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nayarablueglasses · 3 years

Note

hello hello hello gay panic headcanonns for kirishima, bakugo, sero, shinsou, and iida is my request i saw your denki post and wanted to give you sumn attention miss ma'am

i was honestly not expecting this!! so sorry it took this long to respond, I don't know if you can tell but i wrote these in the span of a week because i got really really busy and was inturrupted everytime i sat down to start.

also... i do apologize deeply but my shinsou hc just wasn’t turning out right and in the end i decided it’s not worth posting. my apologies ;;

so glad you enjoyed my denki x male reader!!

here you go ♡♡

warnings:

kirishima’s reader really likes strawberry milk and that’s the theme of it, vv sorry if you don’like strawberry milk ;; personally it’my favourite thing ever along with coconut bread

bakugo’s has a brief mention of a kick to the chest and the following nosebleed, it doesn't go into detail but if that bothers you then please do skip ^-^

and just a little author’s note, please enjoy and let me know what you think and if there should be other warnings ♡♡

☞☆ Kirishima

oh he’s mad

i’ll tell you why

you came out of your dorm today looking sad

so of course, being a manly man, he asks you what’s wrong

you’re out of strawberry milk and didn’t realize, it seems

manly man that he is

he found some more for you

that’s not why he’s angry

your eyes lit up and you got so excited

strawberry milk is apparently one of your favourite things

so you thanked him with a hug

but no that’s not exactly why he’s angy

he’s angy because all he said was “THAKOME”

“thakome" wtfl (what the fairy lights)

he was trying to say thanks for the hug and “you're welcome” for the milk

he ran away

and then began pondering how deep in the shit called love he was

turns out he’s very deep in love shit

now what does he do

he’s not afraid to like guys especially cos you're super manly

but what if you don’t think it’s manly to like men

just his luck

you invited him to your room to play games and there’s an lgbtq+ flag on your wall

he saw an opportunity and was super casually like “heY where can i get one cos liKE i gotta represent too y’know"

your eyes lit up again, stop that

then you two got to talking about how you realized you were gay

you shared your story and asked for his

took some convincing but manly men don’t lie so he told you that you're pretty much his story

highkey you teared up a little and told him you really like him

bakugo rolled his eyes when he saw you two holding hands and was all like

“about time you two dumbasses”

you just ignored him while kiri turned red and started mumbling

☞☆ Bakugo

what is attraction

no like he really doesn’t like people

but you two were sparring, right

and you were sweaty

and you were grinning

and you kicked him in the chest ^-^ look at you i’m so proud you landed a hit on bakugo

the exact moment he fell in love

and then you rushed over and you made the saddest face he’s ever seen

you were honestly so afraid he was hurt from the face he made

...

“holy shit”

so maybe you must’ve kicked him in the nose, not chest

because he’s got a nosebleed

it didn’t help that you help your shirt to his nose and you were leaning all close

he may or may not have exploded a little bit of the floorboards

don’t blame him, he has no idea how to communicate with words

so when he goes to recovery girl (at your insistence) he’s pissed

why does he keep thinking about you

literally what is the point, you’re shit at fighting anyways

poor baby

he doesn’t understand this

next time he sees you he’ll literally scream, “GET OUT OF MY HEAD EXTRA, WHY AM I THINKING OF YOU ALL THE TIME”

you’re confused

kirishima will have to coach him, with plenty of quips from denki and sero

so the next time he’ll confess with kiri’s teachings in mind

☞☆ Sero

you’re trying to tell me he hasn’t done this gay panic shit before?

he knows how this goes

he’s fully content to just sit here and look at your handsome face

he was scatter rained enough

but he’s not even listening aizawa-sensei anymore

just

--staaaaare--

you know what i’m talking about

it’s not creepy or anything, just

“pay attention, cellophane”

oh shit

play it cool

just pretend to be actually listening for a few

it’ll be fine

he’s been through that situation so many times

at this point the whole class knows

everybody’s certain that’s aizawa’s way of wingman-ing

except you never look up on time

you catch him looking sometimes but he plays it cool and points at mineta with a grin

it works every time, mineta is always trying to perv someone >:(

he likes to imagine what would happen if he confessed

his favourite is where you butterfly kiss him

he has less nice scenarios in his head but that one always makes him smile

once in the dorm kitchens you asked him why he’s smiling

you said it super innocent and it sounded so neutral he didn’t stop himself from answering

“just because i like you”

aizawa stopped telling him to pay attention after thfe irst time he saw you holding hands in the hallways

sero will never stop smiling

what a goof but you love him

☞☆ Iida

oh boy why you gotta confuse sanic like this huh??

and when i say confused i mean he doesn’t understand this at ALL

don’t get it twisted, he knows what “gay” is

sanic just didn’t realize HE was gay

and boy is he

see, sanic is well put together

he knows exactly who he is

and then you

y o u

you gave him some art you did of him

he was like ??? thanks for the art??? when did you draw this???

he’s supportive of this new artistic talent but it’s n e w to say the least

so you went “oh i just look at you all the time”

you said it so casual

but you ran away after that as i would

not as fast as sanic but he wouldn’t have gone after you

because he was dumbstruck anD i MeAn he was struck dumb

you??? look at him?? aLL tHe tIME? like??

so being the responsible class rep that he is

he had an existential breakdown

came face to face with the fact that his friendly feelings towards you are’t as friendly as he’d been convincing himself

denied it

accepted it

and then ran after you in the five seconds after you ran off

oh boy words are awful because how do people confess? i don’t know but don’t ask him, because he butchered it BAD

but at least the words left his mouth

honestly this boy didn’t even stop to consider what would happen after he confessed

he just word vomited

which is why he’s extra happy when you hug him and tell him you feel the same

in more simple words of course

“i like you too, tenya!”

sonic’s in heaven please hug him some more

#bnha x male reader #bnha x reader #iida x male reader #iida x reader #sero x male reader #sero x reader #bakugo x male reader #bakugo x reader #kirishima x male reader #kirishima x reader

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octaviainthewasteland · 6 years

Text

Haribo Hearts

AO3

Summary: "Once we are born, we begin to forget The very reason we came But you I’m sure I’ve met Long before the night the stars went out We’re meeting up again"

Rating: Teen and Up

Artist’s work: by amazing @zoemaru boop

Beta: BIG THANKS TO @sondeneige for being patient with my sorry ass and making this work much easier to read.

Thanks to @pidgebigbang for organizing the event!!!

“But you can love other people, right?”

Mum falters, and together over her and the dough, which she has stopped kneading, settles an odd silence. Like when someone asks for a question to be repeated, as if they have not heard it, but they definitely have, they are just trying to buy time to put the social puzzle together, to understand if it is a trick or a genuine question, because, really, who asks that kind of question anyway?

“Of course,” she says eventually, pinching Katie’s cheek and leaving sticky fingerprints, “I love you, for one. And Matt.”

Katie frowns and wipes her cheek with sudden ferocity.

“You know what I mean. Of course…”

Of course you love us. We are your children.

Of course you love dad. He is your soulmate.

The pie ends up mediocre, but after all, mum has never claimed to be a perfect housewife. Katie’s parents met in the office. Two kids, a dog, guests sometimes on Fridays and a few journalists here and there. They are a normal middle-class family, a specimen of the intellectual elite. They have never been stopped in the middle of a street for an autograph, but the wall of the staircase is covered in photos from school science fairs. In these photos, Sam Holt is always surrounded by excited kids with their volcanoes and planes and other projects.

Katie glares at these photos, munching on a piece of the pie, which has been highly praised by dad and has always been completely tasteless. There is no point in lowering her eyes to her shoulder, the lines are not visible. Not yet, only under the bright light and only if she squints, she can make out some general figures – but she can feel a little swelling under the tips of her fingers. First there was just an itchy patch of skin, and now this. Her mark is beginning to appear, right when dad and Matt have begun to get ready for their Kerberos expedition, and they are going without her, and it means that she would have to apply to the Garrison in their absence. Her application is going to be successful, no doubt, how can they reject one of the Holts?

Before, she used to love the idea of being accepted to the Garrison, but when all the action happens somewhere else, and she will be stuck in the dusty classrooms, behind a tiny desk.While dad and Matt will be exploring the universe and will be the first people to go so deep in space?

And now, of all times, she is reminded about all that soulmate crap. Someone’s writing, someone’s name on her, like a stamp, an official sign that now she belongs to someone else. No funny story at the table in fifty years: “Oh, I met your grandpa by accident…” Because everything is set. She knows. They know. Everybody knows.

To be fair, it is not like she has her doubts about her parents loving each other. Nonetheless, isn’t it so cruelly ironic? So many movies and books, plots and stories about a person, who is about to get married but meets their soulmate and it changes their whole life? They’re unable to resist, and is it realistically possible to resist, and if it is, why doesn’t anybody resist?

It may be another way for Mother Nature to ensure the procreation of humanity. But what about people who cannot biologically or psychologically or plainly do not wish to procreate? To begin with, there would not be any same-sex soulmates, then. They have been taught in history about the LGBT movement, and one of their mottos has been: “The Universe is never wrong”.

The Universe is never wrong.

Katie shakes off the crumbs and leans on the banister, listening to soft voices of her parents in the living room. So what would Descartes think about all this? Did he have a soulmate?

Cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I am. Without doubting there is no existing. Then how can they study the theory of knowledge and that blind faith in the authority is dangerous, and then just accept something so unexplainable? Some time ago people believed the Earth was flat, and they imprisoned Galileo because he doubted that. If now they know that they can be wrong about something as big as the Earth, how can they not doubt ‘the universe’s choice’?

Katie does not believe in God, and refuses to abide by a random choice.

The invisible mark on her skin is itching.

“We’re so sorry.”

“My condolences.”

“Katie, tears are normal. It’s okay to be sad.”

But the thing is, she is not sad. She is angry. She swallows hot tears, peeved by her own powerlessness, with mum’s apathy, with Iverson’s annoyed expression that morphs into pity, with the guard’s indifference, when they drag her out. Let them not even hope she would comply. That she would surrender, she twists and turns like a crazy cat. She scratches and bites them, tries to kick or head butt anyone at arm’s length, and she screams, screams, screams – cadets, who pass by, look at her, immediately recognizing the Holts’ girl.

“Poor thing.”

“What a nightmare.”

Sympathetic faces are fusing into a whirlpool, and it makes her sick, and she throws up in the ‘ladies room’, her whole body shuddering. Sobs become coughs, then slowly turn into frantic hiccups, and it is all lies that it gets better. It doesn’t. Not a bit. Just worse. Because the Kerberos accident has already become yesterday’s news, and they “have to move forward”. Because they never told them the truth, thinking that some quick excuses would ever be enough to bury two empty coffins, so they would stop asking and simply give up. The flowers at the little memorial have not withered yet, and already everyone seems to have forgotten about Sam and Matt Holt. And Shiro. He hasn’t even got a coffin, as he had wanted to be cremated, for his ashes to be scattered from as high as a bird flies. He has even chosen a pilot to perform that. Yet there is nothing to scatter.

She grits her teeth. Not yet. No coffins and no ashes yet. Even if everyone gives up, even if nobody else in the whole world gives a shit about them – she will not forget, she will find them and bring them back. Everyone knows the Holts’ girl, but no one knows a Gunderson’s boy.

It gives her its own twisted glee. She has never been considered pretty, not that it ever bothered her. Her palms are too big, her knees knobby, frog-like eyes and of course her bushy eyebrows, wide and expressive. Everyone has agreed, though, that her hair was nice. Long and wavy, only if difficult to tame into a plait. Gnawing her lip, she butchers her long hair, she relished the thought that this ‘Lance’ would never meet Katie Holt, and Pidge Gunderson is nobody’s soulmate.

She should have known better.

The boy is all legs and arms, all jumpy and jerky, like a grasshopper. His friend lifts his arms helplessly, mouthing a silent sorry. Pidge is still shaken by the fact that Iverson let her be – or not her, but a ‘distant cousin’ of Matt’s, a live copy of a diseased boy, so Iverson doesn’t look too closely, averts his eye to avoid the eye contact for longer than two seconds, he’s “yes yes, cadet, try your best” and Pidge would never give him a reason to look at ‘him’ more closely. So she misses the moment, when the boy’s arms snakes around her shoulder, and she is struck by an electric bolt, she is suffocating and feverish, and before the boy opens his mouth to introduce himself, Pidge already knows his name.

Lance.

She never says it out loud, but she kind of envies the rest of the team.

Pidge realizes that while scrubbing the sink in the kitchen. Thanks to her allergy, she is relieved of the dusting duty, because instead of cleaning the table in the common room. Lance started doodling on it, and when she pointed out that he has the worst case of the chicken scratch, he kept poking her nose, which ended up in an endless series of deafening sneezes.

It has been hardly a doodle, to be honest, more like a wiggly writing, a name, repeated all over.

Katie Holt, Katie Holt, Katie Holt, Katie Holt, Katie Holt – Keith destroys that obsessive scribbling with one wipe, and Lance attacks him of course, because apparently, his mark isn’t quite normal, just a single letter ‘S’, and obviously, he must be super mega jealous of Lance’s amazing soul mate. Hunk grunts disapprovingly, because he has nothing at all, and Lance is quick to apologize for his inattentive words, but still reaches out to smack Keith. Hunk doesn’t hold it against him, because Lance shoots words like he shoots a rifle – carelessly but dead on target – but Hunk is used to it. He is a little bit concerned about not having a mark, but if you have priorities and if you’re not Lance, you realize there’s not much time for romance and soulmates with all the training and the whole universe under oppression from an advanced alien race of violet lizard cats.

So, Keith has a wriggle of a letter for a soulmark, Hunk has none at all and Shiro has lost his mark with his right arm. Not forgetting to mention that soulmates as a concept is unknown to Alteans in general.

When asked, Pidge lies and says that she does not have one either.

“Maybe your soulmate isn’t born or hasn’t hit puberty yet,” Shiro tries to console her. “Mine appeared quite late. I was already thinking I got none at all.”

“Meet me and my sugar baby in thirty years,” Pidge mumbles in reply.

Not that they talk about it often or something – unless you’re Lance, of course – it just pops up now and then, especially when Allura and Coran notice the marks on the actors during the movie night. Coran thinks it’s wonderfully romantic.

More like a premise for groundbreaking disappointment, if you ask Pidge, as she moves on to polish the tap. Lance seems enamored with this imaginary ‘Katie Holt’, he flirts and falls in love with every skirt, because she’s a reflection of his little dream. Because he’s so full of love for the One and Only that he just can’t hold it anymore and the love spills over the edges and covers everyone around. It’s a little bit disturbing. It’s a little bit scary.

Because sooner or later Lance will find out that his sweetheart ‘Katie Holt’ is just scrawny Pidge, who is always sweaty and has moons of dirt under her nails.

Which yet again proves that this whole soulmate thing is crap, because they haven’t suddenly fallen madly in love at first sight. Maybe it has some activation code? Like your soulmate has to address you by the name that is on their soulmark or touch it or something? Does that mean that soulmarks mean nothing for mute people or someone in a situation like Shiro? Figures why he’s so unbothered by the whole ‘lost my soulmark in space’ issue.

After ten thousands years of slumber, the castle has stood up quite well, and yet it still resembles most of all a haunted house. Dust and alien spider webs everywhere, the windows have grown turbid. The exterior of the castle is covered by plates that resemble their solar panels, so there has been enough energy to preserve Allura and Coran’s bodies and coordinate cleaning bots, but many of them got broken or lost throughout the time. The energy also supplied the defense system, so nobody could break in, but at the same time nobody has aired the place for ten thousand years, and the air conditioning system has been defeated by time and lack of sentient presence.

There seemed to always be a distinct odor in corridors and they even spotted some mold. Usually (always) it’s the cleaning bots’ job, but blabbing something about discipline and necessity of chores for self-organization, Shiro has coerced them into helping out. More likely he couldn’t sleep at night so he busied himself with something while they stayed on Arus. It would be foolish to jump right into the action, while nobody had any idea what has been going on in the Universe for the past thousand years and paladins still didn’t have any sort of training with the Lions. Thus, they have stayed for a while to prepare and catch up.

Pidge wonders who used to sleep in her room and she is grateful that the cleaning bots have removed previous owner’s belongings before she moved in. The paladin uniform has no size, but she had to adjust the seat in the Green Lion. She can’t help but wonder what life had been like then. Allura and Coran do not let too much out, and all the documents are in Altean – they understand each other because of the universal translators, but in order to read stuff, she has to be better than the intermediate level she can read at now.

They have watched a couple of classic Altean movies, too, during the movie nights. Pidge tries to watch them in the evenings, with subtitles rather than translation. Altean language is unlike any language on Earth (not that she personally speaks many, but she’s not a brat who resorts to generalizing, she checked it against any known languages in the system.) It’s difficult to distinguish separate words, as their speech is melodious and mostly consists of vowels. Although Lance’s vocabulary is built on the derivatives of ‘quiznak’, he often joins her. Hunk is busy learning how to pilot with Shiro and after a unanimous vote, he is not allowed to culturally exchange with Coran. However, it has been too little, too late, the damage has already been done. Now they are running laps and exercising to BTS and Girls’ Generation, transmitted throughout the whole castle

There are certain things that will most surely turn you listless, that will rob you of any energy and make something as essential and undemanding as a trip to the restroom into a challenge. One of those things is Coran’s enthusiastic account of the adventures of his youth. While the components of these anecdotes individually are unbelievable and would suffice for a next generation of Hollywood movies, and Coran’s manner of speaking is quite engaging, he has a habit of focusing on wrong details, the aspects of these stories that are the complete opposite of cool.

Another one will be writing reports. No explanation necessary. Everyone hates writing reports.

For Pidge, the third one is summer. There was no school in summer and yes, she didn’t like school that much, but sometimes it was nice. Summer was never nice. She knew that her classmates went someplace together or at least keeping contact, FaceTiming, Snapchatting, WhatsApping or otherwise osculating each other through social media. No one has ever sent her a message to ask how her summer was going. She didn’t bother, because she had Matt. He’s never been really popular either.

But then he left for Garrison, where population of nerds is three to one. “Don’t call them nerds,” – often said Dad, - “call them people of extreme passions”. Yeah, for example, he and Matt, who seemed to have an extreme passion for this Shiro guy. Shiro was a special kind of nerd, like the mastermind of espionage who managed to blend into the crowd of jocks, but a nerd nonetheless. He could not tell Nitrogen from Sodium (he still tried to drop cringy jokes: are you made of Copper and Tellurium?) but he could draw the star map with his eyes closed and all while piloting a can without an engine through a meteor shower.

Shiro would sometimes come around, but more often than not he would snatch Matt away somewhere, because apparently there was a Buttercup to their Bubbles and Blossom, who resided closer to the Garrison than here. They invited her along, but she didn’t want to be a deadweight, so she refused, reduced to a sulking amoeba at her desk, melting under the July sun, too lazy to open a book or even lift her eyelids, but too hot to have anything more substantial than constant drowsiness.

So one cannot overstate the extent of willpower it requires keeping concentration, while being stuck writing a report under Coran’s guidance, while being horribly sunburnt. Pidge peels off a little piece of dead skin from her nose and sighs. Thanks to conditioning systems, it was nicely cool inside the castle, but she can’t appreciate it, because she’s already a boiled crab and she’s not in the castle, she is in a tent with almost transparent walls. Objectively guys have it worse, because they’re currently digging wells for a nation of desert dwellers, but Pidge is not a very sympathetic person, especially while impersonating Freddie Krueger. Coran remains to look fresh and chirpy, which is beyond annoying.

The planet of eternal July, wonderful. Pidge can’t wait to return to the cold abyss of outer space.

Had they been more careful, the robeast wouldn’t have destroyed the reservoir, the only reservoir for miles and miles of dust and soil so dry it cracks. It is their responsibility (plus there’s a high probability they’re the only ones capable) to build a new system of water supply.

And so they have stayed for a little longer. First day they have worked with Lions, but it proved that the soil was too crumbly and needed a careful approach. They resolved to good old digging and sometimes applying bayards, namely Hunk’s cannon or Lance’s blaster. It was time-consuming, tiring and seemingly unsuccessful – although Allura assured them that they would soon reach underground waters. Pidge got her free pass, when she got sunburned even through damp clothes. Others had to continue.

That��s the kind of work they do everywhere. In Allura’s words: not only fighting, but also rebuilding. Pidge hates all this physical work, but she can’t deny it has its own merits, when they make living a little bit easier for someone. She tries to keep a journal of all the different races and cultures they come across, but there’re so many. Could she have imagined that back in her room, paralyzed with boredom? She has always had a vivid imagination, but she couldn’t process that Earth, a whole separate world, a multitude of languages, practices and traditions, different people and countries – always has been a speck of the cosmos, with histories much bigger and older than her.

So far none of the alien had an idea even remotely similar to soulmates. It puts a whole discourse of soulmates into a new perspective. It puts a whole discourse on the existence of God into a new perspective. They have seen aliens larger than life: ancient, powerful, terrifying – totally godlike. Woods of Olkarion, Balmera, Ziggurat and many more. Meeting such entities is a lot like having a religious experience.

The further from Earth, the more Pidge rethinks her own views and in fact she finds herself leaning towards agnosticism rather than atheism.

Coran stops short of the climax of a recount of his days with fashion pirates (for the seventh time), when the drapes are drawn for a mere moment, and they are hit with a strong wave of dry air, devoid of anything but sand. Guys crawl inside and drop dead on thin cushions. Coran goes around, literally nursing them from a little clayey cup. After a while, one of them jiggles like a worm, refusing to get up and walk like a human being, and gets closer to Pidge.

It’s Lance, obviously. He uncovers his face, blinding her with a grin.

She should comment on him reeking of sweat and how funny he looks in a turban made of wet cloths. The truth is, she must look as ridiculous as he. More ridiculous, because despite turban and Halloween mummy inspired costume, he still manages to look… nice.

Lance reaches out to flick her nose, but stops at the last second and chucked with affinity.

“Wanna check something out? We’ll need to take the Lions, though.” “What? Now?” she tries to say that without moving any muscles. “Yep.”

She means to say no, but shrugs and nods instead. With a sudden burst of renewed power, Lance jumps up and drinks some more water, eager to take off right away.

“What about others?” she finally croaks. “Hunk?” Lance pokes him. “No, thanks,” mumbles back the pile of clothes. “Shiro?” “No.” “Coran?” “Thank you, but I must decline.” “See? They’re quitters. Sad and bitter.”

With a raised eyebrow, Pidge turns to Keith, but before even asking she realizes he’s definitely not interested.

Maybe it’s a smart move, she considers, while entering the world of heat and sand again. They take Blue, because Green channels Pidge’s mood about moving in such weather, and Blue carries them towards the horizon, rigged with steep mountain peaks.

This planet has its own sun, larger than the Earth’s one, like a ball of blazing whiteness. She doesn’t rotate, which means there’s no night and day, and the other side of the planet is nothing more than frozen wastelands. Tribes’ greatest punishment is being stranded on the borders of the eternal night. Throughout the whole known history of several millenniums, there are only six known cases of such sentences. There is also a myth of a lost tribe, though. At the beginning of civilization, there had been Thirteen Tribes, but after the Great War, one of them had been banished forever. However, the Thirteenth Tribe survived, tamed the night and prepared to return one day and get their revenge. Voltron has scanned the surface of the planet while passing and they haven’t noticed any life forms on the icy half, but who knows? Maybe they’re good at hiding. Maybe they’ve gone underground. Maybe they’re ice zombies. Game of Thrones might be onto something.

There is some irony in the fact that one part of the planet suffers from water shortage, while the other is basically covered with water. In times of the greatest needs, there were many expeditions to bring the ice, but only few returned. Not only there is a drastic gap in the temperatures, the only way is through a mountain chain. Being better equipped, Voltron has brought large chunks of ice, but people really need those wells.

Blue gracefully lands on a secret plateau, and Lance commands Pidge to put on the paladin suit. They leave the armor, content with the layered black jumpsuit.

When they exit Blue, Pidge is about to ask what’s it all about, but swallows the question.

The high sky is heavy with reds and orange and smudges of yellow, blues and purples – it looks like a mindless watercolor practice, it looks like nothing she has seen before. They have passed it on their way and she hasn’t even paid attention. It’s not visible from far above.

“One side is eternal day, another is eternal night, and in the middle…”

In the middle is the eternal sunset. Sunrise. Neither and both.

Lance looks smug and rests his elbow on her shoulder. The soulmark pulsates, and she’s afraid for a moment, that he will feel it even through the clothes, but Lance remains oblivious. The cool air gently touches her hurt face and eases the pain.

For once in a while, Pidge doesn’t think anything. She just stands on the edge of a plateau and enjoys the sunset. Or sunrise.

Neither.

Both.

#pidge big bang #plance #pidgance #pidge gunderson #vld lance #voltron

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mrsrcbinscn · 5 years

Text

BDRPWriMo Task #6 - 10 Short-Short Stories

Task #6: Write ten short-short stories of no more than a paragraph long.

Franny Robinson’s musical influences; ten interview quotes about other musicians and singers that she says inspire her work

i. Jenny Lewis

“I dunno, there’s just-” Robinson paused and with her palms flat up, made claws with her hands as she searched for the words. “-something so honest about Jenny. I had the honor of performing with her once and I was just in awe. I think I have a little bit of a crush on her. I was first introduced to her work in 2001 by a great friend of mine from college, Dani Weiss [currently a member of the American-Canadian newgrass band The Weepy Willows]. We were...going on a little trip -

Q: Acid or shrooms?

“My husband is sitting right there, oh god. Acid. In moderation, I think things like that can be worthwhile experiences. In moderation. We were doing acid in her apartment and listenin’ to music and she [Weiss] put on their album Take Offs and Landings. I was real into it from Go Ahead [the first track]. Which. I always liked chill music when I dropped acid, anything too loud and busy made me anxious. And when the followup, The Execution of All Things came out, it was like - I was like - just like, ‘damn, this woman is amazing.’ Her songwriting ability is just phenomenal and her voice- I feel like I’m sittin’ across from her and she’s tellin’ me stories. There’s- again, the only thing I can think of is this honesty about her.”

ii. Hizuru

“Japan actually has a vibrant history with jazz music, so I’m familiar with a lot of Japanese jazz and have had the honor of working with many talented Japanese jazz musicians. I don’t know very much about Hizuru, actually, other than I love them. I have been experimenting with incorporating traditional Cambodian music with, you know, jazz and other western styles of music. That part of my culture is very important to me, so I want - I want to show the world how beautiful instruments like tro and chapei are. Anyway- I was struggling with a balance of sounds when in 2017 I stumbled upon a Hizuru song called - oh, god, I don’t speak Japanese, so I’ll probably butcher this. The song is called Ushiwakamaru. It is an instrumental piece, as is the entire self-titled album, and the blend of traditional Japanese music and modern jazz on that entire album is perfection. I hope they come out with more soon, I am hungry for more, truly.”

iii. Ella Fitzgerald

Q: Of the early jazz vocalists, who inspires you the most?

“Oh my god, Ella Fitzgerald. Well - mm, no, absolutely her, no question. I am by no means implying I live up to her standard, in fact I never will, but I have channeled her. Especially in my earlier work when I was a bit more concerned with going what jazz fans want, expect, and love versus taking lessons from those who came before me and building on that with my own ideas, my own voice. If that makes sense? She was classic. It’s Only A Paper Moon was, I think, the first jazz song I heard when I was little. Or, it was the first that really struck me. [laughs] My oldest brother used his birthday money to buy an Ella Fitzgerald album for me on vinyl so I would stop running around the house singing the only lyrics I remembered. I think it was like [singing]- Say, its only a paper moon, sailing over a cardboard sea...and I forgot the rest so I could just repeat cardboard sea like three times.”

iv. Patsy Cline

“I’m from Georgia,” laughs Robinson, running a hand through her hair as she pulls her feet up under her on the chaise lounge in her Swynlake home. “Like, out in the country in Georgia. You couldn’t grow up there in the eighties and not have known who Patsy Cline and Dolly Parton were. Dolly was more, like, relevant and current, but Patsy’s a classic. And as a woman whose natural register is lower myself, I really appreciated being able to sing along decently well without much effort. We don’t - we don’t get to see alto voices in popular music a lot. Pop, even the jazz music that gets a following outside of hardcore jazz fans. Hitting the craziest high notes does seem to be a current trend across the genre spectrum.”

When asked if that was a bad thing, Robinson simply shook her head. “I don’t think it;s positive or negative one way or the other. It’s just an observation.”

v. Ahmad Jamal

“I mean, if you want to talk jazz pianists, you can’t not talk about Ahmad Jamal. On Green Dolphin Street? Autumn Rain? F---, man, leaving him out is criminal. He’s been in the game for five decades, that’s longer than I’ve been alive. I only hope to be on his level. Like, I hear words from his piano. I understand what I’m supposed to be feeling, thinking, or seeing when I listen to his work. And with instrumental music, that’s a challenge. Classical? I struggle to listen to classical music. I think it’s beautiful, and I really respect classical musicians, but unless I’m explicitly aware of what picture this piece is supposed to paint in my head, when I tell a classical expert what a piece makes me feel, they’re usually like ‘ACTUALLY...’

vi. Édith Piaf

“My father - well, he’s technically my stepfather,” Robinson said, scowling at the word like it was a swear. “But, he adopted me when he married my mother, and my biological father may as well have been a sperm donor. Anyway. My father is from Switzerland, and they have four official languages there. He speaks them all, plus English, plus he learned to speak Khmer when he married my mother. He’s so cool, my dad. He’s from a Francophone-Italophone Swiss family, so I grew up listening to a lot of old French, Italian, and some German music from him. I still don’t speak German and Italian though, [laughs] sorry Dad.”

“We listened to Édith Piaf a lot together. I was very protective of my mother as a child, you know how kids of single moms are? My mom was my superhero and I was used to American men thinking they had a right to touch her because she was just a poor foreign woman who owned a restaurant. So when my future dad started hanging around, I hated him. But he was determined to make me like him so I’d let him marry my mother, and he’d take me for ice cream and play Édith Piaf cassettes in the car. He’d tell me about what the love songs meant, and didn’t tell me about the songs that weren’t, and told me the love songs are how he felt about my mother. He was like, ‘Dara-’ my legal first name is Darareaksmey, it’s Khmer. My parents usually calls me ‘Dara.’ ‘Dara, if you let me, I’ll be good to your mother, and to you.’ I eventually got tired of him begging me to marry my mom so I let him. [laughs]

I asked if she ever regretted giving him her blessing.

“No, never. He’s my dad, and the two boys he brought into the marriage are my older brothers. I’m my Swiss grandparents’ only granddaughter, so they spoiled me even from Switzerland. No, we’re family.”

vii. Dolores O'Riordan

Interview date, 26th of January, 2018

Q: Let’s talk about something I just found out about you from your Twitter feed the other day.

A: Oh, no, should I tell my husband to cover his ears?

Q: No, it’s rated H for Husband.

A: Excellent.

Q: You’re a huge fan of Dolores O’Riordan. Which, I wouldn’t have guessed. But on the day the tragic news of her passing broke, you Tweeted out a tribute to her including ffive meet and greet pictures of the two of you together- the first, correct me if I’m wrong, is from 1994?

A: Yes, yes I had actually seen then the year prior, when I was thirteen, but ‘94 was the first time I could afford a backstage package with my babysitting money. The other four are from 1999, 2002, 2010, and 2016. I loved The Cranberries, they were the first concert I dragged my husband to when we were dating.

Q: Safe to say you’ve been a hardcore fan for-

A: Two and a half decades, yeah. Yeah, The Cranberries are one of my all time favorites. Dolores O’Riordan’s voice was...everything.

Q: You’re a jazz artist, primarily. What’s consistently drawn you to The Cranberries?

A: [laughs] Other than being a teenager in the 90′s? I mean, her voice. She changed the game for what it meant to be a female vocalist in rock music. And up until my second year at NYU, I wasn’t sure where I was going with music. I loved rock, I loved jazz, I was into R&B, I loved bluegrass. I sang in several bands in high school and college, and The Cranberries were usually on the setlist. Her voice was amazing. I idolized her as a young vocalist, even if I ended up gravitating toward a different genre.

Q: You uploaded a cover of Dreams with Irish alt-rock singer and guitarist Padraig Chen, and Irish indie musician Siobhán Walsh as well. How did that collaboration come about?

A: Padraig’s been a friend of mine for a long time; we met through a mutual friend who is also an Asian-diaspora musician in the UK and Ireland and it was a match made in music heaven. We’ve collaborated a lot. Siobhán is a friend of Pat’s, and we all looked up to Dolores, so we just got together and made our little tribute to her.

viii. Badi Assad

“I was first introduced to bossa nova...probably during my sophomore year of college. Her voice is like butter, but frankly, that’s not the most interesting thing about her. She combines traditional jazz, bossa nova, other Latin music elements, and traditional Middle Eastern sounds. Anything that is a marriage of different tastes and cultures is interesting to me, and when its done as well as she does it? Forget it. She is one of the best jazz and jazz-adjacent guitarists out there today. I really admire her. I hope to perform with her one day, it’s genuinely a dream of mine.”

ix. Ros Serey Sothea

“One of my most unexpected musical influences...well, I don’t - I don’t think she’s so much unexpected, as any of my following outside of my small Cambodian or Khmer-American following won’t have ever heard of. Ros Serey Sothea is one of the most important singer in Khmer popular music history, she’s called the Golden Voice. My mother would sing her songs to me as a child, whichever of them she could remember. Under the Khmer Rogue, which my mother survived, something like 90% of Cambodia’s artists, dancers, musicians, and singers died or were executed. She was one of them. And my mother’s favorite singer. Most of the master recordings from her and other singers like Pen Ran and Sinn Sisamouth were destroyed by the Khmer Rogue, so whatever recordings we do have of Khmer rock and roll from that era are so, so vital to preserve and keep record of. Even though I am a jazz music educator, at my lower level, more generic classes where I have the wiggle room to do so, I talk about Khmer music of the 60s and early 70s for a class because I feel so strongly about the legacy of this music.”

“I went on a tangent,” Robinson said apologetically. “Where was I? Oh, Ros Serey Sothea. Right, so her voice was just-” Robinson put her arms out to her side and swayed to the imaginary music in her head. “-you could just kind groove like this to only her voice, nothing else needed. Her voice danced on top of the backing band. My mother managed to get her hands on some records, her siblings who remained in Cambodia sent some to us and her other siblings who were resettled, in the mid-eighties. So, I was six or seven before I heard my first Khmer song from a record player or a cassette instead of my mother’s voice, even though she’d been singing to me since I was born. These songs are still incredibly important to Cambodians today, and diaspora as well.”

I asked her if that had anything to do with the semi-viral success of her recent cover of 70′s singer Sieng Vannthy’s ‘Console Me’.

“Oh, for sure.” Robinson said. "It’s the first time I professionally recorded a song in Khmer, a lot of people were surprised I spoke the language.”

x. Dolly Parton

“Okay, Dolly probably has less of an influence on my music than my persona, I’ll be honest. But her music means so much to me. At my wedding, during toasts, my mother mortified me by throwin’ in video footage of my first ever live performance from ‘89. Little nine-year-old Franny was on stage in little secondhand cowboy boots, this horribly 80s lookin’ frilly dress, my hair in little twin braids, singin’ and dancin’ to Why’d You Come In Here Lookin’ Like That. To this day, my husband still brings that up.”

Q: How do you mean Dolly Parton influenced your persona?

“Great question. So, our origins are similar. Kind of. She grew up poor one of twelve children, I grew up poor, one of three. My family eventually was lucky enough to make it out of the poverty I was born into but we were still always poor, you know? Like. I remember my mom rationing her food so I could eat enough until that stopped when I was about seven and my mom didn’t have to make a meal for herself last two meals. And we’re both from the American South.”

“I grew up on Dolly. She’s the queen of our people [laughs] and I’m not even being facetious. We love her. Can’t get enough of her. And I include myself in that; Dolly Parton is an icon. She is unashamed of who she is and where she comes from, which really struck a chord with me. As the American-born daughter of a refugee, I was always caught between two cultures. Am I Cambodian, am I American? Which can I claim? My mother taught to me my Cambodian culture, our Vietnamese friends taught me about Vietnamese culture, but my white father was from Switzerland so I didn’t learn to be American until school. That’s when I started droppin’ my G’s, sayin’ y’all and ain’t, and asking my parents to make grits for breakfast when they’d never eaten them before in their immigrant lives. I wanted so badly to just be seen as American, to be seen as just a girl from Georgia. If it weren’t for my mother refusing to let me speak English to her at home I would have lost my Khmer. She spoke English just fine, but English was for Out There.”

“My mom taught me to be proudly Cambodian, but I’m not just Cambodian, right? I mean, I’m biracial, sure. But more importantly, I’m bi-cultural. I’m not just Cambodian, I’m American - Southern, if we wanna get real specific. Both of my cultures are vibrant, and beautiful, and are equally important to me. My mom taught me not to be ashamed to be the daughter of a refugee - she didn’t get into specifics until I was older, but she was always made it clear she had Been Through Some Shit and could handle anything. Even now, when I go through something difficult I just tell myself, ‘Mom survived genocide, you can do whatever this is.’ I knew how to be proudly Cambodian, I knew how to wear traditional dress to nice events, and wear Khmer wedding clothes for my wedding instead of a white dress. But I didn’t know how to embrace this other part of myself - because wasn’t raised in the default Middle America. Even my American side is a type of odd culture, isn’t it?

Dolly Parton taught me not to be ashamed of the other half of where I came from. She is unapologetic about bein’ who she is. She is proud of where she came from. And I want to be the Dolly Parton of my rural Georgia town. My identities as Cambodian and Georgian are more important to be than my identity as, like, an American person in general. I want people to think, ‘that’s a Georgia woman’ when they think of me, just like you look at Dolly and say ‘that’s a Appalachian girl’ before you just go ‘oh, she’s American.’

#bdrpwrimomckala #bdrpwrimo #&&...hc #// some of these got long fight me #franny has feelings about music

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