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nobodysdaydreams · 3 months

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Okay, now they REALLY gotta drop the Jacobi duck-related lore 🦆 (and I need to stop holding out hope Blessie will return 😔💔)

(Or my reaction to Wolf359’s Mission Mishap Episodes).

Welcome back dear readers! My schedule has been busy lately, but the Mission Mishap episodes were mercifully short, so I’ve been listening to a few episodes per week and have gathered my reactions here for you all to enjoy.

Tagging the mutuals who got me invested in this, and if you want to be tagged or untagged from these posts, lmk, or you can follow my blog or simply follow the tag "#bods wolf359 reactions". Anyone who has followed me for a while knows my updates are inconsistent, so I apologize in advance for that and for any spelling/grammar mistakes in my posts.

@sophieswundergarten @oflightningandstars @acollectionofcuriousreblogs @herawell @commsroom

Also tagging @lovelyladylavie because I promised I’d tag you way back on this post and forgot (I’m so sorry!) but my reactions are all under the tag so you should be able to find them!

Mission Mishaps: A Little Night Music

"Not fully reading your contract before you sign it...not understanding your job responsibilities, and wanting commander off your back" I love Doug's sponsorships and the dramatic irony 😂 *Cue The Fine Print playing in the background...*

I guess the only actor they could get was Doug. Nice of him to fill us in on what Minkowski and Hera are saying though.

OH MY GOSH.

HIS VOICE.

DR. DR. PROFESSOR DR. PROFESSOR F. EIFFEL 😂

It's so fancy. Mannnyyyy PhDs. Very impressive, Doug.

I'm so happy we got more radio show Doug. I need to hear him do a radio show where all his personalities talk to each other. Being the special guest on the show is Cutter's punishment for all eternity. The Dear Listeners make 5 copies of Doug so he can be all the characters.

"The feeling you'll die miserably..." yikes, broke character for a second there Doug.

"Ah yes...the way the piano notes dance around the...other piano notes...absolutely fantastic piece for when you want to start your day with the paino-y energy" Well said Doug.

Oh boy. Cowboy music. Is this the return of Badass McAwesome? Do I dare to hope?

Ah, well, better luck next time.

His poor toe. I hate when that happens too, Doug.

The...mind eraser?

Don't like how that sounds. Especially after the threats in "Change of Mind".

Better not be foreshadowing.

"This song is a mutant, it's superpower is being catchy. It never leaves."

Okay, THAT better not be foreshadowing.

"Afraid of the plant monster?" I wish we could be, Doug. I wish we could be. 😔🪴

"Worried you'll never get back to Earth to see you're family?" Oh, Doug. 💔

"Bosses you're pretty sure are kind of evil" Kind of is generous Doug.

Yeah...yeah Doug that got very dark there for a bit.

Moral boosting? Oh dear. MUTE 😂 AFTER TWO MINUTES 😂

I love Doug. Poor fellow. I enjoyed the broadcast Doug. They don't appreciate your talents.

Mission Mishaps: The Space You’re In

I love the title’s double meaning.

More of Doug dodging his work I see. A common theme.

“Please stop going off on tangents” I guess Cutter and Pryce didn’t send them up with any ADHD meds. “I’m here for work 😊” Nice cover, Doug. 👍🏻 nailed it.

“I’m gonna get that thing that I forgot”. You do that Doug.

How did I know Doug was gonna break something? 🤣

Specimen incubation period??? BLESSIE????

How dare they tease us with Blessie lore?

Good question Doug. Why IS there a harpoon?

Doug literally has no where to hide. 🤣

Oh right. Space. Why do I see that backfiring?

PFFTTT—- Did she just call him a lizard? 🦎

“It’s beautiful” -> “I hate space” poor Doug. I’m sensing a pattern 🤣

Mission Mishaps: You Want, I Solve Ah Doug stealing coffee from Minkowski. Once again, I sense a pattern.

Wait. A puppy? 🥰🐕‍🦺🐾

“The mean lady who runs this place” really Doug? You did just steal her coffee.

2 tails? Well, twice the wagging, I see that as a win. 🥰

Follow him Doug!

IS ZACH VALENTI DOING THE VOICE OF THE DOG?

AS SMEGOL AND GOLLUM FROM LORD OF THE RINGS?

AND IS DOUG HALLUCINATING FROM THE COFFEE???

The dogs are multiplying? David Bowie is here? Okay Doug is hallucinating for sure.

Ah hello Hilbert.

Why is he treating the manual like it’s the ring? 🤣

Well. That was weird.

Oh, Hilbert. All to get Doug to bond with the manual.

And yet something tells me he still won’t read it. It does sound like he might be cuddling with it at night and killing anyone who tries to take it from him though. Mildly concerning. Mission Mishaps: The Veldt Oh my gosh. The episode description. Eiffel goes into the greenhouse… y’all. I don’t wanna get my hopes up, but…

IS THIS BLESSIE CONTENT???? 🪴

I’m so excited guys. I don’t wanna get my hopes up, I know I shouldn’t, but I need Blessie back!

So Doug is doing his chores again. I sense a pattern.

He does a great Australian accent. Again, I need the aliens to clone Doug just so he can have a show where his different personalities talk to each other. Hm. Oxygen chamber has a lot of passwords. And a lot of weird ways to enter passwords. Which is nice for protecting the air, but not so great when you, you know, desperately need air and only have a few seconds to enter the password.

The binary forms of color? This is so extreme not to mention boring. Not one sign of Blessie. I’ve been bamboozled. And WHY is there a timer? This is so weird.

THAT’S IT?

Well I’m upset. We went to the greenhouse and didn’t see leaf or stem of Blessie. 💔

I’m not giving up hope. If not in the show then in fanfic that plant is coming back.

Mission Mishaps: Lights Out

Another entry from dear Doug. I wonder if Minkowski and Hilbert are gonna have him do something he doesn’t want to and then hijinks ensues and Doug messes something up?

HP Lovecraft, Call of Kuthulu? Oh me too Doug stuff is hard to pronounce.

Doug does a good creepy narrator voice. It’s funny to think of Hera listening to all this. It reminds me of those people on Lovelace’s crew reading stories together.

“Property of Dr….”

DOCTOR WHO? (A good show, but I’m literally asking the question).

Is it that girl on Lovelace’s crew who liked to read? (I’m sorry it’s hard to keep track of their names).

Ah yes, and the star is acting up. As is Doug’s imagination. I’m sure this couldn’t possibly go wrong.

Hilbert. What sample? What escaped?

I’m not getting my hopes up this time. You teased me with Blessie once. I’m not falling for it again. I’ve been burned before.

It just sounds like a little mouse. 🐁

…I hope it’s not one of the spiders… I’m now beginning to realize Doug’s fears…

“It’s small and scurrying”

Is it a mouse?

Doug, it’s probably just a mouse. “It’s staring at me.” Well it’s probably scared too, Doug.

Doug, you better not have killed that poor little mouse.

You killed the maintenance drone Doug? Well that was a wild ride. At first I thought they weren’t gonna go the “Doug messes up a thing Hilbert and Minkowski are doing” route but they always surprise me with their ability to bring it back there. Not that I’m complaining, I’m loving these stories. Mission Mishaps: Cold Turkey More Doug! Wow. 553 days. That’s… that’s a lot.

Thanksgiving? Is this the same Thanksgiving from Hera’s memory? 🦃

Banned from the kitchen? Oh poor, Doug. Was Hilbert not available? I guess he’s Russian so he doesn’t celebrate it. But he can probably cook.

Doug is just like me fr. Don’t ask my partner what happened when I tried to make him food. All you need to know was that I tried my best, and it’s the thought that counts.

Doug is gonna burn this Turkey. I know the actress was probably busy and these are “extra” episodes, but Hera please come online and help him.

Oh gross. Cans of spam? Disgusting.

Right, maybe Hilbert can do something. But on the other hand, Hilbert and Eiffel can make each other worse. And what was that about psychoactive properties? What was Hilbert exposed to?

“Can I give indifference? I have plenty of that.” Yes, Hilbert, you made that very clear.

“Oh well if I have to “come on”.” “Really!” “No.” Hilbert is lowkey hilarious 🤣 “I like pecan pie…maybe thanksgiving is not so terrible.” 🥧

I love how Hilbert sounds like he’s plotting something ominous even when he’s just talking about pie. 🤣

But seriously, why was he in Texas? He never answered that.

“The best way to keep him away from the kitchen was to put you in charge” oh poor Doug. She was right though.

Aw, this is sweet. I like how it connects to what we saw in Hera’s memories too.

Mission Mishaps: No Complaints Aw man, SI-5? What happened to Doug?

First they take Blessie from me then they force me to spent time with his killers.

Well gang, I guess it’s time for the adventures of Whiskey Man and Duck Boy.

Wow. Sitting in a car and brooding in the rain. An action packed adventure if I’ve ever heard one.

Oh wait, are they stalking Maxwell? They said she was from a small town.

“Did you stalk me?” Yes, he did Jacobi. Kepler was acting so creepy at that bar, I’m sorry. What even was that?

“I really hate you sometimes sir. ✨You’re the worst✨” oh Duck Boy you have no idea.

THE DUCK THING? OH NO PLEASE TELL US ABOUT THE DUCK THING.

What video. WHAT VIDEO.

Please tell us why Jacobi is brooding and PLEASE tell us about the duck video.

Jacobi taught him questions only? Wow he really does love to dig his own grave.

Kepler is not your friend Jacobi. If you think he is, you… gosh you really need to meet somebody. Anybody.

All this complaining… Jacobi really is the evil version of Doug sometimes…

What was on Jacobi’s mind? What did Rachel think was on his mind? Oh, his one year recruitment.

Nothing good ever comes out of a mysterious duffel bag. Why does he have all those fireworks?

When your evil boss takes you on a fake stake out and gives you some fireworks to blow up because he knows you crave destruction: 💣🎆🥰🎇🧨😍

I like that they play fireworks sounds as they roll the credits. It’s a nice touch. Mission Mishaps: Happy Holidays Already down to the last one. Time flies when you’re having fun. Oh more SI-5. Hopefully a little less Whiskey Boy, a little more Duck related lore.

Oh no such luck. :(

Geez, Kepler really does love flexing every single bit of power that he has, doesn’t he? Just get to the point already! Why couldn’t he have been the one to go instead of Maxwell?

“Oh no! Not a binary fault in the quartical… um… that’s bad!” Duck Boy stop being funny I don’t want to like you.

Not Kepler’s slow claps… I swear this man is infatuated with the idea of being a super villain.

What are they afraid of?

…

A holiday party?

the evil space corporation has a HOLIDAY PARTY?

For what holiday? Cutter and Pryce clearly hate holidays. They’ve ordered people killed on nearly every holiday we’ve seen! … actually maybe that’s their way of making the holidays their own… and it makes me wonder who they want to kill at this party. Jacobi and Maxwell have a right to be concerned about this.

“We don’t ask questions. We trust that we were given orders for a reason.” THAT ONLY WORKS IF YOU ARE WORKING FOR TRUSTWORTHY PEOPLE. And committing or endorsing murder takes you off the trustworthy list.

The idea of Cutter and Pryce celebrating Christmas disgusts me. Like, physically I have a hard time stomaching it. Christmas is about joy, and love, and goodwill toward mankind. Cutter and his crazy science gf have no place involving themselves in that. Not unless they show some serious remorse and do some serious penance and jail time.

SECRET SANTA EXCHANGE?

What kind of horrifying messed up gifts do people get each other? I hope Jacobi gets a pet duck.

… Maxwell’s mom died? “We all know you don’t talk to your mom” “…my mom just died?” “No Jacobi.” STOP BEING FUNNY.

Compare this to the holiday stuff that happens with the Hephaestus… this has such a creepy undertone. Especially when you imagine the events happening at the same time.

Well, that’s all for the Mission Mishaps. Sorry it took me so long guys, but I love and appreciate your patience. Excited to finish the rest of the series and hopefully I’ll have more for you soon!

#bods wolf359 reactions #wolf 359 #w359 #wolf359 reactions #alana maxwell #warren kepler #daniel jacobi #doug eiffel #renee minkowski #alexander hilbert #Wolf359 #wolf 359 podcast #wolf 359 spoilers #Mission mishaps #wolf359 #hera wolf 359

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strangledeggs · 4 months

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Has Remix Culture Run Out Of Steam?

The short answer is "no". The long answer is...

A couple days ago, I was talking with @philippesaner about the failures of postmodern critical theory to come up with a viable alternative to liberal-democratic politics given all its critiques of the latter (this subject seems to inevitably come up at least once every time we meet in real life). The famous article he brought up that the title of my current essay here is referencing is of course Bruno Latour's "Has Critique Run Out Of Steam?" which if you haven't read and are at all mystified by why we would be discussing something like this in the first place, I'd recommend reading.

Anyway, around the same time (maybe it was even the same day?), my sister happened to show me Youtube music critic Toddintheshadows' 10 worst songs of the year list for 2023. A notable entry on the list that I hadn't heard prior to seeing the video was a song that was essentially a cover of Haddaway's "What Is Love?", kind of like that previous Bebe Rexha basically-a-cover "remix" of Eiffel 65's "I'm Blue".

That struck me as interesting, given that both songs seem exemplary of a current trend that takes the very simple approach of reviving an old song that was already a "proven" high-charting hit by doing the bare minimum work on it to get it considered a "new" song, then re-releasing it and watching it climb the charts again on the power of nostalgia alone. If it seems like I'm making this out to be a more deliberate process than you'd think it might be (instead of just a coincidence born of nostalgia for the 90s/2000s), that's because I have good reason to believe it is. This Pitchfork article from a few years ago pretty much predicted this exact phenomenon, as it details how venture capitalists started buying up the song catalogues of major songwriters with specifically the intention of marketing new songs based on the licensing of older, already well-known songs.

What does this have to do with Bruno Latour? Well, many of you may not remember this, but pop music (pop culture in general, I would argue, as we'll see through some other examples) went through its own moment of "postmodern theory" not long after the political theory took off mid-20th century. There were many different ideas tossed around for a while, some of them conflicting, but most of them centered on the deconstruction of the individual artist as a singular creative originator of things, much like certified post-structuralist Barthes' "death of the author" (actually, you could argue that Barthes' original essay was the first shot in this assault on the cult of the pop-star-as-creative-genius). This culminated in a fierce debate over what started happening with the birth of hip-hop in the late 70s, but especially the 80s and 90s. Early hip-hop was often heavily dependent on the DJ's use of "samples" of already-recorded music. This sparked accusations from more traditionalist musicians (nowadays we tend to call these "rockists", which isn't entirely fair because there are many rock musicians that appreciate the nuances of this debate and many outside the genre that don't) that hip-hop was a fundamentally unoriginal genre because it relied on playing "other people's music".

At the same time that early sample-based hip-hop was emerging, a new form of recording started to be sold, first in conjunction with hip-hop DJ culture but quickly expanding beyond these bounds. This was the format of the "remixed" song, which I won't bother to explain here because I'm pretty sure everyone is familiar with it at this point. Between the growing popularity of remixes and hip-hop, many of the traditionalists seemed to feel that we were heading towards a future in music where no one would bother to create new music again because we'd just plunder the same songs from the past forever, leading us into a creative dead end that would constitute the much-threatened, long-dreaded "death of music".

This is where the postmodern streak in pop music comes in. Speaking in response to these accusations of creative bankruptcy, the postmodernists pointed out that actually, all of music had been nothing but "remixes" from the start, since no one has a truly "original" idea and all new music can be traced back through the music that influenced it in a chain that only ends at our recorded history of music. This is obvious enough from genres like rock (which used the basic structures of the blues as its jumping-off point) and jazz (which often featured artists "quoting" other songs by playing their melodies mid-solo, a kind of proto-sampling when you think about it), but it could even be observed in how classical composers would take musical themes from popular folk songs and imitate each others' compositional structures.

The point of music, the postmodernists went on to argue, isn't to create something totally "original" anyway, since that's basically impossible. It's instead to simply create something "new", and "new doesn't have to mean that it isn't built on the back of some older work; "newness", in fact, comes from the new combination of older elements, which, placed in a new context, will now seem unfamiliar as a whole even if the individual parts are familiar. As Buck 65 says, and then re-constructs through a sample of someone saying the same thing at the end of his song "Leftfielder", "And you never heard it like this before".

The postmodernists were, I think, indisputably right, and for a while it looked like they had won this particular culture war. Hip-hop went on to experience a golden age of creativity through sampling and remixes (something reflected in reference-heavy lyrics too, as any hip-hop listener will notice). Pop music in general got a lot more explicitly self-conscious and self-referential. It was (and continues to be - we're not out of this era yet, despite what I might be implicitly foreshadowing here!) an interesting time for people like me who enjoy nerding out over "spot-the-reference" games, as well as debates over the relationship between form, content and historical placement of music.

But there is a dark side to the arguments the postmodernists made. If there is truly, as an ancient source claims, "nothing new under the sun", then maybe the answer to this is not to try and create new things (since this would be a waste of time) but to stick as close as possible to those things from past times that we know have already worked. This is an argument for aesthetic conservativism, which claims on some level that there are actually a finite number of "good" art pieces (songs, stories, poems, etc.) that we can create, and if we try and deviate from these, we will either end up accidentally reproducing a worse version of one of those "originary" pieces anyway, or produce utter nonsense that will be of interest to no one.

How deep this theory goes depends on who you ask. I would argue that the originator of this argument is as far back as Plato, who claimed that there were metaphysical "forms" constituting the "real" existences of all things in the world that were, in themselves, just defective imitations of those forms. This kind of thinking is reflected in psychoanalyst Jung's idea of "archetypes", different kinds of narratives that exist eternally in all human minds which can be seen as the blueprints for all other stories we tell each other. And this idea would be highly influential on comparative mythology scholars like Joseph Campbell, whose own book "Hero With A Thousand Face", which argued that there is only one real story humanity has ever told known as the "monomyth", in turn influenced George Lucas in the writing of Star Wars.

But it doesn't have to get that deep. To many who espouse some version of this view, aesthetic conservativism is simply a shorthand for commitment to "formula" in the arts. Many of these people wouldn't even go so far as to completely deny the possibility of entirely original art - they just think it's usually a waste of time, and that 99% of what's worth making is made by the use of a "proven formula" that works because we have evidence of it already working in the past. It's a kind of bastardized "scientific" approach to creating art, where you claim to create through "evidence-based" methods, but you only ever draw your evidence from historical data and ignore the possibility of current tastes changing. It's the approach of any screenwriter who's told you about how "Save The Cat" changed their life. What's kind of funny with these types is how many of them worship George Lucas; after all, they tend to value what's successful on the market over all else, and Star Wars is nothing if not that. So the ghost of Plato (and Jung, and Campbell) lives on in these "formulaic conservatives" even if most of them never get around to thinking that much about it.

Anyway, for the record, I think this philosophy of aesthetic conservativism is completely full of shit. I'll keep my own beef with Plato for the separate essay it deserves, but I will make my case for the pop postmodernists on this issue here: just because you can retroactively identify patterns of things that "work", doesn't mean those will be the only things that will ever function as art. For one thing, canonical tastes change over time, and what we considered to be a masterpiece 100 years ago isn't always the same as what we consider to be a masterpiece today. Further, I would accuse some of these aesthetic conservatives of a kind of reverse "forest-for-the-trees" view: they can't see the uniqueness of individual trees because they're too focused on the forest as a whole! While you can point out the similarities among different works across time, you can also point out their differences, which frequently lie in their specific details - combinations of which, I might add, come from the distinct circumstances of a sum of past influences that result in an ever-new "remixed" cultural product over time. You can, in fact, just produce minor variations on the same thing and end up with wildly different results as long as you know what to focus on. Case in point: though "Cool Hand Luke" might feature a similar story to that of Jesus in the Bible, no one would ever mistake it for the Gospels, and we certainly don't view those two things as equivalent.

This might seem like I'm nitpicking here, but taking the aesthetic conservative stance has real consequences for the kind of art that gets produced. Consider the movie industry, where this kind of thinking seems to have dominated for a long time; it feels like only now, we're coming out of a long winter of cookie-cutter superhero movies which, while certainly driven economically by IP licensing deals, were justified critically to many by the idea that they're constructed according to a certain "proven formula". It was a fundamentally backward-looking paradigm of culture, one that suggested that lazily regurgitating the same thing over and over again was not only all that was possible, it was desirable because it had already worked in the past! This is the same logic expressed in those interviews with the venture capitalists buying up song catalogues in the hopes that they can prey on people's nostalgia for already "proven" hits. And you might say they're transparently only in this for the money, so what does their logic matter anyway? But I'd argue that the financial victors of culture wars like this have a significant stake in people buying the logic of what they're doing on some level, because if everyone recognized what they were doing to be obviously bad, they'd stop consuming it and move on to something else.

I would contrast this aesthetic conservativism with a more "forward-looking" approach, one that uses the postmodernist cultural theory to look towards creating new combinations of things out of old things in ways that feel genuinely surprising. Think something like DJ Shadow's "Endtroducing.....", the first album constructed entirely out of samples, or more recently, 100 gecs bizarre genre-pastiches that leap from one sound to another with little warning. You'll note that neither of these artists sound like each other, or much else that came before them, despite taking obvious influences from the decades of music that immediately preceded them.

The change doesn't have to be that drastic, either. You could be a country-rock band playing in a 70s style, like the Drive-By Truckers, but you're experimenting with songform and subject matter for a change, or a rapper incorporating a slam-poetry influence into your flow like Noname or R.A.P. Ferreira. The point is that you can, in fact, make new music with a forward-looking approach, and there is something truly disturbing to the thought that the future of the industry might be several more years of covers of the already successful hits of yesteryear, like those of "I'm Blue" and "What Is Love?" If that's the case, then we might start to see a backlash against the postmodernist cultural theory, since those growing up in the current generation would only know it by means of this aesthetic conservativism which takes the conclusion that "everything is a remix" as a license to do the barest minimum of remixing possible for the safest return on investments. And what we might see then is a return to pre-20th century ideas of the sanctity of the individual artist's creation and "originality", which will simply throw more fuel on an already raging fire of support for devastatingly overreaching IP laws, which will ironically only make it easier for this phenomenon of re-animated Hits From The Dead to continue. Because you know who can afford to buy up that IP so that their own remixes are the only "legal" ones...

As a final note here, I wanted to bring up the original "Everything Is A Remix" guy, Kirby Ferguson, whose video essay series released under that title is still available in its original form here (it's just past the "updated 2023 edition", which I haven't watched yet). I first watched this series almost 15 years ago and I felt like the guy was basically summarizing everything I had been saying about the postmodernist theory of art at that point - nothing is truly "original", remixing isn't the same as "stealing", intellectual property law is a plague, etc. Anyway, I haven't kept up with what he's been doing these days, and taking a quick glance at the site, it looks kind of grim: he's got a dubious-looking course on using AI in art as well as several self-help-y looking ones on "unlocking your creative potential". I guess he had to make some money on his idea somehow (ironic, for a guy whose thesis kind of necessitated a destruction of the laws that allow people to profit off their ideas), but this is a bit of depressing direction to see him take. Anyway, check out the original videos if you haven't seen them, they make a compelling argument even if I think I would find it kind of oversimplified now (disclaimer: I haven't rewatched them at the time of writing this and am relying on my memory from almost 15 years ago, so I take no responsibility here if they turn out to actually kind of suck).

#Music #Music analysis #Remix culture #Aesthetics

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sorry-i-ship-drarry · 3 years

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Da Capo

Dialogue Prompt 16- " because I love you, is that what you wanted to hear " requested by @sunflowerishdolphin ( your last remaining request ) | TW- NONE |

Da Capo-(Italian: from the beginning); at the end of a piece of music or a section of it, means that it should be played or sung again from the beginning.

He shut the door behind him, locking immediately, putting those grocery bags on the counter and turned on the voice Machine , picking up the mails from the corner table reading who addressed them as he simultaneously heard the voice messages like his usual evening, a routine that had became a practice.

" you have 2 new messages "

" hey harry, this is Clint. Send me those pictures via e-mail, could you ? Call me when you get back "

Harry subconsciously nodded as he read the next mail addressed from the burrow.

" harry "

He stopped dead in his movements as he stared at the tiles on the floor, hearing that very familiar voice.

" I- I know I should not- you know- never mind. Uh, call me or not, whatever. Just- how do you end this-" the voice message echoed with rustling until it ended with a beep and harry couldn't bring himself to stop the beeping.

When one of the apple fell down over the ground creating a thud, harry broke free from his locked moment of strangeness and shut off the beep. He stared at the number long enough to remember his past, the horrors, the pain, the anguish, the agony of it all but he couldn't resist himself from Noting down the number on the notepad and just staring at it.

He had called, 1 year and 6 months later, he had called.

Harry left the notepad like it had been resting on the counter and went out to the garden to water his plants and get some peace from the quick Sand of the emotions that had started overwhelming in the presence of the noted down number. But it didn't help the rail of his thoughts that resulted in overflowing of the pots.

The evening had turned into a chilly night yet without a care he kept staring at the TV screen blankly, finding it hard to forget that voice message. That familiarity in the voice had almost Haunted harry every night in dreams and that un-advanced way of not knowing still how to end a voice message made harry smile if only for a moment but he was strongly reminded of how had things ended, in fights, In rush, in sadness, in heart break.

He wanted to call back and ask him why had he called, he even stood before the phone, dialing almost the entire number but could never gather the entire courage to actually call him back. How could he ? After everything that had happened, how could he?

It had been almost 1 and half year since harry moved to a small town in Paris living in a muggle suburb and still learning French but he had sat in his balcony drowning in rain, yet he never felt at home. He never wanted to leave Britain, London but what choice did he had but to leave everything behind and start new, a fresh start and yet all he felt was moving backwards. He loved it here, the neighborhood, the children on the streets, the grocery man, Adrian's little shop around the corner yet the smell of the Rain, the smell of laundry, the Blooming garden, the sunlight, nothing felt the same, not like how it was when he was with him. Nothing ever felt the same anymore .

Somewhere around blankly staring at the TV, the screen had Turned grey with no more left to watch when harry forcibly picked himself up and put himself to bed, relentlessly tossing and turning until sleep had returned to him like previous night's.

You can't stop thinking about me .

That's not true.

Do you really think so? Then why am I here ?

You tell me.

He sighed, his voice flourishing and sounding like the softest of breeze, you can feel it too, can't you, you know I will be there with you..

I can't feel anything. A pause.

You're coming?

Do you want me to ?

Harry tossed one last time, slowly opening his eyes in the silence of the night and the street light outside flickering with yellow and black. He sighed to himself as he sat right up and followed the line of sight to where the phone was kept.

" hi, draco, hi- uh, you called. I- didn't know about it- just got your message- I wanted to check what you called for so leave me a message or call me in the mor-"

" harry?"

Harry stilled with the phone pressed against his ear, his breathing sounding very clear like he had held the phone very close to himself as if holding it too close would make the conversation more real.

He stared at his feets on the ground comprehending how to respond, he had not expected draco to pick up-

" harry, you there ?"

" yeah, yeah. Uh sorry- I just- " he breathed " isn't it late ?"

" sort of yeah. I just- I came from a run "

" this late at night ?"

" yeah " he breathed.

Harry breathed.

" you called earlier ?"

" yeah " a long pause before he released a rolling breath and spoke again " I'm visiting Paris and I- I know you're there, so I was just wondering if you'd like to meet sometime if you're free of course ?"

Harry's fingers coiled to the telephone loop, a little smile forming over his lips as he whispered " Sure. When ?"

" this weekend "

" I'll pick you up ?"

" that'd be- nice " he breathed.

" okay "

They breathed.

" I'll send the details via mail " he added

" okay "

And they finally cut the call but all harry did was stare at his feets on the ground crossed together as if it offered any peace.

_______________________________

The sun had rose like usual with the birds chirping just outside Harry's balcony, the usual ringing of his alarm clock went unnoticed as harry stepped out of the long shower. He padded across the room water dripping down his neck due to his washed hair, finally shutting off the Alarm. He stared at the watch as minutes stroke by, his mind lost in the moving of the minute hands until a shiver has ran down his spine and he dropped the clock on the bed and fetched the shirt and the pants he has decided to worn a day before. The same blue flowy shirt and the same Khaki pants.

Anxiety was not a surprise visitor anymore as harry fidgeted wearing his watch over his rest and tying his shoe laces that at some point, harry left them be thinking that if he'd fall, he'd fall. He ran all around the apartment going from one room to another to living room because his things were scattered all across until finally the clock stroke 12 and harry left the apartment in his second hand ford from 1985.

Harry leaned against his car in front of the France ministry of magic building waiting for draco to come with sun bouncing over his soft brunette hair, checking his watch every minute or two.

And there he was, the same boy walking through the door carrying 2 bags in a soft cotton red faded shirt and washed blue jeans.

" waited for long ?"he asked awkwardly.

Harry shook his head as he took his bags and dropped them in back seat.

" I- harry- I just wanted to ask something "

Harry frowned but nodded as he opened the car door for draco.

" this isn't awkward, is it ?"

Harry huffed out a breath, glancing behind draco for a moment. Was it awkward,of course but he Wanted to settle through the awkwardness and not be like one of those people who can't visit their ex.

" it is a bit but we'll settle in. After all we're friends, right ?"

Draco chuckled softly before he nodded " we can be "

Harry smiled before he stepped away and let draco take the passenger seat and settled into his driver's seat as well.

" Hungry ?" Harry asked as the ignition roared.

Draco nodded " very "

" I know just the place " harry smiled putting on his sunglasses and drove to exactly where he needed to.

________________________________

Things remained a bit awkward with draco as harry adjusted to all new information and forgot thinking of draco as an ex he scrambled away from and reminded himself more to treat him like the way he used to before the relationship happened.

But despite that the wicked angels that remained on Harry's shoulder reminded him to be careful this time and even if he harry heard them, he ignored as he served draco the croissant he has freshly picked up from the bakery around the corner.

" what about the eiffel tower ?" Draco asked as he sipped his lemon tea, taking the plate of croissant away from harry.

" it's overrated but worth it. It's better in the evening, I'll take you there " harry replied as he ate his own.

" oh shit- I forgot. I had to be at work 15 minutes ago. I'll see you later yeah " draco hurried with his baked food and picked up his bag he has came with and disapparated from within the apartment.

Harry collapsed down on the chair thinking to himself what was he doing. How could he just forget everything and move on and pretend like nothing happened like he had been doing for days. He hated the pretending, the " I'm doing fine without you " act or we're better as friends act, he hated it but as draco would come from the hotel every afternoon and sometimes stay by till the evening, harry would allow himself to relish in those moments and let be.

"the real question is do you really want to be friends or not ?" Jade asks as she dressed the mannequin with new shirt introduced in this work fashion line.

" i- i don't know jade. Do I want to forget everything and move forward, yes but I can't just look at him pretend we don't have a past " harry kicked the ground as he was leaned against the wall in the cubicle with jade and the white mannequin for display.

" Harry, the past is the past. It doesn't matter anymore. And you know the whole thing about ex's can't be friends,it's shit, I'm friends with my first boyfriend " jade replied with the pin between her lips as he tucked the buttons together.

" your first boyfriend is gay now. You're not helping jade-"

" look harry. Is it worth it ? Is it worth spending time with him? Is it worth meeting him again everyday ? Is it worth being friends with him again ? Those are the real questions " She asked with her head titled for emphasis, her hands in the air waiting for his response.

Harry sighed closing his eyes, opening them again and spoke " I think. He's changed a lot and he's different now"

" well there you go and you know what, even if you don't want to be friends or anything, he's just visiting. He's not going to stay here forever you know and you barely visit home, so friends or no friends, it won't matter much" jade shrugged as she put the mannequin the hat and stretched her neck backwards to check the entire look before nodding to herself and stepping out of the cubicle, harry following him.

" I guess you're right " harry mumbled. Jade nodded and they departed to their response departments of work.

When the evening arrived he met draco Outside his work building and strolled off to where they could disapparate from without being noticed.

" it's a beautiful place " draco suddenly said as they were walking down the streets.

" it is " harry hummed nodding, pocketing his hand.

" don't you ever-" Breath " like miss home ? Everyone else?" He asked

Harry thought for a moment before he replied with all he could think of " it's a part of starting fresh. I miss people back home but I love it here too, everyone's nice "

" but doesn't it ever get lonely ?" Draco asked as he now walked right by Harry's side.

" sometimes but other times I just forget " harry shrugged looking forward before crossing the road.

" forget what ?" Draco asked as he ran to maintain his pace with harry.

" forget that I'm lonely. The best way to not get lonely is just not to think of being lonely " harry shrugged as he for a moment looked at Draco before he entered the dark Empty alley.

" is it easy ?" Draco asked as he stood before harry taking his hand for side along disapparation.

Harry gazed at draco, allowing the free sensation of holding his hand making him feel closer to home before he took a step forward towards draco.

" no "

And disapparated.

Part 2 & 3

might turn into a series fiction. @drarrywords thanks for beta reading this..

300 followers appreciate dialogue Prompt requests open

Angst prompt requests open

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nightklok · 3 years

Text

Kloktober Day 1 Prompt

Prompt: Favorite Character and OTP Pairing: Picklegail (Pickles the Drummer/Abigail Remeltindtdrinc) Title: The war is over and we are beginning Characters: Pickles the Drummer, Abigail Remeltindtdrinc, Eclair (cat), band members and charles are only mentioned Trigger Warnings: Very slight angst, very slight mention/discussion of trauma/PTSD. Tags: Some dark humor, mentioned trauma, discussion of trauma, fall, post galagtikon 2, hopeful/happy ending Summary: It's the first fall Pickles has realized he's lived through in years.

Author's Note: Yes this is...6 days late-But i still wanted to publish this anyway so enjoy :')

Read this fic on AO3 or read below!

The first day of fall fell on a Saturday.

And Pickles would realize it was the first time he had actually been aware of fall in years.

He couldn’t remember the last time he saw the leaves change or pumpkin picking or any of the fall activities he sparingly went to as a kid. He simply had no time, family, or desire to do any of those things as he grew older. He had the sudden moment of sadness that he had missed another fall but told himself fall was gonna come back next year and he’d just look at the leaves harder next fall. But he never did.

But now, he had the time. A lot of it. And a fresh perspective on life and just how wonderful living a quiet life was.

Getting to sleep in on a Saturday morning with the person he loved the most and having nothing else to do for the day was one of them. Normally, Abigail was the one who woke up earlier but for the weekend, it got to be the opposite. He could get up in an hour, make some breakfast and they could see about doing something together. Whether it’s going outside or staying in and watching something. But at the moment, he was content enough just sleeping.

But it wouldn’t last long sadly. Despite nothing important needing to be done for the day, he was woken up by the sound of meowing and a cat smacking his face.

Éclair, their beautiful cat they found outside a K-Mart, happened to like going on walks in the morning. And she was very persistent about her walks being exactly at 7:13 AM. It was 7:13 AM.

“C’mon, it’s Saturday,” He murmured as he pulled the blanket closer to his face, hoping that he could sleep for just a few more minutes.

But Éclair had no concept of time and would continue pawing at the sheets and when she began whining, he knew that his time sleeping in was already over. He didn’t want to wake her up and figured she deserved the extra hour of sleeping.

“Okay, okay, I’ll take you on a walk,” Pickles finally answered as he used a hand to gently push her away just so he could sit up. He was careful to not disturb Abigail but he saw her move and murmur something he couldn’t quite hear. He had to assume by the tone that she meant she was gonna do it. She always tried to even when he told her to sleep in on weekends.

“Just go back to sleep, babe, I’ll take care of it.” He answered quickly as he got out of bed but she was already sitting up.

“I’ll come with you.” She answered, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes., “Just give me a few minutes.”

There was no convincing otherwise and he was too tired himself to argue. He quickly snuck in a kiss before he got out of bed, “Alright, take your time.”

By the time he had thrown on some clothes and made himself look presentable enough, Abigail was already by the front door, kneeling down to leash Éclair. Despite them taking the same time to get ready, she looked like she had spent much more time doing it. Then again, she always looked beautiful to him regardless of how much time she spent.

He really did save the world to get to see today huh.

She stood up once she leashed the cat and turned to look at him with that small smile he always loved, “Ready to go?”

“Yeah,” He answered as he made sure he put the house keys in his pocket before opening the door to let her out first before himself. Éclair already began wandering around the front lawn, as far as her leash would go.

They were hit by a cool breeze that gently swayed the trees surrounding them, causing some of the red and orange leaves to fall gracefully onto the ground. The trees weren’t entirely turning their leaves yet but the appearance was showing much more by the day. And each day only meant another normal day. The worst was behind them.

“You sure you don’t wanna get a jacket?” She asked.

“Nah, I’ll be fine. Got my own body heat.” He answered before he pulled her slightly closer enough to feel her skin heat up by the touch, “Besides I know how you can warm me up if I get cold.”

She wanted to mention about the neighbors or anybody seeing them but there was no one around at the moment. It was just them enjoying the early morning fall, the cool breeze and quiet excitement for a new season that just begun.

“Well, are you cold now?” She asked as she pulled him a bit closer.

He didn’t say anything else but reached up to kiss her, feeling her warm lips as they pressed against his. It felt as compassionate as the other thousands of kisses they must’ve shared in their lifetime. Honestly, he could probably find the same feelings he felt kissing her when he got a first kiss; the excitement, anticipation and pure love that he got to kiss someone he loved.

Their kiss was interrupted when she felt her leash getting tugged by Éclair who had grown impatient of them. She sat as far as the leash would let her, looking up at them expectantly. Amused, they walked past their front lawn to the sidewalk but felt the leash being pulled once again. They turned around to find her sitting still, meowing impatiently.

“C’mon, wanna walk a bit more? No? Okay.” Pickles answered with a laugh as Abigail went to pick her up. Almost immediately, she climbed up on her shoulders as she always preferred.

Her idea of walking outside was to walk a few steps and one of them had to pick her up for the rest of the walk. Walking around a block required too much energy. Did they expect her to actually walk alongside them every morning? Yes. Did she never fulfill that dream? No. But they also fed into her routine and nature, it wasn’t just their house anymore after all.

There was no use in arguing with a stubborn cat. She had made her territory in Abigail’s shoulder and they simply had to go along with it. She adjusted the leash so the other end of it would hook onto the inner jacket pocket that had a small sewn in hole meant for earphones. Once she made sure that the leash was secure inside, she reached over to hold his hand who quickly took it.

They took the usual route around the block. Shoes crunched against freshly fallen leaves, the wind picked up slightly again causing the leaves around them to move gently against the wind to a new area. If Pumpkin Spice Lattes and Apple Cider weren’t a symbol that fall was approaching, it was the leaves.

Pickles did try to remember when he last fall. Was it when he was a kid? A teen, maybe? He always fled before fall approached somehow. Always ended up in an area where he could not see the seasons change and everything remained a stagnant season the whole time.

But there was nothing to run from anymore. He could stay and watch the seasons change and turn forever if he wanted to now. Is this what freedom really feels like?

“Do you wanna go grab some coffee at the coffee shop?” She asked, interrupting his thoughts.

He quickly snapped his attention back to her and nodded, “Yeah, actually, the one two blocks from here, right?”

“Yep.”

He knew she knew that something was on his mind but she thankfully didn’t say anything. She already knew enough that he would speak when he was ready and he was always thankful for being able to fill in the gaps when he couldn’t speak. And she would always be thankful when he knew what she meant to say when she could barely get a word. It was a secret language between the two that no one but them knew and it was one they were both incredibly fluent in.

The coffee shop was a mom-and-pop one located on the end of the corner. LGBT friendly (Did he ever find those kind of coffee shops growing up?) and even had a small corner of the area for younger kids to play with. It was one of the places that they always loved frequently going to-if they weren’t well known to the world, they would’ve been known pretty well to the baristas.

“I can take Éclair, you can go order for us.” Pickles said. There were seats outside and given the weather, it wouldn’t be so bad to just sit outside and drink coffee while enjoying nature.

“Alright. The usual?”

“Surprise me.”

Pickles managed to take Éclair off her shoulder and set her down when he found a seat with decent shade. He tied the leash to the pole of the table but she seemed uninterested in exploring and instead jumped on his lap, presumably to take a quick nap.

He checked his phone while he waited, trying to catch up on whatever missed emails and posts from friends he had missed. Admittedly, going from seeing his friends everyday to now once a week at most was one of the toughest things to shift to. From knowing everything that went on in their lives, his knowledge of their whereabouts now came from whatever they posted in the group chat or social media.

Toki’s selfie with Magnus over the Eiffel Tower during their backpacking in Europe route. Nathan’s blurry image of a kid playing with a gator from the alligator rescue/children’s daycare he had started with Rachel. Skwisgaar’s video of one of the songs he was working with Nathan. A prototype rollercoaster blueprint from Murderface for the Dethklok amusement parks he and Knubbler were in charge of. And Charles not sending a photo but reminding him through text about a meeting regarding his solo album.

It was a crazy feeling to have looking at the boys he had lived with for more than a decade suddenly doing their own things. Did he feel left out? Maybe things were moving too fast? Miss the old times? He didn’t really know.

He found himself staring at his screen for far too long until Abigail came back taking a seat in front of him, “They’ll be coming over in a few minutes.”

He set the phone down, “Alright, what’d you get me?”

“You did mention you wanted me to surprise, didn’t you?” She answered with a playful smile that was clear she wouldn’t go easy on him.

“C’mon, I gotta know if I’m allergic to it or not. Could very well be allergic to milk today and might not even know it.”

“Guess it’s up to you to find out then; I’m sure there’s an EpiPen somewhere.”

Of course, she wanted to ask what was wrong but she didn’t want to press him. She knew he would budge eventually, he always did, but it was just a matter of patience and hoping to catch him at the right time.

Eventually, the barista came with the tray of coffees and food she had ordered, including a puppuccino for Éclair who woke up and hopped down to get her treat when Abigail set it down to get everyone’s orders.

She set the pumpkin spiced coffee, cinnamon rolls and a breakfast sandwich in front of him. She had ordered the same pumpkin spice coffee and breakfast sandwich; she always tried to avoid desserts for breakfast but he quickly shoved in a cinnamon roll in her plate anyway, “Here it can be your cheat day.”

“But you made me macrons yesterday.” She pointed out.

“It was sugar-free. And you can’t just pass off on a warm cinnamon roll. It’s bad for the environment I saved.”

She contemplated not even long enough before agreeing. They were pretty good cinnamon rolls…, “Guess I’ll need to pay for your contributions. Alright, I’ll take it.”

Pickles grinned as he took a sip of the coffee. It was still hot but he refused to even express he burnt his tongue for the sake of looking cool, “Great, glad my hard work paid off.”

For as much as he joked around, he didn’t mention anything about what was bothering him for the rest of their breakfast.

He would mention it on the walk back home when it was Pickles’ turn to let Éclair lay on his shoulder and Abigail holding a bag of free treats that the baristas insisted they take home. A few desserts as payment for saving the world. It was well worth it.

“I forgot what fall was like.” Pickles finally said as he looked at her. He didn’t downplay his feelings by joking

“You did?” She asked.

“Yeah. It had been too long since I last saw leaves and everything else and whatever. I guess it’s making me realize how long I missed out on some things, y’know?”

She had to wonder how he even forgot about fall. Or the fact that his hair color always reminded her of it. It was the color of vibrant red autumn leaves, not quite ready to fall yet but when the sun hit it, it showed the intricate details and would even shine as bright as it sometimes. And how could she ever put that into the right words? Maybe it just wasn’t the right moment, “Nostalgia?”

“I-I guess it’s that. Yeah. Nostalgic for the old things I guess. I was too used to that life. And I’m very happy with you, I really am! I’m doing more of the things now than I did before, but it’s hard to just completely let go of the past.”

Of course, he thought she would get offended which is why he didn’t look at her. Here he was clinging to his past again like some spoiled brat. If only he didn’t open his mouth. He probably seemed so ungrateful-

But he was met instead with warm hands taking his and he looked up to a very understanding Abigail, “I understand. There’s some things I miss and feel nostalgic for too. I don’t expect you to not miss those things. These things just end up happening, it’s part of natural life.”

“I guess…it’s just a lot harder to adjust than I thought. I’m sorry if I’m just dumping this on you, though. I know that this hasn’t been easy for you either.”

It wasn’t easy when Abigail could barely sleep without getting horrific nightmares that he had stayed up most nights worrying about. It wasn’t easy when Pickles ended up getting horrific nightmares too when he came back home, and he had yet to tell her all that he dreamt about. Their future kids, grandkids even, and even the current neighborhood kids would ask for stories of their heroism. Do they even dare talk about the price that was paid for it?

It couldn’t even be said that they had overcome it. The nightmares were less frequent, yes, but they were there. All it took was one bad night to ruin a week or month even. The horrors of their past would most likely be there for the rest of their lives, looming over and ready to strike when things seemed to be better.

But they made it so far together too. What’s another mile anyway?

“It hasn’t been easy but we’re both getting there.” She paused her walking to look at him, “We made it so far together, after all. I don’t expect you to be okay the same way you don’t expect me to be okay either, right? I’m not gonna ask you to do anymore than you already are doing and what you’re doing is enough.”

“And if it’s not enough? God, what if I’m just fucking up right now? There’s no way I can just…I don’t even know what. It’s just terrifying to be falling down that dark path again.”

She watched as Éclair looked up to the leaves around them, eyes completely dilated to look at the world around her. A leaf would just brush past her, failed to be caught and it fell to the ground.

Of course the leaves would eventually be raked. Whatever wasn’t thrown out or burned would eventually become mulch for the soil. Would help provide for the soil when spring rolls around. Then everything will grow again. Everything will be okay.

“If we fall again, we start over and flourish.”

—

“What was your last memory with fall if you don’t mind my asking?” Abigail asked that evening. They sat in the living room couch, sharing a blanket as they watched Knives Out. It would quickly become a tradition for them to watch whatever fall-related movies there were just to get in the spirit.

He paused for a moment, before finally coming up with an answer, “I met you, didn’t I? We were at that fall event Cornickelson used to host. It was probably a few years before you became Dethklok’s music producer? But anyway, we were paired at the same table and I was probably awkward as fuck right then and there but you still wanted to talk to me. We went to the garden and we just ended up talking about everything. God, I felt like a teenager with their first crush when I was with you. I never got to say that your hair color reminded me of the leaves.”

#my writing #metalocalypse #abigail remeltindtdrinc #pickles the drummer #kloktober2021 #kloktober

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everamazingfe · 3 years

Text

A Close Shave

Fic Summary: After being picked up by the Urania and brought back to the Hephaestus station, Communications Officer Doug Eiffel tries to come to terms with his new look. It doesn’t go well. Luckily, Jacobi comes along to save the day.

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Words in this fic: 2082 Pairings: Doug Eiffel/Daniel Jacobi Warnings for this fic: Brief mentions of abuse

Notes: I got into Wolf 359 at the start of this year, and after relistening to it recently I decided to start writing some fics. I was pretty nervous about posting this, but I couldn't keep it in my drafts forever, so here it is! There’s also a link to this fic over on A O 3 as the source of this post! Click it to go read it over there, or you can search up the title or ‘everamazingfe’ on the site.

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There was something about him, Eiffel had decided within the first few seconds of seeing him for the first time. His face was mostly blank unless he had some sly comment to say, some sarcastic remark, and then that stony expression was replaced by something cockier, more smug. Sometimes there was a flash of softness to it, usually when Maxwell was speaking. But even when his face was at its blankest, there was a mischievous gleam in those bright green eyes of his.

Eiffel had never really noticed anyone’s eyes before. He didn’t know Minkowski’s eye color, or Lovelace’s for that matter. Hell, Eiffel didn’t even know if he knew his own eye color at this point, he avoided looking in mirrors at all costs. But for some reason, he’d noticed Jacobi’s. Not only had he noticed it, but he had committed it to memory as well.

For a moment, he was convinced he could picture them clearly as he stared out the window above his comms panel, making eye contact with them in the reflection of the glass. Somehow, he was able to picture his face with perfect clarity too, despite only seeing it a handful of times while he was in sound mind.

“Feel good to be home?” The Jacobi that Eiffel thought he was picturing in his mind so clearly spoke, startling him out of his trance and making him jump because it wasn’t his imagination, it was the real deal. It made sense, he’d never had a very visual imagination anyway, but there was always hope for a change of mind. “Wow, I didn’t think I was all that scary, Officer Eiffel.”

“You’re not,” he grumbled with a huff of indignation, grabbing the edge of his station and pulling himself back to it, hooking his knees beneath it to keep himself there. “I just… Got lost in thought.”

“You? Capable of thought? Now that’s something that wasn’t included in your file.” There it was, that stupid sly grin that Jacobi always had when he thought he was being oh-so-clever. Usually, he was. But that joke had become played out within the first month on the station.

Eiffel responded with mock laughter, trying to ignore the way that comment made an invisible knife twist in his chest. After all he’d done, no one thought he was good at anything. What a surprise. But he didn’t have time to unpack all of that right then. “Get some new material, I’ve heard it all before,” he drawled, hoping he looked as bored as he sounded. “I’m a slacker, I’m an idiot, I’m a motormouth. Tell me something I don’t know.”

“Your shoe’s untied.”

Maybe there was some truth to one of those three things, because like the idiot he was, Eiffel had that brief moment of panic everyone had when someone told them that their shoe was untied, or their fly was down, or there was something on their shirt. And because of that panic, he looked down. It had completely slipped his mind that he hadn’t even worn shoes in the two (Three? Did those hundred days hurtling through space count? He didn’t know.) years he had been on the Hephaestus. “Oh, goddammit!” He groaned as he stared down at his socked feet in dismay, trying to tune out the cackling laughter Jacobi let out behind him that sent him halfway across the room.

“You’re also gullible, apparently!” He let himself continue his path across the room so he could push off the back wall, still in a fit of giggles as he sailed back to the console. “You actually fell for it! I can’t believe it! I’ve never gotten anyone with that before.” Jacobi’s grin was bigger than it had ever been, and he wiped the tears from his eyes before they wreaked havoc on the station’s internal systems. Maxwell was too smart to fall for a simple trick like that, and Kepler… Well, Kepler didn’t like being pranked.

Eiffel grumbled something incoherently, waiting patiently for Jacobi to get over himself before he spoke again. “Was there a real reason you came down here?”

“No, not really. Kepler’s giving Minkowski an orientation for her new role and then he needed to discuss… something with Hilbert, I don’t even wanna know. And Ala- Maxwell’s busy with Hera. So, I was bored.”

“What about Lovelace?”

“Dunno. Didn’t ask. Didn’t care.”

“Right… So you came to interrupt my very important work?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“Lucky me.”

“Lucky you.” Jacobi made himself comfortable, lounging in the free-floating bliss that was zero-g as Eiffel pretended to look busy, though his eyes were fixed on the reflection of the man in the glass. The bright light of Wolf 359 backlit him beautifully, and the color in the star seemed to desaturate everything else in the reflection, except for those damn eyes.

Eiffel let out a sigh, bringing a hand up to run it through his hair, his fingers brushing through the empty space where his long curls used to be. He let out a frustrated growl, moving his hand up to his scalp. The little hair that was left was scraggly and damaged as hell. It was coarse and patchy, and it scratched his hand uncomfortably when he ran his hand over it. “Actually. I have an idea of something we can do.” He turned around to look at the real Jacobi, who arched an eyebrow in silent encouragement for him to go on. “Come with me.”

He’d had his head shaved a handful of times, and it was usually under duress. The first time was as a punishment for getting gum stuck in it, even though he hadn’t been the one to put gum there, and it would’ve been much easier to just cut the chunk out rather than shave his whole head. The second time had been when he’d joined the military. This would make number three, but this time it was necessary, despite the fact that his goal had really been to never cut his hair again. All that length had meant a lot to him, it meant that he had control over something in his life, finally, but the cryofreeze had, apparently, had other plans for it.

Additionally, most of the shaving kits, particularly their razors, had been dismantled for Minkowski’s crusade against Blessie. God only knew where all of those had ended up, or if they were still even on the station, but he knew there was one that was still safely tucked away.

“Wow, Eiffel. I thought you would’ve liked to wine and dine your dates before bringing them home. You always struck me as more of a gentleman than that.”

“Shut up.” He rooted around in his locker, letting various pieces of uniform and whatever else had been shoved in there float freely around them as he did so. Most of it was contraband that he should’ve been more careful about getting seen, but he was too focused. Once he found the kit, he let out a soft, ‘a ha!’ And underhand tossed it to Jacobi. “You’re shaving my head.”

For once, Jacobi didn’t have some sort of sarcastic remark to make in response. He was just confused. “Sorry?”

“I can’t… I can’t stand it being like this. I can’t. And it’ll never grow back right with the ends this damaged, and I don’t really feel like cutting myself a thousand times in the process. So you’re doing it for me.” He tried to make his voice sound commanding, authoritative, but instead he just sounded desperate, irritated, upset. His hair meant so much to him, but he could stand to be without it for a little bit. He’d done it before, he could do it again. What he couldn’t stand was the sorry excuse for hair that he’d been left with.

“You don’t think I’d use the razor to kill you? It’d be the perfect opportunity.”

“If you wanted to kill me, you could’ve done it back on the Urania when I was half dead.”

“You hadn’t annoyed me as much back then.”

“I mean, if you really want to, I guess you can, but… I’d really just like my head shaved, please.”

A dramatic sigh filled the silence, and then: “Ugh, fine. But you owe me.”

That was good enough for Eiffel, and he trailed along behind Jacobi to the Hephaestus’ bathroom. Gravity was a little different in there, as in it was actually present in order to make showering and other general acts of hygiene (that Eiffel didn’t really partake in) a little easier. So he was able to sit on the counter and stare their reflections down as Jacobi stood behind him, setting the kit beside him on the counter.

Jacobi wasn’t a friend, not by a longshot. In Minkowski’s book, he was part of ‘the enemy.’ But they’d spent a decent amount of time together after he’d been picked up by the Urania, and even a little bit of time before that over the comms. Someone had to keep in touch with him and keep up-to-date on his coordinates so the ship could get a lock on his location, and Kepler had felt like that work was beneath the highly intellectual minds of himself and Maxwell, so it had fallen to Jacobi. And Eiffel hadn’t minded, because beneath all the smart remarks, the guy was alright to talk to. A little stilted, maybe, but that wasn’t anything he couldn’t work with. It was better on the Urania. Easier, at least, because Jacobi’s body language did a lot of the talking for him. Once again, helping Eiffel was deemed grunt work, so Jacobi had been the one stuck tending to his wounds, helping him get around when he was too weak to even keep his eyes open, and adjust to eating again after not doing it for a hundred days (though with all of the substitutes for rations Hilbert dared to call food, one could argue it had been even longer since he’d really eaten).

Long story short, Eiffel liked Jacobi to some degree. The guy was alright in his book, and he was sure the feeling was mutual, because he could’ve easily said no, or done a hackjob of it, or killed him. But instead, he took his time and made sure that he didn’t miss any spots, his other hand resting gently on Eiffel’s head to keep it steady despite all the fidgeting.

After the first pass, Eiffel moved to get off the counter, to turn around and thank Jacobi, but a firm hand on his shoulder pushed him back down.

“I gotta go again, make sure I didn’t miss a spot. It looked awful before, but it’ll look even worse if there’s just a tiny patch with a few hairs left.”

Eiffel furrowed his eyebrows together, but nodded and got comfortable again. As comfortable as he could, at least. His ass was already numb and the feeling was starting to spread down to his legs, but hopefully the second pass would go quicker.

And it did, kind of. Jacobi didn’t need to clean the hair from the razor as often because there was barely any left, but he still took that same slow and gentle care as he had the first time. When he was done, he wiped off the leftover shaving cream with a nearby towel, smiling genuinely as Eiffel lifted a hand to feel over his scalp. “Well? How does it feel?”

“It feels great,” he answered earnestly, laughing in relief. He didn’t hate the way his reflection looked anymore, and now he could actually believe everyone when they told him to pull it together because it would grow back eventually. Hopefully this made the process easier. His eyes drifted to Jacobi’s in the mirror, mirroring that same smile. “Thank you... I really do owe you.”

“Yeah, you do.” The genuine smile faded to his usual cocky grin, and Eiffel threw the towel at him. It hit him square in the face, but it didn’t wipe away that look. “But… You’re welcome.” He offered him a hand to help him off the counter, steadying him with a chuckle when he nearly lost his balance. “Gravity that hard on you, Doug?”

“No! It’s just… That counter was not very comfortable to sit for that long on. And yeah, I guess gravity’s pretty hard to adjust to too.”

“Well then we’d better get you back to the lazy embrace of zero-g.”

#wolf 359 #w359 #daniel jacobi #doug eiffel #jacoffel #fic #my fic #my writing #everamazingfe #mini episode #oneshot

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izloveshorses · 3 years

Text

Waiting

Canonverse, 1.5k, “missing scene” format. Sometime during Learn to Do It or any time before they leave Petersburg. This came to me fully written as soon as I woke up so... here u go I guess

“Dmitry, let’s get out of here,” Anya muttered, grabbing his wrist. They’d crossed paths at the market after her shift and he told her to stay close until it was time to go home, since the sun was setting and this place was dangerous after dark.

He glanced down, completely baffled, as they wove through the crowded street. “What’s wrong?”

“See that man over there?” she nodded towards one of the slimy vendors selling antiques. “He’s not a good man.”

“There are plenty of indecent men here.” But he fell into step beside her anyway. “How do you know him?”

She hesitated, wondering how much she wanted to reveal. That encounter definitely wasn’t a memory she wanted to relive. “He stole something from me once. When I first arrived in Leningrad.”

He didn’t speak again until they’d left the square. “What did he take?”

“A silver pendant. The nurses at the hospital gave it to me before I left.”

“Hmm.” He adjusted the satchel on his shoulder. “Did he do anything else to you?”

She swallowed. “Nothing I want to talk about.”

He was silent the entire rest of the way back. But after months of living in close quarters, she could tell by the way his jaw clenched or his fists tightened around his strap that he was stewing in anger. It was a silly thing to be angry about, really. No point in wanting to change what’d already happened. Though she didn’t offer up any other conversation either.

They spent the evening reviewing the family tree again and their various titles, she and Dmitry bickered until Vlad got annoyed enough to put a stop to it, and Anya went to bed early. The next day went on as usual— she worked until her palms and feet blistered, collected her wages, met Vlad in the palace, cleaned, and otherwise kept herself busy. But Dmitry was later than he normally was.

The first hour she didn’t think about it. Yes, it was unusual for Dmitry to be untimely, but there were some viable reasons he was held up somewhere.

She told Vlad as much in the second hour, who was starting to verbalize his concern. They shared a sorry dinner of canned beans and mushrooms, and Anya suggested starting her lessons on etiquette without him, and he welcomed the distraction.

The third hour was when she started worrying. Curfew had passed and if he hadn’t found a place to hide for the night, he was truly in danger, and several hypotheticals ran across Anya’s mind. What if he was arrested? Kidnapped? Mugged? Drunk at a bar? Dead?

“Would he run away without us?” She asked Vlad. He was teaching her a card game by the dim light of a lantern on the table.

He chuckled. “I know you two don’t get along, but he’s loyal.” He placed a face card down and Anya sighed. Gambling could’ve been in her past but it definitely wasn’t something in her future. “Even if he were to run, it wouldn’t be a smart move at this point. Which, if anything, he’s smart.”

Hour four was the worst part. Those hypotheticals turned into very real possibilities, and the thought of what would happen if he actually didn’t come back made her stomach swirl. It wasn’t like she enjoyed him, necessarily, but she never wished for anything horrible to happen to him. Selfishly she wondered if she’d be stuck here in this palace if he never came back. Or if all of what she’d been working for was wasted. But those worries weren’t everlasting, so when she was still pacing the living area she realized there was more there than she thought. Maybe it was that, admittedly, he didn’t deserve to be snuffed out like so many others she’d seen over the years. Or maybe she didn’t actually hate him as much as she wanted to, or as much as she tried to. That thought was the most frustrating of all.

“Vlad?” she asked, voice small in the massive space.

“Yes, dear?” He’d picked up a book to read in the low light, but he was clearly unable to focus, constantly shifting himself in his seat, worried for his friend.

“Do you think I was too mean to him?”

He barked a laugh, the noise making her jump after hours of solemn quiet. “Our boy needs to be put in his place every once in a while, don’t worry.” his laughter quieted but he continued when he noticed she was still looking at him expectantly. “Even so, no. That’s not something you need to be thinking about now.”

The guilt simmered down in her stomach, but the answer still didn’t ease her worry. She fiddled with the fire from her spot on the floor for the millionth time and tossed the last log onto the coals. She knew it was probably premature or unhealthy to think like this, but she couldn’t focus on her own book, so she just hugged her knees and stared at the embers. And waited.

Finally, there was a squeak of the front door and a rush of wind. She and Vlad leapt to their feet in a rush. Vlad saw him first and gave an exuberant holler. “It’s good to see you, my boy!”

When caught sight of him she suddenly felt embarrassed for worrying. Dmitry trudged through the doorway, a little worse for wear, a hand on his lower abdomen, but here and alive. He looked at her like he wasn’t sure what to expect, and now that he was here she wasn’t quite sure what to do, either. So she got angry. Naturally. “Where have you been?!”

“I got held up,” he grunted. “Sorry about that.”

“Are you all right?” Vlad asked, taking his coat.

“Just bruised, nothing serious.”

“It’s past curfew!” Anya was too upset to be compassionate. “I was— Vlad was so worried! You could’ve been arrested or dead in an alley and we’d never know! What were you thinking!”

“Relax, I’m here now.”

“Don’t tell me to relax!” They’d moved into the kitchen now where he was stepping out of his sopping boots. Vlad’s smile was nearly giddy with relief but she still held her ground. “What could’ve possibly held you up that long?”

He only grinned, tired but proud, and dug into his pocket. “This.”

Her brow furrowed and she stepped closer to look. In his palm was a silver pendant with the imperial seal stamped to the front and an Eiffel Tower on the back, an odd combination of clues. The exact pendant she’d mentioned yesterday.

It took a moment to piece together the dots. Why he was gone so long. The bruises. The piece of her past and the only gift from the kind nurses she had left in his palm. That meant… he’d put himself in danger, went looking for trouble, just to steal something she’d mentioned offhandedly once?

“I can’t believe that guy still had this,” he started, breaking the silence. “There’s probably nothing else like it. No chain, though.”

She shook her head, swallowing, and finally met his eyes again. “Why?” Why risk his life and everything they’d worked towards for this?

He only shrugged. “I hate thieves who steal without reason.” He grinned again and raised an eyebrow. “You going soft on me?”

She hadn’t noticed there were tears in her eyes and she angrily wiped them away. “No! I’m—” She didn’t know what to think. Her hands still shook with anger at making her feel so worried for so long for something so small, but the enormous gratitude expanded in her chest. At this point she couldn’t tell if her body wanted to throw a punch at that grin or kiss him. She did neither; flinging her arms around his waist instead seemed sufficient enough.

She must’ve surprised him because he froze. After a second, though, she felt awkward hands pat her back, and she pulled away quickly, not meeting his eyes. Then, to cover up whatever just happened, she punched him in the shoulder.

“Ow!”

“Don’t scare us like that again!”

He laughed and rubbed his shoulder. “You’re welcome.”

She remembered Vlad was there, who looked incredibly confused and amused. “I’m going to bed,” she told him, too exhausted for anything else.

On her way out of the kitchen she caught a glimpse of their conversation. “Oh, don’t look at me like that!”

“That was very gentlemanly of you, Dmitry. Are you going soft?”

“Be quiet. You know that’s not why I did it.”

“Sure, and what’s next? Flowers? Chocolates?”

Anya smiled to herself, unable to hear the rest. She rubbed her thumb on the side of the pendant, re-memorizing the worn bumps and edges, and tucked it in the pocket of the inside of her coat. It fell with a clack onto her diamond. No, she wouldn’t think too much of any of it, even if it rested against her heart.

#dimya #anastasia broadway #anastasia #fanfiction #my writing #anastasia musical #all five of my other wips are mad at me but i had no choice i'm sorry #i don't think dmitry is really the type of person to go looking for a fight but ladies can u *imagine*

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lils-of-the-valley · 3 years

Text

Like Hawkmoth with his latest Chloe akumatization, I will attempt a back to back review of an episode. This time, it's Optigami! I admit I'm a little scared for this one because I've seen quite a bit of salt, but I'm hopeful. So lets jump right in!

Ok, we start with a flashback to Miracle Queen (I, uh... never watched it. I watched it back when there was no French sub or an English dub out and straight up forgot about the fact that I was supposed to watch it again. Is it too late and useless or should I go watch it on Netfix?)

That is the creepiest origami akuma I've ever seen

I don't like Audrey.... If there's one thing I learned from ML is that I don't like rich parents because they all seem to be bitches

Damn Marinette, holding a semi-squat for 10 minutes without moving. That's gotta hurt, no?

Wait, DJWifi are being so cute!! They were my first OTP in this show and I would die for them!

Adrien's face of confusion when seeing Mari look like a spider refusing to get in the elevator

The fuck Alec. Why are you locked up in a stall playing a kid's game on your phone? Shouldn't you be, Idk, working??

Wait, what the actual fuck. I too would be freaking out

I HATE GABRIEL SO MUCH OH MY FUCKING GOD

Ok, but like, there's just something about 1) Hawkmoth doing his monologue in a public bathroom, 2) Alec shitting his pants behind him, watching the monologue happen

KAGAMI NOOOOO

ZOÉ!! There's something cute about her hiding with Chloe

Chloe, that was a bitch move

Alya, now is not the time to tease Mari about the Adrien situation! We need a hero to save Paris!

Nino is such a cute boyfriend uwu

I never like Alec, but I 100% understand his horror rn

How the fuck did Luka and Wayhem get into the vents???

I love Adrien's perception! We're so used to seeing Marinette be "our everyday Ladybug" but I can't wait to see more Adrien being a hero out of costume!

Did they really almost reveal their identities? I mean, I know it's too early, but I can't wait for that to happen, even if it's only in season 6 or 7, I promise to be patient

Wait, it took all that time for Kim to get up? HOW MANY FLIGHTS OF STAIRS DID THAT KID RUN UP????

NINO NOOOOOOO

NOT SENTI-NINOOOOOO

Ok, there is no reason for this to be so funny, the Eiffel Tower being in the desert right after Kaalki says that she never causes chaos has me in tears

I know Alya was only trying to do what was right, but now I'm scared. Is Hawkmoth going to steal the turtle miraculous?

Marinette upon realizing how much fixing will be needed after this battle: suddenly, I feel tired

Oh my god I would die for LadyBee

Ok, I see why people were upset, but like, 1) how was Mari supposed to know that sending Adrien away would keep CN away? 2) she was protecting Adrien. 3) it was really unpredictable that CN would be kept out of this battle

So CN can't use his Cataclysm on himself, it seems. That's good to know

Ooh, good perception LB!

YAYYY!! Even if he didn't do much, Kitty still helped!!

You know what, I'm really happy that Alya gets to become a permanent hero. She deserves it and everyone wanted that back when Rena Rouge was first announced. So yayyy for permanent Rena!

Also, did I mention that I HATE GABRIEL AGRESTE???

All in all, I really liked this episode. We're getting to see more than just Ladybug and Chat Noir which I find great! I don't know why people didn't like this episode, I found it great. I enjoyed getting to see Natalie, feels like we haven't seen her in forever. I was hoping to see more Kagami (Idk, the title Optigami gave me Kagami hopes, but I guess it was just a play on optical and origami) but that's fine, an assumption of my part. I can't wait to see Chat's reaction when LB introduces Rena as a permanent member and how that's going to go (I'm sure he'll be excited!) and I'm curious as to how Gabriel will go about knowing that Rena = Alya

#ml #mlb #miraculous #miraculous ladybug #ml memes #ml spoilers #optigami #ml optigami #ml optigami spoilers #ml optigami spoiler #optigami spoilers #optigami spoiler #lils rambles #my thoughts on the ep

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lieblingspulli · 3 years

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The Final Lily

w.c: 3.8k

Jungkook x OC

Summary: Jungkook is a musical, artistic and Nighttime sky deity that falls in love with a mortal author. To keep her safe, he stays away and gives her gifts in order to make her dreams come true, even far after she has become a legendary playwright and has passed.

Masterlist!

The theater began to feel stuffy as people piled into their seats. All Jungkook could hear was the elite of Paris chatting away and the usual theater conversations. Jungkook wiped away some sweat from the back of his neck. It was hot in here.

Being packed in a theater like rats with the sweatiest people Jungkook had ever seen was not on his itinerary for today. He had seen marvels that no one had ever seen before and yet he was here sitting next to a Vicomte and his wife who sweat like pigs. Jungkook was disgusted. He tried to hide it. Jungkook wasn’t here to converse with sweaty nobility, he was here for a play. Or more so a retelling of a poem. A really long one.

The French nobility around him seemed to ignore him entirely, which meant his disguise was working. He had begged for Jin to cloak him so that he was not noticeable tonight. Tonight was deeply important to him and Jin knew why.

Jungkook recalled his conversation with Jin earlier. He was unsure about how Jin would react.

“Are you sure you want to go down there in your state Jungkook? They can see you and immediately recognize you from a mile away.” Jin looked at him, uneasy about this whole thing.

“Jin, you know I have to. Today is too special for me not to.” Jungkook pleaded and gave Jin his doe eyes. “I haven’t missed this day for almost four thousand years. I can’t do this without your help.”

“Yoongi would get mad at me for letting you sneak down there, looking so obvious. You can’t just pop up in the middle of Paris and expect not to be seen in a dark theater when you’re literally glowing Jungkook.”

Jungkook felt the frustration building in his throat and huffed.

“I won’t get caught, I promise. Really!” He waited a second and stared at Jin pleadingly who was looking a great deal uncomfortable with the prospect of letting the younger god just waltz into a human packed space when he was at the peak of his power. Jungkook knew this. He knew the dangers of going out like this, and he knew Jin knew it too. He grimaced and pleaded with his eyes to Jin as he could see the wheels turning in Jin’s head.

“I swear to myself, if you get caught, you never asked me, okay? This is so dangerous, you don’t even know how much trouble I would get in if Yoongi found out.” Jin nervously bit his fingers and gestured to nowhere in particular. Jungkook just grinned and ran out.

As the theater filled and people in unnecessary frilly dresses took their seats, Jungkook gripped the theater ticket in his hands. He felt empty, even with this ticket in his hand. He should have been happy, but he wasn’t. Jungkook stared at the title of the play for a good ten minutes before the lights started to dim and it took his vision of the ticket away from him. Jungkook heard the presenter say something in French, but he didn’t bother to learn the language so it just sounded like curly language to him. He wished he did learn it though, he wanted to hear all the praises that his Asteria would have cried over. He wanted to commit every single one to memory so that maybe one day, he could tell her how many people loved her work. Jungkook frowned and tried to keep his tears in. His heart ached but it was too early for that. Taking a deep breath, he looked up and focused on the curtain opening as two people (clearly actors) were positioned by a fake pond and started their scene.

The next two hours were like a blur for Jungkook. He knew every single word of this poem, every single breath, every single tear and every single kiss. He knew the words by heart and he knew what each cue meant. He could even give Namjoon a run for his money if he told him that he knew the exact pace at which each sentence should be spoken. Jungkook may have been a patron of writing and inspired many great writers, but none moved him as much as this piece did. This piece felt like it was for his eyes only, and Jungkook was angry that it outlived the person who should be right next to him, watching the actors say their lines with joy. The stillness of the theater felt strange, it was hot and stuffy, but each person focused intently on the actors who were fake crying and fake admiring the water. He studied everyone’s face when the main lead met her love and asked about her gifts. He smiled when everyone else did at the scene where the lead, whose name was Isidora, finally got to kiss the man who led her to happiness. Jungkook loved every part of this play.

Isadora’s eyes glinted in the theater spotlight and suddenly she was gleaming with joy. Jungkook’s unintentional aura had made her gleam like moonlight and the play was phenomenal because of it. Every careful line was read by her actor with vigor and drama, eager to show the audience the power of love. Agapinor, Isadora’s lover read his lines with fervor. Jungkook studied their faces for a while before their scene was over, not listening to their words anymore.

He knew why the lead’s name was Isidora, and it made him smile with joy but also cry tears of grief. Isidora was Greek for ‘the gift of the moon’. This poem was supposed to be a gift of the moon but really, it was a gift for him. It was a gift for the moon. Jungkook clutched his ticket tighter as he watched Isidora be ripped away from her love and never see him again. The ending always made him emotional. He could hear the sweaty nobles gasp and he almost regretted coming here. It was always like this and had been for centuries. Jungkook quickly left before the lights even turned on in the theater, away from those smelly people and snobby politicians. Away from his gift and away from the words of his love.

Jungkook briskly walked out, careful not to bump into anybody and attract attention to himself. It was enough that the full moon made him practically glow, but his presence at the theater had calmed everybody and made them emotional. He needed to leave before he was spotted. His heart burned and his eyes stung, but he made it to the edge of the brick ledge, overlooking the canal. In the water’s reflection he could see the point of the Eiffel tower, a metal marvel that amazed him every time he saw it. Jungkook thought Yoongi would have liked to see it, but Yoongi wasn’t the type to roam the streets of Paris, or any other city for that matter. He was firmly against human contact and had stayed away for centuries from them. The last time Yoongi graced Earth was when he had to come down and fix Taehyung’s last great flood near Sparta. That was also the last time he had seen Yoongi so mad. Jungkook shuddered at the thought.

He kept staring at the Eiffel tower and eventually he could see little specks in the sky, reflected from the water. It always happened like this. The play and then the meteors. Jungkook wanted to catch every meteor and cradle them in his arms. He wanted to see her again. A silver droplet landed in the water and made the canal water clear up a little. Jungkook continued to observe the blurry specks until he looked up and saw them clearly, despite his tears. The moon seemed to shine a little brighter and the meteors sparkled beautifully in the clear night sky. Jungkook decided it was time to go and see them for real now. He walked away from the ledge and pulled his trench coat a little tighter in.

Jungkook materialized behind a big oak tree that had been there for millenia. It was a very old oak tree, it should have withered long ago. But it was also a gift for him. Namjoon had perfectly preserved this grove in its entirety. The flowers here bloomed at the same time every year for hundreds of years. The grass never withered and the trees stayed green. The Mediterranean climate helped preserve the flora and fauna and Namjoon had even kept the pond the same for many years. It held the same beauty as it did when Jungkook was first led here. Even in the middle of the 17th century, this sacred place had remained untouched. Jungkook felt the cool breeze of the night and saw the same meteors he had seen earlier streak the sky with glittering white specks. Asteria would have loved to see the natural beauty of her special spot.

Tears welled up in Jungkook’s eyes as he carefully sat on the grass next to her pond. Little silver fish swam away from him as he touched a finger to the surface of the cool water. He tucked his sandaled feet under his thighs and crossed his legs over each other, careful not to pull the fabric of his chiton and so that the object he held in his hands could rest in his lap.

“I’m back for you my love.” Jungkook said to nobody. “Can I read to you? Just as you would to me, do you remember?” He managed to choke out, suddenly short of breath. The trees rustled with the slight breeze, but no answer. Jungkook was here alone, he knew that. But he still felt like he wasn’t. So he talked freely here, the only time he could talk to her with his real voice. Jungkook looked at the dartfish and nodded, ready to read.

He carefully opened the leather cover of his book and saw the charcoal markings inside the rough cover. This was the original book he had made her sign. In the bright moonlight, the leather and worn paper seemed gray rather than a faded brown. This relic was older than many buildings here, even older than the pantheon on the hill of Athens. It was made of real goat leather and rough scroll paper, made by artisans in her time. Jungkook ran his fingers along the paper and felt all the rough bumps. He didn’t touch the writing, afraid the charcoal would smudge as if it were fresh. He flipped the page and read the first lines of the book in his mind. He started to read out loud after he cleared his throat and wasn’t afraid anymore. His Asteria’s writing always made him less afraid. He read the first page and remembered her voice reading it. He breathed life into her words as she once did when she was creating them. Jungkook’s voice hitched at the end of the page when he read the same words Asteria had written as she began to voice her ambitions out loud. He could close his eyes and remember it like it was yesterday.

“I hope these words reach people outside of this small little village. I want them to be as famous as the classics.” Asteria whispered to herself as she scribbled some words in her newly bound book. Jungkook wanted to shout to her, “You will! I’ll make it so!” But he couldn’t. He couldn’t speak, so he only looked at her longingly from behind a thick tree, as if his words in his mind could reach her. But they didn’t. He watched Asteria continue to scribble on her first page of the book he had left for her.

“I also wonder if I’ll ever meet the man who left me these gifts. I hope it’s not Pheobos. His manners are worse than a pig’s. I want this man to be handsome and kind and loving. I hope I’ll get to see him someday.” She sighed out and shamelessly looked at the fish in the pond with longing. Jungkook was left with little restraint and wide eyes. She was so unabashed about what she wanted, he loved it. He wanted to give her everything she wanted and more. He wanted to love her better than any man could. Better than that Pheobos could anyway. Her tiny voice continued on with her proclamations.

“I probably shouldn’t be saying this but please, if anyone is out there and listening, Aphrodite, maybe? Let me see this man at least once in my life.” Asteria stopped writing and relaxed her shoulders as she watched the clear sky. “I want to see the man I’ve fallen in love with.” Her golden brown hair flew in the wind and it shined like golden thread. The breeze quickly died and she patiently stared at the glittering blue ocean, visible from her pond.

These words made Jungkook’s breath hitch and his heart flutter. His face felt warm and his ears, he knew, were red. He wanted so badly to just run out and say, “Here I am!” Jungkook listened in painful silence as Asteria waited for a sign, but Hobi had made the day too good, and nothing made a noise, not even with the wind. Jungkook wanted to throw a pebble or something to convince her that he was there and he would always be there. Asteria sighed and continued to write.

Jungkook clutched the book tightly but quickly let go in fear that it would crumble into ashes. He could feel his face still warm from his memory and he could remember how warm her presence had made him. Her entire being had comforted him, he wistfully wished for that again. He was afraid that his memories would turn to ashes along with his book, so he held it as if he were to hold her, never to let go. Jungkook squeezed his eyes as he let his tears run down his face and onto his hands. The silver droplets quickly disappeared and if anything, they made more meteors fall. He could feel the cool breeze caress his warm cheeks as if to comfort him, saying no more tears. He choked on his tears that quickly turned to sobs.

Everything in Jungkook told him that Asteria was his love and his only. Out of the millennia of him being alive, he only truly felt alive with her in his presence. Her warm smile and golden skin made him fall in love with her every time he pictured her in his mind. Her soft, delicate hands were made to write and he loved to see them work their magic. He fell in love with every part of her, from her fingers to her peach colored lips, to her eyes that held the stars. Jungkook could hear her laugh every time she smiled and he could hear it echo in his mind as he imagined her receiving the first copy of her book. He could remember her jumping excitedly as the publisher congratulated her for it. Her excited giggles were fresh in his mind as he sat here, centuries later without her.

Jungkook vividly remembered the touch of her fingers on his as they both reached for the pen she had dropped. When she looked at him, in his disguise of course, he had memorized the map of her face, the glint in her eyes and the beauty marks on her cheeks. He could paint a perfect picture of her just with his memories alone. Her insistent laugh as she apologized for being so unlady-like had been seared into his brain. Her tears had been solidified in his memories. Jungkook sobbed as he watched the meteors fall in grace. The moon mocked him with it’s glow. The meteors fell so beautifully against the midnight sky and the constellations his brothers had created that he wanted to snatch them and throw them into the ocean. Jungkook wanted to make her his. He wanted to bring her back and he wanted to show her the wonders of this new world. He wanted her to love him and he wanted to love her. He wanted to love her sunkissed fingers and her high cheekbones and her curly baby hairs and her smooth neck. He wanted to melt into her touch instead of his puddle of misery. He wanted to beg Taehyung and Jin to bring a soul back to life, even though none of them had the power to do so. He would traverse the planes of his own existence to bring her back. He would do anything for her gaze again.

Jungkook took a shaky breath and let the book float in his hands as it dematerialized into the space he called home. It would show up in his room later. Hands now empty of her writing, he felt uneasy again. Some tears made his vision blurry and he had cried enough times to know not to touch them or else it would make his eyes burn. His tears were supposed to heal him, as moonlight droplets usually would, but he found that his tears for her never did. They seemed to make his eyes burn and his heart hurt even more. Jungkook continued to observe this space, it’s natural beauty and the meteors that fell for her. He continued to wonder if he would ever see her again, in vain. Jungkook never got to hold her or kiss her or even tell her he loved her, but he just wished that she didn’t die feeling unloved. He loved her passionately and deeply, he stored her memories in his heart and locked them away for days like these. He seemed to find her face in every painting that Namjoon showed him. He found her words in every book he read.

Looking back down at the pond and the reflection of the stars in her pond, he finally spoke to her.

“I wish you were here to see how much you’ve come to be known.” The fish were startled by his voice. “I just wish I could have shown my true face to you, and loved you how you were. I wish I could have kept you with me forever.” Jungkook’s words died in the still air and he felt a tear slide down his chin once again. The meteors had slowed down and the moon was beginning to shift with the time he spent here. He never wanted to leave. He was so attached to this silly little pond, he felt like sleeping here if he could.

“Please say something.” Jungkook whispered. Nothing answered back.

The oak tree branches rustled with the slight breeze and he suddenly felt the chill. Asteria’s warmth was no longer here. Jungkook took this as a sign to leave.

As Jungkook leaned to push himself up off the ground, he spotted something glowing white in the moonlight. It caught his eye instantly, the object seemed to sparkle in the little moonlight that was left. He only realized what it was when he crawled over to it, careful not to block the moonlight.

Blossoming in front of his own two eyes was a delicate flower. It’s petals were soft, just like Asteria’s lips. The glowing white color brought Jungkook to the verge of tears. He trembled, afraid to kill it if he touched it. But he gently touched it anyway.

Right in the same spot that Jungkook watched his Asteria write her books for years was a delicate and fully blossomed white Lily. It’s leaves were strong and healthy, it’s petals soft and delicate. The strong floral scent of the lily hit Jungkook so hard, it brought him to full sobs again. The flower blossomed in the direction of the pond, but Jungkook felt like it was facing him, telling him it was okay. The healthy petals and yellow pollen spoke to him. They told him that this was it, without any words. Jungkook knew this was a sign and he sobbed into his hands, hating that he knew what it meant.

He knew that Asteria lived a long and good life. He wanted her to, so he protected her like a flower blossoming in his garden. Even after she was married and had kids, he left a white lily for her every day on this spot. Even when she stopped coming to their spot, he left her a blossom. Even after she was gone, he came here and left her a lily every day. Soon enough, he stopped coming too, too cowardly to face his grief of losing her. He could no longer see her or feel her warmth, so he no longer left her flowers. But this blossom, growing from this unchanging dirt that had stayed the same for centuries, it was for him. He could feel it. He somehow sensed that she knew he left her those things. This flower was proof. Jungkook softly caressed the petals and a silver teardrop fell on the ground beside it, making the soil become dark with fertility.

Jungkook sighed and furrowed his brows hard. Namjoon had taught him to manifest flowers eons ago, even if he did not have the power to do so. He felt like he had to, for Asteria. He needed to leave a sign for her spirit, so she could rest in peace. He needed to say something to her finally for the first time. So he tried.

Carefully Jungkook shifted himself to the space next to her flower and held his shaky hands just above the soil. Using the still fertile soil, he concentrated long and hard, imagining the scent and exact color of his new blossom. As he held his breath, he lifted his hands in a slow upward motion and felt a soft stem poke his palm. Jungkook opened one eye and saw a flower growing right before his eyes. In a matter of seconds his flower had opened and bloomed a bright orange lily with black specks on it’s petals.

The fertile soil and his heightened abilities had made the stem thick and strong, the petals seemed hearty. They gleamed with the bright moonlight. Jungkook admired his work and noticed that a vine off the stem had grown over to the white lily and curled around it’s stem. Jungkook’s burning eyes welled with more tears and he shifted his weight back onto his feet while sitting on his knees. This would be his final goodbye for her. A final gift to his other half. A final testament of his love, these blossoms would live eternally in this Eden of theirs. Jungkook slowly got up and willed the rest of his energy into one last star that shined bright in the sky. The closest one to the moon, he willed it to shine brighter than any other star in his night sky. Jungkook’s tears flowed freely as he walked away from his memory of her forever.

#Jungkook #bts #oc #deity #namjoon #yoongi #hobi #jin #jimin #taehyung

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nobody-wants-ice-cream · 4 years

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Everything Wrong With The Umbrella Academy. Episode 8, I Heard a Rumor.

This episode is particularly brutal. Warnings include child abuse, domestic abuse, suicide, rape, gore, and manipulation. Keep yourself safe.

We Only See Each Other at Weddings and Funerals

Run Boy Run

Extra Ordinary

Man on the Moon

Number Five

The Day That Wasn’t

The Day That Was

Disclaimer: This is all in good fun! I wanted to do a really nitpicky re-watch of the series and found some really cool and interesting things I didn’t notice before. This is meant to have a Cinema Sins-esque tone. However, I did take off a lot more sins than Cinema Sins would have because I do genuinely like the series and the people that made it possible. So all of the good things got one sin off and all the bad things got one sin added. This is a really long post, so grab some popcorn. If there’s anything that I missed, feel free to add it!

I would also like to add that normally you wouldn’t watch a show this way. I am purposefully looking for mistakes, easter eggs, and other things that we’re not supposed to notice. I am watching not with the goal of entertainment, but for analysis. So most of the things that I sin, I am seeing for the first time.

Also, no I can’t do better. I am in no way qualified to give this level of criticism about anything. I am not taking this seriously. At all.

I Heard a Rumor

Stormy Weather by Etta James. I adore this song. When I first watched the show I was so happy when this song came on.-1

I am also taking a sin off for the Emmy Raver-Lampman version -1

It looks like Allison genuinely adores her daughter. And Claire’s bedroom? I would want to have that room now and I am at least ten years older than her. -1

Speaking of, how old is Claire? Sin until we have answers. +1

The animations for the story of The Umbrella Academy defeating the robbers at the museum. -2

“While your Uncle Klaus got a little distracted.” What did Klaus do on missions again? +1

Allison carefully censors the mission so she is still telling the truth but doesn’t actually say that Diego used knives or that Ben used the horror to (presumably, we don’t know how much control Ben had) kill four people. Good job. See Reggie, this is how you don’t traumatise your kid with violence. -1

“Their leader.” Looks suspiciously like a villain from the comics. -1

“I wanna hear the one about the Eiffel tower.” Me too, Claire. Especially since the magazine clips we see suggest Five was there this time. -1

Mind control. ON A CHILD. This is what bothers me the most about Allison as a character and I am glad that she is moving past it. However, in no universe can I let this go. Depending on how Allison used it, Claire’s emotional control could be fucked for life. +40

Patrick behaves like a rational human being and doesn’t blow up at Allison for this in front of their child. He also divorces her in order to keep said child safe. Good. -1

“I heard a rumor you love me.” Who did she say this to? It doesn’t matter who, it’s still disturbing, but oh dear God who did she say this to? I think this is the second most fucked up thing we hear Allison say after the rumoring Claire scene. +10

Allison is going 120 kmh, or 75 mph, in the rain. If you have ever driven a car in the rain then you know exactly why I am sinning this. For those who don’t know, google hydroplaning. Allison could have died here very, very easily. +3

Title screen on a billboard! I forgot how cool the episode 8 title screen was. -1

Allison doesn’t bring her proof with her when going to confront Vanya, who has been shown to be irrational when it comes to Leonard. +1

Bird jumpscare. +1

“They want me to come back tomorrow be fitted for a prosthetic eye”. Leonard places emphasis on the words “prosthetic eye” to remind the viewers that Leonard is bad news. Good acting choice. -1

Leonard’s clothes look freshly bloody when the blood should be several hours old and therefore a more rusty brown color than a bright red. I think. I don’t know if that’s how it works with such large amounts of blood. +1

Luther’s bed is now magically big enough to fit both him and the rave girl. +1

Luther’s reaction to the rave girl. Rewatch this scene to get such a laugh at Luther’s face. -1

How out of it was Luther vs the rave girl? Consent issues on both sides. +3

Luther treated the rave girl to some wine? Or cranberry juice? How thoughtful. -1

I really, really hope they were safe though. There is no evidence to imply they were safe. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about then you’re too young to be watching TUA). +1

Klaus is such a little shit. “Wakey wakey! Eggs and bakey!” while ringing the bell. Peak sibling culture is doing this sort of thing while knowing that the other sibling is NOT going to appreciate it. Also, Klaus deserves his revenge after last night. -1

The little wave the rave girl gives Klaus. -1

Go back and watch this scene. Holy shit this is so underrated. This is the funniest thing ever. -1

“He popped his cherry! Now you’re gonna have to marry her” -4

Klaus doesn’t remember his first time. Consent issues. +3

“No dilly-dallying, alright?” I love Klaus. -1

Klaus makes french press coffee for Luther and Ben. Klaus is a good brother. -1

I would kill to see Ben’s reaction to Luther and the rave girl. +1

Five snatches Luther’s coffee and not Ben’s, ya know, the guy who can’t drink the coffee. And is invisible. Five is a dick to Luther or Five wanted to be a little shit to Luther after having to hear him and the rave girl. Either way, +1

He steals the coffee and he complains about it. +1

Ben! -1

“This is a bad idea” no shit. +1

The awkward pauses where Ben is presumably speaking don’t make sense here. +1

The camera trickery used to make Luther look like a giant compared to Five. -1

Five knows where the aspirin is “top shelf next to the crackers” because he was also hungover. I think. I can’t remember if FIve stopped back at the house, but presumably he and Luther had to go there to get the car. -1

Luther still isn’t getting up to get the aspirin even though he can listen just fine while getting it. +1

Ben adding to the dramatic tension of the scene in a uniquely humorous way that only this show can pull off. -2

Luther doesn’t believe Klaus about Reggie’s suicide. What reason would Klaus have to lie about this, Luther? +1

Five believes him right away. -1

Convenient Pogo backing up Klaus is convenient. +1

This has nothing to do with this very dramatic and important scene, but the mismatched chairs, while cute, don’t appear in any other scene. +1

Five calls Reggie a “sick bastard” under his breath. That’s one way to describe him. -1

Pogo kept this secret for a long time. Not telling the kids was a strange choice and I’m not sure why Pogo made it. On one hand, he would be respecting the wishes of his creator and friend but on the other he would be helping these people come to terms with their father’s death. Pogo’s character motivations are strange and I don’t understand them. +1

Luther said it best, “there’s always choice.” +1

Random thought I had, where was Harold’s grandmother when he was being abused and then going to jail because he killed his abuser? +1

Leonard says some nice things in this scene. If we didn’t know how manipulative he was I would give him credit for this line. +1

Agnes looks adorable out of the Griddy’s uniform. Costume/hair people, you did good. -1

Agnes keeps saying things like “we aren’t in a rush” and talking about seeing three years worth of stops to remind us that there is no time. Hazel looks heartbroken by it. -1

Allison abandons her vehicle. Do not take driving advice from The Umbrella Academy, ever! +1

Allison sees a random scarf from several cars away and immediately connects it with Vanya. Does she also have super sight? +1

The first time we see Allison get recognized by a random stranger for her acting is eight episodes in. +1

Cheddar (the cop Allison is talking to) is so enamored by Allison that he stops doing his job correctly. +1

“Jackpine cove” who named these towns? +1

Allison and Five have the same little shrug when they finish telling terrible lies. -1

Allison is a terrible liar. +1

Diego is still in jail. They’re talking about transferring him upstate. This is really bad news. +1

“Did she use that word? Contentious?” The definitions of contentious all say the word argument. Beeman says that Diego and Patch had an argumentative relationship. This matters to Diego. Why? +1

This conversation was written by someone who doesn’t understand the connotation of the word contentious. +1

Beeman encourages Diego to escape and go on the run. Are all the cops incompitent on this show? You have Patch, who hasn’t pinned Diego for obstruction of justice despite the show implying that Diego has touched evidence he wasn’t supposed to many times, Cheddar, who is so distracted by Allison freakin’ Hargreeves that he forgets that taking her along to a murder case is unethical at best, and Beeman who straight up encourages Diego to escape from jail. That last one is definitely illegal. +10

The parallel between Five and Leonard reading something they aren’t supposed to have in the bathroom. Both the apocalypse file and the journal are red, too. This means something but I don’t have the analysis skills to really go into it. If anyone wants to take a crack at it, go ahead. Sin removed because I know this is smart even if I can’t figure out why.-1

Vanya’s training implies that Reggie has been training these kids hard since they were at least four years old. +7

Current Sin Count: 73

Reggie doesn’t praise Vanya for breaking the glass, he just demands that she does it again. Say it with me now, Reggie is a dick. +1

Leonard straight up uses the word extraordinary. Sigh. +1

The description for how Vanya’s powers work (concentrate on a constant sound until that’s all you can hear and then use an emotional connection to target) is surprisingly good. This is the best description of somebody’s powers we’ve ever gotten in this show. -1

Klaus is attempting to get the yarn on the needle and failing miserably. This is one of the simpler, if tedious, things we do in knitting. Therefore, it is completely understandable how a beginner can’t make heads or tails of it. -1

Five is still injured. The old man walk gives it away. +1

Five treats Klaus like a second in command. I want more of this duo. -1

“So how’d the crazy bastard actually know to kill himself a week before the end of the world?” We would all like to know the answer to that question. Five would be excellent at cinema sins. +1

“Don’t answer, that was purely rhetorical.” Nice cop out, show. +1

Reggie used The Apocalypse to make his kids do the dishes. Checks out. +1

Five and Klaus bond over hating doing the dishes and the person making them do the dishes. Sibling culture. -1

“Where have you been?” “Jail. Long story.” The looks on Klaus and Five’s faces! -2

Vanya breaks the monocle. Good job, kid. However, if you know the comics then you know why I am mildly concerned about this. -1

“That will conclude your training for the time being.” Meaning the next 25 years. Reggie, you suck. +1

Now Vanya’s powers are a bit more vague and imply that she has super hearing. +1

Leonard’s training routine actually includes some praise, which is a step up from Reggie. However, a step up from Reggie is still someplace in hell, so it’s still a sin. +1

It’s also a sin because it’s uncontrolled and Vanya is afraid of it, yet Leonard keeps pushing her. +1

Leonard uses the kind of language Reggie would use to describe Vanya’s powers. Checks out because he read Reggie’s book and is using his ideas to train Vanya. +1

Helen Cho’s missing person poster reminds the viewer that Leonard is bad news. +1

Vanya plays for the St. Pluvium Chamber Orchestra. First of all, no they have a conductor. +1

Second of all, “Pluvium” means of or relating to rain. The Umbrella Academy fights against the leader of the rain orchestra in episode 10. Who came up with that pun? That is absolutely hilarious. -1

Based on a post by @seven-valid-libras I think Griddy’s is across the street from this bar? I am not 100% sure. If it is then that’s a sin off because Agnes definitely has a bunch of drunk people coming in for doughnuts every now and then. I lowkey want to write this fic. -1

“Maybe they’ll brood each other to death” Is this a reference to the fact that Luther and Diego were both too emo for umbrellas in episode 1? -1

I feel so bad for Luther right now. Reggie really fucked with his head. +1

After hearing that Vanya’s boyfriend is a convicted murderer, Luther is more concerned for Allison than he is for Vanya. +1

Diego’s face when Luther says “you should have led with that!” [the fact that Allison went after a convicted murderer alone] -1

Luther is right. Diego should have led with that. +1

Luther breaks the door in his rush to get out of the bar. Checks out. -1

Mary J. Blige. -1

The shop is closing because Agnes is leaving? Who owns Griddy’s? +1

And if the shop is closing, then why leave doughnuts on the shelf? Are they gifts for the other waitresses who are now out of a job? +1

Agnes keeps a flamingo (presumably, scented) candle in a bakery. +1

Cha Cha was way too close to that explosion to not get some scratches at the very least. +1

Sergeant Cheddar is letting Allison stay in the room while he interrogates Mr. Luntz (the man that survived Vanya’s powers). +1

What kind of person allows themselves to be hired by some guy in order to beat him up in front of his girlfriend? Who does that? Are there people like that who exist in real life? +1

Allison doesn’t get pissed off when Luntz says that they started to hurt the girl (Vanya) too. +1

Sgt. Cheddar finally gets pissed off with Allison after she starts leading Luntz. This took way too long. +1

“What I really need to do is practice,” said every musician ever. Including me. As I’m typing this I’m putting off practicing. Vanya is calling me out. I deserve it. +1

Also, Vanya just got first chair and so far she still hasn’t learned the solo the day before the concert. That is such a mood. -1

The cracks in Leonard’s personality are finally starting to show. If Harold was smart he would let Vanya do this without attempting to manipulate her into more practice. +1

Vanya left her violin propped up in the middle of a sofa. That is a broken violin waiting to happen. +1

Where is her rosin? Don’t tell me she reuses the same rosin and doesn’t clean her instrument. Please. +2

Leonard doesn’t tell Vanya where he will be going. He just sort of leaves without a note. This would be fine if this universe had cell phones, but it doesn’t. Leonard is a dick. +1

Agnes would like to spend her (Hazel tells her it’s hypothetical but we know it’s not) last two days on Earth with Hazel. That is so sweet. But also, they met less than a week ago. +1

This is the turning point that makes Hazel an active character that wants to stop the apocalypse. Finally some character motivation that makes sense! Whoop! -1

They Call Me a Fool by Damon is another one of my favorites from the soundtrack. What can I say, I’m a sucker for jazz. -1

There is a parallel between Five leaving Vanya’s apartment and Leonard leaving her at the cabin. Her brother (whom I assume she loves) and the man she is infatuated with both leave her at some point without warning. The people who Vanya loves keep leaving her. +2

Vanya puts her violin down on a chair and lets the bow fall. Bows are expensive. +1

“I made a secret place just for you. None of your siblings get to play there.” Of course Reggie is framing it this way. He’s scared of her. +1

The further away from Pogo the camera is, the less real he looks. +1

Reggie and Pogo locked Vanya in this cage. +1

Vanya’s violin bow fell down but in the next shot it’s propped on the chair. +1

Sgt. Cheddar tells Allison to stay put but has no way to verify that she actually will. Also, if he’s such a fan then shouldn’t he know that she used to be a superhero? +1

Allison kept her proof about Leonard/Harold in the car again. +1

“I love you. And I wanna be here for you as your sister.” -1

“I love him.” Vanya you met him less than a week ago. +2

If there was ever a wrong time to bring up the fact that you took Vanya’s powers away and left her with a horribly low self esteem due to the poorly worded “I heard a rumor that you think you’re just ordinary”, it would be now! Now is the wrong time to bring this up! +10

Reggie used Allison to make Vanya powerless. Reggie is a dick. An absolute bastard. A complete scumbag. Etc. +20

Reggie has also been drugging Vanya since she was FOUR YEARS OLD. +50

Insert Reggie insults here. Feel free to come up with your own in the tags. Fuck this guy repeatedly with a rusty chainsaw. +20

Vanya is not in the right state of mind to understand that Reggie is the one that made Allison rumor her. +1

The final fight between Allison and Vanya is heartbreaking. Emmy Raver-Lampman and Ellen Page are excellent actresses. -5

Vanya’s skin keeps getting paler and paler. Foreshadowing. -1

This is the only time Allison attempts to use her powers in the show. To save her life. I would say that it is pretty justified. -1

Violin bows are not sharp enough to cut human flesh. Is this another part of Vanya’s power? +1

Gore warning! This is super fucked. Not gonna lie, I gag a little every time I see this.+4

Vanya is freaking out and then Leonard walks in. Vanya’s mental state is completely out the window at this point. +4

Leonard manhandles Vanya into letting her sister die (as far as they know) on the floor of the cabin. +10

Allison has definitely lost enough blood to kill her, yet she survives this. +1

Leonard went out to kill Luntz. +10

Nobody in the car (Five driving, Klaus shotgun, Luther and Diego in the back) is wearing a seatbelt. +1

Also, of these four people, Five is the most qualified to drive right now? Diego is sitting right there! And we saw Klaus drive the ice cream truck! Luther would have some trouble driving because he’s so large. But really?? +2

“Can you go any faster?” “Ask me again and I’ll burn you with the cigarette lighter.” The comic relief doesn’t really land here because the scene before was so dramatic and the music is still playing. To change the mood, the song would also have to change. +2

Independently, that is a pretty funny Grandpa Five line. -1

Including Ben in the scene where they find Allison bleeding out on the floor is a subtle reminder to the audience that if Allison was dead, Klaus would be able to see her ghost. The lack of a ghost means she is still alive. +1

Also, this scene has all the original members of The Umbrella Academy in it. Look how far they’ve come from the bank robbery. +6

No one is checking for a pulse right now. They’re just assuming that Allison is dead. +10

Overall Review: It goes without saying that this episode is fucking brutal. When I first watched it I had to stop and go do something else for a while because of the rumor reveal and the throat thing. That was really, really concerning. Props to Emmy Raver-Lampman. She fucking killed it this episode. If anyone was wondering if she was a good actress (ya know because of all the “come look at this” lines she kept getting) then this episode made it very clear that she can act and she does it very, very well.

So, Vanya’s sanity is out the window, Allison is down for the count, and no one cares about the apocalypse right now. That last one is understandable because of Allison’s situation, but damn it really isn’t looking good for the Hargreeves siblings.

Also, I want to talk about something. This is the last episode in which Allison and Vanya are both capable of speech. And in the eight hours we have known these two women, they have had multiple conversations. All of them have been about a man. Their brothers, their father, Patrick, or Leonard/Harold. Seriously, the two women in this show that are main characters never have a conversation that isn’t about a man. There is no excuse. With the fridging and this, you have to wonder if the writers on this show hate women or something? I don’t normally add sins post analysis, but I think I will make an exception for this one. +100

Total: 283

Sentence: Serious gore.

#The Umbrella Academy #all in good fun #luther hargreeves #diego hargreeves #allison hargreeves #klaus hargreeves #five hargreeves #ben hargreeves #vanya hargreeves #leonard peabody #harold jenkins #show warnings apply #this episode is brutal

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nellied-reviews · 4 years

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Super Energy Saver Mode Re-listen

Hellooooo! My Wolf 359 re-listen has hit episode 6, and guess what that means? Yup, you got it!

Super Energy Saver Mode

In which Eiffel struggles to name his top five lanthanides, Hilbert blows things up again, and the Hephaestus might be haunted?!

I'll confess, going into this episode I could not remember very much about it. The title felt familiar, I vaguely remembered that it was one of the episodes where something on the Hephaestus stops working, but other than that? Nothing. Zip. Zilch. So that was exciting.

And you know what? I can kind of see why I didn't retain much from this episode! Plot-wise Super Energy Saver Mode just doesn't do very much. There's not a complex solve or fix for the issues that come up, or a clever work-around. Instead, Minkowski and Eiffel just... figure everything out and fix it competently?

In retrospect, there is, of course, one big, plot-relevant, spoilery thing that happens. But even that is basically left unresolved by the episode’s ending, which aims to create a creepy atmosphere than anything else.

Because that is what this episode does well. Without the additional job of being plotty, Super Energy Saver Mode can just concentrate on being atmospheric. Coming into it pretty much blind, in particular, meant that I appreciated the tension baked into the episode - even once I remembered what was going on, I really enjoyed how spooky this episode felt.

As per usual, though, we don't start with the creepiness. Instead, we start with Eiffel chatting about something mundane - namely, the fact that it's the crew's 500th day in space!

It's something that I think, on any other show, wouldn't actually be all that mundane. There are a whole bunch of spacey series where I could imagine a pretty decent episode being built around the crew trying to host some sort of anniversary celebration. But here, 500 days isn't something to be celebrated. It's not a bad thing, per se. But it's not a good thing. It's just a thing, a reminder of how worn down the crew are at this point, and how many days they have left on the clock. We get the impression that this mission is more of a long, hard slog than anything else - and thus we're reminded again of how little Goddard cares about its employees' wellbeing and morale.

Eiffel and Hera are having an unofficial party, though, with just the two of them, which is sweet. In practice, of course, this just means that they're spending time chatting while Eiffel avoids work. But it's really cute, and I find the banter about top five lists and the various criteria that Hera uses to come up with them soooooo funny. I mean, Hera judges "Stick It to the Man" songs by active political regimes at the time of composition, and complexity of choral progression, which I love for reasons I can't quite pinpoint?

The sequence also shows how differently Hera and Eiffel think. Eiffel very immediately and intuitively forms an emotional connection to things like music, but can't even fathom how Hera just knows things like the 900th digit of pi, or all of the lanthanides. Hera, meanwhile, has so much more information and raw data at her metaphorical fingertips than Eiffel, but doesn't quite connect to it in the same way, and doesn’t entirely get how Eiffel does. It's not (like with the Dear Listeners) that she can't connect to music, or fundamentally doesn't get it. But she's working on a different scale, judging by different standards. And she's not embarrassed to mess with Eiffel because of it, or to talk about it with him. Really, it's a textbook example of how to hang out and be friends with somebody while still thinking and relating to the world differently - which I think is a large part of what I like about Eiffel and Hera's friendship.

Their fun little interaction gets interrupted, sadly, by Hilbert requesting extra power for his lab, which we can already tell will end badly, because come on, it's Hilbert. But what is interesting is how irritated Hera seems afterwards. I mean, she does the whole "I am not programmed to get upset" spiel, but nobody's buying it, and when she confesses that she doesn't like Hilbert's tone, there's definitely a lot of annoyance there. It reminds us, after seeing Hera's machine side, that she's still a person and still has emotions - a balance that Wolf 359 is generally pretty good at. Hera's allowed to be an AI, with the non-human worldview that that entails. But at the end of the day, she's still a character with emotional depth and nuance.

With that in mind, then, Hera admits that she doesn't like Hilbert's tone - which is totally understandable - but also that she's mostly worried that somebody's going to get hurt as a consequence of Hilbert's recklessness - which seems to be validated when the station's power cuts out and Hera goes offline mid-sentence.

Eiffel, given the circumstances, remains remarkably calm, but this does mark the point where the episode shifts genre to become what is, in effect, a haunted house story. It's set on a space ship, sure, but all of the beats from this point onwards are pretty much the beats you might expect if Eiffel were, say, spending the night alone in his late grandfather's crumbling old mansion, long rumoured to be cursed. It's paranormal horror at its finest, complete with weird voices and jump scares and a bunch of "it's probably nothing" moments.

I noticed, as well, that there was barely any music from this point onwards. There is some (shout out to the creepy little theme with the ghost-like, theremin-sounding wail and the soft bass guitar!) but it's subtle, and very much secondary to the sound effects, which suddenly get very loud. For as long as the power is off, we get all sorts of creaking, groaning and echoing - and with it a sense of just how big and empty the Hephaestus really is. Hera's constant presence and the electronic noises around the place do a lot to mask that, normally. But now we're hearing the silence, and it is eerie.

Adorably, Eiffel's first instinct is to ask himself, "What would Commander Minkowski say if she were here right now?" This leads into a huge and surprisingly detailed fake argument, of course, which is hilarious in and of itself, but there's also just something kinda sweet about how immediately Eiffel assumes that Minkowski would have a handle on things. Eiffel still complains about her a lot, at this point in the series, so the respect that this little moment betrays feels fresh and sort of unexpected.

Eiffel's not wrong to trust Minkowski, either. Once she shows up, the episode's main problem - Hera being offline - gets solved quickly and remarkably efficiently, with Eiffel doing the legwork and Minkowski giving instructions, and honestly, it's in moments like this that I remember how technically competent Minkowski is. I think I tend to remember the more military, combative bits best, with her stalking round harpoon in hand or shooting folks, so it's nice to be reminded that the Commander can also handle things like repairs just fine.

Of course, that means that the episode's main tension is never actually about the power outage. The sudden silence and the threat of life support running out add to the episode's general atmosphere, sure. But the thing we are most anxious about, as the episode plays out, isn't the ship's newly-accessed Super Energy Saver Mode. No, instead of that, we're given a new mystery, and it's a doozy: what's up with that voice Eiffel keeps hearing?

It starts almost inaudible, but in the end Eiffel hears the words loud, clear and terrifying: "You're not the first." Which, like, terrifying much? It's vague and ominous and very chilling, especially with all the distortion that's going on.

In retrospect, of course, we know that this is our first encounter with Captain Isabelle Lovelace - indeed, it's one of the very few encounters that we have with the real, non-alien-duplicate Isabelle Lovelace, for whatever that's worth. We also know that she doesn't mean any harm - she's trying to warn the crew, in fact.

Strangely, though, knowing that doesn't actually this any less effective as a ghost story. After all, what are we hearing, but the voice of a dead woman, warning the crew about an even worse monster lurking in their midst? The Hephaestus, Lovelace's recording reminds us, is indeed haunted, if not literally then at least metaphorically, by the ghosts of its former crew and the traces that they have managed to leave behind.

With or without hindsight, then, the episode is creepy, hinging ultimately on the idea that there might be something not quite airtight in Hera's programming, that there could be something hiding - or deliberately hidden - just underneath her code. In making that the focus of the story, the episode opens up the tantalising possibility that something might fundamentally be wrong with the Hephaestus and its systems. The show's very setting is destabilised and made frightening - and that's a genie that you can't just put back in the bottle once you decide that you're done telling ghost stories. Instead, the feeling that something is not quite right persists even after Hera comes back online, and still haunts the episode as it draws to a close, since we don't actually get an explanation of who Lovelace is. Instead, it remains a mystery. A spooky, weird, always-in-the-back-of-your-mind mystery.

It's a bold move, and it feels a lot like what happened with the plant monster, which is also at large at this point. I'm beginning to suspect that this is a thing we're going to see more of, too - big, obvious plot threads that are ostentatiously waved in front of us, then dropped, apparently without comment.

It's something I think these early episodes could do more easily, since the expectation that loose ends would be followed up on wasn't quite established yet. Later on in the series, everything gets more serialized, so if something like, say, an alien duplicate of Jacobi turns up and is left dangling, we can reasonably expect that it'll get addressed at a point. Earlier on? We've not got those expectations. This might just be the sort of show where weird, scary voices are brought up and then never mentioned again. It might be the sort of show that lets a plant monster loose and forgets about it for the rest of the series.

When it turns out, then, that that isn't the case, even in these early, apparently inconsequential episodes, it feels like a bonus, and we get, in hindsight, a little thrill of recognition, as we realise that no, there was a plot there the whole time. It's a satisfying feeling, at least for me, and it's 100% what's fuelling this re-listen.

So yup. Super Energy Saver Mode. An exercise in atmospheric spookiness, an enjoyable haunted house story and just generally a pleasant surprise. Solid work, really.

Miscellaneous thoughts

Eiffel is talking about an 830 day mission, if I've done my maths right - with the possibility of Command extending it! That is one long-ass time to spend in space with three other people!

I want to know Eiffel's top five Stick It to the Man songs so badly

"Ooookay. Maybe this isn't one of those wait and see things. Maybe it's one of those... imminent death things."

Wait Hilbert had to amputate multiple of Minkowski's toes???

Bless her, Hera sounds drunk when she's coming back online ^-^

#wolf 359 #wolf359 #w359 #wolf 359 relisten #super energy saver mode #nellied reviews #creepy episode this time #featuring a very familiar voice #distorted beyond all recognition #also Eiffel and Hera being cute

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kimjihyun-archive · 4 years

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「 𝐦𝐚𝐦𝐦𝐚 𝐦𝐢𝐚; 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐧𝐞 」

summary: when the woman he once loved pops back into his life, bucky can’t decide if he wants to pick or where they left off or forget her completely.

pairing: bucky barnes x f!reader

word count: 2.2k

notes: this chapter is based off of ‘why did it have to be me’ and it’s a part of @stuckonjbbarnes’s 250 follow writing challenge! i had so much fun with this one, thank you for letting me participate!!

“you used me!”

“i wouldn’t quite put it like that,” she claimed flippantly. she didn’t even look at him as she tossed the shirt into her bag.

“then how would you put it? you took advantage of me? manipulated me?”

“no, no” she snorted, folding one pant leg over the other. “c’mon buck, you had fun didn’t you? we both knew this couldn’t go anywhere.” she stood in front of the dresser with her socks, making a small hiss of triumph whenever she successfully tossed one into the bag.

“i-“ bucky opened his mouth to contest, but the words died in his throat. if he wasn’t so distracted by the argument at hand he’d probably be commenting on her horrific aim.

“oh no, you—you really thought we’d stay together after the mission?” another article of clothing in the bag. her face was stern but the shudder of victory as outfits hung loosely in her suitcase said otherwise.

“i mean, yeah. why else would we have done this in the first place?” she knotted her brows, digging further into the final drawer, hoping to fish out anything that didn’t belong to him.

this was it, the moment he’d been waiting for. here he was, pouring his heart out to the woman he thought had fallen in love with him, just for her to be more interested in slam dunking her clothing into her suitcase. if it wasn’t for the simmering in his bones whenever he began to speak he would’ve gone insane right the and there.

“oh for god sake, a summer fling maybe?! i mean, you’re an avenger, james. we both know it’d never work.” his name, the title she’d so rarely used, replaced by terms of endearment sweet enough to make his teeth rot. he’d heard it spoken by some of the worst men to walk the face of the earth, but the way it fell off her tongue and lingered in the air left a build up of bile in his throat.

“with enough work i thought we could—“

“no, no, no. let me stop you right there. that, that right there,” she pointed to the jumpsuit tossed on the chair in the corner. “that’s my job; that’s the only thing i’m willing to work for.” she crunched down on travel sized shampoo bottles as she stuffed the now unfolded clothes into her carry on.

he could tell she knew what she’d done. she’d struck him, a straight blow to the chest. sure she was an assassin, a damn good one at that, but the countless number of nights that she’d told him she hated it, that she wanted to give it all up. hell, if she’d told him she was quitting two hours ago he would’ve believed her, but her current quick-escape attempt made him think otherwise.

“it’s paris: the city of love. spending your entire summer here and not finding a fling is pretty much a sin.”

bucky’s mouth formed an “o” unsure of what to say as she struggled to zip her suitcase shut. he stood there dumbfounded until she spoke again.

“look, it’s been great, you’ve been great, but i think it’d be better if you just forgot all about me. the job they offered me is far—far enough that we’ll probably never see each other again.” her face was flat, but her voice wavered as she dragged out the ‘a’ in ‘far’.

he didn’t get it. the flowery girl that’d been suctioned to him since the moment they’d met was cold. her eyes were red and blotchy and for the first time in months she suddenly didn’t look like she wanted to pour her heart out to him. what had he done?

she leaned in, gifting him a final peck on the cheek and she lingered there for a moment. he could feel her breath on his face but as much as he wanted to melt into her, they both knew this was the end.

he plodded toward her, attempting to find anything he could say to make her stay with him, but as she shut the door behind her he could only think of the was the how her skin had swallowed the morning sun the day before and how blinding it was now.

“bucky?” a voice, a familiar one called out to him from across the room. the compound was filled with the chatter of fighters, newly trained and current avengers. ‘recruitment day’ as steve liked to call it, was quite possibly his least favorite day of the year. bucky spent hours trying to find a hallway to hide in or a chair deep enough in the corner that everyone would simply leave him alone. but like every other year, this never seemed to work out for him.

he spun on his heels with his teeth clenched together, awaiting the numbing conversation he’d have to deal with. When his gaze met her, his expression fell.

“[name]? wha—what are you doing here?”

“i uh,” she shrugged her shoulders, motioning to the uniform with a large “a” stitched into the chest. “i guess i’m an avenger now?” she unscrewed the cap on her water bottle and held it vertically over her head, waiting for each drop to fall into her mouth. it made the squeaking sound of bending plastic as she crushed it in her hands. suddenly they both saw it—a recycling, only three or four feet away. she looked at him like she used to when they were next to any type of large bin, grasping the water bottle in her hands. he rolled his eyes as she propelled the bottle through the air, missing the recycling by a long shot.

he laughed but only because it hurt. because he wasn’t sure quite what to do. she’d been a ghost to him for so long, someone he’d only seen in the depths of his dreams, that actually making eye contact with her rendered him useless.

he wished he could say the summer he spent in france was long forgotten, but the moment after she left he’d added her to the list of things that haunted him.

he could see it though; she’d aged. not in the ‘wrinkles around your eyes’ sort of way, but more like a sprout of maturity. the girl who’d left him in their hotel room three years ago was tired and too confident for her own good. this woman was lacking the eye bags and wore a smile he’d never seen before. she seemed oddly content.

“so, you finally did it? quit the whole assassin thing?” he said, attempting to swallow the dry spot in his throat, to no avail. as much as he wanted to pretend it never happened, to act like they’d been talking to each other every day and tell her anything, the was a sinking anger in his body that he couldn’t quite brush away.

“i uh,” she swiped her foot across the ground, her eyes trained to the back-and-forth pattern of her shoelaces. “yeah, yeah i did. it took a long time, but once i started to forget their names i realized it was time to go, ya know?”

bucky kept a little book, tucked away neatly in the back of his desk drawer. it was red and leather bound with nothing other than a list of names. each person had their own page, each person he’d hurt, each person he’d killed. he considered it his only way to cope with what he’d done. that maybe if they all had their names scribbled in his little red notebook they’d still be alive in some way.

“i remember them all. all their names, what they were doing when i killed them. i don’t know how you could forget.” his eyes were glued on that red letter wound so tightly into the chest of her shirt. it taunted him, the symbol he’d known as a sense of hope now had to be shared with her.

“yeah well,” her face contorted like she was going to rebuttal, but something held her back. she pursed her lips, fighting to hold in whatever she’d wanted to say.

she opened her mouth to reply when something drew her attention from across the room.

“i um, i have to go—you know training and all, but it’s great to see you again, buck. it’s been too long.” she spun on her heels and sauntered across the room, leaving nothing more than a quick wave behind her. She didn’t look back, or seem to care enough to.

it took him a minute to place the feeling, the sinking in his stomach that he’d felt once before, but suddenly it struck him—it was the same knot he’d felt when she left him in the hotel room; alone with his own thoughts.

that night while brushing through knots of wet hair he couldn’t stop thinking about it. how after three years she could still play him like a fiddle, how her voice still left kaleidoscope of butterflies roaming in his stomach.

it was sort of funny, how he remembered every detail of their time together when he wished for nothing more than to forget. for her, he assumed it was simply another man she’d shacked up with for a season, but he’d fallen in love. he’d kissed her in front of the eiffel tower, letting the taste of strawberry chapstick sting his lips. she’d comb through his hair after he’d shower and run her hands through his scalp, the flowers of electricity blooming deep in his skull.

he leaned back, pressing the base of his palms into his eye sockets. loose water droplets seeped through his pillow case but all he could seem to focus on was erasing the mental images of her that plagued his head.

the room was suddenly spinning as he stood up. abruptly, there was this ravenous hunger to destroy all things that could be connected to her. he stumbled towards the bathroom, every muscle in his body burning with each footstep against the carpet.

he stood in front of the bathroom mirror, the tiles below him acting as the only solace to the smoldering in his bones. he held to scissors to his hair, slicing off chunks into the sink. the edges were jagged, uneven at the end of every cut. the stands that dropped into the bottom of the drain varied in size and shape, but no matter how uneven his hair was or how close the scissors approached his scalp, there was something freeing about its absence. He stared at his reflection in the mirror and for the briefest second, he forgot about her.

bucky ran a hand through his hair, the freshly scissored ends brushing up against his fingertips. the dizzying feeling he’d felt standing in front of that mirror had faded, but thanks to the sight of her, it had never really disappeared completely.

“it’s stupid of you,” steve said.

“what is?”

“this.” he sat across from him with his head buried in a book. bucky couldn’t really tell what it was, but if he was that interested in it, it had to be something he’d read at least ten times before. steve has always had a thing for dead authors who never seemed to publish more than once book.

“i don’t get what you mean.”

“you’re avoiding her,” he ran his tongue over his teeth leaving the light ‘whisp’ sound hanging in the air. “you’re doing that thing where you try to forget about your problems until they aren’t problems anymore. and i know that usually works, but buck, she’s not goin’ anywhere.” bucky hoped that steve would give up right there, but he knew better than to expect a surrender out of america’s golden boy.

“i’d like to say that i’ll somehow get rid of ‘er for you, but she’s a perfect fit for this team and i won’t ruin that because you don’t have the courage to talk to her.”

bucky sucked in a breath through tightly wound lips. he was angry, but he didn’t expect any less out of his best friend. if he wanted comfort he would’ve gone to literally anyone else.

“look, i know it feels like a lifetime ago, trust me i do, but you have the chance to fix this. if she takes up your mind this much, maybe you don’t wanna forget her. maybe you wanna be friends with her again, maybe you want her back.”

a relationship with her? he couldn’t say the thought hadn’t crossed his mind, but he wasn’t sure he could face the consequences of getting close to her again. she was intoxicating to him, this enigma that he couldn’t seem to forget. yet even as painful as it was, there was this feeling deep inside him that he had to know her again, connect with her. and oddly enough, he was willing to risk it all just to regain the blooming ecstasy bag was her.

“i’ll try. i’ll try and talk to her.” steve’s eyes averted from the page to meet bucky’s with a smile. he licked his fingers and flipped the page over to the next, lowering his head back in the book. “emphasis on the try part.”

“yeah yeah, buck, i got it.”

taglist: @vaultingphilosophy @take-me-to-ny @cclkestis @theodceker @playbucky

#bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes fic #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barns imagine #mm fic #marvel #marvel fic #winter soldier #Dani250

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pandawritespoorly · 4 years

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Heroes Like You

Author’s Note: First things first, that title. I didn't know what to put, so that's what it is. I'm not exactly happy with it.

Secondly, I wrote this very quickly last night because I realized the potential that Miraculous had for discussions on mental health. Then I realized the mess we have instead. This isn't quite what I had initially been thinking of, but it needed to be short, because I had to get to bed. I'll expand on my thoughts at the bottom if you're interested.

I kind of didn't want to post this, which is why it's closer to 'evening' than 'late afternoon'.

Summary: When an akuma attack spawns from a panic attack, the wrong discussion spawns from it, and Marinette can feel the pressure.

Marinette doesn’t want to look at the news. It just makes her feel sick. The last akuma had been a result of someone having a panic attack.

As if panic attacks weren’t already scary enough, now they have the added fear of akumatization tied to them.

Now a bunch of morons are calling for anyone with a mental disorder to either be under surveillance, or shipped out of the city. It’s absolutely ludicrous.

It’s just wrong.

She can’t focus, she can’t think, because some part of her has always thought about this. She’s got an anxiety disorder. Ladybug has an anxiety disorder.

Is she unfit for being a hero? She messed up immediately, and sure, she’s ‘the chosen one’, but Fu couldn’t have known that she was (is) such a mess.

Tikki is looking at her in concern. They’ve already spoken about it, but Marinette can tell she’s about to start again.

She’s not ready for that.

Shaking her head, Marinette transforms.

Ladybug exits the room, heading across the rooftops for a run. She’s done this before when she was feeling upset, but it’s different this time.

It’s more than just something at school, or just teenage life in general. This is a city-wide problem.

She’s not sure if it’s a loud minority that’s coming after disorders, or a loud majority. Her brain tells her it must be a majority, because who would want a hero who can’t even go to school without worrying about-

No no no, that’s not productive.

She can feel herself shaking, which means that she should probably take a break.

If you stop here, people might see you. They’ll see you freaking out and they’ll know they’ll know they’ll know.

Not. Productive.

Ladybug spots the Eiffel Tower, deciding she’ll wait up there. She’ll just sit there until she doesn’t look like a complete wreck.

Easy.

This is fine. Everything’s fine.

She’s not fooled, but does eventually make it to the top without falling off.

Putting her yo-yo away, she takes a moment to properly assess herself. Her hands are shaking like a broken mixer. It’s pretty bad, she’s usually not this visible about it.

Oh Kwami, if she’s shaking this bad, maybe someone saw.

Not to mention that she’s borderline hyperventilating, which probably wasn’t helped by not taking a break, and then just scaling the Eiffel Tower.

This is a terrible time for her to freak out. She’s not fit to be a hero. All of those people are right. She shouldn’t-

“Hey, LB!”

Chat’s cheerful voice breaks through her thoughts. She looks up at him, meeting his eyes. Ladybug can tell the moment he properly takes her in.

Oh great, someone’s seen now, he’ll be so disgusted. She just wanted to be a hero so badly that she couldn’t just let someone more stable do it.

“Ladybug?” Chat sits down, scootching a little closer and reaching towards her gently, “What’s wrong? You’re crying.”

Oh. She is.

Wiping her face with the heel of her hand, she manages shakily, “‘t’s nothing. It doesn’t matter.”

“It must if you’re so upset.”

He really is a sweetheart. She gives him a soft smile and takes a minute to get some control over her breathing again.

She’s still shaking, but it’s not as bad.

“Have you seen the news? From the last akuma?”

He nods, and waits for her to continue.

“I… I have an anxiety disorder,” her voice breaks slightly, “A- a lot of what they’re saying… it’s just- I’ve never been able to shake the- the feeling that I’m not fit for this, and all of that is…” she trails off, knowing he’ll understand.

She braces for his confirmation. That she’s a fraud. A mess that shouldn’t be playing hero, when she’s just a girl with a stupid broken mind that can’t go a day without freaking out about something stupid.

“Bug…” he whispers. She turns to see him, tears visible in his eyes, holding his arms out in offer of a hug.

A sob escapes her as she accepts it. He wraps his arms around her, holding her comfortingly.

“You know all of those people are idiots, right? They’re just a bunch of discriminatory jerks using this as an excuse to drum up fear. You’re the best hero Paris could ask for.”

She laughs, “S-second best. Can’t forget about you.”

“I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree then.”

They hug in silence for a moment longer before Ladybug speaks again, “We should do something. We’re the official sources of all things akuma after all.”

The two break apart, but Chat keeps an arm on her back and she leans against his shoulder.

“What did you have in mind? We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”

“Well…”

---

“Hey, Ladybloggers! Alya here! Today we’ve got a special treat, both heroes are here to speak with us! Say hello to Chat Noir and Ladybug!” Alya sits across from the camera as she gestures at the two.

They wave.

“So, what brings you here?”

“We’d like to clear up some misconceptions,” Chat begins.

Ladybug nods, “I’m sure everyone one is aware of the ‘debate’ that sparked from the most recent akuma in regards to mental illness.”

Alya wrinkles her nose, “Unfortunately, yes.”

“Well, we’d like to state it clearly that anyone with any sort of mental illness is not at all more of a threat to the city than anyone else. Threatening and attacking them is only making Hawkmoth’s job easier. This shouldn’t even be a debate.”

Chat continues, “It’s pretty easy to see that this environment that has taken root in Paris is only going to make akumatizations more likely. No one is doing anyone any favors by wrongfully coming after them for something they aren’t at fault for.”

Alya smiles, “Glad to see you two have some sense. I personally have been disgusted by the insanity that’s been going on. Thank you for giving your input, I hope that’ll be enough to get people to see sense.”

“Well,” Ladybug interjects, “There’s one more thing I’d like to say before we head out.”

Chat grips her hand comfortingly, a silent show of support.

Alya nods, “Of course, go ahead.”

“I know it must be easy to make the assumption that someone with a mental health disorder is automatically at a higher risk of akumatization. This couldn’t be more wrong. Akumatization isn’t anyone’s fault but Hawkmoth’s.” She looks directly at the camera,” I want all of you out there that are being targeted, that feel unsafe because suddenly you’re being threatened due to something you can’t control, that I’m with you. I have an anxiety disorder. Just looking at the news makes me feel sick, and I’ve had several anxiety attacks since this began. I still haven’t fully calmed down, if we’re being honest. The point is, I, Ladybug, am one of those people that, if the internet is to be believed, should be shipped out of Paris. That couldn’t be more wrong. My mind is a mess, but I am not some sort of risk. I’ll admit I’ve attracted akumas before, but so have many others. If you demonize people just for feeling, you’ll only be playing into Hawkmoth’s hands.”

Alya looks at her for a moment, “Can I hug you?”

Ladybug smiles, hugging the journalist as she and Chat stand to go.

“Thank you,” They all say at once, laughing slightly at their unison.

Ladybug feels a little better.

---

Author’s Note: There you go.

So basically, I was thinking about the fact that the 'villains' are just everyday people that got upset. That's it. There's not a bias against them for being upset, and while I'm pretty sure it's because of the mess that is the writing, I just think it could have led to an interesting discussion as Paris worked on moving past the fact that these people caused damage, and instead trying to help them through their issues. Does that make sense? I can expand on that if I need to.

Anyways, then I got myself all worked up and angry because instead of that, or even some other important thought-provoking theme, we've got... whatever you want to call this. Am I bitter about this? What would give you that idea? Whatever would give the impression that I, an author whose most popular work is a Chameleon salt fic, am bitter about the writing of the show?

I'm sure everyone who has been in the fandom for longer than a second can agree that Marinette has anxiety, or has at least seen a fanwork where she does. Guess who else has anxiety? This girl! Yeah, I'm not happy about it either. Going through the majority of my school years with undiagnosed social anxiety was a nightmare, let me tell you.

Thanks for reading! Feel free to leave any thoughts, theories, constructive criticism, or anything really in my ask box, in replies or through reblogs. I love seeing what you think!

#miraculous ladybug #fanfic #mental health #anxiety #anxiety attack #marinette has anxiety #ladybug #chat noir #alya cesaire #🐼✏️

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johannesviii · 4 years

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Top 10 Personal Favorite Hit Songs from 2015

This is the last list that was kind of difficult to do and where some cuts had to be made. The next four ones weren’t very good years music-wise and generally speaking.

Also there’s something that embarrasses me even more than Blue (Eiffel 65) somewhere on this top ten. Oops.

Disclaimers:

Keep in mind I’m using both the year-end top 100 lists from the US and from France while making these top 10 things. There’s songs in English that charted in my country way higher than they did in their home countries, or even earlier or later, so that might get surprising at times.

Of course there will be stuff in French. We suck. I know. It’s my list. Deal with it.

My musical tastes have always been terrible and I’m not a critic, just a listener and an idiot.

I have sound to color synesthesia which justifies nothing but might explain why I have trouble describing some songs in other terms than visual ones.

2015 was a bit calmer, apart from the fact I moved out of the appartment and bought one instead of renting one. This is still where I’m living nowadays, it’s not big but having no landlord is a LOT less stressful even if it will take a long time to pay the loan (one time the lock broke and I couldn’t get out and the landlord refused to fix it OR pay for a new lock if I decided to call someone to fix it ; another time someone who had a spare key opened the door while I was wearing a bathrobe and was like “oh. You’re here” and I was like “...I mean..... yeah.... 'cause I live here”). I also made new friends online that year and felt less isolated.

Sidenote, my first “flat” mp3 player’s battery died today but after a quick emergency operation I was able to save the data on it. I used that mp3 player from roughly 2008 to 2013 so that’s a relief, it kinda has sentimental value and I was still using it to listen to DW audios nowadays from time to time.

As you can see in the first picture, my super old portable cd player, which still works fine, by the way, is judging this little amateur so hard right now.

So! This is the year Faithless dropped Faithless 2.0, 21 Pilots dropped Blurryface, Mylène Farmer dropped the surprisingly quite good (for this point in her career) Interstellaires, and Carly Rae Jepsen dropped E MO TION, which would have been my favorite album of the year... if Nightwish hadn’t made the absolutely jawdropping Endless Forms Most Beautiful. A symphonic metal concept album about Earth and evolution and the place of humanity in the universe?? Excuse me? Who’s read my christmas list? My favorite songs on it are Alpenglow, Shudder Before The Beautiful, the title track, Edema Ruh which has the best intro, and of course The Greatest Show On Earth, which is an incredibly ambitious, kinda bloated and quite pretentious (in a good way) song about the history of Earth, looking back from a future where mankind is extinct and concluding “we were here”, and holy shit I get emotional every time, and it’s 24 minutes long, and I still never get bored when I relisten to it. Just amazing.

As far as unelligible songs that piss me off go, it’s all Carly Rae Jepsen: I Really Like You, and especially Run Away With Me. If they had been elligible, that last one would be my #1, definitely.

Here’s some... uh, a lot of honorable mentions, actually.

Budapest (George Ezra) and Chandelier (Sia) - Still elligible, still not on the list.

Cheerleader (OMI) - I have no idea why people dislike this song.

Ex’s and Oh’s (Elle King) - This is one of these songs that would be higher on the list if I had better taste. I still like it a lot though.

FourFiveSeconds (Rihanna, Kanye West, Paul McCartney) - Ditto.

You Know You Like It (DJ Snake) - Great drop. The rest is meh.

Miracle (Julian Perretta) - The opposite of the previous one ; a fantastic song let down by its drop.

Uma Thurman (Fall Out Boy) - This song makes absolutely no sense but it’s a lot of fun nonetheless.

Lean On (Major Lazer) - Super overplayed but holy shit this is incredibly catchy. The bridge is especially great.

Want to want me (Jason Derulo) - If this guy had that kind of song in him why does he suck most of the time. What happened.

Hundred Miles (Yazz) - Nice earworm that never got annoying.

Are you with me (Lost frequencies) - Basically a less good version of Waves from the previous year. This is a compliment.

Ain’t Nobody (Felix Jaehn) - And this is the less good version of Rather Be from the previous year. This is also a compliment.

Laissez Passer (Maître Gims) - When I started to check French hit songs from years where I basically wasn’t listening to the general local radio anymore, some friends told me they were grabbing popcorn and waiting for me to start hating some specific acts. Maître Gims was one of them. To their disappointment, I love just about every non-love, non-breakup hit song he’s ever made. Oops.

Love Me Harder (Ariana Grande & The Weeknd) - It took me ages to like The Weeknd but this song helped a lot. This just sounds fantastic regardless of the content (just saying this because I have a tendency to dislike stuff like that). He isn’t even the best singer of the two on this track, wow.

Millionnaire (Soprano) - In a worse year, this would make the list without question. The lyrics aren’t that original but still very good (love the line “remplis-moi les poches d’espoir” (fill my pockets with hope)) and the melody is just beautiful.

On écrit sur les murs (Kids United) - If you recall I put the original version of this on my 1990 list because I liked the Kids United version a lot and also had nothing else to put at the 10th spot on the 1990 list. The fact that I don’t even have enough space for the better version on this list says a lot about how abysmal 1990 was, music-wise.

And now, the actual list!

10 - Centuries (Fall Out Boy)

US: #43 / FR: Not on the list

Why are these guys still on my lists.

No, seriously. Why. This is yet another song that would be better if it was faster. And the sample is badly used. So I have no idea why it works. One of these days I’ll have to reevaluate Fall Out Boy’s entire discography, take a good look at myself, and admit I possibly like this band and that I’ve been lying to myself for like 15 years... but today is not that day.

9 - Sapés Comme Jamais (Maître Gims)

US: Not on the list / FR: #10

Told you I liked Maître Gims!

Listen. It’s not my place to comment on the ethics of the whole La Sape movement (which can be summarised as “modern black dandies trying to get the most expensive & beautiful clothes possible”) but you have to admit it’s super cool to have a more energetic and fun version of Suit And Tie. God, that beat. And it’s a ton of fun to sing along with the chorus! And it’s such a convincing song when it’s combined with the music video, you kinda want to look as cool and confident as these guys.

Also quick shoutout to the Sapeuses. Absolute legends & queens, every last one of them.

8 - Style (Taylor Swift)

US: #29 / FR: Not on the list

That year my s.o went to a party I didn’t want to go to and came back home completely drunk & way too late, crashed on the couch and started to ramble about how “Style” by Taylor Swift had a better sound mixing than the entirety of Epica’s latest album at the time and how amazing it was. For like half an hour.

I completely agree, just to clarify.

7 - Cool For The Summer (Demi Lovato)

US: #53 / FR: Not on the list

In what is possibly the least controversial opinion on this entire list: I love Cool For The Summer, the melody is great, the lyrics are good, the singing is the best, and you all know that and you all love this song, so yeah. Moving on to-

Oh god here comes #6. Oh shit. Oh no.

Can’t we just skip it and pretend-

6 - Animals (Maroon 5)

US: #46 / FR: Not on the list

So. I.

Uuuuuuuuuuuuuh.

How can I justify this bullshit.

The truth is: I can’t. Not really. I’m not even entirely sure what happened here. I hate this band and have always hated them, from the start. The lyrics are painfully stupid. The singing is as atrocious as ever. The “AWOOOOO” bit on the bridge is absolutely ridiculous. None of Levine’s “oh look at me I’m so dangerous” act remotely works. There isn’t a single thing I find competent here apart from the melody. I mean it. I’m not saying any of this to look cool. If I wanted to look cool, this certainly wouldn’t be on the list.

But you know what, the sheer incompetence on display here may be exactly why I like it. If it was a credible serial killer song written like an upbeat pop song, it would be disturbing and unlistenable. But the way it’s made, it simply sounds stupid, so you keep imagining some sort of inoffensive nerd pretending he’s a horrible monster (and failing) whenever you hear it. And that, I think, is what pushes it squarely into the “so bad it’s f█cking fantastic” territory, where it joins Butterfly from my 2001 list.

That sounds about right.

5 - Adventure of a Lifetime (Coldplay)

US: Not on the list / FR: #29

I haven’t mentioned A Head Full of Dreams in that year’s albums, because it came out at the very end of 2015 so I mostly consider it to be a 2016 album. It’s not as good as Mylo Xyloto, and not as consistant as Ghost Stories, but it contains some real gems. Adventure of a Lifetime isn’t nearly my favorite song on it, and I still put it super high here. I love the lyrics in particular (”under this pressure, under this weight, we are diamonds taking shape” oh damn) but the song itself just makes you want to move. I literally can’t listen to it without at least moving my head in rhythm a little bit. It’s nearly as colorful as the album cover. And it’s a joy to sing along the “woooohooooo”s!

4 - Stolen Car (Mylène Farmer & Sting)

US: Not on the list / FR: #61

This is Stolen Car (Take Me Dancing), from Sting (2004), rewritten as a half English half French duet where it’s unclear if the female singer is the imaginary lover or the car in the story. You might want to re-read that sentence.

What did I say on a previous list? Ah yes, “I see a duet between two singers I like and I die instantly”. This is also the last time Mylène Farmer is going to appear on one of my lists. I could say “self care”, but I genuinely don’t like any of her more recent hits, at all. Whatever. She’s been on these lists since the very first one (1988) anyway.

It’s been a wild ride, to say the least.

3 - Shut Up And Dance (Walk the Moon)

US: #6 / FR: Not on the list

And for the second least controversial opinion on this list: despite the massive overplay, I never EVER got tired of this, it’s colorful, energetic, super fun, and it’s still on my mp3 player to this day. Just a fantastic song. And a great band! I wish One Foot had been elligible for a future list, it’s super good. Aw.

2 - Ego (Willy Williams)

US: Not on the list / FR: #69

This is a song about a guy who imagines himself as this super cool elegant dude, but when he looks at himself in the mirror he hates everything he’s seeing.

I know this isn’t supposed to be a song about gender dysphoria but my god is this shit relatable.

To make things even better, it’s served by creepy music box sounds ala The Birthday Massacre and by an untouchable, strange beat. It’s a dark, weird song, but it’s all kinds of wonderful and catchy as hell, and apparently I’m not the only one to think that considering the mindboggling number of views on the youtube music video. Watch it if you haven’t seen it, it’s hypnotic and makes the song even better.

I only discovered this song last year but I’ve listened to it so much since then I really debated if this should be at the #1 spot. It’s just... so horribly relatable.

But you know what’s even more relatable?

Being broke and sad and still trying to have the time of your life.

1 - Downtown (Macklemore & Ryan Lewis)

US: #84 / FR: Not on the list

Some people call this Thriftshop 2.0 but I think it’s even better than Thriftshop, which was, if you recall one of my previous lists, already pretty damn good in my opinion.

As you probably already know, it’s a song about a guy buying a moped and bragging about him and his friends, and their mopeds, and how cool they look when they ride downtown on their mopeds. I never owned a moped in my life. But I have a super small & shitty car which I love very much and so it’s very relatable. Also I’ve never written the word ‘moped’ so often in a single paragraph before in my life.

I love every single person who sings on this track. I love the music video. I’ve been trying to match the flow of the second verse ever since it came out and I still can’t do it with my shitty accent. It’s full of weird and corny lines, but that’s also why I love it so much. The dialogue at the beginning! “Dope, my crew is ill, and all we need is two good wheels”! “Head into the dealership and drop a stack and cop a Kawasaki, I'm stunting on everybody, hella raw, pass the wasabi”! “My seat is leather, alright, I'm lying, it's pleather / But girl, we could still ride together / You don't need an Uber, you don't need a cab / F█ck a bus pass, you got a moped man”!! “Cut the bullshit / Get off my mullet / Stone washed, so raw / Moped like a bullet - NYAOOOOOO”!! “Running around the whole town / Neighbors yelling at me like, "You need to slow down." / Going thirty-eight, Dan, chill the f█ck out / Mow your damn lawn and sit the hell down”!!! Oh shit, I basically quoted one third of the song. I just. Ugh. I love it so much, okay?

Cringe culture is dead and we peed on its grave. We spend enough time in our lives feeling miserable. Like what you like. Even if it’s super ridiculous. No: especially if it’s super ridiculous. Live a little, damn it.

Next up: The Year Everything Went Wrong Except Pop Music

#Johannes’ bad not good pretty terrible music lists #music #long post #eye contact tw

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nyxxon · 5 years

Text

Bad Flirting (Kaminari Denki)

(A/N: Insert me stealing bad Google pick-up lines. 🤧)

"Yo, (Last Name)-chan! Are you French? Because Eiffel for you."

Rolling your eyes and shaking your head lightly, you continued walking down the hall beside Kaminari who was using the cheesiest of pick-up lines on you. Choosing not to say anything, you basically ignored the male as you made way to your next class.

This had become a common occurrence as of late. Ever since he had bumped into you in the hall about three weeks ago, he had been trying to garner your attention by whatever means he could⁠—⁠such as little gesture, purposely bumping into you again to have an excuse to communicate with you, etc...—but the pick-up lines had just started about a few days ago on the three week mark.

He had also surprisingly found out your name through asking multiple people⁠—not even coming to you for it⁠—about it until he had finally struck gold with a student in your class who had then also come to 'warn' you about how a certain straw haired male with a black lightning bolt in his hair seemed to want to get to know you more and had his eye on you while telling you that you should be upfront with him if you didn't want to be continually pestered; however, you actually wouldn't mind getting to know Kaminari as you had a little bit of a crush on him albeit small since you had only had the pleasure of knowing him through glances here and there, but it was still there.

The idea of the straw haired male trying to get to know you didn't seem like a bad idea, but soon you had come to realize he wasn't really trying to communicate normally... Or as what the majority of the world would refer to as normal anyways... And would just use all the cheesiest greetings anyone could come up with...

It was cute at first⁠—⁠and still was, if you were truly being honest with yourself—until it became apparent he just didn't really know how to truly 'pick-up' a girl having probably no doubt Googled all the actions he was doing... As well as Googling all these cheesy lines he was spouting to you.

"No? Uh..." He stopped in the middle of the hallway trying to come up with another one in hopes you'd acknowledge it before looking back up at your shrinking form, "... Uh... Are you a cat? Because I feline a connection with you! Yeah? Yeah?"

However, you didn't stop and just shook your head once more before disappearing around the corner though a small smile was present on your lips at the straw haired male's attempts at trying to talk to you while failing to realize if he'd just act normal, he'd be able to do just fine instead of all the cheesiness... So instead of humoring him with going along, you decided ignoring yet also slightly acknowledging him enough with his (you dare say) lame attempts, he'd sooner or later catch on and actually have a normal conversation with you with a simple 'hi' as it went on from there.

Kaminari just slumped in defeat, but he instantly straightened himself up as a fire burned in his eyes while he looked in the direction you had disappeared from. He wasn't going to give up that easily...

『•••』

Boredly tapping your pen against the book that you had to go through for a certain class, you silently read it but failing to notice a certain male making his way silently towards the table you occupied in the library of the school the next day...

"What a coincidence!" An all too familiar voice soon sounded causing you to look up from your book and stop tapping with the pen as you raised a brow.

"Hmm..." You had a feeling he only knew you gone here in the mornings before school from having studied you intently for the oast three weeks, not that you minded but wished he'd just communicate normally.

"So a library, huh?"

Well, this sounded almost normal... Perhaps Kaminari had caught on to the little signs of you just wanting a regular conversation..? Placing your chin on the palm of your hand, you nodded silently to the question.

"Well..." He began to dig inside his pocket for something causing you to tilt your head before pulling out what appeared to be a (one hundred percent outdated) library card that he had no doubt gotten when he was probably in kindergarten or something and you furrowed your brows.

"... It's a good thing I have my library card on me, because I'm totally checking you out."

Or... Maybe not.

Sighing while shaking your head with a smile present, you got up from your chair and gathered your things before exiting the library leaving the male there to watch as you silently left the library.

"So that didn't work... Guess I'll have to think of a better one..." Kaminari placed his hand on his chin going deep in thought.

Walking down the hall, you were making your way out of the school since the day had finally been finished.

You were surprised you hadn't seen Kaminari for the rest of the day. Usually, he'd be bombarding you with a multiple of cheesy attempts to get to you; however, today had been... Silent. It'd be a lie if you said you were a bit disappointed. You may have wanted him to communicate with you normally, but that didn't mean you wanted him to completely stop saying a single word to you.

Though it seemed it wouldn't last much longer as you heard your name being called causing you to turn around and face the one who had been flooding your thoughts. A pang of relief shot through you as you stopped and watched as the male running up to you seemingly out of breath.

It didn't take long for him to make it in front of you as he bent down a bit and placed his hands on his knees to stabilize himself and catch his breath before looking up at you with a big grin, "... Thought you had left already, glad I caught ya before you did!"

"No... I'm still here though I was just leaving."

Seemingly ignoring what you had said, Kaminari cleared his throat as he stood straight up while you rose a brow, having a good idea what he was probably about to do, before he looked directly in your eyes, "... Is it hot in here, it is it just you?" He wiggled his brows for effect as you just blinked, seeing this he waved his hands in front of his face.

"... No, no, no. Wait." He pondered for a moment, "... Did it hurt? When you fell from heaven? Huuuuh, huuuuh..? No..? Well... Are you a parking ticket? Because you got fine written all over you..."

Not getting any of the reactions he had been wanting, Kaminari continued using multiple pick-up lines, them all cheesier than the last, while you just stared and blinked at him with a strained smile plastered on your face allowing him to do so.

"... I must be in a museum because you're truly a work of ar–"

"Kaminari-kun." You interrupted him which caused him to open his eyes as he had had them closed, your smile even more strained than when he had started this whole thing.

Seemingly catching your drift (surprisingly), he began to rub the back of his neck awkwardly as he laughed nervously, "... IIIIIII'm ruining any chances I've had, aren't I?"

"I... Wouldn't say that..." You looked to the side awkwardly, "... Though you aren't going anywhere either..." Looking back, you gave him a small real smile, "... You're trying a bit too hard."

His blinked, "... Huh?"

"All you had to do was talk to me regularly. No need to be so... Extra."

Kaminari's eyes widened, "... You're telling me I didn't have to go all out?! All this could have been solved with me simply going up to you and starting a regular conversation or just asking you out?!"

You giggled, "... Exactly. Though maybe I should have been a bit more forward about that and told you straight up myself..."

"No... It's my fault..." Dramatic tears began to pour from his eyes as he leaned to the side, "... Damnit." Though he quickly composed himself as he looked to the side, "... I'm guessing it's too late to–"

"Saturday. Six o'clock p.m. at the movie theater downtown. I've been wanting to see (Movie Title) for a bit now... That's if you want to."

He snapped his head back to look at you with wide eyes, "... I'd... I want to! Sounds good to me!"

Smiling softly, you tilted your head to the side, "... It's settled then." You looked at your watch, "... Though I have to go and get home now. It was... Nice talking to you Kaminari-kun. See you around." You turned and waved at the still somewhat shocked male.

"Y-Yeah, bye, (Last Name)-chan..!"

The straw haired male watched until you disappeared out of the school, leaving him in the hallway all alone. He couldn't believe it. He actually landed a date with you! A light blush spread across his cheeks as a big grin made way to his face. He couldn't wait to tell his friends.

However, it dawned on Kaminari that he was broke and he didn't want you paying for it all or any of it at all causing him to dramatically slump over though he soon composed himself while telling himself he'd deal with that when the time came.

Until then... Kaminari would just bask in the ecstasy in knowing he had finally, after three weeks, landed a date with the girl that had caught his eye.

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royallyprincesslilly · 5 years

Text

Title: Love, Maybe? {27}

Chris Evans X Reader OFC Vixen Giovanni

Warning: Cursing, Plot, Slow, Smoldering, Torturous Burn 😊

Word Count: 5K

Summary: After a night of drunkenness you wake up next to warm, hot as hell body, a migraine and no memory of the night before. When you come to realize that the hot body belongs to none other than Hollywood’s golden boy Chris Evans you freak out. As events unfold you become even more panicked to find out you got married in your drunken haze. What else is there to do but get it annulled, right? Before walking away, you share one more night of molten kisses and passion. Three years later you are still living with the repercussions of your brash decisions, but the surprises don’t stop there. The past has a way of coming back and have you questioning is this fate that you’ve been running from, hell could it have been love, maybe?

Note: Italic texts is an inner Vixen thought. Bold Italic texts is an inner Chris thought.

**Slightly Edited/Proofread**

***Interactive**

Thank you guys for reading!!!! If you enjoyed this please LIKE, COMMENT, REBLOG. 😊 ❤️ ❤️ ❤️

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chapter 27: Boston Bound

-One Week Later-

You should have said no. You should have said it was way too soon for this and not felt guilty that you’d had her all to yourself for two years. You should have been selfish. If you had, then you wouldn’t be here right now; in a private jet with your parents, Nexus, Chris, Dodger, and Ella more than halfway to Boston. You certainly wouldn’t be nervous enough to shit bricks. You wouldn’t have all these thoughts and worries about what it would be like coming face to face with Chris’ family. You would be chilling in LA, or San Fran for your little girls’ birthday party.

“You just had to be the bigger person, huh. Had to give in to that need to make up for your actions. Uuugh, damn dummy!”

You closed your eyes and tried to push away the voice—your voice in your head.

“I can survive a week in Boston. I survived doing all this on my own. I survived being a new mother and opening a restaurant for the first time. I survived pregnancy while going to culinary school and working full time. I am a badass; I can survive this.”

“How you holding up?”

“I can survive!” Everyone in the cabin looked at you as if you were crazy. Nexus snorted as she sat across from you.

“Relax, it’s no big deal, Vix.” You rolled your eyes.

“Nex, I am meeting his family. He’s told them about me, told them who I am and what I did.”

“So? If he’s not trippin’ about it anymore, why should they? If he's moved on and forgiven you, why should they hold a grudge?” She had a point, but for some reason, you couldn’t get past the possibility that they would hate you.

“They are going to love you. As sick as it is, you are beyond lovable Vix. Just own what you did, let it be known you regret it and want to move forward for the best interest of Ella. If they can’t do that, then you know they aren’t thinking about Ella or Chris.” You took a deep breath and slowly released it. “I just took a DNA test--.” Nexus began, you snorted and looked around to make sure no one was watching.

“Turns out, I’m a hundred percent that--.”

“Language you two.” You and Nexus giggled together, and when you looked over, Chris was watching you with a content smile on his face.

~~~~~~

Once you landed, everyone quickly piled into the truck, then Chris got in the driver’s seat. You weren’t surprised really you’d seen him drive before. He tipped his hat lower and looked at you. “Ready?” You nodded because words failed you, he looked so damn good. When he smiled, the butterflies in your belly took off. Quickly you looked away and tried to get a grip.

“You can’t lose your shit now, you still have seven more days,” you whined.

The drive was a nice one. After fifteen minutes of going through the city, Chris pointed out every sight to everyone in the car. You could tell he was a proud Bostonian; it was cute. When he passed Dodger stadium Chris pointed it out, and Ella shouted out “doder,” which made Dodger bark up a storm. Everyone laughed like it was the cutest thing in the world. It felt almost normal, and again that scared you.

When he left the city, you fell silent and got lost in your own thoughts while everyone else fell into conversation.

“You are never quiet pumpernickel. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, I’m fine. Maybe just jet-lagged,” you lied. Chris studied you for a moment before his eyes went back to the road. When everyone else fell back into their conversation he spoke.

“If you’re feeling up to it later, there’s something I wanna show you.”

“Something like what?” Chris smiled again, and again your belly fluttered.

“For me to know and you to find out. Honestly, where’s your sense of adventure? I remember you used to have a huge one.” You smirked.

“I remember you being at the top of Vegas’s version of the Eiffel tower, and you stripped right there.” You gasped loudly and covered your mouth. You couldn’t believe he just said that. You looked around to see if anyone heard him but saw no one was focused on you at all. Chris snorted and laughed just as you released yours.

“Oh my god, how do you remember that?”

“I told you, I’m an actor. I have a great memory.” You smiled and looked out the window again completely mortified. He probably remembered exactly what you look like naked ad remembered just what you did to each other at the top of that fake Eiffel tower. That thought sent a blazing heat down your spine. You remembered what he looked like too, you remembered very well.

“So?” You smiled to yourself and decided just to do it.

“Okay.” Chris smiled as if he’d won some type of award then looked back to the road, repeating the same word you just said. You smiled to yourself and watched the views of trees pass you by.

Another fifteen minutes passed, and Chris was pulling into a long driveway that led to a house that looked like it was on a hill. It was at this moment you began to regret letting him convince you to stay at his place rather than a hotel. Everyone petitioned that it would be a better way for him and Ella to spend even more time together. You felt if you would have declined you would have come off as a bitch. So, again, you caved.

“Wow, this is so great. This is yours, Chris?”

“Yes. I come out here every chance I get when I’m not working.”

“Do your parents live close?”

“Well, they each live about twenty-five or thirty minutes away. I have a closer place that is in the city, but I thought this would be a more low key place for the princess’ birthday party.”

You remained silent, a little amazed how normal it all sounded. It was as if three years hadn’t passed, and he’d been in her life all along. You wondered if it should have felt that natural. Shouldn’t there have been some—adjustment time, some form of awkwardness? Your family got out the car and looked around the front lawn. It was a beautiful property, and it looked well maintained. As they talked amongst themselves you walked to the back and took Ella out her car seat. Once out she planted a big wet kiss on your cheek.

“Thank you, baby.”

“My mama.” You smiled and kissed her all over her face. She erupted in giggles as she wiggled in her seat. Once you lifted her into your arms you turned to see Chris watching on with a soft smile on his lips. “Da-da.” His smile widened as he approached. He bent and kissed her on the forehead as you watched. Ella touched your cheek with one hand and Chris’ with her other. “Mama. Da-da.” You peeped up at Chris, who in turn did the same to you. For a few moments, the three of you stood there, no speaking just—being. You were the one to step away first.

“I’ll show you guys around and come back for the bags,” Chris informed.

The six of you and Dodger walked inside where Chris gave the tour of his traditional style farmhouse. It wasn’t exorbitantly decorated or even disgustingly pretentious. It was tastefully done, and it looked like it fit his personality. It looked like he could host dinner parties one night with his Hollywood friends, but the next night chill on the couch in front of the fireplace and drink a beer. It screamed him. One by one, he showed each of the members of your family their rooms until it left just you and Ella.

“So, for you princess, I have a surprise.”

“Prise, prise, I wuve prise. Eye-cweam?”

Chris snorted and shook his head. “No, not ice cream.”

“Pony.” You pinched your lips. She’d been trying to swindle a pony from you since the day she learned the word. Chris looked at you confused.

“She wants a pony?”

“What little girl doesn’t?” He smiled.

“Uh—no princess, not a pony.” The three of you came to a stop in front of a closed door.

“Mama told me how much you love unicorns, and mermaids--.” Chris began. Ella enthusiastically nodded her head, clearly excited for whatever his surprise was.

“So, here we go.” Chris opened the door and revealed the girliest, most unicorn and mermaid filled room you’d ever seen. Ella’s face lit up, and she squealed with glee as she wriggled free from your arms. Placing her on the floor, she bounced around the room from item to item.

“Oonicwon, mowmaid, oonicwon, mowmaid, pink!” Everything she touched, she squealed. You stood in the doorway, just looking around at all the effort he’d put into things. The walls were a pinkish, light orangish sherbert mesh. It reminded you of the softest sunset. It was a beautiful color. On one wall her name was written in cursive letters with a dainty crown right above it. You gulped down the emotion threatening to bubble over.

“Schwing.” You looked back to her as she climbed into the swing that was off to the side of the room hanging from the ceiling. She tried to push herself and grunted when she couldn’t get as high as she wanted. As quickly as she got on she jumped off and bounded to the unicorn teepee that was set in a corner next to a beautiful window. The room was fit for a princess and absolutely breathtaking. Looking at Ella you knew she loved it. When you looked to Chris he was watching her with the biggest smile on his face.

Ella ran to you and crashed into your legs. “Mama, ooo see?” You nodded.

“Yes, my love, I see. It’s amazing.”

“Mazing,” Ella repeated. You bent down to her and whispered in her ear. She smiled and ran across to Chris and crashed into his legs.

“Uuugh, you’re going to take me down one of these days.” He lifted her into his arms just as she threw her tiny ones around his neck.

“Ank oo.”

“You’re welcome, princess. Do you like it?” She nodded her head while still holding him close. It melted you. Chris looked to you, and the look on his face made yet another Teflon layer of your wall crumble.

“God damn it!”

Ella wiggled her way free to the floor and ran out of the room and down the hall, no doubt about to tell everyone about her amazing room. You smiled and wrapped your arms around yourself. You could feel yourself drifting to him like he were some sort of magnet and you the polarized matter. Chris walked to you slowly, and you held tighter and hoped it was enough to keep you in check.

“Is it too much?” You looked around the room again and saw for the first time a massive dollhouse-like playhouse. It was the cutest thing you’d ever seen and knew Ella would spend countless hours in there. You scoffed and shrugged.

“Have you met your daughter? This is the child who wore head to toe pink sparkles to the park the other day. Do you remember that?” Chris laughed, and you smiled and nodded. “There is no such thing as too much.”

You walked into the room a little more walking around him in a way that created the most distance. You stopped in front of the swing and sat, hoping to god it didn’t break under your weight. “This though—might not be the best idea. I can see her sneaking out of bed to swing and hurting herself. While she seems super advanced for her age let’s not set her up to fail.” He smiled and nodded.

“Got it mama bear. I’ll take it down before bedtime.” You nodded and looked around again.

“This is great though. It screams—permanence.” You looked down at the carpeted floor and shuffled your feet.

“I mean—that’s the idea—right? Did I overstep?”

“No, no, don’t—uuugh. I’m sorry, no, you didn’t. This is great, this—you’re great for doing this.”

“I sense a but.” You stood and walked to him then touched his hand, hoping the action would make your words believable.

“There is no but, you’re her father, you wanted to—.”

“Show you that I’m taking this serious, to show you I want this, I want her, I want everything it means Vixen, all of it.”

Biting your bottom lip, you held his gaze. You saw his pupil dilate and even felt his hand radiate with more heat than normal. Chris stepped into you and closed the appropriate space between you, and you could feel the air around you become thin and dense. Every hair on your body stood up, and then you saw his face move closer to yours.

“Shit, he’s gonna kiss me.”

“Vixen!”

You jumped at the sound of your mother’s voice and backed away from Chris as if you’d just been caught doing something dirty. A few seconds later, your mother appeared at the doorway. She looked between the two of you, and you walked to her. “Yeah mom.”

“Ella found the pool and is begging to get in.” Chris laughed.

“That was quick.” You smiled and nodded.

“I told you, she’s a mermaid.”

“I’ll bring up the bags,” Chris said as he walked past you and your mother. Once alone, your mother gave you the look she always did when she expected an explanation. You stood your ground and remained silent.

“So you are forever connected to a superstar celebrity by the child you share. What do you plan on doing about it?”

You gaped at her. She had the guts to bring this up. You expected it, hell, some part of you was waiting for it. “What do you mean do about it?”

“Vixen, you’re a beautiful woman, you have a lot to offer. Why not take things—further?” You scoffed and shook your head.

“Mom, wow.”

“Tell me you haven’t thought about it. Tell me you’ve never looked at him and wanted more. He is a handsome man sweetie. Maybe this is your chance.”

You couldn’t believe your ears. She never seemed to amaze you. She had a one-track mind, and right now, you were it. “Chance for what mom?”

“Love, maybe?” You snorted and laughed.

“Love? She’s insane.”

You shook your head just as Chris walked back in with bags. “Thanks.”

“Mama, poowl pwease.” You smiled and nodded to her.

“Come on, let’s pick a pretty bathing suit and get you all ready little mermaid.” Ella clapped her hands and went to the bags. “If you guys would excuse us, we have a fashion montage to start.”

“Yayyyy!” Chris and your mother smiled at each other and walked out of the room so you and Ella could begin

Fifteen minutes later, you and Ella walked out to the backyard where the pool awaited you. She squealed with excitement, you smiled and put down the towels you held. Ella went to the edge and looked into the water. “Kristella Raelle, away from the edge, please.” She quickly backed away to a safe distance. You peeled off the t-shirt you wore and walked to the steps of the pool.

“Ready baby?” She ran to you, and you grasped her hand to lead her into the water. Once she stepped into the water, she let loose a loud laugh. You smiled thoroughly enjoying her happiness. Once you stepped off the last step and sunk into the water you held your arms out for her.

“Wedy mama?”

“I’m ready, baby!” Ella squealed again and smiled, and Chris walked out, wearing a pair of swim trunks. Your eyes quickly scanned his exposed muscle and really liked what you saw. Again, the theme song for Baywatch played in your head.

“Da-da, watoh, come.” Chris smiled and sat at the edge of the pool and watched.

“Wook!” Ella jumped from the step into your arms, and you spun her around. Chris clapped and lowered himself into the water.

“Want to swim to da-da?” She nodded, and you set her in front of you then let her go. She did a quick little doggy paddle to an exhilarated Chris. Once she reached his arms he scooped her up and held her in the air. Ella laughed and posed as if she were Baby from Dirty Dancing.

“Good job, princess.” You smiled. He turned to you as if to ask if you saw her. You nodded and swam to them. The three of you swam around and enjoyed the time together.

Ella and Chris played in the water, and he seemed to love it, every second that passed he seemed to become more of a big kid, Ella loved it. He let her ride his back like he was a seahorse, and she was the sea princess. Chris let her ride his shoulders while he swam underwater like the whale and she was a talented whale rider. He pretended to be the dolphin complete with dolphin noises while Ella played the dolphin whisperer. They even played Marco Polo once Chris explained it to her, this she loved because every time Chris rocketed from underneath the water when she screamed “maco” he wiggled like a fish diving above the waves and every time he did a belly flop right in the water. Soon they drew the attention of your entire family who sat around the pool watching with adoring looks on their faces.

After an hour, you’d had enough of the water, and after forty minutes you’d had more than your heart could take of the cuteness. You disappeared into the house to the kitchen and examined the contents of the fridge. Soon after, you busied yourself with cooking some dinner. It took no time at all before you got lost in the chopping, mixing, measuring, layering and a plethora of other actions that allowed your brain to stop.

You were thankful for it because if it continued you were sure you’d go insane with the constant debate; it was now a three-way fight. Your head, your body and your heart all wanted different things. Your head spoke of shoulds, your body spoke of coulds, and your heart—that traitor was the worst of all, it spoke of woulds. Where your mind and body didn’t question, your heart had plenty. They were questions you didn’t have answers to, questions you would only find the answer to from him, and you weren’t quite brave enough—yet.

“I should have known this is where you disappeared to.” You looked up from your bending position and saw Chris standing on the other side of the island. He was still shirtless, and your eyes noticed. Slowly they traveled down his torso and took in every detail. The two tattoos on his chest looked like perfect decorations for the well-formed muscle. Your palm itched to touch him. When your eyes trailed down his abs to his oblique indentations, that urge intensified. Unintentionally you squeezed the piping bag in your hands, sending white icing oozing out the tip and right onto your face. It was all so perfectly suggestive.

“Oh fuck!” You stood and looked around for a cloth. Chris walked around the island to you with the item in his hand.

“Here.” He lifted his hands to your face and began wiping off the icing. After a few deliberate swipes of the cloth, his movements slowed until they stopped altogether. He was now standing before you with your jaw gently held with one hand a cloth in the other. “There, perfect again. although—you’ve been perfect since—the day—I—I—I met you.” By the time he finished his sentence he was whispering. Chris grazed his thumb along your cheek, and the soft touch sent your belly fluttering.

“I have something to tell you,” Chris began. His Adam's apple bobbed as he gulped.

“What?” Your voice was a breathy whisper; you couldn’t muster anything else.

“Uh---well--,” Chris began again.

“Vix?” You looked from Chris to Nexus, who’d entered the kitchen.

“Yeah.” Walking to her, she looked between you and Chris. You shook your head signaling for her to let it go.

“Ella, she missed her nap so--.”

You sighed. “Yeah, she’ll be a grumpy mess in an hour. We’ll have dinner now and hopefully avoid the meltdown to get her in bed.” Nex nodded and slowly turned to walk out.

“So—dinner?”

“Ready, I was just--.”

“Uh-huh, I see what you were doing.” With that, Nex walked out of the room, and you sighed before you cleared your throat.

“If you wanna take a quick shower, dinner will be on the table in ten,” you informed. Chris slowly nodded then walked out where Nex did. Once you were alone again you sighed and finished the touches to the cake you were icing.

After dinner, you tucked Ella into her new bed in her new room. She fell asleep quickly which left you sitting there just staring at her. You knew if you did this to any other kid it would be creepy, but she was yours; it was normal. You’d spent so many nights watching her sleep marveling at the tiny human you were blessed with. Before you knew it two hours had passed, and you were still being a creeper.

Walking out the room and down the hall to your own you quickly stripped and took a hot shower. The steam helped de-stress you, and the hot water did wonders for your need to be comforted. You worked to keep Chris off your mind. It was hard, but no matter what, after a few minutes, he came right back into your head. It was frustrating. Nex would say it was a sign you were also on his mind. You wondered if that were true.

Once you stepped out wrapped in a plush towel, you stared at the canopy bed and just like that you were back in Vegas again. It was like he was trolling you with little details from your time together. this was yet another similarity from your exhausting wedding night. You sat on the window seat in the room and looked out to the sea of dark trees. It was peaceful out here, and you knew why he’d chosen this spot. It had nothing in common with LA. As you lotioned your skin, you stared up at the moon and marveled at how big and bright it looked here. A spark of fire caught your eye, and you peered more closely out the window. Chris stepped out onto the grass and walked to the clearing of trees. You watched him climb into the hammock that was just out of sight. Once he was in it all you could see was the tips of his feet and occasional peeks of his head.

Soon you saw clouds of smoke weft into the air, and you knew he was smoking, you bet it was weed. A nostalgic smile decorated your lips. He began swinging in the hammock, and every time he did, you saw him in full sight. He had a faraway look on his face, but somehow he still looked perplexed. You wondered what he was thinking about so seriously. You had the thought to go down to him and split that blunt but knew if you had weed in your system your inhibitions would soon be lowered and with it your panties.

“That’s if you wear panties, honey.”

You smirked and shook your head at the thought. Sometimes you wondered if you were your own worst enemy. Sighing, you looked back to the moon once last time. When you were a child, your mother always had you make a wish on the moon every night. It must have been some old hippie practice because every single night, you’d made a wish on the moon. Some came true instantly, and others took time. You glanced back down to Chris who looked to be looking up at the same moon and closed your eyes.

Taking a deep breath, you had the perfect wish, the one your heart, head, and body all agreed on. “If it’s meant for me, let it be.”

~~~~~~~~~~~

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#love maybe fic #Chris Evans #chris evans fanfiction #Chris Evans X black reader #chris evans x you #chris evans x reader #slow burn fanfic #angst fanfic

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