#those two kids did great in that role!! i was impressed | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

archiveofkloss · 6 months ago

Text

In conversation with fellow top model Christy Turlington, Karlie Kloss opens up on how being a muse and a mother unlocked the next great chapters of her life

Those in the world of fashion can recall the moment Karlie Kloss appeared on the scene at fifteen with feline, emerald eyes, and a smize that has made her a muse to many.

A walking phenom since her early days of dominating catwalks, campaigns, and covers, the industry has been trying to keep up with Kloss as she makes leggy strides toward her next goals with intent, grace, and the guidance of her fellow supers in the business. For Kloss, that mentor position was filled by none other than Christy Turlington. “She is such a North star for me,” Kloss explains. “For what it could mean to be a model and also use your platform [to promote] things that make a real impact in the world.”

With Kloss now in her early thirties, her activism work and outspokenness echo that of Turlington. The two have walked uncannily parallel paths: both were discovered in their early teens, made the decision to step away from the modeling world to attend college in their early twenties, and now have two kids. Additionally, both have dedicated much of their efforts to their community-driven organizations like Kloss’ Gateway Coalition, focused on reproductive care, and tech education initiatives, Kode with Klossy, and Turlington’s Every Mother Counts. Most recently, Kloss has ventured into new territory, adding another title to her impressive resume by taking on the role of CEO of Bedford Media, overseeing the soon-to-be-revived publications, i-D and LIFE magazine. It seems nothing can stop the force of nature that is Karlie Kloss.

V MAGAZINE: How did you meet? Do you remember that first interaction?

CHRISTY TURLINGTON: You want to tell it, Karlie?

KARLIE KLOSS: The first time I met Christy Turlington, it was almost like a scene out of a movie because I’ve idolized Christy long before ever meeting her, and all that she stood for in the world and the industry. I remember many years of being on shoots and feeling like I got to know you by the stories other makeup artists or hair stylists [would tell me] about the legend of Christy. No Woman, No Cry[Turlington’s 2010 documentary] came out at that time, and you were running marathons…I was always a super fan. She was shooting in the Donna Karan studio over in the West Village. Donna invited me because she knew how much I admired Christy, and I remember walking into Urban Zen where the shoot was happening. I was standing face-to-face with Christy, and I just started crying. I’ve never had that reaction ever again with anyone in the world, but I was so moved and humbled to meet her, and so I just was bawling.

V: Oh, my God! What was your reaction, Christy?

CT: No, it was so sweet! We’ve talked about it a lot since. I feel like you were 15 or 16, you were at the beginning of your career, and you sort of started at the top, so you were very much everywhere. What I remember very specifically about you and Donna’s interaction is that you reminded me of some of my peers when I was around your age, where we would be so invested in the designers and the people we worked with, that every day after the show, we’d pick up WWD. You talked to Donna in a very sophisticated way, giving her commentary on the collection that you had just worn, which was very sweet. I was touched. Donna, I’ve known since the beginning of her career, she’s also such an incredible woman and leader. And I felt in the middle of these two worlds. It was kind of like the confluence of past, present, and future.

V: Do you remember what year that was?

KK: I think that might be in 2008 or 2009.

CT: Yeah, I think it was before I was in school. I was at Columbia, working on my public health degree, and I feel like it was before Every Mother Counts, which was the beginning of my advocacy. But I had small kids, and [embarking] on a direction of where that step was taking me, so I was in a really important transition time, I would say.

V: I’ve seen many moments where you two were together—at events, in campaigns, and on covers—and I read in the New York Times that Christy actually wrote Karlie’s recommendation letter for college.

KK: Yes, for NYU!

V: How did that even happen?

KK: This was before ChatGPT, so she really had to write it! It was so generous of Christy to do that. Even knowing that Christy Turlington— who continues, over many decades, to have an extraordinary fashion career as an iconic supermodel—also cares about her education was so important for me. When I was in my early twenties, I was really nervous about the decision, because I thought, “If I take any amount of time away from my fashion career, will it all disappear?” and Christy was such an important sounding board to prove that [I should] invest in my own education. I couldn’t have done it—and wouldn’t have done it—without Christy’s example and encouragement.

CT: After we met, within a couple of years we started to get together and meet for lunch, and just talk about things. So, when Karlie mentioned that she was interested in going back to school, of course, I was ecstatic for her. When I decided [to get my degree], I was already making a conscious choice of stepping away and slowing down the career at like 10 years in. Karlie was still very much at the height. I think you were already recognizing that you were not as excited about all the things you’d already experienced. So I was really in support of this choice and also tried to give as much of a reality check of what it would feel like, and try to reassure her that the more that she did work on herself, the more in-demand she would be. The more you continue to evolve and invest in yourself, the more people want to be a part of that and want to get closer to you to learn all the different things that you’re now interested in. I think your curiosity, your earnestness, and your seriousness have always been, I think, what stood out to me. I’ve seen it in every phase since we first met. You just continue to evolve in the most natural, thoughtful, and purposeful way.

KK: Wow! This is like a dream. I’m glad this is being recorded. I think on days when I’m having a bad day, I need to look back at this.

KP: So with the both of you going back to school at the heights of your career, Karlie, did you happen to get any pushback at all from people advising the opposite?

KK: I think we all have that little voice in our head that is our own worst enemy, and as a young woman, I doubted myself in all sorts of ways. I was worried that if I made the choice to go back to school, this fairy tale of a fashion career that had happened quite quickly [would disappear]. I just had to trust my gut and kind of ignore what anyone else says. In modeling and fashion, everything changes from one day to the next, and nothing is promised. I had to take that leap of faith and believe that even if this all went away, I had a great time. I met a lot of great people, including my icon, Christy Turlington. Continuing the relationship we have with ourselves and being confident in knowing our power, our worth, and our potential—you can’t go wrong when you lean into who you are and invest in that. At that moment, that was the right thing for me to do.

V: Now at 31, having all that modeling experience and taking those investments in your education, you’ve gone on to start all these organizations. The same goes for Christy with Every Mother Counts, which Karlie has been involved in quite a bit. You went on a trip to Haiti a few years ago. I’d love to know at what point you had the ideas for those organizations.

KK: It’s so funny, I actually had a YouTube channel at the time [where I recorded the trip], I’m going to go back after this and rewatch those videos.

CT: Yes, I forgot about that!

KK: Remember that? Oh, it’s probably so cringe, but I was such a nerd. I was so passionate and excited about being on this trip [to Haiti], it really was a turning point for me in a lot of ways. Christy was so kind to invite me on this trip with some other extraordinary women who have continued to stay in my life, including Sara Blakely, who is one of the most extraordinary, successful female entrepreneurs in this country, and has built a company that has done so much good in so many ways. I think it was such an important trip for me to physically see the work. [Because] we live in New York, it’s easy to kind of feel disconnected from these topics—you go to a charity event and you write a check. But actually going on this trip and seeing where Every Mother Counts was really changing the lives of women in Haiti in the most profound and important of ways, [especially] in that moment of when you’re most vulnerable: bringing your child into the world. I founded Kode with Klossy a year or two later. [That trip] set me on this path and helped show me what could be possible through my own natural curiosity. So after that trip, I went back to NYU and I started taking coding classes, which made me realize there are so many opportunities in the changing world that we live in, and for young women in particular— imagine the problems they could solve with this ability. It started simply like that with 21 scholarships, and next year is our 10th year.

CT: That’s big, that’s huge!

KK: It’s huge! We’ve had more than 10,000 young women and gender expansive teens in our programs over the past years. We’re going to probably have close to 4,000 scholars in our programs this summer alone. You never know the way that you can impact somebody else’s life. I don’t think Christy even probably knew inviting me on that trip would set me on my own journey in such a profound way, and I hope that our Kode with Klossy scholars have a similar experience of wanting to continue to light that spark for others.

CT: I’m a big fan of Bryan Stevenson [social justice activist], and I love the way he speaks about proximity. For me that’s really the truth. I would say through Kode with Klossy, similarly, you want to be with those kids. You want to be in the room where the lights turn on and everyone has that feeling of connectivity and you’re a part of a community. We’ve crossed paths once again in our parallel pathing and that’s through what Karlie is doing now with Gateway Coalition. I think to have younger moms and people coming from the communities that they’re trying to address continue to keep quality care and service [that considers] the full spectrum of reproductive health and rights, it’s going to be even more helpful. I think that’s one of the parallels that we share is the ability to build a community that will ultimately have a greater impact… I can see the multiplier effect happening between coding and technology and the community you’ve built, and also the commitment you’ve made to do this work at this moment. I’m even more excited to see it from this angle because that’s where we intersect more directly than we have in the last few years.

KK: Thank you, Christy. That means a lot. Even in this country, with the lack of access to basic resources and healthcare, I really continue to learn from Christy in so many ways. After I just had my first [child] and came back home, Christy and Grace [Burns], her oldest, came over and met my little guy, and it was just so crazy. Having the entry into motherhood, and having your first child, no matter the resources you have or where you live in this world, it is a profoundly life changing experience, and you have to have your community and village around you. I feel very lucky that Christy and Grace are now in my village.

V: I love that. You know, we actually recently photographed Grace for our V GIRLSseries.

CT: Yeah, that’s right. She loved that! In LA, right?

KP: Yes, that was it. We first saw Grace on TikTok, and I found out that she recently shot a campaign, too, for Tamara Mellon.

CT: Yeah, she’s doing a lot of shooting, and she’s shooting friends right now in Spain. I sort of marvel at Karlie, and how much she’s able to take on. Seeing her do all the things, it appears effortless, but I know it’s not. Then, with my daughter who’s 21 in October, it’s like really another full circle. She’s in class full time, she’s publishing books of poetry, shooting campaigns, and being shot in campaigns, I’m like, “Of course, you can do that because Karlie is your [role model].” So it’s a very direct correlation in the way that we’re all continuing to inspire and care for and support one another.

KK: Yes, I’m in that phase where my three-year-old at three in the morning last night was all of a sudden in my bed and I didn’t sleep, and I’m like, “Okay, this is my life.”

CT: Aw! And the thing is, it doesn’t end, you know? Everyone had a mother in order to come into the world, and no matter what age or where you are, and what station you are in your life, your mother continues to worry, care, and be there ready for the call, just always there for you. I think that’s the part that’s so relatable, regardless of one’s decision to have a child or not have a child, which is why it’s so important to support that regardless. You see how important that is for the folks who don’t have it, and folks that do, and the difference that creates in terms of an opportunity for success and for people to thrive in their lives.

V: What are some of the ways you both see the results of all of your efforts through the mothers and the women that you’re helping directly?

CT: I get to hear a lot from mothers. We support mostly providers, from community-based folks that are community health workers, doulas or midwives, and also physicians. When I see people who are working at the community level—which is where we mostly are invested—they’re the people at the front lines. They’re the people who are not turning folks away, especially now that things are harder and more precarious, dangerous, and potentially riskier. They’re still there, and they are not going anywhere. Those are the people that give me the most motivation. I feel like our purpose really is to try to uplift them and give them the support and care that they need to continue to meet their communities where they are.

KK: That’s why unrestricted funding matters. Because I’ve also run a nonprofit with Kode with Klossy, and I know when you put that trust in the leader of that community who is providing that care, they’re going to do what they can to allocate these funds in the most high-impact ways. With Kode with Klossy, there are more than 10,000 young people who are now in the world’s workforce, and they’re not just young teenage women with dreams, they’re actually pursuing their passions. It’s really for me what always has been most important: self-realization more so than like a technical skill set. Of our alumni in college, more than 70% of them go on to major or minor in computer science, which is crazy to me. That to me is such an indicator that Kode with Klossy really reaches them in a moment where they’re deciding what doors the world could open for them. Especially now with every industry being impacted and needing to evolve, this basic technical literacy is crucial. To see how that plays out in their lives, and also how they bring that back to the community of Kode with Klossy—they come back and help teach in our camps, and they go on to build apps and projects that are impacting their communities, and solving problems that reach many people that are far beyond even just Kode with Klossy. So it’s pretty awesome.

CT: I was just thinking about Haiti because I hadn’t thought about it in so long–you don’t have any photos from that trip, do you?

KK: I do! I’m gonna find those.

CT: If you do, that would be fun to revisit, because we have so many photos from events and things that aren’t that exciting and we’ve only shot professionally together, really, once.

V: Yup, it was your Cole Haan campaign.

CT: It was a while ago. Then we did Edward [Enninful’s] last cover [for British Vogue]. Otherwise, most of our life has been doing other things. But we’re connected through it and it’s really lovely. I love our story, Karlie.

KK: I love our story. Well, maybe we need to do a V shoot together.

V: Let’s please do it!

CT: Next Mother’s Day!

KK: Exactly!

#karlie kloss #v magazine #v magazine issue v149 #interview #christy turlington

7 notes · View notes

justforbooks · 1 year ago

Text

Michael Caine wears two watches: an analogue for the time and an Apple for everything else. It even knows his pulse, he says, impressed. Right now, it’s telling him his flat is 26C: warm enough for his wife, Shakira, to pour iced coffee into his flask, but not hot enough for those balcony doors to be open: “It’s blowing a bloody gale in here!”

I slide them shut slightly. Is that OK? A bit more. Enough? Bit more. I close them completely. He’s happy now.

Caine lives in Chelsea Harbour: posh 80s condos and Princess Diana’s gym. He likes the security and tolerates the helicopters. His London penthouse has caramel carpets, 360-degree views, two Oscars and 5,000 photos of his grandchildren.

Below us lies Battersea Bridge, tide low, shore glittering. No, he shudders, he’s never mudlarked. Why not? After all, his first novel, out in November, is about binmen who find uranium down at the dump. “Well,” he says darkly, “other people do things and it goes all right. I do them and bad things happen.”

He looks at me. We’re waiting for his co-star, John Standing, who is stuck in traffic. Caine is a big man with whom to make small talk. It’s not just that your brain short-circuits each time he speaks (Michael Caine?!?!), it’s that at 90, he’s still 6ft 2in, undiminished and simply intimidating.

In 1987, he gave an acting masterclass in which he revealed the secret to being forceful on screen was a) don’t blink and b) mascara. It works face-to-face, too. The first one, anyway.

During the Blitz, says Caine, he watched the city get flattened from his dormer in Camberwell; from here, he’s seen it rise up again. He loves new-build and soft furnishings with the passion of a man raised in an attic with no hot water, one outdoor loo and rickets. Every time a bomb fell, the mattresses doiiinged. “Me and my brother would laugh all through the bleedin’ air raids!”

An update: Standing will be here shortly. I praise the pot-plants and Caine mourns his garden. He was evacuated to Berkshire, where he was fed a tin of pilchards a day and locked in a cupboard for the weekends, and then to rural Norfolk, where he discovered a love of horticulture – later energetically indulged at his own places in Oxfordshire and Surrey.

Less so in Hollywood. He sold up there after someone told him that if he wanted to grow daffodils he’d need to put the bulbs in the fridge for a fortnight. “That was it! Final straw!” But did he do it? “Oh yeah. It worked.”

In comes Standing, 89 but nimble as a debutante, all polish and apologies. They settle down, discuss the weather and a window is discreetly opened. Caine goggles at my iPad, which he mistakes for a phone: “Blimey, that’s a big one!”

The Great Escaper is brilliant, I say. Caine is surprised I’ve seen it, let alone enjoyed it. Didn’t he? “Yeah. But I’ve had films where I liked it but other people didn’t agree with me.”

No wonder it tempted them from retirement: meaty roles dry up as you approach 100. Caine plays Bernard Jordan, a real-life Royal Navy veteran who made headlines in 2014 when he travelled alone from his care home in Hove, East Sussex, to Normandy for the 70th D-day anniversary. The film – flintier than you might think, and very moving – fictionalises a friendship with Arthur, a former RAF pilot (Standing) he meets on the ferry.

Both actors did national service in Berlin after the war; Caine was then drafted to Korea – “a bugger”, he says (his memoir suggests this is understatement). “When we got there they said: the Chinese have just sent a million troops. What? But they were just young kids and old men to take all our ammunition. You shoot at them and then the real fighters come. And that was the Chinese in a nutshell.”

In the film, the pair make a pilgrimage to the war cemetery at Bayeux in Normandy. “What a waste,” cries Bernard as the camera zooms out to show the rows and rows of headstones. Caine doesn’t agree. “You had to have full cemeteries because you’d had to fight the German army, which was not a load of idiots. And the Germans had to be stopped.”

And Korea? Well, communism is “perfectly frightful”, says Standing. Caine nods. “It doesn’t take care of the working class quite the way they say. My father was a fishmonger in Billingsgate, so I knew when I saw the communists, they had no idea what it was all about. Do any working-class people want to live in North Korea?”

They both think national service should be reintroduced. “It gives you a whole new realisation of life,” says Caine. “I notice how different young people are today. They’re so free with everything. Military training makes you think about helping other people. My grandsons – all they do is play football.” (Still, he adds later, they’re also “incredible, unbelievable, and they worry about other people – which is handy”.)

Standing chips in: one of his daughters is “a bit woke” and cautions him about getting cancelled. “It’s horrible! We’re not allowed to say anything. I loathe it. My God, you’re not allowed to have mother-in-law jokes! It’s sort of barking.”

Then again, “things were far less complicated” 70 years ago. He smiles benignly. “Your telephone alone is the most complex thing anybody’s ever dreamed of. You’ve got all the information you ever want. You can chat to Henry VIII. Have you seen the man made of wood and iron playing the most immaculate game of ping-pong and thrashing the ordinary Briton at the other end?”

I haven’t. Caine confesses some concern over robots – that’s partly what his novel, a thriller, is about. “But I’m 90. I don’t worry about the future. I worry if I’m gonna make it to lunch.”

Caine and Standing first met on another hot day, in the summer of 1976, shooting another war movie, The Eagle Has Landed. Caine played a Nazi eager to assassinate Churchill; Standing a rather flaky vicar. Memories of the shoot seem thin on the ground, but they agree moviemaking hasn’t changed much.

“I make my own world,” says Caine. “And if they employ me, they gotta leave me to do it my way. Otherwise I screw it up. And even if I do it my way, I screw it up as well.”

They both chuckle. “Michael, darling!” says Standing.

Have they changed?

Standing sighs. “We’re just so bloody old.”

“And we’re still here,” says Caine.

“Which is incredible! All my mates are brown bread.”

“Oh, mine and all. Sean Connery, Roger Moore. Everybody’s dead. It’s amazing.”

How does that feel?

“Lonely,” says Caine. “I had dinner last night here with eight women. Shakira gets ’em. I don’t get ’em. They’re the wives of my friends. I’m often sitting with a table full of widows.”

Standing empathises. “Hundreds of women round one all the time. And you sit there thinking: give us a break! Ask me something, anything you like!”

Caine nods. “Ask me a question about football! But I’m perfectly happy with all the girls. I love them.”

Again: consult his memoir for more details, but this is putting it mildly. Caine spent the 50s, 60s and early 70s hoovering up hotties across the continents, pausing only for relationships with Natalie Wood and Nancy Sinatra and to refuel on vodka with Terence Stamp and Peter O’Toole.

So when he says he was tired of bachelor life by 1972, you can believe it – he must have been exhausted. He had a night in, saw a Maxwell House ad on telly and resolved to fly to Brazil the next morning to marry the woman with the maracas. No need, said a pal: she was Indian, not Brazilian, and lived on the Fulham Road in west London.

This is one of Caine’s regular chatshow yarns and he duly does it for us today: “I tracked her down! Incredible!” Caine is a bit of an anecdote jukebox – tales triggered by the briefest mention of Cary or Larry or Frank – but with material like his, it’s hard to object. Though charming, he also dominates conversation in general – about which Standing is a gent. Does he miss the 60s? “I don’t miss it, but I love having done it. I used to get into trouble all over the place.”

He and Shakira have been married more than 50 years. Ageing is less awful, he advises, “if you’re married to someone really beautiful who doesn’t grow old. I wake up every morning and there she is!” It’s true: Shakira, 76, does seem preternaturally patient and gorgeous. “What is great about her is that she’s very bright. She was the secretary in the … I forget which country she comes from [Shakira was born in British Guiana, now Guyana], but she was the secretary of the American embassy, so she’s a great secretary for me. She runs everything. It’s unbelievable.”

At the heart of The Great Escaper is another enduring marriage, between Bernie and Irene, played by Glenda Jackson in her final film. She and Caine first worked together 48 years ago. “She was very young and pretty,” he says. “Very attractive. Bloody good actress. But a left-wing socialist and I’m all for making money because I come from a very poor background.” They never talked politics – bit busy making the movies. He saw her five days before she died in June: “She seemed fine.” He’s relieved it was quick.

Bernie and Irene are a devoted couple who, though the film doesn’t discuss it, didn’t have children. Might that have changed their dynamic? “Oh, tremendously,” says Caine. “You don’t have any other separate thing to talk about. You talk about each other. And you don’t have to judge how people feel about someone else. Only you.”

It’s a sharp insight, particularly given that he’s personally “always had children around me like wildfire”. His eldest daughter, Dominique, was born when he was 23, during a brief marriage to the actor Patricia Haines; he and Shakira have another daughter, Natasha. Picking up his eldest grandson from the school is, Shakira tells me later, the highlight of his week. “I love kids,” he says, a bit wistfully.

Standing murmurs agreement. He’s also been married for yonks. The secret, he says, is “laughing with each other”.

Caine is less on-message: “Don’t argue. Don’t try to prove it with arguments or a row. Let ’em do it.”

“Women are No 1 anyway,” says Standing.

“It’s the only place you can get babies,” nods Caine.

“But I gotta say this, Michael: have you seen what women do now?” says Standing. A dramatic pause. He’s a West End veteran, light comedies a specialty. “Cage fighting!” He turns to me. “What possessed your sex to do something like that? For men to cage fight is unthinkable. For women – boom, boom, boom, on each other’s faces! Deranged! But that’s modern life.”

Has Caine seen that? “Oh yeah,” he says blithely. “On television.” And? “I was stunned.” Why? “I wouldn’t do that to anyone. Even if I didn’t like them. I’d just knock ’em out and walk away.”

The real theme of The Great Escaper is – perhaps not one for the poster – that the only escape from old age is death. Yet Caine and Standing continue to produce work that will live on after they’re gone. Caine wrote his first novel bedridden during lockdown, and is now writing a second. Standing is a professional painter. They have six children between them. Are any of these enterprises better or worse as stabs at immortality? There’s only really one, says Caine: “Kindness.” And maybe Alfie. And The Muppet Christmas Carol.

“Michael, darling,” says Standing, “I said to someone the other day: ‘Have you heard of Peter O’Toole?’ She said: ‘Well, I know the name.’ Once you are dead, you are dead. You think of Bogart! But young people only know Goose. What’s he called? Gosling. Big names in the theatre – Gielgud – mean nothing.”

That craft and that class is history, they reckon. When I ask Caine who today’s version of him is, he agrees there isn’t one.

“Because you don’t get young people now who are that far back in society. That had to come forward in great leaps. I think my type of person is extinct. I can’t think of anybody who had a life like mine.”

It wasn’t just the poverty, he says, it was Korea and then, six months later, malaria (he nearly died). “And so it never stopped, you know? Until it did.”

And yet it sort of hasn’t. Caine remains an icon of a time and an energy that feel increasingly exotic. He still calls himself working class and frets over any potential betrayal of his roots. The fate of his brother, Stanley, troubles him. “He just stood there and watched me become a millionaire when he didn’t even have a job. I turned him into someone who couldn’t move. I should have gone and moved him.”

Once, Caine was shopping for a sofa and Stanley – who’d been awol for a while – appeared as part of the team lugging it in from the back. “I grabbed him. I said, ‘You are outta here.’ Oh, it was terrible. I didn’t know where he was.

“He became an alcoholic. So I bought him two houses: one to live in and one to rent so he could have some money to buy some booze.” Caine’s eyes are rheumy. “He’s three years younger than me. And he’s been dead for five years.”

There was an older brother, too, David, born with severe epilepsy and confined to an institution. Caine only found out about him after their mother’s death – though she had visited David secretly each week. Caine then made him as comfortable as possible. His mother spent her final years living in one of the houses he’d bought her with a carer and her two young sons, “who loved my mum like a grandma. I was very happy with that. I did everything for everybody. So that’s it. I’m sitting here, I’ve done it. I can’t do any more.”

The Great Escaper has been widely described as Caine’s final film, just as Harry Brown was in 2009, and then – 24 films later – Best Sellers in 2021. It’s not. He’s shooting another in January: “It’s about someone who is so famous I’d never heard of him. Charles, Charles …”

“ … Darwin,” says Standing.

“Yeah. I play Charles Darwin. And that’ll be it. I won’t do another one after.”

He’s sure?

“No! But the point is, can you do it? Can you remember all the lines? I’ve got used to not working and staying in bed till 11am and staying out late at night. I love it.”

In The Great Escaper, Jackson has a line about life being fun when you’re young, but once you hit her age, “you’re basically buggered”. Present company queers that pitch. “Oh blimey,” says Caine. “I have a great time.” Standing nods. His one concession to old age has been to give up tap-dancing – though you suspect he might oblige in an emergency.

Neither man can think of a single instance in which they’ve been ill-treated because of their age.

“Nobody patronises me,” says Caine.

“We don’t look like we need help,” says Standing.

In Caine’s case, that’s not entirely true. His skin is smooth, his cheeks full – “I’m very lucky the whole face has not collapsed” – and The Great Escaper showcases them with loads of fantastic closeups. Yet he does use a walker and wheelchair. Never had qualms about being seen with them, he says. “Nope. It’s my life and I do what I want.”

“I think you are bloody brave,” says Standing. “Michael, man-to-man, it was an admirable thing to say: ‘Bollocks, I will do the film’, in spite of all those things.’”

I think he’s right. For someone with an image as familiar – and cultivated – as Caine’s, to visibly concede frailty feels courageous. It’s a shame, I say, that “mobility issues” were given as the reason the Queen didn’t attend various events near the end – as if being seen in a wheelchair was inconceivable.

Caine opts not to criticise the Queen. Instead he cues up the story of the first time they met, at a dinner, when she asked him to tell her a joke. He couldn’t think of a clean one. “She pointed to the man on her other side and said: ‘I’m gonna talk to him now. In five minutes I’ll be back and I want a joke.’”

I don’t know what I’d imagined Michael Caine’s Queen impression to sound like, but it’s definitely a lot more mobster. That was quite frightening, I tell him, once he’s finished the joke (long, about a chicken). Does he see any similarities between them?

“I think everyone sees a similarity between themselves and the Queen.”

Even Standing, an actual baronet, demurs at that one. But the fact Caine believes it adds weight to the idea they do share something – the ability, perhaps, to unsettle others through their presence alone. The Great Escaper taps that, too. Bernie prompts in people – Arthur included – profound reckonings, without really trying. Can Caine relate?

“I don’t know,” he says. “A bit, probably, yes. But it could be quite unpleasant. I don’t do things that are unpleasant.”

But you feel you have that power?

“Yeah, oh yeah.”

And what’s that like?

He grins. “Great.”

Our time is up. Caine checks his watch. “28C,” he says, “and that’s with the bloody windows open.”

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

#just for books #michael caine #john standing

14 notes · View notes

shwoo · 1 year ago

Text

Nearly forgot about the new Fionna and Cake episodes, (Destiny and the Winter King) and had to go to bed immediately after watching it, but now I have thoughts! About those two episodes specifically. Very overthinky thoughts in places.

I got tired and took all day writing this, so it might decrease in coherency as it goes on.

-It's nice to see Simon having motivation again. Even if that motivation is to... basically die.

-Simon is such a nerd, with his excitement about the library and his Ship of Theseus joke! I love him. Why did he not actually go into the library, though? :(

-I wrote a fanfic once when a Farmworld character comments on a normal Adventure Time style character's lack of nose, and the character covers it self-consciously! It was... weirdly validating to see the show make the same joke?

-Farmworld Jake is still alive... Did main world Jake not die of old age? I'm sure a normal dog wouldn't have a longer natural lifespan than a magical talking dog who is also half stretchy alien.

-Farmworld Finn's named kids have the same names as Finn's pillow kids in Puhoy! That was a cool callback, even though pillow Bonnie's name made more sense. Did Finn not name her after Princess Bubblegum in the pillow world, or did he also know a Bonnie in Farmworld?

-I thought Jay was a girl for most of the episode, until someone referred to him with masculine pronouns. I like living in this world where I could think that despite his thing for Little Destiny being obvious from the beginning. (I like that gay relationships are more commonly and casually depicted in fiction than they used to be)

-I like Farmworld Finn. He's a good person who's doing his best. I hope he didn't die in the end. It seemed a little ambiguous.

-Simon, you of all people should know not to talk positively about the crown to someone who was cursed by it. Unless he didn't realise Finn ever wore the crown?

-After Simon assumed that Jay's dad was another version of him, I was hoping he'd find out what did happen to him in this universe, but I guess the corpse was a little bit close to the giant nuclear bomb thingy.

-Cake apparently reads AO3, or at least something adjacent enough to know what enemies to lovers is, which is impressive for someone who was a normal housecat like a day ago.

-The next episode has a Gumlee subplot for some reason? Okay! And Gary's not wrong that Fionna flaked out on him. She could've at least tried to explain where she was once Winter King fixed her phone, but she didn't.

-Also I love that Ellis P was randomly at Fionna's apartment too. They only just met.

-I wonder how much of the differences between the Winter King and Simon are intrinsic to this world's Simon, and how much are a result of him using the crown. He's definitely still influenced by the crown, but I'm not sure what his line about Betty is implying. Did he start feeling that way because of this universe's point of divergence, or did the point of divergence happen because he never liked her as much as the main Simon did? He reacted so calmly about her that I don't think he was lying.

-Interesting contrast with Simon being fine in the snow while Fionna and Cake are clearly freezing. That's some superhuman cold tolerance Simon has.

-"How'd you stop being Ice King" "I just tried REALLY HARD and now everything's great!" "Oh, okay,"

-Was it winter in the Fionna and Cake world in the first episode? The world is obviously affected by Simon's mental state in some way, and now it's snowing over there.

-I'm not sure what to think about ice Marceline, but wasn't she older than that when she turned the family axe into some kind of lute? I don't know if this world's Marceline is supposed to be dead or not, but Winter King seems to have depicted her at that age for a reason.

-I thought it was a role reversal world when the Candy Queen showed up, but all her Ice King-like traits were just foreshadowing! Disturbing, disturbing foreshadowing. I thought it was interesting that she did the same leg kick thing while playing the piano that the Winter King did. Or maybe that was a just a callback.

-Simon seemed to legitimately like her song. He's so sweet when he's not marinating in self-hatred.

-No wonder the Candy Queen feels such a sense of kinship with the Winter King that she wants to mash them up in a blender. He's giving her all his negative traits so he doesn't have to deal with them.

-The Lemoncarbs were never going to like Gary's proposal. They're Lemongrabs and he's a Princess Bubblegum, and there's been multiple episodes about how incompatible their interests are.

-Fionna did that weird demagickifying Prismo thing like Cake did with one of the hot dog people in the second episode. Does that only happen when they're feeling happy and accepted, or was the timing coincidence? Also, I think it might have something to do with why Prismo's not supposed to create things, since it uses the same effect as his powers. Their world is probably inherently unstable regardless of whose head it's in, or something dramatic like that.

-I'm glad Fionna's rethinking her self-centred worldview. Maybe she can also realise that her own world isn't as boring as she thinks, because I'm pretty sure that's also a metaphor for Simon's self-hatred. Though would it still be a metaphor if she's not currently in his head?

-So we've had a revisit of Farmworld, where FInn was negatively affected by the crown's curse, and a world where Princess Bubblegum is negatively affected by the crown's curse. Is Marceline up next? She was at least as important a secondary character on the original show as PB was. And more important personally to Simon.

#Adventure Time #Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake #Simon Petrikov #Fionna the Human #Cake the Cat #I talked about other characters but I don't think I should tag them all

30 notes · View notes

thebuckblogimo · 4 months ago

Text

A natural born mother who still has what it takes.

September 24, 2024

When I met Debbie, a young nurse from Cleveland, the person who would become my wife, I recall sitting near the ocean with her one night under a starry sky, talking into the wee hours about the things we deeply believed. I also recall one of my strongest impressions of her at the time: This woman is destined to be a great mother.

As things turned out I was absolutely right.

We wound up having four children together. And when the kids were toddlers, and despite working midnight shifts at Detroit's Henry Ford Hospital, she was always there for them. Hugging them. Coaxing them. Encouraging them. Loving them. Sometimes all at the same time as they sprawled out atop our bed.

Often she did those things while feeling thoroughly exhausted due to the demands of her job.

Now, over four decades later, our oldest son is 40, battling depression and sometimes, when he gets into a funk, she'll listen to him for hours as he unloads what he needs to unpack over the phone. She is always there for him--listening, counseling, comforting, loving--while never seeming to tire.

She's a natural born mom that way.

Over the recent Labor Day weekend, one of our daughters gave birth to her second child, a healthy girl. So we camped out at the home of the young family for about three weeks, helping them as best we could. It was my job to shop for groceries, play chef and walk the young family's rambunctious German Shepherd. Debbie's primary responsibility was to care for the young parents' two-year-old while they attended to the needs of their new baby and our daughter healed from her C-section.

During our stay I was able to take breaks from my duties. Ocassionally I'd get up early to go to a greasy spoon for breakfast. Or watch a little TV. Or read the newspaper on my laptop on the back porch. But Debbie was at it practically all day. Every time I glanced over at her she would be in the living room or dining room, comforting the two-year-old in her arms, or maneuvering stuffed animals with her on the floor, or stroking the back of her head before putting her down for a nap.

Albeit in her 70s, being a mom seems like riding a bike for my wife.

I'd like to think that I did my part as a young father back in the day: changing diapers, watching the Little Rascals with the kids on morning TV, or getting them out of the house and buckling them into the car seats of our van so Deb could get some sleep after working all night at the hospital.

As the years went by and they got older, I was usually the one our kids went to for advice about getting shit done in college, or persuing their careers, or how to navigate office politics.

Today, when they're hurting, whether physically, mentally or emotionally, Debbie is the one they usually go to. And now, with our having three grandchildren, two in Detroit and one in Chicago (where there's another on the way), she plays a starring role as "grandma."

But, really, she's a mom, a care giver at heart. It's what she was born to do. I was certain of that from the start.

2 notes · View notes

yanderes-galore · 2 years ago

Note

Well, time for my autistic hyperfixation skills to shine! Here's your cheat-sheet for what Halo EU media to skip to for the good parts (aka aliens):

Since you've already read The Cole Protocol, Envoy is a rlly good skipping point. Besides the greatness that is Rojka 'Kasaan, and it having a pretty notable Jiralhanae villain, it's also written by the same author and follows up on the Gray Team storyline introduced in the former book.

Hunters in the Dark also makes the top of my list for fleshing out the Halo 3 co-op characters N'tho 'Sraom and Usze 'Taham and giving us nice cross-species positive interactions. Also can't forget Broken Circle, as it's all Sangheili and San'Shyuum in the story, no humans for once. It's split between two timelines: the era of the Covenant's founding and the time of Halo 2.

The Ferrets series of books (Last Light, Retribution, and Divine Wind so far) features the reoccurring antagonistic faction the Keepers of the One Truth lead by the Jiralhanae named Castor. The Master Chief series also features Fleetmaster Nizat 'Kvarosee in the first two books (Silent Storm and Oblivion) and the Keepers in Shadows of Reach; haven't read them yet but I heard good things about Nizat so far and he seems to be one of the more unique in the lore, being kinda older than most Sangheili we've seen so far. Also can't forget the Halo CE novelization, The Flood, which featured the first portrayal of Covenant perspectives in canon I believe (and therefore some of the lore and characterization there is a bit off in comparison to the rest of the books, but it's fine). Zuka 'Zamamee and Yayap are a real treat in that one, even if the tone of their sections are a bit sillier than most (from my impression so far, haven't finished the book yet actually).

And I kind of have to include the Kilo-Five trilogy, although with the fair warning that they're a bit divisive amongst the fandom. You're either gonna like them or despise them. I think a majority people, regardless of how they feel about the trilogy as a whole, did find the alien sections fine though. If I had to re-read them again I'd probably skip to just those chapters. Jul 'Mdama is a prominent character in the first two books (Glasslands and The Thursday War), with his wife Raia 'Mdama having more of a spotlight in the second, but then the whole 'Mdama plotline wraps up and gets replaced by Kig-Yar Chol 'Von in Mortal Dictata (although she's a good character on her own and it's unfortunate her story never got picked up by other authors after the trilogy ended). Other notable aliens in the trilogy include Forze 'Mdama, Avu Med 'Telcam, Sav Fel, and probably the most concentration of named Huragoks in a Halo storyline ever. Thel also makes some appearances here too.

Speaking of the 'Mdamas tho; I haven't gotten to it yet but Legacy of Onyx does feature Jul and Raia's sons as major players post-Halo 5, plus I believe there is a Sangheili teacher character and maybe some rare alien kid characters. Ohhhh and I can't believe I almost forgot, but upcoming book Outcasts is gonna feature Thel as a main character again! Been waiting for it but it got delayed, we should finally be getting it in August tho. You may want to read the Master Chief books first tho since it looks like some lore introduced there will be featured here too, especially since it's the same author Troy Dennings.

Finally to round out the recs are the anthologies. I'd go for Fractures before Evolutions, as the former has Shadow of Intent with Rtas, Tul 'Juran, Vul 'Soran, Stolt, and Tem'Bhetek and Oasis with Jat (who existed for maybe a dozen pages but has captured my heart for years). Latter still has Henry (human nickname, we never learned his real name because of language barrier) in The Mona Lisa, some named Jiralhanae in Stomping on the Heels of a Fuss (which I forgot about so idk if it's because it's been years or if they did not have much of a role), and an unnamed Sangheili shipmaster who's the focus of The Return. The Return & The Mona Lisa also got "animated" adaptations in the form of voice-acted motion comics you can find on YouTube.

Those are all books but maybe I might as well throw in the comics. Obviously there's the Rise of Atriox miniseries. Also not as well known but there was a small prequel comic for the first Halo Wars which features Ripa 'Moramee's origin story; I got the physical copy as part of my game copy, idk if there's a way to access it digitally. The Halo Graphic Novel includes the famous Halo story The Last Voyage of the Infinite Succor feat Rtas 'Vadum and Thel in his Fleetmaster era. Haven't read it but Blood Lines has two Sangheili brothers as major antagonists. Tales From Slipspace has Atriox in Hunting Party and Avu Med 'Telcam in Knight Takes Bishop. Finally one of the more well known comics, Escalation has a few points of interest (note I haven't read all of 'em yet and going off Halopedia for this): Thel in Issues 1-3 + Jiralhanae Lydus, Jul 'Mdama and Sali 'Nyon in the Janus Key arc (Issues 13-16) and Absolute Record arc (Issues 19-24), and Ayit 'Sevi in Absolute Record arc.

And what the heck. let's get obscure: The Halo Wars Official Strategy Guide published by Prima Publishing includes some flash fiction featuring Ripa 'Moramee and The Prophet of Regret, because sometimes crumbs is all ya get. Halo: Legends - aka the official Halo anime - also has The Duel which shows an ancient Arbiter and why the title is considered dishonorable in modern Halo times.

Oh and... I guess there's the Forerunner trilogy, for like, Forerunners... tbh tho they're basically bootleggish humans to me, I rank them the lowest out of all the Halo aliens and don't really consider them most of the time when hyper-focusing on Halo aliens.

Gonna read this later

#panther ideas for later

14 notes · View notes

atamascolily · 1 year ago

Text

princess tutu re-watch, episode 18

oh hey, it's the forest from the opening credits!

and we open with Fakir having a real KNIGHTmare, so to speak

Fakir: My subconscious can go shove it.

meanwhile, Ahiru, Pike, and Lilie are all excited about Fakir's return to school but for wildly different reasons

they are interrupted by a group of avant-garde theater kids practicing mime, one of whom (who identifies as "Shrimp") instantly pegs Ahiru as "duck".

[I am impressed by how long those two girls can hold her up in mid-air, that's quite a feat of strength]

They want Mytho to dance in one of their performance, but Ahiru correctly believes this to be a bad idea and so volunteers Fakir instead

this is Fakir's CALLING, by the way, I've been saying this for a while now, but is he grateful for the opportunity? Of course not.

Neko-sensei is unexpectedly helpful, calling into question whether there is truly such a thing as "impure" love, name-dropped Odile (the Black Swan, aka the inspiration for Rue) as an example

Fakir: This script hits a little too close to home. A ghost knight? And what happened to the ending? There's a pattern emerging and I don't like it… So, uh, where did it come from?

Drama Club: No idea! We just found it one day and figured we'd put on a show! And the fact that there's an actual ghost knight running around means more publicity! What can possibly go wrong?

Fakir touches original copy and has instant war flashbacks.

Fakir: Okay, I'll do it… but I sure hope this doesn't awaken anything in me!

Drosselmeyer: Hey, Ahiru, what about those heart shards? You had ONE job…

oh THAT's why Mytho was so dismissive about Rue's chances of capturing a heart… because the Raven's whole schtick is built on the premise that no one will ever love her but the two of them (and you can only capture someone's heart if they love you enough to surrender it willingly).

cut to a stellar sequence of Fakir practicing his role for the play, A++ use of animation budget

Drama Club: This is great! It's like he was BORN to play this role or something!

Fakir finishes his routine and is disappointed to discover Ahiru ran out halfway through to run errands, lololol

The Drama Club asks him to join them permanently and Fakir should totally say yes, but instead he's having PTSD and walks out and everybody chalks it up to him being a broody Byronic hero-type.

Mytho: I love your hair, Rue. It's just like feathers, which are objectively best, and like crows, which are better.

Rue: you need to work on your pick-up lines, dear.

The two of them decide to enlist the ghost knight to fuck with Fakir.

Fakir (walking through fog just like his dream): I HAVE A BAD FEELING ABOUT THIS. To the stables! *horse neighing*

Ahiru: Wait, how did I end up in this creepy forest?

Fakir: HI-YO SILVER, AWAYYYYYY!

Turns out the Headless Horseman ghost knight has a heart shard, and Fakir's plan is to fight to the death and have Tutu deal with the aftermath. Ahiru is less than thrilled with this and jumps into the battle instead, forcing Fakir to tackle her to safety.

Tutu wins by her signature finishing move: a hug.

The ghost vanishes, Mytho gets his sense of Pride back, and Tutu collapses, and returns to duck form, leaving Fakir to cradle her in his arms and cry.

meanwhile, a hooded figure steals the original copy of the script out of the storage cupboard in the drama club room and walks off

Drosselmeyer: Oh shit this is bad, and I don't have anyone I can bully into fixing this! If only my puppets didn't sacrifice themselves… It's so hard to get good help these days… nobody wants to work anymore... blah blah blah...

the episode ends before the performance, so we don't get to see what happens there, but I still think Fakir should join the drama club. It would be so good for him!!!

#princess tutu #lily liveblogs

5 notes · View notes

anotherplaceintheuniverse · 2 years ago

Text

and you wish you could live in between (part two to “i wish”)

broadway actress gina and future portwell

thank you for reading!

Gina sighed as she walked in the large theater when a familiar face met her at the door. “Gina?”

“Carlos? What are you doing here?”

“I’m choreographing this show. You?”

“I’m here for a chemistry read!”

“You’re the Giana they were talking about? I shouldn’t be telling you this but they’re really looking forward to it. Let me show you around.”

Carlos let an assistant director know Gina was there and showed her around backstage. As they walked by the lighting booth he asked, “So how have you been? I saw on Insta you and EJ got hitched!”

“Yeah, and we have a kid now. He’s in Kindergarten.”

“Is he going into the family business?”

“He loves to dance just like his mama.” Gina smiled widely. Gina loved that her son was a dancer just like her. “He’s been taking lessons since he could walk.”

“That’s awesome. Do you guys live nearby?”

“No, we moved out to LA right before Benji was born. Finally got EJ away from the Caswells.”

“Is he still acting?”

“No, he’s working at his dad’s company. He manages their LA branch. He’s doing well and he’s so great with Benji.”

“Seb has been talking about kids but I’m still not sure.”

“Well, if you’re ever in California, I’m always looking for a sitter.”

“Hopefully, the family will move with you to New York and we can take you out to dinner.”

“Oh I couldn’t do that to them.”

“How will you do the show then?”

Gina laughed awkwardly “Well, let’s not count our chickens before they hatch.”

———————————————————————————————————

Gina pressed her phone to her ear as her cab driver took off towards her hotel. “Hey, Eej.”

“Hey! How was the callback?”

“It was great! The theater was beautiful-you would have loved it. Guess who’s choreographing the show?”

“Please don’t say Ms. Jen.”

“No!” Gina laughed loudly. “Carlos! We talked for a while. He and Seb are still going strong up here.”

“Small world!” EJ’s voice cut out slightly. “Hold on, I’m pulling into the pickup line…Benji!” EJ’s loud voice filled Gina’s ears. She heard a door open and close. “B, Mama’s on the phone.”

“Mama! Did you get it?”

“I don’t know yet, Bud.”

“But you did your best, right?”

“Yep, that’s all I can do. How was school?”

“Great! Emily invited me to her birthday party!”

“That’s great! I’ll text Kourtney when I get to my hotel and ask for details.”

“Mama, I’m gonna do a report on a planet-“

“Oh my gosh. I’m getting another call. It’s my agent. I’ll call you back, okay? Love you guys!”

“Love yo-“ The phone cut out before EJ could finish his sentence. EJ looked at Benji through the rear view mirror. “Pretty exciting for Mama, huh?”

“Yeah,” Benji sighed.

“What was the report you were talking about?”

“It’s nothing.” Benji sighed and looked out the window.

———————————————————————————————————

“Sarah! Hi!”

“Gina! I hope I’m not interrupting anything?”

“Not at all.”

“Well, I have some good news. They’re offering you the role of Cinderella in Into the Woods! They were so impressed with your audition and it didn’t hurt that your friend was the choreographer. Congratulations!”

“Oh my gosh! Thank you so much! Obviously, I need to call my husband and-“

“Oh, I bet, dear. Rehearsals start in a month so hopefully that will give you enough time to relocate.”

“Relocate…”

“We can negotiate a shorter run but typically those making their debuts prefer a longer run. At least a year.”

“Right. Well, thank you, Sarah. I need to discuss logistics with EJ-“

“How is Elton? And Benny?”

“Benji is great. They both are. Thank you, Sarah.”

“One more thing. Looks like this show will be more of a reunion. I just heard Elton’s cousin, Ashley-“

“Ashlyn? Is she involved?”

“She was also cast! Congratulations to both of you!”

———————————————————————————————————

Gina raced to Ashlyn’s apartment as soon as she managed to get off the phone with Sarah-which didn’t prove to be an easy task. Ashlyn opened the door with a startled look. “Gina?”

“Ash! I just got off the phone with my agent. When were you going to tell me you also auditioned for Into the Woods?”

“Come in come in!” Ashlyn hugged Gina. “Wait, I didn’t even know you were here! New York is my turf!”

“Yeah, the second I got back from my reading, my agent called. She set this all up but I didn’t think it would actually happen! And Carlos choreographing? It’s like an East High reunion!”

Ashlyn led Gina to the kitchen. As Gina spoke excitedly about her audition, Ashlyn grabbed two wine glasses from the cabinet. She quickly poured two glasses and handed one to Gina.

“I’m sure EJ is excited to see everyone again! I’m sure glad I’ll actually get to see Benji!””

“Yeah, you’re the only one who knows right now. I need to call him but…”

“But?”

“I don’t know. He already moved to LA for me. I don’t know if he’ll be able to leave.”

“I’m sure he and Uncle Cash will work something out. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity, G! You can’t just walk away.”

“I know. I just…I need to call him…I’m happy, Ash. Really. Just nervous about how it’s all going to work.”

“Well, our guest room is always available if that’s helpful.” Ashlyn put her hand on Gina’s shoulder gently. “Go call him and then we’ll have a movie night. I’ll tell Red to bring some food home when he closes.”

“You’re the best. You know that, right?”

#hsmtmts #hsmtmts fic #portwell #portwell fic #gina porter #ej caswell #carlos rodriguez #ashlyn caswell #gina x ej

7 notes · View notes

semper-legens · 2 years ago

Text

65. Gleanings, by Neal Shusterman

Owned: No, library Page count: 426 My summary: The world is run by the Thunderhead, and kept in line by gleanings from Scythes. We’ve seen Scythe Anastasia and Scythe Lucifer’s stories. But what about the other stories we haven’t seen? The past, present, and future of this world - art contests, communities denying the existence of Scythes, a dog’s revenge, tragedy in space. This world is so much bigger than ever before. My rating: 4/5 My commentary:

I didn't know this book existed! It's a further novel in the Arc of a Scythe series; I say novel, it's a collection of short stories set across the timeline of the Arc of a Scythe canon. There's at least one story that takes place just as the Scythedom began, and at least one that takes place after the events of the series. I wasn't entirely sure what I was getting into when I started reading this one (see the fact that I didn't know it existed), but hot damn do I love Neal Shusterman's work, and this certainly did not disappoint.

Standard disclaimer: not talking about all the stories, just the ones that jumped out at me for whatever reason. And the first of those is The Mortal Canvas, featuring an early Scythe coming to an school and challenging four pupils to a contest - create the best art, and gain a year of immunity from gleaning. I'm of two minds about this one. I really liked the view of the early days of this world, where the younger generation have been born into immortality but the older ones still remember fearing death. I just wasn't too sure about the actual art contest element. See, one of the worldbuilding points in Arc of a Scythe is that humanity is just a tiny bit creatively sterile, everything being safe and standardised. This is encapsulated in the students, Wyatt being unable to create art without relying on formula and program, and Morty wanting to create something original. Morty ends up submitting an incredibly provocative oil painting of the Scythe that shocks the onlookers into silence. His is obviously the best art, though Wyatt wins the contest, but I'm not too sure about the messaging going on here. Much is made of the idea that a fear of death and mortality is an impetus for great art, but it smacks of the whole 'if you get help for mental health issues you won't be able to Create' mindset so common in reality. Then again, the issue is less of individual response than collective artistic stagnation - it's not that Wyatt is himself bad for not being able to create, more society's fault for prizing cookie-cutter copies of great art rather than something more creative and challenging. Hmm. I think I just did a 180 in my opinion on this one.

Another of the stories featured a young man who has emigrated to Mars and wants to return to Earth, study, and really make a name for himself there in a way that he can't do in a backwater like Mars. He applies for and, through an act of desperate murder, gains the role of a valet to a visiting Scythe. Who charges him with a 'great act' that will shock Mars out of complacency. See, Mars is out of the jurisdiction of the Scythes, not having a large enough population to necessitate gleaning of the populace. This leads to some complacency - without gleaning, the people quite literally cannot die outside of major accident. So he causes that accident. Blows up a damn nuclear reactor, and ends up impressing the Scythe so much that he gains an apprenticeship. And he wants to choose the name Goddard. I gotta admit, I was lukewarm on this story, but the twist at the end punched me straight in the chest. Knowing the backstory of Goddard was interesting enough; reading this story with full knowledge of where this kid is going to end up is delicious. Seriously, baby Goddard, you threw your friend to his death to get the valet role over him? What an absolute scumbag.

I'm gonna use my last paragraph here to be a little more general. One thing I always praise about Shusterman's work is that his worldbuilding is ridiculously expansive; he just commits to the bit, putting extra detail in, even if that detail is weird or kind of silly. Like retelling the Masque of the Red Death, for example. And this is a good way to see the parts of the Arc of a Scythe world that have been backgrounded to this point! Like what happened to Citra's brother, or the Dream shared by the people of one region, or what it's like to be an Unsavory, or getting a conclusion on the rockets sent into space at the end of the series. It's a way of broadening the scope of the series that doesn't bog down any of the novels' narratives, and it was greatly appreciated. If you read and enjoyed Arc of a Scythe, this is a worthy followup and welcome addition!

Next, more Junji Ito, and a man barely human.

#Gleanings #Neal Shusterman #bookblr #book blog #book blogger #4

6 notes · View notes

kylesvariouslistsandstuff · 5 months ago

Text

CORALINE's 15th anniversary re-issue is continuing to do pretty great, as more showtimes are being added by popular demand. Other territories are getting this, too. The re-issue looks to make over $30m in North America by the time it wraps up its run. For context, on its original run, it made $75m domestically. That's fantastic.

And I feel that this re-issue did so well and not so much the SHREK 2 and LION KING ones because... Everybody and their brother I think has seen both of those movies in cinemas. SHREK 2, released back in 2004, used to be the long-time record-holder for highest grossing animated movie both domestically *and* worldwide. Worldwide it was dethroned in 2010 by TOY STORY 3, and domestically in 2016 by FINDING DORY. LION KING was a long-time record-holder, too. Released in 1994, made $768m-ish back then, and was surpassed by FINDING NEMO domestically and worldwide in 2003.

LION KING was re-issued a number of times, too, adding to its overall gross. There was the 2002 "Special Edition" IMAX-only re-release, and then a 3D re-release in 2011. The 3D re-release took in a whopping $91m domestically and $186m worldwide. Now add in this year's brief re-issue, it currently sits a little under a billion worldwide in gross money. Adjusted, it's like lightyears above and away.

SHREK 2 never saw a theatrical re-issue, at least in the states, except for the most recent one. Again, I think it making less than $5m this year boils down to "so many people already saw it in theaters". Its performance was probably similar to that of a Fathom Events re-issue of a classic movie.

CORALINE, by contrast, did alright in early 2009. $75m here, $124m everywhere, against a $60m budget. Probably not a great total, but LAIKA is owned by a nepo baby, so they got to keep making features. Every movie since then technically kinda lost money, but again, they get to keep making these movies... So this re-issue was a chance for people who missed it to see it in theaters, along with people who saw it on DVD as kids. I think the horror elements really work in its favor, too. With SHREK 2 and LION KING, it's kinda like "oh, those are back in theaters, huh?" With CORALINE? At my cinema job, I noticed lots of groups, teens, etc. Those who likely - again - saw it on DVD as kids and were terrified, haha. That was like gateway kid-friendly horror.

Not even Henry Selick's other beloved movie, THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS, could do that kinda business last fall. That's been theatrically re-issued a gazillion times, too. That movie by no means flopped or anything back in 1993, it did decently, better than most animated movies not made by Disney Animation back then. It was a good few clicks above, say, FERNGULLY at the time. I would argue, having lived it, that NIGHTMARE really inched into the mainstream in the early-to-mid 2000s. After the DVD was released. It practically became synonymous with Hot Topic if INVADER ZIM already wasn't, the characters and world appeared in KINGDOM HEARTS, more parks stuff came about. With how ubiquitous it is now, you'd think it was the size of ALADDIN and THE LION KING on first release back in '93, but no. That's one that grew over time, too.

And to have two pictures like to your name, that's pretty solid I'd say. Not even the stop-motion films Tim Burton actually directed, and not a picture that he had a large role in like NIGHTMARE, had that kind of longevity I'd argue. CORPSE BRIDE has its fans, and FRANKENWEENIE's a hidden gem, but I don't see them having the same status as NIGHTMARE and CORALINE. Those two are something else.

Makes me wonder what'll happen if they do a re-release of PARANORMAN, or another LAIKA picture. If it'd do impressively well in the re-issue.

CORALINE's lifetime gross is $161m+ worldwide, as of now.

1 note · View note

eveningbluemoon · 1 year ago

Note

💭 + childhood + jujutsu politics

Oh I've been itching for this one !! ☺️☺️☺️

(Note: I may have gone overboard.)

Childhood

Kusakabe was born into a non-sorcerer family

The lack of CT also meant it took a little longer for him to be brought to attention to anyone, so he was pretty much a gloomy kid who saw curses and his parents were likely very "oh our kid is so creative^^".

He often skipped school too because of this. Bro was not having it.

Kusakabe liked after class kendo practice and he was the best there, mostly because he was instincitively using ce reinforcement and accidentally embuing ce to his shinai. Unfair advantage from the get go.

At some point, I think he got checked into a hospital for unrelated reasons and a nurse realized he ticked off enough of the "sorcerer checklist" and went to do standard protocol like "hey, so this is what you are, you have higher ce levels, these are curses, etc etc" at around 14 and informed jujutsu society of Kusakabe's existence

Honestly? The lack of CT wasn't very interesting and they considered Kusakabe just kinda... not worth putting into jujutsu high. He was living a pretty normal life now and his prospects of survival in an actual fight were low.

Until he started exorcising curses himself with his shinai from kendo. He did NOT realize he could fight back and man, was it CATHARTIC.

Beat the shit outta the one in his house. At school. Low-level curses but lil Kusakabe was having a blast.

Yeah, jujutsu society were not impressed still, they were CONCERNED. This guy could get himself killed or kill others 😭😭😭 humbled Kusakabe real quick when he realized just how far he could get without CT or a special domain, but you learn from that.

Aside from that, he cares a great deal about his sister. She was there majority of the times he didn't want to get out of bed because the "weird creature no one else can see" was staring him down.

She even made excuses up for their parents.

The two just couldn't be close as they wanted to because of the sheer difference in their worlds. She couldn't see curses, after all.

He would say he had a normal-ish childhood compared to most sorcerers.

Jujutsu Politics

Considering he was the least likely to reach Grade 1 status in his class, and of all sorcerers around that time, I'd say he struggled trying to both prove himself to jujutsu society and accepting he didn't want any of it.

Kusakabe did believe that sorcerers were born to protect non sorcerers, becoming jaded overtime as he watched the bodies of his classmates pile up.

He still believes in it, mildly. He just doesn't want to do it anymore. And he wants to teach his students they shouldn't feel obligated to do so.

He believes it's in the higher ups best interest to make students believe that they should offer up their life for their cause.

Kusakabe also believes the higher ups are fucked in the head but opposing them is not his role, not when he has his sister to look after. Someone else will deal with it.

There is a bit of guilt that comes with looking away from what they're doing, especially the execution orders on students. But he trusts those that can do something ( Gojo ) will ensure it doesn't happen, even if he won't admit it.

Kusakabe will keep accepting missions to exorcise even if he despises that the foundation of jujutsu sorcery is built on the corpses of those that have passed. And man, a lot of those corpses aren't even half his age.

Classes were small to begin with given the rare nature of sorcerers. How is it that there are only few left by graduation?

Kusakabe doesn't like thinking of it anymore. He's alive and he can deal with the guilt, exactly because he's alive. He has a paycheck, he can use it to forget a little.

He doesn't consider sorcerers as heroes at all. He believes he'll die in this field of work before he gets a chance to retire.

If he keeps thinking about that, he'd lose it.

He doesn't want his sister to lose the last of her family and maybe that's all he really needs to think about anymore.

There's times he wishes he could have just passed for a non-sorcerer all those years ago and avoided all this mess.

#eve;drabbles #whew #i got a little carried away #ty for the question!!

1 note · View note

achaotichuman · 1 year ago

Text

Nesta did not bear the responsibility of being the parent and should not have been expected to act like one. Feyre did not have that responsibility either, but the idea that it is immediately the eldest sister's fault and responsibly to be another parent to younger children is a dangerous line of thinking. Nesta was already dealing with her own trauma and having her childhood taken by her mother. She was fourteen when her mother had her seduce adult men, she was child when she was beaten by her grandmother and mother. She should not have had to turn into the parent after they fell into poverty.

Rhys did not help Feyre by assaulting her. He drugged her and forced her to give him dances until she vomited. That in of itself was absolutely disgusting and he said he did it to get on Tamlin's nerves.

Tamlin had been sexually harassed by Amarantha since he was a child. She kept going after him and he kept saying no. She cursed him as a final show that no one but her could love him. It was emotional abuse. Imagine being told for fifty years that straight that no one but a pedophiliac rapist could love you. On top of it he was having to send his sentries, his friends, out to die in vain. He took refugees in from other Courts. He extended kindness to all that asked on top of being emotionally manipulated into believing Amarantha when she said 'No one but me could ever love someone like you'. By the time Acotar began he believed her.

Lucien was following orders in a traumatic situation. Not to mention the letter Feyre sent is not proof that she was safe, considering the Spring Court was fully under the impression that she was illiterate. It would have simply looked like Rhys trying to coverup him not waning to 'return her'.

Rhys treats Elain like an infant. She is never held accountable for anything, nor is she really allowed her own spotlight. Even Nesta wants her to stay in her box rather than help them out. This is evident with what happened with that scrying. It was the obvious the Inner Circle was simply using Elain as a means to end to force Nesta to scry for them.

And really not sure what your point is with Feyre being able to take care of a household equals being able to rule a Court. Those are two very, very different things. Being kind and compassionate also does not equal being able to rule a Court. And having immense magical abilities also does not equal being able to rule a Court. You have to have great political knowledge of how your Court runs. How it has been run, what you are capable of achieving. You have to have immense knowledge of how to other Courts run. Feyre doesn't really go anywhere besides Velaris. When she goes to the Court of Nightmares, she has no respect there. No one sees her as a powerful figure, they see her as the High lord's plaything. They're only scared of Rhys, that's the only reason none of them talk shit about her. Relying wholly on your mate so a third of your Court listens to you is not sustainable is you are a ruler. She rarely goes to Illyria and most of them probably don't even know she exists. And whatever knowledge she has is whatever the Inner Circle decides to tell her. She does not have the knowledge to be High Lady. She certainly has the knowledge to be lady of Night. But that wouldn't be 'progressive' now would it?

Overall, I think almost everyone here needs their inner child healed. Feyre and Nesta especially. Feyre, as I have stated previously, should not have been thrown into the masculine role instead of Nesta, it is canonical their father did not make much of an effort, he should've have done more, they should've helped each other, but this is a dysfunctional family being showcased here. Feyre was not given the opportunity to take back what she lost. She was never really a normal kid with a stable household. She should've been given the chance to explore the world and herself before being tied down permanently in the Night Court by being made High lady and having a child. Whilst those are fine, and I do believe with the correct training and LOT MORE EXPERINCE she will be a fine ruler. She needs to get out and explore what the world has to offer her, not just what Rhys has to offer her. Nesta also needs to chance to heal her own inner child. Being locked in the house of wind and forced to work for free is unfortunately not healing. She also deserves the chance to explore what her life could have been like if it hadn't been ripped away. She deserves the chance to see a world outside of Velaris, because Velaris honey is not the whole world.

I think Tamlin's trauma needs to be addressed and unpacked. His entire childhood was stolen by Amarantha and his father and brother's intense physical and emotional abuse which was stated to have been worse than that of Beron's. And, on a side note, I think Azriel deserves the chance to work through his trauma because it has so clearly been ignored.

Anyway, I don't believe I've misread anything; however, these people are fictional, these are just my opinions, you are fully allowed to have yours. None of this was meant to be malicious or rude, I'm sorry if it comes across that way.

And as a final note that everyone in this fandom can agree on. Amarantha was a monster, and Ianthe was a bitch who had it coming.

There are many things I do not know, but here are the things I know for certain.

Nesta shouldn't have been expected to be the parent when the Archeron's fell into poverty. She was a child; she deserved a childhood too. Which had already been stolen from her by her mother.

Rhysand paraded Feyre around Under the Mountain, not for her protection, but because he wanted to control someone else the same way Amarantha was controlling him.

Tamlin did not sit on his ass for fifty years. The curse may have been a different type of abuse to Rhysand's, but it was still abuse. It was Amarantha telling him no one could ever love him besides her as he watched his friends die in vain.

Lucien was always the better friend. No explanation should be needed here.

Elain is a grown woman and should be treated like one. Elain is not 'Elain', Elain is an adult, who made choices like the rest of them.

Feyre shouldn't be High lady. If she wanted to be even close to being worthy of a responsibility like that, she would need more experience and knowledge than Morrigan, Azriel and Cassian combined, which she absolutely does not have.

Amarantha was a monster.

They all deserve a chance to heal their inner child. But in the situations they're in right now, they'll never get that chance.

#acotar #pro nesta archeron #feyre archeron #pro tamlin #pro lucien vanserra #elain archeron #lucien vanserra #tamlin #rhysand

388 notes · View notes

cinnamonest · 4 years ago

Text

Yandere Profile - Link (Legend of Zelda)

ABSOLUTELY YES. MY BOY. LOVE OF MY LIFE.

As some of you may know, today is the release date of Skyward Sword HD for Switch!! So I decided to release this one now in honor of that :3

NOTES:

I went towards the idea of a Princess!reader because that just opens the gate for sooooo much potential. I'm leaning heavily towards the ZeLink interactions in BoTW and Skyward Sword just because those games have the most interaction between the two.

Also! This is great bc it gives me the opportunity to explore an idea I've actually had a long time! I've always thought about how many opportunities there have been across the games for Link and Zelda to be kinda like "haha well seeya later" and just... bolt, run away from everything, abandon their roles and responsibilities and all that. Like, if OoT kid Link got her before Ganon did and ran, if SS Link just decided to get her on the bird and bolt before everything went down, if botw Link was just like haha what if we ran away from everything together... jk... unless...?

And final note, Link is a great pick for the very traditional yandere -- sweet and : ) but can snap into darker personas. I really liked writing this bc I tend to have more self centered yans and less of the "worships the ground you walk on" type of yans like I think Link would be, so it's a nice change.

As usual now the nsfw section is divided by a ---- line.

TWs: fem reader, heavily implied Zelda!reader, stalking, murder, very brief mentions of gore/dismemberment of rivals, manipulation, very brief suicide mention, themes of reincarnation (I’ve been told this can be triggering to some people so just in case)

TWs (nsfw section): noncon, somnophilia

--------------------------------

Severity Scale

Intelligence/Perceptiveness: 4 Brutality: 8.5 Physical capability: 8 Mental/emotional instability: 7 Restrictiveness: 6 Sexual sadism: 5 Stubbornness: 8

What are they generally like? Lucid, aware? Obsessive? How do they behave?

The primary trait of Link that any darling -- any person, really -- would notice is that he is, well, quiet. He has always been a man of few words, and really, he often doesn't know exactly what to say. On his own, at a first glance, he really does seem like a gentle, humble spirit, someone who blends into the background pretty well, who isn't particularly prideful or reckless or aggressive.

Which is why, to be honest, he might sort of evade the gaze of most people -- he doesn't stand out. You remember him as the boy that smiled at you now and then, it's a soft, gentle sort of smile, one that you feel conveys nothing but the utmost innocence and contentment with the world. You know he's pretty good at fighting, but doesn't get into fights needlessly, he's accomplished and respected, but has never been the guy everyone is talking about -- he's in the background, against the wall. Never speaking, always looking out, sometimes at the sky, sometimes carefully watching people. Sometimes you see him, gaze blank and tranquil, and wonder what he's thinking about. Whether he's the village boy in the time of Twilight, the trained and honored warrior that slept for many years, the boy that came down from the sky -- you can't help but feel at ease around him, safe, you can't help but find him endearing and pleasant.

Yet, you always seem to notice him. Other people... forget he exists, sometimes, he's so quiet. You never do, for whatever reason.

When he needs to get something across, he prefers to express himself through actions, not words. If you lived in Skyloft, or Ordon village, you might find problems mysteriously solved, work suddenly done that you don't remember doing. That fencepost outside your home that broke has been replaced overnight. A village child went missing and he comes back a few hours later with them in tow. Always humble, never demanding or expecting thanks, he tells you in his quiet voice that he's happy to help you.

And should you ever ask him for anything, he'll drop whatever he's doing to help. Anything for you, he says with a smile, which makes you feel a bit guilty when, honestly, you're not even sure you're remembering his name right.

And yet, sometimes, you feel so at ease around him it seems unnatural. He seems so easy to trust. You feel like you've known him forever. And sometimes you feel... for just a split second, less at ease. You find yourself randomly stiffening at his calm, sweet voice. You find yourself looking around when you're alone, as if you feel someone is there, and for some reason, his face flashes through your mind. Sometimes when he looks at you, you feel sort of cold. It's almost like invoking a memory you don't have, like some kind of learned instinct you can't recall a reason for. But those moments are fleeting, they come and go before you can even process them, replaced by warmth and comfort.

If you do spend time with him, if you find yourself gazing out your window when he's training, the next thing you notice besides him being quiet and sweet is that he's strong. It's almost ironic, how all the other knights or village boys are so aggressive and rowdy all the time, many of them taller or bulkier, and yet, none of them could ever dream of defeating Link. Not one can match his agility, speed, prowess. Such a pleasant, calm person, with so much skill, strength, and power, but that power is so rarely seen exerted. People marvel at his talent, they say it's as if he has the experience of lifetimes and lifetimes of battle in his blood.

And it's why you feel at ease when he's assigned the task of guarding you. His capabilities are unmatched, and yet you'd never fear any harm to you from him. Both of those traits put together make him the best candidate to protect you.

Of course, you do find yourself doing most of the talking. Sometimes you find yourself rambling to fill the silence, and you fear you're annoying him, but when you stop he raises an eyebrow and asks why you got so quiet. Did he do something wrong? He seems to worry about that a lot -- has he done something bad? Has he made you upset? Are you mad? At first you think he's worried about his position security, but after a while you realize he genuinely worries about it.

And when you do continue your ramblings, you're surprised to find he remembers your words -- every little thing you say. Things you don't even remember telling him. He asks you about that relative you mentioned one time, his eyes light up and he walks a bit to the side because look, it's your favorite flower over there, he'll get it for you. It's impressive, really, how he manages to remember such things. He must take his job very seriously.

He does enjoy giving you such things -- he loves giving you gifts. It's usually things he finds, wholesome little things -- makes a crown out of the flowers you like so much, finds something interesting here or there, while he was off-duty he saw something in the markets he thought you'd like and got it for you. You almost feel guilty, it's so constant that he's giving you things.

Sometimes you ask him about himself, you realize he knows so much about you and you so little about him. He blushes, he rubs the back of his head, he insists there's nothing interesting about him, he wouldn't waste your time like that. It takes time to get him out of his shell, but eventually, he tells you this or that, little stories from his life.

Sometimes you take long walks, you like to get out of the stuffy walls and have fun outside, he accompanies you across Hyrule. Sometimes it feels familiar, you pass places you've never been that give you a feeling of nostalgia, deja vu, a sense that you've been here before.

He’s protectiveness incarnated. Insanely so. He can spring to his feet at a moment's notice and deals with anything that comes for you before they can even get close.

It makes you feel safe, but there's something else there. It's a ferocity that is so contrasting to his normal self, different even from the times you've seen him fight as he trains. It's a glint in the eyes, an aggression in his expression, that almost makes him seem like a different person. And it lingers for a moment, once the creature is dead and his sword hand falls to his side, he turns and glances at you to his side, a hand raised to wipe the blood off his face, and for that lingering second, it's still there, his blank expression and wide eyes -- a ferocity so intense it starts to look like bloodlust, chaos, destruction. And then, it's as if you imagined it. Smiling and telling you it's gone now, you're ok. You're glad he's so truly devoted.

In fact, he's so dedicated to his job that he starts... doing it... outside of his job hours...? Well, today he was given the day off, and you were told to stay inside because you didn't have to go out. He comes knocking on your door, says not to be startled if you hear someone outside your door move or shift or anything, but he just wanted to let you know in case. He'll be right here. Keeping watch. So don't worry. You're safe.

And likewise, he was supposed to have a day off when you were supposed to enter the town. You were assigned two other guards to watch you, since it's a special trip, so you're surprised to find just Link waiting for you. He took care of it, he says, he didn't feel right leaving your safety up to someone else, he doesn't trust them. So they agreed to let him take over for today.

All of this said, he doesn't have to grow alongside you, he doesn't have to be the childhood friend, the knight who guards you. He doesn't even have to have met you. Fate works in odd ways like that. There's a sort of inexplicable instant attachment he takes to you, almost as though it's some kind of destined, divinely inspired sort of thing. He would describe it as saying you feel familiar to him.

He's also, notably, prone to a more traditional trope of what you might call humility whiplash. For the most part, he's got that overly humble, worshipping, "I don't deserve to even stand in your presence" sort of mentality. However, although it's rare and requires a lot of wearing down his mental state, if pushed far enough, he can have brief moments where he snaps into more or less the complete opposite -- entitlement, arrogance, aggression, getting mad at you for the behavior he'd normally take with a smile on his face. Thankfully, unlike some yanderes that have a whole snapping episode towards their darling, his are very very brief, usually only a matter of seconds or a single snarled sentence before he snaps back to normal, wide-eyed and apologetic and telling you I don't know what came over me. It’s... a little frightening to say the least, but you blow it off, tell yourself that hey, everyone has moments like that... Right?

How likely are they to kidnap their darling? How quickly will they do so?

For the most part, he doesn't need it, he can pretty easily cling to your side well enough to be assured of your safety, and he manages to scare off the undesirables not with a glare, but a smile that's just a little too sweet and far too persistent -- it unnerves people. You hear a lot of people say that something about that guy rubs me the wrong way. Or that he gives me goosebumps for some reason. Even the people he scares away themselves can't pinpoint exactly what it is, all they know is that, despite being reputed as kind and quiet (and maybe a little dense), somehow a lot of people agree that something about him puts people at unease, and that's all he needs. Because they stay away from him, and if he’s by your side all the time, that means they stay away from you too. Why keep you trapped when you can just be isolated?

An aware Link is a a unique scenario. One scenario that's rather... interesting to imagine is a Link that defies fate itself, a Link that decides to be selfish in one of those rare snapping moments of his. Perhaps he makes a decision when everything starts going down, when the chaos is beginning, or perhaps he has somehow managed to gain knowledge of the bigger picture at work, the reality of the nature of your existence and his.

Perhaps he begins to think it's unfair. To suffer again and again. To prove himself again and again, and not always even to reap any benefits, to work so hard and yet still -- still -- you slip out of his grasp. He longs for a life with no tribulations, no struggle, no fights to be fought. He begins to feel like it's what he wants the most. He begins to feel like maybe it's what he deserves. So many lifetimes of struggles, if the higher powers won't give him a reward, he'll take it himself.

And perhaps, for all their higher power, not even the great goddesses themselves would have ever predicted it -- humans are ultimately creatures of will. To defy fate and to run away from destiny -- it wouldn't be the first time a human has tried such a thing. Sure, Hyrule may be destroyed. The people may all die. There may be nothing left. But you know what? He's stopped caring. If you're alive and he's alive, tucked away in your little corner of the world where you've found respite, well, that's all he needs. Even if you're on the run from forces that would want to find you, even if the threat of the final third of the triforce owner looms over your head. He'll ignore it, he'll look away.

You'll live a quiet little life together, a happy life without suffering, without quests and enemies, without strife, without worry. That's what he tells you when he steals you away, lifts you out of your bed one night. Says to be quiet, there's danger outside your door, he's rescuing you. You have no reason to not believe him. He waits until things go down, a castle under siege, but rather than taking you to where you're supposed to go, he climbs onto the horse and starts... riding away. It gets further and further into the distance, and you might ask why, what's going on? You have a job to do, he has a battle to be fought. But he says you're going far, far away, someplace you'll be safe.

But what about the divine beasts, the seals, the Twilight, whatever threat runs in this world in this time, what about the threat of Ganon, you ask? He says it doesn't matter anymore. You were doomed to fail, he thinks, it's either stay here and die, or run away. All that matters is you. And he'd like you to feel the same way for him. You will with enough time, don't worry.

He just wants this happy, quiet life with you that he’s been denied time and time again. It’s all he wants. If fate won’t give it to him, he’ll make it happen himself, and carve out the life he is determined to have, defying even the will of higher power.

How difficult is it to escape from them? How do they keep you restrained? How do they deal with attempted escape?

He gets it. Really, he does. "Stop following me!" You yell. Well, he understands why you might feel that way, but this is kinda his job. He thinks you're naive. Not that he would ever, ever have a thought that you're imperfect, of course! It's because you're so perfect and pure that you're... less aware of the dangers all around.

He'll let you think you're free, perhaps. He's more than capable of being quiet, quiet is kind of his thing. Watching you from a short distance is easy. Of course, his horse might make a noise, he can't really help that, or he might misstep on a branch or something. And then you turn around and get all mad again. Now you're even more angry. Well, he can also tell your guardians/father, who will encourage you to accept it. You can't help but feel a little bad -- he's just doing his job.

Now, our aware, runaway Link, well, does he really need to keep you restrained? What would you go back to? Certain death, a land destroyed? Sometimes you mention home, and he's quick to remind you that home doesn't exist anymore. His home is where you are. Can't you feel the same way? You found peace here in this little place -- a village far far away. Travelers, you call yourselves. What's the point in going elsewhere? How would you ever survive without him? He's not very good at being subtle or skillful about the psychological manipulation, it's obvious he's trying to scare you into not leaving, but... it still works, because really, he has a point.

He doesn't want to have to use physical restraint, in any case. And for the most part, it's not needed, because one important aspect of your relation is that his job kinda revolves around you (in some incarnations), or, perhaps you live in the same little village, but either way the thing is that his presence does the job well enough -- he's always there, perhaps more so than almost any other yandere. Even when you think you've managed to get away from him for a moment, somehow his face pops up out of nowhere. How he manages to pull it off is a mystery, you swear he manages to find you so well and predict your movements it's inhuman.

But if you really, really pose a problem, a smarter and sneakier darling that somehow manages to keep slipping out of his grasp and running off (you never get away for more than about 20 minutes or so, but nonetheless), you keep trying to run off when he's sleeping (he wakes up in approximately 25 seconds if your presence is absent from the bed, but that's still enough time to run out the front door), every time he turns his head (which isn't often) you're trying to disappear... well, in that case, he can reach a point of deciding more straightforward measures are necessary. He hates to do it, really, at least when he's not yet at a snapping point. But it's for your own good. And he says so, quite apologetically.

But it's not so bad, it's not like you're being chained to a wall or anything. For one, he got leather ties so you'd be more comfortable, but more importantly, as your guardian, he figured the best thing for you to be tied to would be... himself. Think of it like friendship bracelets! It's just... got a 5-foot chain connecting them. This way you can't sneak off at night, and you won't get too far when he's distracted. It's a safety measure.

How easy are they to trick, deceive, or manipulate?

He's a learner. At first, it's easy. Honestly, he is a rather naive, gullible boy, sometimes he reminds you of a happy dog with his bright eyes. He likes to believe the best of people, give them the benefit of the doubt in all circumstances, and that goes double for you, who he believes can do no wrong.

And even when you do lie to him, it's still not wrong. You didn't do anything bad. Clearly there has simply been a misunderstanding, and you thought you had to lie. Or perhaps you simply forgot a detail or were confusing something with something else. It wasn't malicious on your end, he knows that.

He's actually significantly smarter than he lets on in practical knowledge, though. Those dungeon puzzles pay off, you know? He's got pattern recognition down. So over time he learns how to distinguish when you're lying to him or attempting to deceive him, and sees through it increasingly well.

And yet, he doesn't really... get mad over it, most of the time. Again, he's just capable of deluding himself into believing there's a reason. He believes so strongly in your goodness that he finds a way to interpret everything you do as out of benevolence. So you snuck out the window and didn't tell him you were going for a walk because you just wanted to get away from his suffocating presence for once? You were just thinking of him. You didn't want to burden him and wanted to give him a break. Well, that's thoughtful, but don't worry, he doesn't need a break. He thinks it's precious you're so considerate of him though!

You don't tell him you were talking to that person, and you lie and say no when he asks, because you don't want him to worry, and because you underestimate how dangerous others can be. He's told you a million times and you don't listen, but that's ok, it's because you're just so pure you see the best in everyone. Everything you do is good.

Because he perceives your lies, he will still work against and around it. He won't confront you on your lies, he'll just make sure to deal with the situation -- you lied about sneaking out, well, he'll just keep watch and be ready to meet you outside next time. You lied about talking to a person, well, he'll just have to make sure they stay away from you instead.

If you're trying to trick him, he just plays along until necessary. Smiles and nods. He gets the suspicion you're planning a break-out when he told you he was leaving to go get something from town... rather than saying so, he just decides, you know what? Why don't you come with him? Oh, you're feeling sick, you tell him it's ok, go without you? Well, he can't leave you alone then! Because you're clearly not and just trying to get him to leave... or, as he says, he can't just leave you alone. He'll go another day.

He's fairly manipulable when it comes to praise and affection. You can easily Pavlov him into certain behaviors or patterns with just the slightest words of praise and affection. He's not a very outwardly expressive person, tends to stay quiet, but you can tell how he feels inside when you give the slightest praise, a hug, a kiss on the cheek -- you can see that soft hint of a smile and tell that inside, he's basically melting, even if it's not obvious to most people. And, much like the lying, he’s honestly often aware of it, but he just can’t help it.

How lenient are they? What privileges can you have, and what will you be denied?

He tries to get you the things that he feels will make you happy. Your happiness is incredibly important to him, and he usually thinks about how any action he plans to take might affect you, spends a lot of time debating choices of things to do or say and try to determine how each one will affect you and choose accordingly.

As such, he goes out of his way to support the things you want to do. Have a hobby? He'll find the best materials available. Want a book or a food? He'll obtain it through some means. Even if procuring it involves a side-quest-y set of mundane tasks or scouring the world for 70 of this and 50 of that to exchange it for the item from an obscure specialist, it's all worth it.

The only thing he just doesn't give up on is the constant vigilance and insistence on being by your side more or less every waking second. And every sleeping second. And just every single moment you're alive. It's for your safety.

This is actually one of the things he can get a little nasty about when it comes to how he deals with it, because he quickly has the bright idea that if you don't get it, he'll make you understand. Of course, he can't actually risk you getting hurt, so he stages it. Allows you to sneak off, or at least think you have, and walk right into the path of those monsters he lured, or the people he hired to intimidate you. Of course, it's only natural that he shows up at the last possible second, right on time to save you. You should expect that, after all, it's his responsibility to protect you, of course fate works out perfectly like this. See, he was right, it's so dangerous, and without him you'd be dead. Hopefully you grasp that now.

What kind of rules do they have? What kind of punishment would they use?

His is mostly related to vigilance. Where are you? Who have you been talking to? Who was that person you were talking with just now? What did they say? He's not nosy. He just cares about you. It’s in the job description. You ought to understand just how much certain bad people would love to find you and hurt you. That's why he has to know.

This isn't our modern world, so there's no phones or tracking devices to speak of, just himself, which, well, might as well be a tracking device since he never seems to have difficulty finding you. Sometimes you're not sure how he does it.

He tells you that you don't have to be with him 24/7, but you will be, even if you don't realize it. He's aware enough to know that you'll feel suffocated and get mad if you're aware of his presence all the time, so he gives you your "alone" time, aka, the "follow her quietly from a 20+ foot distance" time. It all feels the same to you. Well, sometimes you feel eyes on you, but you shake the feeling off as paranoia.

So it's not so much that he sets rules and reacts when they're broken, but rather, he works his way around anything you might do so well that he doesn't need you to follow his rules, or really, you take them more as suggestions. But honestly, that's kind of worse. It's enough to drive a darling to the brink of a mental breakdown very quickly. With Link you will inevitably become paranoid, nervous, you feel like you're going insane because he manages to pop up everywhere, he always knows what you did when you did it and you have no idea how it is even conceivably possible for him to know some of the things that he knows. He confronts you very plainly and quietly, often sweetly, asking why you did this or that or telling you it's ok, you don't have to hide anything, surely there’s a good reason, and if not, he forgives you anyway. In a way, it's worse than an angry confrontation. You begin to feel like he's omnipresent, like he can read your mind, and it truly takes a mental toll and affect you worse than any normal yandere's concept of punishment.

This ultimately works out well in his favor. The more you just do what he wants, the less it feels like a violation or intrusion that he knows these things, since he was there with you, it makes sense, and you continuously get bent to his will.

How do they deal with rivals, or perceived rivals? Will they get rid of them? Will they kill them themselves, or find another way?

Ah, and thus we get to that brutality rating.

It would be unthinkable to think that any sort of scum would even dare. Even he isn't worthy of being with you, and someone else thinks they could be? So, he more or less views "rivals" as an offense. When they're threats, well, he's allowed to deal with them. When they're not, well... he has a wonderful reputation. If he says he overheard that person planning usurpation or assassination, that they realized he was listening in and wildly attacked him, everyone will believe him. Even if the death seems a little... non-immediate. And uh... frankly... overkill. How exactly... did those limbs get perfectly severed during equally armed combat? And was it... really necessary... to kinda spill entrails all over like that? He'll apologize, of course, he was just so outraged by the thought of someone hurting you or your family, you know? You notice his eye twitches a bit as he says it.

He has a lot of... bottled up frustrations, which we'll touch on in the nsfw section as well, but it tends to manifest in those two ways: sex and violence. Rather than exerting stress and anger and frustration as it comes, he lets it fester. He tries to maintain being the noble, humble, self-sacrificing person he feels he should be. That is... difficult to do for a long time. People expect a lot from him, even in timelines where he's not necessarily realized as the hero quite yet, he usually has a lot of responsibilities. But then you tack on the whole hero thing? The weight of the world is sometimes, quite literally, on his shoulders. Do you have any idea the kind of stress that comes with that knowledge? It's not pleasant. And it quickly bottles up, a very very fragile bottle set to eventually shatter in a matter of time.

On a longer sort of quest, he just kinda... leaves a trail of destruction in his wake. Enemies don't actually just poof out of existence the way they do on-screen, you know. Anyone coming across an area he's just been through is met with literal piles upon piles of corpses, sometimes monsters, but sometimes people. He takes a very scorched earth sort of policy when it comes to dealing with things.

He's able to easily get close to people, with that sweet face and puppy eyes and lithe body, people don't really feel on guard around him nor intimidated. That makes it significantly easier to infiltrate enemy hideouts, earn favors, and work his way in to be able to commit mass murder more easily. Granted, no one thinks too much of it because they *are* truly enemies, after all, they *did* need to be taken out and well, if the rulers can choose to either send a group of ten soldiers or just one guy and get the job done equally well either way, they'll go with the latter option. No one thinks anything of it, except the occasional person who laughs and says something to the effect of remind me to never get on your bad side, haha! He gives that sheepish, sweet little smile, and jokingly tells them that yeah, better not.

How easy is it to make them mad? What does their anger look like?

For you, nearly impossible. For others, at a hair trigger.

For the most part, he conceals anger well until, as aforementioned, it bottles up and bursts. The truth is he gets irritated virtually all the time by other people. People who talk to you. Look at you. Smile at you. He’s actually rather easily annoyed even when you’re not involved, but again, he’s good at hiding it until it builds.

His rage has a commonality with his calm -- it's quiet. At least, at first. When it's directed at others, his eyes narrow. It's the telltale sign that someone has ignited his rage. It burns on the inside, it starts off as a spark that builds and builds and grows larger and larger until it's a blazing fire that consumes everything in his path. It's a loss of composure, a rare moment of complete loss of self-control. From his own perspective, it feels like he's not in control of his own body, it's all a blur happening in front of him and when it's over he's looking down at his own hands, unable to process his own actions, sometimes unable to remember them.

But it's violent, merciless, unforgiving. It does not yield to begging, it does not leave anything alive unless forced to. You remember the first time you realized how unnatural it was, how shocked you were at how he did something that certainly went against the code he was sworn to follow, the very first time you felt truly afraid of Link. It was a walk in town -- someone called out to you, spitting obscenities about you and your family, your lineage, threw something at you -- he caught it in his hand and crushed it, and quickly, without a word, advanced on the offender. And, to make a long story short, you had to prevent him from beating a man to death in public in broad daylight. He was forgiven by his superiors, but even they seemed shocked. You had to pull him off, and when he jerked his head around to look at whatever was stopping him -- before his face softened as he recognized your own face -- the split second you saw the burn of hatred and fury in eyes that were normally so soft and loving, was nothing short of unsettling, you still recall the chill that ran down your spine.

And honestly? It's terrifying. And the first time, it's shocking. Sure, you knew he could fight. You've seen him fight off monsters, bokoblins and lizalfos and the like. But something is different about seeing the blood of a human being run down his sword, dripping onto the ground, to see the bodies and the blank, numb gaze on his features he always has after it's over. The absolute lack of hesitancy he has to run human enemies through before they even have a chance to explain themselves, how unbothered he seems by the carnage left in his wake. The way he turns back to you, drenched in red and smiles, tells you it's ok, you're safe now. There's no need to look so scared.

And it changes how you view him, in the long run. Less of a guardian angel, more of a guardian dog, one that defends your name when you never asked him to. Pleads to tell him not to fall on deaf ears -- you just don't understand why it has to be this way, he says, you can't comprehend the threat they posed. From the sweet boy that leaves you flowers and repairs and instead leaves a wave of destruction in his path you would not have thought possible.

Directed towards you, though, it's entirely different. He tries his best to have patience with you, no matter what. He smiles, he tries to make excuses as to why you'd say this or do that, why you'd feel a certain way, and he's rather good at deluding himself to give you the benefit of the doubt.

But when it reaches an end, when he can no longer lie to himself, when you push it to a point that you truly make him mad, it's more of a snap. The times he'll lay hands on you in a truly violent way are rare, and as aforementioned, very brief. It's usually not so much of actually a blow, so much as a grab. He just can't get what he's trying to tell you through your thick head, so he stresses it, trying to make you understand as he grabs you by the upper arms, shaking you with each word, and he only stops when he sees the pain and fear in your eyes, drawing his hands back at lightning speed. He saves you from some danger very narrowly, one of the few times he lost track of you for a moment and had to frantically search before coming across you being attacked. What would I have done if something happened to you? Don't you understand that? He's so lost in the relief it takes him a moment to feel you beating on his arms in the embrace, choking and wheezing that you can't breathe, that his grip is so tight it feels like he'll snap you in half. He draws back again, and he apologizes, but it will certainly happen more than once.

So they see you as above them, beneath them, or equal to them?

Above. Like, so, so, so far above. He feels like he doesn't even deserve to look at you. Of course, neither does anyone else, so he's just, you know, stepping up to bear the burden of wrongdoing to keep people even worse than him away from you.

So it's less that you're just above him so much as you're above everyone. He's actually, perhaps surprisingly, a little bit of a pessimist about the world. The world is full of so many terrible people and so many horrible things happen that he's borne witness to. It's a "world cold and hard, (y/n) soft and warm" sort of thing. You're the one good thing, the thing that makes him happy, the ultimate source of comfort he has, and he has to prevent you from being defiled by the evil of the world, keep you innocent and sweet (even if he's just deluding himself to think you are those things in the first place).

This ties into, again, how he interprets every action you take as good and benevolent -- he has the "you can do no wrong" mentality. Even very blatantly malicious things, he'll interpret in a way that makes you somehow still come out a perfect, innocent angel. If you do harm to others, well, they simply deserved it. You did something technically wrong, but you knew no better, or you were desperate. You can't be held responsible for any of it. And if you're mean to him, well, he probably did something to make you upset.

How determined are they for you to love them? How hard will they try to make it happen? Or are they content just having you?

Sort of a duality. Yes, he's very persistent. He thinks about it all the time. Every time you yell and try to run and hurl nasty insults at him, it hurts far more than you realize. He doesn't let it show on his face or in his voice, but it really does, and it gets to him sometimes. He's hyper observant of every little thing you do, your body language, your tone, the way you look at him, and the slightest of differences can change his mood internally, although it tends to look the same outwardly.

He makes little mental notes of it -- today she didn't flinch when I touched her shoulder. Today she didn't frown when she saw me coming. Little things like that will make his entire day. Likewise, the inverse kills him inside. He aims to make every day one of the former days, where the littlest signs of acceptance or even kindness and affection give him a sort of high that makes him feel like he's floating.

He tries his best to do things that he thinks will, well, earn love. Every opportunity to do something for you, he takes it. Everything he sees he'd think you'd like, he buys (or steals, or... loots from a dead body) for you. On and on that idea goes. And although he doesn't say too much, when he does speak to you, he usually has something nice to say. He views it in a formulaic way -- ironically, think about it like those collectibles in overworlds. You get enough of this or that thing, and once you have enough, you can go talk to this or that person and donate them all and get a reward, right? He's accustomed to viewing things that way. Love should be the same way. If he just completes enough tasks and gathers enough items, eventually he'll unlock your love.

That being said, even if it doesn't happen, much to your despair, he just... doesn't. Give. Up. He doesn't quit. No matter how many times you tell him, it doesn't make a difference. You can tell him you'll never love him, and it's like it goes in one ear and out the other. He keeps trying. And he never, ever, ever stops trying. What did you expect? The boy's been fighting the same enemy over and over across lifetimes, needless to say his spirit has build up some persistence.

Bonus: Is there anything that makes them unique, in comparison to other yanderes?

Bonus: Zelda/Triforce of Wisdom Darling

And don't worry. If it all goes wrong, when he fails, those divergences in time where the hero is vanquished and evil wins out -- it's not the end. Somehow, that's the feeling he gets, holding your little lifeless body up, running hands across your cold skin. Somehow, he feels oddly calm. Like it hurts, but it's ok. Like he'll see you again. Maybe not soon, but one day. This time didn't work out. But the next one will.

And that's the feeling you'll always have. Every time you meet him and you feel like you've met before, the lingering memories when you wake from your dreams -- flying through skies and sailing on oceans, a child, an adult, a boy you've never met, or one you've known all your life, but it's always the same face, the same voice, the one right beside you in the waking world. You sometimes wonder if he has the same feelings, the same dreams, the same sense of something greater than yourselves at work, the sense of being just smaller pieces in a much bigger picture.

The sense of permanency, that each other is all there will ever be -- regardless of how it makes you feel, regardless of how that scares you, sometimes you feel like you can never be free. Sometimes, when you think of running away, those dark moments when you think of even escaping from life itself, it feels futile. It's as if you know it would never hold him away forever. As if death is insignificant. Perhaps in this lifetime, you'll become aware of why that is, or perhaps not.

With other obsessive lovers, just the idea of til death do us part is a terrifying thought. But, for Link, not even death can keep him away from you. Your suffering is already determined by the will of higher power, for the sake of a greater good.

In truth, it’s the goddesses who made him this way intentionally -- it’s designed to ensure your safety, even at the cost of your suffering. Again, for a greater good. Sure, you may live one lifetime to the next desperately locked in the same cycle in which your freedom and will is stripped from you, but in the end, it serves a purpose.

Nor will he change -- perhaps this one this time is a bit more spirited, more calm, more pessimistic, more optimistic... but in the end, at their core, they're the same soul, with the same will deep, deep down. The same drive to find you and protect you. The same love for you, an all-consuming love that destroys everything in its path to you and leaves ruin in its wake.

And if fate should one day keep you apart, should things change, for whatever reason, it’s unable to change him. There's another force even more powerful than fate determined to keep you together. The only thing more unavoidable, inevitable, and unescapable than fate, is Link himself.

------------------------------------

General perverseness: how sexual of a person are they? What’s their drive like? How touchy do they get? Do they have any reservations about sexuality?

In moments of passion, he changes a bit, unlike other more submissive yans who stay consistent in their reverence and desire to please.

You see, after a while, being as lenient and tolerant and flexible and completely devoted as he is... constantly self-sacrificing in so many ways, to you, to Hyrule, to the world... some frustrations build up. It's a big, big bottle of emotion, all tucked away and festering, getting greater and greater and eventually it has to explode somehow.

His reservations and inhibitions fall away. Perhaps a darker, more selfish side comes out. Perhaps that's why he's so rough. He knows he'll regret it later, the bruises from how hard he grips, the marks from the bites, but the hormones and the heat takes over. He'll feel bad for defiling you. He'll apologize. And he'll do it again. And again. And again.

But once the resolve crumbles, it topples. That is, he can't partially maintain it -- if it's partially gone, it falls apart completely. He lets go, so to speak. And when he lets go, you find that underneath that carefully constructed resolve and willpower that holds him back, he can be a very, very rough and possessive lover. In his normal state, he wouldn't dare think of you as a possession, or as something he's even worthy of. He would like so, so much to think that, to feel like he's allowed to -- but he doesn't. He chastises himself for even having such a desire. But in those moments, when his resolve is gone and his brain isn't thinking quite too clearly, he might even have to audacity to say "mine." Even if it's not true, not now, maybe it will be. He would like that so much. His and his alone.

And in a moment of clarity, he might even throw away the inhibition on purpose. The more selfish side, the same Link that drags you away from your destiny -- he's already forsaken his responsibilities, hasn't he? Why care anymore about the structures that no longer exist, your status and his, if there's no kingdom left? He likes that it happened, even. This way, this time, you can throw off those titles, those roles. Without your status, your title, there's nothing stopping him from making you his. And you will be his, and nothing more. It's all you need to be. So he doesn't have to care anymore about any of that, he doesn't have to stop himself from going wild. Biting into every little spare patch of skin, covering your body with marks that make him feel comforted to see.

As far as drive it's a bit of a two-sided duality. Outwardly he's not a very sexual person at all, blushes and stutters and averts his gaze at the slightest mention of suggestive topics, tries his best to be Respectful(tm) by always looking away when you're in a compromising position, or your skirt flies up, etc etc. Given how constant his vigilance is, he has a tendency to accidentally walk in on your changing or bathing, except unlike with many yanderes, it's genuinely an accident. Not that the image doesn't stick in his mind, nor does he wish he hadn't gotten to see, but he does feel guilty, and it was genuinely unintentional. He kinda freezes up, so it takes a moment for him to actually snap out of it and run out.

That being said, he quickly develops something of a masturbation addiction when he's younger, it starts as more of a stress reliever than anything, He's so sweet and always feels bad about talking about his problems and feelings, so that and, well, violence are the only ways he can get it out. Thus he learns to channel stress and nerves into sexuality, and once he has a real living body and not just his hand, that dependency on cumming to relieve it doesn't change.

How forceful are they? Do they care about your willingness?

Particularly so, yes, cares quite a bit. And it takes a while for him to feel comfortable. Even consensually, the first few times he touches you for several months, he's got trembling hands and stays quieter than ever, constantly freezes up every time you move or make a noise because he thinks he's done something wrong. He has to be coaxed into feeling more comfortable before he gets used to it, but he will build confidence over time.

As addressed before, though, if he's pushed and pushed and pushed long enough, you can get a darker side to come out. This is most likely something that would only occur post-kidnapping in a distant time, once he's far away from any possibility of consequence and destruction has set in to the world around you. He starts to get a little bitter, if you've been mean to him. It all builds up. Don't you get that he's literally saved your life? That he devoted every waking second to you? Isn't he kinda entitled to some thanks? The cycle of time never rewards him. Even the figures he helps over time rarely give him more than a verbal praise and thanks, maybe an item here or there, and then disappear. His role feels thankless. He starts to feel like he deserves something, something tangible, in return.

Surprisingly, though, he actually does not take the route of guilt-tripping or emotional manipulation or gaslighting his way into it like a lot of the sweeter yanderes when he does have that snap. His snaps/breakdowns are rather extreme in terms of how much of a polar opposite they are to his normal state, rather than just a slight bend of his normal personality. Rather than taking the route of most yanderes like himself, he just gets directly physically forceful. Still somewhat sweet, though, reminds you he loves you, he'd die for you, you're his entire world. You'd argue that doesn't really change the actions, but considering how frightening he is in that state, you're not dumb enough to vocalize that.

The guilt consumes him alive afterwards. Like, immediately afterwards. He's still panting and twitching and buried inside when it sets in. That being said, he doesn't get to stuttering and profusely apologizing, like he does over smaller offenses. It's all done and he can't take it back, so he just kinda collapses and says nothing. He's not the best with words, you know. It's an odd mixture of guilt and, honestly, a bit of satisfaction and relief. It feels like letting go of some self-imposed burden, that feeling of finally surrendering to some deep want, even if it comes with a lot of remorse, the relief of finally letting go does have a good feeling as well... and because of that, it’s another one of those barriers that, once broken, can’t be built up again.

What sort of kinks or fetishes do they have, or would they fill?

In all honesty the boy is, for the most part, a fairly gentle and vanilla lover. He doesn't really need anything special to get off -- he's easily excited and cums very very easily too. Just the prospect of getting to stick his dick in you in any capacity is enough to make him nearly burst at the thought honestly.

In general, as aforementioned, he's very very cautious and gentle to a point, but has a tendency to get actually kinda rough once he gets into it. The thing is, the roughness aspect is actually unintentional. He's one of those boys that is a little bit unaware of his own strength, doesn't process exactly how hard and fast he's going. He just gets lost in the feeling, kinda enters a dazed lusty haze where he's less aware of his actions. Doesn't realize he's literally got an iron grip pressing your head down on his dick or into the bed until you start flailing your hands because you can't breathe. Doesn't realize how hard he was gripping until he sees the bruises on your arms and hips later. That sort of deal -- poor thing is just unaware and doesn't have enough blood in his brain to think straight.

Biting

Surprisingly a really big one for him. (Remnants of a past life cycle with some lupine experiences perhaps?) In all seriousness, he could not explain exactly why if asked, it's one of those "I just like it" sort of things. It feels like yet another way to conjoin the two bodies, pulls you close. The marking aspect is also nice. Granted, he feels guilty afterwards, tries to help it heal. He has that same duality where moments ago he was this intimidating beast of a human being, rough and growly and jerking you like you were weightless, and now he's back to this bright eyed softie stuttering while he apologizes.

The guilt is mixed with a bit of enjoyment, though. It's constantly conflicting -- sure, part of him understands it's embarrassing and will help you cover up, but part of him doesn't want to, he wants people to see. Part of him looks at the marks and tells himself internally to never do that again, and part of him sees them and just wants to give you even more. It's a constant internal conflict, poor thing.

As far as a place, he likes the neck and shoulders best, simply because it's the most visible and it's the most passionate ones to create, when your bodies are tightly locked together. That being said, though, he also has a thing for biting at the insides of your thighs. It's another one of those I just like it sort of things.

Sometimes, when you're asleep, or pretending to be, you can feel him trace the bite marks with his fingers, softly running them over the circular pattern, just enough to barely ghost over your flesh.

Somnophilia

It puts him at ease. This one is particularly prevalent towards the beginning of your relationship, before you really know... how he is. He has this image of you as so pure and he couldn't bear the thought of defiling you with his horrible horrible thoughts. The guilt eats away at him for a while, but eventually he just can't hold back, but how could he ever do anything to you and risk consequence? So... the solution he comes up with is waiting until you sleep.

He tests the waters to see how heavy of a sleeper you are. Calls your name at increasing volume, lightly runs his fingers over your hair, pokes your face, whispers in your ear, runs his hands over your arms. Just to see what makes you rustle, if anything, so he knows the limits. If it turns out you're an incredibly light sleeper, well, unfortunately that means he's limited to just jerking off to your sleeping form, but that's ok. Just seeing your soft face and the cute way you breathe, the slightest way your lips open, that's enough for him.

If it turns out you're a heavier sleeper though, well, he tries to fight the temptation, but ends up going further. Slowly climbs onto your bed, careful to make the weight shift as gently as possible. Slowly pulls the covers back. Runs his hands up and down. It's a lot better when he can actually see your body as he jerks off, honestly. If he's feeling particularly risky, he might press your thighs together, feel how soft your skin is to his cock, how nice the squeezing pressure between them is.

He gets easily lost in a haze, though, so he inevitably ends up accidentally cumming on you and has to frantically find a way to lightly dab it up without waking you. He panics quite a bit, but that doesn't stop him from doing it again the very next night.

Overstimulation/Forced Orgasm

It just means he's doing a good job, really. Sure, you squeal and kick your feet back and forth and tug at his hair, but that's just because it feels good. Orgasms equate to love and feel good, right? Sure there's a little bit of pain when you go overboard, but then it just leads to feeling even better, right?

It's kind of an irrational compulsion rather than a logical goal, though. He just has an impulsive need to feel you quiver and spasm and clench, it basically gives him a chemical high hit and a wave of reassurance, makes him feel good in both the physical sense and the emotional sense. The first one sends him into this compulsive need to feel it over and over and over again, as many times as he can. It's another one of his internal conflict things -- sure, he knows it's hurting, but he just has to get one more. Just one more. But of course, every time turns into "just one more" when he's been saying that for half an hour now.

And, to be honest, it kind of gives him a pride boost to think he can make you cum against your will. How many people struggle to achieve that even when both parties are trying? It makes him feel good in an adequacy sort of way, he feels needed.

Size Kink/Distension

You know, there's a well-known thing among the male-lovers in this world when it comes to size. It's never the arrogant, loud guys, it's never the social butterflies, it's never the tall guys, it's never the beefy muscly guys. No, they're not the ones that end up somehow bestowed with absolute monster cocks. It's always the soft, lean boys who don't talk much. And they're always painfully unaware of it, too.

He's no exception. Not to the size or the complete lack of awareness. He hasn't spent a lot of time around guys his age too much, he's always been the one sent for some special task and ends up out in the wilderness by himself on journeys, or, in some lifetimes, accompanying you most of the time. He doesn't know what the average dick looks like, so he has no idea he's far above average.

This might sound like a plus, and of course in some ways it is, but also he doesn't think about the fact that the average body isn't properly equipped to handle it. You're supposed to just kinda put it in, that's how the sex works, right? Poor thing, especially if it's entirely consensual sex, he's just kinda ???? because why are you in pain? What is he doing wrong? You have to eventually explain it's literally just his body, not something he's doing.

That being said, naturally, he's a humble person, but hearing you say that does kinda... make him feel good inside. A little bit proud. He's not a person who takes a lot of pride in many things, so he likes having this one thing, and quickly notices you can visibly see it through the bulge it makes in your stomach. Especially if it's in a position where your back is pressed to his front, every little movement creates the bulge, so expect to get a lot of that.

He doesn't really bring it up much or talk about it when he's actually fucking you, it's more like, as with many things, something he's quietly aware of and silently enjoys a lot internally, even if it's not voiced.

How do they feel about pregnancy or babies? Do they want them?

Yes and no. It has to do with his overactive protection instinct. What if something happened or went wrong? He couldn't take that. He couldn't lose you.

At the same time, he likes kids, and he's very good with them, very patient. And over time, realizes that a kid would be the perfect tool of manipulation, and besides that, isn't it a beautiful thing, an ultimate manifestation of love?

So how to work around that... Ultimately, what he decides to do is have a kid... Just not by blood. There are plenty of orphans in Hyrule, wandering the streets and the wilderness, picking one up is easy. ...You wouldn't leave this poor child to suffer out there, to fend for themselves, would you? Nor would you leave him to take care of it by himself... Right?

What kind of (nsfw) punishments would they use?

Oh, it's not like he thinks of it that way. He would call it... a reminder. You put yourself in danger again? You tried to go back again? You were gone and for ten whole minutes he didn't know where you were? What could the solution to this issue be? The only thing his brain can really come up with is making sure you need him. Making sure you're content and satisfied here with him so you don't go running off.

Thus we return to the forced orgasm thing -- see, you do need him. It feels good, right? You say it hurts, and maybe it does a little, but ultimately you wouldn't be cumming if it wasn't good. No one else can ever do that. No one else knows you like this. No one else was made for you like this. You can't replace him. You need him. And he can keep going as many times as it takes until you see that, too. Even if he gets milked dry, he has a mouth and hands for a reason.

And by "until you see that," I mean until you say it. In his more... emotionally intense moments, he gets a bit insistent. He needs to hear you say it. Admit it to yourself. And to him. That you need him, that you depend on him, that you'll never leave again. And don't think your patience and tolerance can stand a chance of outlasting his -- it will keep going until you say it.

What body parts of their darling do they like the most?

He's one of those wholesome type of boys who goes with something sweet. He says maybe your hair, your face, your skin, your eyes. It's all so comforting. So familiar. Of course, not to say that he doesn't like your less wholesome mentionable parts, but he wants to be chivalric about such a question, and feels answering that way would be too disrespectful.

In his unspoken thoughts, though, he likes the hips. It's a part of you he can grab onto and hold you close with. He puts his hands there a lot and holds tight, like he feels like at any moment you could slip out of his grasp. And, I mean, it's nice to look at, can't forget that.

#atml #scheduled post #yandere x reader #yandere legend of zelda #yandere link

700 notes · View notes