#like they NEVER show themselves sealing the paint job

[always-andromeda]

I’m sorry but do any of these sad beige tiktok moms realize that aside from the argument over what aesthetic their kid’s toys should be…they’re all placing shit they’ve spray painted and not sealed in front of their literal babies?? Like…ma’am. HELLO????

[atla-confessions]

Because these people in this blog are currently having a heated discussion about something related to food and i liked doing the little confession about ATLA characters and customer service jobs, here’s how well I think ATLA characters cook (and if they can even cook or not):

Katara: cmon. it’s katara. yeah she can cook. she can make a damn good meal. is it healthy? yes. is it delicious? also yes. i think katara is probably an amazing cook. from cold to hot meals, simple to extravagant dishes, from vegetarian to meat lovers… she can do it all. (well, not ALL ALL, but you get the point; she’s talented.) she’s proud of her good cooking skills and WILL brag when she wants, thank yew very much. cooking is one of her love languages.

Sokka: now don’t kill me for this… but yeah he can cook. of course he can. and i don’t mean the open-minded sokka after kyoshi learned how to cook, i mean that boy has always known how cook since he was like twelve. and yeah i know he’s like Sexist or whatever in episodes 1-4 and when he was little but i swear to me it makes sense. he might’ve been sexist but he wasn’t stupid, cooking is a necessary skill that you’re required to have when you want to travel the world and become a warrior. sokka learned how to effortlessly war paint on, how to masterfully use a boomerang, how to hunt, how to fish, etc. … who’s to say cooking wasn’t one of those things? AND, no women were leaving with the men, which meant that the men would be cooking for themselves. sokka probably found this out and was like AH, BUT OF COURSE! IT’S MANLY TO KNOW TO HOW FEED YOURSELF! THIS MEANS I MUST LEARN HOW TO COOK IMMEDIATELY! sorry first i needed to justify myself because some people seem to think he’s incompetent when it comes to anything that people/the show deem as women’s work either subconsciously or not, like cooking. ok now onto his skills. yeah he can make a damn good meal as well. the water siblings are just like really good at cooking, both of em. he makes a mean grilled fish and an even meaner seal jerky. he’s especially talented at meaty dishes (of course) but he can also make nice vegetarian dishes when he’s cooking for the gaang. he can do… not mostly everything like katara, but that doesn’t mean he’s not skilled at cooking.

Zuko: love my boy, but he’s a spoiled guy. during the show he CANNOT cook. iroh makes his meals when they’re moving on foot. the ship’s cook makes his meals for him. when he’s alone? well… we all watched zuko alone… boy was Gaunt . wasn’t eating a damn thing and the things he did eat were stolen/not cooked by him/things he didn’t need to cook. now he can make Tea, but tea isn’t a meal. when zuko finds out both of the water sibling are amazing cooks he’s slighrly envious of them. now does this mean zuko NEVER learns how to cook? NO! he learns after the war when he can, but does this mean that he’s a good cook now that he’s learning? ALSO NO! he’s got the basics down and can feed himself if all else goes wrong and he’s stranded on a random deserted island, but that’s about it; he’s no katara or sokka, who both can make great meals for a shit ton of people. he will never get even remotely close to their level and he accepts this.

Toph: similar case to zuko’s. another spoiled kid who never had to pick up a ladle in her life and get stirring. but she’s literally blind, so it’s understandable that she probably wouldn’t be amazing at cooking. she most ljkely tried to cook once or twice and either burned the food or burned herself, or got mad and accidentally broke something. this is toph we’re talking about. she genuinely wants to learn how to make more meals than just simple cold sandwiches and stuff but she struggles greatly with it. when she was first introduced in the gaang, katara got upset when she refused to cook, but a simple ‘how do you guys keep forgetting i’m Blind’ shut her up real fast.

Suki: hell fucking yeah she can cook! what can she NOT do? she’s the leader of the kyoshi warriors. she’s an excellent fighter. she’s a kindhearted gal. she’s confident but not brash. we don’t know much about suki but trust me when i say that she can Cook. she’s really good with meals but her specialty is anything that’s remotely flashy. imagine those restaurants where the chefs make the food in front of you and get you to exclaim ooh and ahh. yeah that’s suki’s way of bragging about being a cool cook. sokka totally thinks it’s awesome and blushes whenever she makes meals for him because she makes sure to be flirty as FUCK! they have cooking dates together CONFIRMED! no no sorry no complaints talk to the wall yeah there you go… schmuck! (i like sukka can u tell?)

Aang: hmm. now this is a bit of a strange one. i think he CAN cook but not a lot of meals. he mostly cooks meals that originated the air temples but since they’re all vegetarian, most of his meals are cold and not hot, since there’s no need to heat up fruits or vegetables if you don’t want to. he also would ansolutely suck ass at making meaty foods but understandable because again he’s a veggie guy and he would never hurt an animal that way, all life is sacred to him. he’d try to learn how to cook meat for katara and his future children, but he’d end up feeling horrible the second he lays his eyes on any meat and would feel like he’s losing his touch with his culture. but katara’s there to comfort him and tell him that’s okay if he doesn’t learn how to cook meat. aang makes his vegetarian meals for the gaang and despite the fact that sokka really likes meat, he still compliments aang’s food and makes sure to eat it. they’re great pals, your honor. overall, aang is a good cook, but not very skilled when it comes to specific things. but still a good cook.

Should i do more? do these buds even like my little headcanons or assumptions or whatever? I saw a small spat about zuko’s customer service headcanon, so… don’t know if this’ll cause a spat or not. Just saying down here that these are all jokey jokes also Shit this was a lot of garbled writing!

[seraphtrevs]

i know that this is extremely random, but what do you think the brba/bcs character's love languages would be? imo lalo's love language would be acts of service maybe? idk. i would love to hear your thoughts! you always have such great insights

I actually remember doing this during the Long Hiatus!

Kim's is definitely acts of service. She is angry at Jimmy for switching Chuck's documents...but she's also clearly moved by his gesture. She would have broken up with him otherwise, but it just brings them closer. When they are on a break following the fallout from the commercial, Jimmy calls every day to sing to her answering machine. She's not ready to talk to him yet, but it's important to her that he makes a tangible effort at apologizing and demonstrates his willingness to be patient in a way that makes her laugh. He paints her toenails. He gets the Kettlemans backs for her. He is always doing stuff to show her how much he cares

Jimmy's is definitely words of affirmation. He desperately wants his brother to tell him he's proud of him. He wants people to express amazement at his cleverness. Unfortunately, this is something Kim has a hard time with. She will acts-of-service him all day long, but putting things into words is very difficult for her. This is part of the reason why Jimmy is so less secure in their relationship than Kim is - he's always asking for her to reassure him ("this guy? really?") but she struggles with giving that to him. That's why the office becomes such a huge deal to Jimmy because to him, sharing the office is like her saying "I'm proud to be seen with Jimmy McGill, whom I love"

Chuck values quality time. His whole EHS is an elaborate way to get Jimmy to spend time with him. After the death of his parents and his divorce (and probably the death of Hamlin Sr too), he feels very abandoned. However, he can't ask Jimmy to spend time with him because that would be too vulnerable and humiliating. So his brain made up a way for him to get what he needs from Jimmy without having to say that he loves him - it's just because of the dang EHS, not that he really wants Jimmy there every day

Howard's is acts of service. You can tell because he's constantly trying to do things for other people - he agrees to take the blame for shutting Jimmy out of HHM. He offers Jimmy a job to make up for it later. He pays off Kim's debt. He makes Cheryl a peace latte. It's so important to him for people to accept these acts because he's showing his love and care, but he sadly gets rejected a lot because he misreads which acts of service would be welcome and which are not helpful. No one does acts of service for him. Poor Howie. :(

Nacho wants gifts. In the end, he rejected the ill-gotten gains from the cartel...but I think he never stopped being a material girl at heart. He loves jewelry and nice clothes and expensive cars. Tragically he has to go out and take it for himself, but I think he would react really well to being showered with gifts. Maybe if Lalo put a ring on it, things would have turned out differently.

Lalo values acts of service. Nacho wins him over when he parkours to rescue the drugs from the trap house - the drugs themselves weren't worth a lot, but Nacho's willingness to put himself in danger to impress Lalo works really well on him. Nacho burning down Gus's restaurant really sealed the deal.

Mike definitely needs quality time. Yes, he's working to get money to support Kaylee...but actually, he's getting the money to support Kaylee to make sure that Stacey will still want him around. He doesn't feel worthy of spending quality time with either of them unless he's being a provider, which is very sad because Stacey and Kaylee enjoy time with him no matter what, but he can't see that

Gus also prizes quality time. He visits David for the pleasure of listening to him talk, enjoying basking in the presence of someone who can take the pressure off of him and let him be swept away by the dulcet sounds of neurodivergent infodumping.

[kolechiart]

* the funniest part about betrayus turns up the heat to me is that the writers want you to side with stratos as if he isn't blatantly in the wrong here. you're supposed to view o drool as the bad guy because he's mean as if his actions aren't completely justified and logical.

it was by some miracle [and the age rating] that he wasn't hurt by the machine backfiring, let alone anything serious. it's made worse by how he never consented to being a test subject in the first place and was practically shoved in there against his own will. this is all on live television as well, you can throw in a side order of public humiliation.

while he did give it the once over and seal of approval that doesn't really mean anything. it has been show to us extensively that sir c's inventions have a tendency to backfire or not work as intended. the assumption that the machine itself is to blame is entirely fair game.

it's why when they later go to paint his decision to shut down sir c's lab as an unfair abuse of power it's an argument that's dead in the water. a machine he created could've seriously injured someone and while it malfunctioning wasn't his fault in this case who's to say it couldn't be repeatable? he's still responsible to some degree and this a very reasonable response to the situation, a light slap on the wrist even.

trying to paint o drool as being a bad person for harbouring a grudge against sir c and being a bit catty as a result holds no weight to it. he has every right to mistrust the guy who could've gotten him hurt and wants him to face repercussions for it, how is that wrong of him?

if we want to talk about an actual abuse of power then stratos is right there and his utter refusal to hold his own friends accountable. it was by sheer luck that nothing serious happened but instead sir c is the one who gets the apology as if he's the real victim in this situation.

instead o drool gets stripped of his rank and that's supposed to viewed as the correct choice, as if it's a fitting punishment. what did he do again? deem your friend as an active risk to public safety for nearly getting him killed and punishing him accordingly, you know his JOB?

if being mean is now valid grounds to remove someone from power then maybe stratos should go into hiding, it's the only thing he's good at anyway. like how in invasion of the pointy heads stratos is shown instantly surrendering before running to safety, leaving everyone to defend themselves, while o drool is actively taking part in the fight-

maybe that's the real reason why stratos removed his badge. he felt threatened that someone competent held a high position of power and how that not only reflected badly on him but called into question his own standings. o drool for president he's already more qualified.

[soft-kisses-at-midnight]

You're spring, summer, and all of my dreams

Description: Sometimes, the one that saves them all, also needs saving. With opened palms, you realise you can put everything back together.

Warnings: hurt/comfort I suppose, it's truly a sappy piece! crying?? would that be one?? (you can tell I haven't done this for a while huh?)

IT was just another day, where condensation dripped from crinkled water bottles leaving rings on worn blankets. Grass taking on the colour of the sun, feeling like natures own sword stabbing the ankles that rest upon it; air becoming sickeningly sweet with raspberry syrup slushies and happiness.

It was just another day, when you realised you loved him. Soft music playing from a pair of over-loved headphones, foam splitting from its cover. With his arms under his head, nodding slightly to the muted music and sunglasses hiding those iris’ bursting with endless colour. He looked like a dream, something too perfect to be tangible. Your mirage.

With the summer acting as a backdrop to him, he was made for summer. He was made for stargazing, watching the first firefly at night, sharing stories in whispers afraid the night will steal the vulnerability. He was made for warmth, a kind that sinks deep in your bones and never leaves; made for post-it note confessions in the morning, the first slow dance at prom. He was made for everything good.

Eyelashes kissing cheeks, freckles dancing across skin; he lay there, blissfully unaware that your heart was full of him.

“Do you ever feel like you were made for more than this?” a voice so soft it’s barely there, so conscious of his confession he daren’t raise its volume. Oh no, but that’s Steve. Steve is whispers of unfounded insecurity in a world that spins on the axis of him.

“How do you mean?” your heart calls back, it wants to scream ‘you can never be more than everything’ but it keeps itself locked between your rib cage, silent and waiting.

“Like, I don’t know just-” the pause comes, and it sits in the air like a couple on a swing. Easing a hand from the back of his head, grass creases all over the backs of them, he lifts the glasses to show his eyes. The eyes that make sailors sing sad songs in envy of them, can sink ships if he put his mind to it.

“I always thought whatever I’d do would be more than this, more than dead end jobs and even deader dreams I guess.” He lifts his body to sit upright, glasses falling onto the blanket and crossed legs facing you. Palms wringing themselves, almost scolding. “Maybe it’s just the weather making me nostalgic about high school, everyone had big dreams then you know? It’s probably just that, don’t worry about it.” and with a shake of his head, hair falling in front of his face, the short-lived emotion claws itself back inside already fearing of saying too much.

“No no, it’s not nothing, I was just thinking that’s all it’s a lot to take in.” Leaning your head on your upright arm, elbow bent into the fabric on the floor whilst your other hand busies with uprooted daisies pondering the statement. With eyes lifting to meet his, you say “I think it’s perfectly okay to not know everything, like what you’re going to do in 10 years or who you’re going to be. Just because we’re older doesn’t mean we have to have it all figured out.” dropping the daisy, you rise to mirror his position.

“And I don’t think you have dead dreams, only changed one’s and that’s okay too.”

It was just another day when you thought maybe your heart had exploded within your chest, bursting at the seams in compassion. Wanting nothing more than to prove to him that he is summer, that he’s like the first cup of coffee in the morning or the first daffodil in spring. Wanting nothing more than to show him the kaleidoscope of colour he truly is when all he paints himself as, is grey.

“I think, that you, Steve Harrington-“ locking eyes as you point to his chest with a soft smile “can be anything you want and more.” with a small nod to seal the words in stone in his mind, telling him to keep those words locked away for a rainy day.

“Yeah? You think so?” If it was entirely possible for hearts to cry, yours would weep at his words. Words coming from a man, but repeated by the boy who only wanted love but looked in all the wrong places; who never had a full heart, but always went around watering everyone else’s just to watch them bloom. He saved all those who knew him from a drought of love, whilst he was withering away. A heart wrapped in thorns, unrelentingly distrustful from being scarred one too many times. And his eyes; whilst his heart was in drought, his eyes were drowning. Drowning in a sorrow so deep rooted it seemed it would always stay, pupils swimming to keep afloat among the sadness but failing.

A hand catches his chin, just as the first tear falls. Whilst cupping his face, your thumb moves to soothe the burning skin underneath.

“You are everything I dream I could be, but I don’t envy you.” eyes starting to match his, the waves crashing from your eyelids. With a small watery scoff and a shake of the head, you continue “nope, not one bit, you know why? Because I get to watch you become everything you’re meant to be and more, got a front row seat to everything you are and ever will be, doesn’t get better than that.” thumb still stroking soaked skin, his lip catches with his breath. He pushes air outward so deeply, as if to blow all the feelings away, all the feelings he never felt validated to feel, the feelings he kept locked away in a rusty cage with a broken lock just hoping it would be enough to hide it.

But here it is, in all it’s glory. The rain clouds in his eyes turned to crashing waves, then came the tsunami. All at once, the rusty cage fell apart, and out it came. “It’s okay to cry, Steve.” the whisper calls to him, and fuck that’s all it took.

Shoulders shaking with past doubts, hair bouncing from broken promises, eyes squinting in trodden love, hands jumping in irreversible fear; he wept.

Your hand moved to the back of his neck, and ushered him to your chest. Hoping he could hear the rhythm of your heart and know that the blood within it is soaking it in love for him. That with every exhale, your lungs thank him for the scent of home. You hoped.

Nevertheless, you rocked you both back and forth. It’s then, you realised, even summer has thunder storms.

Stroking the tear-dampened hair from his scalp as your chin rests upon it, you hum. You hum in lieu of anything remotely comparable to something as poetic as him. How can you prove to one of the greatest masterpieces you’ve ever seen, that they’re just that? How can you prove that he’s like sun to a sunflower, everyone stands on attention in the air that is him? How can you ever prove to him, that he will never be short of everything?

"You are my favourite part of my day, whether that be chlorine-soaked adventures or merely the comfort of knowing you. You are sunrise and midnight, something people look at and just say 'Wow, I can't believe I ever missed this.'" His hair only dampening further, head shaking, begging for composure. "I wish you could see you as you truly are, you're the first day of July, you're like your favourite blanket on a rainy day, or listening to your favourite song for the first time." With every word, the sobs only permiate below you. The only thing your soul can feel is anger. How dare the world make him feel like he isn't enough. How dare the world paint him anything less than iridescent.

"Everyone who knows you, gets luckier every day you stay by them. It's a pleasure to know you; not a hinderance, Steve." with every word, his self doubt cracks away even more, even in the hope of one day believing you.

"To know you, is to love you, and fuck. Loving you is the greatest thing I will ever do. I'll love you when it rains, or when the sun shines from the clouds. I'll love you in black & white, or colour. I will love you regardless of any context, because it is the greatest thing i have ever been allowed to do." You remove him from your chest, cheeks flushed and eyes more scarlett than when they were last seen, but no less beautiful.

"Thank you, for letting me love you." with cheeks pressed into soaked palms his eyes met yours.

His eyes saying all the words so he wouldn't have to, his eyes gluing over cracks in armour as the teardrops stopped. Only the tracks in thier wake, he gave you a small nod with a shy smile.

"Having you love me, is all I'll ever need." head leaning against your hand, you sat there. Soaking up confessions that were far too earnest for Steve to believe it could ever be about him.

From the boy who never felt love, to the man who was now overflowing in it. His heart was finally home.

This is one of my favourite things I have ever written, I hope you guys enjoy it! Sometimes it's nice to comfort our boy xoxo

[needfulfrights]

“Dark Places” by Gillian Flynn: A Review

Goddamn do I love an awful bitch of a protagonist! There’s just something about “bad women” in books that hooks me instantly, even if I don’t really “like” the character themselves, I still adore reading about them and their fucked-up selves. Some sort of weird catharsis, maybe? Whatever the reason for my dubious devotion to twisted fictional women and what makes them tick, Gillian Flynn hasn't let me down to date; in fact, Dark Place’s Libby Day may be my favorite of Flynn's horrible heroines.

 Libby Day is a sad, angry woman with no family. Well, that’s not quite true. Libby’s family consists of her cat Buck, an estranged aunt, and oh, her brother, Ben who is currently in prison (and has been since he was a teenager) for the murder of the rest of the Day family when Libby was just a small girl. And it was young Libby’s testimony that sealed Ben’s fate.

 Now “Little Libby” is all grown up and in her early 30’s. The money she’s lived off of up until now, donations from well-wishers after her family’s murders, has all but dried up. And so, Libby needs some cash. Now. Or else she’ll have to get an actual job. This conundrum eventually finds her meeting Lyle, head of the “Kill Club,” a group of people obsessed with true crime. For Lyle, his grisly obsession is not focused solely on murders of the Day family, but of Ben Day’s innocence. Such an obsession that Lyle offers to pay Libby to talk with people from her past who were involved with the murders in order to help clear Ben’s name and find the true killer. What starts off as a purely financial pursuit soon finds Libby in a desperate hunt for answers, no longer just for the money, but to help Libby find her own sense of closure about that bloody night, and the person it shaped her into.

 The plot of the story kept me engaged the whole way through. I liked that different plot points and character moments were weaved in so masterfully by Flynn that when the truth about the murders of the Day family finally was revealed it felt well-earned and carefully thought out. Flynn laid down the trail of crumbs to a delightful buffet of an ending that more than satisfied me as a reader.

 However, as I’ve found with the Flynn’s other two novels, while the plot may be engaging and well thought out, it’s her character writing that elevates the whole thing from “great” to “amazing!” All the characters, whether I loved them or loathed them, were interesting to read about and felt authentic. From awkward but oddly charming Lyle, to mean (and sad) as hell Diondra, there wasn’t really a single character in the book that I don’t think added something to the novel.

 I found Libby to be a very compelling protagonist, strangely likeable in her own way, though I would hate to meet anyone like her in real life. A chronic liar and thief (among other things), Libby still managed to win me over through her moments of grudging vulnerability and kindness she shows to others, especially the friendship she builds with Lyle, though I appreciate that she never quite loses her overall acerbic personality. Which is another topic I thought was captured quite well: Libby Day is an extremely damaged person. She has been through some of the most terrible shit anyone could ever go through, never mind going through it as a child. She sleeps with the lights on, she lashes out at others, she holds people at arm’s length. It doesn’t paint a pretty picture of a trauma survivor, but I felt it painted one of the more truthful portrayals I’ve seen.

 The other standout character for me was Libby’s mother Patty. I could feel Patty’s anxiety and hopelessness through the pages. I wanted to hug her, wanted to help her, all while knowing she ended up dead, and then somehow even more devastated for her once the “how” and “who” of the murders were revealed.

 As for Ben…. ah, Ben. Whenever I got to a “Ben” chapter I just kept flipping back and  forth between two thoughts: “Jesus Christ kid, quite being such a pushover” and “Jesus Christ can someone help this poor boy?” I admittedly didn’t like Ben as a person, but I did find him an interesting character. I don’t hate that he was an annoying teenage boy, but the whole sad sack, “woe is me” thing did get old by the end of the book. I kept hoping that he would eventually stand up for himself, start asserting himself, or that someone would come and you know, help this clearly struggling child; but by the end of the novel, even with Ben being a grown adult he still just lets things happen to and around him by other, which I guess is kind of the point of Ben’s character, but it was still frustrating.

 Overall, I really enjoyed the time that I spent with Day family during my time reading Dark Places. I would place it right in the middle of Gillian Flynn’s three works, with Sharp Objects being number one and Gone Girl as my least favorite (still a great book! I’m sorry Amazing Amy!) Whatever urgency the plot may lack by knowing the fate of the Day family from the beginning is more than made up for by the delightfully disturbing cast of characters that Flynn has put to paper.

Rating: 4.25/5

[mcleanpainting]

Common Mistakes to Avoid When Choosing Best Domestic Painters

Painting is one of the most basic and essential tasks for any homeowner. It provides a way to transform the look of your home, increases the value of your property and allows you to express yourself in a very personal way. That’s why hiring Domestic Painters in Melbourne is the best way and also an investment that can last for years if you take care of it properly.

However, people often think they can do it themselves or hire someone who isn't qualified. This might save them some money in the short term but will cost them more in the long run when they need additional work done after hiring an unprofessional painter or even run into safety hazards because no one sealed their woodwork properly.

Not checking the references and reviews of the painters

When you are hiring Domestic Painters in Melbourne, one of the most important things to do is to check their references and reviews.

You can check the references by asking friends and family members who have used a painter before. If they had a good experience with them, they would be happy to recommend their services.

You can also ask your neighbours if they know any painters who are reliable and trustworthy. Checking the reviews on websites like Yelp or Google is another great way of getting information about domestic painters in your area.

If you want to get more insight into how good these painters are, do not hesitate to call their customer service department and ask questions about their work experiences or anything else that may interest you about them as well as other people who have hired them before (or maybe even worked for them).

Don't go for cheap domestic painters at any cost

Do not go for cheap domestic painters at any cost. The reason being is that you will be getting what you pay for, which is a shoddy job. The only way to avoid this from happening is by choosing a painter who knows what he or she is doing, has all the required documents and license to do the job.

Don't choose a painter who does not have all the required documents and license

You should never hire Domestic Painters in Melbourne who does not have all of the required documents and license. The most important document is a certificate from the state government that shows that the painter is qualified to paint or work on homes in your area.

Make sure you ask about insurance coverage as well. This will protect both you and your home from any damage caused by an accident during painting, such as if someone slips and falls while walking on wet paint in an unfinished room.

Never hire a domestic painter who does not use high-quality paints and brushes

Quality of paint is one thing that you should never compromise on when hiring a domestic painter. This is because the quality of your home's walls will determine the overall look and feel of your house. Thus, it's important to choose a domestic painter who uses high-quality paints for their job.

Cheap paints are often not durable and can be easily damaged by moisture, sunlight, or other environmental factors. In addition, they may not last long and lead to problems later on

Conclusion

In the end, it all comes down to knowing what you want and being willing to pay for it. If you want the best possible job done by a painter, then make sure they have the right license and experience under their belt.

There is no need to go overboard and spend thousands on a high-end company when there are plenty of good ones out there offering services at a reasonable price point; just make sure that they're reliable and trustworthy enough not only with their work but also with your personal belongings!

Source : https://www.atoallinks.com/2022/common-mistakes-to-avoid-when-choosing-best-domestic-painters/

[stumacherstan]

Ares x goddess!Reader Part Two:

past!thanatos x reader

As you looked down at the casualties of your city, you sign yet again. “I suppose I haven’t been the best partner these past decades.” You uttered to yourself as you dramatically sat down on the temple, your legs dangling.

Your skin raises as a familiar coldness enshrouds you. Your body’s discards it and goes back to its regular temperature. You smile gently but don’t turn back. “Hello Thanatos.”

“Hello (Y/N), it’s been awhile.” The God of Death looked around. “I certainly didn’t expect the city of refugees to look like this,” he glanced at you, “nor expected it to survive.”

“I have to have tricks up my sleeve every now and then. You know me.”

“Knew.”

You didn’t dare flinch at the words. “Well, thank you for doing your job I suppose.”

“It’s the same old thing. Somebody has to.” Thanatos breathed in as he felt each soul descending with his presence. He had other places to be like always, but he did quite miss his time with you.

“It’s quite ironic isn’t it (Y/N)?”

“Don’t you dare finish whatever you are going to say.” You internally seethed as the hypocrisy that you were slowly becoming aware to.

“I’ll say this, I miss you.” He came up behind and his hand lingered on your shoulder. Thanatos felt a tinge of pain hit his heart when you shrugged him off. “However, I know you’re very much in love with him despite this difficult time. Don’t make the same mistake I made with you.”

You winced at those words. You couldn’t handle losing Ares too. He made you feel a different type of way than anyone else ever could. He had a part of you and you him. You looked over your people and saw them handling themselves.

You needn’t hold their hand for everything. You were a Goddess, not a babysitter. For the most part they took care of themselves so why were you wasting your time with them instead of your supposed husband?

The intense feeling of guilt pooled at your stomach. Your dear Ares must feel so neglected. You rubbed your temples again and sighed loudly.

“Thank y-“ As you turned, your old dear friend was already gone. He had done his job and left. “Well, time to find my beloved.”

________________________________

You stood before your grand shared home. People see Ares as prideful and arrogant, so you would assume the house would be large and grand. On the outside it was with its beautiful marble stature and complimenting staircase to the door.

Yet it was just a mini mansion you two enjoyed. Not as big as the other Gods homes. Ares likes a smaller space that has enough for his foolery. You smiled softly as you thought about how he crashed through the second story trying to prove a pint.

You entered and took a big whiff comfort and warmth. ‘It’s been awhile hasn’t it,’ you smiled bitterly to yourself. You looked around and giggled at the paintings, sculptures, and pictures of you and your dear husband. Such happy simple times. When did you become distant?

Your hands clasped each other’s tightly. You knew he was home, and you knew he knew you were home. “My sweet husband, your darling wife is home!” You called out the old saying you would say every time you came home. When he would come home he would say, “My darling wife, your sweet husband is home!”

Ares was still upset about the whole ordeal, but he would never deny you of your kiss of life and love and tight hug or protection. Or so you would call it. Thinking about it made his heart flutter. He finally walked down to you, and felt all those emotions from he first saw your beauty.

His breath got caught in his throat, his stomach was doing cartwheels, he’s sure he was having heart palpitations. Oh dear, you took his breath away. You were as gorgeous as the first day he met you. You didn’t change one bit.

Ares glided to you and hugged you tightly, dipping you like in those cheesy romcom moments and kissed you passionately. He carefully stood you both whilst your lips danced together. He didn’t want to pull away, but you did first; almost making him whine. Then he saw your eyes that held the sky and universe together.

“As beautiful as ever.” Ares breathed out.

You flushed slightly, “you’re just as charming.”

You couldn’t help but feel giddy being in his arms. His beautiful sunset orange eyes held so much passion and love for you that you felt exposed under it. A certain emotional vulnerability was being shown and felt that you hadn’t experienced in awhile. You did miss your husband during those years after all.

You laid your head on your chest. “I’ve missed you so much, even if I didn’t show it. Carry me to the couch? Somebody wore me out today.”

Ares chuckled as he lifted you with ease just like your wedding day. “Oh did they? Do I have to go and fight them for challenging my lady?”

You playfully swooned at his words and your fingers danced on his face. “You would do that for me?” You batted your eyes up at him innocently.

He carefully sat himself on the couch and adjusted your position to be gently laying on him. “I would do anything for my beautiful wife, anyone who dares strife with her shall have a problem with me.” He started twirling/twisting your hair with his fingers.

“How romantic!” You cheerfully giggled. You let yourself get comfortable and sighed on his chest. “However my dear, you need not strife with such a person. I handled it, you know me.”

“Ah of course of course, you are more than capable of taking yourself. I know.” Ares looked down at you with love. The feelings of bitterness and anger disappeared as you two chatted as if nothing happened. As if he wasn’t the one to fight you.

As looked upon him with the same passion in your orbs, you knew that at some point the discussion had to be talked about. You gently rested your hand on his chest as you cuddled deeper into his arms. “Ares...”

“(Y/N)...”

As stubborn as ever. “I-“ you shoved your face into his chest. “I’m sorry.” Your voice was muffled.

“What was that?”

“I’m. Sorry.”

“A little louder.”

“I’m sorry!”

“For what?”

“Ares...”

“What?”

“I’m sorry for, being an uncaring spouse. I didn’t realize how long the time had passed, and I didn’t consider your feelings. I’m really sorry, I didn’t realize how much we had drifted. I still really and care for you, please remember that. And i should’ve-“

Ares shushed you and gently patted your back. “You and your communication skills.”

Although you had no room to pout, you still did. “You’re not the one to talk.”

“Maybe so, but even then. It’s okay.”

“Are you sure?”

“We had our fight. Now we are here together.”

“I suppose so.”

“Should we go to my mother for counseling?”

You snorted loudly. “Please.”

“You’re right. We can work it out together.”

Comfortable silence ensued. The both of you reminiscing of old times, how it use to be. When he was your mighty God of War and you were his healing Goddess of Peace. Two peas in pod with delightful season of chaos.

“I really do love you. I promise, from here on out, we will spend more time together.”

“That’s all I ever wanted. I’ve missed you so much.” His arms squeezed you lightly and he buried his nose into your hair. “I’ve missed this.”

You choked back tears. “Oh by the stars, I love you so much.”

Ares hushed you with a soft kiss sealing your fate with him once more.

Two beautiful powerful Gods in love.

[vvienne]

SANGCHENG FIC RECS

flight of a one-winged dove by bloodletter

Talking at someone is only fun for so long. That's all being a sect leader is: talking and talking to people bound by courtesy to listen to you. It's so fucking dull. A relief, then, to face one’s equal, and no less an old friend who is inclined to interrupt you whenever you ramble. He likes it. It’s one of Jiang Cheng’s best qualities.

In the years after Guanyin Temple, Nie Huaisang attends to unfinished business.

whipped by reindeercolin

Jiang Cheng blinks. “Dammit, they do think you’re dating one of us! I hate it when Wei Wuxian is right.” “Excuse me?” Nie Huaisang gives him an incredulous look. “First of all, they think I’m dating you, and if anything, they’re getting more aggressive!”

(or, the one in which Jiang Cheng has too many relatives, not enough patience, goes through a brother-divorce and finds out he has a boyfriend - in that order, more or less.)

Ponder the Manner of Things by Pip (Moirail)

It's not that Jiang Cheng can't do a quadruple flip followed by a triple toeloop. It's that his mother seems to think that's still not good enough.

Jiang Cheng is grateful that Huaisang doesn’t have the same kind of family life that he does, all - messy with expectations and cravings for closeness and nothing but vague filial piety where love is meant to be.

a matter of time and organ donation by nev_longbottom

This is it. The call he’s been waiting for. His brother had ‘an accident’ or ‘died in his sleep’ or some other lie to cover up the murder.

“Please, Mingjue is missing. He got into one of his moods and he was gone when I came back from grocery shopping. He’s not answering his phone. I don’t know if he left or was kidnapped or if something else happened. Huaisang, please, if you’ve heard anything,” Meng Yao begs.

Nie Huaisang hunts his brother's killer.

no tip necessary by tattletold

With all the nervousness of a virgin in a whorehouse, Jiang Cheng closes the door behind himself and enters, sitting on the low seat across from the escort. The pretty young man keeps his face hidden behind the delicate fan, and Jiang Cheng thinks for a moment that he recognizes the design painted onto it now that he’s closer.

It’s only when he lowers the fan and opens his eyes, wide, does Jiang Cheng paralyze with realization.

They speak at the same time in equally horrified tones.

“Jiang Cheng?”

“Nie Huaisang?”

Your Place in the Family of Things by raisedbyhyenas

No matter what happens, no matter the circumstances, Wei Wuxian will always leave and Jiang Cheng will always get stuck trying to rebuild from whatever’s left.

*************

In which Jiang Cheng makes friends; gets a cat; begins to rebuild a relationship; and maybe, possibly, potentially, learns a little bit how to be happy.

sigh yourself to sleep by merthurlin

“Let me take care of you, A-Cheng.”

No one—no one has ever said that, not to Jiang Cheng. He wasn’t a very sickly child, true, but the few times he remembered being sick it was never—he had a-jie, and later on he had Wei Wuxian, for what it was worth, but he never—

halcyon days by serein

They're in a forest, it seems just the two of them.

"You have to be patient," Nie Huaisang says, "I once waited for three days to catch a sparrow."

"Three days?" Jiang Cheng replies, sceptical. He can't imagine Nie Huaisang having the attention span for that.

"It's not that hard," Nie Huaisang says, "if you know what they want, and find a way to get it for them."

[JC stumbles across an array and gets physically de-aged to be 16/17. NHS kindly offers his help to an old friend, but things... escalate.]

To Distraction by isozyme

It’s the third night of Yunmeng’s kite festival celebrations. Nie Huaisang has come visiting, eager to partake in the food, the arts, and Jiang Cheng.

-

Jiang Cheng wants to forget. Nie Huaisang has some new lube and wants to see if he can put his whole fist in somebody’s ass.

Lights, Camera, Kiss by MissMagus

When Nie Huaisang gets paired with straight porn star Jiang Cheng for a five-part series, he’s sure it will be an utter disaster. Until the cameras start rolling and their chemistry alights like wildfire.

(Or, the five times Nie Huaisang and Jiang Cheng have sex for their job, and the first time they have sex outside of it.)

Only the Shallow by hamburglar

When Nie Huaisang gets bored and convinces Jiang Cheng to make out with him, he’s probably not expecting to still be dealing with the guy 16 years later.

OR the story where Jiang Cheng goes into: the Cloud Recesses, denial, some bushes, the private porn library at the Unclean Realm, and subspace.

Blind for Love by manamune

Jiang Cheng is poisoned with an aphrodisiac and needs to orgasm repeatedly in order to flush it from his system.

The first person he thinks of going to for help is Nie Huaisang, who does what any good friend would do: he shoves his three decades worth of feelings for Jiang Cheng deep into the recesses of his mind, locks them up so he can pretend they don’t exist, and then fucks him so hard that he passes out.

Descending by lightningwaltz

“I want to… to not be embarrassed.”

“To not be embarrassed during what?”

“During sex.” There. Jiang Cheng can say it. “In general. Also with you right now.”

“Very good.”

“When did you become so authoritative?” Jiang Cheng wants to sound irked, but can’t quite manage anything beyond nervous curiosity.

dark water by Morgan (duckwhatduck)

There are words, somewhere, for this. Words that would put a shape to the thing that sits between them, would seal their understanding. There are words for sympathy, for friendship, for understanding, for that touch, for this feeling.

Jiang Cheng can feel them, somewhere, fluttering formless at the back of his throat, squirming under his ribcage, but he cannot grasp them. They swim beneath the surface, fish in muddy water - and like fish, they will dart away if he grabs for them incautiously, and leave him nothing but cold splashes and grit.

Or: Why talk about things when you could fuck about it instead?

never knew i was a dancer by isozyme

“What’s a stone butch and why aren’t they real?” Jiang Cheng asks, too buzzed to care too much about not being up on lesbian culture.

Huaisang pats Jiang Cheng on the no-man’s-land between her boobs and her shoulder. “You’re so useless, Jiang Cheng. A stone butch is a fictional hottie who doesn’t make you do any work at all, just wants to give head and fuck you stupid on her strap.”

“Fictional?” Jiang Cheng echoes, having - not a moment, per se, but sort of a problem where her thoughts are going too fast for her poor drunken brain to keep up with.

“Nobody actually wants to fuck a chick who’s too lazy to eat you out after,” Huaisang mumbles.

-

After leaving Wei Ying and Lan Zhan’s bachelorette party, Jiang Cheng and Nie Huaisang decide to experiment with some outdated stereotypical lesbian sex roles.

lights out by rynleaf

“Nie-zongzhu makes the most sense,” Sect Leader Yao nods sagely, to murmurs of assent across the Jin Sect’s gold gilded banquet hall. Jin Ling, clad in opulent robes that look somewhat comical on a boy of sixteen, inclines his head as his scribe makes a notation, and the noise rises as sect leaders pat themselves and each other on the back for a decision well made.

Jiang Cheng groans and downs his cup of wine in one go.

-

In which the Sect Leaders elect a new Chief Cultivator.

shadow eternal by rynleaf

“You want me to distract the Chief Cultivator from the Annual Cultivation Conference, so you and other sect leaders can… what. Sign contracts without adult supervision?”

“If Jiang-zongzhu is amenable,” Sect Leader Ouyang repeats with a nod.

Jiang Cheng pinches the bridge of his nose. The pressure he felt building behind his eyes all morning is swiftly coalescing into a bitch of a headache. “Just what do you all think I’m capable of?”

Sect Leader Ouyang bows with a cheerful smile. “We have utmost faith in Sandu Shengshou’s abilities.”

-

In which a night hunt ends in disaster, Jiang Cheng catches a glimpse of Nie Huaisang's heart, and feelings are discussed after a certain fashion.

Four Days in Lanling by halotolerant

Nie Huaisang looks at him. ‘You are confusing me, Clan Leader Jiang, perhaps I misunderstand, but…’

‘You didn’t misunderstand. You don’t misunderstand. You understand all of it.’ For six months Jiang Cheng has been mulling this over, and now with Nie Huaisang in front of him he can’t figure out if he most wants to knock him down or kneel at his feet. What he does is try and breathe. Clench his hands at his sides. ‘And now I am going to ask you to do something for me. You have to do something for me. You have to help Jin Ling.’

Lean for Love Forever by Pip (Moirail)

Having a crush on your roommate is really embarrassing, except that's apparently the opposite of a problem. Jiang Cheng can't deny that's pretty convenient.

Wei Ying holds it up, a series of straps and buckles and velcro and wow, really a lot of leather. It has absolutely no conceivable form beyond tangled.

Nie Huaisang opens the door at exactly the moment that Wei Ying holds the thing up to Jiang Cheng’s chest, as if he’s trying to imagine how exactly it would fit onto a person, and it falls into a tangled pile between them while they stare at Huaisang in mild mortification.

acquired momentum by mongrelmind

Had Madam Yu known that this is where her son would end up, she would have gouged his eyes out with her bracelet before he made the grave mistake of looking in the direction of Nie Huaisang.

-

in which Nie Huaisang has an art show, Jiang Cheng is begrudgingly topless*, and there are. Shenanigans.

*Nie Huaisang excluded.

[sage-nebula]

@smallestfish​

I typed about five cellphone screens arguing against this with things in the game, but I accidentally highlighted all but the last couple lines and replaced them with a closing bracket instead of hitting copy. So, heavily shortened, Josh was more respectful to everyone in this game than the first one. He made a bet that the city would sort itself out if it had a few extra lives, moved one or two pieces when it was necessary, and let his opponent paint himself into a corner. Then, either Haz or he could just make it magically better after anyway if things really did go south, and things did, so they did.  Haz was significantly more cruel than Joshua has ever been by resurrecting everyone except Rindo's friends just to watch the kid squirm, and we know he did it with the intent to see how Rindo would react. There's a question to be asked of why Haz only intervened after time travel stopped being an option, and the answer makes Josh look like he's only waiting for Haz and Rindo to quit first and make his intervention actually necessary and good.

Replying this way because typing in the limit-restricted tumblr replies is annoying.

I disagree that the Shinjuku Game is in any way more respectful to anyone than the Shibuya Game. The Shinjuku Game was explicit psychological torture on the Players with no end in sight but their own erasure. The Variabeauties, Purehearts, and Deep Rivers Society were stuck for I believe 30+ loops; that’s seven months. During that time they not only saw other teams erased, but knew that their own erasure could come at any moment, and it’s specifically spelled out in the Secret Reports that this has an averse psychological effect on the Players. Of course, not that we needed that; Fuya, a 27-year-old man, was reduced to hysteric sobbing once he realized that his and his team’s fate was sealed. Motoi was never what you’d call an upstanding person (he was a plagiarist and an art thief), but his facial expressions when his treachery is revealed show that his sanity has been slipping for a while and he, too, is left grasping for any hope of salvation he can find. Kanon outright says she knows the Game is rigged and there’s no hope of winning, but she’s willing to try whatever she can to at least make it fair; it’s pretty clear that this unwinnable Game has been breaking her morale as well. And hell, by week two we see Fret’s optimism shaking as he realizes that the Ruinbringers can snatch victory away on technicalities, so even two weeks in a Shinjuku Game is enough to start wearing down on Players’ psyches, let alone thirty.

In the Shibuya Game, on the other hand, while it’s more brutal in the sense that the Reapers are out for blood (everyone’s gotta eat), anyone left alive at the end of the Week gets a chance to be restored to life or become a Reaper. (Well, most everyone. I think in the OG Secret Reports it’s stated that some are still redistributed into the Imagination of the UG, but for the most part all winners get a chance to return to life or become Reapers.) On top of which, the Players aren’t pitted against each other; they’re allowed, even encouraged, to work together to complete the missions and defeat the Noise. Shibuya’s Game encourages personal growth and development, whereas Shinjuku’s Game encourages competition and, to be honest, psychological torment. Joshua wanted to erase everyone in Shibuya just as Hazuki did in Shinjuku, yes, but his Game is far less cruel to the Players involved, not to mention the Reapers.

But Joshua simply . . . didn’t care about that, for three years. For three entire years he sat back and allowed Shiba to waltz in and dethrone Uzuki as Conductor. He allowed Shiba to disregard Shibuya’s Game in favor of Shinjuku’s. He allowed the Shinjuku Reapers to erase nearly every single one of his own Reapers for daring to speak out against this, to the point where Uzuki and Kariya feel as though their only option is to keep their mouths shut and go along with it, for their own safety. For three years he allowed Shibuya’s Players to not have the chance to grow, to develop, to discover themselves, to question what it is they’d want out of a second chance, and instead undergo literal hell in an unwinnable Game with no idea what they ever could have done to deserve such punishment. (The answer is, of course, nothing. They did nothing to deserve it. They just suffered it anyway.)

The point is: The Composer is the one who creates the UG. He is the one who creates the rules for how it operates, both within the limitations of the Game and otherwise. When Kubo and the Shinjuku Reapers came to call, and Kubo made it known that he wanted to “purify” Shibuya the way that he did Shinjuku, Joshua made a deliberate choice to enter into this Game with him and leave Shibuya to its fate. He flat out says this is his intention in “A New Day”:

Now, while one could try to argue that he was lying here, because he lies a second after this about not caring about Neku anymore (although in my opinion his definition of “care” is still pretty damn selfish), his actions in Neo make it abundantly clear. Joshua could have very easily done what Hazuki did to Kubo three years ago by booting him out of Shibuya and back to the Higher Plane. He could have easily let Uzuki keep her spot as Conductor and protected his Reapers from erasure by the Shinjuku Reapers. He could have very easily just returned Neku to the RG (thus protecting him from the Shinjuku Reapers / Kubo) instead of locking him in the remains of Shinjuku. He could have very easily done all of this and it would have been within his rights because whether the Higher Plane likes it or not, Shibuya is still his city and he didn’t technically break any rules by choosing not to go through with the purification. Whether Shibuya was purified or not was his call, even if they didn’t like his choice. It’s the reason why Hanekoma is in angel jail and Joshua is not.

But he didn’t. He chose not to. I’ve seen some speculate that this was due to Higher Plane politics, that Joshua wanted to show the Higher Plane that Shibuya was worth saving because it had citizens who could stand up even against angels and win. He wanted them to see what he sees in Shibuya. But even if that was his intention, countless lives were lost because of his decision. Countless people suffered because of his decision. The Variabeauties, the Purehearts, the Deep River Society—hell, even Reapers like Ayano and Susukichi—their erasure dust is partially on Joshua’s hands. He could have prevented all of this and he made a deliberate decision not to. The fact that Hanekoma makes a point in multiple Secret Reports (getting increasingly frustrated each time) that Joshua had opportunity to do something yet chose not to tells us all we need to know about how tied Joshua’s hands were, and the fact is that they were not. Or if they were, the only person who tied them was Joshua himself. 

A few final notes:

1.) My original shitpost was not about Hazuki’s morality or saying that he’s a “better person” than Joshua, but merely pointing out that he did more to save Shibuya (despite it not being his city and not his responsibility) than Joshua did, which is factually true. Joshua did nothing beyond show up for “moral support” for Neku and return Shoka to the RG. (And as far as we know, it was only Shoka. The Variabeauties, Deep River Society, and Purehearts are presumably still erased since they lost the Game.) Even after Neku and the others were perma-erased, Joshua did nothing. He did not intervene. He claims to Neku later that if things got really bad he would have, but again . . . everyone died, the city was on fire, and he was nowhere to be found, so I personally don’t think his word is worth very much here. Bottom line, I’m not saying Hazuki is a better person than Joshua—honestly I think they’re on the same level, more or less—but only that it’s hilarious that he actually took action to save a city that wasn’t his.

2.) For emphasis, Hazuki didn’t have to intervene. Shibuya is not his city. It’s not his responsibility. He could have returned to the Higher Plane to do angel things if he’d really wanted to. He exorcised Kubo for erasing Shibuya once he saw that Shibuya was actually going to be erased because Joshua had saved it once and he was curious as to why, and he couldn’t quite figure that out if Shibuya was gone. But he didn’t have to, and in fact he points out to Rindo that he won’t be able to do so again. But either way, it really wasn’t his job. It was Joshua’s. Joshua just chose not to do it, for whatever reason.

TL;DR:

Joshua let a lot of people suffer and perma-die when he very easily could have prevented it for reasons that are unfathomable even to the Producer (“Does [the Composer] have a plan at all?” — Secret Report #20), and while this was perhaps due to Higher Plane politics and wanting to Prove A Point to the angels of the Higher Plane, that doesn’t change the fact that the suffering and erasure of countless individuals was a direct result of his inaction, or that another city’s Composer had to step in to give the Players a chance to fix the mess because Joshua himself couldn’t be bothered to do so.

[dennou-translations]

Violet Evergarden Booklet 1

Please feel free to message me about possible corrections. If you can, consider supporting the creators by purchasing the official releases. In case anyone is feeling generous: Ko-fi | PayPal. ( ╹◡╹)っ’･*

Index || Next →

That day was a special one for me, but to the rest of the world, this was not the case.

 �� Ann Magnolia and Her Nineteenth Birthday

   There was a number of things I had to do on the special day called today.

I would wake up in the morning and check the weather. As if a tale were beginning, I would turn the curtains over and look outside the window.

The radiant daylight shone on my eyes. Today was sunny. Knowing that made me happy. That I had woken up enveloped in sunshine. That I didn’t have to worry about my letter getting drenched in rain. It was almost as if the truth of these facts was blessing the day.

——I’m happy.

Very happy.

I didn’t usually say this, but I felt like saying it today, so I whispered as I laid back down, “Good morning.”

Husky with wake, my voice echoed through the quiet bedroom. I wandered around in search for someone to have a conversation with from the words “good morning”. However, I couldn’t find anyone to hear them, so they pointlessly vanished somewhere.

If you were just by yourself, words would die as soon as they were born. I knew that as the truth of this world. Like flowers that withered without changing colors, like small birds that couldn’t endure the coldness of midwinter, my words would promptly die. After all, words were tools for people to communicate their intentions. So if there was no other party, they would all but die. That was evident.

There was no one who would reply to me with a “good morning”. There was no one in this house that would do a morning greeting, so if anyone were to say that this much was obvious, it sure was. But in my memories, someone whose voice I had already forgotten would return my words. In a warm and soft voice that was probably how my mother sounded, they would be returned to me.

“Good morning, Ann.”

——Good morning.

“Today is a special day, huh.”

——I know; I’d been counting them with my fingers.

“Your long-awaited birthday.”

With a nod, I stood up.

Today, I was turning nineteen. Twelve years had passed since I had been left all by myself when I was seven years old. I reflected thoroughly upon that reality alone and proudly.

I left my bedroom still wearing a negligee, heading to the spiral staircase. There were portraits hanging in rows from the staircase’s wall.

“My, you’re going outside dressed like this just because you’re at home?”

Decorated with pictures of family members, the wall used to be terrifying for me when I was a child, but it became less so after my mother was added to them. I would go up and down those stairs countless times every day, but the only spot that I would end up directing my gaze to for a few seconds was the portrait of my mother and my childhood self.

If, by any chance, there was strength to the thing called “love”, I thought, if there was a force residing within love, wouldn’t this image start moving one day, since it was the only one I looked at as if I were yearning for something?

I would end up embracing such fantasies.

“I won’t change, no matter how much you stare at me. By the way, doesn’t my complexion look a little bad in this portrait? I should have had more paint put over it.”

Of course, it was just a fabrication.

Having come down the stairs, I went to the front entrance, its door a little worn-out. I should call a repairer. The house was a living being just like me, and since it was already quite old, it was always broken somewhere.

“I also want you to tend to the garden. When was the last time you held a broom?”

As I came outside, I could see this place’s whole scenery. There was nothing but lush grassland and tree-lined roads. The idyllic sight was awfully boring, but above that, it was beautiful, so if you made a frame with your fingers, you would immediately have a scenic picture. In this entire area, there were no other houses in sight. Of course. This territory was under the control of the Magnolias, hence this view belonged to me, the family head.

As long as I didn’t sell or give it away, this landscape would never change. And, same as the previous family heads, I didn’t wish for it to change. Neither did I wish to leave this place. Even if I was all by myself.

“Ann, let’s take a look inside the mailbox.”

I took a look inside the mailbox. Perhaps because it was still early in the morning, there was nothing in it yet.

“It’ll surely be coming soon.”

Today was the day when I, Ann Magnolia, was born. Every year on my birthday, I would get letters from my late mother. Letters from my mother, who by now had become a portrait, would be delivered to me.

“There is no such thing as a letter that needn’t be delivered, Milady.”

To be precise, letters with my mother’s feelings blown into them and ghostwritten by an Auto-Memories Doll would be delivered to me. It was a strange story, but a true one.

“Auto-Memories Doll”. Long had passed ever since this name caused a stir.

The creator was an authority in the field of mechanical dolls, Professor Orlando. His wife, Molly, was a novelist, and all had begun with the posterior loss of her eyesight. He then invented a machine to perform ghostwriting for his beloved wife and named it Auto-Memories Doll. Nowadays, people who worked as ghostwriters were also called Auto-Memories Dolls.

When I was seven, my mother, who was plagued with a serious illness, summoned a beautiful blue-eyed Auto-Memories Doll to our manor. She made her write several letters and hired a postal company to deliver them to me even after her death. She had been secretly planning out a few decades worth of birthday messages for her beloved daughter.

The person who had made this request was an oddball, but the ones who had accepted the job were quite odd themselves. Had they not imagined that someone would abandon it at some point? Had they sealed the contract for such a heavy, troublesome work without any refusal because they were horribly bad at their business, or was it because they were too nice? Having grown into a creditable lady and come to understand the world to a certain extent, I would ponder about such things. Surely, it was because they were nice. Thanks to them, even though I didn’t have a single relative now, at least on my birthday I could recall what being loved by someone felt like.

Just like that, I stood fidgety in front of the mailbox. Closing my eyes, I cleared off the dust on the box of my memories.

——I remember. That she had come around. That she would be over there, quietly writing letters. I remember the figure of that person and of my smiling mother. Surely, until I died...

That few-days’ time had been seared into my mind. Back then, my... Back then, Ann Magnolia’s frizzy hair was still short, and she was selfish and pretended to be taller. She was a helpless child. A very young one. How old she was? Seven years old. An age where one would still long for their mother. Her mother was the center of the world. If her mother died, she wouldn’t even be able to breathe. She was that kind of child. She was aware that her emotions were unstable and that she tended to act a little rashly.

Most people would treat someone like me nicely, and that was it. People who had their eyes on my fortune attempted to get close to me, but once they noticed that I had no intention to let them do so, they never showed their faces to me again.

That person—that person... Violet Evergarden. That Auto-Memories Doll was a bit different from other people, I thought...

Whenever I wondered what was so different about her, I would find myself thinking.

Back then, Ann Magnolia had fallen in love with a mysterious girl who had come around all of a sudden. It was a little girl’s romantic love out of adoration. She both hated and liked the Auto-Memories Doll who had come around out of the blue and stolen her time with her mother.

——What was it that I liked about her?

She was a taciturn and unsociable. A silent porcelain doll. She seemed extremely adult-like. But looking back, she often reacted like a child who knew nothing. Even when I gave her dolls, she didn’t know how to play. Neither did she have any knowledge of how to solve riddles. Even when I made her touch bugs, she never ran away like my mother or our maid. Whenever I invited her to join hands and spin around, we would do it to no end.

“Fufu...”

She was a weird person. Yes, a weird one.

Children would look at adults and measure them by whether they were scary or foolish, would be their allies or enemies, would give them candy or not, and other such things. They would stare very, very fixatedly and judge the grown-ups.

She... that beautiful Auto-Memories Doll... Violet Evergarden was not an adult.

——Yes, she was... how should I put it? She was Violet Evergarden.

Which was why I had snuggled up to her, the same type of person as myself, just like two cats nestling close to each other, I thought.

She was a beautiful child. A beautiful beast. I found her eccentric self to be cool, so I liked her.

Where was she now and what was she doing, I wondered.

I was turning nineteen, but back in the day, she must have been younger than I am now. For her to have prosthetic arms, it wasn’t hard to imagine what had happened to her at the time, when the war had just ended. But surely, there was no doubt that her life had been full of many more ups and downs than the story I had in mind.

Did she not express her emotions enough because she was carrying some sort of wound in her heart? She was such a beautiful person, so she must have won over the heart of some wonderful person by now...

I shook my head left and right. I mustn’t have unjust suspicions of her. I shouldn’t prod into how I was back then – into the Ann Magnolia of back then – and taint it. Even if it was just me with myself, I mustn’t do that. Because all of the joys and sorrows from that time belonged to the old me, who had endured those days. Having become an adult, I shouldn’t have any say over the mental landscape of my old self, as a third party.

Having grown up, I observed my own land, which spread out endlessly. The scent of gently swaying grass and flowers, the chattering of birds, the clouds that moved slowly in the blue sky. It felt like they would be here just like that for a hundred more years.

“It’s not coming, huh. Let’s go eat breakfast.”

Since the postman wasn’t showing up, I had no choice but go back into the manor.

I had been working at home lately. I used to go outside and enjoy the world when I was a student, but I realized that, in the end, I liked being in my house. Maybe this was a Magnolia bloodline thing.

As for my from-home job, I worked with legal counseling. When I was little, I had experienced disputes amongst my own relatives over me and my assets. That was the reason why, if I had to give any.

My mother had left me with a talented legal advisor. A person of outstanding character, who still concerned himself with me even now. As a young child, I excelled at catching insects that I had never seen before, but I didn’t have the means to oppose to the people who wanted to steal this land from me one way or another.

I had started off working at the city’s legal information center, introduced to me by the legal advisor, who had taken me in, and only recently had I become independent. Living in the city had made me realize many things. That there were many people in this world who weren’t protected like me. And that this wasn’t something those people themselves wanted, but things had turned out in such a way due to the environment they were in.

The ascension of the ghostwriting business had a similar background. Children would be made to work like adults, unable to go to school, so when they grew up and had to sign any documents, they couldn’t even write their own names.

People like that, who had been raised in environments where no one helped them, weren’t a rarity. I had heard that the literacy rate was currently rising, but it would still take a long time for this to become something unusual.

Just like with ghostwriting, one could become somebody’s ally through the law. It was especially necessary for children who had been thrown out like me and younglings who were about to enter the world of adults, I believed. Because they could earn completely different futures as a result if they acquired knowledge.

“The law is a weapon,” my legal advisor would say. I agreed with that. My property had been protected by this weapon many times. Some people would say that education was the weapon, but the situations for putting it to use were too limited. Weapons exerted their true value exactly when you had to protect yourself from falling victim to unjust acts or insults.

If possible, I wanted to be someone who could protect others. I wanted to tell people who didn’t know what to do and had become incapable of even walking on their own, “It’s all right; I’ll be your ally”. Because I wanted someone to do that for me back when I was alone.

My reason for choosing law was rooted in this kind of self-righteous way of thinking.

Since I worked from home, I didn’t earn much. To be honest, people would think that being a professional was a pastime for a landowning wealthy lady. I was fine with that.

The people who came to visit me in this remote place were generally in critical situations and had nothing. Those who had something would go to the city. They would go to the city, bow their heads to some famous person, be served a fine brand of tea... and have a graceful conversation while drinking it.

If I could, I wanted to get close to people, just like her. Just like the Auto-Memories Doll who had told me on that day that it was okay to cry. Even if for self-satisfaction.

Speaking of which, I thought as I checked the calendar. Today was my birthday, so I intended to wait for the postman the whole day and hadn’t scheduled any appointments, but a client was coming tomorrow. I should clean up the reception room at least a little.

“Hey, Ann. It is your birthday, so how about going outside with your friends and having a meal with them?”

I had to sweep the floor, take the garbage off the carpet and dust the dirt on the furniture.

“Even just eating something tasty is enough, Ann.”

Right, I should bake some sweets to serve to the costumer tomorrow. It could also be used as celebration for my birthday.

“Ann, aren’t you lonely all by yourself?”

If I was certain, that person had eaten the sweets I baked when we first met with relish. He had a sweet tooth.

As I recalled the figure of that young entrepreneur eating, looking embarrassed and delighted, a smile surfaced naturally. Out of the people that I was currently engaging with, he might be the one whose visit I looked forward to the most. I did think that men were frowny and sullen creatures, but he was adorable.

I rolled up my sleeves with an “all right” and headed to the kitchen.

   “Delivery.”

As the front door’s bell rang and the voice of a visitor ensued, I frantically flung away my bowl and whisk and ran. This is what happens when you distractedly make sweets for about an hour. I was covered in flour and looking unbecoming, but there was no helping it.

“Yes, I’m coming.”

I opened the door in high spirits, and standing there was a postman wearing the uniform of the city’s post office, which I was familiar with. I was disappointed enough that even I myself would think it was a bit childish of me. The other didn’t see my facial expression as he requested my signature for the express delivery without looking at me, but I wound up having an impolite attitude.

——It wasn’t the CH Postal Company.

My mother’s birthday messages were being kept by the CH Postal Company, a mail company that had its main office located in Leiden – the capital of Leidenschaftlich, a southernmost military nation. Therefore, if a different company had come, then the mail wasn’t from my mother.

“Thank you very much.”

I had received three packages. One was a table clock from my legal advisor. The others were accessories and a shawl that were trending in the city from my friends.

There were people getting married and having children upon turning nineteen. All of my closest friends had been quick to marry. Both my opinion that secluding themselves in their homes was a waste in this era of professional women and my envy at the fact that they had found themselves a partner in an early stage of their lives coexisted in the depths of my mind.

“You don’t have to hurry; if you don’t want to do it, you don’t have to.”

Having lost my mother, with this vast land and this manor of excessively elegant exterior in my possession... I couldn’t think that having a family wouldn’t be a good thing.

——Family... family... family, huh?

Did I want a family? Did I really? Those genuine questions surfaced in my mind first-thing.

Welcoming a family would mean welcoming that person’s life. It was an extremely heavy choice. “In health and sickness,” people would lightheartedly say. I believed there were actually few people who properly understood it.

My friends who had married. The people who walked around the city. Lovers and family members from all over the world – everyone. Did they all truly understand? They only looked on the happy side, so could they endure it when a sad scenario arrived upon them? Wouldn’t they end up thinking that not loving the other person would have been better?

“Human beings are creatures that love others in pursuit of happiness, Ann.”

In my experience, since I had seen off the person who was most important to me, the truth was that I didn’t want to go through it ever again. Being told to do it one more time was too hard. Even twenty years later, painful things would be painful.

I brought my consciousness back to reality.

Colorful ribbons, extravagant wrappings and wonderful gifts. As my social disposition was coming to a slight halt, those people were irreplaceable to me. I had to write thank-you notes right away. For these kinds of things, the faster, the better. Because it conveyed sincerity.

I should go back to my bedroom and look for the stationery and envelopes. They were surely somewhere there.

“Ann.”

——Aah, but was it a pretty stationery?

Maybe I should choose a different one, fitting of these wonderful presents.

“Ann, listen.”

They were surely items that took a while to be picked, so I should respond to the other party’s feelings the same way. There were many things to be watchful of here. I had to do it quick. I had to do it soon.

“Please listen.”

Nobody else was going to do it; I was the one who had to. No matter what, I had to do it. I had to taste joy and sadness all by myself and end it fast. Because I was alone. Hurry. I had to hurry and do it.

Nevertheless, I couldn’t move.

“Ann.”

I was in the middle of making sweets, and writing thank-you notes required some preparation. Above all, I couldn’t calm down until my mother’s letter arrived.

Giving several reasons, I made up several excuses not to move.

“Ann... it’s okay.”

I suddenly felt exhausted. Everything became a bother. Even though hands were covered in flour and I was still wearing an apron, I lay on the couch, rolled into fetal position and scrunched down.

Although I had received such marvelous gifts, the feeling of happiness didn’t last. Even though it was something to be grateful for to the point I could be in a good mood the whole day, the feeling of happiness didn’t last. It didn’t last.

“Ann, it’s okay.”

Today was that kind of day.

“Ann, don’t force yourself; I’m sorry.”

——I’m sorry.

“Sorry...”

——I’m sorry.

“Ann, I’m sorry...”

To me, my birthday was...

“...for leaving you behind when you were so small.”

...not my day. It was my mother’s.

——Mom. Why? Just why? Why, Mom? Why did you die sooner than the mothers of the other kids? What is it that went wrong? Did the fact that I was born itself become a burden to you? If so, then I shouldn’t have been born.

I loved you, Mom. Did you know that? I liked you a whole, whole lot. Tired of hearing this? But you didn’t know it, right? Even if you knew, you probably didn’t understand how much I liked you. I’m sure you had no idea how much.

When I realized it, I had more time seeing you in a grave than otherwise. But you’re everywhere in our house. On the sofa that you often sat on. In the music that you enjoyed. On the bed that still smells like you. In myself, who resembles you more and more with each day.

Mom, Mom, Mom – you keep reminding me of how much I loved you. When I was little, you were the world itself.

Mom. You loved me. I know that. But I loved you too. I was the one who... I was... I was... I was the one who...

Aah, Mom. Mom, there are so many things I want to tell you. But if I can say it, there’s just one thing.

Mom, you died without knowing how much I loved you, right?

I loved you much more than you could’ve imagined. I really, really suffered when you died. Enough that I couldn’t breathe.

People often say that time heals all wounds. But I really hate that saying. Rather than things being solved, we forget about them, don’t we? People’s voices, facial expressions, gestures – we forget these kinds of things. Yet I remember them in unexpected times. Like, “Oh, yeah, Mom used to like this”. “Oh, yeah, Mom used to hate that”. And then I blame myself vehemently for forgetting them. Like, “How could you have forgotten? She was your whole world”. Like, “How could you have forgotten? She was your only family”. The loop of agony has no end.

I adored you, Mom. I loved you. I loved you, so for just as much love as I had for you, it feels like my heart will break. It feels like my heart will break every time my birthday comes around. Feels like it will break. It’s painful and there’s no helping it.

Tears slip down my cheeks as I laid on my side. I was looking forward to today so much that I didn’t know what to do with myself, and yet I wound up crying again this year. I would’ve been great if I could welcome it with a smile.

A birthday was a special day.

It was nothing to the rest of the world, just an ordinary day, but it was a special one for me. Because... Because it was a day when I could feel Mom coming back to me. I looked forward to it so much that I couldn’t help myself, but at the same time, I was also helplessly sad. Because I felt my mother’s absence more than anything. Because the truth that she wasn’t here was thrust onto me.

Destiny spoke to me. Either that or God did. “Hey, your mother’s already dead. How long you gonna be crying? Stand up. If you’re alive, stand up.”

Since the world was so merciless, all I could do was nod at those words and say, “Yes, yes, true.”

By entrusting my body to hecticness, I was able to remain as someone who could stand on her own feet, just like Destiny and God wanted. I normally didn’t feel loneliness. I didn’t cry. After all, twelve years had already passed. It was weird to cry like this on and on forever. It was weird, right? I wasn’t a kid anymore. I shouldn’t cry too much. That would make me a bad girl. A girl wasn’t suitable to be the family head of the Magnolia household. I had to become a person who my mother could be proud of from within that portrait.

Wasn’t that right? I couldn’t prove the worth of my existence by doing anything else.

But on this day when I was aware that my mother loved me, I was no good. No good. I’d turn into a mess. The seven-year-old Ann Magnolia would come back to me. She’d say it all. She’d end up saying it. Always, always, always. She’d say what I was holding back from saying.

“I’m lonely”, that is.

I had as many ways of spending my birthday as I had birthdays. Surely, there were millions of people in the world whose birthday was today. How were all of them spending it? Were they spending it in a fulfilling way? There definitely were also people who lived their lives either not knowing when their birthday was or forgetting about it.

So I wasn’t miserable. Nor was I comparing myself with them. That wasn’t it. Because there were certainly people somewhere around the world who were feeling as lonely as me.

There was another thing that I had learned during the time I worked in the city. That loneliness wasn’t something only I had. Many people would come to the law firm and ask for advice regarding their troubles. Everyone was burdened with problems of their own. And everyone was a bit lonely in some aspect. It wasn’t just me, so I didn’t feel lonely.

That person too, and that one, and that other one. Everybody was sad in one way or another.

“I have to get up.”

I had stopped doing what I would do by accident – stopped throwing myself into a sea of sadness. The sea of sadness in my head was a real nuisance, yet it was also comfortable as it enveloped my body in gentle waves of self-pity. But I shouldn’t go too far. Or else I wouldn’t be able to stand up again. It wasn’t like food and sweets would materialize from my sadness.

I counted the things I had to do. Bake sweets. Clean up. I had a number of torn aprons, which I would remake into rags. And then... And then...

“Madam Magnolia, are you home?”

A real-life happening immediately pulled me out of my reverie. I ran toward the front door, from where the voice had come. As I opened the door with much vigor while making extremely improper heavy-feet noises, I found two visitors.

“Hum?”

One of them was... Aah, I was waiting for you. It was a postman wearing the CH Postal Company uniform. He was holding under his arm a letter and a package with what was most likely the gift that my mother had arranged for today.

“Aah, excuse me. Please go first.”

The other was the customer who had made an appointment reservation for tomorrow. A stray young entrepreneur. His finely tailored clothes were easy to recognize as something not order-made and that he didn’t like but was wearing regardless.

Had he mistaken the appointment day?

“Erm, then...”

The two had bumped onto each other at the front gate and both had some business with me, so they were probably conceding the turn to one another. Having been granted it, the CH Postal Company’s postman stood before me, politely giving me the letter and present with a slightly tensed-up countenance.

“This is the CH Postal Company. I have come to bring your delivery... You might be already tired of hearing this vocal message so many times, but happy birthday this year too, Madam Magnolia.”

That was a postman I had never seen before. It was a different person from last year.

“T-Tired, you say... There’s no way I would ever be.”

Still, the fact he was saying these lines meant that the demands commissioned by my mother were being properly kept and protected by that company. That was it.

“Thank you very much. For every year, truly... truly. Please tell this to your chairman too.”

“Y-Yes! Our president is the kind of person that gets very happy at inputs from the clients, so I’ll make sure to tell him!”

I had never met the president of the CH Postal Company, but for someone so young to be talking about him in such a familiar-sounding way, he had to be a wonderful person.

“I’m taking it.”

I signed the acceptance document. The postman laughed as if relieved. Also relieved, I finally looked seriously at him. He was a very young postman. Perhaps from about the same generation as me. The freckled boy looked even younger when laughing.

“I became in charge of it this year. It’s a big area, so I ended up getting a bit lost... I made you wait a lot, didn’t I?”

“Eh, no, no.”

“But you came running as if you were eagerly waiting for it.”

“Yes.”

Recalling the surprised faces of the two young men the moment I had opened the door, I trembled with shame. I was supposed to behave elegant and beautifully as the head of the Magnolia family. Yet I was covered in flour, my hair was disheveled because I had been lying down and I had showed up with footsteps that sounded like the ones of a large man.

Touching my cheeks, which were most likely growing red, I said, “I apologize for showing you an embarrassing sight... No matter what, I always wind up restless on this day.”

“Absolutely not. I’m the one who is sorry for coming late. I have already perfectly memorized the way, so please treat me well next year too.” The postman bowed with a “well, then” and ran toward a parked motorcycle.

After seeing him off, I directed my gaze at the other visitor that had been waiting for me. He, too, slowly looked my way.

“Hello.”

The morning sunshine had disappeared, a dazzling midday light filling up for it. It seemed that quite some time had passed while I was sulking on the couch. With a season of fresh green colors as the background, he was supposed to be a foreign body for me... and for this world of mine, yet he blended appallingly well into it.

“Hello.” My voice sounded a little shrill. “Isn’t there any flour on my face?” As I said this while rubbing my cheeks with the sleeve of my dress, he took a handkerchief from his jacket and handed it to me.

Not minding me as I stiffened up in shock, he said with an earnest attitude, “There is, right here.”

“Ah, all right.”

“And here too.”

“I’m sorry. I was making sweets...”

Wiping myself with the neatly folded handkerchief, it almost seemed like I had gone back to being a child. It was the second time today that my cheeks were dyed red.

“Well, what is your matter...?”

“Aah, that’s right. I was nearby and... hum, I heard from Mr. Robert, the one who introduced you to me, that it was your birthday today, so... though it’s presumptuous of me, I was thinking about celebrating it...”

Robert was the law advisor who had been protecting me since my childhood. Now that he had mentioned it, I remembered that he was introduced to me by Robert. The budget wasn’t compatible with the case, so it had been passed over to me.

——“Nearby”?

Finding a strange point in a part of his story, I said timidly, “This whole area... is my land... You had business near here?”

Silence.

“You’re also seeing Mr. Robert even though you’re working with me...?”

He raised a hand my way as if to ask me to wait and averted his face, looking embarrassed. Had I said anything bad?

“I take it back.”

“All right.”

“I lied... I wanted, hum, to spend time with you somehow...”

“Haah...”

Perhaps having become unable to look at me in the eyes, he kept his face turned away and continued speaking to the direction of the day after tomorrow, “Mr. Robert is a teatime friend from a café that I already frequented... He introduced you to me as a favor... And I heard from him the other day that today was your birthday. Also, I did not just happen to come nearby. It’s impossible to come here without a car or carriage. I do not have much money, so I ended up walking the way here. But it was no coincidence; I came here because I had an objective.”

As I asked, “What’s the objective”, he turned over the palm that had been telling me to wait and showed it to me. That “it’s you”.

I was perplexed. This kind of thing hadn’t happened in my life very often. When it did, it was usually people aiming for my fortune, so I vaguely wondered if he was the same as them.

“Want to come in? If it’s just drinking tea together, then...”

In any case, as the head of the Magnolia family, I had to entertain the guest. After this thought worked its way to me, an alarm sounded in my head that he might deem this as an invitation. That wasn’t my intention, so what should I do if he believed it was?

——What’s up with me? I don’t know if I’m happy or scared.

Aah, my heartbeats were so loud. My cheeks were so hot it felt like they were burning.

——Anyway, I have to say something.

“Hum.”

As I hesitated to speak, he shook his head. “Ah, no. I will have to come again tomorrow, so I’m going home. I have already accomplished my objective.”

“Is that so?” I was a tad out of tune. A little – very relieved.

I observed him while he didn’t try to look at me even a bit. His hands were trembling. Even though he gave off an easygoing impression, he was the type of person who couldn’t hide what was inside.

“I really just came here because I wanted to wish you happy birthday. Just before coming, I hesitated a lot on whether to go today or not... I also don’t have... any presents worthy of a lady like you, so I wanted to at least say these words.”

That sentence surprised my already stunned self even more. “At least these words”, he said. Were there any words that could make his goodwill more obvious?

“I’m sorry. I should have at least arranged something for you, right? Really, a broke man like me showing up out of nowhere... I’m sorry...”

“No, I don’t want material things that much... I prefer this feeling of... wanting to celebrate because it’s my birthday... much more...”

The words cut off midway. What happened to me? Right now, pain and joy were squeezing my chest tightly. It was suffocating.

The easily perceivable love of this person in front of me, as well as his kindness, his sincerity and all these other soft and warm things were appearing in the lonely parts of me and causing me to feel dizzy.

“Ann, can you hear me?”

I had to regain my sanity; I would surely be sober again tomorrow. I shouldn’t open my heart so easily now.

“Ann, please, listen.”

Because the world was cruel. Even if I fell in love with him, sad things were bound to happen.

“Okay? If you’re listening...”

It might be a calculated love; he could just be pretending and was actually a horrible person.

No, I had to wonder about that. It was indeed true that he came the way here on foot. After all, his shoes were dirty with mud. There was grass sticking to it as if he gone through an animal trail.

“If you’re listening, grab onto it.”

Aah, Mom. From now on, I would surely keep questioning you over and over during times like these. Asking you questions in my mind. “Mom, is this correct? Is this the right path,” I would ask. Because you were the only one who had given me love without second intentions. So please, give me an answer.

“Believe in yourself, Ann. Don’t be afraid of love.”

I was sure that the vision of my mother had whispered this to me.

I reached out with my hand. I reached out and grabbed the hem of his jacket.

“I’m going to bake sweets now. Today is my birthday, but I don’t have any plans, so if you’d like, why don’t we eat the baked sweets together outside? I don’t need anything. If you’re going to give me something, then I want just a bit of time for us to celebrate my birthday together,” I told him.

“Thanks.” He was not unkind to my wheat flour-covered hand, grasping it while his face went bright red. “That’d be great,” he said three or so times. The phrase “I like sweet foods” was probably said five times.

I... I found it so funny that I laughed.

That day was a special one for me, but to the rest of the world, this was not the case. But I put in a little effort. I tried making it special on my own. From this point onward, I would definitely keep doing that. I would. I was all alone in this manor. But I was the most special girl in the world to a certain person. It was okay to indulge myself at least on my birthday. I thought this once again reading my mother’s letter later.

Ann, congratulations on your nineteenth birthday. I can’t imagine how you’re doing at nineteen years of age. I really wonder how you’re doing. Are you well? Aren’t you going hungry? I wonder if you became a wonderful lady. Aah, I want to see it. I truly wanted to see it. You have no idea how much I love you, do you? You see, Mom loves the nineteen-year-old you. I’ll love you even as you turn a hundred years old. I can’t tell you face-to-face, so I’m properly writing it here. I love you. No matter what anyone says, I love you. You have the right to be loved. My Ann, be free. My Ann, laugh with joy. My Ann, be happy. My Ann. Don’t be afraid of love.

—From Mom

   “There’s no such thing as a letter that needn’t be delivered, Milady.”

[cosplayinamerica]

The Lizard from Spiderman : crashprojectcosplay // photo: @colindouglasgray​

When I was a kid, my older brother David brought me a huge collection of Spiderman artwork from the animated series. I think it was the art style-guide for the animated cartoon. The standout character for me, before even watching the show was the lizard! His look and his design really grabbed me, and after learning about his story in the show and comics, and even the amazing Spider-Man movie, you see how tragic his story really is. A man with a disability just wants a normal life like everyone else. He tries the unthinkable to grow an arm back and ends up a horrible monster. I think there's something really cool as a cosplayer to undergo that same transformation, and bring a character to life that most people only see on the page or screen. I wanted people to feel like the impossible happened and something they never thought could be real is somehow walking in front of them, just like the comics!

Once I decided I was going to make this for NYCC, I gave myself about a month and a half to finish. I started with a  rough 3d model to get the overall silhouette and to plan where I would fit inside. I glued 1" pieces of upholstery foam to a pair of long sleeve shirt and pants, over and over until I got the right muscular shape I imagined. He needed to be huge, imposing and tall. It was the first muscle suit I ever made, and I'm not the kind of artist to meticulously plan things so there were no templates, or guides used. I just "winged" everything until I was satisfied.

Next step was to carve scales Into the foam to help achieve the lizard appearance . I could have just painted a few spots in the end for the same look, but I wanted the scales to catch light, and for someone to feel them if they touched the skin. I used a soldering iron to carve the scales all over the body. It took hours to do, and I had to pay attention to scale patterns and folds using my son's dinosaur toys as reference. Those Jurassic park toys really helped!!

After a week long vacation away from cosplay, I then glued thin spandex over the entire body, squeezing it into the scale cracks and wrinkles and once it dried, it really looked like leathery skin. I then used acrylic paint and silicone caulking mixed together to paint and seal the suit. This was a bit challenge for me, since I am colorblind and have a ton of trouble telling color apart .

Luckily my wife really helped me choose colors that would work together. Especially the chest colors against the green scales! Here probably the most telling part that I don't preplan things; I didn't try anything on until I was completely done with painting the body. Only then did I try on the legs and tail! Soo lucky they fit haha the head was made referencing those same dino toys, and a lot of the Spiderman LIzard figures I found online. I used foam clay for the first time and I think it came out the perfect mix of lizard, snake and dinosaur. He looks scary!

When I arrived at NYCC, I found a little corner away from everyone and put everything on for the first time. I definitely need to wear it all at least once before I arrive next time! It took me almost 40 minutes to fit it all the first time, and to get used to it.

The first thing I heard someone say when I walked out is "are you serious??" People freaked!!! I heard them ask "is that the Lizard!?" "No way"!! My favorite comments were definitely when people said "I loved him as a kid, you look just the cartoons!" People really appreciated that I didn't make the version from the film especially. Kids responses really made me smile, they asked "is there a guy in there?" Really makes me feel that I did a good job!

This experience really showed me the power that wonder has, and how good it makes people feel to see something they love come alive in front of them. It also showed me how important it is to help people find a way to make that happen for themselves. I never really knew that the people I looked up to, cosplayers artists, photographers could be blown away by something I made! It was an amazing experience and really drives me to keep pushing the limits of what is possible, and keep trying to make people happy. And hopefully someday show.people how they can do it too through cosplay.

📸 @space_dyedvest

I also want to mention the incredible warmth strangers have when they see you at a place like comic con. Complete strangers from all over share this common bond now and help each other. Complete strangers offered me water, helped me fix, remove or put on my suit all because they appreciate the effort that went in. That's really something! World class photographers like Colin Douglas taking time out for a shoot with me, professional cosplayers giving me props and following me; it's a humbling experience and really changes you inside.

I'll always love New York Comic Con.. I've cosplayed mostly exclusively at nycc for about 4 years, and each time I mourn when it's over. Its a chance to feel at home with like minded people and soak in all the creativity it has to offer. I'm always left feeling a little blue the days following, and then I start planning for next year haha. This time, I want to keep this going and build for more events, and help others do the same anyway I can. The cosplay community is filled with some of the nicest, most generous people you can meet. Every fandom has it's community and through cosplay, we all boost each other up.

Lastly, I just want to thank everyone, the cosplayers who supported me, brought me into their community, the photographers who gave me a chance and spotlight and my family and friends who believed I could make art this way. Thank you!!

https://linktr.ee/Crashproject

[agoodgoddamnshot]

Lapis Lazuli - Geraskier [G]

[gif isn’t mine]

Warning(s): None

Word Count: 4,538

Originally posted to my AO3

Geralt suddenly realises how much time he and Jaskier have spent together, and all the places they've travelled around the Continent. He decides that it's time to give the bard something to show how much he appreciates all of it.

His bird flies to Oxenfurt for the winter. The Academy still likes to keep him around for the busier autumn semesters because students will actually listen to someone like Jaskier, and Jaskier likes going back because it’s paid accommodation to weather out the harsh winters in. And Oxenfurt is familiar.

Not that he hasn’t thought of going to wherever it is Geralt goes. And Geralt hasn’t not thought of extending an invitation. Vesemir has made it abundantly clear; if their guests can behave themselves throughout the winter, and won’t mind being put to work for the essential jobs, then his pups can invite whoever they like to Kaer Morhen. Lambert has brought people before; notably a Cat from the Dyn Marv Caravan wandering around the Continent. A Griffin has roosted within their keep before too. Both Aiden and Coën defer to Vesemir, acknowledging that they’re guests and he’s the head of the keep, as is the order of things, and the winters go by without anyone killing each other. And that’s all the elder wolf can hope for, it seems.

The invitation sits on his tongue every year. He knows Jaskier knows of the keep. He’s asked about it before, when his lute is propped on his knee and he looks at Geralt with loud wonderment at all of the things he can lure out of the Witcher about his kind and his guild. He can’t blame the little bird. If he was given the choice of a warm academy apartment, with set banquet meals throughout the day, and a steady pay to tide him by, or a crumbling keep perched on top of the northern mountains, still haunted by the ghosts of everything that’s happened before, he knows what he would pick. But Kaer Morhen is home, and he can see past every horrid thing that happened within those walls, because what’s left behind is his family, and he’ll go wherever they are.

They’re only ever parted for a winter. Even the winters that make themselves longer than they need to be, stretching into spring and keeping the frosts around, it’s only one season. It’s strange that he goes the rest of the three without him.

And this seems to be much worse. It’s quiet on the road; with only his own thoughts and Roach’s chuffs and nickers keeping him company. It used to be the way of things in a world before. Before Geralt found himself a songbird and it perched on his shoulder, following him around from village to town to city and never knowing when to go away.

Gods forbid if Jaskier knew that Geralt secretly misses his voice. He spent so much time of their first year knowing each other trying to get Jaskier to shut up. But it became a gentle hum in the background of their travels. Jaskier would ramble on about something or other while he strolled next to Roach, occasionally brushing his hand along the mare’s neck. And the mare learned to not kick out at Jaskier’s shins or turn and nip his fingers. Her master seemed to like him enough to keep him mostly intact. That, and a few secret sugar cubes and apples snuck into her feed from the bard seemed to win her over.

Spring means his songbird will fly back to him, and autumn means that he’ll fly away again. A secure income and a warm place to hunker down throughout a potentially harsh winter, Geralt can’t blame the lark at all for going to roost.

It’s just the familiar groan of loneliness left behind is awful, and he hates how it makes itself known at night, when he’s slipping into an inn’s bed and the empty space on the other side seem to stretch on for leagues. It’s cold and Geralt always wakes with his arm stretched across, reaching out for someone who isn’t there. And that’s when his chest tightens and he wishes he could cross the Continent within a matter of strides, just to get his little lark back with him.

A courier comes one morning. Nothing more than a lad barely into his adulthood, with spots still speckled on his face and a mop of thick curly hair almost shielding his eyes, who somehow manages to find him in a merchant town’s tavern. Geralt glances up from his breakfast, regarding the lad for a moment as he fumbles through a knapsack of letters and parcels. “Geralt of Rivia,” he says primly, holding out a letter. As soon as the letter is in his hand, the lad scurries away, and that seems to be the end of that.

Geralt thins his lips. Contracts very rarely come to him. His name may start to be travelling further and further into the Continent, but notices are usually left on boards within the village or town itself. Contacting him directly isn’t how it works. He’s never in one place for too long.

But the envelope in his hand is crisp, freshly printed card, and a maroon ink seal at the back tells him all he needs to know. Oxenfurt’s emblem is printed into the wax, and the card smells vaguely of old books and ink.

He thumbs the letter open, running his eyes over the elegant scrawl inside.

Meet me at the Three Crowns Inn for Beltane. Can’t wait to see you again. – Songbird

Geralt’s chest clenches. He can’t stand from his table and run out of the inn fast enough.

-----------

He doesn’t know when he started calling Jaskier his little bird, but the bard certainly had no problems with it. If anything, he greatly encouraged it. Having someone as grumpy as Geralt dote on him seemed to be one of Jaskier’s favourite things. It’s a side of the Witcher that only he sees; when they’re curled in a bed together, or gathered around a campfire, and it’s just the two of them.

Jaskier has a pretty voice, and his songs are beautiful. Not that Geralt would ever tell him that. A preening smug Jaskier is borderline intolerable. He didn’t know why it tumbled out of his lips one night, when Jaskier dozed beside him and Geralt threaded his fingers through the man’s soft and freshly washed hair. But songbird and lark all seemed to fit. And Jaskier revelled in them.

Jaskier is also a magpie in some regards. A mischievous little thing that has a certain penchant for anything shiny and grand. He plucks vials of oils and lotions and soap bars from merchant stands and revels in how they smell, uncaring that the cost of them alone makes Geralt’s eyes water. He adorns his fingers in rings that catch the summer sunlight and glisten, and Geralt likes running his thumb over the gems and engravings in them when Jaskier links their fingers together. He likes gold and silver and gems and fragrant oils, and any time he lingers for a moment outside of a merchant’s stall, nose wrinkled in thought of whether or not he could spare the gold earned from playing in taverns on something, Geralt watches.

He buys rings because he can wear them, and any oils and lotions and soaps that somehow end up in his bag are brushed off as ways he can make his Witcher finally relax for once after a particularly taxing hunt. And the gems he leaves behind. Even though he’ll pick them up, watching how they glint in the midday sun, he’ll set them back and part the merchant with a small grateful smile.

A few of those gems have ended up in Geralt’s pocket. He doesn’t know what he would do with them, or how he would use them or even gift them to Jaskier, but his songbird liked them and didn’t seem keen to part with them. So they take up a permanent residence in one of the smaller pockets of Geralt’s saddlebag. They come from all sorts of places; Nazair and Toussaint, to Aedirn and Poviss. Anywhere he and Jaskier have wandered together, he takes them as small reminders. And in the seasons he goes without his bird, he has something to remind him of him at least.

-----------

Getting to the Three Crowns will take him through a few kingdoms. If he keeps to the main roads, not lingering in any towns for longer than he needs to, he’ll make it to the inn before Jaskier. And he doesn’t think he could cope with having to sit in a tavern’s hall and wait for his little bird to fly to him.

Smaller merchant towns are kinder to him than the bigger cities. He bundles his cloak tighter around himself when he rides through the cities, keeping his eyes on the road ahead and not the badly hidden curious looks from passing people on the streets. The whispers soon follow, and inevitably, the word butcher will dust the shell of his ear. So he sets his heels against Roach’s side and continues on.

But the smaller towns are kinder. They’re quiet and people lap through them like gentle waves, flowing quicker in the day, but dissipating by night. Roach plods along, with Geralt slackening her reins and letting her stretch her neck out. It’s a quiet and still walk in through the town’s main street, and most of the shops are already beginning to board up their windows and draw their stands in for the night. An inn’s sigil hangs at the far end of the street, and Geralt aims Roach towards it.

Before he can let his shoulders slacken, his eyes fall on to a shop next to the inn. It looks like every other building surrounding it – red brick and ornately carved, with worn-paint signs hanging outside. The windows are still clear and its door is open, so he can presume that the merchant is still inside trading wears.

He blinks at the first recognisable word he manages to spot on the worn wooden sign.

Jewellers.

Geralt slows Roach to a stop. The mare huffs, pulling at her bit slightly. The inn and its stables are literally right there. He sets a gloved hand to her neck, scratching into her winter fur beginning to fluff her out. “Wait here,” he rumbles, hopping down from her and on to the cobbles below. He hitches her reins to a small post outside and starts to rustle through his saddlebags. Empty vials of potions he’ll need to brew again, purses of gold that he keeps away from his person just in case of brigands. He fishes out the gems. They’re tiny things, just enough to gather in the palm of his hand.

He pats Roach’s neck one last time. “I’ll only be a second.”

Roach huffs, but waits.

-----------

He doesn’t know what it is, but all merchants tend to look the same. Regardless of whether they’re travelling the roads with him, they all have this glint in their eyes and glasses perched on the end of their nose, with finely kept clothes that reflect the wealth of their trade. And this merchant doesn’t look that much different.

The man inside blinks as soon as Geralt steps inside. “Witcher,” is the first word to bumble out of his mouth. A brief flash of panic blinks across his face before he tries to fight his way back to say something better than a profession as a greeting.

Geralt lifts his hand. “It’s alright,” he murmurs, looking around the shop. It’s unlike the kinds of stores Jaskier likes to drift in to. Wooden shelves along the walls stacked with all types of ornaments and glasswork. The storefront is a mixture of dark cherry wood and glass, showing off the expertly crafted necklaces and rings and bracelets he’s sure are worth every golden coin used to make them. The shop smells faintly of varnished and broiled glass and paint. It wrinkles his nose, but he steps closer to the counter.

The merchant adjusts his glasses. “What can I do for you, Master Witcher?”

Geralt holds out his hand, showing the gems gathered on his palm. “I was wondering if you could do anything with these?”

Even in the fading light of day, the orange strands of evening sunlight that stretch into the merchant’s shop, the gems glisten and gleam on his hand. The merchant gestures to them. May I? Plucking each of them up and examining the way the light catches them, the merchant adjusts his glasses again, moving them up and down his nose and squinting through the lens. “Ah, yes,” the merchant muses, “amethyst, amber, emerald, garnet. You must be very well travelled, Witcher. Some of these gems are hard to come by in these parts.”

Geralt hums. “I travel for work,” he explains simply. “I’ve been everywhere.”

The merchant sets the gems along his work surface, lining them up. Some are slightly bigger than others, but all polished and showing off their colours. The merchant muses, running his eyes over them. “What would you like me to do with them, Master Witcher?”

Geralt lifts a shoulder. “That’s up to you,” he says. “I don’t have any experience in jewellery or fineries.”

And he tries not to bristle at the way the merchant’s eyes drift over every part of him for a moment. Worn and scarred armour, dried blood flecking his skin. He doesn’t even seem like one of the merchant’s patrons.

The merchant’s lips thin. He hums and turns his eyes back on the gems. “I could make something beautiful of these gems, absolutely,” he considers. “But it would cost gold and time, Witcher. Do you have anywhere you need to be in the coming days?”

He’s already going to be early for his meeting. A few days of rest before doing the last trek towards the Three Crowns might do him some good. If he showed up to meet Jaskier like this, after so many seasons apart, he could imagine the bard instantly trying to shove him into a bath laden with oils and soaps. He can stomach to lose a few days to rest.

-----------

The Three Crowns is their usual meeting point. Winter looms over the Continent, peering over the mountains to the west and already hinting at its arrival with chilling and biting winds that tumble down from the hills. The snow and frost keep away, thankfully. The last thing he needs is frozen roads. But they are somewhat flooded. He keeps to the main roads, laden with merchants selling the last of their wares before they can head home from the winter. And if he had any more gold left, he would buy some fruit or bread from them. But the last of his gold dwindles, just enough for a tavern room – something he’s sure Jaskier has already procured and readied for him.

His bones warm at the thought of being with his bird again. If Roach walks a bit quicker, with a noticeable spring in her step, it absolutely has nothing to do with the fact that Jaskier spoils her with more treats than hay and grains. And even she can appreciate having the bard around; also because it makes her companion happy.

The Three Crowns is nestled in the heart of some town straddling a crossing of roads. It sees its fair share of passing traders and huntsmen drifting in from the road only to be swept off again. It reminds him of Posada, and he can understand why Jaskier always insists on it being their meeting up place. Roach chuffs at the sight of it in the distance, almost breaking out into a gallop just to read the town’s wooden barriers.

Stableboys linger around the yard and don’t even blink twice at him setting some gold into their palms. He hops down from Roach and takes his bags off of her before she’s led into the stables around the back of the inn, pawing insistently at the ground to get somewhere warm and full of oats and hay.

The tavern is as crowded as it always is. A hum of noise and the smell of roasting venison assault his senses the moment he steps into the tavern. It’s familiar. This meets him every time he comes to greet Jaskier and begin their wanderings together. But it’s been longer than usual and he’s missed everything about it.

He hauls his saddlebags over his shoulders, stalking further into the tavern. All the tables are already occupied, farmers and merchants and passing huntsmen bowed over their dinners and knocking back tankards of ale and mead. Geralt’s eyes scan the room, looking for the familiar spark of colour that usually stands out from the rest.

And his ears twitch when he hears hurried footsteps approaching from his side. Through the maze of tables and people sitting at them, Geralt watches Jaskier almost trip over his own feet as he hurries towards him, a bright smile and glistening eyes already settled on his face. Geralt has just enough time to let his saddlebags drop to the ground by his side before he’s tackled into a hug. His arms hover in the air for a moment. The closeness Jaskier insists on having with him isn’t something he was ever used to. But he’s warming to it.

As his arms slowly coil around and gather his bard to him, Geralt buries his nose into the hollow of Jaskier’s neck. His lungs fill with the scent of the other man. Sea salt that he likes to scrub and soften his skin with, and the faint lilts of desert roses and vanilla coats the roof of his mouth and Geralt is loath to let the bard go. Jaskier seems to be in a similar position. His arms are curled around Geralt’s shoulders and neck, locked and unwilling to let him go just yet.

The rest of it fades away. The tavern, those gathered within it and all of their conversations melding into one lapping wave of noise. Geralt’s lungs can fill again as he breathes Jaskier in, and a deep rumble purrs out of his chest at the feeling of the bard’s hands settling on to his back, slowly rubbing at the plains of muscle there.

He isn’t sure how long he spends holding on to Jaskier, but eventually the bard tries to slip away. Geralt’s arms tighten. A light breathless laugh shakes through Jaskier. “Come on,” he murmurs, setting his hands on to Geralt’s elbows, “I’ve got us a room.”

He’s slow to let go of the little bird. Even then, he only allows a small sliver of space between them. Jaskier catches one of his hands, and even through the thin leather glove, he can feel the warmth of the bard’s skin blooming through his.

As soon as he has gathered his bags again, Jaskier leads him away, from the prying curious eyes of the other patrons nearby. He’s lured upstairs, until the conversations below become nothing more than a distant hum and Geralt feels like he can think again.

Just as he imagined, Jaskier already has the room ready. The hearth within the wall crackles and spits with a freshly fed fire and candles dotted around, perched on dressers and cabinets, offer a warm glow to the room. With fresh linen sheets and furs lining the foot of their bed, his bones ache at the thought of going to sleep.

A bath has already been brought up and filled, and the air is scented with the musk of desert rose and something sweet laced underneath it.

As soon as he pulls Geralt inside, Jaskier clicks the door shut behind them. He squeezes Geralt’s hand, but doesn’t move to pull away. “Now,” he says primly, “I’m sure you have stories to tell me, darling, but I insist on bathing you first. The road hasn’t been kind to you.”

Because you haven’t been on it with me. The words lodge in his throat and Geralt struggles to keep them behind a shut jaw.

With his saddlebags put to the side, Jaskier’s nimble fingers set on the many belts and buckles of his armour. It’s different; having someone else do it. He remembers the first time where he stood frozen, wondering why his newest travelling companion insisted on removing armour Geralt has been wearing for years. He can do it himself. But now he’s content to let Jaskier strip what he can off of him, leaving him in a worn linen shirt and breeches. He toes off his boots, leaving them alongside the pile of armour that gathers beside his bags. He’ll clean it in the morning, before they go, but as Jaskier drifts over to the bath, already rolling up the sleeves of his shirt, Geralt pauses.

Jaskier moves around the room so seamlessly, as he is with most things. He gathers what he needs to bathe Geralt; lotions and oils for his aching muscles, and a comb to try and wrangle his hair back into something tame.

The bard eventually catches his eye. “Are you going to stand there all night,” he laughs breathlessly, setting a hand on to his hip, “or are you coming over?”

Geralt blinks. His fingers flex by his side, not entirely sure what he should try and do now. He glances over to his saddlebags, piled up beside a nearby dresser. Geralt grunts, holding up his hand. Jaskier cocks his head, but watches the Witcher regardless.

He roots through his bag, looking for a soft felt bag kept in one of the more secure pockets inside. He fishes it out, making sure that the gift is still intact. He tried to keep it safe. He might have even lost hours of sleep because he worried about brigands and highwaymen storming him on the road and taking it.

But now, he somehow manages to force his feet to take him over to Jaskier. The bard looks at him puzzled, his gaze drifting down to the small bag caught in Geralt’s hand.

There’s a moment between them where nothing is said. And Jaskier tilts his head, eyes searching for Geralt’s as the Witcher tries to gather what to say. Because how does he even go about presenting something like this? Geralt clears his throat. Gods, words really aren’t his strong suit. He stretches out his hand, handing the bag over to Jaskier. When the bard looks to him again, lifting an eyebrow, Geralt rubs the back of his neck. “It’s, uh...It’s for you.”

Jaskier regards him for a moment, slowly letting his deft fingers unlace the drawstring and pull the ties apart. A lot of gold and time made what Jaskier is fishing out of the bag, and Geralt’s stomach churns. Gods alive, what if he doesn’t like it?

Jaskier blinks when he lifts his gift out. A necklace of gems, expertly melded together like petals of a flower. Each gem is its own petal, but together, they represent something more. Their journey together, the wanderings all over the Continent and the time spent together. The gems glint in Jaskier’s eyes, bright crystal colours joining the ocean blue Geralt likes losing himself in. The chain is something lithe and simple, small interlinking locks of silver that don’t distract from the flower hanging from it.

Jaskier rubs his thumb over each gem, and the thin and lithe metalwork that binds them all together. His lips part, something resting on the tip of his tongue, about to be spoken, but Jaskier all but gapes. “This...” he stammers, glancing over to Geralt. “Gods, Geralt, how much did this cost, I—it’s beautiful.”

Geralt can feel a flush warming his cheeks. “You, um,” he rasps, clearing his throat again. “You liked the jewels. In the markets we visited. But you never bought them, and I, I don’t know, I guessed that I would get them for you but, uh, I didn’t know how to present them.”

He nods to one of the gems. “The, uh, the lapis is from Toussaint,” he manages to get out, because if he talks about the gems and focuses on the gems and the gems alone, he won’t have to look at Jaskier staring at him. The lapis was the most expensive, but it’s the most beautiful. “The topaz is from that visiting spice market in Redania.” All things that caught Jaskier’s eye, but he had to leave behind. And now it’s here, for him, in a way that he could wear.

Geralt manages to tear his eyes away from the necklace, glancing up and catching the bard’s gaze. Jaskier stares at him, mouth and eyes wide, and for a terrifying moment, he doesn’t say anything. Geralt’s throat bobs. Maybe this is too much. Maybe he doesn’t like it. He doesn’t even mourn the loss of the gold spent on it, but the way he could potentially have soured things between them.

And then Jaskier’s moving. Geralt has just enough awareness to notice heat bloom on the side of his face before Jaskier leans forward, catching his lips in a soft and languid kiss. He stands stock-still for a moment before he melts into it, reaching up to brush the backs of his knuckles along Jaskier’s cheek. His own is nestled into the bard’s hand, his thumb brushing along his cheekbone in something so soft and undeserving of him and his life that he struggles not to shrug it away. Jaskier has always been so kind and soft to him, with gentle hands and lulling words.

Jaskier breaks their kiss when air thins, but he doesn’t go too far away. He sets their foreheads together; the ends of their noses brushing and a shared breath mingling between them. Geralt watches a bright and outrageously happy smile spread across the bard’s lips. “This,” he laughs breathlessly, “gods alive, Geralt, this is beautiful. Thank you. I, gods, how did you even think of something like this?”

He honestly doesn’t know. Jaskier is a worryingly big part of his life now and he needed it immortalised somehow. If, if, the bard didn’t come adventuring with him out on the road anymore, at least there is a reminder of all the places they did go together.

Jaskier lures him into another long and languid kiss. His lips are soft and it’s a struggle to break apart from them. Eventually, one of Jaskier’s hands settles on the centre of his chest. His smile hasn’t even budged. “Thank you,” he murmurs.

Geralt hums. It’s taxing, trying to muster words and make some effort to say them. And what could tumble out of his mouth may not be the way he wants them to come out. So he nudges his forehead into Jaskier’s, enough of a physical touch to widen the bard’s smile.

He doesn’t want to pull away. He has Jaskier back now, and he’ll bundle the bard off to Kaer Morhen with him for the winter, and spend the following seasons after that traversing the path with him. And the thought of all of that settles into the core of his chest and blooms warmth through him; undoing all the stresses of the past seasons, unwinding tension better than any bath or sleep ever could.

[vampcubus]

Ashi I got another idea! How about the gf watching and directing Izuku touching himself. 😈

A/N: Umm? Yes please!? Sorry I couldn’t get to this one last Thursday, but I really got carried away with this one~

Warnings: nsfw!! Not proofread

Words: 1600+

.   .   .

“You mean to tell me you’ve never…?” You trailed off, eyes wide and brows raised into a look of disbelief.

Izuku’s face reddened considerably and he flailed his arms around as he sputtered out nonsense, trying to hide his face as his tongue stumbled over his teeth.

“W-well yes! I m-mean no! I haven’t I'm… I mean I have… t-touched myself before b-but-but not—I mean only when I h-have to and I d-don’t really try to—ah this is embarrassing!” Izuku babbled, shrinking in on himself and moving his knees to his chest to conceal his arising problem that brought on this awkward conversation.

Granted you’d been mid-makeout and didn’t even react when you felt him getting hard against your thigh until he started freaking out. And you’ve gone much further than the heavy petting and heated kisses you’d shared just a minute ago, but Izuku was still incredibly easy to fluster. You sighed and offered a soft smile to the hyperventilating boy in front of you, crawling over to press against his side, pressing a kiss to the palm covering his flushed cheek.

“Hey, it’s okay really, I’m just surprised is all. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about.” You soothed and he peeked his pink face out from one of his forearms. “I assume you only do it when you have to, right?”

He nods and allows you to pry at one of his elbows to tuck yourself closer to his body. He opens his mouth a few times as if to add to it, but can’t quite get the words out, so instead, he looks like a fish out of water. Perhaps you had underestimated his innocence. But just then an idea crosses your mind. You start with a question.

“Can you show me?” You suddenly ask, a smooth edge to your alluring voice that has Izuku both twitching in his pants and sputtering gibberish.

“W-what?!” Izuku squeaks.

“Oh c’mon, you can’t be getting shy now, Izuku! We’ve already seen so much of each other.” You giggled.

“Well… yeah b-but—” You cut him off with a kiss, swinging a leg over his lap and hoisting yourself to sit on his thighs, cradling his chubby cheeks in your palms as you devoured his lips. The green-haired hero melted under your touch, moaning into your mouth and inching his fingers to splay over your thighs. You moved your hands to rest over his, lingering briefly to lovingly caress his scarred fingers before prying them from your body. You broke the kiss and leaned back with a teasing smile.

“You’re only allowed to touch yourself tonight unless I say otherwise.” You purred and marveled as Izuku’s flustered expression morphed into one of horror, and judging the way his lips were shaking you didn’t doubt he had a stream of protests just on the tip of his tongue. “Don’t give me that look, I’m going to teach you the true meaning of self-care.”

Your hands move to his belt and he lifts his hips to help you slid his pants down to his knees after it’s undone. Your thumbs, having hooked into the waistband, tugged his boxers down with them causing him to gasp as his erection springs out and taps his stomach. Wide green eyes follow you as you slide off his lap and move to sit behind him on the bed, pressing his back to your front and resting your chin on his shoulder.

You take one of his hands into your own and guide it to his stiff cock, and Izuku gasps when you wrap his own fingers around the shaft. You notice that he’s trembling as you move your hand away from his.

“Hm? You’re shaking, I’ve barely touched you—or rather, you’ve barely touched you.” You chuckled, and he shivers as your warm breath brushed against his ear. “Stroke yourself.”

Izuku made a startled noise mixed with a wheeze, clearly caught off guard by your sudden instruction. His face gets impossibly redder, and he starts to stutter. You smile and press a kiss to the back of his shoulder.

“Move your hand up and down that pretty little cock of yours, baby boy. Nice and slow.” You ordered gently, and you felt his entire body erupt in a violent shudder. His length throbbed in his hand, and a whine forced itself from between his lips as he did as he was told Izuku gasped and squeezed his eyes shut as he slowly pumped himself from base to tip. “Good boy.”

Izuku bit down on his lip, eyelids fluttering at the pleasure of your praise. You watched with gleaming half-lidded eyes and dilated pupils, licking your lips at the sight of his shaky hand moving up and down his hard length, pre starting to leak from his tip and coat his fingers in slick. His breathing becomes labored and quick, and sweat pearls at his hairline.

“Stroke it a bit faster now, and move your other hand down to your balls, mmkay?”

Izuku nodded, pumping himself faster and sliding a hand down to fondle his balls and whimpered at the increased stimulation. “Ah… m-mm…”

You notice the way he starts to rub his pre-cum off with the increased speed and lean in to mutter another order into his ear.

“Spit on it.” You purred, pressing your warm lips to the side of his sensitive neck, instantly going for the sweet spot just below his jaw. Izuku leans forward and lets a bit of drool drip from between his lips onto his cock, spreading the makeshift lube over his heated flesh like he’s done it a thousand times before. “Now squeeze harder as your hand meets the base and move your thumb up and over the head to brush over the head when you go up.”

Izuku moans loudly and does as he is told, struggling to keep in his noises tas the pleasure only increases. He doesn’t care to know why you know all of this stuff, only that it felt good, really fucking good. The friction of his hand around his dick now slick with his own spit makes a soft squelching sound, and you grin when you notice his hips starting to squirm and lift off the sheets, pressing his cock into the small tunnel his hand provided.

“Y/-Ah! Y/N, p-please…” Izuku whines, and you highly doubt he even knows what he’s asking for but you take a wild guess and assume he wants to jerk himself much faster than the pace you’d set. “C-can I…? Go faster?”

“Yes, of course, honey go as fast as you like now. And thrust your hips into your palm, it’s cute when you buck and squirm~” Izuku’s head falls back onto your shoulder as a mewl passes through his lips, his hand moving at lightning speed around his swollen cock and his hips bucking into his hand. His volume only continued to rise, and you recognized the familiar signs of his orgasm approaching. He was starting to tremble uncontrollably, his noises become strangled and high-pitched, and his eyes rolled into the back of his head as he teetered on the edge.

“Stop.” Izuku lets out a confused noise but forces himself to rip his hand away from his length. His hips buck into the air a few more times, his body still mindlessly chasing the release he’d been so agonizingly close too.

“Y/N!” He exclaims with a frustrated sigh, obviously pouting when you catch his wrist when he tries to reach for his cock again. “Y/N, That’s n-not fair…” He whined and you couldn’t help but giggle at his neediness.

“Shh, It’ll feel rea~lly good if you wait, I promise!” You assured, sucking dark marks into the heated flesh of his throat, marking up the expanse of his neck.

“Now start stroking yourself again, same speed as before, but don’t cum yet.” You directed, and he hand shot back to his cock, pumping himself at a rapid pace. He looks so lost in pleasure right now, ahead resting on your shoulder, face flushed a bright crimson red, and mouth hanging open as moans and mewls poured from it. “You’re doing such a good job, doesn’ it feel good?”

“Ahn—ohh! It feels so… so good, so good, baby!” Izuku groans, eyes squeezing themselves shut and his hips twitching sporadically into his hand. “I’m—I’m cu…” He clamps his mouth shut tight, realizing that he might be able to get away with it if he keeps his lips sealed but you’re already one step ahead of him.

“Stop.”

Izuku lets out a frustrated whimper, hand clutching the fabric of your sweatpants and digging into the flesh of your thigh as he squirms in your arms. He needed to cum or he was going to go insane, there was no way around it, he couldn’t take much more. He’d lose it if you denied him again. Deep down, a part of him was drowning in ecstasy, loving the way you ordered him around and directed his every fluid movement. In his flurry of desperate thoughts, he hadn’t realized his hand had returned to his cock and was pumping him again, sending his head flinging back onto your shoulder. His entire body writhed as the pleasure skyrocketed.

And then he realized that he still had his fingers clawing at your clothed thighs and that he was thrusting into your hand, not his. Upon seeing the blurry shape of your soft hand dancing up and down his length, through his tear-filled eyes, he found himself unable to hold it in any longer.

“I… c… I’m… mhh, oh fu—I-I… !” He attempted to warn you but nothing coherent escaped, only choppy syllables.

“Cum for me, baby.” You whispered, and his breathing stopped short for a moment before a blissed-out wail of ecstasy was torn from his throat. You watched, enamored by the pornographic display of Izuku writhing and bucking into your hand, high-pitched moans leaking out from between his teeth as he paints your fist white with hot spurts of his cum.

[allaboutve]

FAVORITE MOVIE REVIEWS: #9 THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR, John McTiernan

My ninth favorite movie is perhaps my most embarrassing.  The Thomas Crown Affair is fundamentally a date movie that happens to be about a heist.  And call me a liberal fruit bat, but the film articulates some very problematic values.

However, The Thomas Crown Affair benefits from being one of my favorite movies from my adolescence and does a lot of things right.  One of these is its representation of New York City, which is not accurate in detail as much as in spirit.

As an adult I appreciate the relationship between Thomas Crown, played by Pierce Brosnan, and Catherine Banning, played by Rene Russo.  There are no easy answers in the movie or in their fun yet troubled romance.  

Although The Thomas Crown Affair is shamelessly materialistic its moral strength is its honest amorality.  It never mistakes its main characters’ drives with a higher sense of right and wrong, which is sadly becoming the norm in today’s media.

Thomas Crown is a Wall Street Mergers and Acquisitions giant with a fondness for one particular painting--Noon - Rest from Work by Vincent Van Gogh. He affectionately calls it “Haystacks.”  

Late for work and stuck in traffic, he leaves his personal chauffeur in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art to view the painting from a bench the impressionist wing.  It should be mentioned that Crown brings a briefcase containing his lunch, which he eats in the museum.  

He shows up later in the day at the Wall Street headquarters of his company Crown Acquisitions, having accidentally left his briefcase in the museum.  Crown spends the rest of a busy day looking at his watch, waiting for the day to finally end.  Crown finally leaves the office with another briefcase and returns to the Met.  

I should mention that over the course of the day, a foursome of Eastern European thieves smuggle themselves into the museum hidden inside a Greco-Roman Horse (“Trojan Horse”) preparing to heist the very same wing Crown frequents.  Their heist is unrealistically complex--involving crawling through air ducts, sabotaging the air conditioning and an airlift via helicopter.

When Crown arrives, he discovers the nefarious goings on and draws museum security to it.  Security thwarts the art thieves before anything is stolen.  But not quite.

1999 audiences knew from the trailer that Thomas Crown would steal one of the paintings.  But in fact, the entire heist was orchestrated by Crown.  While the impressionist wing is sealed and the thieves apprehended, Crown slides under the closing gate, steals one painting off the wall and stashes it in a briefcase hidden under a museum bench.  He left the briefcase in the Museum intentionally!

And Crown is only able to make his escape because one of the gates is wedged open by the second briefcase he brought work.  We later learn the briefcase was loaded with titanium.  

Crown does not steal his “Haystacks.”  Instead, he steals a painting by Claude Monet San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk.  The movie sets up the painting early on as the watershed painting by Claude Monet that founded the Impressionist movement, worth $100 Million.

(It should be mentioned that this backstory is made up for the movie.  The Claude Monet painting that founded the Impressionist movement is named Impression, Sunrise.  It is actually housed in Paris and its subject matter is superficially similar to San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk, though less dramatic.)

This is our first insight into Crown’s personality.  Crown spends the early part of the movie fantasizing of an easier life, like the man enjoying a siesta in Noon - Rest from Work.  But it is a facade.  Crown is after the drama, dynamism and richness embodied in San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk.

The above synopsis is only approximately the first twenty minutes of the film.  The rest of the movie focuses on the investigation of the robbery.  On the case are two NYPD detectives (“Michael”) McCann and Paretti--played by Denis Leary and Frankie Faison.  

Having four thieves in custody, they want to treat the case textbook and overlook some of the unusual details.  But they are joined within the first hour of their investigation by a Private Investigator named Catherine Banning, played by Rene Russo.  

Her job “is the painting.”  Already a nuisance to the detectives, she sits in on the Witness ID of the thieves, in which Thomas Crown is the witness.  Banning gives Crown several suspicious glances, the gears in her mind turning.

After doing some research Banning discovers Crown has a habit of bidding on paintings by Claude Monet at auctions.  She becomes certain that he stole the missing Monet, and after she resolves other details of the robbery McCann and Paretti believe her.

The rest of The Thomas Crown Affair involves Banning’s attempt to retrieve the missing Monet by seducing Crown--who also appears to be seducing her.  While the plot develops it becomes unclear to both whether Banning is after the painting or Crown.

Whether or not The Thomas Crown Affair lands depends on its execution of the romance between Thomas Crown and Catherine Banning.  More than half of the movie conforms to the plot structure of any modern romantic film.  However, The Thomas Crown Affair deviates from romance tropes in several ways that give the film life where another film’s story and characters would drag.  

(SPOILERS BELOW)

This is not to say that there are not several romance tropes littered throughout the movie.  For instance, two love triangles are forced throughout the movie--involving Detective McCann and a young woman seen dancing early in the film with Crown.  One of these love triangles even leads to a misunderstanding that makes Banning betray Crown to the police in the film’s climax.

Banning is also led astray by Crown’s wealth and privilege--a tropey characteristic of female romantic leads all the way into the 21st Century.  This would not be distracting except that it occurs during a sequence in the Caribbean island Martinique where the film’s pace otherwise grinds to a halt.

For reasons to be discussed, these appear to be problems with the script from its most early drafts.  But The Thomas Crown Affair starts to circumvent romance tropes with its first shot.  If there is a theme in The Thomas Crown Affair I have come to respect, it is the couple’s incongruent needs.  Thomas Crown is attracted to Catherine Banning because of personal insecurity.  On the other hand, Banning is attracted to Crown because he is handsome, receptive and fun to be with.

Crown’s insecurities regarding his love life are first stirred up in his first scene when his therapist questions in session whether a woman could ever trust him.  In Crown’s relationship with Catherine Banning, he tries to prove that he trusts her as opposed to earning her trust.  

From this context, Crown cannot resolve by himself his insecurity about whether a woman can trust.  He is going about it wrong.  What’s more, trust issues are only Crown’s hangup, not necessarily Banning’s.

Crown’s insecurity is not resolved at the end of the film.  At a height of tension in their relationship, Crown promises Banning he will return the stolen Monet to prove that he trusts her.  Instead she passes the information to the police.

This turn of events is perhaps the strength of The Thomas Crown Affair as a romance film.  It is true that Banning sides with the police in part because of a misunderstanding about Crown’s relationship with another woman.  This sort of misunderstanding is typical of Hollywood romance films.  

On the other hand, the film avoids a more problematic romance trope by not stating whether Banning should choose Crown or the police.  Romance films are typically coded so that a couple, especially the female-gendered half, should choose their romantic interest over their other values or responsibilities.  But The Thomas Crown Affair does not even make the case that Banning should side with Crown over the police. 

A climactic chase follows between Crown and the police inside the Met.  Crown not only returns the painting while evading the police, he steals another--The Banks of the Seine at Argenteuil by Édouard Manet.  The painting by Manet is what Banning points to on their first date, saying she would steal that one if given the choice.

Banning goes to the Wall Street Heliport where Crown asks her to meet him.  But he has already left and his associate gives her the painting instead.  A generous gesture, but Banning does not keep the painting.  She returns it to the police instead.  

In that entire sequence, Crown shows that he did not fully trust her.  And Banning does not reciprocate Crown’s further doting on her. 

Catherine Banning’s attraction to Crown is based less on her emotional needs than for the thrill.  As Crown says on their first date, “You like the chase.”  This aspect is consistent with Banning’s counterpart in the 1968 film, Vicki Anderson as played by Faye Dunaway.

However, one of the major deviations between the 1999 movie and the original 1968 The Thomas Crown Affair is the remake’s “happy” ending.  Crown arranges to sit behind Banning on her flight back to Europe and draws her attention by speaking in a Scottish accent.

The scene is ambiguous as to the couple’s future.  The fact that Crown speaks in a Scottish brogue for his last line is a callback to the couple’s first date, when he says the hardest part of attending Oxford University was “learning to talk.”  Crown finally feels free of the pretensions of English and American culture.

At the same time, Crown and Banning’s needs in the relationship are so different that it is foreseeable they are not a long term match.  

As a film romance, The Thomas Crown Affair is refreshing because its romantic leads are not necessarily perfect for each other.  They have their own motivations that are never completely reconciled or resolved.  And that is more true to life than most Hollywood romances.

The Thomas Crown Affair’s script is written with a curious indifference to materialism.  In today’s world, its tone may come off as dissonant.  But understanding its perspective requires consideration of not only the era when it was written but the people involved in making the film.

The Thomas Crown Affair was one of the first films produced by Irish DreamTime, a production company founded by Pierce Brosnan and Producer Beau Sinclair.  By the time a Director was signed, at least one version of the script was already being drafted.  The best explanation why the film conforms to romantic comedy schlock is that its first draft was written to do so.

The early version of the script appears to have remained intact, since writing credits were still retained by Leslie Dixon and Kurt Wimmer.  And since Pierce Brosnan was a producer, this means that The Thomas Crown Affair was intended as a vehicle for Brosnan.  This is made apparent in the Martinique sequence, which is also where the film’s perspective on materialism is its most loud.

In the exact middle of the film, Crown takes a holiday with Catherine Banning in his island estate.  As intimate and seductive as the setting is, Crown also advertises his lavish lifestyle to Banning.  His seduction of Banning becomes more obvious when he offers her even more money than her commission to run away with him.

This sequence was likely included at the behest of Actor-Producer Brosnan himself.  The actor has a well known attraction to tropical locales and even maintains a home in the Hawaiian Islands today.  The ambiguities regarding Crown’s criminality or immorality would then be the product of indifference by the Writers and production staff.

This part of the film stands out in the 21st Century because of several scandalous stories involving Caribbean criminal havens, including the Paradise Papers and Jeffrey Epstein’s estate on Little Saint James in the U.S. Virgin Islands.  

Obviously these scandals were not in the mind of the Producers when the movie was shot in the late 1990s.  

But Thomas Crown is also represented ambiguously throughout the film.  He is a remorseless criminal who has his hands dirtied by other schemes--bribery and offshore banking.  This is consistent with the original 1968 film where Crown was more a villain than antihero.  But more than the 1968 film, Thomas Crown is humanized as a protagonist and romantic lead.  By association his values are also normalized.

Director John McTiernan’s similarities to Thomas Crown make the film’s perspective on materialism and white collar crime suspicious.  McTiernan did more than direct.  He also (uncredited) rewrote the script and used his own property and vehicles in the film.

McTiernan’s biography is also suspect.  In 2000 McTiernan wiretapped a film Producer and later lied to Federal Investigators twice.  Prosecution would drag until 2013 when McTiernan was finally sentenced to twelve months in prison.  

During McTiernan’s first sentencing in 2006, the presiding judge publicly stated John McTiernan thought he was “above the law,” and “lived a privileged life and simply wanted to continue.”

There is reason to believe that McTiernan based Thomas Crown on himself during his rewrite.  Thomas Crown is shown not to be attracted to fame or a cushy lifestyle.  Instead, he is a thrill-seeker with a death wish.

But Crown’s motives are never stated explicitly in The Thomas Crown Affair.  Furthermore, they are muddied by the existence of a forged Monet in Crown’s possession.  The forged painting is eventually discovered by Catherine Banning.  Although Crown needed the real Monet to commission the forged Monet, we learn by the end that Crown no longer had the stolen painting when he first met Banning. 

Although the forged Monet tricks Banning, this could not have been Crown’s intent when he commissioned it.  The best explanation is that Crown intended to trick the police.  

More than that, it means Crown committed his theft intent on being found out.  This is curiously similar to the judge’s description of Director John McTiernan--that he thought he was “above the law.”  McTiernan’s detachment from the consequences of lying to Federal Investigators twice also echoes Crown’s arrogant disrespect for the police.

There are also sociological reasons The Thomas Crown Affair is ambivalent about wealth and materialism.  Public opinion about Wall Street and the U.S. financial industry was not as negative in 1999 as it is in 2021.  This is partly a result of politics changing in response to current events.  

At the same time, the Wall Street boom of the 1980s and how it changed New York City were still fresh in the public consciousness of 1999.  Especially in 1999, where big business was not yet politically divisive prior to the Dot-Com Bust.

The indifference the public had for big business is embodied by Detective McCann.  By the end of the movie, although Thomas Crown has outsmarted the police and museum security, McCann admits to Catherine Banning that he does not really care about catching Crown.  

McCann implies that compared to cases of domestic violence and human exploitation he usually investigates, the art heist by Crown is a victimless crime.  The stolen paintings only matter to “very silly rich people.”

Detective McCann is held up throughout the film as its moral center.  He has legitimate care and respect for Catherine Banning--even though it is shamelessly teased as a love triangle.  He is motivated to solve the case from a sense of professional responsibility.  In his last scene Banning even tells him, “You’re a good man, Michael.”

But McCann’s indifference to Crown’s crimes is The Thomas Crown Affair’s moral failure.  The victims of art theft are not just the owners but the public itself.  Pop culture pre-Enron was similarly indifferent about fraud and white collar crime, believing the victims were only the rich and wealthy.  

This indifference is a product of the era.  The world would learn very shortly that costs of financial fraud and white collar crime are felt more by society than by the financial industry itself.  But to Hollywood and audiences in 1999, Thomas Crown’s art theft and financial crimes were all victimless crimes.

An aspect of The Thomas Crown Affair that deserves credit is its representation of New York City.  The city depicted in the film is different from the experiences of most New Yorkers, even in 1999.

Although the film is not always shot in the correct location, the city is represented well in spirit.  Early in the movie, a truck driver making a delivery to the Met gripes when Thomas Crown crosses into his lane.  Detective McCann similarly expresses contempt for New York City’s social circuit in a manner often overhears.  “I love this neighborhood, some of these broads are wearing my salary.”

An AIDS Research Ball hosted by BVLGARI is another realistic part of New York City culture in that AIDS activism had become mainstream by the late 1990s.

The Thomas Crown Affair is shot in a part of New York City that is inaccessible to most people, yet widely advertised.  And it is represented in film authentically and amorally--if for no other reason than because the film was shot almost entirely within the city.

Perhaps the most widely entertaining aspect of The Thomas Crown Affair is its contribution to the heist film genre.  Heist films are different from other crime movies in that the narrative usually follows the criminal’s or robber’s perspective.

Heist films are also preoccupied with how the criminal will pull off the caper.  They differ from detective films where catching and identifying the criminal are the lingering mysteries.  

But The Thomas Crown Affair is different from other heist movies in that the finer details of Thomas Crown’s capers are never shared with the audience.  For instance, when Crown steals the Monet we are left to wonder how he evaded museum surveillance.  Catherine Banning offers an explanation, but the question is never answered for certain.

Another mystery lingers when Thomas Crown steals the Manet at the end of the film.  Absolutely no hints are offered as to how he managed to steal it.  Part of the attraction of films like these is they leave audiences to guess how certain events occurred.  

My favorite explanation for the stolen Manet is that Crown had a mole working at the Met steal the painting beforehand.  That also explains how Crown obtained the information necessary to steal the first painting.

Catherine Banning’s explanation for why museum security failed to capture the first theft is that a heater was left in front of the painting.  That is because museum surveillance used infrared cameras that responded to temperature, and a heater would have been just enough to interfere with the infrared camera.  I should mention now that this feature of museum surveillance is one of the more far-fetched details in The Thomas Crown Affair.  Especially today, since face recognition software is in such demand in cyber security.

Lack of realism in films about art or jewel theft is common within the genre, and especially true of the era’s other films--Mission: Impossible, Entrapment and Ocean’s Eleven.  

The purpose of heist movies like this is wonder more than realism.  And prior films have been similarly tongue-in-cheek about painting and jewel theft--such including the Blake Edwards comedy The Pink Panther.  

Films like The Thomas Crown Affair are not intended to be a blueprint for future criminals.  Ironically, The Thomas Crown Affair did inspire one bank robber who got away with the loot using the same costumed diversionary tactic as Thomas Crown in the film’s climactic chase scene.

Even though I have said a lot about The Thomas Crown Affair, there are simple reasons why I am fond of the movie.  It is a well-made movie, beautifully shot and secretly intelligent.  It is a decent representation of New York City, despite complications in the script and budget.

The movie itself is light and entertaining and leaves it up to the viewer to make up their mind.  Yes, it requires some suspension of disbelief.  Yet even in that way, it treats its audience as mature adults.  A quality rare in action or romantic films of any era. 

-ve

NEXT POST--#8 LET THE BULLETS FLY (dir. Jiang Wen)

[heliads]

Troubled Waters Chapter 4: Come and Go

Strange happenings are starting to plague Beacon Hills. Scott McCall and his pack have always been able to defend their hometown no matter how dangerous the threat, but they may need the help of mysterious newcomer Y/N L/N.

previous / series masterlist / next

Scott still can’t believe it. He’s sitting at his desk at school while the teacher drones on and on in front of him, but he can’t hear a word she says. A steady stream of thoughts is on loop in his head, drowning out any other sounds.

Y/N is a naiad. Y/N lied to him. Y/N lied to them all.

Her betrayal cuts Scott like a knife. Looking back now, he realizes how foolish he had been to trust her. Why was it so easy for her to weave her way into the pack? Why had they been so willing to tell her all about the other supernaturals of Beacon Hills? Of course she had taken the news of the supernatural world well, she wasn’t even human herself.

Now, Scott and his friends have decided to do what they probably should have done at the start, which is to go find Deaton. When the pack first showed the veterinarian the message in Ancient Greek, he had nodded understandingly. “Your friend was right, this is a warning about the naiads. She was willing to help you find out their weaknesses, even though it could have undermined their entire plot to take over Beacon Hills. That alone is odd, that she would be so eager to take down her own people.”

Deaton had asked for a few days to do research of his own, insisting that Scott and his friends go back to school and carry on as normal. He requested only that they inform him if they see Y/N at school. This appears to not be an issue, as none of the pack have spotted Y/N in the halls. She is in different classes than them, so they have no idea if she’s there and simply hiding from them, but Y/N remains an elusive shadow nonetheless.

The bell rings overhead, distracting Scott from his thoughts. He slings his backpack over his shoulder and heads out of the school, still not entirely focusing. His friends are waiting for him in the parking lot, Stiles peering at some dented corner of his Jeep and brightening when he sees Scott approach. “There you are! We were thinking about heading to Deaton’s to see if he’s got any updates.” Scott nods. “Sounds good.”

The veterinarian does have some updates, and they’re actually pretty important. Deaton has determined that there is more to the naiad situation than meets the eye. “There are certainly naiads here, and they have been here for a while. The thing is, I believe that many more showed up the night you were all at the lake house, and I’m not sure what their intentions are. If we wish to protect the town, you’ll have to learn more about why they’re here and how to stop them.”

Kira nods slowly. “How do we do that?” Deaton sighs, looking at each friend in turn. “You’re not going to like this. The best way to learn about the naiads is by talking to one of them, and I believe that your friend Y/N would be the best candidate for the job.”

Scott lifts his head in surprise. “Absolutely not. She lied to us before, what’s to stop her from doing it again?” Deaton raises his hands reassuringly. “She lied to you about being a naiad, not about the naiads in general. Also, that was most likely to protect herself.”

Deaton steeples his fingers together. “Y/N is your best bet because she’s the most likely to tell you the truth. Any other naiad would probably resist questioning and refuse to say anything, but not her. Scott, you said she looked almost regretful the night you found out her true identity- we can use that to our advantage. Like it or not, Y/N will be the one to tell us what we need to know.”

Scott frowns, but concedes. As much as he doesn’t like to admit it, Deaton is right. The veterinarian also has an idea as to how to find Y/N- a tracking talisman using the same properties as the Nine Herbs. It will summon her to the beacon, and then knock her unconscious the second she touches it. All it needs is the proper base, as well as some object that used to belong to Y/N. Scott finds one pretty easily- she had left a bookmark of hers in one of the mythology books still languishing in Malia’s backpack.

Deaton carefully snips a strip of paper off of the bookmark, and paints a herb concoction on either side of it. Then, he places it in a box, sealing it shut and handing it back to Scott. “Put the box in some body of water. She’ll find it soon enough.”

Deaton’s word is good- after a few hours, the pack checks on the box to find Y/N’s unconscious form lying next to it on the bottom of the lake. Scott insists on being the one to dive down and get her. He doesn’t know how he looks, emerging from the lake with Y/N’s body in his arms, but he knows how he feels- a swirling mess of emotions even he can’t begin to understand.

When Y/N wakes up, she finds herself in the middle of a protective ring of mountain ash. She starts to panic once she sees the pack standing around her. “Where am I? How did I get here?” Scott steps forward. “We brought you here because we needed to talk.” Y/N raises an eyebrow at that. “So you kidnapped me?”

Malia scoffs. “Oh come on, you lied to us about literally everything. You expect us to treat you like an honored guest?” Scott flashes a glare at her, but Y/N looks at them with a new emotion bubbling up behind her eyes- regret.

“I wish I didn’t lie to you. I wish I never had to leave the way I did, but it was the only way to make sure my family was safe. I didn’t send that message, nor did anyone I know. I had to get close to you so I knew what the other naiads were up to.”

Scott turns to her, confused. “Wait, what do you mean, ‘other naiads?’ Aren’t the others with you?” Y/N shakes her head. “There are different groups of naiads in the world, kind of like different clans. My clan lived here in peace for years, it was our homeland. This new clan of naiads are different- they’re angry, and willing to fight for control of the area. The second I saw you with that message, I knew it was from them, and I knew I had to find out more about it.”

Stiles leans forward. “Why didn’t you just tell us you were a naiad too?” Y/N spreads her hands. “Well, what was I supposed to say? Hi, I know you just got a warning saying ‘beware the naiads’, uh, just not me? Come on, if I had told you from the start you would never have believed me, and I needed your trust so I could work with you to find out what was going on.”

Scott nods at that, then turns to face the rest of the pack. “I think we can trust her. I’ve been listening to her heart the whole time, and she never lied, not even once. We need everybody we can to solve whatever is going on with that other clan of naiads, and I think Y/N can help us.” His friends nod in some sort of agreement, and just like that, Y/N is back on their side.

Well, calling her an ally is a bit of an overstatement. None of the pack can really bring themselves to trust Y/N again, even if she had well-intentioned motives. She’s allowed to work with them, and share ideas with them, but she’s always got at least one person watching her, staying on guard just in case she tried to run away again.

It’s on a peaceful, quiet day when Scott is on guard duty for Y/N. They’re alone in his house, poring over mythology books or math homework. Y/N turns to Scott with a regretful expression. “You know I never wanted any of this to happen, right? I know how it sounds, but I never wanted to hurt any of you.” Scott sighs. “I know. When we were on that dock at the lake house, you told me you wanted to protect the people you cared about. This is your way of doing it.” 

Y/N nods slowly. “I still hold by that. The thing is, the people I care about aren’t just you and your pack, it’s my family and my community that could get hurt by these rival naiads. I wish you could understand everything I’m doing, and why I have to do it.” Scott inclines his head in agreement. “It’s hard to feel like you have to protect everyone in your life. I get that, trust me.” A faint smile flickers across Y/N’s lips. “I hope you do.”

The afternoon is sunny and warm, and Scott is feeling more than a little tired after night after night of stress. He supposes that’s why his eyelids feel leadened, and why the couch is so inviting. Scott isn’t sure when he fell asleep, or for how long, but he is awoken by the sound of a car starting in a driveway. Suddenly alert, Scott glances over to discover with horror that Y/N is no longer sitting next to him. He sprints out to the front door to find her already gone, and her silhouette is just disappearing around the curve of the road.

Cursing, Scott closes the door and dashes after her. Thanks to his abilities as a werewolf, Scott is able to find her pretty easily. Her destination is plain- there’s another lake pretty close to his house. Sure enough, Scott rounds a bend in the road and finds Y/N approaching the lake. He starts catching up to her, close enough that he can hear the frantic beating of her heart. Oddly enough, he senses sadness heavy around her as well.

When they’re only yards away from the lake, Scott calls out to her. “Y/N, wait! You don’t have to do this- we can help you!” She stops running and turns to face him, Scott halting his sprint as well so he doesn’t make her nervous. He realizes with a twist in his heart that she’s crying, silent tears slipping down her cheeks. “I have to do this, Scott. My family is in danger.” Scott takes a slow step towards her, gently reaching out his hands as if offering her a way out.

“I can’t help you if you go, Y/N. I can’t defend your absence to the pack. Please, come back with me.” A muffled sob escapes Y/N’s chest. “I wish I could. I wish it more than anything. But this is the only way.” She turns and runs the last few feet, diving into the water. Scott sprints after her, and his hand catches for just the briefest of moments on the back of her shirt before she is gone, slicing into the water like a knife.

tag list: @savingprivatecass​ @lolychu​ @linkpk88​