#more of this maybe sometime. we shall see but also we're making some kind of overlap chart. so.

[chiropteracupola]

"Oh, Fitzjames, I wouldn't dare lean on you... there's so much grease in your hair, I'd probably slide right off."

[@dxppercxdxver and I have been working very hard on ...the terror, but make it glee. yes this is a good use of our time.]

[desceros]

Re: ableism w/Symphony Donnie: Definitely some internalized ableism but I think that’s unfortunately due to not many people knowing what exactly neurodivergence looks like and how people with it processes things differently.

Like, honestly, my biggest gripe was the recording and even that, for the SPECIFIC context of this story and Donnie as a character, it makes sense. Does it make it right? No, but if Donnie never had to think about these things before, for him it’s the same as recording everything to protect his family. Just something he does.

Also, even though my heart broke with Reader’s at her realization, MULTIPLE times reader has said Donnie says what he means and even at the beginning with the “I like you” thing I was like, “Girl, I’m going to need you to define the relationship with him.”

And I think, with Leo, even when writer’s do write him as neurodivergent, what I’ve read always has him as the he better masker whether it’s explicitly said or not. Idk if Symphony Leo is neurodivergent or not but STILL, reader has picked up that he’s good with masking which usually comes off as charming or “easy breezy beautiful cover girl”.

Idk, maybe because I know a lot of people like Donnie irl but if anything I was more frustrated at the obvious miscommunication between both of them than him directly, because as reader said, she projected her feelings on to him when he’s been super direct with his intentions.

Basically, there are sometimes where I wish people would just realize that processing the same thing between two people doesn’t always look the same and that one isn’t necessarily bad.

well-said, anon-chan!

edit: this got SPOILER!! HEAVY!! for chap. 22 and also soooo long so i'm going to tuck it under a cut. but here's some meta on symphony to explore this a bit since it's something that's very important to me and also... pretty critical to the fic itself! i don't typically like explaining myself outside of the text and letting the fic itself speak but. hm. i suppose i shall let it slide for today!

as you all have hopefully noticed by now, as an author, i like to be. hm. more subtle with things. i prefer to tuck things away versus having things be blatant in the text. and this is kind of coming back to bite me a little with donnie and his neurodivergence, i suspect.

i've tried pretty hard to make it contextually obvious that donnie's autistic. i've all but used the word. the way he behaves and communicates is heavily autism-coded.

meanwhile, the story is from viola-chan's pov, and she's neurotypical-coded (well. as much as i, an adhd-riddled autistic cat in a trenchcoat can manage).

as a result, she doesn't... pick up on donnie's problems with communication. not right away. but here, in this chapter, we see where she finally figures out what their issue has been the entire time:

…Oh. Oh god.  He really doesn’t get it. You’d known, of course, that Donnie wasn’t great with people. That he doesn’t communicate well. He doesn’t pick up on cues, or use them himself. No wonder he’s always so frank in his language, you realize. No wonder he’s so comforted by the firm rigidities of science. No wonder he looked so lost. No wonder he was so perplexed.

then, she puts that into practice by being specific and precise with how she talks. and we see that she now knows how to communicate with him in a way that works for both of them. and it works for them:

God; it’s like—a breath of fresh air, you think, staring at him in a little bit of awe. It’s so easy to talk to him, now that you’re just… letting it all out. Being honest. Frank. Infuriating that you hadn’t done this earlier. Feeling your irritation deflate, you nod. “…Okay. You just—need an explanation. Clarification.” “Yes, please,” Donnie gushes, fretting a little.

it's going to take some work. she still takes things he says personally and extrapolates past them (the whole "leo being an important person" thing). but she immediately nips it in the bud and is like. no. we're not doing that anymore. so, going forward, her relationship with donnie is one that's built on learning how to develop this open communication.

of course, it's not perfect, because they're human. donnie twisting her arm into still talking to him by calling in the favor is shitty behavior. a desperate bid to keep someone close that, for some reason, he can't imagine being without. not cool. the recordings of them having sex were shitty behavior to us, people who Know Better. but when violist-chan said 'hey, that's not cool, don't do that' and donnie was given a reason why not to, he just says ok. he might not understand ("but i record everything"). but he acknowledges that there's a concern there, and he agrees to be more conscientious in the future (having a consent sheet).

now then, let's look at leo's behavior in comparison.

donnie's biggest fault was that he didn't know to check in and make sure they were on the same page with everything. leo's fault, on the other hand, is purposeful, manipulative, and cruel. his open admission that he's been manipulating her from the beginning. manipulating donnie. lying to her.

to me, this is much, much worse than what donnie did. even knowing that at some point he starts developing friendly feelings towards her—and some of their interactions were indeed genuine!—i'm with violist-chan here. i'm not going to be digging through every one trying to parse out which ones were real and which ones were him being a dickhead. they're all tainted by the stain of betrayal.

also. because it has come up in a different ask that i will be publishing probably tomorrow bc of spoiler reasons: someone said something to the effect of 'why didn't he just not say anything? he could have taken that to his grave. how selfish'. i will remind you of a conversation between violist-chan and leo that happened in the previous chapter:

“Most of all, he’s honest,” you keep going, tangling your fingers together, staring down at the way they knot at your waist. “If he says something, I can take it at face value. There’s no hidden meaning. Nothing deeper. If he says something feels good, I know it feels good. If he says he likes something, he likes it. If he doesn’t like it, he doesn’t like it. If he asks for something, I don’t need to ask if he’s sure. He asks, so he’s sure. It—It’s a breath of fresh air. If I want to know what he’s thinking, really thinking, all I have to do is ask. And...”  [...] Leo’s still as stone for a few moments longer, looking at you like he’s trying to decide if he wants to say something; but finally he relaxes and comes back to you himself. Reaching out, he flicks your forehead, causing you to wince and rub at it.

i think... leo maybe wouldn't have ever said anything about it. but then you said this. how donnie matters to you because he's honest. there's nothing deeper with him. it's all at face value. you never have to worry about what he's doing, what he's thinking. and that i think... really messed with leo. because he knows he hasn't been honest with you. you can't trust what he says at face value. you do have to worry about what he's doing. and for you to say that that's the main thing you love about donnie—it messed with him. so, even though he knew it would jeapordize the relationship with you, even knowing he wanted to put this off for as long as he could, even though, even though, he decides he has to tell you. he has to come clean.

so even though it feels like shitty, selfish behavior... it's actually him trying to do right by her for a change. to conform to what she looks for in a relationship (both romantic and platonic). it just... didn't go over so well, predictably. most people don't like hearing that not one, but two of their most precious relationships were built on a foundation of misunderstandings or lies.

side note. i do headcanon leo as having adhd that primarily manifests itself as an inattentive form. i don't suspect it has much to do with his behavior here... save perhaps for some possible rsd being triggered when violist-chan is like 'ok actually go fuck yourself i'm out of here.' i don't find it particularly relevant to the discussion of ableism, in this context.

so anyway. long post aside. it's... interesting to me. to see people saying 'actually fuck both donnie and leo equally!!! bleh bleh bleh!!!!' i don't know that it's. hm. active ableism. i'm certainly not accusing anyone of the sort. but it is, at the very least, indicative to me that there are a lot of people who don't read into the text as deeply as perhaps i would like on certain character traits, if i had a magic wand to wave.

....and also perhaps just ableism, haha.

[vidavalor]

I know we're all keeping you from posting the major sexy metas by inundating you with questions but the stuff you post is just SO INTRIGUING lol. Sooo, you think they use toys too, then? ;-) Gosh, I think they are further ahead than most of us! We can probably learn a thing or two from them. Do you think they may have inspired the Kama Sutra? On that note, I wonder what your thoughts are on spirituality/divine love and sex, or sex magick, and what of that you see reflected in Good Omens perhaps?

hi @procrastiel how are you, my darling? Ask and ye shall eventually receive (sorry for the delay). Really fun questions-- thank you! :)

The sex toy reference in GO: Lockdown and some thoughts on Crowley and Aziraphale, mindfulness, and Tantric Eye Gazing under the cut.

<<further ahead than most of us>> They have a few thousand years head start so one would hope.

<<you think they use toys too, then? ;-)>>

Do with this excerpt from the forthcoming Cake meta on GO: Lockdown what you will:

The Bundt cake exploded in popularity in Buddy Holly's America of the 1950s when the Nordicware company developed the Bundt pan with its distinctive shape. To date, Bundt cake is really the only type of cake named after the pan-- one might even say, the device-- used to bake the cake, rather than after the kind of cake itself. While you can bake many kinds of cake in a Bundt cake pan, the traditional choice is... pound cake.

<<inspired The Kama Sutra?>>

I don't think they inspired it since they at least tried to be a secret for some time but there are some things tied to it that seem relevant a bit maybe? The most direct thing to tantra that I noticed is maybe an allusion to Tantric Eye Gazing (sometimes also called "Soul Gazing").

This one is fun because there's actually some science behind it as well. It's been proven that staring into a trusted partner's eyes for about 40 to 60 seconds causes your body to start to generate the hormone oxytocin, the bonding chemical that some people call "the love hormone." Look into someone's eyes a little longer-- a couple of minutes or more-- and your body starts to flood with oxytocin.

The effects include decreased cortisol (stress hormone) production-- so less anxiety-- and an increased sense of calm/peace, etc., but it also causes a deeper connection between partners. You can theoretically do it anywhere you both feel safe and comfortable enough to be a bit vulnerable and where you are probably not going to be interrupted-- so, the bookshop, for them. If you practice Tantric Eye Gazing in bed, the love hormone flood deepens intimacy between partners and contributes to a more pleasurable experience. The preoccupation with Crowley's eyes and his whole serpent gaze is potentially a nod to something like this as well.

Aziraphale is, as we know, obsessed with Crowley's eyes. He painted half the shop their color. He lives for kinky lunch and being gazed at... he even got The Bentley to take off its sunglasses lol. Meanwhile, Crowley's favorite song is that besotted pinefest "Pale Blue Eyes" so it's not like it's a one-sided thing. They could have kind of fallen into aspects of Eye Gazing without knowing it is a thing, honestly, but I'd wager since they've been around forever, they know what it is. Plus, well, there's also crepes, which winds up defined around it fundamentally being about eventually coming back to a position that makes it easier to kiss and emphasizes eye contact, which is a way of emphasizing a focus on intimacy.

You could also, if you want to, take Aziraphale's "you like waiting inside" comment below a bit in this direction as well, because the idea with Tantric Eye Gazing in bed is that it is meant to bring about a sense of a kind of hyper-awareness of the present and to feel grounding-- not at all things these two like or need lol-- but, just as you can try this outside of bed and it's a different experience, it is also different in bed, depending on when and how you and your partner try it. One way is just while inside your partner but before actively moving much. "You like waiting inside" is already "you like just hanging out inside me and taking your time and driving us both insane" so it's not really far off to throw the eye thing in there as well.

Aziraphale does mean on one level that Crowley just likes being in the actual bookshop, yeah, but Aziraphale also both used the bookshop as euphemistic for his body earlier in the season and says the comment in the Marguerite's scene with a suggestive tone, so it's not out there to go there with it, imo. There are other things it suggests as well, really, but none that I can see that directly conflict with the idea of it being also related to Eye Gazing.

Tantric Eye Gazing is basically a mindfulness exercise as well and they are both overtly into trying to combat the blahs of life with mindfulness in scenes we've already seen-- the way they both breathe in the magic shop in the present in S2 and Aziraphale with the sushi in 1.01, for a couple of examples. This isn't just a way of coping with anxiety and depression; they are examples of sensual living. They both are already highly sensitive but add in the openness to experiencing things like food and music on a deeper level and it's not hard to reach the conclusion that they treat sex the same way, if not even more so.

The sushi scene is also an example of tying that sense of mindfulness to sex directly. I mean, Aziraphale taking that peaceful, centering breath and breathing in the brine there and hearing the miracle chime and assuming it was Crowley apparating in beside him so he wasn't expecting to silently ADHLKDJEKJKFLE GABRIEL! when he opened his eyes and looked towards where he thought Crowley would be...

...and that look? Yeah, they've tried and like and frequently do the eye thing lol.

The actual Kama Sutra itself? When I read your question, the gif below was what I pictured-- just Crowley tossing the whole book up and them picking pages out of the air and the running commentary...

"Absolutely not." "Hm, maybe that one." "You're bendy enough for this one." "Was this one not legally torture in several kingdoms at one point?" "That can't be comfortable." "We're magical and I think that would kill us..." lol

They probably tried what of it looked fun, as they seem willing to give anything that interests them a whirl.

<<sex magick in GO>>

I've made a note to put together some more coherent thoughts and do a separate thing on this at some point. It's a very creative question & I'd like to devote some more thought to it first. Thanks for the ask. :)

[primal--scream]

She doesn't even go here

So yeah, I'm stampeding into another fandom that is well under way and in which I'm barely halfway into season 3, but I love fandom, and I really love this show, and I have friends in this one and I'm diving in with both feet. I just started watching on Saturday and I'm already almost done with S3 and boy do I have some fucking thoughts. I plan to be caught up before they come back from hiatus. And for my jumping off point I'm picking 3x3

So you want me NOT to ship that? Oh fuck that. You can't ask me not to ship co-dependent BFFs when the scene is set on an Ed Sheeran song.

THAT SONG and THAT SCENE. Are you fucking insane?

A neon fucking sign couldn't be more glaring.

I'm going to need my mutuals and you bisches know who you are, to load me up on 911 buddie gifs and theory and ALL THE FANDOM SHIT THAT I HAVE MISSED BECAUSE HEEELLLLLFUCKINGLLLOOOOO.

So listen music in shows isn't just music or background noise. It's significant to the scene in which they are playing it. So lets examine shall we. I know you all already know this.

It opens with a shot of Buck being all morose and this:

when I'm away I will remember how you kissed me Under the lampost back on Sixth Street Hearin' you whisper through the phone

Right okay, so obviously the song is about love, but it's about long distance love and how sometimes when you fight, you look at these pictures of yourselves together and everything is frozen in a happier time and no one is hurting, which kind of links back to the pic that Buck sent to Eddie of him and Christopher before everything went to shit and that frozen moment in time. And while this moment is about how Buck shouldn't give up trying to fight his way back to the department, it also mirrors how he didn't give up and kept searching for Christopher.

So it moves to the voice over Sometimes being lost is not knowing how to get from where we are to where we want to be, where we need to be and then then

wait for me to come home

And then there's Eddie knocking on the door, implying that Buck is waiting for Eddie and Christopher to come and Buck is really shocked to see them because why would Eddie trust him after what happened right? But Eddie has faith in him, because Eddie trusts him and more importantly Christopher trusts him which is key forEddie and more significant than anything else.

Buck trying to make himself the bad guy and Eddie absolutely refusing to let him do it *sobs* by putting all of his trust and faith in Buck to keep his son safe no matter what. And then the way Eddie forces Buck to meet his eyes, even following Buck's head movements to get the point across, and the subtle touch on Buck's neck and Bucks is being hit with some major feelings and then another voice over

A few choice words can sometimes be the life raft that gets you home to be seen, to be found isn't that what we're all searching for.

Eddie and Christopher are what Buck is searching for, it's just that none of them know it yet. And he's so fucking relived it's palpable.

This is the slowest fucking burn I've ever seen, but man the pay off is going to be fucking phenomenal if it happens.

And who knows if it will, but they're building it, and maybe it won't, but I know we see it and they know we see it, and that matters as much as whether or not it happens.

[seth-burroughs]

chapter one rewatch part one. Witamy w następnym odcinku przygód Yumy w wypiździewie ft. Shinigami ona też tu jest

(I think ill just be making separate posts on all of these instead of putting the chapters in the reblogs as they could get a bit.... lengthy otherwise)

behold...... the best chapter.... in my humble yet correct opinion..... here it is..

poor fucking yumer doesn't even get a hotel room he just. sleeps on the damn sofa in the submarine. at least yakou gets some company after all these years

how are there still leaves/needles on these trees? there is zero sunlight and even if there are varieties in there that could survive that for a while its also been raining for entire three years i think all that dampness has long since caused them to get 1000 root rot and fungal diseases. that's not a forest that is a pile of rotten wood that's already 70% disintegrated. what do they even nail all that shit to

the fungi, on the other hand? they're fucking thriving. i made a post about that earlier but i don't want to look for it. all i need to say is that kanai ward has a massive fucking evil fungus problem.

at least yakou had a good time that night lmao.

perhaps i should enter a kokofurio/yumakou era

even shinigami pointed out how poetic yuma tends to get sometimes with his monologues xD

ah yes the cooking scene. maybe i am just such an incredibly skilled gourmet chef that it doesn't even occur to me, but i do not get how do you even manage to fuck up this badly.

and it even looks and smells normal..... how does he do that.

yuma, how the hell do you do that.

okay i came back after i pause since i was doing too bad with my brain shitfuckery to continue it then came back for it in order to distract from my brain shitfuckery

am i really about to enter a kokofurio/yumakou era

im actually ending up liking yakou way more than i did initially lmao..... the guy is growing on me. shame about the d*tective thing though ://

oh, speaking of, detectivephobia mention counter: 5 (kind of)

ooooh also i see. yakou says that he tried contacting wdo several times about the whole kanai ward situation before but they always waved him off and said they got bigger cases to worry about. i wonder why would they do that hmmmmm

"he didnt seem all that impressive to me" youd know huh shinigami

"each master detective is quirky in their own way"

YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH CITY TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAY CITY TIME :3333333333 also there was a meatbun trivia right before we left. nervous laughter

im already getting emotional and we're not even at ginma or marunomon districts yet. what shall i do with myself once that time comes.........................

whats up ramen dude

meatbuns again [ominous music] well at least i can confirm they tasted good lmao?

are u gonna be mad at me for skipping the whole vivia segment

FUBUKI :D

"im sure halara is around somewhere probably hustling kids outta their money'' omgg the foreshadowing in precipitation cipher is actually insane you guyssss

ending this at the part when kokogami's about to look for halara!! goodnight gamers ..

[pof203]

A Summoner Birthday

Special Quest: Shino

Okay, Shino, I managed to get you here. What would you like to do first?

...

Lupin: Don't tell me you're still embarrassed to be here, are you?

Shino: ... I'm just...

Lupin: C'mon, take it off.

Shino: ...

Finally, Shino removes his hat...

I'm just not sure if I should be here! This is clearly not my style.

Lupin: I know. But I thought a change of scenery would do you some good.

Shino: I... I suppose.

You brought Shino to the virtual fairytale world because you noticed he has been tense for sometime. You hoped bringing him here will do him some good.

Shino: I guess I could try that dungeon I've heard about. But then again, that's not the change of scenery you had in mind.

Lupin: I guess so. But still, where would you like to go?

Shino: Well... I hear there's a ball. I guess we could go there.

Lupin: Okay, let's go.

Shino: ... (still unsure) I hope I don't regret this.

With that, you and Shino make a quick stop at Arachne's shop to get something nice to wear before going to the ball.

After getting changed at Arachne's shop, you and Shino arrive at the palace where a ball was taking place.

Lupin: (Princely Regalia) So here we are. At the ball.

So, this is what it's like to be in high society. It's not so different from the club, but you can really sense the regal effect of this affair. It really makes you feel like... Like royalty.

Lupin: Enjoy it while you can, Shino. Because for tonight... you are royalty.

Shino blushes at your words, but is happy to hear that.

Lupin: Shall we dance?

Shino: (unsure) I don't know, I'm not much of a dancer. I have done dancing at the Bon festival, but when it comes to the waltz, I might as well have two left feet.

Lupin: I'm sure you'll be fine. Just follow my lead.

You offer your hand to Shino and he reluctantly takes it as you guide him onto the dance floor.

You two glide across the floor with grace and emotion. You and Shino are waltzing beautifully. Though, Shino does step on your toes a couple of times.

Shino: (embarrassed, but smiling) I tried to warn you.

Lupin: It's okay. Let's keep going.

Shino: Alright.

You and Shino continue to waltz around the ballroom as magic just flies around you.

After you think you've danced enough, you and Shino decided to stop for some food and drink.

Shino: This is quite the spread. It's almost as good as we what have at the club. The only difference is that this food is just data.

Lupin: True, but the feeling is just as real.

No doubt about it. When Shino got a taste of the food, he was extremely pleased.

Shino: You were right. This is good.

You and Shino sit down for a bit while the rest of the dancers dance.

Shino: I guess you were right, it is nice to do something out of character once and a while.

Lupin: I know. I bet it's a wonderful feeling for you, isn't it?

Shino: You're bet was right.

You also notice something on Shino's mind.

Lupin: Is something on your mind?

Shino: I'm just wondering. Should we have invited Moritaka to come with us? I know you only see him as a friend, but I still think he should have been here with us since he's such a close friend.

Lupin: I'm sure he would love to be here. I guess we can bring him and Kenta next time.

Shino: I know. We're members of the Eight Dog Warriors. Yet you love you love a few of us. I'm not sure why we are so special out of all the others.

Lupin: Because I know you're not as bad as you seem. You did help us that time when we needed it most. Only someone with a heart as big as yours could go out of their way for that.

Shino: You really think that?

Lupin: Maybe... But what do you think?

Shino was a bit loss for words, but he knew what to say.

Shino: Well, I guess it might be true. You always seem to care so much about others. Even during that time when Wakan Tanka was a member of the Invaders, you still believed in him while the rest of us lost it. You are so kind and compassionate. I think you really do have more than one soul.

Lupin: Maybe. You have some much love of your own and you're willing to give it. The Dog Warriors, Wakan Tanka, the Summoners, the Outlaws, you love us all and we love you. I love you, too. No matter what, that is true.

Shino: (happy) I'm happy to hear that, Lupin. I love you, too.

You both embrace each other, the night filled with music only you two can hear. This leads the two of you back to the dancefloor for more dancing.

As the clock struck midnight, you both decide to return to Candyland to return home.

[lizhly-writes]

Lizhly, longtime follower here but going anon coz I'm embarrassed. Help I have 2 weeks to write 3000 words of ANY fiction and that's not a lot TECHNICALLY but it's for a workshop group that will be seeing it every day for a week so it has to be good. I don't know where to start, have too many half baked ideas, and I procrastinate. Share your wisdom?

I had a draft to this, you know. tumblr deleted it. we're going off some half-baked wisdom now. anyway! flattered you chose to ask me, disclaimer that i am probably not your best source when it comes to not procrastinating and doing 3k in 2 weeks (track record is not great) but I will do my best!

now. here is how i would do it. here we are, under the cut:

Ideas

pick the funnest one or the one you're most comfortable writing. if that is not immediately obvious, then i would spend a set period of time brainstorming through each idea. just word vomiting every single thing you think about it onto a page. 5-25 min, depending on your schedule. 1 hr each would be great but who has that kind of time? me, on the weekends, maybe, but that's not important. the important thing is equal amount of time for each idea.

if you find your brainstorming time for that idea has ended and you wish that you could spend more time writing about that idea, congrats! earmark it. you're probably interested in writing it. if you find yourself struggling to come up with anything for the idea, you are probably not very interested in the idea. strike it off.

anyway. finish going through all your ideas. narrow down on the ones that you've written the most for. you probably have the most ideas for those ideas. if you are still not clear as to which idea you'd like from that pool, then present your ideas to the public/your friends and ask what they'd be most interested in. put up a goddamn poll if you have to.

The Writing:

Now. there are three kinds of writers: plotters, pantsers, and plantsers. more verbosely put: those who plot, those who write by the seat of their fucking pants, and those who do both. I'm that last one, so the following advice caters to number 3, which I shall separate into three modes of writing.

the outlining.

Write down exactly what you want to happen. It doesn't need to be neat, it doesn't need to be pretty, it can, in fact, resemble a tumblr rant. See below.

See, it's not particularly clean. I swear a lot. But the important thing is that I'm covering why I have this chapter, and exactly what kind of beats and scenes I want.

Here, you're figuring out, at minimum, a setting, your characters, and an idea of a beginning, a middle, and end. I like writing a little character profile and setting description here as well, just so I remember what's going on. If you can keep track of it everything in your head, all power to you!

This is also a pretty good time to figure out if you're writing too much. Like if you outline your entire story and find yourself with 10 fucking chapters? Too much. Figure out where to cut down or switch to a different idea.

2. the ranting

Right, so this is where the BULK of the writing gets done. This is the part where you try to grab as much word count as you possibly can. Ideally you are following your outline (don't be afraid to make changes to your outline, though, if some things aren't working), but if you are anything like me, you are writing outrageously out of order, probably hitting up all the fun scenes first. Do things make sense, read altogether? It would be nice if they did, but ultimately, it doesn't matter. Keep going. Write anything you can think of. Copy some bits of your outline, if it fits. Swear a bunch, if that's what helps. If you don't want to write something, like maybe a transition scene, just say it. That's fine.

The point, as I said, is to get word count. The point is speed, not quality. You can make things nicer later, but you need things there to make nicer, first.

Sometimes, the words don't come. I personally participate in word sprints and games for this. It adds a certain amount of accountability and competitiveness to it, both of which I respond decently well to. It also adds a time limit, which should help with procrastination.

3. the ordering

Now this is where you start putting things into some semblance of order. You have your raw material in abundance -- now it's time to make something out of it. You make things nice. You start rearranging your disconnected scenes and write little bridges connecting them. You fill out scenes and holes you've left in description or whatever. This is the step that makes your mess readable.

This is, for me, the longest part of the writing process. I get bored around here, and also probably lose some motivation here.

I like posting little bits of my writing on Discord, because there are some people that like my writing and are likely to say nice things. Comments! A boost to your ego and likely your inspiration. They keep you going.

(Notice I say three modes of writing, not three phases. This is because I bounce wildly between them. I get bored halfway through outlining, and go to ranting; sometimes, i've run out of things to rant about because I haven't established a stable enough base to continue on, so I go back to outlining or go to ordering to clean up what i have so i can launch off easier. Go back and forth between them when necessary).

Editing:

Once you finish your draft? Let it sit for a bit, if you have time. Take a break. You need some time away from your work.

Then you go over it with a fine-toothed comb. Grammar and spelling, sure, but truthfully, I don't immediately look for that. What I pay attention to is: would I need more description here? Over there? What about the dialogue, does it read well? Do I have enough dialogue tags? Do I have too many dialogue tags? Does this phrase hits like it needs to? Is the word choice good? Is everyone in character? Does everything make sense? Do you like what you've written? If not, why?

You will probably find your bits to add there.

What I would also do, if you're trying to make it good and you're unsure if what you're written is good, is find a beta reader. Maybe more than one beta reader, if you like. Finish your own editing, yes, but there is a limited amount of improvement you can get through the echo chamber of the self. An outside eye will help. Those questions that I've put up there, if you don't have answers, you're likely going to ask whoever your beta reader is.

Where will you find a beta reader? Ask a friend, if you trust them. Join a writer's discord, where there will probably be a channel for beta readers -- and also, a shit-ton of writers who will probably be happy to help you to find that word that's on the tip of your tongue or sprint against you to gain word count.

annnyway this is how i write. hope it helps! if you have questions, feel free to reply, or, i don't know, send another ask. good luck on your writing, anon!!! hope you get your 3000 words in!

[allthemusic]

Week ending: 14th November

Well, both of this week's songs look properly obscure. Which is interesting, I guess? I feel like this is the funny thing about this project - sometimes I do get the feeling that I'm probably the only person in the world who's listening to all these songs in these particular combinations and actively trying to form opinions on them. It's kind of cool, but also you do listen to a lot of complete nonsense - as we shall see this week.

You Got-Ta Have Something in the Bank, Frank - Frankie Vaughan and the Kaye Sisters (8)

This song is very silly. That's not a bad thing. I like some silliness as much as the next person, and this song is great, because for the first time you get the sense that somebody's realised that Frankie could do really well with some genuinely funny stuff. No more stuffy songs for him to ham up - we're giving him something that's genuinely goofy here, and surprise, surprise, it works!

The premise is simple, and honestly, quite funny. Frankie keeps flirting with his lady, but every time he says he loves her, she responds by reminding that You gotta have something in the bank, Frank, and promising that once you have something in the bank, Frank, I'll give you my heart. And thus we get this interplay between a besotted Frankie and the Kaye Sisters, who play the part of his more pragmatic paramour, who reminds him constantly that hey, hey Frankie, we can't live in a tent / No, no, Frankie, you've gotta pay the rent.

It's funny, of course, but it also gives us these lovely little snapshots of 1950s life, as the Kaye sisters sing about how they need a stove to cook the food, and a big refrigerator, / They'll come from the factory and we'll make the payments later. As she reminds Frankie, we need a house, we need a car with lots of gadgets on it / You need lots of steaks and chops and the baby needs a bonnet. It's such a time capsule, in a way, harking back to an era of stay-at-home housewives competing for the latest time-saving kitchen gadgets, and best-dressed babies, and nicest cars. And of course, the husband's the breadwinner, so you need to bag yourself a man who can afford to fund all that, you know? It's such a 1950s image of how family finances work, and it generally feels like the sort of dynamic you'd see in a classic 1950s or 1960s sitcom.

In all this, it helps that the music is also good, goofy fun. From speedy strummed guitar, to plucked bass, silly trombones and the Kaye sisters' almost cartoonishly prim and proper backing vocals - nothing here is trying to be taken seriously. Gone are the sweeping, cinematic strings and rolling timpani, and all in all, I think it's definitely an improvement. Good job, Frankie.

My Dixie Darling - Lonnie Donegan (10)

As is par for the course with Lonnie, this is a very American song. With the references to "Dixie" in the title, and the rather military snare drum at the start, you might even be forgiven for assuming it's a Civil War song. It isn't - it's a Carter Family number from 1936 - but this is a song that's absolutely steeped in the historic US north-south divide, with its talk of my Dixie darling, of winning big at the Kentucky Races, and of how I'm gonna marry, settle down / Settle down in a Southern town, / Buy myself a small homestead / Bloom in peace until I'm dead. It's a deliberately old-fashioned, nostalgic view of the southern US, and honestly, it's kind of weird that it's this particular strand of folk music that Lonnie - a Glaswegian! - would choose to resurrect, complete with a fake Southern accent.

Then again, sonically, you've got everything here that Lonnie seems to like, so maybe it's just the sound of it that appeals. You've got some fast, fancy banjo-work, lightweight lyrics that you can repeat over and over again until they lose all meaning, and an ending that you can just speed up and up until you crash into the end of the track. The southern US details are basically colour, at this point - the whole point's the sound of it, the energy, the carefully corralled and controlled chaos.

With that in mind, I guess it's fine. It's not Lonnie's most intense song, or his most memorable, but there's enough energy to keep it going, and I do like bits of it. The drone you get over the intro, for example - that's fun! Plus, you've got a pretty sick solo in the middle, and some cool drumming right at the end. And I appreciated the little boost you get as the song speeds up near the end. But yeah. Overall, I think it's just... fine. Not my favourite Lonnie Donegan tune, but perfectly serviceable.

(I should also note here that I spent most of my first listen-through wondering if a "banjo-rotting tune" was meant to be a good or a bad thing. Turns out he was singing about having his "banjo right in tune", and I just can't make out words well. Oops.)

I wasn't inspired by either of these two songs, but like I said, I kind of like the thought that I might be the only person in the world right now listening to specifically these two songs on repeat. It's cool to unearth something like that, even when the song you end up with is kinda average. And sometimes you also get a silly song about your wife wanting to buy a new refrigerator. So there's that.

Favourite song of the bunch: You Got-Ta Have Something in the Bank, Frank

[ellowynthenotking]

Mar 4 

Dear Dad

So, we're going to have a little bit more travel time, and by that I mean, actually a lot more travel time. 

I mean, I heard a rumor, well, actually, I think it was Reese who heard it, but when I went to talk to the others, everyone had already kinda known about it. 

It might have an easier way to travel, but it might also be much, much harder. 

And anyway, I think that it's just going to be something that we have to deal with. 

I really don't want to, I'd much rather get more sleep cause I feel like it's been forever since we got a chance to rest, even a little bit, but I know that there's not much that's actually going to happen, like ever again. 

So instead, I shall suffer, slowly lose more and more sleep, and feel my grasp on my sanity slowly drift away.

We're running out of money too. That's a real issue that we have to deal with because if we aren't staying in a temple, we have to pay to stay in an inn. And even if most of them are nice enough to let us stay in one room for cheap, they're still expensive. And food is expensive. And everything is expensive. 

Why is life so expensive?

We're going to have to make money somehow.

Zunair wants to play music in bars and stuff again to make money, which worked and made us a fair amount of money. But we don't have a lot of time. We need to keep going, but we need money.

It's a terrible, terrible cycle. 

Also, I think we're going to go insane if we spend too much more time together. We really will. 

Sometimes, when I'm feeling really irritated at Zunair, I can FEEL how much I sound like Grace in my internal monologue of yelling at them. Or like Willow with her words of disappointment.

It's really weird, I'm not going to lie.

But we're getting closer, I think, both to where we want to go and to each other. 

It's kind of neat. I'm learning things about them that I never thought I would, that I never wanted to know, but now I know anyway.

When there are no phones, minimal distractions, only each other. 

We can still ignore each other pretty well if we want to, but we're still talking even if we're actively trying. 

It turns out that when you don't have much to talk about, you find stuff to talk about.

Anyway.

I should probably go to bed. I'm sure there's some stuff that we'll need to learn more about. There's probably even more stuff that I'm not thinking of that I've learned. 

And I'm sure it won't be long until someone's kicking me awake on accident or on purpose so we can go to the next place. 

I’ll write to you when I can. Hopefully, it’ll be soon. 

I mean, I'm still hopeful that we'll get home soon, but that seems less and less likely every day.

But I'm still hopeful.

Love, Jack

P.S.

I might have accidentally, on purpose, said that we'd have a massive dinner when we all get home. And that we'd be able/willing to host everything. And that everyone and their families are invited. I probably shouldn't have done that, but I think you'll like everyone once you get to know them, and it'll be nice to see everyone interact. 

The hard part will be getting enough food for everyone.

It'll be like a feast! It'll be great!

Probably. 

I'm sure it'll be fine. Maybe the guys won't remember what I offered, and we'll be clear.

Anyway, it'll be fine. 

Probably. Hopefully! 

Anyway, love you! I'll write you again soon,

Jack

Read the rest of the series here: 

Or read more by this author here: 

[dearaliya]

A Court of Thorns and Roses: Missed the boat, but got caught in the waves

Dear Aliya,

Booktok might know what they’re talking about.

I’d been seeing artwork and hearing snippets from this series for a while and eventually took a chance on the first book. I can’t say how glad I was, I love a good magical romance with severe parallels to Beauty and the Beast.

Well within reason.

It's actually the enemies-to-lovers trope that I wholeheartedly adore, and it's in this series a few times so naturally I was hooked. Stockholm syndrome isn't ideal, but pining and dancing around one another until someone confesses? My kinda book.

Shall we dot point? Stop me if I'd spoil things

Characters Maas does some pretty good character work in her stories. A bland story is permitted to exist if the characters can carry the show and they did so well that I had to always know what was next for them. So let's discuss a few!

Tamlin Look, we're talking about the first book here. In this one, he was pretty... okay? He's a dude thrust into a bad situation and he's making the most of it sometimes, other times not so much. I kicked my feet a few times, twirled my hair once or twice I'm not immune to charm.

He wasn't my outright pick, though I enjoyed his interactions with Feyre and they might have hit it off better if he was just slightly not so overbearing.

Short of it is, if I got swept off my feet by him I wouldn't say no, I just didn't love how perpetually unhelpful he seemed to be towards the end of the book.

Feyre You know what? I really like some of Maas's female characters. They're as strong and independent as you'd expect a woman in these types of novels to be, but there's always a facet of them that is so grounded it's kind of refreshing. Feyre learned to hunt, put her own needs aside for her family and got rewarded for that for at least a little while. She only wanted simple things, like enough money to look after herself and maybe buy a few paints.

Her cataloguing and noticing colours and everything that an artist would notice was a lovely little touch to make her feel more like a person and I really appreciated it.

She does have a lot of things go realllly well for her so we're walking the fine line of mary-sue character but it pulls back enough that it scrapes by.

Lucien Look, I have a thing for snarky mean gingers and as soon as Lucien opened his mouth I was fully sold on the book. Make of that what you will, but he’s not the only character I enjoyed following who was sporting the red hair and we'll sure get to that.

I was almost disappointed when I found out he wasn't part of the love interest cast honestly cause he had good chemistry with Feyre. I did at first think it was going to be a choice between him and Tamlin, and I would have chosen him! He helped during the challenges, it was my last push to jump ship.

I also find the headcanon that he was staring at Feyre during his challenge, unable to read, and losing his mind because the words on the wall were probably just, no, nope and this one hilarious so bless whoever placed that in my mind.

Amarantha I do not condone the actions and atrocities committed by Amarantha. No one should be excused for what she did.

Now that the formal disclaimer is out of the way she was a little bit cool. She's a terrible person and if I met her IRL we'd be brawling under the mountain, if I were able to get close. In that vein, however, fucking up the guy who tortured your sister to death so hard that all that's left is a knucklebone and an eye that you fused to a ring to force him into uninterrupted consciousness for centuries? My kinda bitch. Not all men but definitely that one and she made sure he never forgot it.

Not to mention she crippled Prythian overnight and kept it under her control for fifty years. She nearly sealed her place on a throne permanently too, if not for the power of love. She was getting shit done, I was almost sad to see her go and not end up an asset to the courts given she was a general to Hybern.

Rhysand Lucian was in the lead till this one showed up. I am just as basic and unoriginal as everyone else and once Rhysand stepped into the story I pointed, cheered and put myself firmly in his camp. (I did cheat a little, he was the primary focus of a lot of fanart.)

'There you are, I've been looking for you.'

Howl walked so this man could RUN. I assumed there was a reason he'd been looking, upon finding out what it was later in the series? What a long play, what a setup and what a payoff.

Under the Mountain was not his finest time in terms of winning over Feyre, he's mouthy and cocky and inebriated her most nights under the guise of lessening the pain of being trapped there. However, as stated a little higher with Lucien, I love a smartass and he fit the bill perfectly.

Plot Girl kills wolf. Girl meets beast. Beast is man. They will-they won't-they for most of the book. He sends her away. She comes back to fight for him. Wins. They live happily(ish) ever after till the next instalment. I give you, ACOTAR.

Okay, I'm not being totally serious because there's more in there and you could bare bones a lot of books this way. I've heard a lot made about this story and how paint-by-numbers it is and while that is true in some aspects it's not true in all. There were a lot of nice, humanising scenes and interesting worldbuilding that painted Prythian as its own place while still keeping snippets of traditional fae folklore and myth. It's not fully fleshed out, but the central focus is supposed to be the romance between the two main characters so it doesn't really have to be.

Other The Suriel CARRIED the drama dispersed through these books, starting with this one. Came for the clothing, stirred some shit and promptly disappeared into the shadows until another part of the plot needs to be jumpstarted. The other magical creatures were also interesting as well, though I couldn't consistently pronounce any of their names and neither could the girls narrating the audiobook.

Golly, is that a segway?

Yes! Speaking of audiobooks, this series is fully covered and I own them all! I don't always have the time to sit in one place so I appreciated that it was all completed and the narrators were great. There are a few audiobooks that I refuse to buy because of the way the narrator's voice sounds but that's a me problem. Another me problem is that they keep changing who narrated what book! ACOTAR and ACOMAF are both the same but it switches once we get to ACOWAR and again during ACOSF (which is slightly less of an issue because we are following Nesta this time). Each lady does a great job, but pronunciations changed and it felt a little jarring at times to experience.

Nothing more comes to mind, so I appreciate you listening to my thoughts. I’ll see you next time, stay well!

Hannah xx

[lovincomets]

pick a card: the things they want to say to you right now, in a little letter

hello hello hello! this is my first post and my first pick-a-card reading upon here, and i'm so excited! the theme today is black & white, which is not really my aesthetic but it looked really pretty! i'm gonna be doing this reading mostly on what my gut & instinct says, but i'll pull some tarot cards too! also, i'm a beginner on tumblr, so please excuse me for any mistakes, if i make any. thank you! (i do not own any of these pictures, credits go to google)

● please breathe in and out, and then choose, if you're confused between choosing. ● it's perfectly okay to be drawn to more than 1 pile. however, i suggest that pick the one by which you feel more drawn towards.

pile 1 -----> pile 2

pile 3 ----> pile 4 this pick-a-card reading includes :- ● a small and cute letter from the person you're thinking about. ● some channeled messages / things that came in my mind while writing your letter. ● a channeled song. let's start with the reading!

pile 1 dear love, it's been a long time since i've talked to you. every second without talking to you felt like hell. i've missed you so much. i kind of feel like you're ignoring me, are you? i hope not. i just wanna talk to you. please text me, it'll make my day. are you eating well and taking care of yourself? i'm really worried about you. you look sad these days. is everything okay? if not, just know that i'm always there for you and everything is going to be alright soon. my love, i miss you so so much. please talk to me. love you. ♡ channeled messages "i love your eyes", "princess", los angeles, the colour white, "you're my queen", "i love you", a guy looking at a girl with doe eyes as she talks to someone else. ♡ channeled song havana - camila cabello (feat. young thug) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- pile 2 baby, i'm still blushing. you have no idea how much i love talking to you, do you? you probably think that i don't like talking to you, or i dont care about what you say, but, i love it. i really do love it. all the little moments we have, when you're in my arms, when we're laughing and joking around with each other. i love it so much. babe, never ever doubt about my feelings towards you. they're real and i know it. even though i may not show it sometimes, you really do have my heart, my queen. ♡ channeled messages "la la la la la la", a slow mo video of a couple laughing and hugging each other, california (?), cherry by lana del rey, "i wanna kiss you", "let's cuddle". ♡ channeled song last kiss - taylor swift ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ pile 3 hi, i don't think we know each other that well, do we? well, you seem interesting. i would love to know more about you, talk to me the next time you see me. the last time i saw you, were you running? you looked really pretty with all that hair in front of your face, i don't know what i'm even saying, but i loved it. let's be friends, shall we? ♡ channeled messages a chemistry lab, "hey, who is she?", a school/uni/college, "yolo!", a pretty girl with bangs, a guy wearing a checked white shirt. ♡ channeled song can i be him - james arthur ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ pile 4 yo, (such playful energy!) i love you. i don't think you know that. you probably never will. we are so close, i love to tease you and make fun of you, we bully each other sarcastically, i love it. you're my bestest friend. i want to be more than friends, but i'm not sure if you would want that. i'm scared to reveal my feelings to you. maybe you would reject me. i'm not sure. i don't want to ruin this amazing friendship i have with you. i really love you. you as a whole are an extremely gorgeous human being. ♡ channeled messages texting on discord, laughing, "stop hitting me! (in a playful way), "you're so cute!", a tiny room, running on the baseball field. ♡ channeled song olivia - one direction

thank you so much for reading! i hope you all liked it :) please share/reblog/like if you can! it would be much appreciated! <3 also, you can dm me whenever you want! i'll love to be friends with you all!

[pumpkinpaix]

on translation (again), 知己, "soulmates", danmei, and cdrama subtitling

aka, cyan wanders off into the weeds and lies down to be swallowed by the earth because whatever.

almost two months ago, i made a brief impromptu salt post after encountering something frustrating at the end of a long day. i didn't actually want to have a conversation about it, but then everyone kept talking in the replies and i said fuck it and wrote like 7k words in an emotional frenzy before shoving it into my drafts because i couldn't stand to look at it anymore. but hey, i came back to it and did my best with whatever the fuck this ended up being, so here, have the full avalanche of only marginally organized thoughts. take it or leave it.

if you're new here, you may want to read my last big post on translation. there are two other posts linked at the beginning of that one which provide context. they will (hopefully) give you some idea of where I stand when it comes to translation as an art/practice if you don't already know.

i am also going to be blunt: those posts were made over half a year ago and i had a LOT more patience to spare back then for anglophone cdrama/danmei fandom. these days, i can't even browse fic for five minutes without losing my temper, so like. you know. fair warning, I am still trying to be kind, but I hit my breaking point sometime back in 2020 my dudes.

if you're still with me, cheers to u mate let's go

basically: at this moment in time, I despise "soulmates" as a translation for 知己 in the contexts of english subtitles for danmei live-action adaptations. when CQL first came out, I was neutral-critical of the translation--it wasn't what I would have chosen, but I understood why the choice was made, and it was tolerable to me in most cases. there are even certain situations where I still think it makes fairly good sense, ignoring metatextual concerns. however, approximately *checks notes* two years later and after the entrance of SHL onto the anglophone danmei cdrama fandom scene, I've revised that opinion to no, actually "soulmates" is bad and i hate it, specifically for how it's been picked up and misconstrued in anglophone fandom spaces and the consequences thereof. i swear to GOD if i had KNOWN how much psychic damage I was going to take because of this translation choice, I would have salted and burned the earth under it at the outset!!!! hindsight is 20/20 (ha) or whatever!!!

i know that that's a controversial take, but if you wanna hear me out, i shall continue forthwith beneath the cut

anglophone fandom goes fucking wild for 知己, from "omg and they were soulmates" jokes to screaming about netflix's summary for the untamed:

In a magical world of inter-clan rivalry, two soulmates face treacherous schemes and uncover a dark mystery linked to a tragic event in the past.

not gonna lie it was only funny the first few times haha yes indeed these two omg ~soulmates~ how did they get this past censorship etc etc. but now? i just find it aggravating. on particularly bad days, i have to put the internet down gently or I'll start crying.

look. i get it. there is a delight in seeing what feels like a daring flaunt of government restrictions, especially when it's something close to your heart, something close to your personhood. get wrecked, wangxian too gay for the censors etc. we cannot be suppressed. or, perhaps in more familiar terms, "we're here, we're queer, get used to it."

there's a flavor to the way a lot of these offhand comments and jokes about gay couples somehow "getting through" censorship in BL cdramas that makes me flinch when I see them. it's hard to pinpoint and describe--but maybe it's the lack of fear. chinese governmental censorship of the media is. not a joke, you know? there can be severe consequences for crossing the state. do you remember the case of tianyi? do you remember the disappearance of fan bingbing? do you remember li wenliang?

do you remember this post?

what troubles me about 知己 and "soulmates" in particular is how it's often held up as some kind of evidence of how brazen and cheeky the media in question is being--to the point where sometimes people will claim or imply that translating 知己 as anything other than "soulmates" is somehow queer erasure. that 知己 in the contexts of both CQL and SHL carried explicit romantic intent and to not encode that romantic tone within the english translation/subtitle would be, idk, the equivalent of calling wangxian and wenzhou galpals or whatever.

im. okay. im gonna be real with you right now. this just isn't fucking true. moreover, i find this kind of attitude to be such a shallow, one-dimensional approach to the politics of queerness in text, especially in the contexts we're dealing with here. this kind of rhetoric runs adjacent to painfully recent, american-centric chronically online discussions on representation and visibility in pop culture/media that I often find lack complexity and compassion. it feels intensely tied to the american culture of gay pride, the notion that being loudly, explicitly out is the best or only way to embody queer progress and that to do otherwise is, on some level, a betrayal. this isn't even a new conversation. here's a piece that appeared in salon from 1999 in which the author talks about his own misgivings about the culture and focus on pride. it's dated, certainly, but i can't pretend i'm not like. kinda depressed about the fact that so many of his points feel acutely relevant to me, almost exactly 22 years later.

you cannot measure chinese media with the same standards you might measure US (or UK or whatever) media because they are produced within very different cultural, political and historical contexts. being queer in the US or being POC in the US does not automatically give you a privileged understanding of the issues that surround the chinese media industry! i am fucking chinese-american and i had to do a lot of fucking personal work just to understand what little I do right now because it would be ridiculous to say that my heritage somehow gives me perfect access to the whole picture.

i don't. usually like to talk about my academic qualifications--most of the time I see people flexing on that front, I remain highly suspicious because well. look, I also have a college degree in Something Or Other and i was Not Impressed with like 80% of my peers. i know exactly how little you need to do to get a degree at a good, private university in the states. but I think it's tangential to my point, so: I come from an academic background that gave me access to a lot of knowledge and modes of thought which make me uniquely suited to talking about these sorts of subjects, and despite all of that, i still don't feel comfortable outright passing judgment on the majority of issues surrounding danmei fandom/media/etc. it fucking boggles my mind that there are some of you out here really trying to position yourselves as moral arbiters of something most of you can't even grasp in its original language, much less its rich cultural context. you may have noticed that my stance on almost everything is "it's complicated! here's what I believe i understand" so tbh the hubris on display is quite frankly astounding. my irritation with the "soulmates" effect is just a minor facet of *gestures* everything.

i know that the language i'm using is not particularly gentle. i hope you can understand and forgive me for having some ugly, vicious emotions after an ugly, vicious two years, both within fandom and without. i am not trying to punish anyone. i'm just. you know. running really low on good faith and patience.

i ultimately can't blame people for latching onto the soulmates translation--it's compelling, it feels unexpectedly explicit, and it was provided by "official sources" (oof). this is more an entreaty to spend a little more time thinking about some assumptions you may be holding or to reconsider your stances on a few things. maybe you'll ultimately disagree with me--that's fine. i don't want people to agree with me just because I said it, I want people to agree with me because they considered my words and judged them to be sound. but the fact still remains that 知己 isn't revolutionary or even particularly daring. you could call it capitulation and even that wouldn't be inaccurate. it is a socially acceptable way to label an intimate bond between two men in stories, platonic or otherwise. of course they're 知己. it's not the use of 知己 itself that makes an onscreen relationship more or less explicitly romantic but the context of the rest of their interactions. 知己 has multiple valences, and to pretend or assume that the romantic one is the only relevant reading of it is an oversimplification that I feel devalues both the depth of the term itself and, more broadly, love that does not take a romantic form. at its core, 知己 is about intimacy--in many shapes and at many levels.

before i continue, please read @hunxi-guilai's post about 知己 and how it can vary in meaning and gravity depending on context. I'm gonna quote the paragraphs that are particularly relevant to my points here because no offense, i don't trust anyone to read anything or put in the effort to meet me halfway anymore.

first:

People seem shocked when 知己 zhiji is a term dropped in casual conversation or daily dialogue, and they really shouldn’t be; it is as weighty or as casual as someone makes it in the moment. It is a living, breathing word that is actively employed in vernacular vocabularies, not some ancient artifact only pulled out and dusted off for the most significant/dramatic of occasions.

and second:

In the 《天涯客》 audiodrama, Zhou Zishu calls Wen Kexing a zhiji just for noticing that he’s sunning himself on the street (because Wen Kexing is the only one who sees through Zhou Zishu’s disguise at that moment, and doesn’t take him for a beggar). At that point, they haven’t even exchanged a single word, and Zhou Zishu remarks to himself that he hadn’t thought to meet a 知己 zhiji. He makes no more of it than that–just the acknowledgement oh, someone understood me, before moving on with his day.

i think problems arise for a few reasons.

1) a lot of people just do not understand translation from a practical standpoint, which I blame on a combination of flawed education systems and a failure to apply critical reasoning to situations involving translation. i think this is definitely a problem in the US specifically--that's the public education system I grew up in and have personal experience with, and I can say that with a fair amount of confidence. because of this, I see a lot (and i mean a lot) of people insisting on one-to-one translations of terms, concepts, etc. there is a lot of concern with "accuracy" and "what's the correct/proper translation for x then". if you read my last series of posts on translation that i linked up at the beginning of this post, you may have noticed that trend and my frustrations with it. this is less an issue with "poor" or "bad" translations themselves, but with how people have learned (or perhaps, not learned) to interact with translations.

2) a related issue to point 1 is that beyond not understanding the basic complications inherent to all translation is the subsequent (predictable) lack of understanding regarding different types of translation and how different branches of translation will prioritize different things entirely and implement completely different techniques. literary translation is very different from legal translation, which is very different from subtitling for mass market release, which is different from academic translation, which is different from comics translation, which is different from video game localization, which is different from machine translation, which is different from live interpretation etc. etc. etc. this is a problem not only for laypeople but also for professionals who work in translation industries that have little to no interaction with other types of translation. a professional legal translator isn't automatically qualified to talk shit to me about literary translation (and vice-versa) because we have fundamentally different goals, philosophies, and concerns. furthermore, translation as a trade vs translation as an art require different knowledge bases and skills--I'm a terrible medical interpreter, but an excellent literary translator.

3) so put these two gaps in general knowledge together, combine them with an explosively growing fandom, two languages that are notoriously difficult to translate between, the unfortunate political snarl surrounding the source material, then add a dash of tumblr-twitter university-flavored social justice rhetoric, a heaping metric fuckton spoonful of sinophobia, and you get the unfortunate, "知己 EQUALS SOULMATE IF YOU DO ANYTHING ELSE IT'S BOWING TO CENSORSHIP STOP ERASING QUEERNESS FROM MEDIA" take.

is this a (somewhat unkind) hyperbolic representation? i mean, yeah. but please remember, this take also manifests in things like "then what's the proper translation for 知己 [or any other complicated term]?" and "but 知己 is a way of getting around the censors by implying romance, right?" and "well, how do you keep the original [romantic] meaning of 知己 in translation then?" and "omg they really said soulmates" and "CQL/SHL said SOULMATE RIGHTS" and "wangxian/wenzhou are soulmates 😭😭😭😭" and, as i've stated, my least favorite: "CQL/SHL said fuck the censors they're soulmates".

these are fairly innocent on their own--like I said, despite the very serious digression i took up there, I get it. I understand the impulses, I understand why it's fun, but when it piles up and gets repeated over and over, it starts to wear. just. please think twice before idk, hinging entire premises on the misconception that two characters are "canonical soulmates" or making yet another fucking censorship joke or hot take that i personally have to see. stop using chinese state-sponsored censorship as a prop in your bids for internet clout and/or self-absorbed political agendas projected onto fictional characters.

okay.

with that said, i guess now it's time for some more regularly scheduled cyan programming: obsessive opinions about translation choices.

besides often finding online fandom's current preoccupation with explicitly stated queer representation simplistic and uncompassionate or whatever, I also, for petty, personal reasons, just think it's just such an unbelievably boring and unimaginative way to engage with language and literature--with the power of things that are left unsaid, with subtext and subtlety! yes, there is great power and value in explicit statements, but there is also power in the implicit. the wholesale dismissal of anything less than open declarations results in, i think, some pretty hollow takes (and some seriously lackluster writing).

so what are the artistic reasons for why I don't want to see "soulmate" for 知己 anymore?

as hunxi explained in her post, 知己 is a term that changes meaning and gravity depending on context and situational usage. just as it can be used with great significance, it can also be a totally casual thing. taking into account the tendency for fandom at large to think of translation as a one-to-one equivalency, when you consistently translate 知己 into "soulmate" you end up with... issues.

i think this is specifically due to its immutable register--"soulmate" is an inherently weighty term, something that is not true for 知己. furthermore, "soulmate" is likely to carry a romantic connotation in english, which, once again, is not true for 知己. this leads to, I think, a lot of misunderstanding and analytical mistakes when discussing both CQL and SHL, because even if people do understand that it's not an exact translation, there's still a persistent belief that 知己, like soulmate, is inherently weighty and sometimes almost explicitly romantic.

let's talk about CQL and SHL to illustrate my point. that's why most of you are here, isn't it?

CQL first. ep 25. the godforsaken iconic 知己 exchange.

[ID: screenshot from episode 25 of the untamed during the 知己 conversation. lan wangji and wei wuxian face each other in profile. there are no words onscreen. /end ID]

this bitch.

here is the original dialogue:

LWJ: 你把我当成什么人？ WWX: 我曾经把你当作我毕生知己 LWJ: 現在仍是

there are numerous translations of these lines--both netflix and youtube (as of 15 june 2021) render 知己 as "confidant": netflix:

LWJ: Who do you take me for? WWX: I once treated you as my lifelong confidant. LWJ: I still am.

youtube:

LWJ: who do you take me for? WWX: I had once taken you as my whole-life confidant. LWJ: Still, I am.

however, the version that I know most people latch onto/are familiar with is the one where wei wuxian's line is subtitled as something like, "I once saw you as my soulmate of this lifetime". if I remember correctly, the WeTV subs originally had this, as did netflix. the episode description of 25 on wikipedia notes that "Wei WuXian answers that he used to treat Lan WangJi as a soulmate." other instances of 知己 are also now rendered as "confidant" (or "true friend" in one instance), but you can see some of the original translations in screenshots collected in this tweet from december 2019.

on the off-chance that the tweet is moved/deleted, here is a screenshot of the images in question:

[ID: four screenshots from the untamed with different pieces of dialogue that include the term "soulmate". /end ID]

top row, left to right are from episodes 7 and 25. the bottom row is two moments from episode 43, in case anyone is insane like me cares. yes i did pull that almost entirely from memory rip my brain storage space

if I were forced to keep soulmate for at least one instance, i would pick the bottom right scene in 43, where wei wuxian remarks: "人生得一知己, 足矣." // "to have a 知己 in one's lifetime, that is enough". unless i'm forgetting another instance, i would argue that this is wei wuxian's weightiest use of the term throughout the entire series: this is in the present-day arc (so after *handwaves* all that trauma), lan wangji just stood beside him publicly and declared his loyalty on the steps of jinlin tai in front of the most prominent figures in their sphere, we're getting close to the resolution of the plot, and wei wuxian has just learned about lan wangji's punishment, aka the depths of his devotion. to go a little deeper, this is a quote from 20th century poet lu xun and is written in an elevated register. putting aside that this is a 20th century literary reference in fantasy ancient china (but then again: there's really no point in trying to "accurately" date CQL. you may as well try to "accurately" date game of thrones), i think the register is meaningful because wei wuxian moves between registers depending on context, but in everyday speech, is most likely to sit comfortably in a colloquial range. an elevated register carries significance for him, unlike lan wangji for whom this is the norm. (yet again: see hunxi's post on linguistic register in CQL for the rundown on that)

this is in stark contrast to the moment in episode 7 depicted in the top left image. wei wuxian and lan wangji have just presented the yin iron to lan xichen and lan qiren and explained their little adventure at the cold springs. wei wuxian speculates on how everything is connected and lan xichen confirms his reasoning and adds, "Wangji, when you asked me before, I couldn't reveal the truth to you." wei wuxian, realizing that he and lan wangji have had the same thoughts about the situation, goes, "哟，知己啊", which basically means "hey, we're 知己!" if i really wanted to capture the tone of this little interjection, i would say the mood is closest to something like: "yo, we totally vibe/we're on the same wavelength/you get me/samesies!" etc etc. this is about as casual as you can get--it's literally just 知己, prefaced by a particle that's roughly equivalent to "hey/yo/oh!" and followed by an auxiliary particle to express a mild sense of enthusiasm.

you can make an argument to use "soulmates" again in this situation. after all, it's not unusual to hyperbolize semi-ironically in english-- "yo, we're totally soulmates" or "hey, soulmate alert" etc. I don't think these specific (exaggerated) examples are appropriate for CQL for obvious reasons, but i think that, in a vacuum, subtitling this as, "hey, it's like we're soulmates" could work.

HOWEVER, as I said before, im now anti-soulmate and I Would Prefer Not To, so let's explore that.

as established, 知己 can naturally vary in gravity, while I personally don't feel that soulmate does. so in order to keep the "soulmate" translation, I think you have to create a reading of tone that's not exactly true to the character in the moment. if someone says, in a situation like this, "yo, it's like we're soulmates", it's understood that there's an irony to it. they're exaggerating for effect, etc. this isn't necessarily OOC for wei wuxian in general, but I don't think it's true to what's happening in this specific scene and more importantly, to the purpose of the 知己 motif throughout CQL. I believe that 知己 is being used earnestly, if lightly.

the 知己 motif is a CQL-only choice; it is not present in the mdzs novel. the use of 知己/知己-adjacent dialogue (i.e. dialogue concerning familiarity, recognition, understanding, insiders vs outsiders) over the course of the story is one of the ways that I think CQL was trying to illustrate a subtextual relationship that would be accepted by the censors. because it is a motif, I understand why we would want to translate the term with some degree of consistency in order to preserve its purpose.

i believe this hinges on the way that 知己 can naturally vary in tonal weight from very light to very heavy: it's anything from "hey! we vibe" to "you are the only one who truly understands me". to use "soulmate" as a blunt, one-to-one equivalence is a) bad because of my earlier points about how translation is never a one-to-one etc. and b) not to my taste specifically because "soulmate" lacks this natural fluidity, so even if you can make interesting artistic choices by varying the sincerity of how "soulmate" is used (as i showed a few paragraphs up), I think this has a subtle but profound effect on the way wangxian's relationship is presented.

CQL wangxian are quite different from mdzs wangxian in a number of ways, but what's relevant here is how their relationship has a much more fated/meant-to-be flavor to it in CQL rather than in mdzs. from the beginning, CQL emphasizes their special connection, even if neither of them has fully come to terms with those feelings. wangxian's first moonlit duel is way more of a big deal in CQL than in mdzs, for example. other examples include: their tagteam adventure in the cold springs with lan yi; their symbolic forehead ribbon marriage; the lantern scene; meeting songxiao and emphasizing their special connection; the emotional farewell in the rain; i could go on. this is a very different relationship to wangxian in the novel, in which wei wuxian is really so caught up in his own problems before his death that the bulk of wangxian's relationship is actually built up and reciprocated during the present-day arc instead. which i prefer!!!! but that's neither here nor there.

"but cyan!" i hear you saying, "surely that means that soulmate is a good translation? what is a soulmate if not a fated/meant-to-be person??" to which i say, HERE'S MY REBUTTAL: to use "soulmate" as a catch-all translation for 知己 changes the axis upon which the relationship moves. instead of gravity, it becomes sincerity. and this, I think, is not a good reflection of what 知己 (and related dialogue) is meant to convey throughout CQL.

one of the personality traits of wei wuxian that CQL doubles down on is how seriously he takes the important things, regardless of what kind of outer demeanor he presents. jiang yanli says to jiang cheng within the first few episodes that "you know that a'xian never fools around when it matters". that doesn't mean he doesn't have fun! he still buys the 天子笑 liquor when he goes to fetch the invitation from caiyi after all. he likes to mess around, he likes to play tricks and he is blessed with a light heart. but we see over and over again, even as a schoolboy, that he is sincere and heartfelt about important things. once again: see the lantern scene.

to me, I think this is enough reason to step back from trying to use the "soulmate" translation because it necessitates that kind of hyperbolic/ironic tone in english in that moment in episode 7, when I think it's actually narratively salient that wei wuxian is being earnest. this is especially important for one of the first uses of 知己 in the story. 知己 grows heavier with each subsequent use as CQL progresses: it goes from something casual to something much more significant, but I don't believe it's ever used ironically--as i said, i believe the thematic axis is gravity. if we confine ourselves to using "soulmate" as a one-to-one translation for 知己, we inevitably hit snags because the terms just do not function the same way.

"well, ok cyan, then what the hell are you proposing we do instead" you all fucking ask me because heaven forbid i complain about anything without providing an itemized list of proposed solutions

after thinking about it for a really long time, i think my preferred solution is actually fairly simple--instead of trying to translate 知己 as a rigid, one-word noun, just... translate what it means.

if you don't already know, the two characters that make up 知己 are 知 "to know" and 己 "self". so someone who is 知己 can literally be described as "one who knows me". i think that to know and to understand are both english verbs that have the same natural weight variance as 知己. you can, completely sincerely, say both "oh yeah, I know her," and "but i know her" for very different effect. i think that with some work and thought, you could come up with subtitles that not only circumvent the problem of reinforcing one-to-one translation tendencies and the misconceptions that those tend to breed, but also preserve the intended thematic throughline and are an acceptable length for actual subtitle timing and encoding.

this post is already way too fucking long, but in for a penny in for my entire life savings i guess: one of the considerations of subtitles that tends to get ignored or forgotten, especially in fansub territory, is timing and relative length. good subtitles must both convey meaning well and convey it in a length that an average viewer can absorb and understand in the time that it is onscreen. fansubs play fast and loose with this because there's no concern over the idea of capturing and/or maintaining an audience. for the most part, fansubs are for people who are already fans. plus, there's (theoretically) no money/profit involved. for media corporations, this is going to be a much bigger concern--capturing and maintaining an audience is critical to profit. and we all know how much people hate subtitles generally anyways (especially in anglophone countries :)), so they had better be a) clear and b) easy to access if you want to keep your viewers.

this is a significant challenge for chinese -> english subtitles because of the way the languages work. i talk about this at length in my post on lan wangji's speech patterns and the difficulties associated with rendering them into english. if you'd like to see an example in action, here's a screenshot of my aegisub workspace for the SHL special ending easter egg subtitles:

[ID: screenshot of the subtitling program aegisub, displaying a segment of an episode. in the CPS column, a few lines are pale to medium red. the line displayed is "Will Senior please offer critique!" for 请前辈指点 /end ID]

honestly, not too bad! my worst character per second (CPS) ratio is 23CPS, which is the first line.

but look at this screenshot from my aegisub workspace for HIStory3: Trap, episode 1:

[ID: screenshot of the subtitling program aegisub, displaying a segment of an episode. in the CPS column, several lines are medium to bright red. the line on display is "Another division says they can snatch him away, so they just snatch him," for 别的单位说抢就抢 /end ID]

god the hilarity of seeing HOW LONG the english is compared to the mandarin. if you look at the numbers, you may notice that i have a 49CPS and also a 39CPS line right next to each other. that is Bad! this was a personal project, so I was unconcerned. however, this would be unacceptable for official, mainstream release subtitles.

netflix's guidelines for english subtitles are publicly available online. if you scroll down to the sections on reading speed for english subtitles for foreign language source material (II.17), you will see that netflix's standard for adult programs is 20CPS. and i hope by now it's clear why that can be such a bitterly challenging metric to meet in a show like CQL.

this is not to defend the netflix subtitles. or the wetv ones. they're absolutely fucking abysmal, even by the standards laid out in the netflix style guide. I could pick through the document and point out every way in which I believe the CQL subtitles laughably fail to meet the standards (and the infuriating consequences thereof), but that's another post for sure. there is some leeway for "industry requirements" but I'm getting real tired of this excuse when it's clear that the real problem is a) the people in charge of the subtitles simply don't care enough/don't pay enough for good subtitles and b) subtitling/specialized translation isn't really considered a serious, difficult art that requires creative skill to be done well. it's truly fucking enraging.

what i'm trying to do by really driving down on all of these minute details is to hopefully (!!) prompt people into shifting their paradigms re: translation/subtitling and more fully understand how simple misconceptions driven by singular translation choices can ripple out into complex and unexpected forms, harmful or not. i am well aware that the amount of thought, time, energy etc. that I've put into this One Translation Choice is completely unfeasible as a mainstream standard. it's obviously ridiculous! but I think there is a middle ground somewhere that wouldn't have caused so much unintentional damage. "soulmates" is the tip of the goddamn iceberg. (every time i see a one-character name, i feel another piece of my soul crumble away)

for CQL specifically, I've gone back and forth between whether I would prefer using "to know" or "to understand" as the fulcrum of the 知己 translation, and I... think..... I would go with "to know". at least right now. there are a few reasons for that tentative choice, one of which is simply that "know" is only four characters while "understand" is ten. the other is that, after messing around with both in each scenario, I think "know" ultimately flows better sonically.

i'm only going to break down the exchange in episode 25 because i'm exhausted, but here:

ep 25:

LWJ: 你把我当成什么人？ WWX: 我曾经把你当作 [new line] 我毕生知己 LWJ: 現在仍是

there are actually a couple things with this exchange I want to talk about in addition to 知己. first: the way that lan wangji's first line is subtitled: "who do you take me for?"

this is a poor translation because it has absolutely the wrong tone in english. "who/what do you take me for?" is an idiomatic, rhetorical question, that's usually followed by something derogatory. one of the more common forms you'll see is "what do you take me for, an idiot?" it's not appropriate for this serious, vulnerable question that lan wangji is posing.

a much better translation, in my opinion, would be "who am I to you?" which also has some pretty specific connotations in english. it doesn't have to be romantic, but it does often appear in romantic scenarios where someone wants to know where they stand in relation to another. this, i think, gets you the hint of romantic intention that feels appropriate in this scene without the heavy-handedness of "soulmates", and also just. more accurately reflects lan wangji's intentions.

(an aside: i speculate that the reason we got "who do you take me for" is because the chinese sentence structure more or less literally translates to something like "you have taken me for/regarded me as/made me into what kind of person?". depending on tone, you can use it in the same way as "who do you take me for" in english, but unfortunately, that's not what's happening here. it seems like a very unsurprising mistake for a machine translation.)

so the 知己 line. this one is HARD because it's long! and the subtitles split right before 毕生知己 because wei wuxian pauses. I think the power of the line rests in keeping the answer wholly after the pause. the original was, I think, "I once saw you as [pause, new subtitle line] my soulmate of this lifetime."

ugh!! it's so awkward and weird, ESPECIALLY following a "who do you take me for" GOD. here's my proposal:

I once thought you were someone [pause] who would know me for a lifetime.

it's long!! yes it's long, but we have a little wiggle room because there's a lot of heavy silences during this exchange, so we might actually be able to make the CPS limit. or almost. what the fuck ever. I could shorten it further by just saying "I once thought you [pause] would know me for a lifetime" but this is the wrong form of answer for the question "who am I to you?" so I think it's worthwhile to keep "were someone" despite how many characters it adds.

and lan wangji's final response (yes, I have thoughts on this too): we have both "I still am" and "Still, I am". I feel strongly that "Still, I am" is better than "I still am" because lan wangji being lan wangji is using a more formal construction. the 仍 character he's using for "still" is usually literary. putting "still" at the front of the sentence creates a more elevated tone in english, and emphasizes it, which more closely reflects lan wangji's intention.

NOW HOWEVER, if we are going with my dialogue proposals, I would say that we should change this to "Still, I do" because the relevant part of "someone who would know me for a lifetime" is the knowing and the implication in that is "i don't know if you know me right now" or "i don't know if you will actually know me forever" or "you knew me once, and i thought it would be forever, but now I'm not so sure". so i feel that lan wangji's response should be to that implied uncertainty, even if it shifts the grammar a little. I do still know you. I know you right now.

putting it all together, my proposed dialogue would look like this:

LWJ: Who am I to you? WWX: I once thought you were someone [new line] who would know me for a lifetime. LWJ: Still, I do.

DO YOU SEE WHY I THINK THIS IS BETTER THAN SOULMATES. what's powerful about this scene is what isn't being said! it's the tone! it's the fucking reaching out and trying to cling to someone you're afraid you're in the process of losing. fucks sake. what is more intimate than really knowing a person? i hate everything. soulmates my ASS.

all right, let's pivot to SHL, which presents a different set of challenges with its use of 知己. there are two exchanges involving 知己 that I think are particularly noteworthy: once in ep8, the moment we all remember when wen kexing says it, and once in ep30, when jin-wang says he had always thought zhou zishu was his 知己.

in these two lines in SHL, there is an emphasis on 知己's function as a title/role, whereas in CQL I think there's more room to bend the structure of the dialogue around 知己 without losing sight of its original purpose. both of the lines in SHL use 知己 in direct contrast to another, lesser term: in wen kexing's case, he's saying, "you only think of me as a friend? after all this? but I think of you as 知己". jin-wang, on the other hand, is saying, "I always thought you were my 知己, but it seems you're nothing more than an ordinary person". it's much harder here to try and retain the punch of the parallel structure of these moments without the use of a shorter, one-to-one translation: "friend" vs "someone who understands me", and "someone who understands me" vs "ordinary person"--they're such unequal length that I think the overall structure starts to get clunky, especially in episode 30 when it's all said at once. the mandarin has an elegance because each term is two characters: 朋友 (friend)，庸人 (mediocre/ordinary person)，知己

since i never met a translation challenge i didn't charge at headfirst screaming, let's give this a shot. why the hell not.

here's my problem with using "soulmates"--even though I think it does work in episode 8, it really doesn't in episode 30. i think the reason the moment in episode 30 produces such a visceral recoil is because it's using a term that's perfectly appropriate in the social context, but still feels like a desecration because of how that term has been given a different meaning through the rest of the show. as it is right now, the translation "soulmates" feels like a distraction from the intensity of the moment because it doesn't really fit--again, it's the romantic connotations of soulmate that are making things difficult. jin-wang very obviously does NOT mean 知己 in a romantic context (though that can be a valid and fun dynamic to play with in fic etc.) this is a much closer to a patron-minister manifestation of the 知己 relationship, and it centers around ideals, politics, shared vision etc. (for background on this aspect of 知己, please avail yourself of one of hunxi's posts if you're unfamiliar with it idk look, hunxi just has a lot of backlog i can conveniently cite ok)

when I read "soulmate" on the screen it took me right out of the moment--it's such an out-of-place term for the situation! i think it diminishes jin-wang's charisma a lot because it sounds so... laughable?? idk. in any case, jin-wang is beiyuan's ex and I Would Llike To See It

so what i'm looking for is a one-to-one translation that can work in both scenarios, and after a lot of thought on this front, the best I've been able to come up with in english is "kindred spirit". if I were forced to give a general one-to-one translation of 知己 for all-purpose use, this is what I would choose as well. but again, it's far from perfect. I would just prefer it over "soulmates" or "bosom friend" or what the fuck ever as a catch-all.

anyways, episode 8:

WKX: 你怎么不问我当你是什么？ ZZS: 管你当我是什么 ... WKX: 是 知己

YT subs:

WKX: Why don't you ask me what I think of you? ZZS: I don't care. ... WKX: You're my soulmate.

my proposed alteration:

WKX: Why aren't you asking how I think of you? ZZS: Who cares how you think of me. ... WKX: I think of you as [new line] my kindred spirit.

episode 30:

JW: 孤王还一直以为 [new line] 你是我的知己 [new line] 原来 [new line] 你也只是个庸人而已

YT subs:

JW: I always think [new line] you are my soul mate. [new line] But it turns out [new line] that you're no more than an ordinary person.

my proposed alteration:

JW: This lonely prince had always thought [new line] that you were my kindred spirit [new line] But it seems [new line] you were nothing more than another ordinary person.

i... want to do explanations of my choices, but I really am running on nothing but fumes at this point. the only thing I want to mention, I think, is the prince's use of 孤王 as a pronoun. most of the time, when speaking with zhou zishu, he refers to himself as either 本王 or simply, 我. i did a quick check, and i'm fairly confident that 孤王 carries the connotation of solitude/loneliness. it's not an uncommon pronoun (for royalty), but I think it's important that he switches to this one in this moment when he laments that he and zhou zishu aren't what he had once hoped they could be.

if I were translating only for myself, I would probably still try to somehow work with "someone who understands me" because I think that just hits harder than "kindred spirit". so like, "I think of you as someone who understands me" and "This lonely prince had always thought that you were someone who understood me", that kind of thing. i think it gets more precisely at the core of what makes 知己 such an important concept in SHL. but i did think it was worthwhile to show how one might translate 知己 in a different context while restricted to a one-to-one term, just as proof of concept. we can have better subtitles that still meet style guidelines. yes, this is fueled by my own bitterness and spite. im fucking tired of the excuses for piss-poor subtitles when the problem clearly is one of value, not possibility.

so where does this leave us, at the end of approximately 7k (yikes)? i... talked about a lot of things, so if you made it all the way to the end, congrats and thanks for sticking with it. i've been trying to figure out how to end this post since i started it, and I haven't found a good answer, but I'll try.

in early 2013, I met a lesbian activist from china at a conference. she was there with a small delegation, maybe about five young queer people, who worked in beijing, or maybe shanghai--it's been a long time, and I don't remember most of the details. what I do remember was that I was anxious, that I still didn't feel comfortable with a label, and that I was at least half-convinced I was faking whatever queer mishmash of feelings I had going on. and I remember that these were the first queer people from china i had ever knowingly met. they talked about the work they were doing, their own coming out experiences, the antagonism and support they'd received--the woman I spoke to mentioned that they had a lesbian print magazine publication, and I naively asked after the presentation if there was any way they could mail it to someone overseas (me) who was interested in reading it. she hesitated somewhat apologetically and said, "well, no, not really. it's still an illegal publication, you see. we can't distribute like that." this was nearly six years before the webnovelist tianyi was sentenced to a decade in prison for printing and distributing her BL work.

in august 2020, about a year after CQL aired, the organizers of shanghai pride announced that they were halting all activities indefinitely after 11 years. new laws instated early this year on self-publishing are increasing restrictions on free speech.

something a little closer to home: you remember 227 right? do you remember some of the cold, callous reactions to the news? like this one? what about the incessant trickle of hot twitter takes that all seem to start with "I know censorship is bad, but"?

at the end of the day, perhaps this is just my sad, tired entreaty once again to think more about how you interact with stories in translation, how complex the act of translation can be. before you blithely make jokes about chinese media censorship and how shows "get around it" based solely on your view through the small and cloudy window of low-quality subtitles, i ask you again to take a moment to reflect. before you tweet a thread about how even though censorship is bad, it forces creativity and produces interesting art, all while holding up misinterpretations of those subtitles as evidence--look, i don't give a fuck. the hays code produced interesting cinema too. many terrible things produce interesting art.

on a more personal note: before you start a fucking dissection of a language you don't understand on my personal vent post, before you barge into someone's askbox with this entitled attitude about language, before you ask any of us to act as your personal tour guide without doing us the basic courtesy of a five second google search, before you try to impose culturally ignorant moral judgments on the text, just. take a minute.

this post is as much a summary of my feelings on 知己 and translation as it is a messy, bitter reaction to the straws that are this close to breaking the camel's back. how many times must i reiterate that translation is not and never will be uncomplicated and bloodless before you all stop demanding easy, simple answers? stop asking me to exploit a culture I barely feel belongs to me for your fanfiction. stop asking me to gut myself to make your media more palatable.

i don't have a coherent thesis for this post. i don't want to have a debate. make your own post if you want to have a discussion because I really don't.

as i sit here staring at all the places where I revised my words to be softer, where i put a disclaimer asking for forgiveness, i debate undoing it all and speaking as harshly as i feel. why should i have to disclaim my emotions every time I have them? why should I have to make everyone comfortable when I have been trying with every fucking fiber of my goodwill to be gentle this whole time, only to be backstabbed, insulted, used, talked over, dismissed? must even my anger be eloquent to be valued? what do i need to be forgiven for?

i miss finding joy here.

[viridiave]

Daylight Prairie- Creatures of the Light (lore dump)

I've had a couple of theories and headcanons stirring around my head regarding Prairie for a while now- so right here we're gonna tie some of them together cuz I haven't lored in a good long while XD

Note- btw I'm not part of beta so this is purely just me- a crackhead- putting together a crackpot narrative. SOME spoilers for Eden are present.

<THE CEREMONIAL WORSHIPPERS>

okay these guys drive me fucking nuts

We barely know anything about these guys- and what little we do know is derived purely from their closed off uh... Worshipping space. Look at this freaking thing.

In the middle of nowhere. Surrounded by clouds for miles. Fairly advanced diamond technology. Altars with graves decked out in gold and candles. The mechanism for the entrance to the elevator to begin with is fairly complex as well- activated by butterflies and the butterflies don't even die in the process. And to top everything off, this place has a portal that leads directly to the Prairie Temple.

If this isn't sus I don't know what is- but I think I have an explanation.

There are six spaces for six more people that we are not aware of. The only people we DO know of is one bald person in the short garb and another bald person in the long garb. I propose that these six missing people are the Whisperers.

Which is... pretty out there, I know. Counting the 'voices' that we get in game, (including the ones from previous Seasons like Lightseekers and Sanctuary) we have one for Birds, Whales, Mantas, Memories, Crabs, and Jellyfish. For now, we're not counting either Butterflies or Krill- and I'll explain why in a bit.

As for the initial proposition that these Whisperers are the missing six, first we need to ask ourselves what exactly it was that the Worshippers were... worshipping. There is a possible god of which we see in game, and the name of this god is the Megabird.

Megabird here was heavily present in concepts, and in the final product we only ever get to see traces of her and heck to this day we're not sure if she's a canon entity in the final game at all. Megabird as an entity in the concepts is basically the god overseeing the world of Sky and is comprised entirely of light. It's unclear whether or not the Ancestors were aware of her existence after or even before the King rose to power. The Elders themselves are likely privy to this information, but somehow I doubt that it's something anyone wanting to assert control over their people would encourage.

There's certainly the possibility that these Worshippers were a religious sect dedicated to the Elders themselves- but since I'm here trying to propose that they're worshipping something tangential to the possible actual god, we're going to assume this isn't the case. On that note-

<THE WORSHIPPERS WERE DEVOUT TO LIGHT ITSELF>

I propose that the Ceremonial Worshippers valued the Light above all else- and this worship was extended towards the light creatures themselves.

'Oi. Vir. Crabs are DARK Creatures.'

Not all of them. Heck, a dark crab might not have been the norm back then, but that's a stretch and besides- the fact is that these crabs on the far end of Sanctuary are docile.

Keep in mind that these followers were stationed in Prairie, of all places. You know what else is in Prairie? Sanctuary Isles- home to several kinds of manta, butterflies, jellyfish, and even the elusive Elder Manta (yes that's what the big chonky boi that looks like a light krill is called- it's not a whale.).  Daylight Prairie is in no shortage of light creatures- and at the center of it all is its Elder.

Prairie Elder is implied to have responsibilities toward the light creatures as presented in the SkyShop poem featuring them:

'Fields of harvest, prairies of joy.

Farmer and fauna as one.

The Elder protects the creatures of light,

For darkened days to come.

Fly up, fly away,

For the Children of Light in need.

We shall recall our days of wonder,

And feel its air once more.'

-SkyShop Poem (Prairie Elder Pin)

In the greater context of the story, Daylight Prairie is the primary source of light energy in the form of the light creatures- it makes sense that the Elder of that realm would oversee the flow of light creatures from one realm to the other, and that the Ancestors in their domain would have a greater respect for the creatures than others. They're the ones working with them, and they're the ones that know them best.

Enter the Worshippers- who were likely serving directly under the Prairie Elder. I'm not confident that the Prairie Elder could have shared information about the Megabird- or if they even know the god existed. 'The Light itself' is pretty vague for something to be worshipped, and it's possible that the Prairie Elder instead encouraged people that the Light manifested itself into the various light creatures that we see.

In this world however- industrialization marches on, and eventually these light creatures became things to be harvested rather than worshipped. It's speculated that light creatures were used in the production of diamonds- we see signs of this scattered throughout Forest, and Wasteland by proxy. The mural under the bridge in Forest and the doors to the Temple seem to suggest as much at least. Eventually, this industrialization will grow out of hand. I have a few theories on what the Prairie Elder might have done to passively rebel against this.

<PRAIRIE ELDER AND THE BUTTERFLIES>

We learn in the Prairie Elder's cutscene that they are able to form- not summon- butterflies from fire. I'm not proposing that the Prairie Elder is single-handedly responsible for the existence of butterflies- rather I'm proposing through the Prairie Elder's abilities that light is able to be manipulated in such a way that one can create light creatures, should they know how.

It could just be the butterflies, honestly. And really it could just be the Prairie Elder that's capable of such a feat- and because of these holes in this theory it's the first to go.

And yes this is the reason why the Butterflies don't count. I think. That has holes too and I can make a case for the Butterfly Charmer technically being part of this... But I digress.

<SANCTUARY ISLES>

Sanctuary Islands could be a literal Sanctuary for the light creatures- there is an impressive variety of them present. It's also very out of the way, tucked away in a corner of Bird's Nest. The theory I'm proposing here is that the Prairie Elder and the Sanctuary Guide worked together to keep this place hidden from the rest of the Kingdom- and that it was the Sanctuary Guide that broke the bells that would have granted the Ancestors access to the light creatures.

<THE WORSHIPPERS DISBANDED>

This is... probably improbable, but my whole post was leading up to this so we're doing this. The missing six Worshippers are the Whisperers that we've encountered throughout the game- leaving in order to either develop their relationship with or protect their creatures of choice.

The Bird Whisperer stayed close and remained in Prairie- and is probably the reason why Bird's Nest exists at all. The Jellyfish Whisperer remained as well, opting to stay in Sanctuary- the natural habitat of the jellyfish.

The Whale Whisperer ventured to Forest- where there probably once was a small population of Whales, given the corpse we see in the Bridge Area and the live Whale in the Underground Cavern.

The Manta Whisperer went to Valley- I'm guessing to see how mantas were being used for labor and competitions? And Valley is right next to Wasteland so I might be reaching but they could have been monitoring that too.

The Crab Whisperer is a tricky one because we see them travelling with the Lightseekers, and yes I am proposing that this lady was formerly a Worshipper. But because we're dealing with a creature that we now know is more dark than light, maybe the Crab Whisperer joined the Lightseekers in order to observe that phenomenon more closely? Because she does refer to the crabs as friends in her SkyShop poem. Wasteland wasn't always a... wasteland, after all. Things could have been different, and the crabs could have been adapting in a time where they would be relatively dangerous but not so much that an Ancestor couldn't approach them.

And then there's the Memory Whisperer. For this one, I don't think a spirit manta actually exists- at least, not as an organic creature and moreso just an interactive holograph courtesy of the machinations of Vault. I'm actually not too sure on what this person could have been doing, but they have a call- and my best guess is that the Memory Whisperer is one who listens to the last vestiges of light leftover by a creature- because we do see skeletons in Vault, and one is of a creature that looks like an amalgamation of several spirit mantas.

<WHY DON'T THE KRILL COUNT?>

As far back as Prophecy, Krill don't appear to be aligned with the light. They aren't depicted as former light creatures, nor a corrupted variant of an elder manta or whale- they are presented as thenselves in that Prophecy mural. Though I'm sure we'll get a Krill call later on, I'm not going to count them until then.

<CONCLUSION...?>

This huge post is... full of holes and heavy speculation, I'm aware. Mostly I just wanted to dump a bunch of shower thoughts and leftover lore I came up in the Discord lore chat. Go check it out sometime, I've derived a few points in this from interacting with people there. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this matter, by the way- it's fun theorizing! I haven't done this seriously in a long while.

[little-smartass]

THE VAMPIRE LESTAT COVER ALBUM - the legendary Vampire Lestat is back and bigger and badder than ever, this time bringing a whole album of song covers ranging from classic bangers to newer fresh takes on chart hits! get your copy now, complete with a transcript of the artist's commentary on each song!

(songs I think Lestat would cover and release as an album in an attempt to re-kickstart his career and/or make some sort of dramatic statement to Louis. tracklist and "artist commentary" under the cut)

Survival - Muse

“And I’ll reveal my strength, to the whole human race, yes I am prepared, to stay alive, and I won’t forgive, and vengeance is mine, and I won’t give in, because I choose to thrive! Yeah I’m gonna win!”

Oh, I wish this song had been around back on that opening night at the Cow Palace - how apt that would have been! What a fucking anthem! They would have been rioting all night. I mean, they already were, but, like, because of the music. Not because vampires were being immolated in the middle of the crowd. Different kind of riot.

The Bitch Is Back - Elton John

“I’m a bitch, I’m a bitch, oh the bitch is back, stone cold sober as a matter of fact, I can bitch, I can bitch, ‘cause I’m better than you, it’s the way that I move, the things that I do!”

One day I want to have this play as I walk into Night Island. I’ll time it perfectly so that I throw off my coat - my denim jacket, or- oh, no, a fur! Maximum drama! - just as the chorus starts. Armand will know that I’m coming of course, but I think that’ll just make it even better. And I have good memories to this song... [muffled question] Sorry, gentlemen don’t kiss and tell, bébé. [laughter]

Everybody Loves Me - OneRepublic

"Oh my, feels just like I don’t try, look so good I might die, all I know is everybody loves me, head down, swaying to my own sound, flashes in my face now, all I know is everybody loves me”

Look, do I even need to explain this one? Didn’t think so.

Bad Reputation - Joan Jett

"I don't give a damn ‘bout my reputation, I've never been afraid of any deviation, and I don't really care if you think I'm strange, I ain't gonna change - and I'm never gonna care bout my bad reputation"

This one's fairly self-explanatory again. It could have been my personal anthem when I was mortal quite honestly. And it's an awful lot of fun to jump about and headbang to, don't you think? That's a new thing I've found out about, headbanging. People have been hopping about to music looking like fools for centuries but now there's a name for it. Fantastic.

bad guy - Billie Eilish

"I’m that bad type, make your mama sad time, make your girlfriend mad type, might seduce your dad time… I’m the bad guy. Duh.”

Creepy? Check. Sexy? Check. Tongue-in-cheek? Check check. This song was great and a lot of fun to cover.

Lover to Lover - Florence + the Machine

“I believe there’s no salvation for me now, no space among the clouds, and I feel I’m heading down, but that’s alright, that’s alright, that’s alright”

I don’t know, this one just felt very relevant. Also the piano was great to do. You might have noticed that I’ve picked a lot of songs with piano, and that’s because I bullied the studio into getting me a goooooorgeous grand piano for the recording space and I wanted to use it as much as possible!

Feeling Good - Muse

“Stars when you shine, you know how I feel, scent of the pine, you know how I feel, oh freedom is mine, and I know how I feel”

I just really like this song - I’ve done a cover of an excellent cover! Can- can you put emojis in this? Do people still use emojis? Well imagine I’ve put the shrug one. Wait, isn’t there- Daniel, Daniel, come here, isn’t there a shrug emoji made up of keyboard- [muffled words] yes! The shrug one! Yes, put that in the transcription. [ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ] I just like this song.

The Man - The Killers

“I got gas in the tank, I got money in the bank, I got news for you baby, you're looking at the man, I got skin in the game, I got a household name, I got news for you baby, you're looking at the man”

I feel like this one speaks for itself too. Can you put that shrug emoji thing in here again? [ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ] Yes!

J'ai Pas Envie - MIKA

J'ai pas envie, de faire comme si, comme les maris, qui disent oui, j'ai pas envie, j'ai pas envie, j'ai pas envie d'te faire plaisir, j'ai pas envie, j'ai pas envie, si tu m'aimes viens me le dire"

Look, I'm not going to translate the whole song for you, because it has all this clever wordplay you just totally lose in english… but the gist of it is that these two lovers are… at odds a lot. It's… it's maybe a little spiteful [laughter] but in a fun way! It's a fun song! Louis won't even be mad about it, it's MIKA.

Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy - Queen

"When I'm not with you, think of you always (I miss those long hot summer nights), when I'm not with you, think of me always, always"

[Long pause] God, I miss Freddie.

Let 'Em Talk - Kesha

Ah, full disclosure - I put this song in purely because of the expression Louis made when I played it in the car and it got to the line “can suck my dick” and she did that popping noise… it was incredible, and I just knew I had to cover it so I could see his expression when I said that. I can’t wait to play it to him. [laughter]

So What - P!nk

"So so what, I'm still a rockstar, I got my rock moves, and I don't need you, and guess what? I'm having more fun, and now that we're done, I'm gonna show you tonight, I'm alright, I'm just fine, (and you're a tool, so)"

I'm actually a big fan of nineties and noughties female stars - all that grrrrrrrl power, it's great fun, you know? I'd say this one is fairly self-explanatory, because I am still a rockstar! This is my new album! Fuck you EMP and your sniffy little article calling me "washed up"!

Little Lion Man - Mumford & Sons

"But it was not your fault but mine, and it was your heart on the line, I really fucked it up this time, didn't I my dear?"

This one could be self-deprecating, but it's also very vindictively angry at the same time, and that's a combination I definitely get. Like, oh, it's my fault, isn't it? It's my fucking fault again, what a surprise. Perhaps "learn from your mother or you'll spend your days biting your own neck" is a little on the nose… [muffled words] you've read my books, right? [muffled words] Good, good.

Missy - The Airbourne Toxic Event

"But I swear there's still some good in me, I think if you'd stuck around you'd see, all the botched attempts at integrity I once had"

Oh, I was feeling philosophical when I picked this one. No, philosophical isn't the right word… melancholy? Do people still use that word? "I swear I swear I swear I'll never get sad" is both furiously defiant and yet so self-defeatingly ironic. [Exasperated noise] Enough of that. Next!

Please Don't Leave Me - P!nk

"I don't know if I can yell any louder, how many times have I kicked you out of here, or said something insulting? I can be so mean when I wanna be, I am capable of nearly anything, when my heart is broken… (please, please don't leave me)"

Oh, we’re… we’re getting to this section now. [clearing throat] Well, I have to make up for that sucking dick line, don’t I? Get a bit vulnerable. Oh God, why did I decide to do this bit? [muffled words] [bad chicago accent] But why buy the cow? Because you love him, you really do. [sigh, laughter]

Next To Me - Imagine Dragons

"Oh, I always let you down, shattered on the ground, still I find you there, next to me, and oh, the stupid things I do, I'm far from good it's true, still I find you, next to me"

Why did I- I don’t remember putting so many of these ones in.

Run To You - Pentatonix

"I've been settling scores, I've been fighting so long, but I've lost your war, and our kingdom is gone... how shall I win back your heart which was mine? I have broken bones and tattered clothes, I've run out of time"

[Sigh] [clears throat] Yeah. I think we can move onto the next one.

Love of My Life - Queen

“Love of my life, don't leave me, you've stolen my love, you now desert me, love of my life, can't you see? Bring it back, bring it back, don't take it away from me, because you don't know, what it means to me”

I play this one sometimes on my baby grand when we've had a fight, and it's impossible for him to stay angry. He's a sucker for this sort of… formality in romance. God, I wish I'd realised that earlier. If I'd written him a letter in fancy copperplate script with scented paper and enclosed rose petals politely requesting him to bend me over his desk back in the day, it might not have taken two centuries of mutual blue balls for us to figure our shit out. Ah well, live and learn… as it were. [muffled words] Look, I did a whole bunch of vulnerable songs! Now I get to make sex jokes! [laughter] oh fuck off.

[haechanokeh]

I’m right for you [pt. 3]

[teaser] [ Chapter 1 ] [ Chapter 2 ]

(you can play Die For You by The Weeknd while reading this 😌)

pairing: popular college! mark x average! reader

genre: romance, smut, angst, series.

warning: corruption, oral sex (both receiving and giving), cream pie, rough sex, mention of religion, rough sex, self-esteem, psychology, public sex, sub! reader, sex toys. possessive mark two-faced mark

I think I’m right for you, babe. You know what I’m thinking, see it in your eyes. You hate that you want me, hate it when you cry. It ain’t workin’ ‘cause you’re perfect and I know that you’re worth it I can’t walk away. (Die for you by The Weeknd)

today is you case presentation with mark. you were deeply affected of what happened in the cubicle but mark seemed unbothered because he was greeting you as usual. it wasn’t weird, he always greets everyone but what was really weird was your classmates. they were looking at you and it made you felt conscious, they were not saying anything but sometimes you catch them glancing at you but you brushed it off and focus on your brainstorming with mark.

yes you do dislike mark but you thank god that he's your partner. he never missed a question from your professor during case study on the other hand you're just standing beside him dumbly. you only understand the question AND the answer once mark responded. well, mark a very kind person he was, despite of answering it alone he made sure that you're included in the case saying base in y/n and my research, even lied that some are from my own research but of course not. plus, for some odd reason, your classmates' eyes were literally made you uncomfortable to the point you were having a hard time to breathe or your social anxiety attacking you. however, at the very moment, you want to give mark a tight hug for making your life easy.

the whole presentation ended. you were putting your things back to your back while standing while mark scrolling in his phone because his dad texted him asking if he could buy him some new pen. you gasped when an arm was on your shoulder, and that caught mark's attention but he hid his annoyance. 

"hey, y/n, i heard you like someone ha?" his brows were playfully raising. it was lucas, he gave mark a meaningful glance but mark smiled confusingly.

"what?" you didn't have any idea what he's telling you. 

"i heard someone saw-"

"mark!" mina suddenly appeared calling mark's name a little too loud which made lucas stop from talking. "we're going to a milk tea house, do you want to come with us?"

“y/n, come with us.” lucas pulled you closer to his body. mark was taring at lucas arm around your shoulder. you weren’t aware of mark’s expression because your mind was thinking ways to breakthrough from lucas. 

“no!” mina exclaimed. he caught everyone’s attention, and she became flustered. “i mean, we will only make her feel uncomfortable and lucas please remove your arms to y/n, she doesn’t look comfortable.” she mumbled. lucas did remove his arms from you. 

“milk tea? can we also come with you?” then the people started to surround mark. it became noisy, knowing you who’s allergic to people and noise sneaked out from the circle and left the room.

mark turned his head to look at you but you’re nowhere to be found. he sighed and forced himself to interact with his classmates.

your mother texted you that he will be away for one week because of their excursion. she left you an allowance good for one week including your meals for the whole day and transportation. you already had your dinner outside. right now you were just laying down on your favorite long sofa in your living room, watching NCT 2020 funny moments. suddenly, mark's name popped. mark is your class representative, he has access to class contacts and it wasn't that mark called you because you're always late in the class so for almost past 3 years he's the one you always contact just to inform the class that you're just late. 

wait, did i miss an announcement? you quickly left the class maybe something came up.

"hello, was there an announcement?" you directly asked

"none, just checking you. we haven't had a proper conversation awhile ago unless it's case related." 

you heart melted, he's very kind and sweet... that scares you.

"ah okay." you simply answered. it wasn't because you want to talk to him, well you really don't want to talk to him but it wasn't that he's annoying or anything- it was just you hate phone calls. you hate talking with someone in general unless it's your mom. 

"well, have you eaten yet?" he tried to save the conversation, he wanted to hear your voice longer.

"yes." it was a one-word reply. 

mark was slightly shattered because you don't seem to want to talk to him. he just thought that maybe you were tired.

"okay, goodnight."

"yeah." then you hang up. 

you returned watching youtube until you drifted into your dreamland... no it wasn't your dreamland.

you gasped and sat up as you woke from another perverted dream with mark. your chest was rising aggressively and you look down as you felt the wetness between your thighs. you raked your hands over your hair as you felt frustration and guilt. this was your second time that you dreamt of mark doing erotic things. you looked at the digital clock it was already 2 am. you groaned and stood up, you want to wash your body because the stickiness just made you feel more guilty if it stays there longer.

you entered your room and stripped, walking directly into your bathroom. you opened a warm shower and as the water trickled on your body, hands unconsciously trailing to the south. your dream was so hot, you can't lie about that. it was in the same cubicle but instead of his digits, it was his dick inside you. 

your eyes closed as you rubbed your bead slow while recalling your dream. you squeezed your left breast and imagining it was mark's squeezing it. you want something to fill your womanhood so you inserted your two fingers and thrust it. your lungs felt like being suppressed by pressure, your thrust became furious. 

"oh my- mark fuck." you moaned his name and you have never been so ashamed. it was so wrong but the feeling was so good that you weren't able to stop yourself from moaning. you felt the tension in your thighs. you knelt down and the hand that squeezing your breast was now on your clit rubbing it furiously. 

"mark! fuck right there." you felt the tension in your abdomen and your legs started to shake. your body just gave in, bending down, cheek shoved against the wet tiles while the warm water splashed on your body.

you screamed erotically, eyes rolling and lashes flickering. your legs were shaking as you reached your high.

 mark hasn't slept yet, it's okay for him because there are no classes. he was staring at the ceiling and mind preoccupied by you.

he was trying to understand why do you keep pushing him away even though you clearly wanted him too. mark did remember where you say he's very different from you, and so? what's wrong with it? what he didn't like is the thought of changing just for a single person but...

"shall i?" he chuckled bitterly. he was really close to his insanity. he feared that this affection will grow into something that is uncontrollable- like an obsession.  

he checked the time through his phone. it's 5 in the morning. he decided to jog outside, so, he took a quick shower and wore his tracksuit and running shoes. maybe if tiredness hits him, he will feel sleepy. mark already went to your house and he didn't tell you that his house is just a few blocks away from you, instead of going to his normal route, he changed it, jogging in your house direction.

when he was closed to your street, he was surprised to see you outside. he stood and admire your naturalness from afar. your hair was disheveled, your eyes weren't completely closed yet, and your face was a little puffy but it doesn't take away your beauty. plus, your cute teddy bear pajamas made him smile. he sends his gratitude to god because he created a masterpiece. 

yeah, mark is deeply in love and he thinks there's no way out of this feeling. 

you were actually waiting for your breakfast, your pancakes from mcdonalds and a warm chocolate drink. when the delivery arrived, you paid and gave him a tip for being quick. you were about to go back inside when you heard a VERY familiar voice which was owned by the person who sleep deprived you 

"Y/N!" his voice was loud, it even cracked. 

"what are you doing here?" you asked.

"morning jog, and good morning to you." he replied and greeted at the same time.

"jog.." you paused and gasped. "from your condo to here?!" you exclaimed in disbelief. mark laughed at your reaction. of course it'll shock you because you already been in his condo and if he jogged it from there to here, he was supposed to be passing out right now.

"no, my family house is actually a few blocks away from here."  he said.

WHAT?! this is not good. you thought. the more he gets closer the more he has access to your mind and body. you masked your displeased face and just nodded.

"okay, ahm. i'm heading back now. bye." you pointed at your house door and awkwardly turned your back walking towards your door.

you expected him to do something because he always do that but to your disappointment he didn't. you looked back to check if he was stil there but he was no longer standing there but you saw him jogging away from your direction. you sighed in disappoinment that made you mentally slap yourself for feeling very contradicting .

you ate miserably your affordable and favorite pancake.

mark took a bathe and go down to eat breakfast together with his parents. they prayed before eating. the cooked food by his mom made him question why your ordered delivery food for breakfast.

"how's school?" mark's dad asked him.

"good, still the same." he replied.

"your father will lead a service, you can invite your classmates. oh mina, you can invite her, she's very sweet girl." his mom said but she doesn't have any motive. she knew mark have not interest in romantic relationship as of the moment, her child was so focus in maintaining his grades and scholarship. at least, that's what he though.. if she only knew.

"i'll try." he forced a smile but behind it was growing tiredness. he knew that his classmates doesn't really want to praise but because they were so fond of mark and they just love to hang out. it defeated the purpose of going to church.

after the breakfast, mark's parent left for their work. he washed the dishes and went up stairs and stayed in his room with his music and guitar. it helped to detach his mind from thinking of you, but it was just temporary as he saw you name appeared in his phone. he almost threw his guitar just to answer your call very quick.

"y/n? why?" he sound so excited.

"ahm, mark... well.. perhaps, do you ahm, have notes from yesterdays discussion? i mean in all cases, not just ours?" you were very stuttering because of shyness. your class have long test about the cases but you're notes are everywhere and you can't understand your writings.

"yes." he said. he knew where this is going. he quickly get out from his bed and go straight to his closet, choosing shirt to wear. "do you need it? i can bring it to you."

"no, no. ahm, you do digital notes right? mind if you could send it through gdrive?" you really don't want to bother him... nah lies. you're just preventing things from happening.

mark paused for a moment and was a little hurt, he understood your statement as if you don't want to see him. but mark will not having any of that.

"it was handwritten though." he faked sorry. he hoped you didn't notice what he did there, hoping that you received it as if it was literally handwritten like directly to paper since he sounded apologetic.

"oh... i see. well, ahm, can you drop by in the house?"

mark still not satisfied by just dropping by.

"how about we study together? we can review together."

you translated it like 'the smartest in your class can help you'and that's very tempting. you can't easily study 8 cases and you need him. you used his diuretics notes in lecture, you almost aced it. now, your lab needs him.

"then, pizza is okay for you?" you whisoered from the other end.

mark secretly fist pump and grinned in triumph.

"yes."

you spayed air freshener in your living room and changed your shirt to another shirt? you only have tees just in different colors, you changed your short into black sweatpants. you made sure that your hair was far different from the hair he saw this morning. you already ordered the pizza.

the doorbell rang. your quickly opened the door for him. mark was standing, carrying his ipad and his other hand holding a two milk teas in a cup holder. he's wearing dark blue t-shirt and gray sweatpants. you smiled awkwardly and let him in. you scanned his body, looking for paper or at least a piece of paper but you didn't see any of it. mark was looking down at you, watching you observing him.

"where's your notes?" you curiously asked.

"here." he lifted his ipad. your jaw dropped.

"i thought you did not do digital notes?"

"i don't recalling telling you i didn't, i just said it was handwritten and when i saif that handwritten in my ipad." he reasoned. taht made you think later realizing that he was right and that made you dumb.

you sighed in defeat.

"by the way, bought you milk tea since you missed it yesterday." he said, you acually don't care if you missed it or not.

you walked towards the single couch and patted it.

"you can seat here." you said.

he quickly sat down and put the milk teas on top of your living room's table. he confusingly watched you when you sat on the long couch and it was the end of it. you were too far from him.

you noticed his sulking face.

"mr. mark lee, what's with your long face?" you chuckled teasingly.

"why are you too far from me?" he pouted.

"damage control." you replied shortly and get your case 3 notes which is very illegible to read. "can i borrow your case 3?"

"why? what did i do?" mark asked was clueless. he did not pay attention to your question

"mark, being alone with you is not healthy anymore." you directly answered him.

"orgasm is healthy, what do you mean?" mark didn't get your.

"mark, that's not what i mean. we're like horny teenagers doing unappropriate things."

"we're already passed in that phase in life, we're both adults." he rebutted.

you mentally face palmed yourself in frustration. why is he so smart and dumb at the same time.

"mark, that's not why i mean. we're being to touchy, every time we are left alone the next thing we knew we're touching each other. do you know how scary was that to me? it only happened twice but i am already longing for more! when i don't feel your touches i go craaazy! i even touched myself for freaking 2-" you froze when you realize what you were telling him you stared blankly at him.

on the other hand, mark was very pleased hearing you exploded from frustration as you became honest for the first time.

"you touched yourself? what 2?" he smirked and lifted his brows.

you cleared your throat.

"can i borrow your ipad? i need your case 3." you murmured and look anywhere but him your face heat up. you want to be swallowed by your favorite sofa.

"then get it."

you look at his ipad sitting on his manly wide spread apart thighs. your eyes stared at the mark that makes your knees weak and wet pussy. his fiery eyes looking directly toyou while he was sitting comfortably on the couch and arms are both in each side of the armrest.

"mark lee, i need it." you tried to use your stern voice but failed because your voice was too small.

"i told you, you can get it.. here." he glanced at his ipad.

you gulped and the living room's air became thick. your submissive self switched on and you just found yourself walking towards him. your hands felt cold as you reached for his ipad. when you lifted it, his bulge forming in his gray sweatpants made you almost drool. you were reminded how fucking hot it was.

you want to touch it and do anything you can possibly could but your single rational braincells keeping you in the light.

"you don't seem sure of what you really wanted to do." he snapped you from overthinking. "should i make you choices?"

"what?" you asked confusingly but your voice was shaking.

"you bring that ipad with you and go back to where you were sitting, or..." he looked up to you with his dark eyes, leaning a little forward you trace the side of your hips with his palm..

"put the ipad on the table and sit in my lap."

mark knew that you can never say no at this state. if you could only see how your body shivered and how defeated your face was, he knew you already gave in.

and his was right.

the original draft was deleted because of my stupidity 😭 idk think this is good as the original draft.

hello, some of you asked me if i have a tag list, i will be creating one.

✨if you want to be added in I'm Right For You Tag List, you can DM or Ask me so i can add you ✨

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anyways, i would like to say thank you for supporting this story. i did not expect some of you will like it. i also want to thanks people who leaving message through dms and ask praising this story. also to those nctzens hearting it 🥺🤗

[liibrii]

fem!Miya!reader x Suna Rintarou || mostly platonic || part of the Third Miya series

Synopsis: A glimpse into your friendship with Suna during your 1st year at Inarizaki High school.

Warnings: barely proofread, general stupidity, there's a serial killer joke, reader is a lil shit

wc: 1.6k

a/n: naming chapters is hard 😭 as always feedback is greatly appreciated and if you wanna be tagged in future chapters let me know!

Friendship with Suna is one of those where you can't quite remember how or when it started. One week he was just that lanky guy sitting at a desk to the right of you, the next week you walked home together and you told him your brothers' embarrassing childhood stories in exchange for chemistry homework. In a way it's an echo of all your childhood friendships forged on the beach with other kids you only knew for a week but during that week you'd take over the world for them if they asked. But the one week friendship with Suna became two weeks, three weeks, and after the fourth you stopped counting.

Suna Rintarou is a funny guy. Not funny as in telling jokes or spouting quips and smirks. He's funny in a way that even now you can't really tell who he is. He's quiet. But not shy in the slightest. He moved over from Aichi and you cringe at the memory of saying: “Oh so that's why ya talk funny. I thought yer just pretentious,“ when he told you. Your ears catch on fire by just thinking about it. So embarrassing. But he must have pretty low standards for his friends because at the time he didn't really seem bothered by your slip of the tongue. The next day he offered you a chuupet and that was enough to buy your undying loyalty.

Suna's a funny guy. You don't know how he became your friend, you don't know what he sees in you that makes him put up with you. But you're glad to have an inside man on the volleyball team.

Years of living together with the same person makes one develop the ability of sniffing out trouble before they even start to happen. In this case it's four empty pudding packages in the trash bin that make you decide to nope right out of there before Tsumu tries to blame you for their mysterious disappearance. Again.

You put on music and walk aimlessly through the streets, one of those walks where it doesn't matter if you get lost because you have no clue where you're headed anyway. Everyone needs a stroll like that from time to time. Often they lead to situations that would otherwise probably never happen. Like running into a serial killer, but luck is on your side today so the only person you run into is a familiar lanky figure stretching by the side of the road. “Sunarin! Didn't expect to meet ya here!“

He looks up and his blushed sweaty face wears the same expression as ever. In the last months you've learned Suna has two expressions, the deadpan one, and the deadpan one with furrowed brows. “O, Miya. Well, I live nearby.“ Oh right, you did pass the bus station where he exits just a song ago. “Taking a stroll, are you?“

“Samu and Tsumu are having a screamin' match right now so I decided to get myself out of there before they'd drag me into it.“

“Tragic. Where are you headed?“

Your destination is 'who cares' so you join Suna on a walk. It's good he already ran his evening route because you're not in the mood to reenact a wanna be healthy person's only free time activity.

Just a short walk between the apartment buildings by the side of the road you reach a path of cobble stones that leads further between trees.  

“What? You didn't know there's a park here?“ Suna smirks and you're surprised his face muscles are even capable of stretching so far.

You shake your head, slightly embarrassed. “No, I really didn't. To be fair this neighbourhood used to be ruled by another clan so we never played around here,“ you quickly add as if children clan wars from years ago are a better excuse than simply being unfamiliar with this part of the town.

Suna doesn't comment but the corners of his mouth keep tugging up even after you walk through the park. Or maybe that's because you tripped over nothing while watching a cat cross your path.

“We have a cat back home,“ he tells you and shows you the picture of his little sister with a big fluffy orange cat on her lap.

“So cute,“ you coo, “looks just like ya.“

“Oh yeah, lots of people say she looks just like me. I think I'm more handsome though.“

“No, I meant the cat.“

This time you're the one prepared to jump away form a well aimed kick but Suna only gives you a disappointed glare. “I thought you were the nice Miya.“

You sympathetically pat his shoulder. “Sorry. My sincere condolences. Shall I send some flowers for the funeral of yer last brain cell? Samu always wanted a cat but dad wouldn't let him.“

“Really? Why not?“

“Oh he made the mistake of asking just after the mango incident.“

“The-“

“Only Miyas are allowed to know about it,“ you say, snickering at Suna's furrowed brows. You know curiosity is going to eat at him for weeks to come. Maybe you should come up with a cover story, just in case. “Do ya miss yer friends? Ones from Aichi I mean?“

Suna thinks for a moment, maybe still trying to figure out what a mango incident could possibly be. “Sometimes,“ he says after a while and a poke to his side, “but I met a lot of new people at the dorms. Inarizaki isn't that bad either. There's you and Ginjima, and your brothers sometimes, and ehm,“ he mumbles as he tries to remember whom else he could call a friend.

“If Tsumu or Samu bring this topic up just let them know ya were my friend first,“ you pout. That's the problem with having had siblings in the same class for the entire grade and middle school; all your friends were also their friends. “It can't be easy,“ you say, half trying to make him feel better, and half just changing the topic that's starting to turn his ears red, “movin' over here I mean. Ya really left all ya knew behind for volleyball. That's pretty admirable. Ya just might be as crazy as Samu and Tsumu.“

“Please don't compare me to your brothers,“ says Suna.

“That bad, eh? So what's it like? Livin' in a dorm?“

“Oh. Well. We're four in a room-“

“Yikes. And I thought havin' two other people in your room is a lot.“

Suna laughs. Oh, so he can do that. It suits him, you decide after a moment. “Now take into account that two of those keep leaving dirty socks around.“

“Oh I know what that's like,“ you nod, all too familiar with dirty socks under table, under bed and other parts of bed you'd rather not think about.

“I doubt you'd get in trouble for punching them though.“

“Oh I would.“ You look him over. “Ya don't really look like a punchin' type to me. More a very petty guy. Soy sauce in mornin' tea kind of guy.“

“You're giving me ideas.“

“Thanks, that will be one kit-kat. Or none if ya put some in Samu's water bottle.“

“All in all dorm isn't that bad,“ Suna tells you once you both stop laughing over the prospect of putting soy sauce into Osamu's drink. “Wish I could sleep a bit longer in the morning but what can you do? And I miss mom's cooking. We cook ourselves and the food is good. Usually. It's just not the same, you know? Want a chuupet?“

“Ya brought a chuupet to an evenin' run?“

You still gladly take the fruit stick. It's a rare occasion in which it isn't in danger of being snatched away by one of your co-spawns. You don't comment but the next day a neatly wrapped bento box waits on Suna's table.

Suna doesn't quite remember when you became friends. One day you were a girl from his class that looked suspiciously similar to those loud Twins on the volleyball team (the moment he realised your last name is in fact Miya too he felt incredibly stupid for not noticing sooner), the next day you're hanging with him during breaks and sending him messages along the lines of 'I'll buy you as many chuupets as ya want if ya tell me what happened at practice yesterday, I need to let Tsumu know who's the boss' that usually arrive in the middle of the night. Even if they wake him up your name popping on his screen still makes him smile.

Really it takes impossibly long for Suna to realise he doesn't enjoy being in your presence only because being friends with you is as easy as getting the ball around a block or because you're the one Miya to voluntarily share your food with him.

The moment the cogs finally fell in their place and began to spin, making the little 'there might be something more' thought appear is one he'll remember for the rest of his life, and will quite probably haunt his nightmares too.

That's the thing about emotions (truly the revelations of that day are almost too much for his volleyball focused teenage brain), they take over neurones in charge of sending information around the brain, bribing the ones running toward mouth to run faster than the ones heading towards the comprehension centre, and then you find yourself in awkward situations such as saying your name out loud in the packed locker room followed by: “She's really funny and amazing. I like her a lot.“

But the situation being awkward is the least of Suna's problems as two pairs of almost identical brown eyes stare him down.

Oh, shit.

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