used to. Their home up North had been large but well… homey. It had been full of wood and old photographs and at least one fireplace was going at any given time.

The kids had been overwhelmed when their parents showed them this place, with the pool and the tennis courts and the all of it. Sansa had nearly fainted when his parents showed her the suite she’d call her own, complete with the dressing room and a separate sitting room.

It was far too King’s Landing for him though. He didn’t care about more room for his clothes, especially because none of the ones he wore up North were usable now.

It was Halloween and it was warm. Really warm.

Up North, Sansa would always complain that having to wear a coat over her costume or layers underneath ruined the effect. Tonight though, she’d worn her toga and sandals and headdress and looked every inch a queen - no parka in sight.

She’d had the idea to throw a party last weekend and their parents, so grateful that one of their children was adjusting, had readily agreed. He hadn’t paid much attention to the details, too focused on his college applications and football practice, so when he’d come downstairs this afternoon and saw a giant cauldron on the lawn being filled by uniformed waiters with water and apples it had been his first indication that the party was going to be more than a few friends.

He recognized some people as he walked through. There were people dressed as weirwolves, and minions, and nurses. One girl dressed as a bubble bath, which was far more endearing than the countless girls dressed as cats. He nodded at a guy from his football team who was dancing with a girl in his homeroom, the pair of them dressed up as characters from some show everyone was watching.

Sansa was somewhere, the belle of the ball. She fit in better down here than any of his other siblings, better than him. Though, she actually tried to when the rest of them were focused on getting back North to their real lives.

He tried not to be a grouch about it, to set a good example, but this was his senior year. He was supposed to finish it with Theon and Jon, get their last championship and do Senior Prank Day and Senior Skip Day and Prom with all the people he’d been going to school with since Kindergarten.

And he hated everyone in the south for not being them.

He walked through the kitchen where a couple was making out against the fridge and down the hallway past his father’s study to the library. He rarely came in here, but he just needed a few minutes away from the music and the people to gather himself.

The light was on, which was weird because it had been made clear that everything past the kitchen was off-limits. He looked around warily, figuring that a couple had come in here to do more than make out.

“Oh!,” a surprised voice said.

He turned towards the window, surprised he hadn’t seen her standing there before. She was a wisp of a thing, to be sure, but with her golden hair and sparkly dress she was hard to miss.

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said, adding in his head in my family’s private room.

That wasn’t the sort of thing you said out loud to a girl who looked like her though.

“That’s alright,” she said and then smiled, as though they shared a private joke, “I suppose I’m the one that startled you.”

There was something in her voice - money and honey but something else that he couldn’t really place.

“A good surprise,” he admitted and then scratched his cheek, “Though uh, I’ll admit you’re not really supposed to be in here.”

The girl looked around the room and smirked, “Tell me about it.”

“What?,” he asked.

At the same time though she said, “I’m Myrcella.”

“Robb,” he waved awkwardly.

“It’s a pleasure to know you,” she smiled and he couldn’t help but smile back.

“I… haven’t seen you around,” he told her.

She looked to be a year or two younger than him, maybe Sansa’s class, so they wouldn’t have any classes together. Even still, he definitely would have remembered her if he’d seen her in passing. She looked prissy, and certainly spoke prissily, so it was possibly she went to a different private school in the area.

Sansa would have died over her costume. Like her, Myrcella had chosen a historical one. She was dressed as a flapper, but it didn’t look cheap the way the ones in the costume stores always did. He wondered vaguely if the dress had belonged to someone in her family.

More acutely he was focused on the girl inside it.

She placed her hands behind her back and nodded, looking out the window, “I don’t come out very much.”

“Why not?,” he wondered, “Too shy?”

She looked at him and bit her lip, “Something like that.”

“Well I can leave you…,” he started, hoping she’d say no.

She shook her head, “It’s nice to talk to someone.”

He nodded and went towards her. She looked at him like he was a hunter, so he tried to appear as non-threatening as possible when he sat on the couch.

She sat in one of the arm chairs, crossing her legs at the ankles. Her skin was practically shimmering under the overhead light.

“So how’d you know to come over here?,” he wondered.

She looked at him and said, “Want to know a secret?”

“Yes,” he agreed readily.

“I used to live here,” she told him.

“Oh!,” he exclaimed. “That’s… that must be strange to be back here then.”

She smiled, “Truth be told, it feels like I never left.” They could hear the music getting louder and she closed her eyes, “It’s just splendid that there are parties here again.”

He wondered when she’d lived here. Maybe as a little girl. It was unusual for people to move out of their family homes, unless there had been a tragedy. Death, debt, or divorce.

He looked at her, really looked. Even with the golden hair and the perfect cheek bones and the sparkling eyes, it was clear. This was a girl that had seen a tragedy or two.

“Wha-,” he started to ask but then he heard a loud crash. “Fuck - sorry, I um… I have to go see what that was… can you… will you be here…will you stay?”

She smiled sadly, “Oh, at least for a little while.”

He nodded and got up. He should ask for her number, just in case, but that crash sounded bad. He waved at her and ran out.

The crash was bad. There were two guys fighting in the front hall and they’d knocked over an antique vase. More people had crowded in.

It was a half hour before he’d been able to fully break it up, and by that time people had gotten a little out of hand. He and Sansa decided it was time for the party to be over, so they ushered everyone out the door.

By the time the last person had left it was after midnight. He ran to the library but found it empty, and cold.

Disappointed, he went up to bed and called Jon. He and Theon were at a party and they put him on speaker phone so that the whole party could say hi. When he hung up he turned out the light, wanting to fall asleep quickly, and sleep through the rest of the year.

That night though he had the strangest dream. Myrcella was there, dressed just as she had been that night, but everyone else was dressed like her too. There was something he had to tell her. Urgently. Like his life depended on it - or hers did. He kept getting close to her and then she’d slip away. And then there was a bang! and he woke up.

He padded downstairs to the kitchen and saw Arya sitting at the island eating cereal and his Mom unloading the dishwasher.

“Mornin’,” he grumbled.

“Our hero,” Arya cooed at him.

His Mom looked over at him, “Morning baby, thank you for keeping things from getting too out of hand.”

He shrugged, getting himself a mug for coffee, “Sorry about the vase.”

He sat down next to Arya and sipped his coffee, picking a piece of cereal out of her bowl. She slapped his arm but nudged her bowl closer to him anyway.

“So,” his Mom said, “Did you manage to have any fun at all?”

To his surprise he nodded. His mom looked at him in surprise and he said, “I met a girl.”

“Ooooooh,” Arya teased, making kissy faces.

He clamped his hand over her mouth and looked at his Mom’s happy face and explained, “She used to live here.”

At that his Mom’s face fell into a look of confusion, “Robb this house was vacant when we bought it. Had been for… oh say…. thirty years? The last owner didn’t have any children, and it had been his since…I think the twenties…Are you sure that’s what she said? Could she have meant in King’s Landing?”

He thought about it and nodded, “I…I guess she could have? I haven’t seen her around. You’re sure about the previous owners?”

She nodded, “Yes, it was a Mr. Baelish who owned it. A bachelor til the end… there’s some things of the house’s past owners still in the library… we’ve hardly moved anything… so you can check but I’m almost positive.”

“Okay,” he shrugged, “I’m going to go for a run.”

He went upstairs and got changed into shorts and a t shirt and pulled on his sneakers and grabbed his head phones. He was going to take a run in the woods, there was a path that he liked, so he went down the back staircase.

He was about to walk out the door when he saw that the door to the library was open.

Usually he wasn’t so curious, but it was a bit strange. She’d made it seem like she’d lived here. Not in King’s Landing. In this very house.

He walked inside and started looking on the book shelves. Mostly it was musty copies of old books, their gilded letters starting to fade.

He was about to give up when his hand, seemingly on its own, found its way to a leather bound album. He felt a chill go down his spine when he touched it, which was ridiculous. He was just creeping himself out.

He grabbed it off the shelf and sat down on the couch and opened it to the first page.

The Baratheon Family, 1921 - it said on the first page. It wasn’t printed, the way their family albums sometimes were, but written in an elegant, almost lazy scrawl.

He opened the first page and saw the house. Even in sepia tone it was still the same. He turned the page and saw a large brown haired man standing with a smaller one. The larger man was smiling but the smaller man was smirking.

The person had written, Daddy and Mr. Baelish.

On the next page was an elegant woman, that looked somehow familiar. She was beautiful but scowling.

Mumsie, Summer 1921.

He turned the next page and saw two blonde haired boys, the oldest only a year or so older than him.

Underneath this photograph the same person had scrawled. Tommy and Joff, Summer 1921.

He turned the next page and his heart stopped. It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be possible.

But there, looking back at him was Myrcella. She was dressed similarly to how she’d been last night, an effervescent smile on her face.

Underneath it the person had written, Me, me as bright as can be!, Summer 1921

He looked through the rest of the album. She was there a number of times, with the boy named Tommy, and the dour woman. A picture of a whole lot of them, other golden haired dandies and powerful men. Mr. Baelish, with that same smirk.

He was starting to feel lightheaded, but it didn’t make sense. None of it made sense.

In spite of his better judgment, he pulled out his phone and typed Myrcella Baratheon into the search. There were listings for a couple of numbers and he kept scrolling and then came across the following headlines.

Violence Strikes King’s Landing

The Tragedy of Myrcella Baratheon

Bootlegging Scheme gone wrong, daughter pays the price

He clicked on that one and read the story. It appeared that Robert Baratheon ran a successful bootlegging operation, and a man named Petyr Baelish had been part of his crew. There was a sting operation, Baelish had cooperated with the feds to catch Robert and his sons and wife, who were all part of it. Myrcella Baratheon was meant to be out of the house, attending a party with the man whom everyone was convinced would soon be her fiance, Trystane Martell, but she heard shouting as she was about to leave and ran into library. She spooked someone, though the article did not say who, and was shot three times in the chest.

He clicked out of that article and into the one titled The Tragedy of Myrcella Baratheon. The story was written by a teetotaler, who was using Myrcella as an example of how innocent lives were being ruined by drink.

In spite of his better judgment, he said to the room, “Myrcella?”

Unsurprisingly, no one answered. He went back to the first article and his blood ran cold.

It was dated November 1, 1921. She had died on Halloween night, nearly a hundred years before.

He placed the album down on the couch and as if on its own it felt to the last page. There was no picture, just the elegant scrawl.

See you next year.

#prompt #robbcella #halloween

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wisdomrays · 3 years ago

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TAFAKKUR: Part 347

THE UNIVERSE IN THE LIGHT OF MODERN PHYSICS

‘The least understood aspect of the universe is its being understandable,’ said Einstein.

These words attempt to pierce the veil of habit that develops in our minds from not looking into the reason for things. The perfection of the order operative in the universe is of such a degree that it prevents us from being aware of it. In the same way, we only become aware of the faultless operation of the watches we have worn on our wrists for years when they stop working.

In the world-view developed upon the foundation of Newton’s laws of motion, the universe was likened to a flawlessly operating watch. Events were tied to one another in a cause-effect relationship and our knowing the laws of this relationship allowed us to predict events with great accuracy. It was possible to determine with mathematical exactness a wide range of phenomena, from the times of eclipses of sun and moon to the amount of fuel and the speed needed to put an object into orbit around the earth. The success of these ‘natural laws’ led many people to believe that they completely expressed and ‘ruled’ the whole order of the universe.

Because God creates and sustains all things and events from behind the veil of universal general laws, because certain events (causes) are followed reliably by similar events (effects) each time they (the causes) occur, it begins to be supposed that the causes are responsible for or ‘create’ the effects. This is, of course, a gross error, as no number of causes suffices to create even a little effect; for every event even the tiniest, the whole universe must be presupposed first, including the laws operative within it. Moment by moment, all things and all events are created and sustained by God, Who wills from an infinite range of alternative possibilities a particular actuality.

The clockwork model of the universe derived from Newtonian or classical physics is not a complete account of the phenomena which we observe in the universe. Already in the late 19th century, scientists had been bewildered by the lines that turned up in the light spectra emitted by heated gases: the steady, stable clockwork model predicted did not happen. Also, there were problems explaining the behaviour of light: sometimes it made more sense as a beam of particles, sometimes as a wave.

Today our understanding of the universe is very far from the ‘clockwork’ model. The shift in understanding occurred in the first quarter of the 20th century, beginning in 1900 with the publication of Max Planck’s work on radiation. The problem Planck worked on for six years was that the actually measured radiation from hot bodies did not conform to the values predicted by the classical theory. He put forward the suggestion that bodies radiating energy did so, not evenly and continuously, but unevenly and discontinuously in tiny packets or ‘quanta’. So startling was this suggestion that, despite confirmation by experiment, Planck himself thought of his theory as solving the problem of radiation by a sort of trick.

But then, in 1905, Albert Einstein published an article using the notion of packets of energy of definite sizes to explain how electrons are ejected from metal when light (radiation) falls on it. Whereas classical theory had predicted that the voltage (measure of the energy of the electrons ejected) would be proportional to the intensity of the light (radiation), Einstein showed that it was proportional instead to the frequency of the radiation. The conformity of this explanation with experimentally observed results gained Einstein the Nobel Prize. (Einstein didn’t receive the prize for his famous theory of relativity.) The significance of these findings and theories was not fully appreciated at the time.

A few years later in 1910, Ernest Rutherford did a ground-breaking experiment. He bombarded a thin layer made up of gold atoms with high energy particles and showed that the atom contained an extremely small positively-charged nucleus with negatively-charged electrons moving around it. Following the classical physics model, these electrons should have been small particles orbiting the nucleus in the same way as the planets orbit the sun, steadily losing energy until they fell on to the nucleus-in other words, the atom should have been unstable. Again it was a rejection of the classical model, three years later, by Niels Bohr, that helped solve the problem. Bohr argued that the electrons must move in fixed orbits until deflected by the absorption or emission of a unit of energy.

Atoms emit radiation after various external signals and only at specific wave lengths. As Einstein said, every different color of light is composed of energy packets inversely proportional to its wave-length (frequency). Because the Planck constant (h) is very small, the energy of these packets is also very, very small. For example, a normal light bulb emits 1020 light packets (photons) a second. Each of these photons is created when an activated atom or molecule passes to its normal or ‘basic state.’ Thus light, which allows us to see and which is a basic building block of life, develops as a result of the motions (in wave form) of electrons. The concepts of classical physics could successfully explain many of the events of daily life, but it couldn’t explain events on the subatomic level.

During those years (1910-1925) physics fell into a state of confusion because of the many measurements that conflicted with general theory and could not be explained by it. This situation was to lead W. Pauli (later to discover the principle fundamental to the understanding of the structure and characteristics of elements) to say he would rather have been a singer or gambler than a physicist. Actually in order to explain the observations being made, the whole way in which physical events had been understood required fundamental revision by wholly new methods. This was achieved by Werner Heisenberg, a 24 year-old physicist described by his teachers as a person who dealt with the essence of a subject rather than getting bogged down in detail, a person with powerful concentration and ambition. Perhaps the success of this young mind can be explained by the critical perspective he developed through reading the works of great men such as Kant and Plato, which was later supported with sound knowledge he got from great physicists. Heisenberg, who relaxed from work by climbing rocks and reading poetry, said: ‘It was around three in the morning when the calculations were completed and the solution to the problem appeared in front of me. First I experienced a great shock. I was so excited that I didn’t even think about sleeping. I left the house and, sitting on a rock, I waited for the sunrise.’

Like the other scientists who established quantum physics, Heisenberg was a philosopher-physicist. The philosophy he accepted and advocated that allowed him to interpret atomic events is as follows: ‘Even though it is successful with classical physics, the language we use to explain physical events in the atom or its surroundings is insufficient. For this reason, after making a specific measurement in a quantum system (for example, an atom), using that knowledge we can get a theory that will tell us what kind of results we can find in the next measurement. But it’s not possible to say anything about what takes place between the two measurements.’

What pushed Heisenberg to make such a statement was that the mathematical tools he used to develop a theory that could explain the observed discontinuity of energy in light and atoms were abstract concepts that had not been used before. In classical physics the numbers we know were used to give value to matter’s position, speed, size, etc. In Heisenberg’s quantum mechanics, these sizes were expressed with infinite dimensional n x n matrices which enabled physicists to calculate the properties attributed to electrons (energy, position, momentum, angular momentum) in an approximate way. Because these abstract mathematical expressions didn’t have an equivalent in everyday spoken language, it wasn’t possible to approach them with a classical understanding. It was observed that in order to measure the position of an electron, the experimenter necessarily altered its velocity. This problem was formally expressed in 1927 in Heisenberg’s famous Uncertainty Principle.

Independently of Heisenberg, Erwin Schrodinger made another significant breakthrough in mathematical description of electrons. Inspired by the hypothesis put forward two years earlier by De Broglie about the wave properties of matter particles, Schrodinger developed a ‘wave mechanics’ by which the movement of particles could be calculated. (figure: 1) But the fundamental question remained as to what these strange and original ‘waves of matter particles’ or ‘waves accompanying matter particles’ were.

The mathematical formulations devised by Heisenberg and Schrodinger are complementary in the sense that physicists use whichever best resolves the particular calculations they are trying to make. There is no formally distinct space between the scientists and the phenomena they are seeking to understand and manipulate: their means of observation and manipulation (the mathematics) in some sense ‘posit’, put in place, the very phenomena whose place (among other properties) they are trying to determine. Alongside the notion of an infinite array of rows and points, as invented by Heisenberg, to plot the position or motion of a sub-atomic particle, physicists and philosophers of physics have begun to speak of arrays of events or ‘stories’ to try to explain, in something resembling ordinary language, the ideas they are handling. This cannot be described as a world-view in the way that the Newtonian physics confirmed and sustained a world-view, but it is nevertheless a clear and distinct disposition which, instead of excluding God as the Force Who wound up the clockwork and then retired from His creation, admits the in-completeness and uncertainty of human knowledge as a structural element of reality-in other words, the uncertainty is not a function of our present ignorance (to be relieved by future knowledge), but an actual constituent of the way reality is.

Quantum physics, at least figuratively and metaphorically, has became a vehicle for the interpretation of such concepts as matter, beyond-matter, energy, existence and non-existence in a way nearer to Divine sources; and led to many physicists settling accounts with their conscience and turning towards God Who is understood to be simultaneously transcendent and immanent, there and here.

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ohmrbell · 4 years ago

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Finding Peace (Micah Bell x reader) Chapter 2

That first night staying in the mountains was awful, the build up of heat that had previously gathered in the cabin had fully dissipated and left only a deathly chill falling over each of us as we attempted rest. The cabin had collapsed areas creating holes in the walls and roof allowing chunks of snow to cascade inside covering the damaged floor. Every so often a strong wind would blow through so cold it would rattle my bones provoking me to bury my face further into my leather coat. The coat had soft furs surrounding the neck that I pulled up to cover my mouth. I huffed hot breathe into the inside to keep some heat there. Mrs Adler had taken to the same idea as she rapped up into one of her shawls opposite me also still awake.

The rest of the girls all decided on cuddling up into the most sheltered corner of the cabin including Jack to provide more warmth but I choose to stay distant. I fit in with most of the camp don’t get me wrong but I was very different than the rest of the women. What we have in common is our strength and our ability to fight for life but I just show it more publicly and consistently than the others. I prefer to make use of my talents by robbing, killing, hunting alone and with the men. All of which I know they can do too but prefer not to. I enjoy having company but cuddling for heat is not an activity I would care to partake in even if it means I’ll suffer. The Noise in the cabin has now finally fallen still and Mrs Adler has taken slumber. Soft breaths and snores echo in the room accompanying the creaking of the old wood boards and the gentle cries of the wind. It would probably be in my best interest to catch at least a bit of sleep so I leaned back into my grey padded bedroll and covered my face with my hat, tossing and turning from side to side until I eventually passed out.

I began to stir due to the voices around me and the fact that I was being lightly shaken. I open my eyes to see Mary Beth leaning over me “Mrs Grimshaw wanted me to wake you she wants us to grab some firewood” I nodded my head at her and sat up, my whole body felt stiff from sleeping on the cold floor. I’m used to sleeping on the floor but the added elements don’t make it very enjoyable. I began to stretch out my frozen limbs once I was standing before gripping my black hat, pulling my coat in tighter and readjusting my steel toe boots. Walking over to the door I looked back at Mary Beth who was borrowing another jacket off Karen before joining me in the wilderness.

I pushed open the fragile door putting most of my body weight into it in order to shove it past the thick snow which had settled while we slept. I slipped on my worn leather gloves and made my way towards the woods. I took a few long strides until I reached the treeline turning to wait on Mary Beth. I felt bad for her being up here she is a very slim and small women whose frame is most definitely not suited to this type of climate but yet she’s a trooper who never complains, she waddled here way towards me exhaling clouds of frost from her hot breath in the cold air. “ It’s freezing out here y/n, we best get moving on fast” “I know we’ll be quick, c’mon this way” I guided her up a steep path layered with cobblestones and dirt which lead into a small clearing, we both rushed to grab any salvageable wood and sticks we could find “ I used to think the snow was beautiful, I would dream to live in a place like this, always seemed so romantic in my books” she let out a soft sigh “well I don’t think you should believe your books to much Mary Beth ain’t all sunshine and rainbows” I jested back at her. She scoffed but her face held a smile. “ All right I think we have enough for today we can head back now” I muttered following her back down the path and towards Colter. We collected a decent amount of kindling which we distributed around the cabins, most of the camp were awake by now and I gave out a string of good mornings to those who passed by. Once we finished our task we headed towards where we slept. Approaching the cabin door I stopped “you head on in Mary Beth I’ll grab ya some food”. She smiled at me graciously before hurrying inside and closing the door behind her.

I continued on past the cabin and to the half shack where Pearson had set up his stuff. Charles and Arthur have just returned from a hunt so there will actually be some meat in this stew. I have decided however that stew is my least favourite food now, eating the same thing everyday is dull, but I understand it’s hard to offer variety in our position. “Hey Pearson” the man turned around and my face twisted in disgust “Jesus, ever think of cleaning up” I snapped at him then laughed, he was covered in grease, animal blood and god knows what else. “Lovely to see you miss L/N” he snarled at me sarcasm dripping from his tongue. “I’m grabbing me and Mary Beth some food, maybe I’ll keep it down this time” I said muttering the latter, Pearson just let out a groan and rolled his eyes at me and continued to do whatever is it that Pearson does when he’s not cooking. I appreciate the work he does because well I don’t think any of us are any good at cooking never mind making it last 12 odd people. He’s just so fun to annoy. I carried the hot bowls over to the main cabin, the heat radiating from the plate onto my hands was so comforting, I welcomed the burning sensation that occurs when cold meets warm, my stomach started growling loudly, it’s been a while since we were able to sit down and eat a proper meal.

The rest of the day was slow, there isn't exactly a lot to do up here, even the basic tasks like sewing was hard to do up here, try stitching in this weather and your hands will be icicles before you even loop the thread through the needle. To pass time I had been checking in on everyone and sharing short stories and laughs on my way. The furthest cabin from the one I was situated in held Micah, Bill, Lenny, Javier and Charles. Javier and Bill both were on guard duty and Charles had been out feeding the poor horses the last time I saw him. I saw Lenny outside the small shack cleaning his revolver while crouched in front of the small fire. “Hey Lenny”, “Y/N” he responded with a nod of the head. “How’re you coping in, well, all of this” I asked, leaning myself against the wooden post that was positioned across from the fire. “I..I’m alright, just tryn’ to keep busy s’all, i’m not much for talking right now..” I felt guilty for Lenny he was so very young to deal with all of this, losing someone who he was sweet too and were still unsure of Sean's location who was his best friend. I sighed “M’sorry Lenny, stay strong” I thought I would leave him be and pushed open the door of the cabin. Micah was sat on a single broken wooden chair in the far corner of the room, he was warming his hands up on the old burner as I moved towards him. I plopped down onto the bottom bunk and lay down, smiling at the nice change in comfort, finally able to lay down after a long day.

“What do you want missy” Micah snapped at me, clearly ruining his peace. “And to think that I was actually gonna check up on you” I fought back turning to sit up and face him the smile gone from my face. We locked eyes for a minute just glaring into the others soul. His eyes are a wonderful icy blue and as much as I hate to admit it I cant help but keep staring. “See something you like girl” He purred, laughing his signature chuckle “Leave it Micah” I growled as a warning, being up here was enough never mind his menacing. He sat forward propping his elbows up onto his knees, dropping his head to hang low. “Me an the boys are raiding some O’Driscoll camp nearby in the mornin’ gonna kill that bastard Colm” My head perked up staring at him “Can I come” I asked hoping that I would be able to escape for even a few hours. “Not happening sweetheart” he laughed “So eager, but this is a job for the men, we need to be quick and smooth” I rolled my eyes at him and stomped out of the cabin slamming the door behind me as I pushed my way back through the snow towards the main cabin. I was so furious and it was already dark outside that I just slid down into my corner and covered my face with my hat until I fell asleep, ignoring those who tried to speak to me.

#red dead redemption #rdr2 #findingpeace #micah #micahbell #micah bell #micah bell x reader

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maxiekat · 5 years ago

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In a world full of rom-coms, when was the last time you cried over an onscreen breakup that actually stuck? No grand gestures to save the day, just pure, raw, lust and heartbreak. If you want to get so deep in your feels you forget if you’re actually heartbroken or just bleary-eyed over someone else’s love story, then you may need to subscribe to the church of Drake Doremus.

The director is known for his mostly improvised, chill-inducing romantic dramas (Like Crazy, Newness, Equals) and his latest is a tender-to-the-touch look at a modern love triangle in Endings, Beginnings, which premieres Sunday at Toronto Film Festival. Much like his previous work, Endings, Beginnings is clever and cutting, but also soft and quiet. Shailene Woodley is at the heart of the film playing Daphne, a thirty-something artist (her specialty is hand-painted tea pots, which she sells on Etsy) who recently and abruptly quit her job and ended her long-term relationship with her boyfriend (Matthew Gray Gubler, in his third Doremus film).

Looking for a hard reset on life, Daphne moves into the pool house of her much more together older half-sister. She also stops drinking, focuses on looking for a new job, and cuts men out of her life. Until, of course, she meets two men at a New Year’s Party. One’s brooding, asking her for a light of a cigarette in the most drunken and charming of ways. He’s wearing a shearling jacket, worn-in with adventures. The other’s in LA’s version of a suit — he’s put together, and looks at her with the steady intentness. Daphne should be avoiding both, but she quickly becomes enamored with bad boy Frank (Sebastian Stan), a nomad who drinks absinthe, and good boy Jack (Jamie Dornan), an academic who has a dog and dreams of moving to Europe. What starts as innocent text-flirting evolves into two full-blown relationships. Oh, and the guys are best friends.

When Stan first read for the film, he read for both Frank and Jack’s role, but what really attracted him to the heady rom-dram was Dormeus himself, of whom he’s been a huge fan. “I met him and I said, ‘I gotta tell you, I don’t know which one of these people you are seeing me as, but I really relate to both of them. I love both,’” he says over the phone to Refinery29. Stan’s in London where he’s filming the spy-thriller 355, a movie he says is “stylistically and tonally very different,” than Endings, Beginnings, but with “a couple of similarities here and there.”

“And we just got very deep. We got into relationships and being in our 30s and the world we are in right now, and all our experiences.” The vulnerability seen on-screen between Woodley, Stan, and Dornan is something special, and almost entirely improvised, based on just 30 pages of notes. Endings, Beginnings is a far cry from the big budget Marvel movies you’re used to seeing Stan in (he plays Captain America’s pal Bucky Barnes in seven Marvel movies and one upcoming spin-off series.) I was reading your Instagram post earlier gushing about working on this film with Drake. When did you become a fan of his, and why did you two think Frank was the role for you?

“I was aware of [Drake] for awhile. Like everyone else, I loved Like, Crazy, and then I also like his recent movie with Nicholas Hoult, Equals. I was also just really interested in doing a movie and improvising — because the entire movie is practically improvised. I never worked in that medium before. I got a call saying, Hey do you want to meet with Drake and talk about this movie [and] read the draft?, which was basically like 30 pages. There were two guy [parts] at the time. I met him and I said, ‘I gotta tell you, I don’t know which one of these people you are seeing me as, but I really relate to both of them. I love both.’ And we just got very deep. We got into relationships and being in our 30s and the world we are in right now, and all our experiences. Again, I didn’t really know that is where we were gonna go, but he was very honest with me and I was honest with him. We parted ways, and the next thing I knew he called me to have a session with somebody at the time that he was thinking of for the role as Daphne, and I went in and had a 3-hour improv session with him, then he called me and told me that he wants me to do the Frank role and I was fine with that.”

Only 30 pages. Everything else is improv? All the film’s dialogue?

“Yes, that is all literally on the day, in the moment, happening real-time. Basically, the script that he had was just the outline: Daphne comes out a recent relationship and moves in with her best friends. They’re having a New Years Party, and she runs into Frank who asks her for a cigarette. It was all outlines, but in terms of the dialogue and how we would get there, that was all improvised. That was an interesting experience because I had never worked that way and no take is ever the same. I walked away from that experience feeling very vulnerable. You’re not hiding behind any lines.”

The improvisation really added to the film. I left it feeling more emotional than I expected.

“We’ve all had relationships, and we know how tricky they are. They’re complex and there’s many layers. I don’t know — I have always loved romantic comedies. I grew up on When Harry Met Sally and all that, but I sometimes feel that relationships aren’t entirely depicted as messy and as raw and as painful as they are. That’s why I loved working with him because I feel like he gets to the core of situations. I’m happy to hear you related to it because that is what he wants. He wants you to go, 'I’ve had that conversation...been in that situation.’”

There’s been a resurgence in romantic comedies, but not so much romantic dramas like this. Do you think there’s a reason why?

“I love romantic comedies and there is a space for them, but [rom coms] are hopeful. Sometimes when I go to the movies, I don’t want to necessarily see what my life is. I want to be like, Hey! It’s nice to think that maybe that could be that way. If you want to be inspired, or laugh a little bit — there’s that element of it. And sometimes you want to see a movie that makes you feel less alone in your experience. A lot of European films are much closer to this, and I think Drake loves a lot of European films and is influenced by them and the personal quality. Structurally in romantic comedies, you have bigger things happening, right? Whereas [in this movie], there are big things happening, but there’s a much more subtle transition through everything.”

Frank is the “player” of the film, while Jack is the “good guy,” for lack of a better phrase. You’ve said before that you didn’t really know why you were often cast as the “bad boy.” Do you still not know why?

“I don’t know! [Groans] I don’t know. The truth is, the reason I was saying [I could play] Jack was that I talk a lot in my life. I philosophize a lot. I try to read things. Then I think about it, and then I wanna talk about it. I relate to that [aspect of Jack]. And actually, there was a lot to Frank and Daphne that we shot that was funny. They had a lot of their own back and forth, but what ended up being in the movie — I think Drake never forgot the vision that he had for Frank — [was him] being much darker than we shot. I am happy it ended up that way because there needed to be a contrast.

But I don’t know! I am glad they think I can do this. I am one of the most over-thinking, neurotic people I know. So I don’t know how it happens, but it keeps happening.”

I thought a big part of Frank also was his big shearling jacket. Since most of the movie was improvised, did you have anything to do with his outfits?

“Oh yeah, I kept that jacket, first of all. It’s a great jacket. What’s great about Drake is that he was like, ‘Hey, listen, people wear the same stuff all the time. If something works, let’s just it.’ I was like yeah, the guy probably kind of flies by the seat of his pants anyways so he just has a few things. I think I wore some of my own jeans. The boots I wore were mine. Drake definitely wanted us to wear our own stuff so we could feel comfortable in it.”

This was originally called No, No, No, Yes and ended as Endings, Beginnings. How did the title change shape the movie?

“It was always a working title. I saw that it was paired up with her experience — every no and every yes was paired to one of the relationships that she was going through. Endings, Beginnings is a little more specific. I know for awhile he was even contemplating a title that was even just made up of emojis which I thought would have been really fun.”

Oh yeah. I loved the texting aspect in this movie.

“There is an element of texting in the time period we are in, and there is this new language to it. They got it in the sense that both Jack and Frank have their very specific ways of texting. Jack probably uses punctuation, and Frank does not. [Laughs]”

You’ve worked with a few of the Big Little Lies women now. Do you have plans to work with the others like Zoe Kravitz, Reese Witherspoon, or Laura Dern?

“That has not hit me — that’s kinda funny. I don’t think I have ever met Reese Witherspoon and I’ve met Laura Dern. If the opportunity presents itself then great. I certainly wouldn’t have had a problem if there had been a role in the second season. I would have done it in a second. I loved the first season.”

I have one more that I have to ask about — obviously Gossip Girl is getting rebooted, and Chace [Crawford] said it made him feel “old,” but he’d be down. Have you thought about it at all?

“[Laughs] I don’t even… it’s so weird. Somehow a lot of people talk to me about Gossip Girl, and I always thought I was just a guest star. It was a very special show. It certainly defined those years, and we all got our start there in a way. It would be hilarious and weird and crazy. He’s right — we are old! I don’t know what business they’d have with me, but, Jesus. If there was some funny little witty thing and they called and we’re like, ‘We’re doing this thing and we have everybody….’ I’m not gonna be the asshole that says no. Maybe I’ll be in the background scooping some ice cream.”

#sebastian stan #endings beginnings #drake doremus #gossip girl #shailene woodley

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chickensarentcheap · 4 years ago

Text

Sanctuary -Chapter 57

Warnings: none

Tagging: @c-a-v-a-l-r-y, @alievans007, @innerpaperexpertcloud, @valkyrie-of-the-light

He keeps his ball cap and sunglasses on; hands stuffed in the pockets on his hoodie, eyes always working as they take in his surroundings. Observing fellow pedestrians on the sidewalk, store fronts, cars passing by on the street, any movement in doorways and windows. Anything and everything that can seem unusual or appear even remotely suspicious. He wishes he'd changed into long pants and his boots back at the hotel; there's a chill in the air and his legs and feet are cold, which in turn makes the pain from the arthritis that inhabits his body even worse. Lately it's been a dull and manageable ache; the steady use of Tylenol 3 managing to take the edge off and helping him function better. Today, not even all the drugs in the world won't touch the agony that is beginning to take root in all the effected joints. Once more proof that he's making the right decision in walking away. That he's simply getting too old for this bullshit. And that he doesn't want to be the dad that's too fucked up to be able to actually enjoy his kids. Nor give them the memory that he wasn't able to do the things with them that other dads were able to do.

The front windows of the shop once belonging to Heather McMann's grandmother have been covered over with layers of newspaper, and while he's managed to peek through the small divide between the edges of different sheets, it's difficult to see inside; the sun too bright, the inside too dark. Just able to make out the metal shelving that still holds merchandise and the old fashioned cash register that sits on the front counter. There's no sign of life coming from within; at least not on this level. No hint of movement, no sound. He steps back and studies the front window; there's no breaks or gaps between the seals, making it impossible to get any sort of viewing device into the building that way. He checks the door; a considerable opening between worn out weather stripping and the concrete entrance way, a mail slot, the window pane in the middle frosted and not allowing curious eyes to peer inside. There's options; a good tech guy with the best of equipment would be able to get eyes in there. But how long would it take? A day? Two days? A few? They didn't have that kind of time to spare. Not when Heather McMann has been visiting and quite clearly know she's being watched.

Out of sheer curiosity he tries the handle; it's loose fitting and heavily rusted, but the door itself doesn't budge.

“See anything?”

He gives a small start; he'd been so focused that he hadn't hurt Nathan approach from behind. Had he heard even the slightest of noise or had that inkling that lets him know someone is drawing near, he would have been ready for it. A hand already on his Glock before the kid could even speak.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he hisses. “You want to get shot? Because that's how you get shot. What are you doing here?”

“Yaz sent me. Said you needed to have someone watch your back.”

“Doesn't mean you have to be right up my ass. How'd you know I wasn't going to turn around and kick the shit out of you?”

“I didn't,” the kid admits. “Guess I just took my chance and...”

“You don't take chances. Ever. You want to stay alive? Don't take chances. You have to know what you're walking into. What and who you're up again. You don't just go in blind and hope for the best. Got it?”

Nathan nods.

“It's why we can't go in there. No matter how much I want to. Because I could walk in there and there could be twenty guys just lying in wait. And I'm getting way too old to deal with that kind of fucking shit. I need to get home to my family...alive...and taking chances like that will have me in a body bag. You're a Marine. I'm sure you're used to high stakes crap like this.”

“I've only had one tour. And it wasn't much of one. Conflict was over before we even arrived. You're military, right?”

“I was,” Tyler confirms, as he steps out of the doorway and back onto the sidewalk. “SASR. That's...”

“Special Air Service Regiment,” Nathan finishes for him, as he falls in step alongside of him. “I've read all about it. You guys are legendary. Why'd you leave? Having the skill set that you'd do, you'd think it would come in handy even in the military. What made you leave?”

“It's a long story. And one I don't like to talk about. Look, I like you kid. And I don't like many people. But just what are you doing out here?”

“Like I said, Yaz told me to come and have your back.”

“You realize having my back doesn't mean actually being on my back, right? That you're just supposed to hang out and keep an eye on me? Make sure no one has their eyes on me or won't try and sneak up and kill me? Us being together sort of defeats the whole purpose. If I get made, so do you.”

The kid frowns. “Makes sense.”

“Hey, you're new. I get it. And this isn't your regular thing. You're kind of out of your element here. You haven't done this much, have you.”

“My first time,” he admits.

“You're doing fine, kid. You just have to learn to be more natural. Blend in. Right now, everything about you screams military. If you were working for the bad guys, I would have had you pegged the second I saw you walking down the street. You have to loosen up a bit. Fuck the rigged posture. Act like you're just a normal bloke, out and about. Best thing to do is be about a hundred meters behind me. Not really watching me, but keeping your eyes open. And not just on me, everything and everyone around you. Understand?”

Nathan nods.

“You have to know what's going on all around you. Not just in front. All directions. Or someone will come along and fuck you up. I've seen it happen. Tons of times. You want to get out of this situation alive and go back to your normal life? Don't fuck up. I thought a situation was under control once and turned my back on it, and a fucking teenager nearly killed me.”

“Dhaka?”

“Yeah. That was a shit show all the way around. I mean, a couple good things came out of it. The first days were awesome. But what happened after? It was a fucking nightmare that I don't wish on anyone. So if you are ever thinking of getting out of the Marines and into this life? Remember my advice: don't fucking do it. Because one day you're going to want something normal. You're going to want a wife and kids and they're going to get sucked into this bullshit and that's not fair to them. Trust me. It's not. I've put my wife through hell. I've been away from my kids more than I've been with them. And that's a cross I'm always going to have to bear.”

“So it's true then? That this job is your last? That you're walking away after this?”

“I should have walked away a long time ago. After my twins came along. That should have been it. That's when my wife needed me the most and I totally fucked off and abandoned her. Trust me kid, don't get into this life. And if you do, don't make the same mistakes that I did. Once you have a life...a real life....give up this one. And don't go back to it. No matter how bored or restless you get. Just walk away and don't look back.”

****

The alley way is narrow; just as Yaz had said. Leaving out the possibility of getting a car back there to load the kids into once he manages to grab them. It would be too easy to be corner; a tall, wire fence with barbed wire at the top, making an escape in that direction impossible. The only way out is through the end he'd just walked down; if another vehicle was to pull in, they'd be trapped. They could...if desperate enough...flee through the back door one of the shops or up one of the fire escapes, but with two kids in tow, that would prove to be extremely difficult. Having to navigate through unknown stores and apartments, putting a lot of innocent lives at risk.

That's a direction he does not want to go in.

He uses his SAT to take pictures of his surroundings; they'd be useful when it came time to planning his way in and out and any and bad case scenarios he may encounter. And he's about to turn on his heel and head back down the alley when he sees her out of the corner of his eye; blond hair pulled back into a pony tail and her tall, slender frame clad in a pair of baggy linen pants and an oversized sweater. Standing at the entrance to the alley, watching him warily, nervously wringing her hands together. His hand immediately reaches for his Glock but then stops; she's calm, not rushing at him, a sad, almost scared look on her face. So he stands down; anxious to keep the situation as relaxed as possible.

“Heather,” he greets simply, as he turns to face her.

“Mister Rake,” she says in return.

“You know who am I? Why I'm here?”

She nods. “They all know you. They all know what you do. How good you are at it. Word travels fast.”

“You armed?”

She shakes her head.

“Prove it. Show me.”

She slowly lifts up the bottom of her sweater; turning in circle to show that there's nothing tucked into her waist band, nor is there a holster on either hip.

“Legs too,” he orders, and she readily complies; pushing up on pant leg, then the other.

“I'm not here to hurt you,” she says.

“How'd you know I was here?”

“I saw you. Walking across the street. I was over there...” she nods over her shoulder, in the direction of a cafe across the street. “...watching you.”

“How'd you know I was in New Zealand.?”

“I...they...know everything about you. Where you live, your wife's name, your kids' names. Everything there is to know about you, they know. You don't think they've been watching you? That they haven't been following you every step of the way? They were in Colorado. At the hospital. Your wife's pregnant? Congratulations. That's what? Number five?”

“How about you leave my family out of this. They've got nothing to do with it. They're innocent.”

“Not when they're connected to you, they're not. That's the reality of what you do. That they just get brought along into whatever mess you're sent to clean up. It's sad, isn't it. That in the end they'll be the ones that pay for your decisions and your mistakes. They never wanted to hurt them. They just wanted to send you a message. To stay out of their business.”

“Who are 'they'? Your family?”

She nods.

“You know your husband's dead, right?”

“I do. And thank you for that. He is...was...a monster. And I'm hoping he got what he deserved and now he's burning in hell where he belongs. It's the the best thing you ever could have done. For me and the kids.”

“You mean nothing to me. All I care about is the kids. Where are they, Heather? Where's the kids? Are they inside? Because if they are, we can end this all right now. You can take me in there and I get them out and I can get them somewhere safe. This has gone on long enough. It's been almost a month now; since your husband reported you guys missing. Those kids are scared and they're hurt and need to see a doctor and get somewhere safe. That's why I'm here. To help them. You know that, yeah?”

“I know.”

“I'm not here to hurt anyone or kill anyone. I just want those kids. And I want things to go as smoothly and peacefully as possible. You can help me do that. You can take me inside and let me get them. In and out. I don't give a shit what else is going on in there. I just want the kids.”

“I can't,” she shakes her head, voice cracking . “I can't go in there. I can't help you.”

“Heather, listen to me,” he holds his hands up...palms out...in a request for peace and calm as he approaches her. “I'm not going to hurt you. I should. But I won't. Because I just want the kids. Nothing else matters. Just them. Are they inside? Can you at least tell me that?”

“I need to talk to you.”

“We are talking.”

“In private.”

“Yeah, that's not going to happen. Why would I go anywhere with you? We go somewhere and what? You've got half a dozen guys waiting in the wings to kill me?”

“That's not that I want. I don't want you dead. I want your help.”

“I am here to help. I'm here to help the kids. So why don't you start helping me by taking me in there and letting me get them.”

“I can't. I'm sorry. But I can't.”

“Why would I help you? After everything you've done. After being in on all of this and letting people hurt your kids? You sent people after my family. You had them take pictures of my wife and my kids. Why the hell would I help you after all that?”

“You don't understand,” tears slip down her cheeks. “I wasn't me. I didn't plan this. It wasn't my idea. It's what he wanted you to think. He wanted you to think I was the bad person and that this was all my doing. It wasn't. Far from it.”

“He? Your husband?”

“Please. I need you to understand. I need you to listen to me. None of this is what you think. Whatever he told you...about me...it's not true. That's why I came over here. When I saw you. Because I need to explain everything to you.”

Tyler sees Nathan silently approaching Heather from behind, but he holds a hand up; a signal for the young man to stand down.

“Well I'm right here, Heather,” he says. “I'm listening. What do you need to tell me?”

“Not here. It's too dangerous. They could come back at any time. And if they see me here...with you...they will kill them. No question about it.”

“I can't just trust you. I can't just follow you out here and go somewhere. You understand that, right? Why I can't trust you?”

“I don't want to kill you,” she insists. “I just want your help. You're the only one who can help me. We can go somewhere. Public. Where there's lots of people. You can even bring one of your people along. I know they've been watching. I've seen the girl wandering the street. I know she's one of yours.”

Tyler's eyes narrow, skeptical. “And you just want to talk?”

“There's things you need to know. About Mark. About my family. About me. And then I'll help you.”

“If I go, he comes with me,” Tyler nods over her shoulder at the young Marine waiting anxiously in the wings. “That's not up for debate. And we stay in public and you don't pull any funny shit. No reaching into your purse, no making any phone calls, no sending texts. Got it?”

She nods.

“Good,” he says, as he takes her by the upper arm. “Let's go.”

****

They walk for three blocks, then choose the first available place: the front steps of a derelict church that sits beside an elementary school. Far enough away from the centre of town, yet close enough to get back if the dire need arises. And even if someone is watching them, the chances of them escalating it into a violent situation are slim; too many houses, children on recess, to many eyes and ears and innocent casualties. He waits for Heather to sit down first before he taking a seat on the step above her. It's better for keeping an eye on her, and letting her know that he's the one with the power; who is in charge and control of the situation. And he gives Nathan a small nod in confirmation that the situation is stable, and the young Marine begins a casual patrol of their surroundings.

“So...” Tyler says, and stretches his legs out in front of him, wincing at the stiffness and pain in his right knee. “...you wanted to go somewhere and talk. We're here. Talk.”

“I had nothing to do with my children. Regardless of what my husband told you. Not intentionally, anyway.”

“I saw the pictures. You were kept in a nicer place, one of the chairs from your own house was used, you weren't nearly messed up as your kids. And you're trying to tell me you had nothing to do with it? I wasn't born yesterday. I know when I'm being played.”

“Michael told me that if I helped him, he'd go easy on me. That he wouldn't kill me. If I just played along...”

“And you did?”

“I was scared. He said he'd kill them. Right in front of me. And I didn't want that happening.”

“But you were totally okay with letting other people abuse them? Is it just physical or...?”

She nods. “Just physical. I'd rather die than let anything else...anything worse...happen to them.”

“Yeah, well what's going on is bad enough. Whose idea was it? His?”

“He was contacted by someone. He was hired. To kill you. And he went to Guatemala to do it. When he came home he said that things fell apart. That he couldn't get close to you to get the job done and had to kill someone else. And that he had a plan. To get you to come to him. But that he had to go to Colorado to do it. And when he was gone, that's when they came to the house. To grab me and the kids. That part was real. All of us were grabbed. Even me. And it was real at first. Very real. The things they did. To both me and the kids.”

“When did you realize it was bullshit? At least what was going on with you?”

“Two days later. One of them...the kidnappers...he's Michael's younger brother. He told me. And he told me that Michael said I had to play along or he would kill me. And the kids. I was scared. He's always been sick. In the head. For years. And it's gotten over worse over the past two. Hearing voices, seeing things that aren't there, overly paranoid. And if you tried to calm him down or told him those things weren't happening, he got violent. So I went along with it. Because I knew it was true. He would kill the kids.”

“Did you have anything to do with it? Watching my family? Sending the pictures?”

She shakes her head. “I only know what I was told. Just that he was 'handling' things in the States and that he was going to lure you back to Ireland. He said he was going to make it look like the IRA was responsible for what happened to the kids and that you'd cause problems with them and they'd end up killing you. So no one could tie it to him. And things went wrong and he said he had to step things up. That you were starting to figure things out and it was all unravelling.”

“So he tried to kill me at the house.”

“You weren't the only one he was going to kill. And believe me, a quick death would have been a lot better than what he had planned. You saw what he did? To my cousin?”

“Erin was your cousin?”

She nods, biting down on her bottom lip as she fights back emotion. “I was the one who sent her to your hotel. With the first pictures. I was hoping it was enough for you to figure things out. But I think I just made them worse. What he did to Erin? That would have been tame compared to what he would have done to your wife.”

Tyler isn't surprised to hear it. But it still makes him feel sick to his stomach. Bile rising in his throat, fists clenching. “You said there's people in Colorado. That they were at the hospital yesterday?”

“They weren't there to hurt either of you. They were there to make sure no one did.”

“You sent them?”

“I've been trying to get the kids myself. Since Michael was killed. Did you do that? Kill him?”

Tyler shakes his head. “I did things leading up to it. But I didn't actually kill him. I wish I did though. I just gave him to the people who did.”

“Well for what it's worth, thank you. As horrible as that makes me sound to say it. It was the best thing that could have ever happened. For me and those kids. For the world, actually. I shouldn't talk like that, because he was legitimately sick. But some things can't be excused or forgiven. No matter what's wrong with someone.”

“Who has the kids? Your family? Why? If you're in control of them...”

She laughs. “Is that what he told you? That I was the head of things now? It was him. It was all him. That's why he killed my father. So he could be in control of everything. I mean, I can't prove that he did it. But I always suspected it.”

“Are the kids at the store?”

She nods. “In the basement. But it isn't a normal basement. It's designed like the bunker at home. A lot of different rooms, spread out.”

“How hard is it going to be for me to get them out?”

“Near impossible. They know you're coming for the kids. They're preparing for it. They're going to make things as hard as they can. They have a lot of fire power. And not just guns, explosives. They're going to rig that entire place. You won't even know exactly what they've done and where they've put things until it's too late.”

“How many people?”

“Fifteen. On any given day. Sometimes twenty.”

Fuck.

“Can you get back in there? I need you to do me a favour.”

“I'm taking food in there tomorrow. What do you need me to do?”

“I need pictures. Of everything. Every room, every corner of the room, if there's windows, crawl spaces, what the floors are like, what the ceiling is like. Everything and anything. Big or small. No matter how stupid it seems. Can you do that? Will you be able to stay safe doing that? I need eyes in there and there's no other way to do it. Think you can handle that?”

She nods.

“And I want you tell them that I need proof of life. And I need it within the next twelve hours. Or the whole thing is off. I don't get what I want...from either of you...and I go home. I leave and then it's up to you to get your kids out of there. Because I'm fucking sick of this shit. These games. Enough's enough. And if I find out that you're fucking with me, you're going to end up the same way as your husband. Only I'll do it myself, understand?”

“I understand. And I'm sorry. That your family was brought into this. Your kids are innocent.”

“Yeah...” he says. “They are. But so are yours.”

****

It's one am...Christchurch time....when he phones home. He'd called earlier in the day; after he'd gotten back from his talk with Heather McMann. Despite already knowing what would have happened had they been both been caught at McMann's home, hearing it from Heather herself had been a kick in the gut. Even his worst case scenario didn't come close to what would have been carried out, and he's been burdened by those thoughts...those images his brain created...since leaving Heather back in alley where she'd found him. So he'd been desperate to hear her voice; to know that she was alive and well, to listen to her talk about anything and everything in hopes of it getting rid of the nightmare that wouldn't stop playing in his head.

Now he's just lonely. Missing home. Anxious to get the job over and done with. The inability to actually get into the building without getting shot or blown up was a set back; he'd have to rely on the pictures that Heather would provide him with. If she'd even come through. He'd been expecting a number of hostiles, but the actual count had surprised him. It is disheartening; the lay out of the building, the alley that leaves no real options for escape, the sheer amount of fire power and the extent the Buckmans are willing to go to to stop him. It goes far beyond getting the kids; they're out for revenge now. They know that McMann is dead. And they know the damage that was done to him before hand.

“I wasn't expecting to hear from you,” she says, and he can hear the squeak of the screen door on the front porch as she steps outside. “Are you okay?”

“Something has to be wrong for me to call?”

“You're usually not a call three times a day kind of guy. So this is a surprise. A very nice surprise. What time is it there?”

“Midnight.”

“And you're not sleeping because...”

“Because I'm not tired and I wanted to check on you. Make sure everything is okay.”

“You are such a bad liar,” she laughs. “I can tell when you're tired. Your voice changes. And I know how jet lag gets you sometimes and your body is still getting used to being back on the meds. You need sleep, Tyler. You're not a machine.”

“You need to stop worrying about me so much.”

“You need to bite me,” she retorts.

“What would that do? You like that shit.”

“You're right,” she giggles. “I do. Did you eat something?”

“I was just going to ask you the same thing.”

“I'm fine. I'm eating okay and I'm drinking and everything is staying down. I'd tell you if there was something wrong, I swear. I'm fine. We're both fine. I promise. Are you sure you're okay?”

“I'm okay,” he assures her, although he feels anything but. He can't get it out of his head; those images that Heather McMann had put into it. About what would have happened had they both been caught at the house. And he wants to tell her exactly what it is that's bothering him, but that is the last thing she needs; hearing what some fucking sicko and his people would have done to her. “And yeah...” he says. “...I ate.”

“Good. Because you can't run on an empty tank. I know how you get when you're really into a job. How intense you get. You don't eat, you don't sleep. Don't do that to yourself, okay? Start worrying more about yourself and less about me. I'm fine. The baby's fine. Kyle and Nik are here and they're up my ass constantly making sure I'm okay. You've got nothing to worry about. Just concentrate on you and what you need to do.”

He knows he should tell her. About meeting with Heather McMann. About how things are a lot more complicated than he ever anticipated. But again, it's that fear oh burdening her. Especially at a time like this.

“Tyler?”

“Yeah?”

“You scared me last night. When you were talking about what I should if things go wrong and you don't come back. I mean, we've had that talk before. But never in that way. You've never sounded like that before. Not in the entire five and a half years that we've been together. You're intense, but you're still optimistic about getting home. But last night....I don't know...last night scared me.”

“I wasn't trying to scare you. That's the last thing I wanted. I just wanted to make sure that you know what to do. Just in case.”

“It wasn't what you said. It's how you said it. How you sounded. Like you weren't even going to try to make it home. You were just so final about it. Like you'd already made up your mind that this was it. That you're going to die there.”

“It's going to be harder than we thought,” he admits. “A lot harder. I think we've all been underestimating them.”

“I told you that these people are not to be messed around with. That they're a hundred times worse than the Mahajan Seniors and Amir Asifs of the world. These people make guys like that seem like amateurs. But it doesn't mean you can't beat them. You're smart. Smarter than you give yourself credit for. And you're the strongest person I know and I know you can beat them. I know you can get those kids out of there. And yourself.”

“You have a lot of faith in me.”

“Well someone has to, because you don't. This isn't you, Tyler. You don't think these ways. When you leave, you always talk about everything we're going to do with the kids when you get back. You always tell me 'I''ll see you when I see you', and you never did that when you left this time. It's like you're not even going to bother to try and come home.”

“Of course I'm going to try. I want to come home. I want to see you and my kids again. I want to see that baby born.”

“So what the hell? Why were you talking the way you were? Because that's not you. You don't talk like that. Ever. You're intense, but you're not doom and gloom. You need to knock that shit off. That's your brain fucking with you. You're stressed and you're worried and you're scared. About a lot of things. And I get that and I wish I could take that all away from you. But you always get the job done. Always. Even when it seems impossible. Look at Dhaka. Everything was against us. And everyone. And you still got us out of there.”

“And nearly died in the process,” Tyler reminds her.

“But you didn't. You didn't die. Because you're a stubborn asshole who doesn't give up easily. And that's why it scares me to hear you be so final about things. You're not like that and you've never been like that. You won't give up. No matter how hard it seems. Because you don't want to miss this baby being born. And if that's the one thing that gets you through this, than that's enough. Promise me you won't give up. That you'll do everything you have to make sure you come home.”

“I promise,” he fights back emotion. “Whatever it takes.”

“And I know it's extra hard for you because it is kids. And they're the same age as Millie and the twins. Or close enough to it. But goddammit, Tyler Rake. You are not the type of person that just gives up. I need you to come home. Our kids need you to come home. And this baby needs you here. Because if I have to take my brother into the delivery room with me, I'm going to be really fucked pissed at you.”

He can't help but chuckle at that. “I'm kind of useless in there too, so I don't know who would be worse. Me or him.”

“You're not useless in there. I'm just always worried you're going to faint. You think you'd be used to it by now. You've gone in there three times already. You think you wouldn't be grossed out anymore.”

“Baby, I love you. But it is way beyond gross. And I've done and seem some gross things. But that? That is...I don't even know.”

“Well thank God men aren't the ones having babies or we'd be screwed! I looked at some houses online today. In Australia.”

“Yeah? And?”

“I found a lot. In the area that you mentioned. And in the price range we talked about. Right on the coast. I have a top three.”

“Well send me the links and I'll look at them and we'll go from there.”

“I'll even let you pick which one. Because I love all of them and I won't be disappointed with either of the three. I'm just saying...”

“Or we could wait until I get back and we can pick then.”

“See? That's more like it! That's you talking! Not the other guy. This guy. You need to talk like this more and just ignore everything else. Because I know you're coming home. And I know you know that too. So stop your shit, okay? Stop with the doom and gloom and just think about how amazing it's going to be when you get back. How things are going to change. For the better. How we're going to change. Can you do that? For me?”

He smiles. “Just for you.”

“Now go and get some sleep. I'm sure you've got a lot to do tomorrow.”

He nods, even though he knows she can't see him. He thinks about Heather McMann. Wonders if she'll come through with the pictures or if she's just as much a psycho as her dead husband and this is actually just another part in some sick and twisted game. About those two kids; locked up in that basement, terrified, being beaten and God knows what else. And he thinks of his own. Of how they smile and what their giggles sound like and how he's never heard any word sound as good as 'daddy' does when they say it. How they look at him as if he can do no wrong; that there's no monster he can't chase away, no problem he can't fix, no hurt he can't mend.

“The kids come home tomorrow,” he says, as if an afterthought.

“I can't wait to see them. I miss them so much. And Ovi. I've missed him too. He's my second biggest baby. You're my first.”

He smirks. “Tell them I love them. That I can't wait to see them. And that I'll be home soon.”

“I will. I love you, Tyler. And I miss you.”

“I miss you, too, baby. And I love you. So much. I'll see you when I see you.”

“That's much better,” she says, and he can picture the smile on her face. “Get some rest. You need it.”

“I'll call you tomorrow,” he promises, and then tells her he loves her one more time before disconnecting the call.

Dropping the cell onto the mattress beside him, he stretches out in the bed and places his clasped hands on his stomach; eyes focused on the ceiling as he tries to concentrate on more pleasant thoughts. About moving to Australia and having a place that backs out onto the ocean and being able to take the kids fishing and teaching them how to surf. About that tiny baby currently safe and sound in the warm confines of his wife's body, about being convinced that it's a girl; impossibly tiny with dark hair and dark eyes and her mother's freckles across the bridge of her nose.

But his thoughts return to the McMann children again. About the hell they've endured over the past three weeks. How scared they must be. Confused. Hurting.

Ready to give up hope that there's someone out there that will come and rescue them.

#tyler rake #tyler rake fan fiction #tyler rake fan fic #sanctuary #chris hemsworth character #extraction

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twokinkybeans · 5 years ago

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Jar Of Dirt Chapter 9: Cinnamon Orange [Starker Fanfiction NFSW/18+]

Kink/Sexual Warnings: Daddy Kink, Praise Kink, Thigh Rubbing, Sauna Sex, Teasing, Only Peter gets off Other Warnings: Tony's having emotional struggles

All Chapters: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10 ... Masterpost (More to come!)

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Chapter 9: Cinnamon Orange “What’s this?” Tony says accusingly as he holds up the Swissy in front of Peter’s face. The boy is sitting on the couch with his legs crossed, studying for the midterm he has in two hours. After that, Tony said he would take Peter on a fun little trip abroad, refusing to say where exactly. Peter had packed his bags earlier this morning, and now they’re here. “Well, since we’re going on a mystery vacation, I figured that’d spice things up?” He looks up at the billionaire innocently. He knows damn well what he’s done. Tony sucks at his teeth and shakes his head with a scoff. “No. No, we’re not bringing the Swissy, we’re not bringing the jar. We’re gonna relax for a week, okay?” Peter frowns. “Having sex doesn’t relax you?” Tony groans loudly and puts the Swissy on the coffee table, sitting down next to it. “Pete, we discussed this. I’m scared. Okay? I want to be a hundred percent sure you’re not going to lose yourself like that again before I even try anything.” Peter pulls in his legs and looks away. “It’s been three weeks, Mr. Stark. I’m fine again! Been swinging through New York and helping old ladies cross the street just like I always did. I’m back!” “Well, I’m not.” Tony stands up again, taking the Swissy with him. “No sex, Pete. Not yet.”

Peter’s frustrated. Obviously. After a few days of numbness, everything went back to normal, but Tony can’t help himself. He’s scared he’ll break the boy like he did before and he doesn’t want Peter to experience it ever again. It doesn’t matter how many times Peter said it was the best sex he’s ever had. It frightened Tony. And the guilt was still there. He knows Peter gets himself off in the shower every night now. He can literally hear it, the boy isn’t exactly quiet. And Tony’s pretty sure the cheeky bastard is not holding back his moans to entice Tony to join him in the shower and fuck him hard. Like they both want to. But Tony can’t. He just can’t.

Tony has spent many hours in the gym, lifting weights, running laps, taking the coldest showers. But fuck, he can’t stop being hard for Peter. He won’t allow himself to get off. He’s saving himself for when he’s ready again, but both his mind and his body are working together to eat at his willpower. Not to mention Peter’s working very hard for it too. Leaning over counters, sticking out his butt just a little more than necessary. When they watch a film together, Peter constantly “accidentally” lets his hands roam a little too low. Heck, Tony even caught the boy pretending to be asleep while being the big spoon, rubbing himself against Tony’s ass. But he’s got this. He’s going to get through this. All he needs is for his subconscious to stop being scared and then both he and Peter can experience all the pleasure they want. Tony wishes with all his heart that his feelings are set straight soon. Not just so that Peter can get what he wants. No. He wants to rail his little slut.

Peter’s mouth hasn’t shut since they’ve arrived at the exclusive Italian spa. He’s in awe of the place and can’t help but stare open-mouthed at the stunning design. It’s in the middle of nowhere, on an otherwise deserted island, and only the richest moneybags can afford the luxury of this place. Tony is one of those rich moneybags. Peter feels like a commoner in the VIP lounge of the most exclusive club he can think of. In essence, he kind of is. And it makes him only slightly uncomfortable. The place is beyond imagination. A gigantic building, no- a temple, with marble and chandeliers and fountains and lush greenery everywhere. The island is covered in smaller temples, each containing their own baths, saunas and treatment rooms. Massive Corinthian pillars hold up the structures and the marble floors are broken up by the most intricate, symmetrical mosaics. The gardens are never ending, filled with statues, and from what Peter could gather, the number of guests that are there can’t be more than thirty. This place is really only for the richest people. Everything about it screams abundant luxury. And everything is delicate. Expensive.

Peter’s worn sneakers tap the floor awkwardly as he waits for Tony to finish up at the front desk. Peter tends to forget how much Tony is in his element in these kinds of situations. He’s rich. He knows it. He flaunts it. Tony knows exactly how all of this works and Peter can’t help but admit that, fuck. He’s hot like this. Sunglasses, mysteriously hiding his eyes as he nonchalantly leans on the counter, using his large, rough hands to enunciate the words he speaks. Peter’s not even listening anymore. He’s just hearing Tony’s deep, low voice as he arranges all kinds of massages and- Peter caught Tony’s words and his interest peaks. A private sauna? Peter presses his lips on top of each other and shifts, hoping no one notices his hard-on. A private sauna… Peter smiles mischievously at his feet, conjuring up his evil plan.

That evening, Tony smiles at Peter on the other side of the fancy dinner table. The boy looks absolutely adorable in the tux. It’s the same one he wore at Tony’s party three weeks ago. The same bow tie to go along with it. “So, how did the exam go? I completely forgot to ask.” “Oh, I think I did okay!” Peter starts. “I mean, I wasn’t exactly sure about the question where we had to estimate how much energy would be deposited into the Earth if it is hit by a one-tonne meteor traveling on an orbit around the Sun with a semi-major axis of 20.0A.U, but I tried and I think I nailed all the other questions!” “Was it moving in the same or opposite direction as the Earth’s orbit?” “Opposite.” Tony quickly grabs his phone to calculate the answer. “Alright, so if this... is the velocity, then it should be… 2.59 ×10^12 Joules?” Peter’s face lights up and Tony can’t help but smile along with that contagious little grin. “That was my answer! I nailed the test!” Peter exclaims happily, sitting back in his chair smirking. He realizes that there are people looking at them, so Peter giggles and tones his voice down a bit. “If I’m correct about the other questions too, then… I got a perfect score.”

Tony puts his phone away again and raises his crystal wine glass high in the air, looking at Peter. “To the smartest man I know.” “That’s you,” Peter laughs, his eyebrow raised. “No, Peter. You. I’m smart, but I’m only keeping up with you because I’ve had all these years to study. If you go on like this, you’ll be a thousand times smarter than I’ve ever been. You’re so intelligent it’s almost scary.” Peter feels his cheeks flush and he lowers his gaze to his glass of wine, raising it as well, clinking it against Tony’s. He knows he’s smart. Hearing it come from Tony’s mouth adds a different layer to it though. He can’t imagine ever knowing more than him. But then, Tony usually knows stuff like this.

Being in a fancy restaurant once again reminds Peter of the last time they were at one. He’s already having a hard time keeping to his new self-made rule. No teasing Tony until the sauna. It’ll be hard. Very hard. But waiting these three little days are going to be worth all of it. Besides, he gets to enjoy all these massages and whatever Tony booked for them. It’s not like he’ll be bored. Not teasing Tony has proved to him just how much he actually teases his boyfriend throughout the day, and he has to consciously stop himself from doing so. No jokes about tiramisu. Sadly.

Peter’s brushing his teeth in the bathroom closest to their bed - yes, the hotel room has more than one bathroom - while Tony gets comfortable in the large king bed. They’ve had two full days of extreme relaxation and Peter’s pretty sure he can’t feel half his muscles anymore. In a good way, this time. He walks out of the bathroom, toothbrush hanging from his mouth as he pulls up his cotton pajama pants. Tony’s scrolling through his phone, the lower half of his body covered by the thin sheets. His chest is bare. Toned. His arc reactor glows dimly. Peter loves the little faces Tony pulls when he’s reading, but Tony soon looks up, raising an eyebrow, silently wondering why Peter’s looking at him. “So, what are we doing tomorrow?” Peter asks innocently as he takes the toothbrush out of his mouth. He knows what they’re doing tomorrow. Oh, he knows. “Not much, to be honest.” Tony puts his phone on the nightstand and crosses his arms. “I was hoping we could have a nice sleep in, dive into one of those mint baths and then head to the private sauna.” “Oh, yeah, the sauna! Forgot about that.” He didn’t. “What time was that again?” “The appointment’s at four. We got loads of time.” “Cool!” Hot. Peter rushes back to the bathroom to hide his excitement. He needs his dick to calm the fuck down. Only one more day of no touching. No teasing. No nothing. Tony must have noticed his behavior. There’s no other way. He hasn’t commented on it, though. Which makes Peter slightly worried whether or not Tony will agree with Peter’s plan.

When he feels like his cock has softened up enough, he puts away his toothbrush and takes a breath before walking back into the bedroom. The size of it is insane. It’s not just a bedroom. It’s a whole apartment. Multiple rooms, sitting areas. Four bathrooms, excluding the two extra baths that are in the living spaces. There’s a gigantic, solid mahogany dinner table that could fit at least fifteen people. No idea why they would need it, but it’s awesome nonetheless. Peter flops onto the bed face down, limbs spread outward, making Tony laugh. “I wish I could still do that,” he jokes. “Tones, you’re not that old, you should try it.” Peter turns and curls up into himself, staring at Tony from his side of the bed. He’s a safe distance away from the other man. No chance to lose composure. “The masseurs are gonna have a tough time tomorrow if I did that, Pete, I’m good where I am, thank you.” “Such a superhero,” Peter quips, tugging at the sheets. He sits up straight again and looks around the room for the umpteenth time. The frescos on the wall are intricate and the sheer detail of the woodworks on the bed posts could keep someone entertained for hours. “Just look at this place, mister Stark!” “I have. More often than you’d think.” Tony cocks an eyebrow. “I’ve been here with my parents, so I’ve seen every corner of this island.”

Peter turns his head to look at Tony, who’s suddenly evading Peter’s stare. “That… Must’ve been a while back,” Peter says quietly. Tony takes a breath and nods. “Yeah, I know. I’m old.” “No, I didn’t-” “I know what you meant, kid.” He sucks at his teeth and sighs before opening his arms to Peter. “Come cuddle, please? Bedtime.” Tony’s great at avoiding topics he doesn’t want to talk about. They’ve discussed Tony’s parents often enough for Peter to know the whole story and as Tony respects Peter doesn’t like to talk about his own parents, Peter opts to do the same.

There’s a new issue at hand, however. Cuddling. Peter sucks at cuddling. Well, right now, at least. Why? Because he loves cuddling. And being as touch starved for Tony as he is, this is gonna get really hard really soon. And with this, he means he. Peter complies, though, not liking the sad, nostalgic look on Tony’s face. He shuffles closer and gets under the sheets, next to Tony. Like a key finding its lock, they embrace each other. Peter rests his head on Tony’s chest after they scoot down further under the blankets and he closes his eyes, breathing softly and listening to Tony’s gentle heartbeat. It’s weird, but Peter loves feeling the glow of Tony’s arc reactor on his face.

One of Tony’s hands rests on Peter’s head, his thumb rubbing slow circles in the boy’s hair. His other arm is curled around Peter’s waist and… Shit. Peter wriggles slightly in an attempt to push the lower half of his body away from Tony, who’s trying to tangle their legs together. The slight awkward situation causes Tony to laugh softly. “Where’d your legs go?” He chuckles. Peter sticks them out the bed on the other side, his wheel of excuses turning fast. “Feet are hot. Not nice. Out of bed,” he says quickly. Tony scoffs a single laugh and pulls the boy’s upper body closer. “Alright then.” Peter knows Tony knows he’s lying, but he’s grateful the man doesn’t ask any questions. Both of them could probably hold a contest for who has the bluest balls right now. Neither want the physical contact to lead to anything more than cuddling and he wants to give Tony a chance at the space he’s been asking for, so this is an odd compromise. It feels silly. Probably looks silly too, Peter thinks. But hey, tomorrow’s the big day.

Tony groans content as he and Peter set foot in the hot sauna. The heat immediately attacking them both inside and out. Peter has been in a sauna with Tony a few times before, as Tony has one at home, but the ones in this spa have all kinds of herbal infusions to stimulate the senses. Upon Peter’s request, the spa arranged for some dried oranges and cinnamon to give the sauna a sweet and spicy feel. Ha. Spicy. Tony sits down at the lowest level first, aiming to work his way up. Peter immediately goes to level two, to sit behind Tony. Drops of sweat are already forming on their skin and when he sees Tony relax, he goes in. He leans forward, pressing his hands on Tony’s back. He slowly works his way up, squeezing the skin and massaging gently. He smirks when Tony lets out a stifled moan as Peter reaches his neck. He rubs gentle shapes onto the man’s skin, before pushing his hands even further up, into Tony’s slight curls. Tony’s head nearly falls back under the attention, so completely relaxed he seems unaware of Peter’s wicked scheme. The boy massages Tony’s scalp and leans even further forward, until his mouth is right next to Tony’s ear. “S’hot in here, isn’t it, Mr. Stark?” he mumbles. The man lets out a low hum in response. A hum that goes straight to Peter’s dick. “Wanna come up to level two?” Tony huffs, not really wanting to move under the boy’s attention, but he nods and gets up, stepping up the bench to sit next to Peter.

They sit there for a little bit. The strong scent of the orange and cinnamon filling their lungs as they become damp with their own sweat. Tony has his eyes closed, smiling, knowing his boyfriend is right next to him. He’s been so sweet to Tony, giving him the time and space to get his mind cleared up from all the overstimulation stuff. Maybe he’ll finally give Peter what he wants tonight, Tony decides. The boy’s been too good for him. However, what Tony hadn’t noticed, was Peter standing up from his seat, turning himself so he’s right in front of Tony. The man has his legs slightly spread and his eyes open wide when he suddenly feels Peter sitting down on top of his left leg. “Hello, there,” Tony quips, clearing his throat. Peter leans in to press a wet kiss on the corner of Tony’s mouth. The man doesn’t move. “Hi, daddy,” he whispers, his eyes fluttering. “I thought we discussed this, Pete.” Tony cocks an eyebrow, but doesn’t move Peter off of him, like he did all the other times Peter tried. Peter smiles innocently, taking it as an invitation to start moving. Slowly, he grinds himself into Tony’s leg. He’s already achingly hard after not doing anything for three days. Tony simply leans back, letting the boy do his work. The kid’s jacked himself off for weeks now. It’s not like getting off on Tony’s thigh will get him that deep into subspace again. Especially since Tony won’t actually be touching him. Peter’s just getting himself off.

This is fine.

Tony’s mouth turns dry when Peter starts whimpering. His hips roll effortlessly over Tony’s sweaty thigh. The older man is almost embarrassed at how fast his dick turns hard, watching his good boy trying to find his release. Tony shouldn’t enable this. But fuck. He wants to. “Peter, please, you’re not making this any easier for me,” Tony breathes out as he fights his urges to touch himself. Or Peter. Or both. Peter leans in, sucking on the skin just below Tony’s ear. “I don’t want you to hold back, daddy, I want to make this…” His hand creeps to Tony’s shaft, cupping it for a second before moving up to flick one of Tony’s nipples. “...hard, for you.” The boy continues to rub himself on Tony and he leans back to show himself off as he starts playing with his own nipples, using his sweat to glide over the buds. “Besides,” he moans. “If you won’t touch me... “ His hips move fast and his pants are quick. “I’m just gonna touch you.”

Tony swallows. He’s pretty sure he’ll come untouched if Peter really decides to get off right then and there, in a technically public but for now private sauna. Peter moans obscenely as his hands roam over his own body, touching all the places that make his cock throb. “Aren’t I pretty for you, daddy?” He sighs with his eyes closed. His mouth hangs open and his rolls speed up even further. Tony can’t help but moan himself and he closes his eyes in the hopes of blocking out what’s happening. Peter notices and smirks as he stops holding back altogether, moaning and whimpering loudly with every roll of his hips. “I know you’re so hard, daddy, I can see it, I can feel your cock throbbing from here, I can feel it, daddy-”

Shit.

How did Tony never realize that? Peter can feel the wind outside high rises, he feels when Tony stands behind him, simply through a shift of air. He can feel Tony’s cock without touching it. The realization hits Tony with a wave of pleasure and he squeezes his eyes shut. He can’t hold back anymore. He knew Peter was planning something, why else would he be so physically distant the past few days? Tony didn’t know it would lead to semi-public sex in a cinnamon-orange sauna on a deserted island in Italy, but he’s done complaining. Peter gets his wish. Tony’s groan turns into a pained chuckle. “You planned this, didn't you?" He growls as he opens his eyes to watch his slut ride his thigh, desperately searching for release. "Made me miss you so bad that I would have no choice but to throw you on your stomach in this sauna and fuck you deep and hard?" "Y-yes, daddy, want you to fuck me so badly," Peter gasps, realizing Tony finally gave in. "Well, too bad now, boy... I'm not going to touch you. Not unless you come rubbing your cock on me. Go on then, keep grinding, show daddy your cum, get off on my thigh like the desperate little slut you are."

Peter sucks in a hot breath, Tony’s words shooting through him like a missile. He increases the speed of his movement, his moans becoming more and more desperate. “Can- Can I hold you?” Peter asks suddenly. Tony’s taken aback by the innocent question, but realizes how touch starved the boy is. They haven’t done anything like this for weeks and shit, the boy has been holding back for three days now. Tony would love to remain the composed dom in this, but it would be too cruel to deny Peter this now. “Yeah, kid, wrap your arms around me, use me, baby.” Peter immediately envelopes Tony, not even kissing him, just pressing the man against his chest. They’re both sweating, panting messes, heating each other up even further.

“Daddy’s got you.” Peter whimpers, angling himself a bit differently to get more friction. He gasps, digging his fingers into Tony’s sweaty skin. “M-Missed this,” the boy chokes out. Tony groans at Peter’s nails clawing into his skin as he realizes that fuck, yes, he’s missed this as well. “Missed you too, sweetness. Oh, you’ve been such a good boy for daddy, haven’t you?” “Y-yeah!” “My sweet boy, so hot, you should see yourself, baby,” Tony growls. He can feel how Peter’s rhythm is slowly falling apart, how he’s just rutting down, chasing his high. “I-I need you, daddy, need to cum, I can’t hold it off one more day.” “You can, honey, you can come all over me. Show me how much you want this, I want to see you fall apart.” Tony’s struggling. He wants to just flip them over, wrap his fingers around that pretty little cock and watch how the moans would increase with every flick of his wrist. He wants to push Peter down on his knees, fuck, fuck. “You’re fucking with my head, baby-” he growls, “-do you feel how hard I am baby, you already thinking about tonight, when we’re in bed together? I’m gonna fuck you, sweetie, I promise. Gonna give you what you’ve been waiting for.”

Tony wants it so bad, he can’t help himself. He reaches for Peter’s pretty ass, gripping it tightly and helping the boy set a solid rhythm again, taking over. Peter surrenders to his guidance within seconds and it has Tony gasping. The hot, cinnamon orange air stings his lungs in the best possible way. “Peter, you close baby?” “Y-Yes, Tony, so c-close! Don’t let go of me, please, please.” “Never again, I promise.” “I’m gonna hold that a- Oh fuck, daddy, I can’t- ” Peter closes his eyes, falling into Tony’s chest as he cries out in pleasure. Tony groans as he feels how Peter comes all over his thigh, his entire body shaking within Tony’s safe embrace. Tony stares at him, his pupils blown wide.

Peter’s perfect. His hips riding him through his orgasm, his cock twitching against Tony’s skin. Peter’s eyes are still closed, brows furrowed together. The boy leans down, panting heavily as his forehead rests against Tony’s arc reactor. “Yes, that’s it , aren’t you my pretty, sweet, little boy, Peter?” Tony feels his eyes sting with tears. Peter looks so fragile, so sweet and angelic against the soft, shiny, blue light. “I-I am…” Peter whispers. “Yes, you are. You’re so good for me, being a little brat to help me overcome my fears.” Tony kisses the top of Peter’s hair, and the boy then looks up at him, a playful sparkle in his eye. “I’m only obedient if it’s in my best interest,” Peter says, gauging Tony’s reaction. When he sees Tony’s eyes light up at the joke he giggles. “You sneaky little thing.” “Hmmm, don’t pretend you didn’t like it.” “Never.”

Tony cuddles Peter for as long as he can still manage to take the heat of the sauna. Whispering sweet praise into his ear, how much he loves him, how grateful he is for Peter trying his best to give him space. How he’s going to ruin him tonight. Because fuck he will. Peter’s not escaping that one. He’s drying himself off with a big fluffy towel after taking the cold shower that Peter talked him into. Yes, he knows he’s supposed to take the cold shower but he usually just sits outside the sauna for a bit. He couldn’t ignore the hopeful, playful look on his boyfriend’s face, however. Peter laughed out loud at all the faces Tony pulled when the freezing stream of water hit his skin. He barely lasted three seconds before jumping away from it and wrapping the towel around his shoulders.

“Pete, come on out, you’ll get ice burns.” “It’s not that cold, Tony.” “Yes, it is. Come here, I want to wrap you in this fluffy thing,” Tony says, referring to Peter’s towel, “-then carry you to our room for cuddles. And food. And more sex.” Peter chuckles and turns the shower off, running his way into Tony’s arms. Tony gasps when Peter’s icy-cold body wraps around him. “Peter!” “It’s for your own good!” “Honey, please, a heart attack isn’t good for my health,” he laughs, trying to push the boy off him. Only to realize how much he missed this as well. Not having sex, meant not being as close. As playful. As goofy. He smiles. He’s past that now. “Hush it, I can hear your heartbeat. You’re doing just fine.”

Tony snorts, lifting Peter’s chin up and kissing him slowly. Their soft lips melting together. The older man closes his eyes, trailing his fingers across Peter’s cheeks as he keeps on kissing him. His lips slightly parting, Peter taking the invitation and their tongues meeting in the middle. It’s so warm and gentle that it has Tony’s heartbeat speed up. Peter sighs against his lips, his hands walking up towards Tony’s shoulder blades to hold him tight. They just stay like that for a while, making out soft and gently, their bodies locked into their embrace.

--- More: Chapter 10 Masterpost

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mahou-queen · 4 years ago

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♡52 Weeks of Lolita Questionnaire♡

In a recent Lovely Lor video, Lor answered questions from Loliprompts’ questionnaire “52 weeks of lolita”. It seems like a fun list of questions and I thought I would answer them too~ ♡

1. What is your favorite brand, and why? What’s its history? ♡ I guess my favorite brand would have to be Angelic Pretty. I love a lot of other brands, but the majority of dresses in my wish list right now are Angelic Pretty. As for their history? I don’t really know haha, I guess I should research that a bit.

2. How would you describe lolita fashion to a curious person you met in passing? ♡ I always just say I am apart of a fashion club? People don’t generally require more than that but if they did I would probably tell them that it’s an alternative fashion based on Victorian fashion and we have a fashion club and we get dressed up and meet for tea and stuff.

3. What style do you think is the most underrated, and why? ♡ qi and wa lolita. I almost never see them, or see interest in them which is a shame because there are some really beautiful dresses out there that are suited for these styles.

4. What does the phrase “lolita lifestyle” mean to you, and do you, or would you like to, adhere to it? ♡ lolita lifestyle is when you try to bring lolita or lolita-esque aesthetics into every aspect of your life. Maybe wearing lolita every or most days, and having a very “loliable” home/room. I could never be a lifestyler because I have other fashion interests. Also lolita is not appropriate at my workplace.

5. What do you think constitutes lolita etiquette or good manners? ♡ I don’t believe there is any “lolita etiquette” I think you should just be yourself. Good manner are good manners, don’t be rude to your comm members, don’t dance on the tables at a tea party. But that’s just commonsense I don’t think there is a way to behave that is lolita.

6. Does your style change with the seasons, or do you dress the same and try to bear the cold/heat? ♡ I try, but admittedly I am awful at it. I try to keep berets in the cooler months, as well as long sleeves. BUT I’m a sucker for ankle socks and I wear them all year despite the cold and I do freeze my legs off at winter meets.

7. Do you have a fashion role-model? What do you admire most about them? ♡ I actually have several! I will list them and their instagrams here: sleepyriri - Her coords are so dreamy looking, very light floaty aesthetic which I love. She also has her own lolita brand! Le_verger_sucre - Her coords are so pink and princess-y. I find myself sharing her photos a lot. Fannyrosie - the classic lolita queen. Need I say more? Tokimeki.bunny - I love the cuteness of her coords. They always have a lot of extra elements and are so well balanced. She’s also really good at coordinating printed tights which I am awful at. Tsumikko - Lavender QUEEN! I love her use of aprons, layering, and color balancing. Very light, floaty vibes. Milkcircus - Print QUEEN. Her use of prints and patterns absolutely inspires me. Coords are always very multi-dimensional Cursed.Kaiser - They’re coords are honestly so cool, there’s a kind of drama in them that I really like. Darkxdelirium - She almost made me want honey cake with her impeccable coording skills.

8. What are the top 10 things you love most about lolita? Can you also compile a list of things you hate? ♡ I don’t think I can come up with 10 but I’ll do my best. ♡ Loves: The community aspect, the ability to reclaim my femininity through lolita, the creativity that goes into building coords, crafting to make one of a kind pieces, being able to feel beautiful without being “sexy”, having a hobby to focus on when I need something to escape to.

♡ Hates: Second-hand market price fluctuation, brands still releasing dresses with a max 96cm bust, buying petticoats, storing my stuff (especially purses), brands who charge astronomical prices for low quality materials (AP purses, Q-pot jewelry, etc).

9. How strict are you in applying the rules to yourself? To others? ♡ I am pretty strict on myself. For a long time I was terrified to be seen as ita. I was even afraid to wear bodyline for fear of being ”ita” even though my coord was good. These days I am less strict on myself and worry much less about these things, but I still struggle to get out of the strict mindset from time to time. others? I love experimentation even if I am afraid to do so so I am really not too strict on others, if it works, it works, and I am not going to criticize anyone.

10. What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever incorporated into a coord, or the weirdest material you’ve ever worn? ♡ The weirdest thing I think I have ever worn in a coord were a pair of korilakkuma bell earrings. As you can imagine, bells on your ears? not great.

11. What’s the story behind your discovery of lolita fashion? ♡ When I was a senior in high school, a new girl started attending my school. She wore fairy kei and sweet lolita to school. We became friends through art class and eventually she ended up teaching me about the fashion. She sold me my first dress, and later my first brand piece. I am really glad to have met her and to have been exposed to lolita. You can follow her on instagram here

12. What is the one item that you’ve owned the longest? ♡ I still own my very first dress I got in 2012. Bodyline Squirrel Party. However, I am planning to sell it since I’ve worn it in everyway I can think of.

13. Do you think lolita is only about clothes, or does it also encompass a certain attitude or mindset? ♡ Lolita is about the fashion. All kinds of people are lolitas and they like it or wear it for different reasons.

14. Have you ever decorated a room or other space (car?) with lolita aesthetics in mind? ♡ My old bedroom used to be very “kawaii”. I love pink so my car stuff, my desk, as much as I can get away with, is pink.

15. Is it possible to be too obsessed with lolita? ♡ If lolita is interfering with your ability to pay your bills, or to be happy, or to focus on school or work or family then you should probably pull back. Some people do get very absorbed by things and in those cases it can become too much.

16. What are you favorite and least favorite trends? Do you think it’s important to follow them, or to do as you like regardless of them? ♡ My favorite trend ever is the chiffon half blouse. So comfortable, affordable, light, cute, and much more size inclusive. Least favorite trend? mis-matched shoes from the 2010 era. I like my shoes to get equal wear. I think these days more than ever, you can really just do whatever you want. Wear the fashion is right now is like anything goes which I think is great,

17. How do you define “lolita cosplay” and how do you feel about it? ♡ Lolita cosplay is stupid. sorry

18. Are there other fashions that you wear regularly, or are you an everyday lolita? ♡ I don't wear other street fashions anymore. I used to wear fairy kei and himekaji but these days I just dress regular outside of lolita.

19. Do you look for bargains to save as much money as possible, or are you willing to make sacrifices for high-quality products? ♡ I try to find the best prices when applicable but if I am in love with something I’ll do what I have to do.

20. When was the last time you wore lolita, and what did you do that day? If you wear it daily, when was the last time you went OTT or extra-fancy? ♡ The last time I wore lolita was in April lmao. For a virtual meet-up with my comm.

21. If you were to combine lolita fashion with an unrelated style or theme, what would your new creation be? ♡uhhhh I honestly have no idea at all.

22. What is your favorite accessory, and why is it your favorite? ♡ I have 2, 2-way bow clips from back when bodyline had a massive “sundries” section. They're no longer available and haven't been for a long time. I am really glad I got them, I wish I had bought more sundries when that section was still there.

23. What’s your favorite online lolita community or forum? Are there any that you avoid? ♡ I don’t have a favorite tbh. I have never been on 4chan and I never will be.

24. What is your favorite theme (e.g. school loli, pirate loli, nurse loli) or motif (e.g. deer, music notes, stars/constellations)? ♡ black and gold stars! Valentines day! fruits! gingham!

25. Is there any music that you associate with lolita? ♡ orange caramel lol

26. Will you ever be too old for lolita? ♡ never

27. Do you enjoy sewing? Why or why not? ♡ I don’t know how to sew :(

28. How does your location affect your involvement in the local lolita community? Would you like to move elsewhere to be closer, or perhaps farther away? ♡ I drive about 1.5 hours for meetups because that’s the closest active comm. I do not mind so much. I’d like to maybe be closer.

29. Does your sleepwear resemble lolita at all? ♡ not at all. I sleep in oversized t-shirts

30. Can you admit to any unpopular opinions regarding lolita? ♡ I hate peeking bloomers. I’m sorry :(

31. How do you feel about Visual kei or Jrock, and do you feel it’s related to lolita, or not? ♡ Love it, and absolutely. Visual Kei is like lolitas relative.

32. Whether or not you wear them (looking at you, Ouji), do you prefer the look of skirts, JSKs, and OPs with or without prints? ♡ I like both, but these days I am appreciating non-printed items more.

33. How has your style evolved over time? ♡ It hasn't really, just gotten more refined.

34. If applicable, what other communities do you belong to? What other identities do you adopt? ♡ I’m queer, so the LGBTQ community is important to me.

35. What are your favorite shoes to wear with your style, or what’s your dream pair? ♡ I love heels. I do not like flat shoes because I like to elongate my legs. I don’t have a dream pair.

36. Would you, or have you ever, dressed your pets in lolita? ♡ lol I’d try but I don't think it would work.

37. How do you feel about people who wear lolita for Halloween? Does it depend on whether that person is already a lolita? ♡ Wearing lolita for Halloween as a lolita is fine, but wearing it as a costume is kind of meh.

38. Excluding fashion shows, what’s the most amount of outfits you’ve ever worn in a day? ♡ just 1 haha

39. What’s your worst lolita horror story? ♡ I don’t really have any. I one time went with some of my college friends to a con and I left my dorm building in full sweet early in the morning. I was afraid my dormmates would see me cause I did not want to explain but luckily no one was awake and I made it to the van unscathed.

40. Do you like sweets? If so, what’s your favorite dessert? ♡ I love angel food cake

41. Do you have any beauty products, health routines, or special diet to keep you at your best? ♡ I take co-q-10 for my eczema, I like laneige lip sleeping mask, especially in the winter.

42. What were the best and worst meetups you’ve hosted? If you haven’t hosted, would you like to someday? ♡ I wanted to host a garden meet this summer but covid ruined that. Maybe next year.

43. Who is your favorite artist? If not famous for lolita art, do you think they have lolita appeal? ♡ I love a lot of artists, some of them I think are lolita-adjacent because their style is kawaii. I’ll list some here: jisaaaa! ubokhee MISOART_ meowwniz gojio_ hanavbara Fancy Surprise Arcade Healer Yurie Sekiya and many many more. Go stalk my following on instagram for lots of kawaii artists.

44. How do you feel about wigs? Do you wear any, or style your natural hair? ♡ I used to wear wigs, but my hair is too long now so I use my natural hair with fake bangs.

45. What’s your favorite animal motif? ♡ bears?

46. Have you ever visited a brand’s shop/boutique? If so, what was your reaction? If not, what shop would you most like to visit? ♡ I want to visit AP San Francisco

47. Do you think posting photos of your coord online is a crucial part of belonging to the community? ♡ YES, it’s how we all stay connected and inspired

48. How has the lolita community changed since you became a part of it? Where do you see lolita heading in the future in terms of community and networking? ♡ I think it’s become way more accepting and accessible. When I got into lolita there were virtually no legit resellers, the community was entirely on livejournal, buying second hand was a nightmare. Buying anything! was a nightmare. There was so much stress around looking “ita”, and the superiority of brand. These days its just not like that. So much amazing taobao brands have really helped even the field for lolita. We have so much more access to the clothes, the community, everything. It’s great. I only see it getting better as years go on.

49. What advice would you give someone who is nervous about starting lolita? Or do you think they should learn their own lessons? ♡ I think too many lolitas today rely on seasoned lolitas to tell them everything. I would say, go watch lovely lor, read @lolita-tips and look at other peoples coordinates. Lolita Tips tumblr taught me basically everything I know back in the day and it a wealth of info and concrit. Part of what makes the lolita journey so great is the research, the learning, the mistakes. You don’t wanna be like someone else, you wanna be you. So you really need to do the work yourself so you can put your personal flair into the fashion. That’s when it’s at its best.

50. What’s your dream dress/garment? Is it a faraway goal or have you obtained it? ♡ My dream dress was AP sweetie violet jsk in lavender. Which I got in 2019. My new dream dress is AP rose tea garden jsk in navy. It’ll probably be a while before I can afford to buy one.

51. How do you feel about the stereotype that lolitas are full of drama? What’s the worst drama you’ve ever witnessed or been involved in? ♡ I think any and all groups of people are bound to have drama. I don’t believe that’s specific to lolita at all. I personally have not been involved in any lolita drama.

52. Are you loyal to any particular makeup brands? ♡ I am very particular about my makeup because I do not like to use certain ingredients. I really like Pacifica. But I also like some Korean brands like The Saem, MISSHA, and TonyMoly.

This was super long but I had fun answering all the questions. Have you done this questionnaire? I’d love to see your answers~

#about me #lolita asks #loliprompts #52 weeks of lolita #lolita fashion #egl community #j fashion

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