#working with him directly would also be great because I’d something to focus on

[thegirlsread]

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[vhagarlovebot]

THE WAY I FEEL INSIDE.

pairing: modern!aemond targaryen x fem!reader.

summary: you’ve been in love with aemond targaryen ever since your second year at boarding school, the only problem is that he doesn’t know it and you’ve never been good at lying to him.

content warnings: best friends to lovers, pining, hurt/comfort, love confessions, mentions of alcohol, swearing, basically two idiots in love. it is a little bit long.

note: hello, lovely reader ! i just want to say a few things before you start reading. this was one of my first works here on this app but in a different blog way back when i used to write for the marauders. this was actually written thinking about remus lupin and i edited it the best i could, so you’re probably still going to see some very poor grammar and it’s because i’d just started writing in english and because of that it is completely normal for me to still have problems writing in a language that isn’t mine. i really hope you enjoy! reblogs and likes are greatly appreciated.

THE GREAT HALL IS A MESS in the morning and does not help with the migraine you woke up with, therefore you can’t focus on an essay that’s due today. it does not help that your friends are laughing and talking with each other either, it’s not like you’re good at paying attention to one thing when there’s a lot going on right next to you, so your attention shifts away to them not really listening to what they’re saying.

you’re still with your hands on your head looking directly at the book you have in front, trying to sort out the mess, when cregan’s voice startles you.

“you alright, love?” he asks from his seat in front of you, the hint of a smirk on his face.

“jus’ trying to finish this essay.” you say softly, closing the book and rubbing your tired eyes with the palm of your hand.

“i thought you finished it last night.” baela says, turning her head, body facing cregan. “you need help?”

“not really,” you give her a tired smile. “m’just tired, i didn’t sleep well last night.”

whatever baela says you can’t hear it because from the corner of your eyes you see aemond’s tall body getting closer to the table and sitting next to you. twenty minutes ago he was sitting at that same spot but left without saying a word, causing everyone to worry.

“here,” aemond gives you something, looking down you see a white pill in his open palm. “s’going to make you feel better.”

you don’t say anything, you just stare at those bright blue eyes and blushed cheeks. and he stares back, not paying attention to anyone but you.

you didn’t think aemond could do anything else to show how much he cares about you, but you were proved wrong. something as simple as this has your heart beating fast and tears filling your eyes, and you’re extra aware that he can hear the thump thump thump of your heart as much as you can see the frown that has taken over his face.

and you’re also aware your friends are watching, so you take a deep breath and the pill still sitting on his hand.

“always taking care of me, aem, thank you.” you mumble, laying your head on his shoulder.

you walk slowly through the halls, head in the clouds.

you were able to finish the essay on time, the migraine long gone, and the only reason you managed to do it was thanks to aemond because if he hadn’t gone to the infirmary then you’d still be sitting in the great hall eating your brains out.

at the thought of your best friend a smile makes its way on your face.

ever since you have known aemond he’s always been extra careful with you, extra attentive, extra caring. and you’re pretty sure it started during second year in boarding school when your parents sent you a letter saying they would not be home for christmas, which meant you had nowhere to go and no other option but to stay at the school alone. aemond was sitting close to you that day and saw the way you tried to hide your sadness with a small smile but weren’t able to keep the tears from falling, and when you left in such a hurry that you didn’t notice you had dropped the letter on your way out, that’s exactly when he decided to persuade his friends to stay. he didn’t mind lying or spending christmas at the school, he just wanted to see the pretty girl smile again.

you met the targaryens on christmas day your second year at boarding school when they were some of the few students who stayed too, and it was one of the best thing that ever happened in your life.

you fell in love with aemond targaryen on christmas day your second year at boarding school, though at that time you didn’t know and refused to accept it until fifth year.

you two fell into a routine in which you were a walking mess and he was right there next you ready to help you, or be a mess with you. always making sure you eat all your meals after he saw how on fourth year you stopped going to breakfast choosing to go straight to classes and how you always stayed at the library until there was no one left, so you were free to go to your dorm without worried glances from your friends. that was until you came down from the girls dormitories one morning, knowing everyone was at the great hall, everyone except aemond who was waiting for you at the bottom of the stairs with an apple and a juice box in his right hand, and a shy smile on his face. always making sure you understood everything your professors said. always waiting for you after one particular class you two did not share once he witnessed some girls being mean to you. and you were always happy to lie next to him when he was feeling grouchy and scared, giving him comforting words and tracing the scar on his face, making him hide under his pillow with blushed cheeks; he looked after you and you looked after him, that’s your friendship. you always tried to convince yourself it was just a friend worrying for a friend, when in fact you were head over heels in love with the boy.

there have been a few occasions where all you wanted to do was tell him how much you love him; a lot more than a best friend should love her best friend. but every time you decided to finally do it, still afraid you would ruin the friendship but unable to hide how much you were feeling, something that would leave you with scattered pieces of your heart in your hands happened. because with each passing year while the feeling inside of you grew, and it grew and it grew, aemond showed you he didn’t feel the same way. and you knew he never did it on purpose, how could he if he didn’t know you were in love with him while he snogged different girls, running to talk to you about it and breaking your heart. you didn’t think you’d hate lying so much, but every time he sought advice from you, you hated every word that came out of your mouth, you hated the forced smile on your face, you hated how your eyes welled up with tears when he told you alys rivers stopped him after classes to tell him how handsome he looked that day, batting her eyelashes then coyly hiding behind her books. you hate how your chest physically aches when there is a party in the common hall because it means you’d have to see him flirt with a different girl all night. and that’s exactly why you stopped going to parties, giving a different excuse every time someone asked.

so you convinced yourself that everything you could ever have from aemond is his everlasting friendship. and that is better than not having aemond at all.

your walk comes to a stop when you see your friends sitting in the grass at the rugby pitch, in the distance cregan is giving his team a talk before the game, looking rather annoyed.

“cregan’s going to kill you if you don’t take this game seriously.” you say looking at your raven-haired friend, tossing your bag and sitting next to helaena. at this, jace throws you a half-eaten chocolate before taking his things and jogging to his friend.

“where were you?” baela asks, titling her head.

“professor gerardys wanted help with something, i said yes for a few extra points.” you shrug, bringing the chocolate to your mouth while looking around. instant regret crosses your features at the sight of your best friend sitting a few meters away with a bunch of people, his arm around alys river’s shoulders.

luke follows your gaze. “it looks like she finally took the courage to ask him out.”

“she asked him out!?” your voice comes out a little too loud for your liking and you really don’t like the look of pity that comes into your girl friends eyes. “well, it was about damn time.” you chuckle, though your friends know the reality behind those words.

“you coming tonight?” helaena asks, changing the subject and rubbing your arms, but looking straight ahead to baela, who is making fun of something luke said. “i think it’ll make you feel better,” her smile is pleading. “y´know you need it, forget the books for one night.”

you look at aemond one more time. “i think i deserve it.”

you are laughing as baela explains to two boys how jace was the one who helped win the match. “no, no! you don’t understand how important it is that jace did that,” she exclaims. “if he had gone to the left, then we wouldn’t be here.” the silver-haired shakes her head, taking a sip of her drink.

“i think they get it, baels.” you roll your eyes, rubbing shoulders with her. “don’t you, boys?” they nod eagerly, hiding their faces behind the cups filled with liquor.

your conversation is interrupted by someone leaning against the wall next to you. “hey, you.” aemond speaks after a moment of silence. “i didn’t think you’d be coming.”

“if you want i can go back to my dorm.” you mumble, trying to avoid his gaze. you know you shouldn’t be so cold with him, after all he’s done nothing to have you reacting this way, at least not something he’s aware of.

“that’s not what i said.” you’re not looking at him but you can sense the frown on his face. “i’m happy you’re here, i can’t remember when was the last time we party together.”

“well, i’m here now.” you clear your throat. “were you with alys rivers today?” you definitely shouldn’t have asked, you don’t even want to talk about it. you would rather hear about how jace is the best player on his team than to hear about how the older girl is stealing your best friend’s heart when you wish you were her. you want your heart to stop hurting and your mind to stop creating scenarios in which it is you who’s feeling the warm emanating from his body, the owner of his laugh… his heart.

“you saw us?” he doesn’t sound surprised.

“s’not like you two were being quiet.” you shrug, taking a sip of your beer.

“we all saw you.” baela explains, interrupting the conversation in your favor. “are you two like… together?” she asks what’s been going through your mind all day but were too afraid to ask.

aemond goes silent and all the blood leaves your face. that’s it, this is the final confirmation you needed to let aemond go—not like he was yours to lose—and you don’t want to hear it. your heart has been crushed so many times through the years you don’t think you could handle it one more time.

you straighten your shoulders and smile, but it doesn’t reach your eyes. “if you’ll excuse me.” you try to fight the feeling that has settled in your belly, pushing away the pain in your chest, but it gets harder every second. you would think time would make it easier.

you try to hide the sound of your heart breaking by walking away, but aemond is having none of it. he grabs your wrist and you’re forced to stay right where you are. but you’re afraid. you fear that the longer you spend with aemond, the more emotionally unstable you become, eventually exposing yourself and your true feelings.

baela excuses herself, leaving you and your best friend alone, though the common hall is full, it feels like it is just the two of you.

“are you feeling alright?” he asks, confused. “you want me to go to the infirmary again? i’m sure they will ha—”

“jus’ stop it!” you cut him off, pushing him away.

he whispers your name. “i’m just trying to—”

“i didn’t ask you.”

“well, ouch.” aemond takes a step back, looking at you like you have two heads coming out of your body. “i know you didn’t ask me, but i want to.”

“m’not your fucking problem.” you mutter bitterly to yourself, but he hears it.

“did i do something to upset you?” he asks, genuinely worried. you can see the gears moving inside his head, like he’s really trying to remember what did he do.

you know you’re acting this way guided by your feelings and aemond has nothing, but everything actually, to do with it.

you take a deep breath. “i’m sorry, i’m not feeling well today.” you shake your head, taking two careful steps towards him. “you did nothing. i just need to lay down, i’ll see you in the morning.” you assure him with a smile.

but again, he’s grabbing your wrist before you can walk away. “i can go up with you.”

“you should worry about your girlfriend.” you nod, looking over his shoulder at alys rivers, who’s not even trying to hide the scowl on her face.

he doesn’t even look. “but you need me.”

he doesn’t deny it.

aemond doesn’t deny she’s his girlfriend.

“i don’t need you.” you get out of his grip and he doesn’t stop you.

once you are out of sight, you let all the tears fall.

you don’t know what time it is, but you still hear the music echoing. sighing, you roll on your back ready to go back to sleep when you hear what woke you up again. you can barely hear the thud coming from outside the dorm and the first thing that comes into your mind is that one of the girls is trying to open the door but is too drunk to do it, so you get out of bed.

there is, indeed, someone drunk behind the door. but this person has silver hair and blue eyes that, you are sure, look into your soul.

you suddenly remember you cried yourself to sleep and if he weren’t too drunk he’d notice how red your eyes are.

“what are you doing here, aemond?” you ask, helping him to his feet and inside your dorm.

“why do you hate me so much?” he drags the words, and you can smell the whisky every time he opens his mouth.

“i don’t hate you, silly.” you couldn’t help but laugh, carrying him to your bed. “maybe i do hate you a little bit right now. how much did you drink?”

“don’t know, lost the count.” he smiles while looking at you. “would you lay down with me?”

“okay, jus’ let me take off your shoes.” he keeps staring at you while you help him get rid of his jacket and shoes, he even smiles every time you make eye contact.

once you’re lying on your bed again, aemond turns to you. “why were you crying?” it doesn’t surprise you, really, he’s always been extra observant.

“i had a bad migraine.” you shrug, avoiding his gaze. but his slender fingers on your chin make you look directly at him. you try to steady your heart, pounding in your chest so hard you know he can hear it.

“yea’ right.” aemond mocks you. “after that pill i gave you this morning there’s no way you still had it.”

“maybe it wasn’t as effective as you thought.”

“would you stop for a second?” he grimaces, bringing his hands to his temple. “i can’t think straight and you already have my mind going in circles.”

“what does that mean?”

he sighs, caressing your cheek. “you don’t even notice.”

“notice what?” you ask, confused. he’s drunk and talking nonsense, and having him so close to you isn’t helping.

“that i’m—” he whispers, not breaking eye contact, air tick between the two of you. a part of you hopes his next words are the ones you were dying to hear for so long. you also hope you’re not dreaming when you see him lower his gaze to your lips. you’re extra aware of the proximity, you feel his breath on your face, combination of alcohol, cigarettes and just aemond. he parts his lips and you instantly close your eyes. “m’going to be sick.”

“what?” you open your eyes only to miss his warmth.

aemond rushes to the bathroom, face pale. you know he’s throwing up before you even get out of bed, and it doesn’t take long for you to be by his side.

aemond whines when you try to get closer, a wet cloth in hand. “don´t.”

“i’ll always hold your hand, aem.” you whisper, reminding him of the words he’s said to you a bunch of times. when you get closer again he doesn’t say anything and just lets you do your thing. “this is goin’ to make you feel better.” you say quietly, filling a glass of water and kneeling beside him.

aemond groans, resting against the wall behind him. you do the same. “you know,” he turns his head to you. “you are really, really pretty.”

your cheeks go red immediately and you know aemond notices that too, so you try to look somewhere else but his hands on your jaw don’t let you. and so you find yourself looking straight into his blue eyes, full of something you can’t figure it out. but he stares at you for a long time, or maybe it's just seconds, but you feel like he spends hours smiling at you with his eyes slightly closed, like you’re going to vanish if he stops and leave him there on the bathroom floor feeling pathetic.

“and you are really, really drunk.” your voice is barely a whisper, still looking at him.

“you don’t believe me? you don’t believe me.” he shakes his head, the smile growing. “you’re so oblivious.”

“m’not!” you complain, pulling his hand away.

you really don’t know what he’s talking about, but he doesn’t need to know that. he also does not need to know you’re feeling those familiar butterflies in your belly, the ones that appeared the first time he held your hand, leaving your entire body tingling.

“i should kiss you right now to see how oblivious you are after.” aemond says casually, as if he didn’t just say what you think he did.

“wh—what?” this time your eyes are fix on the bathroom floor; the tiles are more interesting than his eyes. oh but you know if you look at him again you’ll be completely lost. you know he’s drunk and saying things he doesn’t really feel because he doesn’t feel that way about you, right? suddenly, your eyes are on him again. “don’t say things you don’t mean.”

“but i mean it.” his eyes dart to your lips. when he looks up again, he realizes he’s been caught. “do you want to kiss me, sweet girl?” aemond moves closer, his face inches away from yours. of course you want to kiss him, you’ve been dreaming of it for years, and even in those dreams, it didn’t feel this surreal.

“why don’t you ask me again when you’re sober?” you shake your head, a smile making its way on your face. “and your breath stinks, by the way.”

aemond laughs, resting his head on your shoulder. your heart skips a beat because he doesn’t say anything, and when you are going to speak again not knowing exactly what to say but wanting to hear something from him, anything that could tell you how he really feels, aegon appears in the doorway.

“hey, lover boy, it’s time to go.” he kneels in front of you and his brother just groans, hiding behind your hair and inhaling your perfume.

“you smell nice.” the smile on his face is one of drunkenness.

and when you witness how aemond can barely stand, your heart breaks into tiny pieces. maybe aemond was just drunk, maybe he just wanted to kiss you because you were the only girl with him. you weren’t aemond’s first choice; you were his last.

you wake up feeling a little optimistic. you don’t know if aemond really meant what he said, but you are ready to face whatever his words may be, even if those words break your heart.

none of your friends are in the common hall when you go downstairs and, in all honesty, you don’t want to look for them, there's only one person in your head and you’re going to find him before all bravery leaves your body.

you are smiling widely when you step into the great hall, familiar faces sitting at the table but not the one you’re looking for. your smile falters when you get closer to your friends, all of them laughing and talking about the party last night. maybe he’s still asleep, maybe you’ll grab some food and bring it to him. maybe you could do that if he wasn’t sitting next to alys rivers at her table.

tears fill your eyes as you hear helaena’s voice calling your name, but all your attention is on aemond and the smile adorning his face. all you can hear before running out of there it’s his laugh. of course he wasn’t thinking straight, what were you thinking? he’s so charming and handsome, always helping others, always smelling good, always flirting with pretty girls in the hallways, always enjoying his popularity. he’s tall, agile and strong, smart; of course he needs a girl that can match with him, his needs. and you’re not that girl. you’re not popular, most of the time you are running late to classes, asking help from others, you don’t do sports and it shows, it’s a miracle if a boy flirts with you and if a boy does it, most of the time it’s because him or his friends want you to introduce them to your girlfriends. you are not that pretty either, you have bags under your eyes, you barely do make up and your hair is a disaster. what could aemond targaryen possibly like about you?

you barely make it to the stairs leading to your dorm when a hand grabs your wrist, heavy breathing behind you. “wait!”

“sorry, i forgot something,” you say quickly, wiping your tears with your free hand. “i’ll be back in a minute.”

he lets you go and you run to the stairs, before his words stop you. “i was really drunk las’ night, wasn’t i?”

“yes.” you say with a bitter laugh.

“shit— i think i threw up in your bathroom.” he laughs, and you hear his footsteps getting closer. “sorry ‘bout that.”

“it’s okay.” you smile even though he can’t see your face. “i need to grab this thing before class, you know how profess—“

“i’m sober now.”

your heart stops beating, everything around you stops. did you hear him right? you don’t dare to move, you can’t.

what could aemond targaryen possibly like about you?

“but i saw you with al—”

“she’s barely a friend.” he explains. “i don’t know if what you said last night was because you didn’t know how to reject me,” he starts saying, moving closer and closer to you. “but i’m here anyway. i can’t hide what i feel inside me anymore.” and that’s when you turn around.

he’s a few feet away, fidgeting with his hands and looking at you with that same something you saw last night.

“i’ve loved you since the first time i saw you. when—”

“when we met on second year.” you interrupt him, cocking your head to the side. of course you remember, because the letter you got from your parents that year was the reason your whole friendship started. you just can’t believe what you are hearing. now the tears streaming down your face have a different reason, one you did not think was possible.

he smiles sheepishly at you. “no—that was not the first time i saw you.” he scratches the back of his neck, meeting your gaze. “i saw you the first day of school, on the train. you were sitting next to baela and i remember thinking ‘god, i’ve never seen such a beautiful girl before’” he takes one step forward. “i remember thinking i was seeing an angel.” he chuckles, his face red and eyes glistening. “i’m seeing one right now.”

you can’t see due to the cascade coming from your eyes, you try to wipe it, only for them to be replaced with more tears. you didn’t think you could smile this big, to feel this happy, to feel this loved.

“i remember seeing you in classes, in the hallways… always so pretty.” he takes another step, this time only looking at your eyes, not fidgeting with his hands, not uncertainty in his words. “i was a silly, silly boy back then and didn’t know how to talk to you, so when on second year you got that letter,” he looks shy, his eyes meeting the floor. “i took it and convinced the boys to persuade our parents to stay. i wanted to stay with you, i wanted to see you smile again and—when i saw the smile you gave me, it was all worth it.”

you rush to him, face wet and blushed, and a heart beating so fast you think it’s going to explode. locking your arms around his neck, you softly press your lips to his in a kiss full of unspoken words, full of passion and love and tenderness. you are both crying and it’s wet, but oh so perfect.

“you love me?” you ask, smiling with teeth. you have never been so happy before, you have never felt so safe in someone’s arms as you feel in aemond’s; you have never felt so in love with aemond targaryen as you feel right now.

“i am hopelessly, irretrievably in love with you.” aemond murmurs, lips curled in a grin, arms around your waist making you feel those butterflies you’ve experienced through the years once more.

“and i am hopelessly, irretrievably in love with you, aemond targaryen.” you say softly, caressing his cheek. a new set of tears already falling down your face. “always have been.”

[ticklygiggles]

hii! for the drabble event, could you please do a reader x scaramouche (genshin) one for me please 🙏 romantic one! thank you so much if you do it!💕💕

[You & I Event - entries closed!]

A/N: first drabble (that turned into a fic skskdk), from this event! I hope you enjoy this! I love Scara so so much I'm dying dkfkfkg

This was highly inspired by that event where Nahida forces Scaramouche to study in the Akademiya and that she'll personally revise his thesis!

Words: 1.5k

Rumor has it that the new Vahumana scholar was dating someone. 

Everyone at the Six Darshans knew about the new student: Hat Guy—ah, no, Scaramouche.

Men and women were crazy about his handsome face and his terrifying intelligence. Scaramouche could write up to three essays of many several pages in a single day on extremely complex topics that even Vahumana's seniors were not able to fully understand.

He was a reserved person and limited himself to speaking only when necessary. He was constantly seen in the library with his nose buried in a book. He wasn't sociable, and his humor wasn't the brightest, so when rumors of Scaramouche having found a mate began to roam the halls of Vahumana, everyone was curious as to who had stolen such a complex person’s heart. 

Were they a student from the Akademiya too? Were they in the same classes as him? Was it a man or a woman? 

They all wanted to know the truth behind all these rumors, but there was no way in all Teyvat that any of them would dare ask Scaramouche directly. So the rumor that Scaramouche was seeing someone would remain a mystery to everyone. 

But of course, there was someone who knew all about it. 

"Ugh, would you stop staring at me? I'm trying to focus here, you're being annoying."

You giggled, looking back at your own book. Scaramouche's mysterious partner was no other but you. One more student of Vahumana who was lucky enough to catch the attention of someone like Hat Guy. It would be a lie if you said that you had not fallen for him long before your classmates relationship turned into a romantic one, but to think Scaramouche would also feel attracted to you… well, that was something you were not expecting. 

"You're doing it again!"

You laughed, "I'm sorry," you said, smiling brightly. "You're just so pretty, I can't help but stare." 

Scaramouche made a face that had you laughing again.

"You're so weird, why am I even dating you?" 

"Because I have a great personality and I love you nicely?" 

Scaramouche huffed, but by the pink hue appearing over his ears it was more than evident that you were right. 

"Let me finish my thesis," he mumbled shyly.

Your boyfriend was not hard to love, he was actually quite easy to read for you. You could know what he wanted and needed at any time because, even though he had a big brain for school work, he was terrible at expressing his own feelings, good thing he had you. 

"I think we should take a break."

"Not now."

"You are tired though," you said, closing your book. "And perhaps a little hungry, and maybe also thirsty?" You watched with great pleasure as Scaramouche's pencil halted for a second before he continued to scribble here and there, you smirked. "Maybe also… in need of cuddles?"

"I have to finish this thesis soon," he growled, completely avoiding your eyes and clearing his throat. "You can go and eat and drink and… whatever you want to do, by yourself.”

You chuckled. His painfully shy personality towards you always warmed your heart. He truly was not hard to love, on the contrary, you knew, even though he was still reluctant to tell you about his past, that he needed love. So desperately so, if you dared to say. And you thanked the Dendro Archon in every chance you had for his existence.

But he didn’t need to know that, you thought, his face would probably explode if you dared to tell him about your little prayers. 

You giggled, leaning in closer to him, arms touching. “I’d be very bored if you’re not there with me, though,” you said, blushing yourself when his ears turned red. “I also think that you should rest. We’ve been working nonstop since morning, isn’t it dark outside already?”

Scaramouche turned his head to look outside the window. It was indeed dark already. 

“... I have to finish,” he insisted and you rolled your eyes fondly.

“You can finish,” you said, hugging his arm and expecting him to push you away but he didn’t. “I will help you as much as I can and as much as you allow me, but we need to take a break, otherwise you’re going to tire yourself and you will not be able to work, hmm?”

Scaramouche wasn’t writing anymore, he was listening to you carefully, his fair cheeks glowing beautifully red, you resisted the urge to kiss them. 

“Or should I make you take a rest?”

He perked a little at that and he finally turned to look at you. His eyebrows furrowed slightly, trying to appear intimidating to you, but all you wanted to do was kiss him. 

“What- What do you mean?” He said, cautious and just slightly nervous. 

“I don’t know, I have my methods,” you said, shrugging. “Unless you decide to take a rest, that is.”

Scaramouche looked at you intently, his eyes jumping from left to right, staring at your own orbs. His lips were slightly pursed in thought and his eyebrows almost touched in the middle from how hard he was frowning. You smiled brightly at him, making him jump slightly and turn his head back to his thesis. 

“I can’t. Let me work.”

You were not expecting him to agree and you could only giggle, leaning your head against his shoulder. It had to be the hard way, huh? Well, that was what he asked for. 

Silence reigned in the room once more. The sound of Scaramouche's book pages and his pencil writing rapidly seemed to echo against the walls of your room. It was a soft, relaxing sound, you felt like you could fall asleep at any moment, but no. None of you could sleep for now. Scaramouche seemed to be relaxed, his features had turned to his usual color and he seemed to lean in closer to you. 

This was the perfect chance. 

The jacket of his casual attire had fallen a bit off his shoulder because of you hugging his arm, so shifting a little, you placed a tender kiss to his bare skin. He shuddered slightly and made a little sound deep in his throat when you kissed his shoulder one more time and another and another. 

“Stop, I can’t focus if you’re- haah, w-wait, I- ahahahaha! Gehehet your hahahands ohohoff!”

Success! Between tender kisses that made his skin prickle with goosebumps, Scaramouche had failed to notice both your hands sneaking under his arm, fingers wiggling against his armpit, tickling him nicely. He had also failed to try to hold his laugh back, and now that sweet sound filled your ears making you smile brightly.

"Stahahap tihihihis instahahant!" 

"Sure thing! Tell me, are we going to eat first or just walk around for a bit?"

Scaramouche shook his head and he tried to talk, but his words got lost between his loud cackles. Ah, how could he be so ticklish, you wondered. He simply didn't look like the ticklish type, but there he was cackling with his head thrown back as he tried to squirm away from you. 

"You can't talk? Does it tickle too badly?" Scaramouche nodded. "I'm just tickling one armpit, though, should I get the other one?"

"NOAHAHAHA!"

"Ah! So you can talk, silly boyfriend of mine!" You said playfully, your fingers unstoppable. "Tell me, are we going to continue working like this?"

Even though he was nearly laughing his head off, Scaramouche stubbornly refused to let you win this, but that was okay, you were not one to give up either. 

Smirking against his shoulder, one of your hands pulled out from under his arm and quickly sneaked under the leg of his shorts, your fingers easily finding that tender spot that always drove him up the wall. 

"OKAHAHAY!" Scaramouche shrieked, his knees hitting against the desk when he brought them up. "Fine! FIHIHINE! Nohohot thehehere, PLEHEHEASE!" 

You giggled, your cheeks pink. "So are we going to-

"EHEHEHAHT! Wehehehe'll eat fihihirst!"

"Very well!"

As quickly and surprisingly your attack had started, it finished, causing Scaramouche to collapse against his chair, giggling softly and twitching a little. You grinned, leaning to kiss his flushed cheek.

"Hmm, what would you like to eat? I kind of want-" You couldn't finish, all words got sealed in your mouth when Scaramouche pressed his lips against yours, giving you a tender kiss that made you feel like you had reached Celestia. 

You cupped his cheeks and he shyly wrapped his arms around waist as he kissed you and kissed you and kissed you.

When you both pulled apart, breathless and flushed, your eyes met and a giggle made its way out from your lips, making him smile softly. 

"Maybe we should do the cuddling first."

"Hmph," he said, closing his eyes. "If that is what you want, I guess it's okay."

You chuckled. Ah, he was so easy to love and you were so lucky to be loved back by him. 

[summersmithlatinxgyatt]

GET READY FOR 2000 WORDS OF YAP

This will serve as a dense summary that supports my previous Season 3 and onward Summer analysis blogs. This shows the basis stemming from Season 1 to 3. I highly recommending reading my analysis blogs, but this serves as a great place to start

Summer Smith is a character that I have not seen anyone pay attention to on the same caliber as Rick or even any other character of the family. Despite the small pool and consistent focus, I constantly see her be summarized as being both a typical teen girl and a badass, as if the latter is all that’s done to make her stand out as a character. Luckily, fans who’ve paid more attention to the narrative and her character can at LEAST pick out scattered parts of her characters through focused moments. I do not want to instantly discredit anyone, especially anyone who has known this about Summer but just never shared their thoughts. However, I still see a lack of any meaningful summary, so I wanted to give my own sort of timeline and summary of Summer’s character. As much as I’d like this to be as in-depth as possible, I will be writing this in one go and whatever is fresh on my mind

Summer is incredibly insecure about her self-image, like many teens her age. The difference is how this plays into being a part of the Smith family. She has no one to talk to about it directly because every member of her family is already involved in their own relationship or somewhat gets over it, which she points out in ‘GoTron Jerrysis Rickvangelion’. Rick’s philosophy was something the show practically revolved around for earlier seasons which is exhibited in every character in different ways except Summer. We don’t really see any moment of Summer burying her fear or getting over it even with some amount of silver lining. Instead, she embraces any caliber of attention and love no matter the ramifications. A great example of this is ‘Something Ricked This Way Comes’, where Summer seeks the attention of Mr. Needful, who Rick aptly points out is ‘literally the Devil’. Despite this, she still works for him, accepts his gratitude, and even saves his life

This is a persistent part of Summer’s character, but in later seasons it is the basis of who she is NOW, not her entire personality. These insecurities can range from not feeling pretty or simply having no friends or partners. There’s also a unique aspect to her dynamic, that being she tends to go along with whatever is happening around her as long as she gains from it or at least survives

‘Ricksy Business’ shows a raging party that Summer hosts solely to have attention drawn towards her and feel popular. Even when Rick invites his alien friends, she doesn’t act like Morty. Morty is shown to be on his toes, trying to stop anything bad from happening and making sure not one thing goes wrong. Summer is neutral to the party while Rick insists it continues on through any means, literally sending Morty out to get drugs for him. In this episode, Summer wanted the party to simply go on for her own popularity. However, it would backfire because of one detail we can’t ignore. Summer isn’t innocent.

She dismissed Nancy as a dork she didn’t want to be around, which later on meant no one wanted to be around her once Nancy talked about how shitty she can be. In Season 4, we see she’s invited her to her house with Tricia at least, but in Season 1, Summer is dismissive of others if they don’t give her some form of attention in return

‘Rixty Minutes’ is an episode that shows that her parents had Summer when they were very young and still in high school. When Summer ties to look into other versions of her life across the multiverse, it’s entirely blank and because these are connected to the versions Jerry and Beth see. THIS IS A CONSISTENT DETAIL! On the TV, we see the version of Jerry that Beth also runs into. That means Summer looked into the same universes, but she was absent. As a result, she blames herself for being a burden and someone holding her parents’ potential back.

One detail worth mentioning is that in the other universes, she mentions she’s playing Yahtzee with her family each time. As I keep mentioning and WILL mention here, she values family in high regard. If these universes are focused on successful outcomes, then the happy ending for Summer she didn’t know about back then was bonding with her family. Board games are sometimes used as bonding moments in the show. Two examples that come to mind as I write this include ‘A Rickconvenient Mort’ when Morty originally brought Planetina to the family and then ‘Rickmancing the Stone’ when Beth plays with the robot versions of Summer and Morty, saying she never gets to do this. It’s clearly something the family almost never does but when they do, the times we have seen them pop up is in the context of being too good to be true - the family being together.

We constantly see Jerry reference television and media, it’s clear he wanted to be an actor

Beth mentions she performs surgery on humans instead of horses

And Summer doesn’t realize that her dream is being achieved - having a normal life and a loving family that bonds

Of course, Morty convinces Summer to not run away as she basically realizes someone DOES love and appreciate her in the family. When she says ‘You’re not my brother?’, it also speaks volumes that another Morty was willing to love another version of his sister after the events of ‘Rick Potion #9’. Furthermore, the idea that no one BELONGS anywhere doesn’t mean everyone aimlessly wanders. It just means that Summer wasn’t entitled to any standards at all, standards that she feels the need to abide by that are the entire root of her insecurities and the idea that she is holding her parents back

‘Get Schwifty’ focuses on Summer’s place in the new religion of Headism. She takes it as an opportunity to be seen as perfect in the eyes of her parents. In an episode like ‘Total Rickall’, we see her mother drinking instead of driving her to school, then bruising her eye with a bottle of wine. And of course, the crux of ‘Rixty Minutes’ is Summer feeling like she’s holding back her parents. Her parents didn't show her love and she didn’t know why, which led to her ignoring anyone who didn’t instantly love her back. She was careless and snappy, but in ‘Get Schwifty’, she realized one way to get their attention - ignore her flaws

Whether or not this detail was intentional too, she was following a philosophy her family followed as well, which was ignoring those flaws. Her own unique spin on it and the point of her place in this episode is having a religion to follow that she can not only align herself upon, but as a reference point for others to realize how much she’s changed. This works not only for her parents but for Ethan as well. Summer is shown to be more active and seemingly happy but incredibly devoted to this religion. When she sees the heads, she uses it as proof that she can achieve a form of improvement that is legitimate, which is why she’s so dedicated to it

However, just because Summer goes along with any means to be popular, it doesn’t mean that she will ignore her family. Again, she wants their attention and love. Summer wouldn’t harm her family entirely if she thinks they already hold a negative view of her, except ARGUABLY Jerry. With these next two examples, you’ll see that Season 2 has outliers because her character is fleshed out

‘Big Trouble in Little Sanchez’ shows that Summer cares for Rick’s well being and is frustrated when no one else seeks his safety. She was selfless enough to risk her own popularity when she ‘ratted out’ Rick, she just didn’t know the extent of it. However, she doesn’t cry about it and insists on still saving Rick. This is around the time she begins to hold her family closer. ‘Total Rickall’ shows the family needs to stick together and tries to find a silver lining from how toxic they all are to one another. ‘Rixty Minutes’ shows Morty’s love for her while ‘Something Ricked This Way Comes’ shows Rick’s love for Summer. As a result, she values them for the happiness they bring one another and goes out of her way to save Rick even when he thinks he doesn’t need help

‘Look Who’s Purging Now’ shows how she’s found her place within the family. She gravitates towards Rick and Morty more instead of her parents. Rick entrusts Summer to save them both while Jerry pesters her. The constant character traits are on FULL DISPLAY in this episode and I’m kicking myself for not mentioning it before. She nearly cries as she remembers moments with her father and is insulted that he used family bonding moments to ease her into giving Jerry money. And although it probably isn’t intentional, saying The Purge sucks opposes Jerry’s view of just liking and referencing all movies. This point is also supported when she asks if all interdimensional cable needs to be juvenile violence. Furthermore, this small detail is contrasted when she’s more aggressive and fine with killing in Season 3.

In this episode, we understand more of who Summer favors in her life - Rick and Morty and not Jerry. This branches out from Season 1’s showing of Summer as a careless teenager, as ‘Raising Gazorpazorp’ and ‘Something Ricked This Way Comes’ cement how she holds Rick close too

So we’ve moved past holding people close to just love them and get something out of it. In Season 2, she realizes she appreciates the genuine love her family has for her. At the same time, she’s finding out who she loves and why. The ending of Season 2, however, utterly changes this

I can go on and on for days about how this scene needs to be recognized as one of the most pivotal across the entire show. I consider it the most important scene when it comes to understanding her character. If you want the episode where Summer changes into her more rebellious and strong side, watch ‘Wedding Squanchers’ after understanding everything that came before.

As I’ve said again and again, the reason I regard Summer breaking into tears when Rick mentions the consequences of the Galactic Federation being on their heels is because so little is said and it shows a lot about Summer.

This is a scene where she’s the only one crying and blames herself because her insecurities have played a part in leading to Tammy murdering Bird Person and successfully rounding up any terrorists. And again, she’s so lonely and out-of-place alongside her family that it’s just looked over, ironically by many fans too

I will wrap this up by summarizing what follows

Because Summer holds herself heavily accountable for befriending Tammy to begin with, she holds her family closer than ever. She swears to bring back Rick and hates the Galactic Federation. This is branching off character traits in Summer and removes the idea that Summer will listen to authority or take their word. Even across ‘Wedding Squanchers’, she comes to an ultimate realization by telling Jerry, “You don’t love someone in hopes of a reward”. This single line removes Summer’s old trait where she quite literally loved other people in hopes of a reward, meaning yes, the previous scene IS her ego death and the moment her character changes.

She despises the Federation and is the only one in the family willing to act against them - again, showing her alienation. This is why Summer is fine with acting violently to address an issue, why she doesn’t listen to a form of authority, and is close with her family. Later seasons show she keeps them together. If Summer didn’t rebel, then there’s almost no chance she would’ve convinced Rick to come back (side-note, another Rick holds Summer hostage instead of Morty in ‘The Rickshank Rickdemption’). Her subconscious potential manifested as Night Summer, which is nothing more than Summer being totally brutal and speaking however she pleases. The Night family listens to Summer, because they recognize that she also keeps them together. This implies that even though no one else in the family says anything about Summer’s role, they HAVE thought about it. Night Summer is not inherently evil or a ‘dark’ version of Summer despite the name. If anything, this is identical to Summer playing Yahtzee - finding her place in her family, being trusted, and being loved.

This is meant to be more of an analysis compilation to break down Summer’s character. To oppose what many have said, Summer is actually a fleshed-out and very consistent character.

She is not just a bratty teenager.

She is not just a badass.

She is not just insecure.

Summer Smith began as an insecure teenager because she has never found attention or love that stayed. As time passed, she found shelter by being loved and loving others. However, this all changed when her past insecurities and the need to be loved caught up and she blamed herself for the Galactic Federation. She needed to keep her family close after nearly losing them, she went against any authority figures from now on, and she went on her own accord. The aforementioned descriptions aren’t entire fractions of her character or something that she instantly falls back on. This is always changing and sometimes is erased as time passes. She’s always changing, and that’s why for me, she is the most overlooked character in the show due to how much depth she carries that isn’t noticed. And of course, why Summer Smith has got to be my favorite character. So much so that a ‘short’ recap ended up being over 2,300 words

[eldritchpluto]

Ghost Quartet Set Ideas

Ok, for context, I’ve been thinking about a set for Ghost Quartet for 3-4 years now . As much as I love the sparse staging of the original show, I’ve always been curious to see how the show could be translated to a different style of production! Also I’m a sucker for big complicated sets.

An important disclaimer. I’m not a set designer in ANY sense of the word, I’ve just been working in school/community theatre for the past 4 or 5 years as an ASM, an SM, or shift crew guy! I’m fully aware that most of this is very unrealistic or even impossible. I just wanna nerd out!

Alright, let’s do this.

Firstly, my idea staging would be a type of thrust stage. I think the original production (and many that came after it) saw how beneficial a more immersive staging would be. This is a very intimate story in many ways, so taking advantage of that is a great idea. However, I’m thinking of a slightly edited version because it works a bit better for my vision.

It would be similar to this above stage, but would have a much wider back part more close to the dimensions/sizing of a smaller proscenium stage!

Then, the set itself! The set would be largely situated in that back part of the stage, and would take the form of what looks almost like a dollhouse. (Again, probably not practical at all, just let me nerd out here)

The house would be a very typical “family home”, and I would want much of the style of furniture to match the vibe that other productions have captured. The photo below has what I’m looking for! (And this is from the London cast I believe? Idk if it was their real set or something just from this one video, but either way!)

The set being a house is very very central to a lot of the thematic ideas I want to go for with this staging! I’m not fully set on what rooms there will be, but the rooms/set pieces that are important to my “vision” are a staircase, a bedroom, an attic, a kitchen, and to hopefully have a piano of some sort in there. Otherwise, nothing is set in stone.

Lighting would be rigged in a way that would allow for the possibility for just any one room is fully lit at a time! But also the whole house could be lit as well. Also, with the returning idea of stars in this show, I’d love to have small LEDs on the back wall of each room, which could be controlled to light up as stars, even in rooms that are currently dark!

Ok, with the basic set idea out of the way, let’s focus on WHY I want it to be staged like this. Firstly, it’s obvious one of the main themes of this show is family, or just in general, deep connections. On top of that, all of these stories and people are connected in some way! So, having it set up like this would help emphasize how all of these stories, no matter how big or small, are a part of each other. One of the main ideas is having each storyline based in only one or two rooms, allowing them to still feel separate, and to create a visual distinction for each storyline.

Now for the REALLY fun part!! Talking about how I would stage this. I’m not going to go through every single song (although I do have thoughts for all of them), but I’ll focus on the big ones!

All of the songs that take place “out of” the story (I mean not fully, but you know what I mean) are outside or the house. These would be located on the thrust part of this stage. Firstly, this is to frame our quartet as our storytellers, and kind of our framing device into this all. They’re a more introspective group, so they are outside of it a bit. On top of that, it gives them more chance to directly connect to the audience. Songs with this would be “I Don’t Know”, “Any Kind of Dead Person”, “Four Friends”, “Prayer”, and “Wind and the Rain”!

The songs involving the astronomer will take place in the attic. He’s always looking up at the stars, and is using the high vantage point to see it all. Also this is a bit of a stretch, but having him here makes sense because he’s kind of “hanging over” the story. During songs like “The Telescope” and “The Astronomer” the LEDs would be on in the other rooms to simulate the stars.

I think the Usher storyline would take place in two side by side bedrooms? Maybe just to help separate the stuff with Lady Usher/Roxy compared to stuff with the younger cast of Family Meeting. I also just have some ideas for some specific blocking that could utilize two side by side rooms!

Here’s where it gets fun! I very badly want “Starchild” to take place in a stairwell. Here, Starchild is in the house, it should be connected to everything else. But, despite being so close, she can’t enter any rooms. She’s stuck. A part of the house, but never one that any sort of family spends time in. Also because I’d love to have family pictures in the stairwell, which starchild can look at, but it’s only reminding them of the family they’re separated from.

Subway!! I see the subway storyline as our “connecting piece” of the show. It’s directly referenced in the other storylines very often, and it’s very much a turning point for Rose’s character. So, instead of having Subway be concentrated in specific rooms, I think each “archtype” in that storyline gets their own room. And as they’re mentioned in the song, the light of the room they’re in flashes. I have a very very specific mental image I’m having a hard time describing, but it’s there!

I want solider and rose to take place in the kitchen, and the kitchen has kind of a bar stool situation? Just fits the vibe. Also because I’d love to have the honey just come from a kitchen cabinet, that’s oddly funny to me.

My ideas are the least developed for the tango dancer storyline, but I’d love for the room it takes place in (likely a living room) to have a piano!

My ideas are similarly murky with the camera shop, I’ll figure it out :(

Ok!! Time for my favorite staging which is, of course, “Hero”. This is the point where Rose is reflecting on everything and sees the entirety of her lives. I think this song would start on the outside of the dollhouse, but as it goes on, she begins walking through the house. Before, during specific storylines, characters wouldn’t leave their designated rooms. But now, Rose walks through it all, finally seeing the whole picture. She can also interact with props from other storylines!! I would want this moment to be really big, and for it to shatter a lot of the norms set by the staging thus far.

Ok, I’ll stop my ramble there for now!! I understand this is super unrealistic, but I wanted to say my ideas anyway! I love this show more than anything, and I’d do anything to work on a production someday. I would just love for the set to also lend itself to the major thematic ideas, because I think it could be used in a way to strengthen the show.

If you’ve gotten this far, thanks for listening to my ramblings!! Feel free to send me any ideas if you have them, or if you have any questions/clarifications! I’d love to talk about this :D

[serenasolaris]

Serena sitting down and continuing her work on a semi-consistent schedule? I know, I know, kind of insane. 

Anyways, let’s cut right back to the chase: We left last post with an in-depth understanding of the basic workings of the mechanics present in The Binding of Isaac, having categorised its combat system and understood how to maximise our advantages. We’ve learnt a few things about this game, namely, that it’s a heavily randomised rogue-like action game with a great emphasis on utilising resources in intelligent ways to min-max the advantages available to the player, and thus make combat easier to survive. Now, we’ll delve into how these mechanics are explored and elaborated on in the flash version’s greatest initial moments, and then lay witness to all that came after that. We might explore the ways in which the game’s scope and focus changed along its history, and finally explain Why Everything About The Binding of Isaac Pisses Me Off, at least gameplay-wise. So, without further ado, let us clear the basement’s floors, and proceed to what lurks below. Follow me as we jump down the trapdoor to the caves, and we discuss...

The Binding of Isaac (and why everything about it pisses me off) 

Part Two: Repentant

After having utilised the resources available to us in the best of our ability for a few floors, we should be prepared to deal with the bosses lurking in the depths of the game or at least have some self respect in order to cut our losses and restart to save time. Since, in our case, we got a quality 4 item in the literal first floor of the game, I’d say luck has smiled upon us and the amount of painstaking work we have to put into surviving what’s to come is fairly minimal. So allow us to, instead, jump right into what’s next.

This is actually the boss I was hoping to get in Basement 1 last time, because (while I consider Monstro a better introductory boss with basic attacks) I feel like Gemini exemplifies the cooperation between chasers and clutters to great effect.

(Just a heads up, I had to hop on a different run to get some of these screenshots, namely this one of the Gemini fight and one later on of the Mom’s Heart/It Lives! fight, so I’m sorry for the inconsistency and for not having the funny laser beam in some of the following screenshots. Doesn’t really matter, but I figured some would be curious anyways.)

Gemini is a pair of parasitic twins composed by a tall, derpy looking guy with a visible wound (called Contusion) and a tiny baby guy that fires shots directly at the player (called Suture). They are connected via an umbilical cord of some sort, and their boss fight is fairly simple.

But it also serves to teach the player something a bit more important: clutters are there to make chasers harder. See how each boss has their own health bar? That’s actually from a mod, normally their health would be collapsed into a single bar, but each twin does have its own health. And the order in which they are killed affects the fight.

Contusion is a medium difficulty chaser that follows the player around. On ocassion, he will sprint for a short period and chase the player a bit faster, getting tired and having to stop for a breath after doing so for a few seconds. 

Suture, on the other hand, is simply attached to Contusion, getting dragged around by him and periodically firing shorts straight towards the player when they enter his line of sight. While the shots he fires could be considered chaser-y, the fact that he fires them continuously even when Contusion is catching a breath after running makes him more of a clutter: an annoyance that aims to put the player in a disfavourable position in order to increase the general difficulty of the chaser’s actual directed attacks. 

This boss, then, becomes a lesson on the cooperation between clutters and chasers during battle, which makes up the game’s battle system and only grows in complexity over time. 

If Contusion is killed first, Suture goes from a fairly easy clutter to a high difficulty chaser with high health. He takes great knockback from Isaac’s tears and moves frantically, similar to level 2 flies, trying to chase Isaac directly. The fact that attacking him makes him move in unpredictable directions due to tear knockback and the fact that he can fly over obstacles that most characters cannot fire over without certain items, as well as the fact that room layouts containing Gemini are often full of rocks and other obstacles that make it harder for the player to get around makes him a surprisingly difficult fight for a single tiny fetus attacking the player in a fairly basic way, and makes him especially dangerous for newer players. Most new players will get this as Gemini’s second phase most of the time, as firing backwards towards Contusion while he chases you is a lot easier than actively going out of your way to fire at Suture during the first phase of the battle. 

However, a knowledgeable player can do something else instead.

(Ignore the fact that I’m at half health. Paying attention to when would be a good time to take a screenshot while you’re being chased by a medium speed enemy is a good way to have your hearts cut in half, especially when you have only a single bad item.)

By killing Suture first, and leaving Contusion without clutter support, the fight goes from a clutter + chaser duo that transforms into a high difficulty chaser battle to a clutter + chaser duo that simply loses its clutter and transforms into a medium to low difficulty chaser battle. This demonstrates how the support of clutter enemies can greatly increase the difficulty of chasers, but also how chasers are the ones actually going in and putting in the work. Gemini’s main attack is getting chased by Contusion, and if he’s gone, then the main attack becomes a much more difficult chase by Suture which, unlike the one performed by his larger brother, has no pause. But if the player understands how attacks interact and how Suture’s constant shots force them to move around the stage, they can utilise strategy to make Contusion less of a risk by eliminating Suture first, and in doing so make the fight have an easier second phase too. The game even rewards players that do this: On alternate “Champion” versions of the boss that sometimes appear and replace the regular one, killing Suture first and Contusion second gives the boss a chance to drop red or soul health upon death, but if Contusion is killed first then Suture is guaranteed to drop nothing. This fight teaches the player how to manage a very basic duo by exemplifying how enemies amplify each other’s difficulty, and the next fight we’ll talk about will be the final lesson the player needs to learn about how battles in this game work.

Mom is a main story boss, meaning you will always encounter her during your runs, and she’s the final boss of the Depths (or Mausoleum, if you take the alternative path) chapter. She’s the fakeout final boss of the game, being presented as the final enemy the player must defeat, but upon killing her for the first time the Womb chapter is unlocked and the real final story boss of the (flash version of the) game, Mom’s Heart, becomes available. Mom, then, becomes both a test and a final lesson for the player, as their understanding of the game’s battle system will be tested by everything to come after her.

Okay, so, remember what I said about enemies being divided into chasers and clutters? That’s not entirely true: Chasers and clutters are actually types of attacks, it’s just that most enemies and some bosses only have one attack method. But mom, as a self-respecting story boss with a theme of her own, has several. So let’s break down each of them. 

Mom’s main chaser attack is her stomp, so iconic that it’s even potrayed as her boss transition screen portrait and in some of the floor transition nightmare sequences. She will periodically grunt, after which a shadow will appear directly below the player, and then try to stomp down on the player with her foot. This attack does a full heart of damage, as opposed to the half heart that most attacks have been doing up until this point, but even though it’s dangerous it does not make an entire final boss fight on its own.

This leads us to her next attack: If Isaac is close enough to any of the four boss room doors present in her arena, mom can use her hand to reach out from it and attack. Since only mom’s foot, hands, and her eyes (which she can periodically stick out of the doors in the room as well) can be damaged, this measure serves to prevent the player from just running up to the eyes as they appear and firing at them up close without thinking. However, it also serves as a very effective clutter attack: Mom’s arena is full of rocks that hinder the player’s movement. While mom’s stomp attack will slowly clear the way if it happens to hit the rocks in the arena, at the start of the fight there will barely be any empty room besides the center of the arena itself, where mom will try to stomp the player, and the area immediately connected to the doors, where she will try to grab the player with her hand. 

Now, for the next fight, we’ll see a boss that doesn’t teach the player, but rather challenges them, and it does this by turning the boss fight formula on its head.

These two attacks synergise nicely, limiting the player’s options and forcing them to act and think fast and strategically in order to clear the rocks impeding their movement and not get hit by the other attacks mom uses. However, again, mom wouldn’t be a final boss only with these two attacks, not even a fakeout final boss, so this is where her final ability comes in: Mom can actually summon other enemies to the stage. 

The enemies Mom summons are quite over the place, but due to the role they serve during mom’s fight, I feel quite comfortable saying that they are clutters. They’re there to force the player to move around, coming from the doors around the walls of the room and moving towards the center, while also fighting them off in order to avoid getting cornered and hit by mom’s stomp attack. The player will need a solid damage stat in order to fight them off, as even though mom can only summon 3 at a time they still can very much overwhelm a player who got unlucky and didn’t try to make up for it via other means, but mom’s stomp attack can actually help the player with this, getting rid of the enemies attacking them. This fight, then, becomes a battle between the player and mom’s army of clutters, to clear them out of the way and make her attacks manageable to then be finally able to damage mom herself. It’s a masterclass on TBOI’s, again, fairly simple combat system, and utilises the resources available to it in the perfect way to make the most of the game’s strengths.

Mom’s Heart, or It Lives! if you’ve beaten it enough times (although the fight remains the same) is the final boss of the Womb, and the final main story boss of the original flash game (dear flash veterans, remember that Satan was added as a post-game boss in a later update). As the final boss in the game, mom’s heart serves less as a lesson and more as a test, challenging the player’s ability and minmaxing knowledge in order to present them with an unconventional final showdown.

Woo! Now that we’ve mastered the game’s combat system through various examples and minmaxed our way through the eight floors of the original game, with a little luck on our side we’ll be able to face whatever else the game is going to throw at us next! Surely no challenge shall be too great for our understanding of the game’s systems! Now let’s go and see what was added after the flash version!

Mom’s heart is somewhat strange for a boss, as unlike most bosses it barely has any chaser attacks (and only uses them in the later phases of its fight). Instead, it also summons enemies to her arena like mom, but unlike mom’s usage of her enemy summons to support her own attacks, mom’s heart mainly uses powerful clutter attacks to provide support for high difficulty enemies with long and short distance chaser attacks, making it harder for the player to avoid what would otherwise be not much different to a random string of unconnected rooms.

The challenge that mom’s heart brings to the table is something nothing else in the game does, because it creates difficulty by creating permanent support for chaser attacks that’s there until the fight is finally over.  By making the player unable to defeat the clutter support first and fight the chasers last, mom’s heart is testing their ability to survive and their power to push through all of its enemies as fast as possible. It creates difficulty not by giving the player particularly difficult chaser attacks to deal with, but instead by taking chaser attacks and giving them an environment to thrive in, and within which they can do serious harm they wouldn’t be able to otherwise. This is the final test for the player after the final lesson that mom taught them, and it is excellently designed for that goal: a fast paced dangerous fight against an onslaught of chasers with permanent clutter support that won’t go away until the battle is finally over. It’s not difficult to see why these two are the final bosses of the original flash game.

For example... What’s that strange hole in the back there?

This, my friends, is the Blue Womb.

And this is where The Binding of Isaac starts to break.

The Blue Womb is a strange floor with barely any rooms. It contains two treasure rooms, four golden chests you can open for pickups (which you can actually look inside of thanks to an item in my inventory!), and a shop. It also contains a strange boss room, 2x2 rooms large. Alright, let’s get all we can out of these last few resources and look at whatever’s in there!

One first thing before we do: The Blue Womb can only be accessed by beating the entire game up until this point (that is, the Basement, Caves, Depths and Womb) in a single run under 30 minutes. That’s... kind of strange for a game so devoted to long periods of minmaxing followed by climactic quick showdowns against difficult foes, but not that strange. In Rebirth, the remake that all the new DLCs came out for, they added the Boss Rush, which you can get by defeating mom in under 20 minutes, so it’s not completely out of left field that they do something like this. The Boss Rush tests players’ game knowledge and their ability to come up with the most powerful build they can in the shortest amount of time possible, and rewards them with a climactic, fast paced, risky showdown against 15 waves of the bosses we’ve fought up until this point, so it also ends up being a very rewarding experience for those who have mastered the game and its deckbuilding mechanics, while also rewarding lucky runs with a fun optional battle that truly showcases the power they’ve obtained in order to get here. Surely this must be just like the boss rush: a fast paced battle to showcase the power of a build that could defeat mom’s heart in under 30 minutes! I mean, the boss room is even the size of the boss rush room. That seems like enough space for an onslaught of enemies to me.

Let me see what I can make of these last few resources, and go right in there.

Oh, a single boss! I’m ready for a frantic battle. Let’s go!

Hm. This just seems to be a reskin of the Blue Baby (or ???) boss in the chest, one of the areas added in the first DLC, Wrath of The Lamb, but... slower, for some reason? Did they give him higher health to compensate for the larger room size? Oh well.

Oh. Okay. When you kill that guy, a large face comes from the floor and starts performing a maelstrom of clutter attacks! That’s why the room is so large, to give you breathing room for when the chasers come. Obviously. Let’s start going at him!

Hm. No chasers yet, but he does seem to be firing some of his shots straight at me. I guess this guy wants to have his cake and eat it too? Nothing wrong with that. He does seem to have a lot of health, though...

Rings of bullets. Good thing I got lucky and got brimstone before this fight, I don’t really know how you’re supposed to avoid these attacks while consistently firing at him. The room size doesn’t really help, either... Oh well, at least he’s always in the center of the room. 

...Cluttering. With little to no chasers to speak of.

Hm.

Oh, look! There’s the chasers! They’re... a ring of tiny flies with low health that come straight at me at a moderate speed.

Huh??? This guy is incomprehensible! What is he trying to do? Do his clutter attacks even give support to his allies? And why does he have so much health? He’s trying to be mom’s heart, but falling just short! Eh, whatever, maybe he has a second phase and gets better then.

Okay, what the hell is this attack? He just fires shots randomly towards one side, and then they go out that side and come out from the other side of the stage? Why are the shots zigzagging up and down nonsensically? What is going on? How am I supposed to dodge this?

...Oh, there’s a safespot that you can hide in when he does this attack and if you do that you take literally no damage? Hm. But wouldn’t the chaser attacks force you out of there? Is this guy just pure clutter? Weird. Oh well. I died, but thanks to one of my items, 1up, I get to respawn right where I left off in the last room. Since I’m trying to showcase this guy, being at half a soul heart could prove inconvenient, so I’m just going to deck myself out with a full healthbar through the console.

Oh look! He’s summoning chasers now! Finally the REAL fight is starting. I do wonder if he’s gonna keep doing those attacks while these guys are here, though... That would require the player to luck out with some high damage or extra health in order to be able to tank all the hits from the enemies everywhere.

Nevermind, those guys were pitifully weak and died almost instantly, and so he went back to full clutter mode. And now he’s moving away from the center of the room? If he keeps spamming attacks like that, I would straight up just not be able to hit him without getting hit myself or waiting for him to stop attacking. Thank the heavens for brimstone’s infinite range.

...Why’s this fight taking so long, anyway?

And out of nowhere, during the attack that literally requires a safe spot to consistently dodge, he decides out of nowhere to start firing fast as hell chaser beams after me??? I don’t think I’d be able to avoid these if my speed stat was lower, although, to be fair, The Binding of Isaac never set out to be a fair or balanced game. The fun of it is precisely found in the imbalance of creating a broken build and flattening your enemies like sheets of paper under a wartank. Although this guy doesn’t really seem flatten-able? Hm. Something’s up here.

And now, he’s finally dead. That was surprisingly long for Isaac. I wonder how long I would’ve been stuck here if I didn’t have some of the best items in the game and the ability to give myself health through console commands. His attacks are weird as hell? What was up with that guy, anyway?

Dropping the character now and discussing this boss utilising my now extensive knowledge of the game: This, my friends, was Hush.

And Hush is where The Binding of Isaac’s core design goes to die.

Hush, added in the Afterbirth DLC, is a point of no return. He signals a before and an after in the way TBOI is designed, setting a precedent for future endgame bosses, floors and enemies to follow. He is the ultimate challenge for Isaac players because he’s not an Isaac boss, he’s something that was fitted into Isaac as Edmund McMillen’s thoughts on his own game started changing. Hush is when The Binding of Isaac stops being a casual rogue-like game with some bits of critique towards parental and religious abuse, and starts becoming Content.

500 (at minimum) hours of pure, raw, unfiltered content. 

Because all this game decides to turn into is a gigantic container for the world’s grossest, most cheaply made slaw.

The Binding of Isaac is an action rogue-like based heavily around luck and strategy. It requires the player to get lucky with good resources and then be aware of how to utilise those resources to their fullest potential in order to grant themselves major advantages. It has a fairly simple combat system that relies on “clutter” enemies and attacks to make “chaser” enemies and attacks, also known as the main threats in battle, more difficult to avoid for the player. To keep itself satisfying, Isaac uses a format of short runs where everything can go by fast and fights are often more sudden frantic skirmishes than long endurance tests. However, the game itself also encourages the player to take their time in order to maximise their advantages and make themselves as powerful as possible, because creating strong builds that make the player feel like a god on earth is the most fun part of the entire game.

...Okay, that might have been a bit of exaggeration. But let me explain why I just despise Hush so much.

Remember everything I’ve told you up until this point about the game? I know you do, but let’s just summarise all that we know about this game for good measure. 

Now, let’s see what the developers think about their own game.

Okay, okay, okay. Let’s ignore the part about the lore for now, because I also want to talk about it, but now is not the time.

It’s an... action RPG shooter? Well, the word “RPG” has no meaning nowadays, so that’s technically accurate. And you do shoot things. I wouldn’t call it a shooter, games with a focus on shooting tend to put more of a focus on interesting bullet patterns and consistency, and value skill much more highly than knowledge, putting the player in difficult and long battles they will have to work hard to survive. You know, actually, that’s a bit like Hush; he has a hidden attribute that makes you deal reduced damage if your damage stat is too high, forcing the battle to be longer, and tight bullet patterns that require lots of attention to dodge, and... Wait a second...

Does Hush think he’s in a Shoot ‘Em Up???

Nah, there’s no way. The next line in the description makes that clear: Players will find “bizarre treasures that change Isaac’s form giving him super human abilities”. There’s clearly more of a focus on strategy here. This is a game about strategising around resources in ways that maximise the player’s advantage, it’s not a shmup, it’s not Touhou, and it knows that. The devs know it. They must... How could they just be ignorant to the strengths of their own game?

That does beg the question though... Why is Hush Like That?

Maybe checking the patch notes for the latest update could give us a little more insight into what the game’s devs were thinking when they introduced certain new things to the game.

Hmm. Alright, that’s just a bunch of changes to certain items and stuff. But there’s one thing here that seems important...

...What does that mean?

Let me explain. 

Tainted characters are alternate versions of the game’s main cast that can be unlocked by opening a secret door in one of the newest final floors added in DLC. Their characteristics are different and they usually have weirder playstyles. Tainted Cain is no different, having a set of characteristics that make him different from everyone else.

Tainted Cain starts with a special item, the Crafting Bag. He also can’t pick up items in any rooms (with like, one exception that only exists thanks to an item you unlock by beating most of the entire game), turning item pedestals into various pickups upon coming into contact with them. However, he can still get items: His crafting bag can turn 8 pickups of any type into an item, allowing the player to plausibly craft any item in the entire game.

You see, Tainted Cain is the ultimate min-maxer.

And the way that he’s been treated allows me to perfectly illustrate my point regarding how the devs feeling about min-maxing nowadays.

When I first heard about this character, I was honestly pumped to play as him. His ability to let the players create the item they want and craft themselves an extremely broken run seemed really cool and like the ultimate incarnation of the spirit of the game. With the help of the list of craftable recipes, and a bit of luck to get the pickups they need, the player now had the ability to get their favourite items every run and ascend to unthinkable levels of power!

First, on a previous patch, Tainted Cain lost the universal crafting list. From that moment onwards, every crafting recipe was randomly generated per seed, meaning that the player had no hope of actually learning useful recipes and applying that knowledge in the future, but rather was forced to rely on external tools in order to plan ahead and create a strategy. Something else also changed in that patch: Higher quality pickups now correlated with higher quality items. This was actually a fairly sound decision, although it made higher quality items rarer, because it rewarded the usage of higher quality pickups in the crafting bag. 

But... Well, that’s not how that went.

Tainted Cain, much like the game itself, was bent and torn in the name of forcefully creating challenge, but in spite of the many attempts of the developers, he survived. Just as much less of a man than before.

This was all done with the intent to encourage the players to play without guides, or at least that’s how it appears. Since better drops were made more consistent thanks to the pickup quality rule and the special room drops, and since recipes were now randomised per seed, the devs wanted to get the players to simply pick whatever in their crafting bag and hope for the best. Or at least that’s what it seems they were going for, but in practice they ended up forcing players to use guides in order to know what items they could make on every seed, because people play Tainted Cain in order to get busted powerful runs and not in order to settle with whatever they happen to get like Every Other Character In The Game. By reducing Tainted Cain’s consistency, they forced him into more exploitative playstyles that made use of certain game mechanics in quite possibly unintended ways, while not changing anything about the power level of the character itself, just making him more reliant on external guides.

They also added one final thing: The “special drop” mechanic. Certain rooms (like secret rooms, curse rooms, or devil rooms) were now associated with certain types of heart pickups. This meant that if you, for example, salvaged an item pedestal located in an angel room, you would always get an eternal heart, and recipes for angel room items included eternal hearts in them.

And this mechanic brought with itself a whole new way of breaking the game: Since the player only had space for one active item (or two if they had the schoolbag passive item), this meant that crafting other active items would force them out of the inventory. On Tainted Cain, this meant that crafting an active item would immediately force the previous one to be salvaged into pickups, and these pickups would actually pull from the current room’s special drop pool. Since there were a few set recipes for items (namely, a few active items with limited and basic uses could be crafted by filling the crafting bag completely with one type of pickup, for instance giving the player a reusable bomb active item if they filled the bag with bombs), Tainted Cain then gained the ability to farm these special drops by crafting cheap and consistent active items in a certain room over and over, thereby gaining plenty of resources to then craft more useful (and quite possibly gamebreaking) items.

And now, instead of realising their mistake and playing to the character’s strengths, they attempted to nerf Tainted Cain by making it harder for him to obtain special drops! This is really, really funny to me, because it shows just how much the developers have lost sight of their game to the point where they’re nerfing the minmax and strategise character in the minmax and strategise game for being too good at minmaxing and strategising, but also because they didn’t even fix the “issue”. Since special drops are just pickups that have a special use when they’re in the crafting bag, they can (of course) be obtained through a multitude of other methods, or even as just random drops Tainted Cain can get from salvaging items elsewhere! A drop not being guaranteed doesn’t mean it’s guaranteed to not drop, but it does mean it will take quite a few tries to get it to drop. So these absolute geniuses of game design “fixed” the character that best capitalises on their own game’s strengths by making him more luck-based, less consistent, and grindier to get to actually do what he’s supposed to be doing (or, at least, what most people are playing him for).

From boss armour being added to level the playing field between players who were lucky and strategised and players who didn’t, to the alternative Greed mode (a special gamemode where the player fights waves of enemies to get money and buy items at an expanded shop) being “expanded upon” with the difficulty setting Greedier mode (which gives the player less money and more enemies, and has to be completed with all characters in order to get all Greed mode unlocks), to gamebreaking combos and items that smart and lucky players could utilise to gain the upperhand, the game clearly has looked for a bit into becoming more challenging. But not in the sense of forcing the player to strategise or think beforehand in order to break the game and win through their wit and gained power, no. The game wants to be challenging... By having difficult fights. And one of these fights is Hush.

But why would they do this? Why would they try so hard to break a character that perfectly exemplified the best their own game had to offer? What was the need for any of this?

Well, it’s that TBOI is, apparently, supposed to be challenging.

Okay, okay, this kind of forces us to question everything we previously thought about TBOI. Let’s try to reconstruct our understanding of the game by utilising the things we’ve learnt over this time about the mindset the developers have.

The Binding of Isaac is a top down rogue-like game with... heavy shoot ‘em up elements, that aims to create an experience in which, with little variation between runs, the player can test their skill against difficult bosses in high-stakes endurance battles where they must keep their senses sharp in order to avoid attacks from every angle, and... How in hell is this TBOI????

WHAT WERE THEY THINKING???

Like, okay, okay, okay. I like shoot ‘em ups, right? I’m a big fan of the Touhou Project and I practically grew up on Undertale (yeah, I’m one of Those Kids), and I’m not that good at them but I still find enjoyment in playing them and getting better!

But that just... Isn’t what Isaac has been trying to achieve all this time? Like, the BASIC FOUNDATION of the game, the concept of gambling and minmaxing for better items and resources in order to be able to make the most of what’s available to the player and destroy enemies with their immense power goes completely AGAINST something like boss armour even existing. Like, why would you reduce the impact of good items in battle? To make the battles more into a test of the player’s bullet dodging skill? But Isaac isn’t skill-based! It’s luck and knowledge based! The fun in this game is supposed to be derived from being smart enough to devise a plan to break it, and then lucky enough to actually be able to go through with it! That’s antithetical to the game’s basic design! And not only that, but shmup design is also antithetical to Isaac’s! If ZUN made it so that in the next Touhou game your character had a limited range and low damage and speed but you could randomly get items through defeating bosses in order to make up for those faults (if you were fortunate enough to get the ones you actually needed), people would look at him like he was crazy! Bullet hells, tests of meticulous moment to moment skill, NEED consistency, because if you add random variables that affect how the player can interact with the world and also affect each other, you’re not going to have a consistent experience no matter how much you try to balance these effects out! Some people will just be stuck in situations that will make them unable to damage certain bosses or kill the enemies they summon as fast as required, but the game just ignores that because it also adds a mechanic which makes lucky and knowledgeable players get less use out of their luck and knowledge, just to make it fair to the others! Isaac encourages the player to understand it, but then turns the player’s understanding into what almost seems to be a requirement in order to even make the slow, tanky bosses that the game calls “tests of skill” passable! And don’t even get me started on the bullet patterns these bosses actually have! Their hitboxes aren’t even clear because Isaac bullet hitboxes were (obviously) not designed for needle bullet hell precision, but even leaving that aside they look like an Undertale fan’s AU fever dream. Like, who thought that it would be a good idea to make a bullet pattern where the INTENDED SOLUTION is requiring the player to stand still and wait until the attack is over, leaving themselves open to WHATEVER THE HELL THE BOSS WANTS TO DO RIGHT AFTER?

But, oh well. The bullet patterns did get better in some Repentance bosses, for whatever that’s worth (even though some of them are still fairly unintuitive, particularly one a boss does which references an item that you can only unlock by beating every boss including that one with one of the hardest characters in the game, and is not intuitive at all to dodge otherwise), and they manage to make decently fun to fight bosses (mother being one of my favourites in the entire game), even though they are kind of making bosses for an entirely different videogame that has nothing to do with the one we’ve been playing up until this point and often finds itself at odds with that one.

I would’ve talked about The Lost and his tainted counterpart more (two characters who’s entire gimmick is basically “don’t get hit), because I quite like them in concept but feel they also illustrate my point quite well, however I didn’t find the space to do so before, so let me just fit it here: While I often like no-hit characters in games, The Binding of Isaac is just not the game for them. No matter how much Hush and Mother and Dogma try to be no-hittable, the game’s basic battle design that most combats in the game use does not accomodate for characters like them existing at all, because if you get unlucky and don’t have enough damage or good enough items to kill clutters fast enough in some rooms chasers literally just murder you (and that’s leaving aside some rooms that feel almost deliberately impossible to no-hit). Just like Tainted Cain illustrates how the game tries so hard to stop being what it is, these two demonstrate how the game tries so hard to be something it isn’t, being presented as the ultimate challenge characters for a game that wasn’t ever meant to be played hitless in the first place. The Binding of Isaac tries really hard to paint itself as a fair and balanced game based on player skill and not luck or gamebreak knowledge, but that doesn’t work when the bases your game is built on are exactly the things you want to not be, and the way the game actively tries to avoid itself in order to become something else feels strange as hell to me...

It’s almost like Edmund wanted to release DLCs for one of his most successful games but didn’t know where to push it next so he just decided to push it off a cliff and onto an entirely different genre for no other reason than a need to add more Content. If The Binding of Isaac stayed as what Rebirth gave us and the ideas that were put into the other DLCs were utilised for another completely different game built from the ground up to be a shoot ‘em up that tests the player’s skill in a consistent environment that not only lets them beat hard bosses but builds itself around making it fun to do so, maybe we could’ve gotten two good games instead of one bad one. But I’m not Edmund, and I don’t get to decide what he makes, and he decided to make this. 

But, oh well. Maybe this is all a big misunderstanding on my part. I mean, it could have been that this was Edmund’s vision from the start! He wanted to create a shmup with rogue-like elements, but didn’t know what made shmups good and went a bit too hard on the rogue-like, and so he ended up creating a rogue-like action game with a heavy component of strategy and no shmup elements to be seen besides a few tangential comparisons. I mean, it’s not like he’s changed his mind halfway through developing a franchise before, especially not this one!

The Binding of Isaac is a game that actively fights against itself, presenting gameplay ideas that contradict themselves when you progress more and more into the unknown depths below Isaac’s home, and tries really hard all of a sudden to become a skill-based shmup when it simply is not. It’s okay to be luck based, it’s okay to be simple and it’s okay to be easy. Not everything has to be a hardcore game that people will play for hours and hours in order to conquer and completely master in order to be good. But when you take a casual game that very clearly is not that, and you stretch it into, as the steam page says, 500+ hours of Content, you get a lackluster game that tries to balance two different ideas by putting them in a blender and mixing them carelessly, and then has to be botched and reworked and changed and have 3 DLCs released for it in order to be in line with what you wanted to create. The Binding of Isaac, as we will soon see is one of the things this game tends to do, had to pick a side, but in the heat of the moment just refused to do so and came up with an excuse as to why it didn’t. The Binding of Isaac has to be challenging, getting 100% has to be hard, even if that means it doesn’t have to be fun. And when the game manages to convince itself of this lie, it mangles itself into a form completely different to what it was built to be. Challenge in the name of challenge is prioritised over fun in a game that’s strong because it’s fast, bite sized, casual fun, just because the devs said so. And that’s how The Binding of Isaac breaks itself: by misunderstanding what made it work in the first place.

Chasers and clutters are just a made up concept, a thing I invented to make the game easier to understand and explain, but it looks like they explained the game wrong. Or at least, that’s what the developers seem to think, and that’s why bosses in the latest DLCs think they can get away with pretending to be Touhou.

Oh, good lord. Welp, looks like we have a lot of ground to cover when we return... Tune in next time for my discussion of this game’s story, because it has one, and it is not that great. We’ll cover everything from child abuse to religious abuse and how the game explores all these topics: Poorly! We’ll talk about how the game misutilises its own tools and symbolism in order to make the simplest narrative ever as convoluted as possible, and finally get to the bottom of why I am so mad about a story that should, on the surface, be the most “me” thing ever.

Hey, hold on. I’m getting a phone call from the voices in my head.

...What’s that?

...Demonic Isaac?

...Mom is a good guy?

...THAT’S THE FINAL ENDING?

But that’s all I had to discuss for this part. This has been SerenaOculis, tune in next time for more insane ramblings, and until then: See you guys on the next post.

[crystalelemental]

It didn’t occur to me, but the PokeFair Lodge spotlight rotation is getting an addition too.  We already have all the Fair units, with Cynthia, N, Marnie, and Raihan.  So...whoever they add is not going to be the Lodge unit, because that’s confirmed to be Dawn.

Which means it’s gotta be an alt.

That’s the only thing that makes sense, they’re powering up an alt rather than a base form.  I am going to assume that they’re working on PokeFairs that are pre-second year anniversary, given that Marnie and Raihan both got expansions.  Given this, we can rule out Lance, Steven, Gloria, Diantha, Ingo, and Emmet.  But we could get SS Red, SS Blue, or Champion Iris.

...do I even need to express my thoughts?

First, this sucks.  This is not a good trade.  Of the initial alts, four of them are in rather dire need of help (Train Bros are still really good), while the three that are possibilities...are fine.  SS Red has been so good that he’s still, STILL argued as being better than Leon.  I argue this.  Because he is.  His self-setup 100% makes him better Leon.  SS Blue is the only unit to have received an expansion long before those were real.  He’s still so good because of it that people argued SS Kris wasn’t worth it, because he was there.  I do think SS Blue could stand to gain a bit of consistency with his buffing that he currently lacks, but also his old expansion conflicting with a 5/5 expansion means they’re gonna go all out to make something work over what he currently has, so he doesn’t turn into a Marnie situation where you can’t afford the upgrade.  And Champion Iris...I mean, same deal, really.  Full energy cost shreds any hope of a seriously impactful upgrade for her.  She doesn’t want to give up her sync nuke multipliers, and that leaves 11 energy.  ELEVEN.  That is not a good amount.  She’ll afford one (1) tile; 5/5 nodes may as well be inaccessible.  Literally the only thing they could possibly do, is give her Defense Crush 9 and Power Play.  Anything short of that will not be worth it.

Meanwhile, Lance continues to have no ability to buff any stat, Steven’s still really sad on damage despite the striker designation, Gloria’s atrocious due to her condition for higher damage being a death sentence in CS and inconsistent in Gauntlet, and Diantha...okay honestly, I think Diantha’s actually fairly good at present, but she could still get some help.  The ones who need it most seem least likely to get anything.  Meanwhile three options that are already pretty damn good...may get more out of it.

I could be wrong.  I hope I’m wrong.  But I don’t expect to be.  We’ll see what happens.

As for who I’d hope for...I mean, obviously I want Iris.  I don’t respect Kanto.  I especially don’t respect Red and Blue given how much the genwunner fanbase sucks them off constantly as the bestest characters ever despite being boring as sin half the time.  Iris would be nice.  And legitimately, of the three, she needs the most help.

As stated, her grid is...a rough time.  She has 11 energy outside of her sync nuke build.  What I’d like is, as stated, for her to just have Defense Crush.  Double Down Defense Crush is so good that it’s argued as a lucky skill over CS2, solely for the raw power increase on random odds.  But to access anything, she’d need to give up a multiplier, and either Relentless or Power Play would be nigh-required.  I think Power Play synergizes best with her natural passive for move damage, Power Loving, but I’d take either.  Self-sufficiency has also been a huge focus, based on a unit like N’s upgrade, and Iris is similarly hosed when it comes to self-sufficiency.  Unfortunately, it would take two tiles to fix both attack and crit rate, and I have another thing I’d like to see.  Speed.  Iris’ gauge control is not great.  So here’s what I’d like to see.

Spaces above, we get one before the sync damage node, and two above in a straight line, with Devastation directly adjacent to the left.  I’d like to see Sharp Entry as the 2/5 addition below the sync damage node that tends to cost 7 energy, then Mind Games 9 as the 4/5 10 energy node, and MP Burst as the 5/5 10 energy node.  Mind Games is to make her more of a spectrum debuffer, potentially hitting everything if desired for her multipliers.  They cap out, but this offers Iris more of a utility role than she previously had.  “At 4/5?”  Listen.  Just let it go.

Spaces below, we get one above the sync damage tile, then one each to the left and right below.  The left side is adjacent to Pecking Order.  The node above, I’d put Berserker 1 on Trainer Move for 7, while the left will be Power Play 5/5, and the right will be Defense Crush 9 for 10 each.

Berserker and Sharp Entry provide perfect self-sufficiency with MP Burst, and are available in grids with current specs.  The goal is to take Devasttation over Pecking Order, keeping Iris with at least some level of team restriction as the harder condition to fill.  Sharp Entry (7), Sync damage (5), Snarl +4 (4), Devastation (10), MP Burst (10), Berserker (7), Power Play/Defense Crush (10) leaves her with 2 energy.  This gives her perfect self-sufficiency, trading Pecking Order for Power Play for slightly better sync damage, or reducing sync damage drastically in exchange for consistent defense debuffs.

Alternatively, if partnered with an attack/crit buffer, she can avoid the 7 energy nodes and go around, which saves 3 on Sharp Entry, and 10 on MP Burst.  15 extra energy means either three sync multipliers, or access to Defense Crush.

The only really acceptable alternative, at least to me, is placing Defense Crush near one of the sync multipliers at 4/5.  If it’s 5/5 above, it’s...going to be incredibly difficult to maintain her current level of sync nuke while gaining the most valuable node.  It’s Marnie and SS Leaf all over again; the allocations demand too much, and she can’t even afford the upgrade she gets.  I really hope they don’t keep doing that.  I know some PokeFairs did well 3/5 while others didn’t, but this full energy cost thing is a massive issue that holds these upgrades back severely.

[dirtybarn]

Dirtybarn Interviews Kenichi Kuromaru: Distinctive Approach with Shape, Detail and Typography

As Dirtybarn, we constantly search for great works, artists, and techniques. We love hearing about their experiences, stories, backgrounds because it gets easier to understand there is no definitive, single way to be a successful designer. Every designer, every creative has a different journey until they reach a certain recognition. We want to champion this idea and support whoever we can, we'll be pursuing a short interview series. Hope you will find something interesting for you in them. Our first guest is Kenichi Kuromaru. We enjoyed our conversation with him and hoped you would feel the same way! What is your background and how do you describe your progress so far? Kenichi Kuromaru: I was born in Morioka City, Iwate Prefecture, Japan, in 1985. When I was a student, I was positively affected by Shigeo FUKUDA who was one of the leading Japanese graphic designers. He uses a trick of the eye in most of his works. They are seemed to be configured simply, however, I think that we can enjoy his expression deeply due to it. After graduating from junior college, where I learned about graphic design, I started to work as a graphic designer in 2006. Now, I’ve been a member of homesickdesign LCC since 2018. I’m good at making a design with typography expression. One of my favorite expressions is mixing the Japanese letters and the Roman alphabet. As you know, Japanese letters consist of three letters such as Chinese characters, Hiragana, and Katakana. In addition, we use the Roman alphabet in our daily life. So, you may think that the culture of Japanese letters is complex. Based on this premise, I have tried to make a new impression with these Japanese letters. Furthermore, I have skills in geometric expressions and I have tried to make the volumetric representation with a 3D rendering application. I wanted to find a method to coexist with new and analog textures in advanced 3D expression. How do you find your own way to express yourself? And why do you choose this typographic vision in your designs? Kenichi Kuromaru: I think that most of my expressions are based on some ideas accumulated over the ages which have disappeared in the process of making one certain design at that time. After a while, I felt those rejected ideas were so fresh and better than the last time I saw them. In other words, I’m influenced by my own ideas when I make designs. The reason why I chose typographic visions in my designs is because I always hope people who saw them will be excited and stimulated through my works. To give an example, I try to focus consciously on both of clarity and ambiguity when I make typography expressions. In other words, I ask myself, “Do you intend to let someone read these letters as letters or as one figure?” In this way, I distinguish them and use effective ones depending on the projects. What are your priorities while working? Kenichi Kuromaru: In terms of making designs, I put my emphasis on the first impression. I mean that I often put my priority on simple ideas before planning certain concept works such as some keywords and sentences to describe that project. What is your primary source of inspiration? Kenichi Kuromaru: My primary source of inspiration is my commuting time in the morning, maybe. I use my car as transportation, so I look forward to passing a mountain path every weekday morning :) In addition, I think it is also important to have time so I can feel free to think or not think about something. In my opinion, however, this time doesn’t affect my work directly. What are your plans for the future? What is the next achievement you set for yourself? Kenichi Kuromaru: First, I hope to improve my skills in making 3D expressions and motion graphics. Secondly, I’d like to explore the measure of AI-powered design. At all. Thanks.

Poster, Arts Live Iwate 2021 Read the full article

[ladyanput]

Ok so this is the third time that I'm sending you an ask tonight. (or is it night time in your country?) I'm being annoying right now but whatever. So I've been cackling about those salt fics you wrote because they are just amazing. I have a request, though it is up to you to write it or not. So, can you write a salt fic where someone got an interview with Ladybug (probably Aurore) and then they ask her why they replaced the old heroes like Rena Rouge, Carapace and etc. and LB is just like I don't work with dumb shits or somethin'. Then there is also a new Black Cat (Probably Luka, Felix, or Damian) because Adrien here is an asshole and this fic is saltier than salt water. Then LB also insults Alya's blog and their school. Those foolish mortals get some lawsuits and the rest is up to you. (This request is probably messed up since it's already midnight here and I can't sleep.)

You're never annoying, I just apologize that it took me so long to get to you. I do hope you don't hold it against me, darling.

A one on one interview with Ladybug was basically unheard of if you weren't the Ladyblog or Nadja Chadwick. Ladybug had made it firm that she wasn't a celebrity, she was a hero. She wasn't there for clout, for attention, for fame or fortune. She just wanted to keep Paris safe.

That's was Aurore admired about her. And why she felt queasy as she sat across from the heroine, who had given her of all people an interview. But she got ahold of herself, taking deep breaths as the cameraman began counting down. And when he hit 'one', she put on her best smile and straightened in her seat.

"Hello Paris! Welcome back to 'Latest Buzz'! I am your lovable host, Aurore Beauréal. Today I am here with a very, very special guest, our very own heroine of Paris; Ladybug!"

Ladybug beamed right at the camera, but gave a shy little wave, giving away the nerves she obviously had.

"Now, Ladybug, I'm so glad you requested to be on the show. You know, I initially thought I had misheard when Estelle told me. Usually you're not big on personal interviews." Aurore gave her full attention to Ladybug, but keeping the bright, friendly smile and perfect posture.

"Well, I tried a few times actually. But when I did, none of them were really great experiences." Ladybug admitted and both girls immediately thought of that disastrous Face-to-Face interview. It left a bitter taste in their mouths. "My issue is that misinformation has been spread around a lot recently. It's made me realize that I need to find more trustworthy sources."

"Ladybug. I vow on my integrity as a host and Estelle's reputation as a journalist that we are people who research facts. We don't ambush our guests, we respect them." She said, placing a hand on her heart. Ladybug saw an honesty in her eyes that she hadn't seen in such a long time. It honestly made her feel.. Respected. "Now, Ladybug.. We both know you have a lot of fans. A lot of admirers. False information can be spread so easily these days, which sources specifically are you telling people to avoid?"

"Well.. With Face-to-Face, I found that I was entirely ambushed in that interview. I wanted to speak about my hero work, but instead Nadja kept trying to needle her way into my personal life. That picture she had shown in largely out of context; when Dark Cupid attacked and Chat Noir was under his spell, it was the only way to get him free."

"Yes, I remember watching that. I'll be honest Ladybug, I felt bad for you." Aurore bit her lip, but smiled a bit when Ladybug nodded. "I mean, Chat Noir wasn't helping either. He seemed to be trying to push this narrative forward that you two are a couple."

"And we're not!" Ladybug burst out before she could stop herself. Everyone in that studio could hear the utter stress and frustration in her voice. "I've begged and begged Chat Noir to stop with the flirting, the 'telling people we're dating', everything! I just wanted him to focus and he couldn't seem to do that!"

"Is that why you replaced him? Because of his slacking off and refusing to take anything seriously?" Aurora sat up an bit straighter, her eyes going wide.

".. Not exactly, no. It was a bunch of issues that eventually piled up and boiled over." Ladybug made some gestures with her hands, trying her hardest to find the words but just letting out a long and pained sigh in the end. "I do enjoy my new partner now. He is more serious, more stable. I know he won't go off and pout if I deny something he wanted. I needed an entirely new team, as a matter of fact."

"Well I am going to say, on behalf of everyone here, that we're glad. We swear on our integrity as journalists that if such rumours were to ever surface again, we will do our proper research." Aurore beamed and many of the staff and crew behind the cameras nodded and gave Ladybug their thumbs up. Honestly, it warmed Ladybug's heart to see such support.

When had been the last time someone had supported her like this? Sure, her parents supported her, but her friends..? Her peers? No, none of them had supported her in a long time.

"Speaking of research, I'd say to stay away from the Ladyblog." It burned to say it but it had to be said. Alya had crossed so many lines it wasn't even forgivable at this point. She had gone too far, had betrayed too many.

"Wait, what?" Aurore nearly jumped out of her seat but quickly composed herself, taking a deep breath. "Pardon me Ladybug, but the Ladyblog has been a vital source of information since the very beginning."

"And I'm not denying that!" Ladybug quickly held up her hands, her eyes desperate now. "But please let me explain. The Ladyblog was amazing in the beginning, but like all things, it started to go astray. It was things like trying so hard to find out my identity. Trying to push that narrative of that whole superhero couple thing.. Ladyblogger Alya Césaire has proven time and time again that she is not trustworthy. I mean, I thought she was my biggest fan. Why does she keep pushing my words aside?"

Many people who watched the interview would agree. If you idolized someone, respected someone, truly looked up to them.. Why would you push aside their words, their wishes to try and push the narrative you're so convinced is true, but isn't there?

"And don't get me started on the whole Lila Rossi craze she seemed to be on now." At Ladybug's mention of Lila Rossi, both Estelle and Aurore had to keep from rolling their eyes. They knew all about the girl.

"You speak as if you are quite frustrated, Ladybug. What an odd reaction to your best friend." Aurore leaned forward a bit in her seat. Everyone else got to the edge of theirs. Ladybug only shook her head, looking utterly defeated.

"That's the thing, she isn't my best friend." It took everything to keep from satin that she hated her, that she had taken away her friends and her life. "The only times she's met Ladybug is when she's been akumatized, which has been around six or seven times at this point. And the other things she's claiming are so outlandish! Saving Jagged Stone's kitten from a airport runway? Clara Nightengale stealing her dance moves? And the Ladyblog just posts it out there, claiming every single story is true. I'm just scared that people are taking this one hundred percent seriously. That's why I had to drop Rena Rouge and Carapace from the team as they believed Lila Rossi over me. They didn't even try to confirm these rumours! And it hurts to think that one day, someone will take Lila's words seriously and get hurt. What if she says it's safe to dip strawberries in bleach? Or tells someone that she found a way to tame some kind of wild animal? Someone would get hurt because they believe her story and try it out for themselves!"

"My goodness, I can definitely see how that is a problem. Misinformation is very easy to spread thanks to the internet, so you being worried is a very relatable thing." Aurore nodded, then tilted her head ever so slightly. "Ladybug, do you know anyone who has taken her word seriously? This is besides the Ladyblog of course."

Ladybug closed her eyes briefly, mentally debating with herself before finally giving in. These things needed to be said.

"Collège François DuPont. Now I wasn't there personally, but I heard about this situation and looked into it. The entire situation was appalling. Apparently a student was found to have cheated, assaulted another student, and commited thievery. But the thing that stuck out is only one person saw her do all of these things; Lila Rossi. No investigation was done, no questioning other students. This student was then expelled immediately. Her teacher and her principal didn't even give her a chance. And from what people have been saying, Miss Rossi's behaviour is actively encouraged in that school. She misses countless days, no, months of school, claiming she's traveling. But when she was supposedly in Achu, doing whatever it was she was claiming with Prince Ali, I was fighting her akuma here in Paris on Heroes Day!"

"I was at school the day that happened. I knew the student that happened to. They're the nicest person in that school! Never a bad thing to say about anyone, always willing to help! I agree with you on how things were handled, it's a level of incompetence that is baffling." Aurore's hands slowly curled into fists as she remembered it all. She slowly shook her head. "The principal, their teacher, their class who backed up Rossi. It must have hurt them so much, made them feel so alone."

"That's why I want people to be more careful with what information they take as fact. It's so important, because stuff like that can lead people to a desperate place. They feel alone, like the entire world is against them. I wouldn't have let the principal and the teacher get away with that gross negligence in their jobs." Ladybug leveled her gaze directly to the camera. "People of Paris, please listen to what I am saying. I am here to be a hero, to protect you from the terror of Hawkmoth and to defeat him. But please, do not be like Principal Damocles, do not be like that teacher and her class at DuPont. Do your research, look up your facts. Do not let a liar lead you to do something dangerous and hurt yourself as well as others. Respect each other, talk and be honest. I swear on my life that I shall do the same. You are the people I swore to protect and I love. I am saying this all to protect you. And I'll hope you'll all forgive me for not protecting you sooner."

...

The interview rocked Paris. Ladybug speaking so openly about her frustrations, about the discrepancies in the Ladyblog and Lila Rossi had many people double checking the sources of everything they learned from that blog.

Alya could barely show her face as she made her way though the school hallways. Her reputation as a journalist had gone down the drain. People had basically started boycotting her blog, harrassing her, or trash talking her on other forums and sites. Even a lot of news outlets picked this up.

What hurt the most from that interview last night was Ladybug's words towards her, both as Rena Rouge and as Alya. Surely the heroine had to be mistaken, she had never beytrayed Ladybug! And that Oblivio incident, it was just to show Chat Noir and Ladybug that they were meant to be together!

Her family was upset with her. No, upset was too tame of a word. They were pissed.

"I can't believe she lied to us.."

"Well what do you expect from someone who keeps harrassing Ladybug?"

Alya flinched when she heard the whispers and rushed into Miss Buster's class. The entire class was there, all seated, all looking utterly miserable. Many of them looked as if they had been crying all night. A lot like she had.

"W-where's Miss Bustier?" Alya asked when she eyed the empty desk. Many of her classmates shot her glares, but didn't say anything about the interview last night. After all, they had no room to talk.

"She and Principal Damocles are with the school board now. We're getting a new teacher." Adrien was the one that spoke up. He looked utterly miserable. So unlike his usual self.

"Lila isn't coming back. She was pulled from school when her mother found out what happened." Alix muttered from her seat, arms crossed and shoulders hunched.

The class went quiet as they all internally contemplated how things had gotten like this. Their eyes focused on the door when it abruptly opened and Marinette came strolling in, carrying a box.

"Good morning everyone!" She said brightly, pretending not to notice the downcast expressions on their faces. She set the box on the teacher's desk before she turned towards them. "Oh? What's wrong everyone?"

".. Did you not watch the interview with Ladybug on 'Latest Buzz'?" Alya stared at Marinette, a bit dumbfounded by her friend's lack of awareness of the situation. She had been expecting Marinette to rush in with support and a fiery vengeance against those who had humiliated her best friend, maybe even a fresh pastry. But instead she was greeted with empty hands and a cheerful hello?

"Oh, well I haven't really had the time to watch much television. I mean, with my transfer papers, needing to plan out my new schedule with all of those new classes. Busy as a bee, that's me!" Marinette just beamed, giving Adrien a playful wink that had his stomach churning.

"Wait, transfering?" It was Rose that spoke up, her large eyes seeming impossibly large now. "Transfer what?"

"To my new school, of course." Marinette giggled and clasped her hands together. "I start on Monday."

"New school?!" Alya was on her feet and rushing towards Marinette. The others quickly followed, crowding around her. "What do you mean new school?! When did you ever say you were going to a new school?"

Marinette blinked, as if stunned, then tilted her head ever so slightly.

"I told you all last week, don't you remember?" Marinette tapped her lower lip, seeming to be wracking her brain before she abruptly snapped her fingers. "Oh! I forgot, you all were deep in conversation with Lila about her upcoming event with Jagged Stone and Clara Nightengale. You know, the one she said she'd be attending with Ladybug, since they're such good friends. Did she ever say how it went?"

All of the students shifted uneasily, suddenly seeming to refuse to meet her face.

Alix murmured something so barely audible, Marinette held a hand to her ear and leaned closer.

"I'm sorry, what was that?"

"Lila was lying to us!" Alix snapped as her cheeks went a flaming red.

"About everything! She never knew Jagged Stone!" Juleka spat out in fury.

"Or Prince Ali!" Rose sniffled.

"And she wasn't friends with Ladybug? They were barely acquaintances!" Alya wailed out as tears welled up in her eyes.

But Marinette hardly reacted the way they were expecting. She just gave them a small smile and nodded.

"Oh, yeah. I know."

Alya sucked in a breath sharply.

"You knew..? But why did you never..?"

"Oh Alya, you silly forgetful thing. I told you the day she returned from her long 'trip', remember? I told you she was lying." Marinette gave Alya a smile that said 'oh you silly thing'. "But you told me that I should really check my sources. And I got tired of trying to bring up any lies, since that was always your response. So I decided to just stop. I mean, since you're such an inspiring, honest journalist you must double and triple check every source you come across and found every story to be true!"

Alya flinched and looked away, feeling the churning feeling in her gut again. No, the Ladyblog had been the only source for the stories. The. Only. One.

"And I'm sure all of you knew what you were doing! I mean, it makes sense; trusting the words of a complete stranger over someone you've known for a while now. Some of you since we were in diapers!" She focused her gaze on Nino and Kim, who had the grace to at least look ashamed.

"Marinette, you really should-" Adrien began, reaching out for the girl, but was cut off by her clapping her hands together.

"But it's alright! I decided that fighting with you all wasn't worth it, so I took Adrien's advice and took the high road! Don't bother exposing Lila, she isn't hurting anyone!" Marinette announced brightly, giving her hands a little wave.

The temperature in the classroom dropped by several degrees.

".. Adrien, she's kidding, right?" Nino glanced over at his friend, his eyes pleading for him to deny it all. But the sight of the blood draining from the model's face and the sweat starting to bead at his forehead told him everything he needed to know. "Dude.."

"How could you?! You knew this entire time and didn't even try to tell me?!" Alya rounded on Adrien, fury in her eyes.

"Now, now, don't get mad at Adrien. I'm sure he knew you all were going to do you research. Besides, it's not like this did anything bad for anyone." Marinette pressed a hand to her cheek, still grinning. "I mean, it's not like you all took her advice without doing any research. You didn't try the things she suggested without actually checking them out to be true, right? No one lost any scholarships or job opportunities. No one's relationships were ruined. No one was hurt."

The nauseous feeling spread to all of the class as the reality of everything caught up with them.

"I'm sure everything will go back to normal, right? I mean, I'm sure that that woman from the education bureau isn't here to fire Damocles and Bustier for their severe neglect in their duties. Expelling me with the most mediocre and shaky proof. Surely that's a school I should feel safe in! That I should be proud to be a part of. But alas, my preparations for my new school are already done, so oh well."

Marinette shrugged and adjusted her purse strap.

"Anyhow, I wish you all luck with the amazing things Lila has helped you to do! I know it must have been worth ignoring me and convincing me I was crazy. With all of the free time I've had, with you guys practically replacing me with Lila in the group, I've had tons of time to spend with my boyfriend."

"Boyfriend?!" Alya's eyes went owlishly wide as she gaped at Marinette. "But what about Adrien?!"

"Oh Alya, I fell out of love with Adrien forever ago." Marinette shook her head in an almost patronizing way that had Alya's cheeks burning with embarrassment. They didn't even pay attention to Adrien's noises of surprise. "I mean, you claimed I was jealous of Lila getting close to Adrien, that I should let the jealousy go. And you know what? You were right! So I decided Adrien wasn't worth the stress, the embarrassment.. I mean, I couldn't even talk to him straight. I thought he was the most perfect guy in the world! Goodness, did I learn my lesson!"

She giggled as if she found the entire thing amusing. She then beamed at the class.

"Well, ta-ta! I need to get back home and make sure everything is ready to go. I wish you all the best, I really do!"

They all watched, shellshocked as Marinette breezed out of the classroom like it was nothing. Like she wasn't leaving her friends, her school, her life behind. And they all would wonder exactly how badly they screwed up, if she could walk away do easily, without a care.

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[defdaily]

‪[TRANSLATION] Arena Homme+ Magazine April 2021 Issue featuring JAY B

Translated by defdaily.

JAY B is free and starting again from scratch. That is what JAY B has in mind. GOT7’s leader announced that he would be leaving JYPE as the group stays together. JAY B is preparing to debut as a solo musician while planning to also release mixtapes and hold exhibitions as Def. We had a chat with JAY B, who has gained more freedom and strength, at the swimming pool about courage, depression, literature and aspirations.

Did you come here alone?

Yes. I took a taxi here. I was the type to go around freely even when I was in JYPE but catching the taxi to work this time around felt new.

All GOT7 members decided to leave JYP but stay together as a group. As a leader, you needed to make a decision, right?

Although we ended up leaving JYPE, we wanted to continue as GOT7. We all agreed to leave [JYPE] and try it between ourselves.The product made from me taking responsibility/taking charge was the single 'Encore’ that was released not too long ago. I was involved in the whole process with a new record label. I was happy to see a good response [to the single]. It was lacking in some areas but I was just very proud that we were able to show a different step. Since we showed through this single that “we did not disband”, what’s next is more important. When we left JYPE, Director Jung Wook mentioned "Your role as a leader starts now." I'm realizing it now.

”I wanted to learn everything about the process of releasing an album and how difficult it is. I wanted to start again from scratch.”

Your role as a leader actually starts now.

I used to find the role of a leader burdensome at times but now I feel a greater sense of responsibility. While supporting each person’s journey, I thought I needed to be the one to step up once we got back together. We also talk regularly in our group chat. Not long ago, Jackson went to China. When Mark went to the USA, I could see him off but when Jackson was leaving, we couldn’t be together because of a schedule. So I told him to have a safe flight, apologised for not being able to see him off and thanked him too. He replied saying he’ll take care and be back.

What motivated you to leave the large agency you've been working with for a long time?

The thought came to mind suddenly as we were promoting as GOT7. Am I taking all these benefits I get for granted? When a schedule is released I just do it, and when they ask me to confirm things I do, but what kind of long process has it gone through before it came to me? Who sends a request and how is it processed? Why am I only waiting until it reaches me and simply watching it unfold? I wanted to be directly involved in that process. I wanted to learn everything about the process of releasing an album and how difficult it is. I want to be humble and start from the bottom again.

Didn't you need the courage?

Of course I did. I was also afraid. My position has risen to all the way up here, but when it comes to my actual knowledge, I think I'm only down there. I was afraid that the difference would feel too big once I left the company. But I think I would have been more afraid if I stayed at JYPE. Since that difference would have grown bigger and bigger. My real self is here, so I should face it head-on a little faster. That's what I thought.

As JAY B or as Def. who releases mixtapes and holds exhibitions, you must have had the desire to do something new.

I want to do research and build it up step by step without haste. JAY B will show hip hop and RnB music that appeals to the general public and Def. will do activities that Def. wants to do. It could be mixtapes or exhibitions, or other different kinds of fictions. Def. is the nickname I used as a bboy before I became a trainee. It’s like air floating about freely. It could be house or soul or acoustic or even modern rock. In a way, you can say that Def. is close to my “main self” but since I debuted as JAY B, I’ll also show a devoted side of myself through JAY B. I want to be a person who can do both what he has to do and what he wants to do freely.

Listening to your mixtapes, and hearing that you like the styles of D’Angelo and Ray Charles, you seem to be attached to the Southern US rhythm and blues and soul music.

I do like them a lot. I like the entire hip-hop culture that originated from there. That culture also includes DJing, graffiti and even bboying. Since I started as a bboy, I would look up older videos to watch, study the culture and also look into what each dance move symbolizes, with my bboying crew and that's how I became fascinated. What captivated me the most was their obstinacy. I felt respect towards the conviction and obstinacy they carried with their culture.

Is that mood still incorporated in your music and dance?

Yes. For example, I don’t think choreography is dance. I think dancing is when music plays and you like the rhythm and start humming and bobbing your head and moving your body. I think dancing is a free act you do out of enjoyment.

What was the reason you joined an idol group after starting out as a bboy?

I gained an interest in music too, not just dancing. When I was young, I listened to D’Angelo’s music and wanted to become a singer like him. But I was rebellious when I first joined JYPE. Haha. I was even suspended for a month once as a trainee. I definitely said hello but they said I didn’t so they said "If you're going to be stubborn, then go home" and me with my young heart replied “Then I shall head home.” and left. Then I met up with my bboying crew after a long time, and in just a few months it turned into a different world. The crew members were above me and I was worried because I could feel myself far away by myself. Should I go back to bboying? Should I continue as a trainee? In the end, I wanted to do my very best in whatever I chose so I decided to focus on becoming a singer. Since I wanted to do music, it was a choice I made with no regrets.

You started as a dancer and ended up as a main vocalist. What was music to you back then?

It was a challenge. Trainees are divided into singing and dancing. I joined as a dancer but what I wanted to do was become a singer and not just do dance. But since I was put into the dancing division, I worked even harder with singing to break that prejudice. I often felt defeated. I still feel defeated with singing. Haha. But music is about endless research. Now it’s more about research than studying.

You grew up as an only child to your parents who did farming?

I was an ordinary kid. I enjoyed Haruki’s Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage and thought the “colourless” kid was just like me. I was a calm kid who helped his parents with their farm work. I don’t know if it’s because I don’t have any older siblings but they said I used to talk to myself a lot. My mother said there was a way she would know if I was home or not. If I was home, she would hear me talk to myself and be like “Oh really?” “Yes really” haha.

It’s extraordinary to read Haruki at that age.

There was an older friend that I knew and he was really cool. He looked really cool reading on the bus with his legs crossed. He said “Hey, Read a book and build up some knowledge.” As I was trying to be cool like him, I gained a favourite author and started reading more since I enjoyed it.

What kind of books do you like?

When I was a teenager I often read Kafka On The Shore. It felt like Kafka was just like me, and so while reading it, I even cried. The style of Murakami Radio was also interesting. The ending phrase “But I like that more…” was very witty. I’m collecting books from secondhand bookstores from authors who won the Young Author awards. I like Lee Jang-wook's short story Byeon Hee-bong. The main character knows the actor Byun Hee-bong, but the world doesn't know him. He would ask "Don't you know Byun Hee-bong from the movie The Host?" But no one knows. I like stories that don’t intend to be funny but they end up making me giggle.

What do you read these days?

I try to read poetry. I purchased and read the first volume that appeared on Moonji’s Poetry Collection, but it has too many Hanja characters. Haha. I started with Munhwak’s Poetry Collection. I have volumes 1 to 85. I also read poet Park Joon's collection of poems and poet Lee Eun-gyu's Affectionate Name. I even underlined and wrote things down.

Among the idols and musicians I’ve met, I think you are the most extensive reader.

We went on tours often and we would have a lot of time in my hotel room. When I went out I took pictures and when I stayed in my hotel room I read books. When I go on an overseas tour, I pack around 30 books in my suitcase. Then I bring back the books that left an impression on me, and those that didn’t sometimes I dispose of them there. These days, I look for independent publications too. I often look for independent publishing bookstores in Nakseongdae or Haebangchon. There are many books that contain honest stories that are not refined, and the power of those sentences is great.

How does reading influence your work?

The poetic expressions with poetic license help when writing lyrics. You read a new sentence and think “What is this expressing?” You receive inspiration from that image being expressed in a new way. I think of lyrics as poetry too. There are times I write how I feel honestly, but when I want to include a certain meaning I’d want to write the lyrics like poetry.

In your photo exhibition <ALONE> last year, you took pictures of objects and signs in the middle of the road.

Wouldn't it feel very lonely if you think about it from an object’s point of view? The camera captures just an instance but the object will stay there. I think each person has an insatiable loneliness. I like the artist Seonglib’s works, and I feel loneliness in his drawings. I don't know why I keep talking about loneliness, I guess I’m familiar with loneliness.

Seems like you take more pictures of objects and landscapes than people.

I don’t really like taking pictures of people. You can clearly see a person’s emotions in their eyes. I prefer hiding things rather than revealing them too much. I prefer objects, backgrounds, and natural objects rather than subjects that openly express 'It's me!'. Tranquil things, I like when you go past something and go “that’s how it was.” I try my best since my job requires being presented to people but that’s also how I am.

Who do you like as a movie director?

I like Woody Allen’s directing. My favourite is Match Point. It's a love story that goes beyond taboos, and it's electrifying. The face of the actor who secretly asks the reunited lover to give him her number remains in my memory for a long time. How could he direct such a real-looking, raw look in their eyes? When I was a theater and film major, I used to take directing classes rather than acting. If I were to direct a film, I would like to shoot an eccentric witty romantic comedy like Love Fiction directed by Jeon Gye-soo.

Are you self-conscious as an artist?

I’m interested in a variety of genres, and interact with crews often, but I think goofing off just because they are an artist is an arrogant attitude. Everyone is their own artist, no matter what they do, right? I'm not trying to be pretentious, I just think there's a difference in expression, and people who work in the office are also doing their own art. That’s why I’m a little shy about the title “artist.” Is there a need to be puffed up with pride because I’m an artist? I’m just a person.

While filming for “What's in my bag” and revealed your medications for depression and panic disorder. When did you face your depression?

I didn’t know I had depression. I thought I was being weak for a short while and let it pass. But on an occasion I got examined and found out I had depression. They asked how I lived by without going to the psychiatrist. I said I just thought I was the type to feel blue. Haha. I’m the type that doesn’t show [what is wrong] but they said I was in a state where I needed treatment. After going to counselling and taking medications, I’m much better now.

“I just wanted to talk about it. It may not show, but depression is both a common and dangerous illness.”

I think you’re cool for having the courage to talk about this.

I got diagnosed and looked at the people around me. There are friends who are ashamed of it and try to hide it, and there are friends who talk about it as if it’s insignificant. I just wanted to talk about it. It may not show, but it’s both a common and dangerous illness. A mental illness is an illness too. Among my fans, or those who read this interview, if there is someone who feels depressed, don’t be ashamed of it and I hope you receive treatment and overcome it. It’s not an embarrassing thing and it doesn’t need to be hidden. And I was filming content where I show what’s inside my bag; I can’t lie. I wish everyone would be healthy.

Are you bad at lying?

Yes. If I have to tell a lie, I think it’s just better to not say anything. Since I’m the type that’s honest and straightforward, I also don’t like beating around the bush.

Can you share a way one can take a step forward towards recovering from depression?

Look at the world in a broad view. Know that there are many places you haven’t been to yet and there are many things you haven’t felt yet. It's also good to take a walk and go off your usual route and take a path you've never been on. Small adventures can also be of great help. Just by leaving the house you’re already halfway there. I think there are more ways you can refresh yourself outside rather than inside. Also, I thought I was an honest person but after being diagnosed with depression, I thought I should be more honest with myself and more faithful to myself. At times like this, think of yourself before others.

What do you believe in?

I just believe in god. I don’t have a religion. I don’t know what kind of existence god is but I do believe that there is a god. When I’m thankful or am having a hard time, I pray. “Thank you.” “Please let me get through this wisely.”

What is the greatest motivation that moves you?

As long as I’m alive, I want to continue doing work that will leave a message. I believe that there is no next life. I think I should live this time diligently to the fullest. To have no regrets.

Translated by defdaily.

[misslovasstuff]

Why Dazai is a complex character

We all know how hard it is to get in this man’s mind, right?

First, let’t take a look on what makes a character complex:

- Conflicted or contradictory motives - Change or grow as a result of the story’s actions - Decisions advance the story’s plot - Create conflict in the story’s plot or theme - Learn something about themselves

 It fits Dazai perfectly, right? Now let’s take them one by one.

1. Conflicted or contradictory motives

- to die/to find meaning/to save others/? What the audience is given to realize is that Dazai wants salvation through death. His desire to die comes with a shade of humor to hide how sad and tragic it really is. Other than that, one motive of his is the promise he made to his friend who died on his arms. You see it right? Dazai’s motives are contradictory because he saves people but can’t really save himself. Although Dazai is on the side of ‘good’ which is actually something that doesn’t really exist in BSD world because everything is more like in a gray area, his motives are more focused on others rather than himself. While on the mafia, his focus was on himself, his doom and suffering. That’s what made him so miserable. People aren’t sure whether Dazai has changed, and they question his conflicted motives. But in reality, it’s very simple. Dazai has no hidden motives other than the ones we already know. He’s not the type to aim for power and fortune. Dazai just wants a bit of happiness, he wants to answer questions that are impossible to answer. I’d like to quote a Dostoevsky saying:

“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.” ― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

2. Change or grow as a result of the story’s actions Dazai’s grow is something people fail to see. I’ve read thoughts on this matter and some claim that Dazai hasn’t changed at all. That is partly true.  Before Oda’s death, Dazai was not open to people (and still isn’t) but the difference stays on how he dealt with it. In the dark era, Dazai drowned himself in misery, seeing only darkness and claiming that this is how it always has been for him. Whilst in the time being, Dazai hides his misery behind a smile and happy facade. Bsck then, he made no attempt to change, nor did he tried to look things differently. Dazai was alone, completely. There were times he was surrounded by people he genuinely cared about, like Oda. Now, the thing is, without Oda, Dazai may have never gotten the development he got. Hardly would the things lead differently if Oda was still alive. With Oda, Dazai felt comfortable, not judges. He felt like he could open up with him because Oda would always listen to Dazai without joking around or judging him. That’s the reason why Odasaku was the only person that came close to understanding Dazai, because he was the only one Dazai opened up to. I believe that is becuase in reality, Dazai trusted Oda. We know how easily he can see through people. Perhaps, he saw in Oda that kindness and goodness that intrigued him. He saw such integrity and selflessness that made him lower his guard.  Their relationship was beautiful. They let aside the ranks and always had each other’s backs. Sometimes, between two people, it just clicks. It feels like you’ve known each other for a long time and you find yourself comfortable, you let yourself be. That’s how Dazai was. Maybe, the only thing that kept him happy, was his friendship with Odasaku and Ango. Because those were two people that accepted him the way he was, people who appreciated life and had dreams and goals, something that Dazai longs to have. When Odasaku died, Dazai’s hope died with him. Although extremely intelligent, Dazai is optimistic. He had hope that he’d find a solution to his problem, but Oda’s words shattered him.

Dazai did not cry. But you can tell that he’s ready to. Look at his face and tell me that that’s not the most devastating Dazai you have ever seen. His lip trembles and his eyes give away how hard it is for him, how hard it has always been. This is the moment that Dazai takes the decision to change, keeping the promise of his friend to become a good man and protect others.

3- Decisions advance the story’s plot Dazai is the one who comes up with brilliant strategies, but that’s not all of it. 

- He took Atsushi under his mentoring and hired him as an agent in the ADA.  Atsushi plays a very important role in almost every mission or situation that ADA is in.  If Atsushi wasn’t in the ADA, things might have gone completely different. - Dazai decided to join the good side. Yet again, if Dazai didn’t join the ADA, there would be no Atsushi, no shin-soukoku and probably the ADA would have already fallen due to the immense power the mafia would have with Dazai in it. More people would die, wars would destroy the city and things may have gotten to be worse. - The creation of shin-soukoku The plot goes around Atushi and Akutagawa as the new generation of the double black, a powerful duo brought together for the good of the city, to defeat the greater evil. Their mentor, who sees the potential in them better than everyone else, has forcefully made them work together, which had successful results. If Dazai didn’t make such decision, Atsushi and Akutagawa may had already killed each other. - Dazai decides almost any plan and strategy there is. He plays his cards well and the way he thinks and acts determine the aftermath.

4- Create conflict in the story’s plot or theme - Dazai’s a problematic character for a lot of reasons. He’s lazy, distracted, unbothered, mysterious and secretive. Sometimes, unwillingly he creates conflicts that sometimes as viewed lightly by the audience. Like the shin-soukoku conflict. A part why Aku hates Atsushi is because he is Dazai’s junior  and that he gets almost everything that he himself once desired. He gets praise and acknowledgment from Dazai. The latter, has not acknowledged Aku that way he wants to, but surely he has acknowledged him on his own way. Dazai made him part of the new double black and puts his trust in him and Atsushi. Dazai too believes in the quote that ‘only a diamond can polish a diamond’. Furthermore, we have the conflict between the mafia and the ADA. You may think that it’s not directly tied to Dazai, but he plays a major role. Having Dazai in the opposite team, makes it harder for the mafia to create successful operations. Not only Dazai’s intelligent and cunning, but he’s an ex-member himself which makes him even more of a threat to the mafia. His suicidal tendencies is the reason why he met Atsushi in the first place. So in a way, Dazai drives the plot of the story.

5- Learn something about themselves I believe that this is the point we are all looking forward to. Although we have already caught a glimpse of Dazai considering his worth as a human being in the Dead apple movie, but also in the manga countless times.

Just look at his expression. How his eyes close so peacefully when Atsushi claims that he does things that let him know that Daza’s a good guy (visiting graves and also in the end of the movie...)

Dazai sees himself rather harshly. He judges himself for his past and puts himself in constant misery. Maybe he doesn’t accept the fact that he’s a ‘good guy’, but he’s desperately trying to be.

Take a look to the following panel (chapter 50)

You can tell how much Dazai wants to help and this warms my heart so much.

“Yosano could heal me and I could help in the search”

 He clenches the sheet because of the frustration of not being able to help; that his ability is holding him back. 

HE’S BLAMING HIMSELF.

Like one would say that he’s injured, or that he was shot, but no. Dazai puts the blame on himself like he always does.

I’d like people to acknowledge Dazai’s growth because our boy is trying so hard. Dazai literally went from hell to salvation. He has already found his salvation but he hasn’t recognized that yet.

In conclusion, Dazai is the complex character we so much love. In the future, maybe we’ll be able to see him a bit more happy. Genuinely happy.

(sorry this was very sloppy but I hope you get the point)

[fatui-gf]

Childe x Dom!Reader

this work will contain femdom, slight bdsm, bondage, light degradation and overstimulation, so if you're uncomfortable with any of these, don't read!

the reader IS NOT Lumine or Aether, they are an adventurer from the guild but have no relation to the protagonists of the game, they are over the age of 18

Everyone knew Childe as somewhat of an unpredictable and dangerous man. He was quite the problem childe, easily ending up in fights, getting a kick from danger. That's what really got him excited, the uncertainty if he'll even make it alive. Always ignoring all of this pain, sometimes even enjoying it which he wouldn't like to admit.

But he felt something special, something more while fighting with you. There was something so alluring about the way you would move and gracefully use your weapon of choice while still remaining gentle about it. He could see that you never wanted to hurt him, even though you knew he was trouble and a fatui, not the guy to be trusted.

As the days went by, you've developed an interesting relationship. Childe would surprise you when he got the time, taking you out to eat or just have fun in the city, always being the one to pay for everything, of course. Gods, this man loves spoiling you.

Slowly, this turned into a friendship but you wondered if this could turn into something more. He would sometimes make dirty jokes or some suggestive remarks but never something that would make you sure that he's into you. He looked like a player after all, he was quite hard to decypher.

This day, you were in your apartment in Liyue, you've just finished cleaning yourself up after getting done with the commissions for the day when you saw a familiar man's face looking at you through the window, standing on your balcony as if this was normal behavior.

As soon as he saw you, he started tapping on the glass, wanting to be let in. You sighed and opened the balcony door. He just laughed nonchalantly

"Hey girlie, long time no see" he said with a smile on his face.

You wanted to ask how he got up there but then realized that it might be better not to. You shot him a small warm smile.

"Are you bored again or injured from. a battle?" you asked.

He laughed "Not this time, I wanted to be better and was more careful this time, for you. But I can see that you like acting as my little nurse though, huh? Do you really love me this much?" he giggled softly, teasing you.

You felt warmth on your cheeks. Again not being obvious, this man... Trying to hide your initial response, you just rolled your eyes and sat on the bed. He followed, still not taking his gaze off of you. He rested his hand against his cheek with a grin. He looked so adorable, it was hard to believe that he was a fatui harbinger.

"You know, I've been thinking a lot about you lately. You have no idea how much I've dreamed about those hands of yours around my... I meant to say, your hands intertwined with mine"

Wow, was he bold. You didn't know how to interpret this but you've had enough, all of this teasing and remarks, it drove you insane at this point. You firly grabbed his chin, positioning it so that he would look directly at you. There was no turing back from this point. You could see his eyes widening from surprise and a pink flush appeared on his face.

This boy was so caught off guard and damn, did he look absolutely adorable like this.

"Playing rough with me, girlie? Just don't be surprised if I bite back" he teased you again.

He truly was a one hell of a brat. It filled you with excitement, how endearing it would be to tame him.

"As I expected from a dog like you, all you ever do is bark and threaten to bite but as soon as I'd raise my voice, you'd turn into a puppy".

Childe felt his length harden in his pants. You could notice it too but focused on his embarrassed expression.

"I'd like to see you try, make me" and so he provoked you.

You gently pushed his shoulders so that he fell on his back on the bed. You started to kiss him deeply while undoing his shirt and tossing it aside.

You could see all the healed scars on his stomach as well as two pink nipples. You gradually made your way to them, sucked and bit on them resulting in a few moans escaping Chile's mouth.

You then unblucked his pants, paying attention to his glowing vision. It looked so pretty glistening in the rays of setting sun. You gently put it away, trying not to damage it and just wondered if using it in some form to play would be too much. You then used his belt to tie him to your bed.

"Confident, are we?" he laughed, his blue eyes staring at you from underneath his long eyelashes.

"I'm just doing what had to be done since long ago, you're always talking, always looking like the cocky guy but truth be told, you're just a little bitch when someone finally knows how to handle you properly".

You could see him gasp, probably never been told something like this before. But saying that it didn't arouse him would be a lie.

"Then turn that little bitch into your bitch" he winked at you.

You removed his pants and looked down at his bulge. You slightly poked it with your foot, slowly stroking it which made him breathe more heavily, a few moans escaped his lips. You kept going as you took off your top and later your bottom, keeping only a beautiful new lacy lingerie. You wanted to just feel fancy today, chilling at home feeling confident in yourself with this new set on but it turned out to be so convinient.

He practically could eat you with his gaze, he loved how it looked on you, you looked like a goddess. You then pulled down his underwear, allowing his dick out, it was pink and very erect, leaning towards his stomach. You placed your hand on it, caressing it with your fingers and you could feel the precum on them. You looked at them and then at Childe and put your finger in his mouth, making him taste his own precum. Due to the humiliating nature to what you've just done, he would like to admit that he got off to the taste of himself but he did. He closed his eyes and sucked on it. He looked so desperate.

You went back to touching his member, picking up on the pace and put a few fingers inside his ass. This made him moan the loudest and you could see his eyes get a little bit teary.

"Y/N please-" he somehow muttered between the moans.

You were practically milking him at this point, going rough with no mercy.

"Please what? Use your words."

He felt so embarrassed but managed

"Please make me cum, please- I feel like I'm so close, I will do everything to you, I'm your personal slut".

It was hard to believe that Tartaglia would say such explicit things in this manner. You then stopped which was met with a displeased groan from Childe.

"You have to earn it".

His eyes sparkled as you unblocked his hands.

"On your knees".

He complied and stepped from. the bed to then kneel right in front of you, his cock painfully twitching. He moved his hand to your thighs getting high of the smell of your skin. He wanted you. So bad. At this point he felt like a bitch in heat, lost all of his self control as he spread your legs open, his tongue basically automatic, going on your clit. It took you by surprise that the harbinger knew what he was supposed to do right away.

He was skilled or maybe just the heat got to his head so much that he tried his best. This didn't really matter though because anyway it felt so good. Not only did you make such a dangerous man get on his knees but also serve you. You were truly special and he had masochistic desires but let's just focus on you being special.

He kept going with all his might while also caressing your thighs. You felt the pit in your stomach growing as you grappled his hair and pulled on it. You came right on his face.

"Such a good boy..." you whispered.

You then tugged on his hair again and placed him below you. You then took your panties and placed them on top of his dick. Childe gasped. You then proceeded to stroke him with the lacey panties right on top of his length.

"I wonder what the other fatui would think of this pathetic image. Tartaglia, the great harbinger getting jerked off with panties as he pants and moans like a slut. You're so embarrassing" you teased him which finally brought him to his climax.

Sharp breaths accompanied his moans. You tossed the cum stained pa tied away, will probably make him wash them later. You then placed yourself right on his cock and started moving.

"No! Wait, you can't do that i-it's- fuck.... It's too sensitive!" he exclaimed breathily.

You kept on going as he basically screamed underneath you.

"Fuck, this hurts so much that it's good" Chile's eyes practically rolled back, he was such a mess, teary eyes, drool rolling down his chin.

But he was your mess, your adorable boy. You kept going as you felt him cum again, feeling his warm semen filling you as he gasped and moaned and groaned. You touched his cheek lovingly, wiping the tears with your thumb. You got closer to him and placed a lot of kisses on his face. He was wrecked, in a good way.

"Soooo... does that make us, like, a thing?" you asked while looking away. You really did fall for him and didn't want it to be just purely sex. You wanted more of him.

He pulled you closer, putting his shaky hands in your hair as he gave you a peck. "Does that answer your question?"

You cuddled him, holding him very tightly and close, making sure he stays with you. You both fell asleep like that, curled up together. In the morning when you woke up earlier than him, you made sure to make breakfast for the both of you. It felt so warm and domestic. Childe felt like home to you.

Author's note I had to move blogs because I wasn’t satisfied with it being a side blog, I wanted to keep it as a main so if you’ve seen this ff before, that’s why! Also, this is my first fic so please don't be too harsh on me dhdhjdnd. I'm posting it at 5am for me because I couldn't sleep so I'm sorry if I missed any typos, feel free to correct me! And I hope you liked this little scenario, pls share your thoughts about it with me 💗

[redrosesartcabin]

Kenji x first perspective female reader:

Things happened

—————————————————

(Hey, how is it going peeps! This was requested by @xxno-0xx . I hope you all, and especially the requester, like it. Only one warning: It involves some swearing, so if you don’t like that don’t read. If the requester doesn’t like it, please tell me and I’ll edit the story! Also: The story plays somewhere either between season 2 and 3, or somewhere around season 3. Though not in a canonical episode)

It’s crazy how things sometimes happen.

A very vague description, I know, but it’s the only way I can convey how I feel.

Things happened that made me have the opportunity to go to Jurassic Worlds Camp Cretaceous.

We had won the league as the best female Baseball team, with the price being -besides the typical golden trophy and some media glory- a trip to Camp Cretaceous for one of us. And as the team leader, I was chosen as the one who can go.

“Oh no it’s fine!”, I had said. I already had a funny feeling about the trip. But they all had insisted, “it’s fine”, they had said, “it’ll be cool” they said.

Oh and weren’t they just so right. I am super peachy.

Practically prancing through the jungle and killing Dinos with my little finger-

Ok that’s enough, I think y’all got the gist: The shit had hit the fan.

Things happened, that made everyone be gone, and suddenly it was up to us to survive on this pretend Prehistoric nightmare.

At least my beloved baseball bat had survived the fall of the Camp Cretaceous building. After that discovery I didn’t let go of it anymore. I took it everywhere with me, hitting every living being that even dared to breath in my new found friends direction.

Friends… I had never thought, before the evacuation of Jurassic World and all that crazy stuff happened, that I’d ever call any of them that. I hadn’t really found any of them to be friendship material. I love baseball and building things out of wood in my free time and had a dry, sarcastic sense of humor. The only person in the group who had come close to that was Yaz, but she had been so closed off, that I couldn’t really tell before we became a group that fought for their survival. Darius also had been ok, but I was older than him and we didn’t have anything in common, so that checked itself out. Everyone else sort of annoyed me in one way or another. Especially Kenji’s pompous ass. He had appeared very full of himself and just generally narcissistic, or at least painfully self centered and pretentious.

Now imagine how surprised one might be, when one figured I was crushing on the guy.

Let’s just say, that things happened that made me see Kenji in a completely different light.

Turns out he has a good enough sense of humor to catch my drift when I speak “in sarcastic” as he likes to call it. Turns out, he was a loyal and fun friend. Turns out he was just a lonely soul, neglected by a father whose work is more important to him than his own son.

Everything turned out different than it appears about him. He still sometimes annoyed me with his pranks and especially when he wouldn’t shut up about his wealth. The latter however became very apparent as the means to show that he was someone, although he didn’t need to prove that anymore. But of course he would think that’s how people would like him, his father had taught him no better.

The first thing I mentioned somehow makes me love him even more. It annoys me, gets such a rise out of me, that it’s somehow funny again. It gives me a spark and Kenji seemingly seems to enjoy seeing that spark. And him enjoying that spark makes me somehow happy as well. It would start with a cat fight and ended in rigorous laughter.

“Why so serious?”, he would sometimes ask when I’d respond with a glare towards him when he’d steal my bat for what felt like the fifty millionth time.

“You’re getting so creative. I barely saw it coming”, I answered dryly and one could practically see the words alternating between being written in small and big letters.

“Well then you should have no problem finding your sweet baby bat then”, he cooed. Looking deep into his dark brown eyes and almost devilish handsome grin made me both want to punch and kiss him, which may have made me irritable and even madder.

“Finding? Why should I find anything if I have a living and breathing treasure map. Come here!”, I demanded with a creepily sweet grin as I’d walk towards him. Then he’d run, I’d run, we wrestled for a second on the ground only to break into a laughing fit, rolling on the floor, crying tears, resolving this nonsense prank and then getting back to either relaxing or fighting off Dinosaurs… again.

I didn’t think, however, that anything could happen between Kenji and me.

For many a reason, though only two are essential: For one, we were busy surviving, one barely had time to get downtime with the group, yet alone for themselves. Secondly, I didn’t really know, or couldn’t really tell, if he felt the same. Maybe it was my own insecurities coming to light or something, but I just couldn’t really believe it.

Seemed unlikely.

But then things happened.

Kenji and I were on the run from an especially nasty, big Dinosaur. We had been collecting some water in big canisters and wanted to head back to camp when it sneak attacked, unexpectedly.

It snared at us, opening its huge mouth, showing a row of thin, long, sharp teeth.

“Fuck off, you tooth pick mouthed asshole!”, I hissed back at it, flailing my bat at it in panic.

The reason for my irrational action was mainly, that we were stuck between two huge rocks, backed up against another rock with no way out.

Maybe hills or mini-mountain were a better description, but it’s also not important.

All that I could think of was that we were stuck and that little fucker wanted to eat us.

“Calm down, y/n, this isn’t making anything better!”, Kenji tried to reason with me. I was close to shouting some obscenities at him or a dry ‘got a better idea, genius!?’, but this time his dark brown eyes, that often had a mischievous twinkle, calmed me, instead of creating the usual spark. I crawled closer to him as we were pressed to the stone wall.

The Dino however wouldn’t give up. Vehemently, it pressed its ugly snout between the walls, stretching its uncomfortably wet tongue towards us and exhaling a nauseating breath.

I was paralyzed, as I looked at that thing, not knowing what would happen next.

Suddenly, I felt my bat being taken out of my hand. I watched as Kenji took on a fighter stance, the bat positioned over his head, ready for the hit.

“What are you doing! Didn’t you just tell me that we should calm it?”, I asked. He turned around, a frown adorned his face, “I said you should calm down”, is all he answered before he darted towards the animal.

“NO!”, I heard myself scream. I had never heard such a sound come from my throat. It was shrill, loud and all in all I couldn’t recognize myself. I was terrified, even more than when I first caught sight of this beast that had brought us into this situation.

Everything seemed to pass by in slow motion as I saw Kenji swing the bat towards its snout. At first I thought it was over for him as the Dinos mouth opened, the teeth seeming to scrape Kenji’s head, that’s how close it was to him… but then I saw Kenji swinging the bat again, directly hitting its head so that it flew against the stone wall. The beast wailed in pain, seemingly backing up, and just like that, it was gone.

“I… I made it”, Kenji first whispered, before he laughed, repeating, “I made it!”, even louder, jumping into the air and forming a victory fistbump in the air.

“That was awesome! Did you see how- Y/N?”, Kenji’s joy subsided as he looked into my angered expression. With a swift motion I took my bat back, glaring at him as I pressed out, between gritted teeth “let’s just go, hero”

Kenji seemed to have caught the sarcastic undertone of me calling him a hero, because I could physically feel his mood shift closer to mine, “hey what’s with that attitude? I just saved our lives!”

“By doing what I also wanted to do. Great!”

“You were panicking! I don’t know if you would’ve gotten a good hit by panicking. Besides, I couldn’t risk you getting hurt!”, he explained.

For a second I could feel my heart flutter, but that didn’t help my opinion on what just happened.

“But you were ready to risk yourself?”, I asked, my tone bitter.

“Why are you so mad?”, he asked, “we are safe, what more could you want?”,

“I-“, I stopped in my tracks, thinking. Yeah: What was I so mad about? He was right, I had panicked. Panic never helps with concentration and right decision making. I found it impressive, that he had the courage and the focus to fight the Dino off. But I just couldn’t fight off the thought of it going wrong. What if he would’ve been eaten?

“What-“, I wanted to repeat what I had been thinking, but could feel a hiccup, breaking the tear flood inside me. No- I was not going to cry. I took a deep breath, looking directly into his confused visage, “- what if it would’ve gone wrong, I’m just… I- I wouldn’t have known what to do without you. I can’t imagine being without you anymore”.

I saw and heard him gasp, his glance unfreezing from his confused state.

“I didn’t realize I was that important to you”, he answered.

I chuckled, too embarrassed to look him in the eyes, “everyone is important to me from the group, I wouldn’t have liked any of them to risk their lives for me but- but especially not you. I- I can’t believe I’m going to say this - I had vowed to take this to my grave ya know-“

“- Get to the point”, Kenji urged me.( I wasn’t looking at him, but he later told me he had smiled whilst saying it, I however thought he was getting annoyed and was almost too scared to continue. Stupid how that sometimes works)

“- I, eh- I’m in love with you I think. Or at least I definitely feel very strongly for you”, I confessed, “there! Now you have something to use against me. Finally got something you can laugh at again on this miserable Isla-mpf”, my self deprecating monologue was interrupted by soft lips catching mine. It almost took my breath away, but then I leaned in, still not believing this was happening, though it definitely was.

“I’m not going to laugh, I love you too. I wouldn’t be stupid enough to risk everything if I didn’t”

“That’s cheesy, but I appreciate the honesty”, I said, wearing my usual shit eating grin as I regained confidence back.

“Oh look who's talking now”

“Oh shut it!”, I laughed and just like that, I found myself kissing him again.

“And here I thought I had to worry, but you two just ran away to make out”, I suddenly heard Darius in the background, half serious, half amused by the moment he found us in.

I quickly broke away from Kenji, grinning sheepishly, “You know how it is Darius: You get chased by a Dino, and then you need a kiss to make the boo boo go away… just so happens I got a bit of a chap on my lips, and Kenji wanted to make it real good again”, I explained, earning a silent chuckle from Kenji.

Darius rolled his eyes, but couldn’t hold back a smile either, “let’s get you love birds home”

————————

And so things happened. Did we have much time to enjoy us being a couple? Not really.

Did more things happen, making everything crazier and tougher?

Did the rift between Darius and Kenji make me anxious as I was sitting by Kenji’s side, as he, with an expression that was too serious for my liking, drove the yacht?

Absolutely.

But I know, that at least he’s by my side still, as am I, and we will make things happen so that we can finally be free from this place.

Hopefully, we’ll make it.

Depends on what the Dino on the yacht has to say about it...

[realcube]

✦ tenya iida x reader

✦ thank you to @coledrawsstuff​ for the request

✦ tw mentions of death, pot noodle & f!reader

[8:49 PM] 

“is that really the time?” you gasped, slapping your hand over your mouth as you stared at the little timestamp in the corner of your message to your partner for your physics project — the class representative, tenya iida.

honestly, it was sheer luck that you were assigned to do this project, which would make up to 20% of your final grade, with one of the smartest students in your class, who you also happened to have a slight crush on but considering how awkward you were around each other, perhaps that had nothing to do with fortune. 

but now you were texting him at ungodly hours at night! well, ungodly for him at least since iida was the one who infamously imposed the eight o’clock bedtime on everyone back when class 1-A stayed in the dorms. anyway, what would he think of you if he sees that you are staying up late and messaging him — only about the project but still — he’ll probably think you are some sort of loser that has nothing better to than message him at night-time with silly inquir-- oh, he replied.

you clicked on the notification that flashed across your screen to view the reply he sent.

[/PHOTO ID: text messages between the reader and iida that read as follows. reader says “Cool! When would you like me to drop the project off at yours? Anytime this week works for me btw!” and Iida replies “Good evening, L/N! It’s nice to hear from you. Also, would right now work for you? Starting tomorrow, I have a hero training with my father so I won’t be home. I’d understand if you are apprehensive to walk over here at night time, though. I could send a chauffer to drive you if you’d like. END ID.]

another involuntary gasp escaped your mouth. shock from both the fact that he was also up late texting you, and how he just offered that you come round to his house at such time. 

you lay frozen, your mind hazy with unrelated thoughts which you had to shake off so you could focus on the issue at hand. a part of you insisted that there was something that felt wrong about going to iida’s house so late at night. but an even louder voice in your mind reasoned that it was only a brief visit to drop off your project and your safety was basically ensured. also, if not today, then you’d probably never be able to find the time to deliver the project, assuming that the ‘hero training’ he mentioned lasted longer than a day.

the mental debate you held with yourself was over quickly as you realised that the only reason it felt ‘wrong’ to visit iida so late at night was because you were generally afraid of seeing him, in fear that you’d embarrass yourself. but the hero in you screamed the loudest today, saying that you could no longer let you shyness get the best of you and if you didn’t drop it off today, there was a chance that you’d have to kiss 20% of your grade goodbye. 

so without any further thought, you fingers worked on their own to type your reply.

[/PHOTO ID: a singular imessage the reader sends that reads “Okay! But there’s really no need for anything fancy. I think I’ll just hire a taxi.” END ID]

a proud smile played on your features as you finally set your phone down with a sigh, about to grab your cash and start getting ready until you noticed another pop up on your screen.

[/PHOTO ID: a singular imessage the reader is sent from iida that reads “Great! Also, the chauffeur is already on their way.” END ID]

you thought he was joking but when a person in a suit, driving a slick, navy car pulled up outside your house, the reality of the situation came crashing down on you all too late. 

it was a well-know fact that Iida came from a long line of heroes so he was quite well-off, but you never thought they were this well-off. and your shock only grew when you were cowering in the black leather back seats, cradling the project against your chest, peering out the window as the car finally arrived at the iida family’s grand estate. 

not only was it absolutely massive in size, everything from the tall marble pillars — or at least, designed to resemble marble — to the perfectly trimmed hedges, just screamed affluence. 

this image was only furthered after the driver let you out by the imposing, and rather intimidating, double doors of the house yet your eyes remained glued to the car for another few seconds, hence you were able to watch as the vehicle drove right into huge garage tucked away at the side of the house, filled with many other automobiles, too many for you to count in the few moment you were given to gawk at it. however, all you needed to notice was how every other car was a shade of blue and the ones lined up at the front were clearly more pimped out than the rest. 

you were suddenly snapped out of your trance by a tap on your shoulder, your eyes only widening more when you jolted around to meet the gaze of tenya, who’s piercing red eyes contrasted greatly with the warm smile gracing his features. “(l/n)! i’m glad to see you!” as always, his voice was loud and almost echoed off the hedges enclosing his estate. opening his arms, he planned on leaning in for a hug until you whipped out your free hand and held it out for him to shake. which he did, but his bright smile began to visibly waver. 

“is that the project?” he inquired, motioning to the ring binder tucked under your arm. 

“yeah.” you muttered, silently offering it out to him while mentally cringing and rebuking yourself for being so awkward about the hug. but your bustling thoughts all halted when you noticed iida’s attire as he gratefully took the project from you, “why are you wearing a suit?” you inquired, suddenly feeling quite undressed since you were under the impression that this exchange would be brief and casual so you didn’t throw on anything fancy. although, thinking back on it now, considering that iida offered to have you escorted to his house in a private car, you should’ve known that everything about the family was ‘fancy’. 

his lips pressed together to form a straight line as he clutched the project tightly to his chest. recalling earlier when he first got the message that you were coming over, one of the first things he did was rush into the shower, but not before kindly asking his mother or tensei to start preparing an extra meal as he’ll be having a guest. once he hopped out of the bathroom, he changed into his favourite outfit and blow-dried his hair to style it with great precision. honestly, he felt quite giddy, like he was preparing for his first date. 

but this wasn’t a date, of course! this was simply a classmate of his coming over to drop off a project! the only reason he dressed up was because he has to maintain the pristine reputation of the iida family. not because he wanted you to like him or anything. absolutely not. 

eventually jolting out of his flashback, tenya blurted out, “oh, no reason.” his hand found it’s way to the back of his neck, rubbing it while being mindful not to mess up his hair. “anyway, have you had dinner yet?”

the rather random question caught you off guard slightly, but after a few moments of recollecting, you replied, “no. i was just about to heat up a pot noodle before i messaged you, though.” 

by the look on tenya’s face, it was as if you had just cursed out his entire bloodline. so you were quick to try ask what the problem was, until tenya answered on his own, accompanied by rapid hand-chopping, “pot noodle? i believe those are the things kaminari would ruin the microwave with back at the dorms. i checked the ingredients on those and they contain next to no nutritional value! as a hero-in-training, your body needs the proper nourishment to become strong and you’re not going to find any of it in a ‘pot noodle’.” 

lies. iida has had several pot noodles in his lifetime and everything is alright in moderation. however, this was just a ploy to convince you to stay and eat dinner with him. 

“come inside, (l/n). i insist that you have dinner here as we wait for the rain to pass.” though his ploy was filled with many holes, it still worked as the driver was no where to be seen and it’s not like you could walk home, so you had no choice but to comply as he excitedly ushered you inside. 

trying to be a gentleman, he offered to take your jacket from you so he could hang it up but that proved to be a challenge as you stood frozen, lips parted to form an ‘o’ shape as your new surroundings flooded over you, your only movement being the twisting of your neck as you tried to take it all in. 

perhaps it was an interior design illusion, but the foyer of the house seemed larger than the whole bottom floor of the UA dorms. though, as you continued to stare, you realised that probably had to do with how it was a part of a longer, regally decorated hallway which iida was current dragging you through. 

“huh?” you gasped, finally coming to your senses at the feeling of his grip on your shoulder. “where are we going?” besides his palm, your shoulders felt bare, which is how you realised that iida miraculously managed to take your jacket off you while you were stunned. 

“to dinner, of course!” 

he was being serious about that?! you weren’t ready to have a whole meal in his house! especially after you have seen how lavish he lives, you don’t know how to eat like a rich person!

but before you could even object to his statement, he pulled you straight into his equally stately dining room which you didn’t even have the time to admire as a lady had sprung directly in front of you.  “oh! you must be tenya’s partner--”

heat rose to the boy’s face, making exaggerated chopping motions between you and his mum out of instinct, “physics partner!” he hastily corrected, voice cracking slightly.

“yes, physics partner.” she pursed her lips as she visibly tried to stifle a giggle, “well, it’s lovely to meet you. i’m tenya’s mother.” she bowed, which you were quick to reciprocate before tenya tugged you over to the dinner table so he could show you to your seat, but his actions immediately resulted in a brief rebuking from his older brother who was already seated opposite you. 

“don’t manhandle our guest.”

“apologies.” tenya responded seriously to tensei’s clearly joking tone. though, to him, the idea of mistreating his guest was not a joking matter as he wanted you to feel as comfortable in his house as you would at your own. 

both tenya and his mother rushed off to grab dinner as well as condiments, leaving you and tensei alone in awkward silence for a good few minutes. although, as soon as they left the room, he began trying to pick up a conversation with you without delay. 

“i never thought this day would come. it’s nice to finally meet you, (l/n).”

why did he sound like a super villain? although his tone seemed far from sinister, his somewhat ominous statement resulted in a shiver running down your spine. what did he mean by ‘finally’? and how did he know your name?!

“it’s nice to meet you too.” you muttered, lowering your head to vaguely bow but also so he wouldn’t notice as you cast glances from side-to-side in search of anything suspicious. 

“i’m tensei iida! although, you may know me as pro-hero ingenium. i took the--”

“no, i’ve never heard of you.”

his bright, bold smile instantaneously fell into a deadpan expression. “oh.” he breathed, the life seeming to have drained from his demeanour as he silently stared into the distance as if the gears had stopped spinning behind his eyes, leaving you with plenty of time to regret your words and shrink back in your chair. 

just as you were ready to shrivel up and out of existence, the man let out a hearty chuckle, “you’re a funny one, (l/n)! it’s a treat to have you on this special day.” 

a sigh of relief passed your lips at his response; the last thing you wanted to do was get off on the wrong foot with him solely due to a comment without any forethought. after you the ease had washed over you, your mind eventually processed what he had said and you were hasty to inquire, “hm? special day? what do you mean?” as you were almost certain that there was no well-known, publicly celebrated holiday today — nor did it seem to be anybody’s birthday.

tensei’s features wavered to reflect slight shock for a moment, until it went back to his default kind smile, “did tenya not tell you? hm, odd. he usually jumps at the opportunity to gush about our family history.” he joked light-heartedly, your visibly forced laugh prompting him to continue, “today’s the anniversary of the ingenium family’s first — documented — establishment. on this day, years ago, our ancestor entered the hero society, ready to save many lives and represent nobility under a name destined to be passed down for generations to come.” 

you nodded along, the amazed sparkle in your eyes bringing another deep chuckle to erupt from tensei’s throat, “seriously? so your whole family is a long line of heroes which began on this date?”

“yep. usually, the celebration would be a bit more extravagant than just the three of us — four years ago we rented a palace venue to accommodate to our vast number of guests — but due to recent circumstances, we decided to tone things down. plus, our dad is busy with his hero duties. at the rate crime is increasing nowadays, i’d probably be out too if it wasn’t for my injuries.” he said, awkwardly gesturing to his wheelchair with a weak smile, “anyway, we’re glad to have you, (l/n). we told tenya he was allowed to invite over a few friends because of the occasion but refused at first, so it was such a relief when he told us that his partner was coming over; he’s speaks highly of you and honestly, you’ve exceeded all of our expectations.” 

it was becoming almost impossible to hide how flustered you were since not only were you being showered by endless praise, but you also learned that apparently someone as well-rounded as iida thought highly of you. 

your throat ran dry and your mind was bustling with endless worries about your appearance and questions in regards to what you have been told, though that wasn’t reflected by your dazed expression. as the silence lingering in the air became more and more penetrating, a part of you began screaming about how rude it was to remain quiet so with little to no prior thought, you stuttered out, “a-and i’m honored to be here. thank you so much for welcoming me!”

tensei wasn’t given the opportunity to reply due to iida and his mother marching in, each one cackling louder than the other, joking about incomprehensible topics as they laid down the plates of food in front the respective seats, being framed by the gleaming silver cutlery that had already been set. 

“thank you so much.” you spoke up to ensure everyone at the table heard you, watching carefully as your friend delivered your meal. “it looks delic--” it took you a moment to pry your eyes off of iida’s buff stature leaning over you, but once you did, you got an eyeful of the meal you were given permission to ingest for free.

pot noodle.

it was as if you were struck down by lightening from the gloomy cloud which had been looming over you this whole time. was a nice dinner too much to ask for? i mean, they were a rich family so something new —something besides pot noodle— should’ve been the standard, right?

feeling your heart tightening your chest, you clutch your shirt, trying to hide all sign of pain from your voice, “it- it looks delicious.” 

your comment brought him reassurance, resulting in iida peering over his shoulder to flash you a smile, but you only frowned when you noticed that he was having a pot noodle too; except his wasn’t in the pot either, instead it was presented in a polished porcelain plate, garnished with parsley. 

“i’m so glad you like it!” it was a challenge to stay dejected when there was a bright ray of sunshine sitting next to you. “i remembered how earlier you seemed disappointed that you couldn’t have your pot noodle, so i insisted that our chefs whip something up to ensure that you feel at-home — to accompany our other dishes, of course. think of it as an appetizer.”

you were busy internally scolding yourself for expecting so much from your friend just because he came from a more affluent background, but as if on cue, your interest was piqued by his final comment, “chefs? other dishes? what do you m--” before you could complete your inquiry, a bunch of people in chef whites came flooding into the dining hall, all pushing metal trollies carrying plates, shiny cloches and bottles resembling those that hold wine.

there was tens of people, each one with a trolley that transported at least three dishes, all dashing through the dining hall to circle the table until a man — who you assumed was the head cook — halted in front of iida’s mother, popped open the wine bottle in his hands and poured her a drink, swiftly rushing off back to the kitchen as the woman brought the glass up to her lips. the other chefs tailed the man, but not before flashing the mouth-watering meal under the cloche, as if they were teasing you!

however, you were too busy shooting them slight glares to even notice that they’d discreetly slip the dish onto the table before leaving so when you finally shifted your gaze back onto the table, you almost fell off your chair at the sight of all the inviting foods spread out in front of you, the navy tablecloth almost completely hidden by the many plates. 

apparently you didn’t even go to the subconscious effort of hiding your amazement as you heard your friend chuckle from beside you, “you look like you’ve never seen food before.”

your bottom lip immediately jutted out, dropping your brows to form an unimpressed look, “it’s just so much, and it all looks so good! how are the four of us gonna finish it?”

“no- i didn’t mean it in a rude way, i thought it was cute.” he muttered, his voice trailing off as you didn’t seem interested in his explanation, “well, we’ll probably save some leftovers for my father then give whatever we can to the less fortunate, and eat the rest over the course of the next few days.” 

“that’s nice.” you mused, subtly trying to grab a bread roll from the plate across from you, “but i think you can only donate canned food.” 

“we have plenty of that.” iida laughed, handing you the plate of bread rolls which you were clearly struggling to reach, “dig in. if there is anything you need, please don’t hesitate to ask.”

you flashed him a friendly smile, “thank you so much! you’re so kind, may i repay you sometime?” you weren't exactly sure what you could do that’d be of equal value to the literal feast in front of you, but that was a problem for future-(y/n) as present-(y/n) was busy enjoying the luxurious texture of the bread roll. 

you both shared a knowing look of ‘repay me how?’ yet he still murmured, “i’d be delighted.” then proceeded to grab the bowl of beef stew and pour himself some. 

“thank you for the food! it was delicious.” you beamed, wiping crumbs from the corner of your lip with a napkin which had been folded into the shape of crane. 

“oh, it’s no problem, dear. thank you for joining us today.” iida’s mother giggled from across the table, catching the attention of the other to boy which lead to tensei erupting into laughter too while tenya tugged on the sleeve of your shirt, a sheepish grin spreading across his features, “i think you are supposed to unfold the napkin before using it.”

it was as if all the blood in your body rushed to your head since you suddenly felt light-headed as you frantically flatten the paper out of it’s crane shape, “oh, of course! i should’ve guessed.”

the other two iida’s continued to cackle, pounding their fists against the table in glee with tears poking at the corners of their eyes, “oh, tenya, you picked the right girl. she’s a hoot!”

“a riot!” his brother agreed, causing you to nod awkwardly while tenya simply scowled, replying as he placed his hand on your shoulder, “that’s not as flattering as you think it is.” tenya grunted, his aura now seeming a lot darker and moodier than before. 

this reflected on the other two as they were quick to silence themselves upon noticing his unimpressed expression, shooting you apologetic looks until tenya sprung up from his chair, “i took a look at the forecast and the weather is predicted to worsen. in fact, they think a thunderstorm is on it’s way, hence i propose that (l/n) should stay the night in our guest bedroom.”

the boy paused, waiting for input from his mother who only shrugged and turned to you, “it’s up to (l/n). i have no problem with her staying over, actually i’d encourage it, for safety reasons.” 

now, all eyes were on you. 

tenya couldn’t help but crack a slight smile, twisting his neck to gaze excitedly down at you, “how about it, (l/n)? would you be able to stay the night?” 

perhaps you should’ve lied; but from the reassuring effect of tenya’s hand on your shoulder to how his mother listed off reasons for you to stay, it was almost inevitable that you said yes and were now being escorted to your room by her.

BONUS 

iida sat at the end of his bed in his pyjamas, drying his damp face with a towel, enjoying the serene atmosphere of his room until his bedroom door was slammed open, causing him to jump slightly. 

“calm down, it’s just me.” tensei chuckled at the stunned look on his brother’s face before wheeling himself closer to the boy, not feeling the need to be invited in — it was only his brother’s room, after all. 

“i’d appreciate it if you knocked next time.” 

“um,” tensei briefly stroked his chin in thought, “no!” he grinned, once again laughing at his brother’s forced scowl until he reached the foot of the bed, “kidding. but anyway, when’s the wedding?”

“what wedding?”

“why, the wedding between you and (l/n)!”

tenya’s eyes widened at his brother’s suggestion, averting his gaze to the calendar on his right, pretending to be interested in whatever the date was but in reality, they both knew he was just trying to hide his raging blush, “what are you on about? don’t go making these sorts of jokes in front of (y/n).”

not making any promises, the older boy simply poked his brother’s cheek, “first name basis, i see.” 

“stop that.”

“i saw how defensive you got over her earlier. plus, you get those icky puppy-love eyes whenever you talk about her.” his explanation only made tenya’s blush even more furious, and so the hand chopping began. “trust me. i was in your shoes not too long ago. for your information, i’m not some old man who’s never had romantic feelings before in his life; i’m well aware of what it’s like to have a crush so there’s no use trying to hide it from me any longer. i know a simp when i see one.”

“who even let you in here?!” tenya hissed, grabbing the handles of his brother’s wheelchair and pushing him out, “goodbye, ossan. come back and talk to me when you are feeling better in the head.”

“oi-” the door was slammed shut right in tensei’s face. 

that was the most disrespectful he’s ever seen his brother act towards him, and he was honestly kind of impressed. “tenya’s all grown up.” he mumbled to himself, wiping an invisible tear from his eye before wheeling himself back to his own room. 

[sophieoverett]

Disruptions of Ritual and Inciting Incidents

I’ve been lucky enough to be a part of a creative development series lately which has come with a lot of great advice and guidance on storytelling, from the extremely specific to the really broad and sweeping. It’s covered everything from character motivations to specific genre structures to audience expectation to interpersonal conflict, but one of the things that has come up over and over again has been the idea of disruption of ritual as pivotal to the establishment of a story.

It’s been interesting to hear it articulated this way, because when I’ve taught creative writing in the past, and when I’ve thought about my own writing, I’ve always talked about this concept as the world we leave behind. It’s the pre-inciting incident stuff – the introductory grounding stuff – whether that be Harry’s life before Hogwarts, or the Bennet’s home before Mr. Bingley moves in next door.

You establish a world – or a ritual – and then you break it open.

It’s in the schism, in the disruption, where your story finds it’s legs and starts to move.

It’s had me thinking a lot about the relationship between the disruption of ritual and the inciting incident of a story, because in a lot of ways, that disruption of ritual directly sets up the latter. A story like Bridgerton has the disruption of ritual in Phoebe making her debut – a change for the whole family – but the inciting incident is really her collision with Simon Hastings and their mutual decision to fake a courtship. Similarly (but differently), Harry Potter has the disruption of ritual when the owls start descending on the Dursley home in the lead up to Harry’s birthday, but the true inciting incident is when Hagrid tells Harry he’s a wizard. Neither of these inciting incidents could’ve happened without the disruption to the character’s lives that got us there.

When we talk about inciting incidents, we’re ultimately talking about the point of no return for your protagonist. Where they either make a choice, or have a choice thrust upon them, it’s one they can never go back from.

How the disruption of ritual lays the groundwork for the inciting incident though is important. It’s not just creating the first bubbles of conflict to pop, but it’s a key part of establishing who your character is and what world they exist in.

But what does that look like? Generally speaking, I find it’s useful to think of this sort of pre-inciting incident (or disruption of ritual world) in three categories:

Change of Circumstance

Change of Environment

Change of Information

So let’s break that down a little!

Change of Circumstance

I think this one is probably the most common.

I’ve watched a lot of new movies lately and I think change of circumstance is at the heart of all of them – in Nomadland, Fern’s husband has passed away and she’s had to move into a caravan out of financial necessity; in The Father, Anthony’s daughter is moving to Italy and so she tells him he’s being moved into an aged care facility for his dementia; in Those Who Wish Me Dead, Hannah, a firefighter, has been benched after freezing during a fire which lead to the death of two teenage boys.

While all these changes are environmental too (which I’ll come back to in a second), they’re more punctuated by the impact these circumstances have on these characters – Fern is grieving, Anthony is losing his agency and independence, Hannah’s role in a job she loves has been diminished.

These changes to circumstance create the context for which the inciting incidents begin and ground the characters within their own emotional arcs. The inciting incident in Those Who Wish Me Dead is when Hannah finds another teenage boy in the woods who’s being chased by assassins; in The Father, the inciting incident comes when Anthony’s daughter hires a new nurse that reminds him of his other, dead daughter, in Nomadland, Fern connects with a seasonal worker at an Amazon factory who in turn connects her to the nomad lifestyle.

In this sense, the disruption of ritual starts a conversation that the inciting incident can either build off or interrupt or both. The examples above are all pretty big, but these sorts of circumstantial disruptions can be anything. They can be as simple as a promotion at work, a pregnancy, a new neighbour; or hell, you can go the other way, and get even bigger – start a war, go on the run, discover a new planet! What’s important though is that initial change of circumstance creates context for your protagonist and builds towards your inciting incident.

Change of Environment

This one is still pretty common, but I’d say it’s often used most efficiently and effectively in horror and fantasy.

Moving house or exploring new territory, whether that be campsites or cave dives or new planets or planes, is a natural way of putting your characters off-kilter and building environmental tension. This tension is really steeped in the unknown of the space your protagonist is interacting with, and in the promise of conflict within it. Movies like The Descent, Hush, Lord of the Rings and Star Wars are all fundamentally steeped in their opening acts involving drastic shifts to their environments that build conflict, whether that be because an environment becomes something to protect (Hobbiton in Lord of the Rings), or something that the protagonist needs to be protected from (The Descent), or that environment being invaded (Hush) are all factors that are essential to the story overall.

In these stories, these environments aren’t just a stage for the character to move across, they’re deeply interactive and often allegorical to the character’s circumstances.

My Neighbor Totoro is one of my favourite examples of this – Satsuki and Mei’s move to a new home whisks them into a magical world with soot spirits and forest creatures, but these spirits and creatures are an escape from the reality that they moved because their mother is sick in a hospital nearby. The environment they’ve moved to is them clinging to a child’s world as they live ever closer to their trauma.

The most important thing to think about with environmental change is to ask why? Environmental change isn’t about simply presenting a stage for your characters – all stories have that – but that that environment be a motivator in your character’s overall arc. After all, Nomadland might deeply love the American landscape, but Fern’s story is driven by circumstance, not environment, as I mentioned above.

Change of Information

Probably the least used of these three, an information disruption is often reserved for stories about whistleblowers or journalists. Spotlight, Bombshell, All the President’s Men, hell, even The Bourne Identity all rely on a transfer of knowledge as pivotal to creating the conflict that the story builds on.

Change of Information involves a character learning something that they didn’t know before, and the information could seem incidental in the first act (the journalist in Citizen Kane for instance learning that Kane’s final word was ‘rosebud’, or Adrian Toomes realizing there’s alien tech in what he’s been assigned to clean up in Spiderman: Homecoming), or it could be left as a landmine for our protagonists to discover (Spotlight did this by opening with the cops in the 1970s talking about the child molestation charge that our protagonists would start investigating in 2001), or be the overall driver for the film (Min-hyuk telling Ki-woo about the Park family in Parasite).

I think Change of Information set-ups though can also be broadened out to tie pretty closely with Change of Circumstances set-ups to the point that I actually almost considered condensing the two, but I do think they’re different enough to be untangled. Parasite of course straddles all three in its brilliance as the information Min-hyuk gives Ki-woo of the Park family creates both a change in circumstance and environment too, and Midsommar is a movie I’d consider to be all three too – knowledge changing hands is essential to that film overall, and the focus in the first act of Dani finding out that her sister’s commit suicide is pivotal to everything that follows. Her change of circumstances and environment hinges on her grieving her sister, yes, but the weight of the opening act is on the discovery of that more so than it is on Dani’s circumstances changing. Life goes on is, in many ways, pivotal to that first act.

Change of information, to me, is about a character’s awareness of something creating that initial disruption overall, and that new knowledge being the ultimate plot and character driver for the rest of the story. It’s the new knowledge or awareness that creates story mobility, environment and circumstance can just come along with it.

What are you talking about, Sophie?

Right, sorry, haha.

Disruption of ritual is ultimately the shift in the story that allows for the inciting incident to happen. It’s what creates the perfect storm of circumstance, environment and information which fuels your characters, but what you choose to prioritise and emphasise is going to impact the direction of your story and provide your readers or audience with the context that shapes their experience overall.

What drives your characters is what determines their path throughout the story you’re telling, and considering circumstances, environment, and the information they do or don’t possess is an important part of shaping that. You don’t have to pick one, of course – as I mentioned above, a lot of great stories embrace two or all three! – but thinking about each and asking yourself why and working out what’s the priority for your protagonist might just help you articulate the crux of your story and give you an opening act that resonates.

[yamayuandadu]

Circe by Madeline Miller: a review

As you might have noticed, a few of my most recent posts were more or less a liveblog of Madeline Miller’s novel Circe. However, as they hardly exhausted the subject, a proper review is also in order. You can find it under the “read more” button. All sorts of content warnings apply because this book takes a number of turns one in theory can expect from Greek mythology but which I’d hardly expect to come up in relation to Circe. I should note that this is my first contact with this author’s work. I am not familiar with Miller’s more famous, earlier novel Song of Achilles - I am not much of an Iliad aficionado, truth to be told. I read the poem itself when my literature class required it, but it left no strong impact on me, unlike, say, the Epic of Gilgamesh or, to stay within the theme of Greek mythology, Homeric Hymn to Demeter, works which I read at a similar point in my life on my own accord.

What motivated me to pick up this novel was the slim possibility that for once I’ll see my two favorite Greek gods in fiction, these being Hecate and Helios (in case you’re curious: #3 is Cybele but I suspect that unless some brave soul will attempt to adapt Nonnus’ Dionysiaca, she’ll forever be stuck with no popcultural presence outside Shin Megami Tensei). After all, it seemed reasonable to expect that Circe’s father will be involved considering their relationship, while rarely discussed in classical sources, seems remarkably close. Hesiod’s Catalogue of Women and Apollonius’ Argonautica describe Circe arriving on her island in her father’s solar chariot, while Ptolemy Hephaestion (as quoted by Photius) notes that Helios protected her home during the Gigantomachy. Helios, for all intents and purposes, seems like a decent dad (and, in Medea’s case, grandpa) in the source material even though his most notable children (and granddaughter) are pretty much all cackling sorcerers, not celebrated heroes. How does Miller’s Helios fare, compared to his mythical self? Not great, to put it lightly, as you’ll see later. As for Hecate… she’s not even in the book. Let me preface the core of the review by saying I don’t think reinterpreting myths, changing relations between figures, etc. is necessarily bad - ancient authors did it all the time, and modern adaptations will inevitably do so too, both to maintain internal coherence and perhaps to adjust the stories to a modern audience, much like ancient authors already did. I simply don’t think this book is successful at that. The purpose of the novel is ostensibly to elevate Circe above the status of a one-dimensional minor antagonist - but to accomplish this, the author mostly demonizes her family and a variety of other figures, so the net result is that there are more one dimensional female villains, not less. I expected the opposite, frankly. The initial section of the novel focuses on Circe’s relationship with her family, chiefly with her father. That’s largely uncharted territory in the source material - to my knowledge no ancient author seemed particularly interested in covering this period in her life. Blank pages of this sort are definitely worth filling. To begin with, Helios is characterized as abusive, neglectful and power-hungry. And also, for some reason, as Zeus’ main titan ally in the Titanomachy - a role which Hesiod attributes to Hecate… To be fair I do not think it’s Hesiod who serves as the primary inspiration here, as it’s hard to see any traces of his account - in which Zeus wins in no small part because he promises the lesser titans higher positions that they had under Cronus - in Miller’s version of events. Only Helios and Oceanus keep their share, and are presented as Zeus’ only titan allies (there’s a small plot hole as Selene appears in the novel and evidently still is the moon…) - contrary to just about any portrayal of the conflict, in which many titans actually side with Zeus and his siblings. Also, worth noting that in Hesiod’s version it’s not Oceanus himself who cements the pact with Zeus, it’s his daughter Styx - yes, -that- Styx. Missed opportunity to put more focus on female mythical figures - first of many in this work, despite many reviews praising it as “feminist.” Of course, it’s not all about Helios. We are quickly introduced to a variety of female characters as well (though, as I noted above, none of these traditionally connected to the Titanomachy despite it being a prominent aspect of the book’s background). They are all somewhat repetitive - to the point of being basically interchangeable. Circe’s mother is vain and cruel; so is Scylla. And Pasiphae. There’s no real indication of any hostility between Circe and any of her siblings in classical sources, as far as I am aware, but here it’s a central theme. The subplots pertaining to it bear an uncanny resemblance to these young adult novels in which the heroine, who is Not Like Other Girls, confronts the Chads and Stacies of the world, and I can’t shake off the feelings that it’s exactly what it is, though with superficial mythical flourish on top. I should note that Pasiphae gets a focus arc of sorts - which to my surprise somehow manages to be more sexist than the primary sources. A pretty famous tidbit repeated by many ancient authors is that Pasiphae cursed her husband Minos, regarded as unfaithful, to kill anyone else he’d have sex with with his… well, bodily fluids. Here she does it entirely  because she’s a debased sadist and not because unfaithfulness is something one can be justifiably mad about. You’d think it would be easy to put a sympathetic spin on this. But the book manages to top that in the very same chapter - can’t have Pasiphae without the Minotaur (sadly - I think virtually everything else about Pasiphae and Minos is more fun than that myth but alas) so in a brand new twist on this myth we learn that actually the infamous affair wasn’t a curse placed on Pasiphae by Poseidon or Aphrodite because of some transgression committed by Minos. She’s just wretched like that by nature. I’m frankly speechless, especially taking into account the book often goes out of its way to present deities in the worst light possible otherwise, and which as I noted reviews praise for its feminist approach - I’m not exactly sure if treating Pasiphae worse than Greek and Roman authors did counts as that.  I should note this is not the only instance of… weirdly enthusiastic references to carnal relations between gods and cattle in this book, as there’s also a weird offhand mention of Helios being the father of his own cows. This, as far as I can tell, is not present in any classical sources and truth to be told I am not a huge fan of this invention. I won’t try to think about the reason behind this addition to maintain my sanity. Pasiphae aside - the author expands on the vague backstory Circe has in classical texts which I’ve mentioned earlier. You’d expect that her island would be a gift from her father - after all many ancient sources state that he provided his children and grandchildren with extravagant gifts. However, since Helios bears little resemblance to his mythical self, Aeaea is instead a place of exile here, since Helios hates Circe and Zeus is afraid of witchcraft and demands such a solution (the same Zeus who, according to Hesiod, holds Hecate in high esteem and who appeared with her on coins reasonably commonly… but hey, licentia poetica, this idea isn’t necessarily bad in itself). Witchcraft is presented as an art exclusive to Helios’ children here - Hecate is nowhere to be found, it’s basically as if her every role in Greek mythology was surgically removed. A bit of a downer, especially since at least one text - I think Ovid’s Metarphoses? - Circe directly invokes Hecate during her confrontation with king Picus (Surprisingly absent here despite being a much more fitting antagonist for Circe than many of the characters presented as her adversaries in this novel…) Of course, we also learn about the origin of Circe’s signature spell according to ancient sources, changing people into animals. It actually takes the novel a longer while to get there, and the invented backstory boils down to Circe getting raped. Despite ancient Greek authors being rather keen on rape as plot device, to my knowledge this was never a part of any myth about Circe. Rather odd decision to put it lightly but I suppose at least there was no cattle involved this time, perhaps two times was enough for the author. Still, I can’t help but feel like much like many other ideas present in this book it seems a bit like the author’s intent is less elevating the Circe above the role of a one note witch antagonist, but rather punishing her for being that. The fact she keeps self loathing about her origin and about not being human doesn’t exactly help to shake off this feeling. This impression that the author isn’t really fond of Circe being a wacky witch only grows stronger when Odysseus enters the scene. There was already a bit of a problem before with Circe’s life revolving around love interests before - somewhat random ones at that (Dedalus during the Pasiphae arc and Hermes on and off - not sure what the inspiration for either of these was) - but it was less noticeable since it was ultimately in the background and the focus was the conflict between Circe and Helios, Pasiphae, etc. In the case of Odysseus it’s much more notable because these subplots cease to appear for a while. As a result of meeting him, Circe decides she wants to experience the joys of motherhood, which long story short eventually leads to the birth of Telegonus, who does exactly what he was famous for. The final arcs have a variety of truly baffling plot twists which didn’t really appeal to me, but which I suppose at least show a degree of creativity - better than just turning Helios’ attitude towards his children upside down for sure. Circe ends up consulting an oc character who I can only describe as “stingray Cthulhu.” His presence doesn’t really add much, and frankly it feels like yet another wasted opportunity to use Hecate, but I digress. Oh, also in another twist Athena is recast as the villain of the Odyssey. Eventually Circe gets to meet Odysseus’ family, for once interacts with another female character on positive terms (with Penelope, to be specific) and… gets together with Telemachus, which to be fair is something present in many ancient works but which feels weird here since there was a pretty long passage about Odysseus describing him as a child to Circe. I think I could live without it. Honestly having her get together with Penelope would feel considerably less weird, but there are no lesbians in the world of this novel. It would appear that the praise for Song of Achilles is connected to the portrayal of gay relationships in it. Can’t say that this applies to Circe - on this front we have an offhand mention of Hyacinth's death. which seems to serve no real purpose other than establishing otherwise irrelevant wind god is evil, and what feels like an advert for Song of Achilles courtesy of Odysseus, which takes less than one page. Eventually Circe opts to become mortal to live with Telemachus and denounces her father and… that’s it. This concludes the story of Circe. I don’t exactly think the original is the deepest or greatest character in classical literature, but I must admit I’d rather read about her wacky witch adventures than about Miller’s Circe. A few small notes I couldn’t fit elsewhere: something very minor that bothered me a lot but that to be honest I don’t think most readers will notice is the extremely chaotic approach to occasional references to the world outside Greece - Sumer is randomly mentioned… chronologically after Babylon and Assyria, and in relation to Persians (or rather - to Perses living among them). At the time we can speak of “Persians” Sumerian was a dead language at best understood by a few literati in the former great cities of Mesopotamia so this is about the same as if a novel about Mesopotamia mentioned Macedonians and then completely randomly Minoans at a chronologically later point. Miller additionally either confused or conflated Perses, son of Perseus, who was viewed positively and associated with Persia (so positively that Xerxes purportedly tried to use it for propaganda purposes!) with Perses the obscure brother of Circe et. al, who is a villain in an equally obscure myth casting Medea as the heroine, in which he rules over “Tauric Chersonese,” the Greek name of a part of Crimea. I am honestly uncertain why was he even there as he amounts to nothing in the book, and there are more prominent minor children of Helios who get no mention (like Aix or Phaeton) so it’s hard to argue it was for the sake of completion. Medea evidently doesn’t triumph over him offscreen which is his sole mythical purpose. Is there something I liked? Well, I’m pretty happy Selene only spoke twice, considering it’s in all due likeness all that spared her from the fate of receiving similarly “amazing” new characterization as her brother. As is, she was… okay. Overall I am definitely not a fan of the book. As for its purported ideological value? It certainly has a female main character. Said character sure does have many experiences which are associated with women. However, I can’t help but think that the novel isn’t exactly feminist - it certainly focuses on Circe, but does it really try to “rehabilitate” her? And is it really “rehabilitation” and feminist reinterpretation when almost every single female character in the book is the same, and arguably depicted with even less compassion than in the source material?  It instead felt like the author’s goal is take away any joy and grandeur present in myths, and to deprive Circe of most of what actually makes her Circe. We don’t need to make myths joyless to make them fit for a new era. It’s okay for female characters to be wacky one off villains and there’s no need to punish them for it. A book which celebrates Circe for who she actually is in the Odyssey and in other Greek sources - an unapologetic and honestly pretty funny character -  would feel much more feminist to me that a book where she is a wacky witch not because she feels like it but because she got raped, if you ask me. 

Circe evidently having the time of her life, by Edmund Dulac (public domain)