#with regards to the edit I guess I could have been celebrating since a while ago lmao but I so didn't catch that at first

[babacontainsmultitudes]

(above from S1 ep. 41)

AHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH IT'S CONNECTED I FUCKING KNEW IT THE DOODLER IS PART OF THE PANTHEON LET'S GOOOOOOO

edit: oop looks like the connection between Heartland and the S1/S2 universe (albeit not the doodler directly yet) was actually canonized a few episodes ago!

[9w1ft]

There ARE pressing issues. Indeed. And in June, you could very well support them while supporting Pride. Like. Retweeting something about them. Like. Posting a message about how we acknowledge that Pride is intersectional and that queer lives matter and racial minority lives matter and gender equality matters etc. Acknowledging the anniversary of the petition and how far it went and thanking everyone that signed. Hell, liking à freaking tweet.

There are many ways to continue to support one or many causes and look *legit* rather than just being One Time Loud during promo season. I /believe/ she's an ally (duh, I'm here) but it also looks kinda cringe if she's only ostensibly an ally when she has something to sell.

i am once again going to refer to be there in five because i think she articulated it well in… i think it’s episode 141 (edit: ep 241 🙈 oops! it’s about 40 mins in, if you want a listen), at one point she said (i’m paraphrasing) that the past few years (ie since covid) have been a big period of growth for a lot of people in regards to social issues. even for people that have always been advocates and activists, it has been a period of time that has magnified and underscored many key problems with our society. it would be one thing for taylor to remain consistently quiet (as many respected celebrities do) on all fronts, however her general quietness (not silence but noticeable quietness) is coming on the tail end of Miss Americana, a documentary who’s key message as taken away by her fans was that taylor was ready to start speaking out on social issues. so there is a dissonance between miss americana taylor and the taylor we have seen (or not really seen) since. and i think a lot of fans, especially through the k*mye thing, really went to bat for taylor when the general public decided taylor was a “bad” person. a lot of people really cut their teeth in maintaining and amplifying that taylor is in fact a “good” person who does “good” things. for these fans, Miss Americana surely felt like a redemption, and acknowledgement and conclusion to an arc that was so formative in their lives. in a way, Lover era was further proof of concept. she began advocating for the queer community, posting more vocally about things, supporting and interacting wider net of fans, etc… but that seemingly all went away the moment her masters were taken.

then the pandemic hits and soon we have people marching for Black lives, and taylor is uber quiet. to the point where she leaves tumblr in perpetuity —a move i worry she will never address— and at one point hands her instagram account over for like a day to an activist but by and large she is gone.

and we can see in folklore a portrait of a taylor that is unbelievably sad. there is a lot of emotion in that album directed at (who i believe are) the people who fucked with her music. there’s epiphany in the mix as well. but she remains super quiet overall. she did the “we will vote you out in november” tweet, and we get the pride post last year and things like “happy pride to you too” but in general the times where she has appeared have been to defend issues related to herself. there’s that business of the bad joke in the netflix show (“happy international womens day i guess 💔”), the tweet in response to the gorillaz guy, etc.

and i think the one thing that has kept a lot of fans afloat or at somewhat of a balance is the idea that she’s been focused on her re-records. now that the momentum for that has been lost, i think it’s left a lot of fans restless

this is by no means an exhaustive recounting of all the related events but i’m assuming we all know the beats so to circle back to the top, bethereinfive said in so many words that long story short, a lot of fans are anxious that they have grown during the pandemic in ways that their idol has not. i would add that i think the parasocial relationship we as a greater fandom have with taylor will lend people to see her as an extension of their own morality. and thus, seeing taylor not do something that you would or associate with people you wouldn’t, etc, feels as if you had lost control of your own body where you thought you previously had it.

now, personally, i still firmly believe that Miss Americana was originally intended to be her coming out documentary. this is just my feeling and i don’t have a well structured argument either than perhaps that we know rep tour chicago was filmed, so there is footage of taylor saying her pride speech that apparently got left on the cutting room floor. and the fact that Lover era was, in general, Gay As Hell.

so while i believe there is a separate discussion to be had about what taylor’s empirical quietness on many social issues means to us as fans, i think at the start that, for a lot of her fans, there has been a grand miscommunication stemming from Miss Americana having been (imo) morphed into a documentary about “finding your voice” or becoming an activist, where maybe that was never taylor’s intention in the first place. to put it another way, she may have unintentionally overpromised on a version of herself that she was not planning to commit to at this time.

once again, a separate conversation can be had about if we like the state of affairs, or if it’s “good” or “bad” to just come out without also defending marginalized communities, but i do think it can be said that the documentary contributed to peoples frustrations.

i think as gaylors, and particularly if you are magically still a kaylor, we are more able to see a greater variety of stressors in taylor’s life that may have been leading to her being checked out at the moment. i have so much empathy for her for so many reasons, she is in a truly singularly complex position and i truly believe if i was in her shoes i would understand it, and i’ve been doing my best to take opportunities when i get perplexed as opportunities to improve my own actions.. ie, focus my energy on what i can control and not what (who) i can’t

but anon, as you said, it’s pretty simple to do a little bit more than what she’s doing now. so in the absence of evidence to the contrary… yeah. 🙈

[emwritesstuff]

as the world caves in | ch. 9 | bucky barnes x reader

synopsis: You are a ghost story. A former Air Force pilot who had her plane shot down by Germany in 1945, but here you were in 2023, alive and frozen in your 25-year-old body.

You haven’t seen Bucky since the 1940’s, before his fall, before you went on a suicide mission only to come back alive. You aren’t sure reliving those memories – and being a living memory of everything the man has lost – is the best for him.

But you and Bucky won’t be apart for long.

This will loosely follow the plot of TFATWS - so spoilers ahead, specially regarding episode six (finale). Thread carefully!

masterlist | AO3

notes:  thank you everyone for your patience with this chapter. I'm dropping this lil shortie so we can get the story moving. Let's go! (warnings: lil' fluff, lil' angst) (word count: 3K) nine: records

Bucky knocked on your door a few weeks later.

It was late, and you were snug in your pajamas, winding down after a long day. With your identity no longer a secret, the government was in the midst of transferring you to something more… hands-on, and definitely less diplomatic, you were assuming; so much for retirement, but you figured 30 years of it had been more time than you could’ve anticipated.

You almost didn’t hear the soft rapping on wood over Vera Lynn’s mellow singing.

When you finally opened it, you found him standing there, wearing tired eyes and a dark coat. “I’m sorry, I know it’s late, but I started walking and I—"

“When I said you’re welcome anytime, Bucky Barnes, I meant any time.”

A tiny fraction of a smile was offered your way, and you grasped it tight against your heart at the same time you do his hand, pulling him inside.

His fingers lingered on yours, but before you could start thinking about it he pulled away, taking a seat at the edge of your couch. “I finished it. The book.”

Bucky answered your question before you could ask it. “I just came from there. The last one– the last name.”

“Well. Are you alright?” You sat next to him, your knee knocking against his, and his gaze went from the floor, to the spot where your legs touched, and then to you. He knitted his eyebrows, seeming a little incredulous you were even asking.

“I will be.” His hands intertwined on the space between his knees, and you placed a hand ton his shoulder, getting him to look at you again.

“Yes, you will. Do you want to talk about it?”

One corner of Bucky’s lip raised up, and he shook his head. “Is that Vera Lynn?”

You smiled, turning to look at your record player as if Vera herself was sitting next to it. “It is. Takes me back, I guess.”

“It’s all we’d listen to at the front.”

Nodding, you wondered for a second if Bucky remembered dancing to We’ll Meet Again the night before he was shipped off. Even if you weren’t the only girl he had danced with then, you still asked yourself if that memory was burned on his mind as it was on yours.

We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when. A short-term promise, made back then by hopeful lovers, friends, family members; you had no idea that those lyrics would prove themselves so literal when you and Bucky mouthed them at each other in the middle of a dancefloor.

You let out a breathy chuckle, standing up and beckoning him to where you kept the rest of your vinyl. “Come on. Vera’s starting to feel a little too nostalgic to me.”

Your record collection was pretty extensive, ranging from things of the good ol’ days from the special editions that were still being released nowadays. Bucky joined you on the floor, and together you started to make your way through decades eternized in discs.

“Marvin Gaye.”

You look up from The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust, finding Bucky making a face at the album he was holding. “It’s really good. Do you want to—”

“No. No more Marvin Gaye.”

You furrowed your eyebrows. “You don’t like him?”

“I like Marvin Gaye! Jesus. Marvin is good—Marvin’s jus’ fine,” Bucky rubbed his eyes with his thumb and middle finger, and you finally understood.

“Sam’s been preaching you the word of R&B to you too, huh?”

You giggled at the tired look he gave you and silently took Trouble Man out of his hands, stuffing it back with the rest of the 1970’s.

Years ago, Bucky would be delighted to dive headfirst in the new – your trips to countless science fairs and expositions were enough proof of that – but looking at him now, knowing him as you were starting to once again, you figured that just a dip of the toes was more than enough.

You pulled Frank Sinatra from the 1950’s section.

“I know Sinatra.”

“Do you now?”

You put the record on your player, and Vera Lynn’s longing gave way to Sinatra’s swagger and jazz.

“Do you?” Bucky teased, frowning at the most recent items in your collection. As soon as Frank’s voice filled the silence, he nodded. “Yeah, that’s nice.”

“I do know him! Or did. Met ‘im in 1962.” You plopped next to Bucky, who was shaking his head. “What?”

“Show off.”

“No, just been around. Met people on the way. And, you asked.” Your smirk grew into a grin as Bucky mouthed your words back at you. Then his face fell for a second, and your amusement was quickly replaced by worry. “What is it?”

“Nothing, I guess – I guess I just missed a lot.” The same way one of the corners of his lips tug on his cheek again in his attempt of a smile, melancholy tugs at your heartstrings. “I missed out on everything. And I missed out on you.”

Bucky’s head was low as he spoke and you could see the tremble of his hands, even though he clutched one of your records tightly. Nina Simone, 1960’s.

“M’not going anywhere, you know.”

“You still lived an entire lifetime—”

“I did, yes, thank you for constantly reminding me that I’m over 100 years old.” You shook your head at him, sighing softly when he chuckled.

You couldn’t blame him, for clinging to every bit of past he’d missed while he was in HYDRA’s clutches – you knew that was inevitable, but you wished that such sorrow wasn’t so related to you.

“What are you doin’?” He asked as you summoned a small stool from the side of your shelf and stepped on it.

“I want to show you somethin’.” The thing you were looking for was stored at the very top: a heavy, brown leather suitcase that almost made you lose your balance when you pulled it from the spot it had been sitting in for—honestly, years, many of them.

The contents of the suitcase rattled as you climbed down and sat next to Bucky again. Sinatra still playing, telling his lover I've got you under my skin, I've got you, deep in the heart of me;

You almost laughed from the truth and irony of it.

I'd tried so, not to give in

I said to myself this affair never will go so well

You unlocked the suitcase, revealing the gathered memories inside. Pictures, movie tickets, theater playbooks, receipts, trinkets. All souvenirs of the 80 something years of your life Bucky hadn’t been there to see.

Not organized in the slightest, the keepsakes of your life were tossed together and out of order just as in your memory: photographs of you in uniform, and sometimes in party dresses; of when you bought your house; of the few times you had pets. Posing next to famous people and other important ones whose names weren’t as well known by the world.

As you and Bucky went through each of them, you added a story or an explanation, sometimes both, to fill him in on the details of your life events. He laughed at some, frowned at a lot, stared at you intently for all of them.

“Is this Berlin?”

You hummed, nodding. “1989. That party was great.”

“Party?” Bucky knitted his eyebrows in surprise.

“The city was unified, the wall was being taken down, and everyone was celebrating. I’ve never seen that many bottles of vodka in one place.” You laughed, taking a good look at yourself in the picture.

The 80’s were definitely not your best decade, looks wise. You had tried a perm the year before, and the poodle look was only then starting to dial down. The beginnings of a bruise were starting to creep on your left eye, from the mission you had completed just a few hours before.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been that drunk.”

Bucky’s surprise intensified, his eyes wide. “We can’t get drunk.”

“Yes we can.”

“No, no we can’t.”

“We can, in fact. It’s all a matter of quantity and, well, speed.” You giggled as Bucky’s mouth gaped more.

“And the hangover?”

“Horrible. Like getting shot on the forehead. Comes quickly, too.”

He grimaced, and with one last look – certainly to register your peculiar appearance on his mind – gently put the picture back inside the suitcase. A stack of papers seemed to call out to him and he picked it up, releasing them from the band that held them together carefully.

Postcards of the places you’ve been: a small note to James Barnes and Steve Rogers on the back of each one.

Bucky’s voice faltered. He let out an anguished little sound, probably something that was supposed to be an Oh, or a What, but had no strength to crawl up his throat.

You brought your knees to your chest as you waited for him.

“You—you wrote to us?”

“I did. You can keep those, they’re addressed to you.”

After all this time, you could barely remember the words you wrote in those postcards; all you knew was that some had longer messages, others a simple Wish you were here.

“After we met in Baltimore, I thought that— that you’d have moved on from us.”

From me.

As if that was possible.

“Well, I stopped writing by 2003, give or take. But really,” You sighed. “It’s hard to forget someone when you’ve always been expecting them to come back to you.”

Bucky flipped the postcard from Rome, read the writing and smiled wistfully at it. “And, I did.”

“You did. And staying away was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but—”

“But you’re annoyingly stubborn.” His jaw tightened, then relaxed when he smirked. “I mean, I get it – If the roles were reversed, I’d leave you rebuild your life without me like a self-sacrificing idiot too.”

Alright. That was fair.

Shaking your head, you watched as he slipped the postcards in his pocket, an amused expression on his face.

“That was… a big mistake. Something a self-sacrificing idiot would do,” You screwed your eyes shut in shame, opening them when Bucky chuckled. “but now, I’m right here. And so are you.”

His stubble scratched the soft skin of your palm when you reached for him, and you continued. “We’re a little out of place in this century, that much is true, but if I’m being honest… I’m getting tired of yearning for the past, Buck.”

Good old times – sometimes really good, sometimes bad, every one of them old – tucked away in your heart like your records were tucked in neatly in their shelf, organized by year. As you went through the decades, your enhanced body eternizing you like marble, your heart seemingly stayed at that army camp overseas. Or maybe Sergeant Bucky Barnes had taken it with him, only for them to be frozen together, leaving you with an empty hole in your chest.

You lived your life longing for that missing piece, the one with blue eyes and the dashing smile and the skilled feet.

The one that in many other stories was the one that got away, the one who now believed he was somebody else, but had brought your heart back with him all the same.

The very heart that nearly leapt out of your chest when Bucky rested his forehead against yours.

You’ve never been this close – there isn’t an ounce of past in the gesture. His eyes being tightly closed kept him from seeing the surprise on your eyes and then how they fell to his lips for a millisecond. Then, those lips brushed against yours in a featherlike touch.

I would sacrifice anything, come what might

For the sake of having you near

He pried himself off you when you exhaled, as if your very breath had electrocuted him.

“M’sorry. I—I didn’t—” He said as you stared at the back of his neck, and the shock gives way to disappointment.

I didn’t mean to. Or maybe: I didn’t want to.

“That’s—it’s okay.” You clapped your hands on your knees, still feeling the prickle of his facial hair on them, and got up to change the music.

There was no doubt Bucky was touch starved, and that he probably craved the closeness that comes with a lover. He sought that for a fleeting second in Sam’s sister, and now in you. No point in dwelling on what it might have meant.

Right?

Looking at Bucky, his expression was overcast, furrowed eyebrows as he watched you from his spot on the floor. You offered him a gentle smile, and the crease on his forehead eased up slightly.

Right.

Don't you know little fool, you never can win

The record player made a scratching sound as you replaced Frank Sinatra with your go-to jazz compilation. Instrumental.

No lyrics.

There was one thing you’ve always been good at, regarding the infatuation with Bucky Barnes that has taken over your heart for almost a century now: locking the feelings away and stepping into the shoes of the best friend.

Besides, you’ve said it yourself: no more yearning for the past. Hopefully you and Bucky would be able to do that soon enough.

At that moment, however, you needed to feel the burn of whiskey down your throat and pretend it’ll heal the calcinating rejection spreading through your chest.

The guilt you found in Bucky’s eyes as he watched you sweep around your hardwood floors made you pour a glass for him.

He took it gratefully, frowning when you bottomed the whole thing up.

“There’s a lot in here.” He tapped the edge of the suitcase, skillfully steering the conversation in the direction of the more palatable, calm territory it was in before.

The sight of your autobiographical collection made you smile.

“An entire lifetime,” You said, fishing your dog tags from the bottom. “I suppose that’s where it started. Or at least, where thisstarted.”

Bucky took them reverentially, running his thumb over the imprint of your name and numbers.

He reached for his neck, producing from under his Henley the same type of metal chain he was holding in his hands. The fact that he still wore his like that sent a sharp blow to your lungs, almost knocking the air out of you.

His face softened, a smile so beautiful spreading across his lips, so much that your chest clenched in protest because it was simply not fair, how he still had you entirely.

He deposited both of your dog tags in your hands, and that’s when you saw it, and remembered it.

“Won’t we get in trouble for this?”

“Do you care?”

“Well…No.” You sighed, already resigned. And a little excited.

Bucky knew you well: it had been too long of being a good little soldier when all you were used to was the rush of being a hellion.

“And that is why, sugar, that I’m doing this with you, and not with Steve.”

The words made your heart soar, but you were sure to recapture it before it could fly away too high, still too attached to the sensation of the take-off to clip its wings.

You liked flying.

“And because Steve hasn’t been successful in his enlisting efforts. Yet.”

Bucky looked at you from behind his eyebrows, a reprimand hiding in his eyes, but he decided to shove his uniform hat on your head instead. You grumbled, calling him a jerk under your breath.

It was the night before Bucky was drafted to England. He looked handsome in his uniform, a shining, polished star, brighter than the sun even under the dim streetlight you two stood under.

After bringing his and Steve’s dates home (yours was lost to another boxing match along the way – not that you were crying about that) Bucky had decided he was going to stay up all night, because, in his words, he could sleep when the war was over. Or, more realistically, in the ship on the way to England.

So there you two were, illuminated by street lamps and moonlight, visiting the façades and front windows of your favorite places in Brooklyn like drifters in the night.

Bucky still concentrated on his task, his shoulder hunched slightly to block your sight.

“Let me see! Bucky!”

“ ’Sposed to be a surprise! I’m almost done.”

You huffed, crossing your arms. “It’s not like I haven’t seen ‘em before.”

“You gotta be more patient. Here.”

He dropped your dog tags on your hand. You displayed the small steel plates on your palm, scanning your eyes over the two. One of them, of course, had your name, number, blood type, next of kin – an aunt you’ve never met – and address.

The other had Bucky’s.

James B Barnes. 32557038.

He slipped his own chain over his head, the plate with your name clinking against his.

You brought the tips of your fingers to your lips, feeling a smile begin to form onto them.

“I forgot we did this. I haven’t looked at these in so long.”

You had stopped wearing your dog tags the day the war had ended – Bucky was gone then, Steve too, and the weight of his dog tags slamming against your chest was too much to bear – your heart was already heavy with its own engraving of their memories.

“Steve had a lecture prepared when he gave mine back.” Bucky chuckled when you looked up at him, incredulous.

You shook your head, half exasperated and half amused. “Good grief, Steve.”

“Y’know how he is. Was,” He trailed, lips twitching as they formed a thin line.

You reached for him, your hand hovering in the space between you for a second before Bucky took it, lacing your fingers. Scooting closer, you let your cheek rest on his shoulder.

“He’d be glad we’re reunited.” You said, raising your head to peek at him and the newfound upwards curl of his lip. “And mortified we’re still bickering.”

Bucky smiled and squeezed your hand. “Old people. Old habits.”

Laughter bubbled out of your chest, and you realized a few things.

In that moment, it didn’t matter – the heartache, the unrequited side of your love. It was just a fact, a fact of life, of your life, that you a lot of the times loved him as more than your best friend. You loved him. And that was the core of it, the most important fact.

And you knew he loved you – you had each other – in this big, ever-changing, modern world, you had Bucky and Bucky had you.

You sat in comfortable, familiar silence until your eyelids grew heavy and you felt yourself drifting in and out of consciousness.

“You dozin’ on me, sugar?”

“It’s been a long day.” You said with your eyes still closed, feeling him chuckle beside you.

“Tell me about it. I can go—”

“You know damn well you should stay.” You patted his arm and hoisted yourself up from the floor. “I’ll get the pull-up ready for you.”

As you sauntered towards the office, ignoring his pleads and protests that he’s got it, he doesn’t need sheets or anything, you put your dog tags back on.

They jingled lightly against your heart.

Maybe you didn’t have to leave all of the past behind to start building something good and new, after all.

[ikeromantic]

Inspiration

Written for @green-tea-and-manga as part of my 500 follower celebration!

Arthur, Mind, Something Old, Cute and Sweet

Approx. 1200 words of fluffiness

Arthur glared at his typewriter. It was a modern Dactyle. Modern! He laughed. His grandfather wouldn’t have bothered with this mechanical monstrosity. The blasted thing was stuck again. Letters ‘N’, ‘E’, and ‘S’.

He wanted his last typewriter back. It was - would be - a slick Remington portable, in blue. The keys had a smooth, firm slide and didn’t blotch the page. But Comte hadn’t brought it back to the mansion after their deal and now he was stuck with . . . well, this thing.

“Aren’t you supposed to be writing?”

Arthur turned to the doorway with a grin. “I can think of some things I’d much rather do.” He waggled his eyebrows.

She laughed as expected. “I can see we aren’t making much progress here. Got writer’s block?”

“Something like that, luv.” He pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Then I know just the thing.” She held her hand out to him.

Arthur accepted her hand and stood up. “Are we going some place then?”

“We are.” She grinned mischievously.

“Your room,” he asked hopefully.

She shook her head. “Not quite.”

“Then I’m quite flummoxed. Where else does a pretty skirt lead her lover to midday?” He wasn’t as confused as he let on. His lady love was wearing button leather boots and a skirt that fell short of her ankles. He had only to add that to the flush in her cheeks and the fluff of fur on her hem to deduce they were going outside and that Vic was sure to be a party to their little break.

He snagged a sunhat for her on the way out, holding it in his freehand until she’d led him down the steps. Arthur settled it over her hair and tied the ribbon under her chin.

“H-how did you know I’d need this?”

Arthur leaned close. “Just a guess. If I’m right, do I get a kiss?”

She giggled and pressed a warm kiss to his lips. It was as sweet and slow as the summer afternoon, and he never wanted it to end, but she pulled back to smile at him shyly. “Vic is running about without a leash. We should probably -”

“Ah yes. Sebastian was quite cross the last time Vic dug an extra hole in the flower bed.” He held his hand out to her. It wasn’t much of a mystery where the dog ran off to. Victoria had a penchant for the tulips, especially on hot days.

That’s where she was too. Rolling about in the dirt with the happiest look on her face.

“Oh Vic. You’ll need another bath now.”

Arthur laughed. “She’s always been a naughty little thing.” He helped get the pup leashed, brushing bits of dirt from her long hair.

“I thought she’d stay on the porch. I told her to stay.” She huffed a bit at the dog, but couldn’t stay angry. Vic was just too cute.

The three of them walked to the forest edge, where the leaves made patterns of light and shadow on the soft grass. Victoria jumped and snapped at passing june beetles and floating butterflies. And the two lovers held hands as they passed under the whispering boughs.

Arthur sat down at the edge of the creek that ran along one edge of le Comte’s lands. It was narrow here, and shallow. Perfect to cool off. “Come on my pretty bird. Let’s take a rest here.”

She sat down beside him. “I think you picked a good spot.”

“I was just following you,” he laughed.

“Well, I was just walking.”

Arthur started unlacing his shoes. “You mean to tell me you didn’t have a spot picked out? No destination?”

“No. I just thought it might help you to get out of the mansion for a little bit. When I was writing my blog, it always helped me to go for a walk. It cleared up my mind so I could focus on what I wanted to say.” She waved her hand dismissively. “Not that it’s the same thing, of course.”

She’d told him before what a blog was. Some sort of public journal. He found the notion fascinating, especially when she’d explained how there were many kinds of ‘blogs’ and ‘fandoms’ and ‘web-sites’ for people to read and engage the writer on. “Say,” he asked suddenly. “What kind of typewriter did you use for that blog? I imagine they only get better.”

“Well . . . most people don’t use typewriters in my time. They’re antiques. We have computers.” She grinned. “I think you’d like them. Information at the tip of your fingers, and no need to rewrite a page to make an edit.”

Arthur groaned. “To have such tools! You think we could talk le Comte into bringing one here the next time he uses the door?”

She laughed. “Probably not? I mean, you’d need the right kind of power supply and there’s no internet . . . I think you’ll just have to wait for it.”

“Blast. No short cuts, eh?” Arthur gave a wry chuckle. “I suppose there’s no help for it then.”

He regarded her from the corner of his eye. “Do you still write about your travels?”

She ducked her head, embarrassed. ”I just make some notes in a journal. Where we’ve been, stuff we’ve done.”

“I’d like to read it. Your blog too!”

He was rewarded with a wide-eyed look and a blush that spread from cheeks to ear-tip. “It’s . . . nothing special! You were there for most of it!”

Arthur shrugged. “It might inspire me. And teach me a bit more about you. The greatest mystery this hack author ever tried to solve.” He tapped her nose with a tip of his finger. “Now put your legs this way so I can help you with your boots.”

“What?” She wasn’t sure what part to reply to, but she did put her legs across his lap.

He ran his hand up her leg, caressing her calf. Arthur was sure she had the nicest legs of any skirt he’d ever chased. He undid the buttons and tugged off her socks, then set them next to his shoes.

“Did you mean that?”

Arthur grinned. “Of course I did, luv. Now put your feet in the water. It feels like a bit of heaven. There you go.”

She poked his arm. “That’s not what I meant. I mean the part where you said . . . I might inspire you?”

In that moment, she looked so vulnerable. Every bit the innocent rabbit he’d seen her as those first days at the mansion. “You inspire me every moment since you stepped through that door. I haven’t written a thing that wasn’t touched by you.” Arthur bit his lower lip, embarrassed by his confession but unable to stop the words. “You are always there, haunting my imagination. I worry sometimes . . . that I’ve dreamt you up. That you couldn’t possibly exist. And that I’ll wake and find you gone.” He stopped, realizing he said more than he intended.

She took his hand and settled it on her chest.

He could feel her racing pulse, the thundering gallop of that sweet and gentle heart.

“You didn’t dream me,” she told him. “And I’m not going anywhere.”

They sat like that for a long while, listening to the water as it rolled over stones. The song of birds in the nearby trees. Their mingled breath and the rhythm of two hearts in love.

[malebodysuittf]

The Wrapping

In my last story, I wanted to write a dark thriller-ish story with a villainous protagonist, but I wanted this story to be a whole lot more wholesome (though still devious) for the holidays! It’s kind of silly and not as hot tbh, but hopefully it’s kind of fun for someone. It’s been one hell of a year, so here’s to a better 2021. Merry Christmas, and Happy Holidays y’all! Stay safe, and make sure no one you’re close to is plotting to suitify you! ;)

edit: Oh crap, I totally forgot to post this yesterday! Here it is though, my message stays the same! 

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

I sighed as I listened to the mundane tapping of fingers on keyboards, nails hitting the desk, pens clicking. Over and over, my head rang with the same sounds throughout the morning. No one who was here wanted to be here. Except perhaps my boss. That piece of shit put us all to work instead of giving us the holidays off. Only reason he might be happy to be here is probably because, if his wife has been hearing any of the rumors regarding his interactions with the female employees of our company, I’m assuming their marriage is disastrous.

I thought I’d be able to relax at home, spend Christmas with my boyfriend, Craig. We’ve been together for a couple of years now, and this was our first year living together. Our first Christmas spent together. The last one, we had both flown home to see our parents, splitting up. 

But of course, my piece of shit boss had called me up. Told me to come in and work...subtly threatened unemployment if I objected. I wanted to quit right  then and there, but money was tight and I knew how much Craig and I could use the cash. I had to break the news to Craig, but he was understanding. He promised that we’d open up presents tonight, or we’d open them up tomorrow if I was too tired. It was heartwarming to hear the support loved one, but made the act of going to work the next day no less grueling. 

“Hey Lance, you get that call from boss too?” I jumped at the sound of my name being called and turned to see my coworker and one of the few friends I’ve made in the office, Trevor. He was a good lookin’ guy, though he only had a frustrated face at the moment. 

“Yeah. Fucking ridiculous.”

“Right? Sick of this fucking job. Frankly, I’m not even sure what I fucking do at this point,” he joked. A hint of a smile popped up on his face. He slapped me on the arm and got up, heading towards the bathroom. I closed my eyes and imagined what I’ll do with Craig. It was the only thing that could motivate me to keep up with my work. 

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

Hours later, the sun was setting and an orange hue painted the sky. It was a surprisingly beautiful sunset, considering it was Christmas. I finally finished my work. I watched the tired people around me cleaning up their desks, disgruntled and ready to go home. I glanced over at Trevor’s desk and noted he was still missing...weird. I hadn’t seen him the entire day ever since he left to go to the restroom. I guessed he had wisened up and just left. I sure as hell wish I could afford to...I know Trevor came from a pretty wealthy background. But at least I could finally find some respite with the end of the day approaching. 

Until I saw the secretary walking to my desk. 

She placed her hands on my desk and looked me in the eye, almost remorsefully. 

“Mr. Campbell would like to speak to you.”

My heart sunk as I realized I’ll be spending more time in this shithole instead of celebrating the holidays with my boyfriend. I slumped in my chair and nodded to the secretary. She left me and I cleaned my act up. Surely it must be something quick, right? I couldn’t imagine him calling me in at the end like this for any reason. 

Walking over to Mr. Campbell’s office, I opened the door and saw my dapper boss staring at me intimidatingly. 

“Hello, Lance. I’m sure this little meeting may come as a surprise. Take a seat, won’t you?” He motioned towards a chair opposite from his desk, while seating himself in a larger one. 

“I know you might be a little confused as to why I called you in. But let me assure it’s nothing bad.” He smiled at me, something I had never seen before on his face. He always looked menacing and unwelcoming. But right in this moment, something seemed different. 

“I just wanted to give you this for being an outstanding part of this office. You’ve always been productive and loyal to this business. You deserve proper compensation. Especially for coming in on Christmas.”

From behind his desk, he pulled out a fairly large box, wrapped in a snowman-covered paper, perhaps the size of my torso, and slid it across the desk. I cautiously took the box, wondering what the catch was. There was no way he decided to just randomly give me this out of kindness or gratefulness. Not Mr. Campbell. This is the abusive boss who makes people work on Christmas, threaten their jobs and their records, and, allegedly, numerous women have quit and spoken up on him firing them if they did not oblige to sexual favors. On top of that, why the hell is he only giving this to me? Still, he was my boss for now, and I had to appeal to him.

“...Er, thanks, Mr. Campbell. I appreciate the gift. I’ll make sure-”

“Why don’t you open it?”

“Right here? Right now?”

“Yes. Open it. I want you to see it.”

Confused, I still obeyed and started to rip the wrapping paper off. I glanced up to give the boss an acknowledging smile as I lifted the lid up. I found a folded up suit and tie, along with pants.

“Clothing, Mr. Campbell?” I tried to feign gratitude with a hesitant smile.

“Keep going.” 

I lifted the clothing and saw an ID on top of a peach colored object. On the ID, I saw a picture of...Trevor. A chill ran across my spine as I felt the peace colored object...it felt like skin. I pulled it out and lo and behold...it was Trevor in the form of a flimsy suit. 

“Is this some kind of...costume?” The thing gave me the creeps, but I couldn’t defy my curiosity. 

“You could say that.”

“Was that...you earlier then?”

A grim glare shot across Mr. Campbell’s face. “No.”

“Then...what did you do to Trevor?” My voice quivered as a ton of horrific scenes ran through my head. 

“It was just an injection. Don’t worry, he’ll be fine.” He pulled out what looked like pink stickers. “All you do is slap these magic tags on, and he’ll be restored within an hour. Sorry to alarm you.” 

A sigh of relief escaped my mouth, until Mr. Campbell said, “Why don’t you put him on right now?” 

“What? Right here? I don’t even know-”

“Take your clothes off. Stretch open the mouth. You can figure out the rest.” 

Something told me I didn’t have a choice. I laid the suit on the floor and started to pull out of my clothing, tossing it over the chair. I grabbed the Trevor suit and dipped my toes into the mouth. Surprisingly, it was soft and comfortable. I slipped into the legs and did a few test jumps. Mr. Campbell observed closely as the suit matched my form. I squeezed my way into the rest of the suit before pulling the face over my own, before a painful ache rushed through my body. Suddenly, a lifetime of memories flooded my mind. I recalled feeling a prick in the neck before everything went black...I wasn’t exactly sure what to say to Mr. Campbell.

“Is there something you would like me to do with this?” Trevor’s voice escaped my throat! It was like I was him entirely. But why did Mr. Campbell want me in this suit? I was confused on what to do now. I stood there awkwardly, naked with an admittedly sexier body. Mr. Campbell walked around his desk and came up to me.

“Why don’t you unwrap your second present?” He grabbed my crotch, though I immediately relented and backed up.

“I’m sorry Mr. Campbell, but I’ve got a boyfriend, and frankly, this is a little weird...”

“Don’t you want to provide for him?” I gulped, knowing my job was on the line. Craig would understand, he always does.

I started to unbutton Mr. Campbell’s jacket and slid it off of him. The white button-up was already partially open, displaying the man’s hairy chest. Despite how awful my boss was, I confessed I considered him an attractive man. I pulled off the shirt and was down to his pants. I looked at him, unsure if he wanted me to go all the way. He nodded, urging me to take it all off. I unbuckled his belt and slid it out, the pants visibly loosened and slipped down with ease. I looked up for another nod of approval before removing his shoes and socks, smelling the subtle rankness of his feet. Finally, i slipped his underwear down, and a lengthy member dropped in front of me. I examined the man in front of me, up and down. Were these the kind of sexual favors my boss wanted? Was he interested in men? 

“Why don’t you keep going?” 

I raised an eyebrow at him, dumbfounded. “What?” 

“Keep going.” He walked closer to me, sensually looking me in the eye. 

I couldn’t quite grasp what he meant, until he tugged at his cheek, revealing something else inside. I rubbed Mr. Campbell’s face and he closed his eyes, groaning in pleasure. Slowly tracing down his face, I hooked my fingers under his lips and started to stretch the mouth open. I could feel the scruffy facial hair move under my fingers as I tugged at his face, the face distorting as a familiar face was revealed under Mr. Campbell’s face.

“Craig?” I was absolutely speechless as I slipped off the entire face of my boss. The upper half of the face landed in a heap behind him, while the chin lay across his chest. I backed up in shock at the spectacle before me! 

Craig gave me a devious smile and started to rip the skin off of himself. Still using Mr. Campbell’s hands, he grabbed at the mouth around his neck and started to pull. As he did, the skin started to give, and he started to rip it off, like wrapping. Truly like a Christmas gift! The face split in half and he tugged towards his left arm. With a forceful motion, the arm sleeve ripped right off and he tossed it towards onto the desk, the fingers hanging over the side as they flopped around. He continued to rip the other side off as the suit seemingly got shredded. With the torso hanging over his hip, the torn up skinsuit hung onto the cock in pieces, the face hanging by the side while the right hand of the suit laying flatly on the ground. Craig heaved as he pulled the rest of it off violently, further shredding the skin until it lay as a mess on the floor. He picked up it and slung the mangled skinsuit onto the desk.

“Merry Christmas, babe!” He held me by my hips and kissed me.

“Craig, what the hell is this?” 

“I bought us some of these serums, and figured they would make a nice gift. I didn’t originally plan to use it on these guys in specific, but when you got that call and told me about your shitty boss...I figured we could get a bit of revenge. Plus, you’ve told me about Trevor being hot. So I figured, why the hell not?” 

“But what about Mr. Campbell? You ripped him up!”

“Don’t worry, trust me, some tape and those little sticker things he showed...he’ll be back. And he’ll be humbled.”

He went back behind the desk and pulled out a paper and slid it over to me. I skimmed through it...this was a document giving the company to me!

“Oh my God! What the fuck? This is...”

“Yep. I always said you’d make a great leader. And whenever your coworkers come by to hang out with us, you have no clue what they say about you. They’re gonna love you. And Mr. Campbell over here, signed the document. Hopefully, he takes the time off to reimagine himself as a better man. All you gotta do is sign it yourself.” He rolled a pen over and I held it within my hand. I scoured through Trevor’s thoughts, and he had said some of the sweetest things about me, and his conversations with our colleagues suggested that maybe I could be the one  to make this shithole better. I brought the pen to the paper and voila, my signature was on it.

“You get to be the boss now, Lance.” Craig got up and came to embrace me. I was too stunned at everything happening to give him much of a response. “You can make this place so much better next year. But for now, why don’t we enjoy that sexy suit you’re in?” He started to kiss me, and I returned the favor. I pulled back for a second and looked Craig in the eyes.

“This is the best Christmas ever...Why don’t I give you my present now?” I gave him a suggestive look, rubbing up against against him. I pushed him down across the desk and whispered into his ear, “I love you, babe. Merry Christmas.” 

[yeetlinglaozus]

For the sake of the point I will be making here I have to first ask that everyone please put aside their own personal feelings and read this as objectively as possible. I don't want to step on anyone's heartstrings or offend anyone by accidentally making them feel some type of way. None of you are wrong for your thoughts or feelings, I just want to create as drama-free a discourse as possible.

So, Wang Yibo and Xiao Zhan made an appearance at the Tencent Starlight Awards and, in my opinion, redeemed 2020 as a year because I never thought I would see them on stage together (at least not this soon after, well, everything). I'm incredibly thankful that we were given such a treat! They looked handsome and stunning as always and I fully commend their stylists for the choices they made here, which if any of you have ever held a personal conversation with me you'll know that is major praise from me given that it is also my job. I adore every bit of Yibo's continued aesthetic of Rich Sk8 Boi Elderly Woman Chic™ and Xiao Zhan looked timelessly sleek in his suits.

Moving on from their physical appearances, I have seen A LOT of people complaining about their demeanor over the course of the night. Many seem to claim and think that they looked sad or upset or any other synonym for it that you want to add here. I've seen people say that, because of this, they don't want them to appear together in public anymore since it's too heartbreaking to witness. I've read through so very many posts that go back and forth on how upsetting it is that they didn't interact and barely smiled and all sorts of other negative remarks.

If you ask me, it isn't that they looked sad or upset. More than anything they seemed weary and cautious and disinterested, as well as obviously tired. They lead extraordinary lives in the sense that anything ordinary that they do is put on blast and peered at by thousands upon thousands of fans and ripped apart. Naturally, due to this, anything spectacular that they do is looked at even moreso. Add that pressure to their work schedules, which are notoriously insane, and the year that XZ has had, and anyone can guess why this event was stilted for them. They took time out of their very full schedules to come out for this all while knowing that of all the present idols and celebrities, they would be looked at the hardest given the rumors that circulate over them. Can you imagine the mental fortitude that would take, especially for Xiao Zhan?

Here's the thing that has really irked me about the commentary regarding this awards show and prompted this special edition post: everybody seems to forget that they are regular people with a job. For them, this is about their careers, not about the rumors and speculative gossiping of their relationship. Yet, they had to factor these things into their undertaking of the event itself. So I say again: they are people with a job and we should all let them do their job. This never should have been treated as the reunion of yizhan when, for them, it was a night of being awarded for their hard work and a chance to promote their new dramas. All that hard work they put in has been debased by fans being upset about a lack of interaction between them and that saddens me greatly, when they really deserve the praise and acclaim.

Shipping them has been a double edged sword to their careers, simultaneously bringing in more fans and bolstering the scope of their careers while also cutting them down. I, myself, am a typical BXG clown and do all the things we're known to do (outside of antagonizing anyone for feeling differently) but I do it all while knowing that my role and scope as a fan is limited to being just that, a fan. I'm not here to discredit their careers by so avidly shipping them that I lose sight of their reality as two real world people with feelings of their own. I know the boundaries of shipping them, and I think it should be more about showing support for them individually as artists and entertainers first and then as people with a connection and bond, whatever the nature of it may be. Their personal lives are not meant to be anyone's entertainment.

Setting aside the shipping, and looking at the actions of the awards show, I'd like to bring to light the biggest indicator of them being outwardly disinterested and tired rather than simply sad. They both elected to not sit in the VIP section among the other stars and weren't featured on the starcam. Whether they were together backstage or not, the point is that they chose to be absent from the public eye and remain unseen which isn't typical of their public personas. To me, this is extremely telling of them more or less being over it all. They deal with a lot of added stress and pressure due to the shipping and the inherent drama that exists among the fanbase and it has been an especially intense year. They are tired, they are human, they are entitled to privacy and to not have every tiny moment of their lives picked apart.

I wish I saw more people talking about the performances themselves or the fact that this was a successful night for Xiao Zhan given that he's still in the midst of a "comeback" and probably had a lot of mixed feelings about showing up and being in the spotlight again. He was moved to tears during his performance by the red ocean that lit up just for him and honestly I cried with him because it was that special. For every instance you could feel disappointed, there's twice as many reasons to be proud and happy of these hard working men.

PS. Comparing this year to last year isn't very valid or helpful when you take into consideration that last year they specifically appeared together in promotion of ChenQing Ling, just as they did with Zhang Liying and Yang Zi this year. Again, this is their job and they should be allowed to do it without having to fret about whether one of them is or isn't in attendance and how they should act in accordance.

Thank you for your time.

[heraldofzaun]

This is my “Viktor has never been a stereotypical evil villain, you guys are just mean” post.

Hi. Well. That says it all, really, but I guess I should elaborate. I think that Viktor has always been a victim of society [cue Joker meme], it’s just that what society has shifted over the course of his lore update.

With new lore, it’s very clearly Piltover casting him out for his (in my opinion, pretty unethical from the get-go) ideas on free will/worker safety/etc. and that subsequently making him worse. But with his previous lore - what I run off of on this blog - I’ve seen a lot of commentary about how he’s always just been “evil”, or that his motivations weren’t defined, etc. And while I can agree that his old lore certainly has less of a word count (5x less, actually) and doesn’t make his motives crystal-clear, it’s just not true that his original incarnation was just a villainous scientist. (Nor is it true that he was perceived as one by his old fans!) It takes a little bit of looking at Blitzcrank’s lore, and the Journal of Justice (hey, remember that?) to see, but it’s there... So, here goes. I’m sorry for how long this ended up being (2k words!) - it ended up touching on a lot more than just Viktor.

Viktor’s always been stolen from. (Except for Blitzcrank’s newest lores, which contradict Viktor’s new lore, which... That’s a topic for another time.) It’s always been Professor Stanwick Pididly (now Professor Stanwick) who’s done the stealing - originally, he was a professor at Zaun’s “prestigious College of Techmaturgy”. In new lore, he’s a professor at an unnamed academy in Piltover. I think the best way to track the new/old changes is bullet-points, rather than writing this all out. Tumblr doesn’t allow T-charts, sadly.

Professor Pididly in old lore:

Zaunite professor.

Stole Blitzcrank (well, the accolades for developing Blitz’s sentience) from Viktor and Viktor’s doctoral team. (While this is headcanon, I’ve always assumed that Stanwick was Viktor’s (and Viktor’s team’s) doctoral advisor. I can’t quite imagine how else he’d pull off stealing a group project like that.) Viktor subsequently withdrew from the college and “barricaded himself in his private laboratory”. (Which is his house in my personal take, because really - what sort of doctoral student can afford a lab?)

Blitzcrank’s case reached Zaun’s legal system, resulting in a “legal maelstrom” (Blitz’s original lore) that ended with Stanwick presumably being legally declared Blitzcrank’s creator.

Blitzcrank’s lore states that “most now know the truth” in regards to who his creator is. This is important for later, so stick that in your back pocket.

Pididly is referred to as “Professor Pididly” in JoJ issues 3, 18, and 23, which are given the dates of August of 20CLE, March of 21 CLE, and June of 21 CLE.

Side note: According to Orianna’s judgment, which is dated May of 21 CLE - stay with me here, it’ll make sense - Blitzcrank entered the League “years before”. As League at this time was mostly running in time with the real world, this makes sense - Blitzcrank was a 2009 champion and Orianna was released in 2011. Judgments seem to be dated to a few days before a champion’s release, in order to tie with the lore - one had to be “Judged” before made a champion... but I’m rambling. Anyways, years before, back pocket.

Is referred to as “Chairman Pididly” in JoJ issue 27, dated August of 21 CLE. “Chairman” seems to be a title given to those in political power in Zaun. Another example is Chairman Magnus Dunderson, Zaun’s “Chief Executive” (issue 5). (I could’ve sworn that there is canonically a “Board of Executives” in old lore Zaun, but scrubbing through the JoJ on the wiki hasn’t turned it up - just Blitzcrank’s lore mentioning the “Council of Zaun”. Maybe it was fanon? Anyways.) Back pocket!

Also stole some work from Viktor in order to revive Urgot. Urgot’s revival was reported on in issue 3 of the JoJ, and the confirmation that it was from Viktor’s work is in Viktor’s original lore.

Professor Stanwick (Pididly? I feel like they ditched his last name because it was “too silly”, also because Stanwick sounds British-adjacent anyways and that’s Piltover’s “thing” - but anyways) in new lore:

Piltovian professor.

Stole Blitzcrank from Viktor alone, who made the robot to help clean up a specific chemical spill. Viktor went to Zaun for a few weeks and came back to find that Stanwick had “held a symposium on Blitzcrank and presented Viktor's research as his own”. Viktor subsequently continued on his studies, culminating with him later being expelled for “violating basic human dignity”. Viktor returns to a laboratory that he had in Zaun.

Blitzcrank’s case is solely a university matter. Viktor petitions Jayce to help support his claim, but Jayce is Jayce and doesn’t help out. The “matter [is] decided in Professor Stanwick’s favor”.

Blitzcrank’s lore doesn’t really say anything about if people know that Viktor made him (them, technically, but Riot doesn’t get to make the robot non-binary), but I guess it’s implied in the 3rd iteration? (That would be the first new one, after the IoW retcon making most champions’ 2nd lores being the same lore with any reference to the titular League of Legends removed.) He works with Viktor in that one. It doesn’t fit with Viktor’s updated lore at all, actually, because it mentions Stanwick absolutely zero times. (A post for another day...)

Has nothing to do with Urgot, since Urgot’s different now.

So, the general plot of “professor rips off a student” is there, it’s just got an added layer of “professor rips off a foreign/out-group student” in new lore to tie into the overarching idea of Piltover exploiting Zaun. (Is Zaun considered foreign? Yes? No? It’s sort of textually implied sometimes to be another city, but can it actually be when it’s physically underneath Piltover? Is the metaphor in new lore a class thing, then? Is it both? Am I supposed to take Viktor’s Russian accent into account when reading this text? I don’t know.) Anyways, so far so... same, in the broad strokes. Unless Viktor’s villainy in old lore is specifically because someone from his city ripped him off, I don’t know how you can compare new/old lore and say that old painted him as a villain.

But what about the everything else I put there? We’re getting there - that’s part of Viktor’s in-universe stuff. I’m taking a quick detour out of universe, to Jayce’s very first lore...

Which had Viktor stealing a techmaturgical device from Jayce. While I can’t cite this, sadly - thank you, Riot deleting the old forums and me not having the patience to look through archives at the moment - there was a backlash around this on the forums. Why would Viktor, a character who’d been stolen from, steal in turn? So Jayce’s second lore, the one that most people were familiar with before the new lore update, was made. Now Viktor stole a crystal after trying to partner with Jayce, Jayce was less well-established as an inventor, he had a bit more character... All good things. (Also, this is probably where the new lore direction of them being former college colleagues come from.)

Also, as an aside: this is the first use I can see of crystals specifically being described as arcane power sources... The only other discussion of magical crystals was the Brackern... which was then merged into magical crystals having to be from the Brackern... Which means that...

But anyways! Clearly Viktor fans didn’t see him as a villain in 2012, or at least not one that would victimize others in the same way that he’d been hurt. They made such a fuss about it that Jayce’s lore was changed to paint Viktor more sympathetically! (When’s the last time that there’s been that much backl- oh. It’s Seraphine again. Anyways.) So, again, Viktor’s perception as an evil scientist mostly seems to have come from people who weren’t really familiar with his lore. So... case closed?

Except that I also want to talk about in-universe things! Everything that I told you to put in your back pocket! Because this post is already over a thousand words and I have thrown myself firmly into this vortex.

Viktor’s victimization by society [Joker meme] is actually probably worse in old lore, which is a fact that I think has been pretty overlooked. While new lore Viktor gets kicked back down to Zaun and gets his work stolen in academia - with Stanwick presumably never being questioned on whether or not he made Blitzcrank, because there’s that whole “Zaunites are bad” thread that is both in and out of universe... Old lore Viktor sure does get it worse, although I admit that this requires some interpretation of canon. His thing with Blitzcrank was, again, a “legal maelstrom” - and with Blitzcrank being considered a Zaunite celebrity before this court case, it seems relatively easy/logical to infer that this maelstrom was a very public case.

So all of Zaun gets to see Viktor crash and burn in court. I’d say that’s a bit worse than just academia seeing it, as is the case in new lore.

And then there’s Blitzcrank’s lore flat-out saying that “most now know the truth” about who made him. (While this lore does predate Viktor’s existence - isn’t it odd to think about a Blitzcrank made by a faceless team of generic doctoral students, rather than Viktor... and a faceless team of generic doctoral students? - I see no reason not to take it as canonical for Viktor’s original lore. There’d been minor lore touchups before, so if Riot wanted Viktor’s creation of Blitzcrank to be an unknown... they could have edited Blitzcrank’s lore.) But Viktor’s still on the fringes, and nothing in his lore (which, again, was written years after Blitzcrank’s) seems to acknowledge that by the time he enters the League we have confirmation, date-wise, that it’s been years since the truth came out. (Orianna Judgment, etc.) That’s to say: people knowing that Viktor made Blitzcrank does nothing for him - he gets no apologies or anything like that.

Of course, if you take League lore as happening concurrently and nix the Judgments and the League, I guess that this is tenuous - but working within the framework of when he was released, it seems clear to me that the implication of all this lore is (whether it was intended by Riot to be read this way or not) that no one in Zaun cares that Viktor was stolen from. It’s an open secret. No one’s seeking justice for him. But it gets worse...!

So, it’s generally known that Stanwick didn’t make Blitzcrank by the time that the JoJ is running. And he’s just a professor for most of the run of that part of the lore, until... Issue 27. In which he becomes Chairman Pididly, someone who is now implied to have political power. (I have to assume he gets the position due to the political goodwill from Noxus that his revival of Urgot must have brought Zaun, but that’s just interpretation.) But! Even though most people know that Stanwick didn’t make Blitzcrank - that he stole Blitzcrank - he ends up not losing his university job (he’s still Professor Pididly for most of the JoJ, after all) but... gaining political office!

All of this is to say that Zaun is so crooked that you can have the fact that you stole from someone and ruined their life revealed... and get a promotion to government! You can shatter an idealistic man who had a “hope to better society” and make him into someone like the Machine Herald and face absolutely zero repercussions. I think that that is significantly worse than how new lore Viktor’s victimization by Piltover consisted of an academia-only dispute that left him with just some bitterness... New Viktor was, after all, kicked out of Piltovian academia for ethics violations, not for Blitzcrank.

Everything surrounding old lore Viktor is a bit harder to piece together, since you have to look through a few lores and make a few inferences, which is why I think that people don’t realize exactly how bad he had it... (That and time erasing memories, or people being new to the fandom, or people not being interested in Viktor, or...) But he had it bad, and I’m honestly disappointed that we never got to explore much of Zaun’s particular brand of corporate corruption in canon. Now they’re the perpetual underdogs, both victims and villians, and Riot isn’t quite sure how to write them beyond constant exploitation from Piltover. (Even the chem-barons have taken somewhat of a backseat lately in new lore, from what I’ve seen - Piltover seems to be the primary cause of Zaun’s ills, because the combined region is now an upper city/lower city metaphor about class. The chem-barons just seem to be written as a result of Piltover’s ignoring of Zaun - because Zaun seems to be more of an undercity than a sovereign city or state, but that varies depending on whatever piece of lore you’re reading and... Another post, another time.)

So. TL;DR: Viktor’s always been a character who was victimized by a city, be it Zaun or Piltover. Viktor’s always been a character more complex than just a maniacal villain, although it takes more work to see that in his old lore as compared to his new. (His new pretty much screams “we are trying to make him and Jayce morally grey”, after all.) This victimization is arguably worse in old lore, as it’s implied that he went through a very public legal case that ended with Stanwick taking credit for Blitzcrank. In addition to that, Stanwick’s subsequent shift to politics implies that Zaun is so corrupt that most everyone knowing that he’s a thief isn’t an issue at all. He’s untouchable.

Viktor’s always been the result of an idealistic man being crushed by a society that doesn’t care for him and his dreams. That’s nothing new.

[hamliet]

when does a relationship become queerbaiting? theres a book that i really like and the 2 male leads characters have a lot of storylines and arcs where they get closer and i think some of the tropes used can be similar to the typical romantic tropes, neither of them end up with anyone at the end of the story since its more about found family and the long journey the whole cast goes through. they even get shipped by another character as a running gag. personally i always saw it as being open to interpretation but recently the revised edition of the original novel came out and there were several lines those 2 characters had about each other that were kinda toned down, i didnt think much of it but i saw a post about how it was clearly baiting and the author was being homophobic for toning it down. i didnt think it counted as baiting since as far as i know, the novel was never advertised as anything with romance and the author never pretended they were gonna end up together. i am definitely a little weirded out by the decision to change those specific lines but a lot of the story stayed the same, including a lot about their relationship so idk what to think.

i guess im more confused on if it counts as baiting, or even substext??

Sooooo I am not the best person to ask about this, because I’m a cis woman who has thus far in life only been attracted in a romantic sense to cis men. I can talk a bit about baiting as a general concept in fiction, but you should definitely take it with some grains of salt. 

Baiting, for me, is like deliberately playing up an aspect writers have no intention on delivering on. Usually this is done for ratings, to tease fans, fanservice, etc, but without payoff, it is just bad writing. Red herrings are good in writing, but only can be successfully used if the actual result is more satisfying than the herring. This applies to writing in general, not just to romantic ships. However, when the baiting involves historically underrepresented groups for no reason other than to get fans to spend money consuming the story, I think we can all agree that becomes something more grotesque than just bad writing: it’s insensitive, socially irresponsible, frankly hurtful. 

Some common examples are Bridgerton which has a gay character, who is extremely minor, yet they played up this character in advertising. Also, Rizzoli and Isles I think actually had its producers mention deliberately playing up the lesbian subtext to hook the audience without ever intending on following through. 

That said, context also matters. Like, there are aspects of the culture of the work’s author, the target audience, and such that come into play here also (so like, romantic tropes differ by culture. For example, enemies to lovers is common in Asian stories but less in the west, and the “girl who pursues a guy” is extremely common in Japanese shonen in particular, while it is very much a cringe trope that almost never results in romance in American fiction. So if a writer reads, say, tropes that are common in America into a Japanese work and says it’s baiting, that’s quite possibly not the intent even if it may have been the experience of the reader. So even if there was no intent, there can still be hurt, and that hurt can be real, if that makes sense. 

The definition of what constitutes ‘baiting’ varies. I do think that, in true Tumblr fashion, the term gets thrown around a lot and loses its intended meaning, or is so rigidly defined that creators can meet the letter of the “not a bait” requirement while ignoring the spirit of it.

To start with the latter: regarding something hitting the letter of what most wouldn’t consider baiting yet not really the spirit, let’s look at The Rise of Skywalker. This movie had a genuine lesbian kiss in it... between two characters we’d never seen more than a glimpse of while others are celebrating around them. Since it has a kiss, it’s not baiting, right? Well... the director deliberately said in the lead-up to the film that he included it because he “wanted LGBT people to see themselves in the film.” If “see yourselves in the film” is like a nanosecond of background, then, like... idk. Baiting or not, it feels icky, and I know some people consider it baiting and some don’t even if they don’t like, love that representation. But I think this is more queerbaiting than like, Nobara and Maki, who don’t have explicit romantic coding. 

Going back to the former, in terms of ‘queerbaiting’ losing its intended meaning... I think there are a lot of really poorly written romantic ships out there, often het, while a lot of same-gender relationships are really well written regardless of whether there’s romantic coding within the text. The main emotional energy in stories with 90% male characters (as frankly many if not most stories are, great job world) is probably between two men. There’s just so much more potential with well-written characters who share a lot of screen time, so of course people are going to ship them. In my opinion, this does not inherently make it baiting, but it certainly creates an environment that lends itself to baiting even if the writers aren’t intending to do this. 

Like, you could say the main emotional energy in BNHA is Bakugou and Deku. However, Bakudeku is 100% not queerbaiting. It’ll never be canon romantically (I don’t even ship it lol). There has been nothing to imply romance between them even if the main emotional message can be seen in their development. Deku/Ochaco is likely to be canon, but there is a significant lack of genuine emotional energy between them (the story’s plots and themes don’t coalesce around their relationship), so it’s probably going to feel forced. In contrast, Naruto/Sasuke had an actual kiss in canon, which while played for laughs is a lot more direct romantic coding than anything between Bakugou/Deku. I actually don’t think the majority of Narusasu is baiting, but I definitely think that one moment in chapter like 3 was really poor fanservice for yaoi fans, and has not aged well at all. 

It is also the case that fans can confuse headcanons with what is actually in the text, and that just never ends well. For example, Clover and Qrow’s ship in RWBY: a lot of people read Clover as gay, which led to “bury your gays” outrage when he died. A member of the crew stated explicitly they had never intended for Clover to be a love interest for Qrow, and truthfully here was nothing strictly romantic in their relationship--nothing like a kiss or a declaration of love or a parallel to another romantic couple. Hence, I don’t personally consider it queerbaiting or bury your gays, but a lot of fans felt that it was and their pain is legitimate even if I think textually the argument isn’t there. The one thing I do think is true about this in particular is that there was also no strict platonic coding, which encourages headcanons. Clear writing, yo. It can help. 

Note the word “can” not “will,” because strict platonic coding doesn’t always fix things, either. In what was probably a reaction to the outrage over Clover’s death, you had extremely blatant platonic coding of Ruby and Penny’s relationship this season leading up to Penny’s death. Ruby refers to Penny as “our friend” three different times, wherein “friend” sends a platonic message and “our” sends an even stronger message that it’s not about the two of them despite the fact that their friendship is one of the sweetest and most interesting in the show. A lingering Ruby-Penny hug then is followed by a lingering Penny-Weiss hug, then Yang, then Blake, etc. The writers went out of their way to hit people over the head with “platonic” and yet they have still gotten accusations of bury your gays and queerbaiting because people will see what they want to see in a story. 

Seeing what you want to see in a story also isn’t inherently bad. People who are underrepresented are going to have to read themselves into stories because Lord knows writers ain’t incorporating them well enough if at all. It’s why “Mary Sues” are common in fanfiction, which is primarily written by people who are not straight white men: because where the hell else are we to see ourselves in fiction? So essentially the macrocosm of culture creates this problem, both in terms of baiting and the misuse of the term, and the only fix is a shit ton more good representation.

[queenofnohr]

Twisted Wonderland: Jade Leech Birthday Suit-up (SSR) - Voice Lines + Personal Story

Voice Lines

SSR Summoning Quote: I look forward to seeing how you’ll host me. Summoning Line: What day is it today? Let’s see, was there anything……? Just kidding— I’m well aware that it’s my and Floyd’s birthday. Groovy: I’m glad I was able to celebrate today with you, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Set Home: This is today’s outfit? Yes, let’s dress up and show off. Home Idle 1: Azul gave me a large aquarium as a gift. …...No, I don’t swim in it. I use it as a terrarium. Home Idle 2: Waiting around for party preparations to be complete doesn’t suit me, so I made one dish. Can you guess what it is? Home Idle 3: It’s surprising that I eat so much? Fufu, I get that a lot. But it’s thanks to that I was able to grow this tall so rapidly. Home Login: I enjoy parties. You get to hear such unexpected stories from people who are completely consumed by the lively atmosphere.  Home Idle Groovy: Shall I pour you some tea? ……You can’t allow the man of the hour to do that? Then I thank you for your consideration. Home Tap 1: For my birthday, Ruggie gave me two recipes that use wild plants. It seems he’s quite the chef…… My curiosity is piqued. Home Tap 2: Every year, our parents ask us what we want as a birthday gift, but what I want has never overlapped with what Floyd wants. Even twins have different tastes. Home Tap 3: I received a special blend of tea leaves from Vil. The flavor is exquisite…… As expected, he knows where to get top-grade tea. Home Tap 4: What I want? …...Art supplies. Actually, as of late, I’ve started not only collecting wild plants from the mountains, but doing field sketches as well. Home Tap 5: ! You’re a mischievous one, to pop a party popper out of the blue like that. It’s only fair that I return that surprise. Right? Home Tap Groovy: Mm, what did you tell me just now? Could you repeat that for me one more time? I’m kidding. I simply wanted to hear you congratulate me more.

Personal Story

Birthday Suit-up Chapter 1

Happy Birthday, Jade Leech

-Octavinelle Dorm - Birthday Party Venue-

NRC School Newspaper Special Edition Interview with the Birthday Boy ~Jade Edition~

> —Happy birthday.

Jade: Thank you very much.

Please tell us how you feel now that you’ve celebrated with everyone.

Jade: I am greatly honored that everyone celebrated with Floyd and I. Though having such a large number of people say, “Happy Birthday,” did make me uncharacteristically embarrassed.

—Have your parents contacted you?

Jade: Yes. Our mother sent a congratulatory message addressed to both Floyd and I. In it she wrote, “Jade, Floyd, are you eating properly every day?” “It’s wonderful that you two are having fun living on land, but come home every once in a while so we can see your faces.” ......She seems to be worried about our current situation. Though it isn’t as if it was a long time since our last correspondence— in fact, we check in with her every day. Our mother has always been a bit of a worrywart.

—Please tell us about any birthday memories you have.

Jade: Memories…… Then I suppose I’ll talk about my childhood. Every year on our birthday, not just our relatives, but our fathers’ colleagues too rush to celebrate with us. And because of that, we receive a veritable mountain of presents.

What kinds of things did you get?

Jade: We receive various items like sweets, seaweed eye-masks, and rare playthings that can only be obtained on land. However, there were always some high-class luxury items mixed in that were completely unnecessary for a child to have no matter how you looked at it…… Apparently, they weren’t for us, but to curry favor with our father…… No, rather, I should say they were from people desperate to gain our father’s trust. Without fail, our father would make those who gave us gifts that had deeper meanings sign a contract. On it read…… “This is a gift in good faith that does not seek compensation.” Father is father, and is just as prone to worrying about us as Mother is. Well, it’s like they say…… A couple who is similar is sure to get along well.

What in the world goes on at your house……

Jade: We simply run an independent business, you know? Taking care of all kinds of work, no matter how big or small…… We’re very normal, I’d say.

Birthday Suit-up Chapter 2

—What kinds of things do you like?

Jade: Terrariums. I feel growing organisms from the surface in transparent cases such as glass containers and aquariums to be quite profound.

Please tell us how you got into making terrariums.

Jade: I got my inspiration from the Great Seven’s Sea Witch. There’s an anecdote about how she kept creatures in bottles. She is a great figure I aspire to be like, and so I started imitating her, wanting to know even a little bit of how she felt. Even back when I lived in my hometown, I grew a great many things in bottles.

What is it that you like about terrariums?

Jade: Let’s see…… I suppose it’s because it’s something you manage yourself. One must have managerial skills to maintain peace in the world within the bottle. In other words, whether they live or die is up to me, alone...... Managing a terrarium is like becoming the ruler of a miniature garden. More than anything else, though, it’s nice being able to grow things freely, at your own pace. However, even though I said you can control it as you please, that’s actually not the case. The plants you gathered may suddenly die, or plants may unexpectedly sprout from the soil you collected in the mountains…… Those sort of unforeseen events happening is also part of their appeal.

Do you enjoy unexpected events?

Jade: Indeed. After all, it’s boring if things go exactly as you expect them to. I’m still a novice regarding land organisms, so how they will grow is often unpredictable for me…… That’s why I find terrariums so intriguing.

Birthday Suit-Up Chapter 3

—Please tell us any interesting memories you may have regarding your earring.

Jade: Oh my, you’re interested in the earring I wear on my left ear? Fufu, alright. I’ll tell you about it. It’s a bit of an old story now, but...... Just before we entered middle school, there was a sturgeon that challenged Floyd and I. He had the most beautiful scales. We were interested and requested that should we win, he give us his scales. The outcome of our match…… It’s obvious, no? That’s right. We were able to beat him soundly, and he conceded those beautiful scales in defeat. We got them processed, and those are the earrings Floyd and I wear now.

They’re very beautiful.

Jade: Thank you very much. It’s a favorite of mine, so I’m happy to hear it praised. Because a sturgeon appears in a powerful spell left behind by the Sea Witch…... Sturgeon scales are popular to have as charms in the Coral Sea.

—Is there anything else that’s popular in the Coral Sea?

Jade: Let’s see…… Ah, yes. Fireworks are very popular. On days when landwellers set off fireworks, many merfolk come to the surface to watch them. Floyd and I also play around near the coast on those days. Everyone is looking up at the sky, so landwellers rarely notice us. Somewhat related, merfolk of old used to think fireworks were jellyfish floating in the sky. Personally, I think they’re too showy to be mistaken for jellyfish, but…… Fufu, it’s an interesting misinterpretation, isn’t it?

Thank you very much for answering our questions. And again, happy birthday.

[slugtranslation-hypmic]

Your thoughts on the anime made me smile like an idiot bc i can relate to it sm ToT

I watched the first episode with subtitles (and a friend - it’s always more fun with a buddy) so I am back with MORE thoughts: Subtitle Edition. Idk if they will be interesting to anyone, but here’s a sampling from the notes I took.

The Hypnosis Mics are not treated as proper nouns. They’re also called solely “mics”, never microphones. I thought this was a really unusual choice (and fwiw, although you can’t usually tell because of the fonts we use, the Hypmics are proper nouns in the manga).

It turns out an “act” and a “law” are not perfect synonyms of each other, so “H Law” (Funimation) is technically more correct than “H Act” (me). Oops.

Not sure how I feel about “Brother Ichi”. It certainly works for “Ichinii” and is pretty cute, but I do really dislike having siblings call one another “Brother” or “Sister”. While this is not always the case (especially in Asian-American households), it’s atypical for Americans to call their siblings that. I know there’s no exact reason Japan has to stick exactly to American English (and I’d REALLY like to talk sometime about some thoughts I’ve had in regards to removing my natural regiolect (regional dialect) from translation and/or creating a “new regiolect” purely for J -> E translation), but it does stick out like a sore thumb in otherwise American English.

Speaking of Brother Ichi, “Brother Ichi’d never lose” made me make this exact face:

I was surprised by how much characters in the MTC sequence used the word “fuck”. I’ve been learning (slowly - I have a natural potty mouth) that excessive swearing can very easily lead to your translation sounding quite childish, even if it would fly quite naturally in real life. This certainly didn’t sound childish, but I kept going, “Oh my god. Can they get away with that?” Loved the “fucking maggots” from Samatoki.

Juuto has a catchphrase in Japanese (やれやれ) that I’ve been using as either “Good grief” or “Good lord”. He didn’t say it in Japanese as far as I heard, but I did see the translation use “Oh my” for him at one point. I wonder if they’ll continue to use that going forward.

I take character voice very seriously for Hypmic, which means I will occasionally make some fairly arbitrary decisions in order to have each character sound unique and not simply various different shades of “me” speaking. (For instance, Sasara uses “man” rather excessively in English mostly because I started writing him that way due to a casual tone of voice and then it stuck. There’s nothing really in Japanese that suggests he should use that more frequently, but it’s there because it served me a purpose in English.) It’s veeeeery interesting for me to see someone else approach these characters and create their own voices for them, especially because the voices we’re writing match up a lot. Ramuda’s use of “pretty please” made me think of this, but other characters kind of surprised me too. Their Jakurai sounds a lot like mine (albeit a bit more forceful, which is a bit closer to the original imo) too, so much that I was kind of surprised when he said something I normally think of as a Gentarou line. I had to remind myself, “Duh, it’s not me writing this.” Still, it’s fascinating to me to watch someone else start out on their own and end up with relatively similar conclusions.

That being said. The elephant in the room. Gentarou. I’m kind of on the fence on whether or not I liked those choices. Gentarou speaks in Japanese with occasionally archaic language and (almost always) formal language. The archaic language he uses is called bungo, aka literary Japanese, which hasn’t been widely spoken or used since the early 20th century. Gentarou uses it because he’s - ding ding, you guessed it! - an author. Now, I know that I’m just biased... because I translate for another series which is written in a much more obnoxious hybridization of bungo and modern Japanese... but I don’t think Gentarou is that heavy of a bungo user to really necessitate the entire “thee” and “thou” thing. I also don’t particularly enjoy using these excessive archaisms for bungo because 19th - 20th century English literature doesn’t sound like this. It sounds more like extremely formal and verbose modern English, so I prefer to use that and throw in some outdated words from time and time again for similar effect. Of course, one could argue that 19th/20th century Japanese literature isn’t necessarily an exact approximation of 19th/20th century English literature, but bah, humbug. I don’t think anyone but me gives a damn about this anyway. Overall, I liked his speech style quite a bit besides that.

Also really enjoyed the use of “wee bit leery of lending more”. The “wee” almost suggests a British accent, and I will be the biggest advocate of British English Gentarou until the day I die. The choice of dialect can make or break a translation (would love to talk about this sometime too), and using British English for him among an otherwise American English-speaking cast would be STELLAR and BRILLIANT.

I was not at all fond of the use of “D’oh!” as one of the little “Gh!” or “Urp!” noises. Sound effects don’t tend to make, but they can absolutely break a translation. (Also know that I criminally awful at sound effects, so this is the pot calling the kettle black.) “D’oh!” brings to mind Homer Simpson, which is okay for Dice, but not... not good at all for Hifumi. Funimation subber, if you are reading this... I’m sorry... I don’t... I don’t like it...

slaps the table with both hands GOD, “COFFEE AND CHILL” IN THE FLING POSSE RAP IS SUCH A BRILLIANT LINE. (Original was “珈琲タイム” iirc - lit. coffee time) (Also while I’m here, I love the fact that “coffee” is written in Gentarou’s bungo whereas “time” is written in the style of Ramuda’s English loan words. Even the way the lyrics appear onscreen is a mixture of FP’s various styles.) This is such a quick and easy way to provide background about Ramuda’s flirtatious nature and put in a bit of harmless innuendo that often appears in Ramuda songs. This also handily explains the entire “Want to go grab a bite to eat?/How about we get a cup of tea?” thing that appears often in Japanese but is less natural in English. Who thought of this? You’re a genius. You deserve a medal.

I have Jakurai use phrases containing the word “I” a lot (in phrases like “I suppose that x”, “I’m afraid that y”, etc) as a way of softening his speech and making it sound like he’s more ... personally responsible for the words coming out of his mouth, I guess. The translator used quite a bit of those similar phrases, as I mentioned previously, which surprised me a good bit. They also used the phrase “I assure you” which is AN AMAZING line for Jakurai. It gives him a much firmer tone than I normally write him with but also suggests by way of similar sounds “reassuring” the listener and overall making him sound more confident and capable. This is so good. I’m going to steal it.

Overall, I thought it was a really solid translation with a lot of thought clearly put into it. I’m excited to see more work from this subber. Mr. Josh Cole, you are killing it. Huge shoutout as well to Kotonoha Consulting and Sarah Alys Lindholm for their work with the lyrics. Incredibly strong effort. Loved it.

On the other hand, it was a bit affirming to me to see that the quality wasn’t vastly different from some of my latest efforts. There were none of the awkward lines which are still prone to crop up in my work, and it was a good bit more creative than what I can normally produce. Additionally, Hypmic is, relatively speaking, fairly easy to translate if you ignore the god damn raps. All that being said... of course I won’t have the same experience as someone who has quite literally been working in Japanese teaching or translation for as long as I’ve been alive, but it’s enough to make me think that I can, conceivably, start selling my work for money in a couple more years. Whoo. Have to celebrate the little victories.

I’m so sorry to anyone who started reading this in the hopes that it would get interesting. It didn’t.

[gesternchen]

Just randomly reviewing scenes from the movies no one remembers now. This week: Avatar (2009).

It’s not like everyone forgot James Cameron’s Avatar. Since we’re still getting some footage from behind the scenes of the sequel and news about the cast, at least someone takes pains to remind themselves of this cinematic experience from the year of 2009. It’s already been 84 (just kidding, 11) years and I’m still looking forward to at least watching the teaser (fun fact: I was 11 when Avatar came out, I’m 22 now). I even bought the Darkhorse comic book on Tsu’Tey’s backstory to, you know, investigate one of my favorite characters a little bit better (spoiler: the backstory wasn’t very much eventful but I noticed a nice detail there which I may talk about briefly a bit later).

Throughout the years Avatar has received a lot of backlash and more or less justified criticism, mainly for the plot and its problematic packaging. I believe, it depends on the perspective one watches a movie from. Of course, I wouldn’t call it an absolute gem of exciting storytelling, even though I truly enjoy it, as in majority its twists are undeniably predictable. However, I always disagreed with people saying relations in Avatar aren’t deep at all. Well, romance between Jake and Neytiri, which, let’s be honest, except for the scene of telling the truth, went too smoothly, and this is why I strongly believe clash of interests is inevitable in sequels. Their interaction remained the key one for the whole movie, and nothing is bad about that, people enjoy a nice lovestory, so do I. But 11 years after I’d like to focus on the disturbing conflict everyone prefers to ignore for some reason when recalling Avatar. For me it’s always been Jake versus Colonel Quaritch.

You guys may have already guessed which scenes I wanna talk about. Those really important ones that I consider climactic to the pace of narration. And what is more about them, they give us crucial details in character development and actors’ play to think through. The main message: Quaritch knew it was coming.

Let me firstly touch upon the scene of short conversation between Jake and Quaritch prior to Sully presumably leaving Pandora. While Jake is awating Quaritch in a large empty hall, he hardly seems to be calm about the talk, every nerve in his body is trembling, but why?

The way Jake’s drumming his fingers on the table makes me wonder if he’s okay.

Then Colonel enters the hall, grabs a chair and reminds that it had been more than two weeks since he got the latest report on how the misson was going. He knows, Sully is questioning reality, and no, he’s not ‘doubting his resolve’. He knows, the right moment to ‘terminate the mission’ is missed. He knows, he lost Jake. He knows, he’s talking to the deserter. Yet Quaritch speaks indifferent. He praises Jake’s effort and rewards him for that. With real legs he promised to him when they first talked. Quaritch hoped they’d trigger the realization in Jake. Which doesn’t happen. How sad he looks when Jake openly refuses to accept the reward.

In just one sequence Stephen’s face demonstrates the shift of all four feelings Quaritch goes through: dissatisfaction, melancholy, shame, disgust.

Quaritch sensed the moment when Jake expressed superiority to the mankind. Jake grasped that Quaritch knew everything, he played with fire, and that’s why he felt anxiety. And it lasted all the way until Quaritch stepped back for leaving the hall. But did Colonel really surrender? I doubt that.

The tension between them both feels electric, so it’s explainable why Jake’s transient smile is so awkward. Sam then heavily staring straight at Colonel's back suggests that up until now Jake regarded Quaritch as his enemy. The enemy he knew he would not be able to defeat.

I remember when watching this scene, I couldn’t get myself the answer to one question. The question was: which report did Quaritch refer to? ‘That report from two weeks ago’, but such information wasn’t satisfactory for me. To be honest, this small discovery became the actual reason why I decided to type this study. Let’s assume that this particular report which Quaritch mentioned was the videolog where Jake confessed that Omaticaya wouldn’t leave the Hometree. Here’s why.

The general audience is used to perceiving Quaritch as a cruel short-tempered military man who just waits for the starting pistol’s shot to destroy everything in sight. Again, nothing is wrong about this, the fact that his character was simply meant to be a generic personification of such type doesn’t leave us with any alternative impression of him. Let’s say, if he was given the order to ignite the operation of the Hometree’s destruction to screw the tribe out of the site, he would absolutely go for it (and so he does). He’s a man of his word after all. Let’s also say, if he was pissed off by Jake’s betrayal, he would transport himself to the mountain site in a blink of an eye, turn off the link and put Jake in jail right after the talk in the hall. Instead, Quaritch decided to wait and give Jake the last chance. Jake preffered unearthly wings to those more tangible, so Quaritch chose not to cut them so abruptly.

We’re moving to the next scene, taking place right before a toned down fight between Tsu’Tey and Jake (I’m saying so, because it’s actually one of the deleted scenes that got edited out of the final cut, and believe me, the pressure between two rivals there is way too intense). Quaritch is watching the record of Jake destroying bulldozer’s lenses with a stone. After that Jake’s face is zoomed and we watch Selfridge get frustrated, Quaritch looks pretty annoyed as well but doesn’t seem to be much surprised. What he’s feeling, is bitter disappointment in himself and knowing that he totally failed to persuade Jake to change his mind.

Just observe Stephen Lang’s performance here. He absolutely nails cold-eyed look, the fire burning slow inside of him is so palpable, and guess what, in a flash he flies off the handle.

Now, shall we check the ultimate scene, preceding the destruction of the Hometree. Though Grace versus Parker juxtaposition is central to this scene, the last time Quaritch confronting Jake face to face in his human body is essential to consider for making things clear.

When it comes to revealing to Selfridge the vainness of further negotiations with Omaticaya, isn’t it just interesting how fast Quaritch manages to find the correct videolog? It literally takes him not more than a couple of swipes to produce the proof. Here is why: he’s already watched the record and is completely aware of the Jake’s values having deteriorated.

You can tell, Jake knew he was under control, but he would rather like to ingnore this fact. His pathetic glance at Quaritch, who’s almost impending above his head, causes to think Jake would guess that Colonel could have watched this videolog. Rather, it was a mutual secret between the two of them until a turning point. But the moment of truth came, and Jake didn’t change his mind. Quaritch made sure of that and finally it was his time to triumph.

So how was it even possible to assume Quaritch may have watched the videolog I’ve been talking about for so long? Well, my explanation may be too easy to believe, but still: we can tell by Jake’s appearance and the date of the record that it is the vlog we need.

This telltale videolog was recorded 16 minutes after the another one, when Jake says that he’s uncertain, who he is anymore (LST abbreviation stands for Local Standard Time). Jake might have suddenly felt depressed and hopeless and got back to the camera while being too emotionally instable, and so must have forgotten to delete the final record.

I have one more note for you. If you check the videolog library Quaritch is swiping through, you’ll see that the latest important record, which he actually needs, is made in the interior of the mountain site block and dates back to August, 13. Other recent vlogs’ covers look nothing like Site 26 sequence. Jake may not have done any of these records at the mountain site. I still wonder though where those three or four ensuing videologs were recorded, the location seems to be red lighted, which means it isn’t blue lighting at Site 26. I may even assume he recorded some pieces at Hell’s Gate. Why would I think so? Probably because in those two scenes (dialog with Quaritch and confession at Parker’s office) Jake looks ten times better than before, he gained some weight at least and doesn’t resemble a living sceleton.

Selfridge gave Jake an hour to relocate the tribe, while gunships led by Colonel’s Dragon were already on full alert. Quaritch had no doubt that Jake’s peacekeeping mission would fail. He knew it from the beginning. Hence he sounds so sarcastic seeing Sully’s avatar tied.

Now Quaritch sipping his villain’s morning coffee tasting like fresh genocide doesn’t feel so cringy: he’s celebrating his victory over Jake (still I should agree with critisism on this point, it really is a stupid cliche and wasn’t intended to carry a deep meaning).

Now I should admit, it’s been a long journey to run this investigation and bring it to light by finally posting it. It took me around a day to collect my thoughts and express them by means of more or less readable English. Just would like to make a little side note: English is not my native, so I promise I did my best! Thanks to James Cameron for making a movie, which woke me up in the middle of the night to start reflecting, and to all the fans out there who still exist and remember this movie and so can read this essay. @avatarmovies I found your blog not so long ago and you guys say you enjoy headcanons (and movie reviews probably?..), so it would be nice if you reblogged this but I’m not insisting!!

[nightships]

The Captain’s Cabin Part 1 (again)

It’s been ages, but @everything-person sent a kind ask about a broken link! I have a sneaky feeling tumblr didn’t like my shirtless edit of our fair Killian that I originally uploaded with the fic. There is ALMOST CERTAINLY a better way to do this, and maybe i’ll get the energy to go fix the links in the old posts, but in the meantime here’s a re-upload of chapter one! reminder that it’s also on ao3. check my “jess writes cs” tag for the rest.

“The Captain’s Cabin?”

Emma squinted up at the sign, covering her eyes to keep the morning light from turning her blind. It was a ridiculous name, if she said so herself. (Never mind that this was their first day in town, and she’d been the one to choose the place.)

“I don’t know about this,” she said, sliding her eyes back to the blonde girl at her side. “We could just get back in the car and find a nice, motel-side Arby’s.”

“We just spent five hours in the car, not counting the five minutes it took to find that parking spot, Emma,” Elsa whined, “If I don’t get to eat whatever it is I’m smelling right now, I think I might cry.”

Emma ceded, but only because the smell of fried seafood was calling to her too.

The two of them stepped out of the misty morning and into the little dockside restaurant, Emma shaking her hair out of her hooded anorak jacket and Elsa flinging her braid back over her shoulder. The lunch crowd was still milling about, mostly older citizens and young parents, and the two were only too happy to take their time finding seats. The walls were stained dark, as if the warm drizzle outside had penetrated the wood, and covered in weather-worn treasures that undoubtedly came from the nearby sea. One side of the small building stood on ground level, but the other seemed to stretch out toward the water. It was nice, Emma had to admit, nicer than the dorky sign on the front had led on.

The two of them chose seats at the end of the long bar, despite all earlier protests about sitting for any prolonged periods (ever again, Elsa had promised, one foot up on the dashboard and the other hanging out the passenger window.) Elsa busied herself tracing the faces of old sailors and fisherman pictured on the walls, while Emma watched the tide coming in.

It hardly looked pleasant out, but she was certain those little black blobs in the distance were boats. She ran her hand over the windowpane to get a clearer view and squinted again, trying to figure out exactly what kind of vessels had caught her attention.

“Can I help the both of you?”

Emma swiveled on the little barstool and found herself eye-level with a toothy, if welcoming, grin. The man was standing on the other side of the bar, his black shirt emblazoned with the same logo from the sign outside the restaurant. She had no idea how he snuck up on her like that, but Elsa answered him before she could voice her question back.

“You definitely can. We’ve been in the car for far too long, and we need food.”

“I’ll have to see if we’ve got any laying around, then,” he said with a bit of a laugh, seeming to relax into his smile as he regarded Emma more thoroughly. "Where are you traveling from?”

“Boston,” the both of them answered, tiredness coming through in Emma’s voice and restlessness coming through in Elsa’s.

He clicked his tongue and handed both of them menus, leaning a hip against the bar as he played with one of the bottles on the counter top. “Quite a long ways away, but at least you chose a beautiful day to come up. It’s not always this nice out.”

“You call this nice?” Emma chuckled, wrinkling her nose as she nodded toward the window. “It’s about to rain.” “On the contrary, lass. I’d reckon the sun’ll be out before you’ve finished your meal.” His smile was challenging her now, as if he was about to reach out into the air and ask her to shake on it.

“Speaking of,” Elsa said, swiveling her menu toward him and pointing at a dish. “Can I get this with curly fries?”

“There’s no way,” Emma said, shaking her head at the man. He was leaned over the counter, arms folded out in front of him. She thought she could see the beginnings of a tattoo on the inside of his arm but refused to inspect any further, knowing his eyes had been following her a little too closely already.

“Ah, but there is,” he sang out. “When you’ve lived here as long as I, you tend to get accustomed to the signs.”

"Nobody’s that good,” She pressed, crossing her arms in front of her. He’d been keeping them (well, keeping her,if Elsa’s less-than-subtle looks meant anything) company ever since they’d ordered a meal, and since then she’d come to know quite a bit about him. His name was Killian Jones, and it didn’t sound like an American name because it wasn’t. He and his brother had come over from the United Kingdom a few years ago and started up business here. They had a sailboat, of all things, moored out at the end of the restaurant’s dock, and that apparently gave him the ability to predict the weather. “You have to have checked an app, or something.”

He shook his head again, eyes sparkling as they regarded her. “I could show you, if you’d like,” he said, a bit of extra something in his voice as he made the offer. “Liam’s not quite done with your orders yet, and it won’t take long.”

Emma gave him a challenging look of her own, then, wondering just how many tourists got an invite out onto his sailboat while their meals were made ready. On the other hand, though, her legs weren’t nearly stretched enough after driving for so long, and she did like the idea of standing again.

“Oh, go do it,” Elsa said, tearing her straw wrapper into tiny little squares atop the bar. “I’ll wait here for when the food gets out.”

“See? She’ll wait here, for when the food gets out,” Killian said, sweeping his arm out toward Elsa and raising his brow at Emma. “Come on, Swan, don’t make a man beg.”

Again, Emma relented, but only because she would never hear the end of it from Elsa if she acted like going with him was a big deal.

“What made you pick Maine, of all places?”

They were both leaned against the rail of his sailboat (which was more than a little impressive, Emma grudgingly admitted. With something like this at her disposal, she’d probably spend a few cloudy days on the water, too) and watching the little town ferry pick up passengers from the neighboring dock. It’d made three trips since they came outside,  passengers snapping pictures and laughing at the sea spray when they passed over particularly large curls of wake.

“I could ask you the same,” he countered, twisting his neck to regard her. She didn’t remember him coming to stand so close, exactly, but then the past twenty minutes had gone by without her thinking of a single excuse to run back to Elsa. (It definitely had nothing to do with the way he seemed to talk about the sea like it was his first love, that was certain.)

“It’s different,” she told him with a small laugh. “We’re not moving in.”

“We didn’t think we were either, to be honest. Liam and I had plans to sail up and down the coast, to pack up every time we thought we were getting too rooted down.”

“Guess that worked out for the two of you,” Emma countered, nodding back toward the restaurant. “Big change of plans?”

“You could say that.” His smile turned wistful then, almost dreamlike, and Emma found herself watching him as he turned his eyes back to the sea. She couldn’t tell if it was the way the sun was now warming their faces or simply the way he was born, but the ocean seemed pooled right there in his eyes, too. He turned to her then, catching her off guard once more with his closeness. “I’ll wager your food’s waiting for you now, love.”

Surprisingly reluctant to leave the peaceful, salty air out on the docks, Emma nodded, letting him lead her back inside. Most of the lunch rush had taken off by then, and it was almost too easy to hear her friend’s voice carrying through the restaurant as they stepped back through the doorway.

“- she’s not really my sister, even though she looks it, but we always take this big sisterly road trip in the spring to celebrate meeting each other. She pretends she hates long trips, but I know that - Emma!”

Emma’s eyes widened considerably as she saw her friend chatting up a dark-haired stranger, one whose head looked exactly like Killian’s from the angle she had on him. He turned then, a lighter shade of blue eyes meeting hers. He was wearing the same shirt as Killian, too, but all brotherly resemblance ended below eye level.

“You must be Emma,” the man said, straightening up off the barstool and reaching out a large, square hand. “Liam Jones, privilege to be at your services today.”

Emma could see Elsa’s bright eyes behind him, switching frantically between delight and panic. She had always been terrible at improvisation, especially when it came to someone she wanted to impress. Emma only smiled and shook his hand warmly, not missing the gigantic plate of curly fries that Elsa had placed between them. (She didn’t miss the look Liam gave to Killian, either, but she found herself wishing she’d seen it from Elsa’s perspective instead. As it was, he was standing too close to her for her to see.)

“Nice to meet you. Are you the one I need to thank for the sandwich waiting over at my seat?”

“I am, especially since my second-in-command was nowhere to be found,” Liam said pointedly, aiming his smirk at her instead of his brother this time. She managed not to blush, but there was no hiding the snort that came from Elsa at her seat.

Seeing the food on her plate reminded Emma of their reason for visiting, and she found herself lingering there long after her plate held nothing but crumbs, swapping travel stories with the two men who held the sea in their eyes. It was comfortable, just as much as her ride together with Elsa had been, and suddenly she found herself wondering what else they might have missed if they hadn’t pulled off the interstate to fuel up in the little seaside town.

(Elsa, for all her part, wasn’t even trying to be subtle as she offered Liam the last long curly fry on her plate, complaining when he told her it’d be ungentlemanly to take anything more from her plate than he already had. Her argument was that he’d made them, after all, and deserved to spend a little time savoring the dishes he made. They didn’t even notice it when Killian snuck the thing off her plate and ate it himself.)

“So,” Killian finally asks, stepping up to tackle the question they’d all been dancing around, “How long are the both of you in town?”

"Oh, we only planned on stopping for a few-” Emma felt the point of Elsa’s shoe dig into her shin then, effectively cutting her off before she could say anything drastic. Emma swiveled back and gave her just as deliberate and obvious a look, wondering what the hell had gotten into her.

“A few days. Maybe a week or two,” Elsa supplied, sipping at her water and refusing to meet Emma’s eyes. “We don’t really have to be back any time soon.”

Emma let it go after a moment, but only because she didn’t want that to be the last smile she saw on Killian Jones’ face.

[luluxa]

Drifter

Something I wanted to do for ages - an illustration to one of my original worlds. And I’m using James as a character because of reasons :D

Edit: the reasons :)

An intro for an AU fic set in one of my original worlds. Written a while ago and by now I honestly don't know when (if) I'm gonna finish it, and as a standalone bit it doesn't make much sense, but I guess it can provide some context for the art.

Guide You

Summary: Jeremy and Richard are set to have an adventure in the lands they know very little about, and of course, for that they will need a guide.

So it would appear they were going in the entirely wrong direction.

Hammond glares at Jeremy, weariness and anger on his little mug underlined poignantly by a ratty beard.

“You are a bellend, Clarkson,” he says very politely due to their new company, a nice change to all the abuse that was hurled at Jeremy for the last three days.

Their – well, Jeremy doesn’t want to say ‘saviour’, since they weren’t dying or anything – their finder inclines his head at Hammond’s expressiveness. An inclined hand is all the emotion that can be read off him, since he doesn’t remove his scarf or goggles, remaining mysteriously faceless and nameless.

“You could turn around and go in whichever direction you wished,” Jeremy retorts testily. He really doesn’t fancy appearing incompetent and pathetic in front of strangers.

“And then explain to your wife and children I just left you in the desert for the wild goats to feast on your flesh?”

Jeremy huffs, gesturing at his face. “Of course, the wild goats wouldn’t do you any harm since you look so much like one they’d accept you in their ranks immediately.”

Hammons scratches at his beard. “I look like Rob Dawny Jr and you know it. Don’t be jealous of my good looks.”

Jeremy lets out a massively sarcastic snort and the mystery man sighs and switches off the engine of his Falcon.

“Would you prefer to continue with this admittedly entertaining comedy double act or shall we make a camp?”

Jeremy and Hammond both grin at the comment and agree that the camp would be great.

“I’m Ainnay,” the man introduces himself at last, as they all dismount. “You, I gather, are from Ktider.”

“We are,” Jeremy nods, “I’m Clarkson, the midget is Hammond, and we were supposed to make a documentary about the desert but he’d challenged me to a race and then we got into the sandstorm and lost all our bearings.”

“You lost our bearings!” Hammond starts again, jabbing a finger at him. “I told you were going the wrong way!”

“Oh sure, because the direction you had proposed wouldn’t have lead us to the mountains a thousand miles from where we’ve started!”

“Yeah, where there’s at least some civilisation and not endless dunes with just an occasional goat skeleton stuck in a dried bush!”

“Gentlemen, please,” Ainnay interrupts them suddenly, holding his palms up. “It’s very easy to get lost in the desert, especially for someone who’s never been here before. Experienced Freemen sometimes get lost in sandstorms. I wouldn’t fight about it on your place. Of course, going for a race in the desert is another matter entirely,” he adds smoothly.

Jeremy gapes at him for a second, exchanges a glace with Hammond, and they both smirk.

“The race was definitely not my fault,” Jeremy says easily.

“You agreed to that!”

“And you agreed to follow me around! Five years ago, in fact!”

At last, Hammond gives up. “Yeah, all right, that was my biggest mistake and I have no choice but to concede it,” he says with as much sarcasm as he can muster.

While they were arguing, Ainnay managed to start a fire and somehow task semi-distracted Hammond with erecting a canopy, so Jeremy can celebrate his victory by sitting down and taking off his incredibly annoying itchy scarf.

“Ohh, I swear, it only cumulates the sand in your hair and does nothing to protect you from it!” he groans, scratching at his head vigorously, while Hammond nods along. “This is rubbish!”

Having brought all his pots and little bags under the canopy, Ainnay sits down as well. “It’s cos you’d put it on all wrong,” he comments. “I’ll show you later how it’s done, but one of the main things is that you put your goggles on it, not under it.”

Jeremy shrugs sheepishly and then has to spend a while ignoring Hammond’s speculations about the comfort of goggles-wearing, because Ainnay takes all his head-gear off as well and appears to be immensely pleasurable to look at.

Swallowing and averting his eyes with an effort from the sinfully pretty bow of pink lips, Jeremy hopes his blush will be mistaken for a heat rash. Will he ever be past this stupid and perverse notion of finding men attractive?

“Are you a Nahan, then?” he hears Hammond ask cautiously and looks up to see a red vertical stripe on Ainnay’s forehead, revealed now when he’s flicked the curls away from his face.

“I am. Couldn’t you tell that by me name?” he asks, looking confused, his accent very slight but audible now when Jeremy thinks about it.

Jeremy glances at Hammond, both of them shrugging.

“Not really. Should we?” Jeremy scowls. “Are we being massively ignorant and rude somehow, by any chance? In which case, please excuse us, we’ve literally came over here a week ago and know close to nothing about the local customs.”

Ainnay smiles, eyes squinted and sparkly, making Jeremy’s insides quiver. “No, not so far, although I can tell already you have a potential.”

Jeremy finds it in himself to snort and Hammond grins ruefully – well, he could get away with a lot, being stupidly charming when he wants to, but Jeremy has nothing to counterbalance his bellendism. He rather hopes he won’t offend Ainnay terribly at some point, as he does, indeed, has a lot of potential – and experience – in this area.

“Nahan people have pretty distinct names,” Ainnay explains calmly, making tea. “A Nahan man will always give you just one, it’s our ‘Amma namet’, a tribe’s name, given to us by someone from the tribe we live in. Those names are Ruisk in origin and usually descriptive – mine, for example, is two words: Ain – soft and Nay – hard.” Ainnay glances up from the tea, looking very soft and lovely indeed, and although Jeremy has known him for twenty minutes, he can tell the ‘hard’ part is there as well.

He nods. “Got it. Why is it always just one name?”

Ainnay offers them cups with tea and switches to making some sort of heavily spiced sandwiches that Hammond eyes with deep distrust.

“Do you believe in any sort of higher power – gods, fate, anything at all?”

Jeremy scowls at the sudden subject swerve. “No,” he says categorically, and Hammond shrugs with indifference. The little fussy moron sips the tea and tries very hard to not make a face – Jeremy thinks the tea is perfectly fine, but then again, Hammond is known to make faces at water. “I mean, we have organised religion in Ktider but it’s no more than a collection of fairy tales and a list of ridiculously strict rules and improbable threats of post-mortem punishment to make an illiterate peasant behave.”

Ainnay frowns fleetingly at that. “How odd. Well, here people do believe in higher powers, although no one’s imposing it on them. I would guess it’s because living somewhere as unpredictable and dangerous as a desert makes you invoke anything at all to ease your struggle with the world around.”

Jeremy contemplates it and nods. “Maybe. The seamen are like that as well – every sea-going man I’ve ever known was superstitious as hell, regarding the seas to be well, almost a deity of its own.”

Ainnay nods. “Yes, so is the desert – you know these lands as Tensah, I think, but it’s really the name of the goddess that is supposedly looking over us.”

Jeremy notes that Ainnay doesn’t seem to be very religious himself, wondering, why doesn’t he conform to the beliefs of his people.

“So what does it have to do with names?” Hammond asks, ever impatient and probably annoyed with the non-promising dinner.

Ainnay doesn’t look bothered with the rudeness, remaining serenely calm and immersed in the food making. “Our tribe names are designed to hide us from the goddess who’s known to not like men very much. Women go by the first name always, as they’ve nothing to fear.”

Men fearing a goddess sounds pretty entertaining – Jeremy’s heard about ancient people worshipping Earth like the ultimate Mother, and it was proposed by some historians in those ancient times women were the rulers – he wonders, whether it was or hell, still is, true for the local desert people.

“I think we have something similar to your Amma namet thing – nicknames,” Jeremy says on an afterthought. “His is Hamster,” he points at Hammond, making the latter glare.

Ainnay hums. “Yeah, we have nicknames too, but it’s not the same thing. Amma namet is absolutely formal and ritualistic rather than amusing and affectionate. It’s for permanent use, since our first name has to be hidden. The first name can only be used one on one, and only your mother can use it, or a person to whom you give that name – usually a life partner. So, if a Nahan man ever gave you his first name he would be actually saying ‘I love you and I want to spend my life with you’.”

“I hope to never hear that one,” Hammond says immediately, and Jeremy immediately and ridiculously wonders what is Ainnay’s first name.

Bad thought, he tells himself angrily. Incredibly bad and out of order.

They receive their plates with the sandwiches and Jeremy makes a point to declare it very tasty – which it is – to counterbalance Hammond’s politely concealed but still evident disgust.

“Don’t mind him. Hammond hates everything that isn’t eggs and gin,” Jeremy explains, talking away his portion to not waste anything.

Hammond lets him with relief. “I don’t hate everything. I’m just not used to foreign food, sorry. I have some crackers on me, I’ll be fine with those.”

Ainnay shrugs. “All right. What’s gin?”

They spend another hour discussing alcoholic beverages and food, Hammond increasingly horrified with Ainnay’s descriptions of the local drinks that seem to include snake bile and scorpions, until Jeremy realises that while remaining perfectly deadpan, Ainnay is having a lot of fun making Hammond queasy, and sits back to be entertained.

“There’s no such thing as rotten shark soup!” Hammond cries eventually, riled up and red in the face. “You’re having me on!”

Ainnay looks at him with clear-eyed sincerity. “Why would I be having you on? It’s a delicacy, I’ve had some, they serve it with fried whale intestines – it’s actually delicious, as long as you don’t breath in.”

On that, Jeremy gives up, giggling and pointing helplessly at Hammond’s constipated mug. “Your stupid tiny face, all scandalised,” he manages at last. “Ainnay, you’ve got to stop or Hammond will be sick.”

Looking pleased with himself, Ainnay nods. “As you wish. Although everything I said was the truth.”  

“You’re worse than Clarkson,” Hammond says, looking hurt. “I hoped to meet someone nice on this journey.”

Ainnay’s expression remains as kindly and innocent as it was. “Tough luck.”

Jeremy dissolves in giggles again, delighted beyond words, and Hammond turns away pointedly, sulking.

“And here I thought we’ll be stuck with just the scenes of the dunes and Hammond moaning,” Jeremy says, pleased, patting his absorber under the coat. He’ll have to sort the stream soon, to not spend hours and days editing the raw material. “That would’ve made a boring show.”

Noticing Ainnay’s confusion, Jeremy produces the absorber disc from under the layers of his dusty robes. “We have them on us 24/7, basically. Bit difficult to make a comprehensive story out of the uninterrupted stream, but we resolved it by embracing a lot of the randomness. People like it, oddly enough.”

Ainnay just looks more confused. “Hold on. I did not understand a word. What is that thing?”

Hammond turns around from his sulking and his crackers to gape at Ainnay along with Jeremy. “You don’t know what it is?”

Ainnay shrugs. “Should I?”

Jeremy looks at his absorber. “Well, yeah, since it came from your part of the world. It’s black niurite, it absorbs the perception of a person connected to it.”

Still blank, Ainnay reaches for the absorber but thinks better of it. “Could you be more specific, please?”

“It absorbs your perception, things you see, or hear, or smell, or what you feel by touch – it stores it as a stream of uh, sensory experience. People then can duplicate it to their absorbers and tune in. It’s a bit like dreaming,” Jeremy tries to explain, “only it’s not your dreaming and everything is real. Well, you could tune into your own stream, which would be like remembering something, but you know, with full presence in the moment. So what Hammond and I are doing here is making a stream – after editing it’ll be his and mine streams in turn combined into one. There should be also a third-person perspective of our discmen, but since we’ve lost them right after coming here, it’ll be just our points of view, so to speak.”

Ainnay listens with his mouth open. “Whoa,” he manages at last. “That’s amazing!”

Bemused, Jeremy exchanges a glance with Hammond again. “Are you saying you have nothing like that in your lands?”

Still transfixed with the absorber, Ainnay shakes his head. “No. We don’t really know what to do with black niurite – your lot likes it enough to buy it, so we sell it to you. We just thought you use it for jewellery or something else decorative. Can you show me how it works?”

Luckily, Hammond has a spare absorber, so he gives it to Ainnay, tying his scarf around his eyes securely and explaining how to connect to it, which takes Ainnay a while but eventually, he lets out a startled yelp and waives his hands about, reacting to something Hammond has on it.

“Bloody Norah!”

Filing away the unfamiliar curse, Jeremy watches Ainnay go from flaily amazement to the stillness of intent concentration – he always loves to watch kids do it, but a grown man discovering streaming is especially endearing.

[let-it-show]

Bless This Happiness We Found

I wanted to write a little something for Anna’s birthday! Simple questions bring about her thoughts and well, just something nice. I didn’t really edit it because I’m very tired, and didn’t want to be much later with it. Title is from the lyrics out the outtake song “Home”! Can easily be read as Snow Sisters or Elsanna :) --- "What do you want for your birthday?" Anna opened her mouth to answer, but as soon  as she did so, she found she had no answer. "I-I don't know." "What? There must be something!" Olaf gave her a concerned look from his place on their red and white checkered picnic blanket. They'd decided to have lunch together on a beautiful summer day while Elsa took a meeting with a couple of farmers in town. Anna would have attended, and she even tried, but with her birthday the following day Elsa had told her she was to take the week off. Anna protested of course, and they almost fought about it. All she wanted to do was spend time with Elsa! Spending time with her sister was her favorite thing in the world! At the same time, it was easy for Elsa to convince her - she hugged Anna and kissed her freckled cheek, telling her just to trust her.

At first Anna had wondered if Elsa was planning some grand event, and she didn't know how she felt about that. She loved Elsa making a big deal of her birthday, she really did, but what would require a week off? If Elsa was planning a huge party, she didn't know that she was ready for whatever was coming.

However as the days went along, she found herself relaxing. She'd been so invested in being the second queen of Arendelle, so invested in leading, that she'd found...well, she lost parts of herself that came back as she relaxed. She felt them as she leaned back on the blanket, clad in the beautiful dress that Elsa had given her years prior during the first birthday in forever. Her hair hung free, resting on her back. "Nothing comes to mind Olaf," she finally answered. "I know I'll get some things, Elsa has given me a different dress every year and-and you know her, she spoils me! I know you and Kristoff have been whispering..." She smiled at him and he chuckled. "...Mattias carved me that duckling last year, and I saw him working at something the other day."

"Oh." Olaf leaned back as well and looked up at the blue sky above them. "I guess if you know you're getting so many gifts, it's greedy to ask for them! Elsa must feel that way since she gives away gifts on her birthday each year."

Anna stared up at the sky as well. When had she last spent lots of time outside the castle with Olaf, just staring at the sky? There were no clouds for them to find shapes in, but she didn't mind that. "Elsa just loves to make everyone around her so happy...so do I! But her birthday is during that time of year, so it makes a little more sense." Elsa had begun to let Anna join with her in planning the gift-giving each winter, and Anna loved it. She loved her sister so much.

"Elsa doesn't have to give gifts to make anyone happy. Neither of you do," Olaf commented. "I'm happy right now! We haven't done this in a while."

A grin broke out over Anna's face, her gaze still on the sky. "I'm happy too."

"Hoo hoo! Queen Anna, you look so happy!"

Anna paused on her walk through town, having spent time with Olaf until he dozed off. Actually, she stayed for a little while, until her foot fell asleep. She kissed the top of the little snowman's head before deciding to go on a very leisurely stroll, something she hadn't done in a while.

She was usually with Elsa, so she missed her, but it was still lovely - especially when a friendly face greeted her. "Oaken! Hi! How are you?" she asked, making her way over to his kiosk. She could never quite pin down how his business worked. Sometimes she wouldn't see him in town for a while and he'd be in his store where she'd met him years ago. Other times, he'd be peddling remedies for stress relief and offering massages to various Arendellians.

"Very well thank you! Tomorrow's your big day!" he said with a smile and a wave from his place behind his counter. On display he had flowers, sunhats, and bottles of...of mysteries. She wasn't sure.

Anna bounced closer though. She hadn't chatted with him in a while, not having proper time. "Yes, it  is," she said with a laugh. "You always remember!"

"How could I forget your birthday?" he asked, and reached for what was a surprisingly huge pile of sunflower bouquets, pulling one wrapped in an orange ribbon. "Let me give you some flowers to start your day with!"

"Oh, thank you!" Anna squealed. She was never able to turn down sunflowers! She took them with a smile as she bounced on her heels, and then buried her face in them. Her love for sunflowers was almost an obsession, and she never put together quite why, other than being bright and sunny. They just made her so happy!

"You're so welcome! But I'm sure you have grander birthday wishes, ya? What have you asked for this year?" He placed his palms together and tapped his fingers against each other, an excited look on his face.

"I haven't asked for anything, I don't really know what I'd want!" Anna replied, her eyes closing as she remained in her flowers for another few seconds.

"Oh no? Nothing at all?"

"Nope!" she answered brightly.

"Oh!"

When Oaken failed to follow up with anything else, Anna opened her eyes. "Is...is that weird?" she asked, somewhat confused.

Oaken chuckled. "No, no. Well...yes. Usually people want something for their birthday! Even if it's not a material gift, they want something! Are you sure there's nothing you're looking for, Anna?"

Anna sighed. She really couldn't think of anything. She had a wonderful life in the castle, and was surrounded by everyone she loved. Most of all, she had Elsa! She couldn't wait to see her again that evening when she knew the meeting would be over. What was she supposed to ask for? "Not really...I know I'll get gifts tomorrow and I'll love whatever I receive, but I don't want anything in particular. As long as nothing bad happens, I'll be happy." That was the truth. She half wanted to say that she hoped for a day where no one wanted to follow mysterious voices and the earth stayed calm, but those would be strange things to say just for the sake of conversation.

Life had been fairly normal. There'd been no disruptions, just days of being a ruler of a kingdom, which could be tiring. Elsa handled it impressively.

Oaken watched her for a second, and then a light chuckle escaped him. "Well, then I'm very happy for you Queen Anna," he said simply, and Anna knew he meant it.

The time to see her sister was drawing closer and the sun was beginning to leave its place high in the blue sky. Anna had made some small talk as she walked, and eventually she found herself in front of the statue she'd had dedicated to their parents. She shifted her sunflowers in her arms as she looked up at them, chewing her lip. She couldn't really remember a truly happy birthday with them, which was somewhat sad. Sure, they celebrated it with her and gave her presents and dinner and there was a very minor celebration in the castle.

And every year, Elsa's door stayed closed without Anna understanding why.

"Good afternoon, Your Majesty! Or perhaps it's good evening by now."

Anna was taken from her thoughts by a familiar, smooth, calming voice. It was a voice she was always happy to hear, and she turned slowly to face Mattias as he approached. "Evening, I suppose. Hello Mattias!" she replied, not bothering to correct him - he knew it was more than okay for him to just call her by her name. He preferred to use her title though, and she respected that.

"How are you doing? Enjoying your week off?" he asked her, continuing forward and stopping beside her to look at the statue.

"Oh, yes, very much. It's been wonderful. It's strange not doing all my meetings and not being in the study but...well, it's also so good to...um..." She felt a little strange telling the hard-working man that it was nice to have less on her shoulders. Even if it was the truth, it seemed a bit awkward to say that to Mattias, dressed in his guard uniform, patrolling like he always did. Anna could tell it brought him a sort of peace.

He glanced at her, a hint of amusement in his face. "It's fine to say you're enjoying not working. From all I've learned about you, it seems being a Queen of Arendelle was never exactly in your plans."

"Oh!" she placed her hand lightly on her chest, laughing nervously. "Well no, it wasn't - I don't, I don't hate it! I don't even dislike it. I just miss some of my life before."

"Understandable," Mattias said with a little nod.

Anna took that as encouragement to continue. "I had responsibilities before! I helped around town and when Elsa would stop being so stubborn I would do what I could with her work. Then we had time to be with each other. That's kind of how it is now, except, I have to be a little more involved because of my title...we still have fun though! And I see her every day since she returned from the forest!"

Mattias glanced at her again, before turning to face her completely. "So despite the change, you're happy? Really happy?"

"I...yes, I am," Anna answered in a small voice. "Why do you ask?"

"Your birthday is tomorrow, correct?"

"...Yes?"

Mattias smiled, letting out the air of almost quiet laughter as he regarded her. "I know birthdays can be a time of reflection, of thinking about what we've accomplished in life. At least, I did that every year in the forest. Anyway, finding you out here looking at the statue of your parents drove me to ask."

Anna felt her shoulders relax - she hadn't even known she'd been tense. Mattias had such a way with his words, so able to calm her when she needed and providing a sense of comfort she hadn't felt from an older male figure in her life in years. Someday she'd have to show him just how much she appreciated him. "I see. Yes, I was thinking a little, mostly about my birthday and how happy I am to have everyone here. My birthdays used to be very lonely, but now..."

"Now?"

Anna shrugged a little. "Well now, things are better than I could have ever thought. I have Elsa, I have my family - that includes you - and I get to do good for my kingdom. I don't have to do it alone. It's a lot of work sometimes but...but then I have days like these, where I can walk around the town and everyone says hi to me. Everyone knows me and no doors are closed. I do what I can to help them, and they support me." She was very, very happy.

Mattias didn't answer right away. He kept smiling, and looked back to the statue. "So...what do you want for your birthday, Your Majesty?"

"Oh..." Anna laughed, she should have expected it. "I can't think of anything. I've tried several times today and just couldn't. There's nothing I could ask for."

"Nothing at all?" he asked, but he didn't sound disbelieving.

"Nothing at all," she responded quietly, looking up at the statue. She didn't follow it up with anything else, just regarding her honored past, though in a way it felt like she was looking at two strangers. In that moment it didn't bother her. She wasn't feeling alone.

When she finally approached the castle a little while later, Elsa was crossing the bridge to meet her. She was in her green dress that she'd made years ago - she had been wearing it all week. Magic dresses rarely had to be laundered, it appeared.

"Anna!" Elsa threw out her arms as she greeted Anna with a huge smile. It was like they hadn't seen each other in months when it had been just hours. Elsa hugged her with such intensity too and she always did that.

It was a hug that let Anna know she'd never be pushed away again, and she melted into it as her bouquet dropped the short distance to the ground. She returned the embrace eagerly. "Oh Elsa! I missed you!"

"I missed you too. The meeting lasted forever...have you had a nice day?" Elsa asked, still squeezing.

"It's been a lovely day. But you know, I wish you'd been at my side," Anna told her quietly.

Elsa finally released her, only to run her palms down Anna's arms to take her hands, holding them down between them. "I would have liked that too. Tomorrow I will be, my schedule is cleared just for you. We can do anything you want. What would you like to do for your birthday?"

It was that question again, though framed differently. Her answer was still the same. "I don't know. Nothing in particular."

"Nothing...? Surely there's something that would make you happy?" Elsa asked, tilting her head a little, the tiny snow diamonds in her hair sparkling despite the setting of the sun.

Anna almost laughed because of how-how dear Elsa looked in the moment, so ready for an answer, so ready to please. How could she ask for more than that? Standing on the bridge, hands joined, while Elsa's gaze met her own - after a day of seeing friends and knowing she was somewhere that so thoroughly loved her.

She squeezed Elsa's hands and leaned forward until their foreheads touched, her sister face so close to her own. "I am happy, Elsa." She watched the beautiful smile that spread across Elsa's features, something she always loved to see. Yes, she was sure of what she was saying. "I am very, very happy."

[freshlybakedspiderbread]

more random trivia and commentary, garden and newspapers edition

double this time. hopefully i’ll be able to have more of these in the future ...!

The Puppeteer’s Little Gardeners (ffnet) (ao3)

literally what started the first thought behind this fic was shortly after publishing ‘what drives us to celebrate’, i just happened to see a tweet that was someone going ‘i like alice and yuuka as a couple and wish there was more content of them’ and i thought to myself ‘huh, thats not a bad pairing at all. why dont i do just that?’ and there I went. To do that. That’s literally all there was to it. This is probably going to be the only time ever where it comes to me that simply n_n;;

that said, if you’ve read it, you could probably guess that Alice’s various dialogue and thoughts in it regarding hitting some kind of slump in her hobbies was some very blatant projecting and self-inserting on my part. I mean there’s always inevitably gonna be a little bit of that no matter what i’m writing, but here it was almost like it was coming directly from my brain feelings onto the text :P Not to say that I turned Alice into a complete self-insert or anything! i’ve always pictured her as a serious and passoinate artist of a magician, compared to the workshop technician of Marisa, the knowledgable researcher of Patchouli, or the down-to-earth free spirit Narumi. Alice’s totally the type who probably has to be reminded to just smell the flowers every now and then.

I feel like with Yuuka, I just had to make sure i never strayed away from the image of her in my mind, which consisted of basically ‘always kinda lax, all smiles, believes and understands the beauty and fragility of flowers more than anyone else’. i believe Yuuka is just genuinely nice and loves flowers! I also believe she can be scary and merciless. these can all be true!!

all the guest stars i just thought would be logical but also fun to include. Marisa and Narumi were no-brainers since they’re neighbours of Alice. I also know in fanworks, Medince has always been vaguely associated with Yuuka in some form another, and my preferred interpretation, as seen in the story, is just that they are also pleasant neighbours. I like to think they got along really well after one or two times where they just beat each other up (which is probably the norm for a lot of dynamics in gensokyo).

I think i remember feeling tempted to spend a lot more time with those other characters, maybe just adding more scenes of Alice or Yuuka talking with them (Yuuka and Narumi never do interact, wonder what that would be like??) or just having more of them going through the sunflower jungle together, but i think its probably for the best that i decided against it. Mostly because i was desperate to finish and submit the fic before christmas for completely arbitrary reasons,

then there’s Eternity Larva, the ‘villain’ of the story. I remember there being several factors that went into me deciding to use her. One is that i was having nostalgic and fond feelings of HSiFS, and wanted a chance to do something with its characters. Another is that, well... I do actually like the bonkers theory/backstory that Larva used to be some kind of super god worshipped by a cult, but only as a funny backstory kind of thing. i don’t think trying to draw drama out of that would be fun for me. I mean, she’s a cute little butterfly fairy who hangs out with Cirno. Having her awaken to dark powers is like trying to take EX Rumia seriously. however, while i was thinking of a way to introduce conflict into this story about taking care of flowers, i figured using Larva would be a fun way to just coyly hint at all that stuff, just on a surface level. As is, the super-powered fairy who turns a garden into a forest is silly enough to fit this relatively peaceful fantasy story, while providing a big enough threat to have Alice have a crisis of confidence.

I think... the florist in the human lady is just barely prominent enough to count as an original character?? one with a preestablished relation to an existing character?? that’s supposed to be a big deal or something, right? i’m old yet i still feel blindly new to the fanfiction side of the world.

anyway, This story isn’t one i think about much at all, but when i do, i think i’m pretty perfectly satisfied with having come up with it and writing it out.

A Sensational Wind Worth Stirring (ffnet) (ao3)

If there’s any character who I can link to my earliest days of being into touhou besides Seiga (and the taoists in general), it would be Aya, literaly the first touhou anything i ever remember coming across. but rather than go into that here, i’ll just say that i knew from early on, i wanted to write a story starring her, and that would give me a reason to write aloud about her place and feelings of tengu hierarchy. The story ultimately didn’t delve super deep into it, I don’t think, and more just used all that as a set-piece, but its a nice set-piece to explore. Sometimes, you just happen to want to tell a certain story in a certain place with a certain atmosphere, if only for variety’s sake !

That said, when it came to thinking of what would actually happen in such a story, uh... i’m pretty i had a big load of nothing for a long while, just a lot of emotions i wanted to convey, and what kind of personality and vibes and fun lines i wanted to be able to show off. then again, is that not how most fan ideas start out? You think of a strong and good feeling and then work backwards until there’s like an actual scene or story to accompany it? Or is that just me...

anyhow, concluding that Saitono and Mai would be the ones to provide the conflice was an inevitable no-brainer. I was still on my HSiFs kick from before, and i felt (still feel) like this pair was an underappreciated duo compared to the secret god they serve. The fact that they’ve actually gone up against Aya in canon helps a lot too for inspiration and things to reference, not that i’m the kind of person who puts too much stock into ‘canon’ in the first place though! They’re funny and they have fun being evil together, I like em a ton! I feel like i may have made Mai a little too scatterbrained in comparison to Satono though, since it feels like maybe the latter is in charge as opposed to it being a pair of equals, hmm...

Anyhow, i think things just fell into place in my mind. Having Aya’s newspaper, her greatest passoin, diminished and then threatened by her own people and then by the dancers just felt like really natural conflicts to have to me. Maybe things don’t play out quite as dramatically as they could have, but there was never gonna be much change in any status quo, but more just reaffirmation and a renewal of confidence in the character (I uh, feel like this is gonna be very consistent for most if not all the touhou fanfic i have in mind).

the big priority is always to show off personalities and relationships i think are neat of course. Hatate and Momiji show slightly different perspectives so that everything isnt only coloured by Aya, and honestly the whole chapter in the human village with Reimu was purely an excuse to dive a little into Aya as ‘the tengu closest to the village’. I’m especially happy with how i envisioned Hatate and how she came out i think, being simultaneously the friendly rival who criticises yet boosts Aya up, and also being the more starry-eyed junior compared to Aya who is more cynical than she’d let on. And i already talked about how fun the dancers were, and i like the thought of them being someone(s) who could really throw Aya off without really trying.

early on, i went back and forth a lot on what or why Satono and Mai were doing in tengu territory, and kept overthinking ideas and justifications before i decided that it is always best to keep it simple and just be like ‘they are there to cause trouble and they continue to cause trouble because they like it’. I mean what reason they offer in the story is a little more substantial than that, but i’m just glad i stuck to that compared to the overtly complex secret Okina plans I suggested to myself and worried over making sense.

The two newspaper ‘articles’ i wrote in the story proved more troublesome than I thought they’d be, for how short they are! I tried to make it similar to the format of the actual articles from Baijr or Afieu (though i might have borrowed more from the translated format courtesy of touhou wiki). Trying to keep it short enough so the gist comes across, but also making it long enough so that playing with the format in the first place seems worthwhile was a tough balance to strike for me... but i’m happy with the result.

close to final little thing to note? After I finished writing the whole thing once, I gave it a look over and decided that every line of dialogue from Aya needed to be rewritten, because i didn’t think it sounded enough like her, or was too dry. In a similar note, i originally peppered a lot of random bits of ‘ayaya’ here and there, before deciding to reign it in. Deciding that the one instance she should utter it being at the climatic fight in the press building is a decision i’m maybe just a little proud of? >_> n_n

there’s so much more to Aya and the tengu in general that i think would be neat to delve into, whether in this story or in future ones, but i don’t think i’m willing or smart enough to really dig especially deep into the related Japanese folklore to meet my own standards. I’ll say that one thing that occasionally gave me the boost to keep writing this was reading tengu-related thoughts from the blogs of friends i made during my roleplaying days. I don’t know if they’d feel awkward about me naming them, but there are two people specifically who hatched upon like hundreds of Aya and tengu-related headcanons that i thought was all sorts of inspiring to my creativity. That said! rest assured that all interpretations and headcanons featured in this story are there because they are what I like and not just there for the sake of having more detail.

[kreekey]

examples of people being racist toward yoko unintentionally: 1- calling her a weird stalker when they glorify/don't mind the many white fangirls who used to stalk the Beatles. 2- spreading misinformation that she lost custody of her daughter when in fact she'd won against her white crazy ex despite everything NOT in favour of her 3- bashing her for using John's glasses on the album cover she worked with John on, when they would've praised the artistry and bold statement if she was a white woman

Hey sorry I got around to answering your ask so late! You make a lot of really interesting points and I rarely hear people consider that. 

1 - reminds me of a Tumblr post I saw about an obsessive Beatlemaniac stalker and people were like “me” or “bless her” haha. Definitely different when they can interpret Yoko’s actions as “stalking”. And your point also reminds me of this quote, which isn’t about fangirls but still somewhat kinda related.

“Like Yoko when she met John, Linda was a divorced woman with a daughter when she met Paul mere months later.  There are stories similar to those about Yoko of her “scheming” to meet and marry Paul.  In the same way that Yoko is said to have joked prior to meeting him that she was “going to marry John Lennon,” Linda joked like any woman with a celebrity crush about how she was “going to marry Paul McCartney.”  (Bob Spitz notes both in his book The Beatles.  Guess which one he thought was conniving, and which one he thought was adorable.)... Was it the lucky fact that Linda got the scene a few months later than Yoko, or was it her whiteness?“ 

X

And I don’t have the answer if it was Yoko’s race that made her such a target, but it’s something interesting to consider and note. [And I’ll clarify this, I'm pretty sure Yoko didn't know about the Beatles until she became face to face with one, like she wasn't a fan who got lucky enough to meet her idol. In the David Frost interview and the 1971 Rolling Stone interview, John noted that Yoko didn't know him when they met, and Yoko Ono: Collector of Skies by Neil Beram says this on their meeting: "She was about as familiar with John's work as he was with hers. "I was an underground person, and such an artistic snob," she said later. "I knew about The Beatles, of course... but I wasn't interested in them." Just about the only thing she could recall about them was the drummer Ringo Starr's first name, because ringo means "apple" in Japanese.”] Also, and this definitely wasn’t stalking, but I posted a quote from Bob Spitz’ biography where he writes along the lines of

“[Linda] always insisted that she was going to marry Paul McCartney,” [Nat Weiss] recalls, “even before she met him”... It was no accident that Linda Eastman veered into his aura. She’d taken a few polite shots of Ringo and George before “zeroing in on Paul,”... Linda had come dressed to kill. Most days she played the typical rock chick, decked out in rumpled jeans and a T-shirt, with little or no makeup and unwashed hair. But today her hair had been carefully blow-dried so that it fell perfectly forward in wing points at her chin. And she was dressed in an expensive double-breasted striped barbershop jacket arranged just so over a sheer black sweater, with a miniskirt that flattered her gorgeous legs. When she squatted down – not so subtly, in what must have been a rehearsed gesture – in front of Paul for an intimate chat, he had trouble keeping his eyes from wandering below-decks...

, and some people commented that it appeared kinda predatory/pre-planned (reminds me of some criticism of Francie Schwartz’s meeting with Paul), but overall cute and everything. At the time I wondered how people would react if Yoko did that to John lol. No way of knowing, just a thought. And also, I know Yoko sent him Grapefruit and little instructions often, I think that’s usually what people cite as the stalking, that she tried to ensnare him with it. Again quoting Yoko Ono: Collector of Skies, 

For a time Yoko kept in touch with John by mailing him daily instructions-she called this Dance Event-that said things like "Dance" and "Watch all the lights until dawn" and "I'm a cloud. Watch for me in the sky." John found the instructions as perplexing as he found them intriguing.

And quoting this interview (in which she also asserts that “each and every occasion she visited John at Kenwood, it was at his invitation.”),

Despite the popular theory that Yoko was frantically inventing schemes to snare the wealthy Beatle, she was struggling with problems in her marriage [with Tony Cox] and also working hard to establish her career in the UK. Arriving in London in September 1966 to perform at the ‘Destruction In Art Symposium’, Yoko was already respected as an avant-garde artist and performer in New York, where she was allied to the Fluxus movement. She had a trained musical background, and had recently been involved in the improvisational music favoured by her peer group. She had also compiled a book of conceptual and instructional pieces called Grapefruit, and printed up a limited edition.

Yoko distributed copies to a number of influential people during 1966-’67. And John Lennon was one of the recipients. This has since been interpreted as one of various ruses on Yoko’s part to enchant Lennon.

She retorts: “There was a myth that I sent Grapefruit to him… how I wanted to trap him. It was a printed, published book. I had an orange carton of them, a lot of it. I would be giving it to critics. It was that sort of thing. He wasn’t the only one who got it.”

X

And by then, John had already eagerly offered to sponsor one of her shows, I think he was genuinely interested in her work. I don’t think John was actually threatened by these notes or felt he was harassed, especially since he made the jump to invite her over while his wife was away (and Yoko just thought it was a party!). He once referred to Yoko “someone that could turn me on to a million things” in the Lennon Remembers interview, he admired her art. And I know he said to Cyn that the letters were just junk from another one of those weird artists, but c’mon, what do you think John would say to his wife regarding the woman he’s romantically interested in? I don’t think it would’ve been fully truthful IMO, especially considering when John said that he nearly invited Yoko to India around that time because he liked her so.

2 is very true. Tony himself tried to make it seem like Yoko and John were crazy heroin druggies, and that's the case he tried to make (and that’s what he tried to tell Kyoko, that he was “saving” her from drug obsessed occultists). But, Yoko had gone “cold turkey” (ala the song) off heroin in 1969. This was 2 years before she won full custody in 1971. 

Although neither parent had been awarded sole custody of the child, Mr. Cox became increasingly reluctant to let Yoko and her new husband spend time with Kyoko, and finally refused to permit it at all. For a year before the Lennons came to America, they had been chasing Mr. Cox and Kyoko around Europe. In Majorca, Spain, the Lennons caught up with them and spirited Kyoko off to their hotel; but Mr. Cox called the police, and a Spanish court gave the child back to him. The incident added to his fear that the Lennons wanted to take her away from him for good.

Soon after the Lennons arrived in New York, they went to the United States Virgin Islands, to the same court where Yoko had been divorced, and that court awarded her permanent custody of her daughter.

X

But, Tony then took Kyoko to Texas (hiding/kidnapping her) which was in violation of that court order. Then more custody battle due to Tony’s stubbornness and evasiveness, but yes, Yoko did win custody then despite everything (even though John was very threatened by Tony lol, to the point he disallowed Yoko to visit him alone in order to discuss co-parenting when that was an option and suggested kidnapping Kyoko. But then again Tony was also kinda crazy. Seriously though IMO Yoko really tried gallantly to have Kyoko in her life, and the loss hurt her. To hear people try to spin it as Yoko being the monster in the situation through misinformation is unfortunate.)

3 is hypothetical, but I do speculate that if Yoko was white, the attitude toward her would’ve been different. Sean said, “It’s intense how racist the world is. If my mother had looked like Debbie Harry, I really think the reaction would have been different.” (X) Yoko’s former partner, Sam Havadtoy, also touched on this in an interview from 1990:

Q: ...No matter what Yoko does, she’s frequently the victim of a bad press. Any idea why?

Havadtoy: After John’s death, newspapers wrote that Yoko was this selfish person hoarding John’s memory, controlling it, not willing to share it with his fans. So after two years, she puts out 200 hours of film footage and a record and they say she’s exploiting John’s memory. She can’t win.

Q: Why not?

Havadtoy: Racism. If she were blond-haired and blue-eyed, nobody would have blamed her for breaking up the Beatles. They were the darlings of the universe; she was an outsider, an Oriental, an avant-garde artist--easy to pick on. When John married Yoko, the British press wrote: “At least he will have clean laundry.” And it’s still happening. America is infatuated with Japan-bashing. 

X

And I do think Season Of Glass was a memory thing, I posted about it here: X. 

And yes, I think that much of Yoko’s criticism/legacy was rooted in that initial reaction, which was pretty sexist and racist. But I think that influence can still be felt today, in ways that aren’t obvious. And like you said, unintentional. (Before anyone gets mad, if you dislike or hate Yoko that doesn't automatically make you racist lol. But the narrative built around her might’ve influenced your opinion of her, and the narrative was kinda rooted in a racist mentality. So that’s why and re-interpreting her in a fresh light is necessary).