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#tis was more a break from the amount of assignments kind of art
cattosleep · 3 months
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tummies ^_^
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selaseldon · 6 months
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Beyond the Natural Panel Presentation - Death Note
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What concepts of Gothic doubling function to define the natural from the supernatural?
In Dina Pedro’s article “We’re Going to Make You into a Proper Woman,” Pedro discusses the concept of “Gothic doubling” in the show Penny Dreadful. While the concept is not exactly depicted in Death Note (2006), there are similarities that apply. In Death Note, the Shinigami, gods of death are the “other” while the humans are the “natural.” Yet humans Light and Misa possess supernatural powers that blur the line between the human and supernatural, while the Shinigami are actually more passive, and either refuse to participate in the plans they have like the Shinigami Ryuk, or have to be forced to participate, like the Shinigami Rem. Again, there isn’t an exact similarity of doubling, but in the show there is this idea of an alter ego, especially Light’s alter ego: Kira. In the show, Light’s power comes from the death note, and during Episode 16, titled “Decision,” he forfeits the power of the death note in order to avoid suspicion from L. In doing so, he loses all memory of the death note and loses his access to power and mass murder. He also reverts back to the original Light from the first episode of the show before he touches the death note. This causes a strange experience for the viewer, as Light’s character during his break from the note are extremely different from his “Kira” personality, lending to the idea that the access to power is what makes him follow his mission of creating a new world and also, supernatural. 
In what ways is gender performativity tied to the supernatural?
In Death Note the supernatural entities, Shinigami, are entities that kind of exist outside the gender binary. In the manga, Shinigami Rem states that she is female, but through the art style of both the manga and show, it is visually ambiguous what gender they are assigned to, which makes sense because they are otherworldly, and thus exist outside human conceptions and gender norms. While a Shinigami might be “male” or “female,” the show itself does not really dwell on the concept of gender when it comes to the death gods, but the fact that they visually present to be “ambiguous” adds to the idea of the supernatural existing outside the norm and being presented as “other.”
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How does the series use the supernatural to liberate characters from oppressive normalcy?
The whole idea behind the start of the show is that Light, a high school valedictorian who is conventionally attractive, picks up the death note because he was bored. After discovering the power of the notebook, he takes it upon himself to create a new world without injustice, as he believes the current justice system is broken. He uses murder to “solve” the world’s problems. What I think is really interesting is that although he has good intentions with the notebook, as he continues to use it and puts himself in danger of being caught, it’s clear that the supernatural power granted to him, a human, actually causes his end. Unfortunately, I don’t think the power of the notebook actually liberates any of the characters, and instead gives the illusion of liberation. While it grants those who use it the power over human lives, Light is an example of how using that unprecedented amount of power who abuse it end up dead, or without any power whatsoever. I think it goes to show that most, or all of the characters who use the notebook end up dead.
In what ways do Gothic doubles allow characters to transgress scripted gender that society imposes on them?
In Penny Dreadful the Gothic doubles allow, at least the perception of female characters to transgress gender norms. In Death Note, as mentioned Light/Kira can be interpreted as a Gothic double, but I would like to examine the doubling of characters L and Light. L is the international detective hired by the Japanese police to solve the case of these unprecedented murders of criminals and those imprisoned in jail. The main plot of the show revolves around this cat and mouse game between L (who suspects Light from the jump but has no evidence to prove he is Kira) and Light (who has the upper hand of access to supernatural powers and a superiority complex), and through this battle of intellect, both characters who kind of have opposite personalities develop a very close partnership, but at the same time are on “opposite sides.” This dynamic between central characters who are supposed to be enemies can be viewed as a homosocial relationship, specifically an intimate one.
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How are characters rewarded or punished for subverting their expected character traits?
Some characters that I think subvert expected character traits are 1. Shinigamis as they are presented as visually frightening but in the case of Ryuk, are actually funny and entertaining. Another character that subverts their expected character traits is 2. Misa, one of the central characters of the show. Misa, the second Kira, also has a death note and a Shinigami, Rem. While Misa presents as very feminine, “girly” and is a fashion icon, she is also dedicated to Kira’s project of eradicating the world of injustice. When Light finds out there is a second Kira, he automatically assumes Kira is a “he,” and is taken aback when Misa presents him with her death note. Unfortunately, Misa’s dedication to Light results in her punishment of death, but it is one she chooses.
Discussion Questions 
How would the show change if the Shinigami took more active roles in the human lives they are attached to? 
How does the question of morals come into play with power and the supernatural? Are there any examples of humans granted with unprecedented power that go well?
How should we as viewers interpret characters and their decisions outside the gender binary?
How should we as viewers approach feminist studies or how to be critical/examine female characters in media? Where is the line between a female character’s self vs how the show writes her? Can she be held accountable for poor writing? (Specifically thinking about Misa in this question)
@theuncannyprofessoro
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lockefanfic · 3 years
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Business Trip: Pt 43 - Crazy
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You’d been with your share of women who liked rough sex - Seulgi, Chaeyoung, occasionally Momo and Seolhyun. But those girls had always been interested in kinks that were at least somewhat consistent with their personalities. It wasn’t much of a surprise that Seulgi was into rough, occasionally painful sex; likewise, Chaeyoung’s preference for zip ties and name calling didn’t strike you as being out of character with the type of person she was outside of the bedroom.
Miyawaki Sakura was either lazy and airheaded or intense and intimidating, depending on what she was doing. Before you were made aware of this new facet of Sakura’s personality you’d only seen such duality before in Sana; but Sana’s personality swings didn’t surprise you like Sakura’s did, nor was the difference between her two poles nearly as extreme as that of the Japanese police officer.
Sakura was altogether different from those girls. She was two sides of the same constantly flipping coin, it seemed. At the moment you were finding out that this duality extended to her sexual pursuits, where she flipped between being an overly friendly, sugary sweet girl to a woman with very specific, very unique kinks on a minute-by-minute basis.
“I’m so sorry about earlier,” she states, the tone in her voice sounding much more pleasant than earlier in the day, especially as it echoed against the cold shower tiles. “I was in the middle of re-reading the Fate series. Did you know the third movie is coming out this summer? I’m sooo looking forward to it. Are you familiar with the Fate series?”
Speaking proved exceedingly difficult given the ball gag in your mouth, and so you settled for nodding.
“She’s going away for awhile, don’t you worry.”
“She better be,” you answer. “I just hope she leads us to the other three members of Blackpink before they lock her up - or that Canadian officer takes her overseas. Did you have a chat with Officer Miyawaki about this?”
“I’ve told her we want time with Rose before she’s extradited and Officer Miyawaki has promised to raise the issue with her superiors, but she hasn’t quite gotten around to it yet,” Nayeon answers.
You both peer into the interrogation room through the one-way glass. On one side of the table sits Rose, her head in her hands. In her prisoner’s jumpsuit and messy hair, she looked outright miserable - a far cry from the dolled up look she sported at the event two days prior. Gone is the haughty, arrogant air that she wore about her like perfume - now she looked small, afraid, almost as if the cold reality of what was about to happen to her had just recently set in.
She hadn’t said a word since she stepped into the room. The young, nervous looking YG-appointed lawyer seated next to her rebuffed all of the questions directed to her client by telling her that she didn’t have to answer anything, as was her right. Rose’s body language, though, told you all you needed to know about her state of mind.
On the other side of the table are Jihyo and Somi Douma, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer who had arrested Rose at the event. Both of them are placing piece after piece of evidence onto the table in an attempt to get something out of the Blackpink member - to no avail so far, thanks to her lawyer. The looks of frustration on the two young officers has been steadily building, but it is tempered somewhat by the fact that much of the evidence was simply indisputable. Rose’s silence today would do nothing to keep her from spending a lot of time behind bars when the time came.
The other two occupants of the room, sitting in a smaller table by the exit, are Mina and Officer Miyawaki. The former is diligently jotting down notes from the meeting into an iPad, the latter seemingly engaged in something important on her phone - but given her known predisposition for playing video games on the job and the fact that her phone was horizontal, you decided she was likely playing a game.
“Sakura was super intense at the event,” Nayeon says, as if reading your thoughts regarding the young Japanese police officer. “When she showed up with Jihyo and Somi to arrest Rose, she had her game face on. It was almost scary. She wanted to see layouts of the building, possible exits and escape routes, dossiers on who might be there and who they might be with. She looked ready to take down every bad guy in the entire restaurant, all on her own.”
“I saw,” you agree. “She walked in there like she owned the place. Rose’s bodyguard tried to stop her, but whatever she said to him made him look like a whipped dog afterward. She destroyed that guy.”
“And now here she is at a major interrogation involving multiple international parties and she’s on her phone playing Among Us,” Nayeon scoffs. “It’s like she has an on and off switch when it comes to her job. I don’t get it. To be honest, I find it a little odd that the precinct would bury someone with her on-site skills in the record keeping department and not out in the field walking a beat.”
You take a moment to consider Nayeon’s point. She was right; surely the Tokyo PD could make better use of Sakura by constantly keeping her in the field, where she clearly excelled, instead of the records department where she was buried under paperwork she had little interest in. There had to be a reason behind it all, but you currently had more pressing issues on your mind than the Japanese liaison officer’s career prospects.
“We need to make sure she gets us that time with Rose. Preferably without her lawyer present.”
“That would be against the rules,” Nayeon says, hesitantly. She knew what you were implying and while she knew you weren’t going to hurt Rose or do anything stupid, she felt she had to tell you anyway out of obligation.
“There’s nothing illegal about me having a chat with a lovely young Australian woman I met at an event a few nights ago,” you reply with a sly smile.
Nayeon smirks, but understands your implication. “I’ll remind Officer Miyawaki,” she says.
In the room, Sakura lets out a sigh, rolling her eyes back into her head - her spaceman was likely just bitten in half by an impostor. Next to her, Mina frowns and shakes her head, a look of plain disapproval on her face.
“No, don’t worry about it,” you say. “I’ll remind her myself.”
---
It didn’t take long to find Sakura later that day. She was absent from her desk, but a nearby colleague told you she was on her lunch hour - even though at that point it was nearly three in the afternoon. While your time with Nayeon and Jihyo had informed you that law enforcement officers saw lunch breaks as a rare luxury, you also knew that Sakura didn’t conform to the usual expectations of this particular line of work. With your limited Japanese and a healthy amount of hand gestures, you were able to ascertain from her colleague that she usually took her lunch breaks on the roof of the building.
The precinct proved to be a little bit of a maze, but you eventually found your way to the roof, which, like many buildings in Asia, was open to access and was often used as a kind of recreational space for the building’s inhabitants. After your time inside the cramped interior of the building you were happy to be outside again, enjoying the fresh air and the sunny, crisp winter afternoon.
Sitting on a bench in one of the corners of the space was Sakura, legs crossed, her nose buried in what looked like a manga. The small pile of convenience store sandwich containers and empty candy wrappers that occupied the rest of the bench confirmed that she was indeed on her lunch break. The volume of the trash, however, implied she’d been there awhile, leading you to wonder just how long her lunch “hours” usually lasted.
“Officer Miyawaki,” you say as you approach her, “I’m sorry to bother you, but I was wondering if-”
You are stopped mid-sentence by a raised finger. Without taking her attention from the manga, Sakura reaches for a half-full bottle of Pocari Sweat next to her on the bench, which she brings to her mouth to take a sip. Eyes working quickly, she finishes the page she was reading before turning the page and devouring that one as well. With brows furrowed and eyes narrowed with concentration, there is a clear look of complete and utter intensity on her face that you’d seen only once before - when she was confronting Rose’s bodyguard and putting him in his place. 
When you’d first been introduced to Miyawaki Sakura you’d wondered just how she had managed to keep her job given her obvious laziness and what seemed to be an utter lack of interest in her duties - or even in maintaining the false appearance of an interest. But her role in the events of two nights prior, and the seriousness with which she carried herself while on-site, answered that question for you. It became clear that her superiors kept her around because when the chips were down and the game was on, she could put on a game face that almost scared you with its intensity. When that happened, she was almost a different person entirely.
The question then became why her superiors had assigned her to the record keeping department. Was it a demotion? Did they think she was too unstable or unreliable for field work? There had to be a reason. 
She goes on for three more pages, consuming the art and text within the manga like they were some sort of life-giving energy source that she could not go a moment more without. You are left to stand there, awkwardly, a little taken aback by the speed and ease at which she had silenced you - but unconsciously, a little afraid of what might happen if you’d insisted on interrupting her reading.
Finally, after reaching what seemed to be a chapter’s conclusion or some other boundary within the manga, she retrieves a bookmark from her bench and marks her place before finally acknowledging your presence.
“Yes?” she says, a look of undisguised annoyance on her otherwise soft, adorable features.
“I, well, I was… um, hoping we could have a quick moment of your time, Officer Miyawaki,” you answer, suddenly unsure of your words, your tongue having turned into stone in your mouth. You’d expected a fast and easy chat - you usually had no problems charming your share of pretty young women - but your resolve had faltered unexpectedly under the piercing gaze of the young officer.
“About?” she asks, plainly, even though you knew what you wanted to talk about must have been obvious to her. What else could it have been, if not Rose? Did she just want to hear you ask for something? Did she want to hear you beg and grovel?
“About the girl, uh, the woman that Officer Dou- I mean, you, you placed in your custody a couple of nights ago,” you answer. 
“Yes, and, what about her?”
“I was hoping I could have a chat- er, maybe, some time, with her. Alone, before she, they, she’s, well... taken away.”
“And what would you want to speak to her about?”
“Well, you see, um…. we’re kind of after her colleagues - three of them. They’re in this team, er, corporate espionage group - they’re called Blackpink. I, well, me, my team and I, we were hoping she could lead us to the other three.”
Sakura takes a moment to weigh your request, her large, deep eyes boring into yours. You were a little ashamed to admit you were faltering a little bit under the intensity of her gaze. While you were sure her current demeanor was borne from you so rudely interrupting her reading and not from any malicious intent, it did little to keep you from withering under her look.
Eventually Sakura’s eyes leave you, and you find yourself releasing an inward sigh of relief to be free of her gaze. 
“I can arrange something,” she says as she opens her manga again. “But it will cost you. Helping you and that foreign officer during that arrest resulted in a lot of extra paperwork for me.”
You are about to say something about her job and the amount of work she actually had to do, especially given the fact that she was in the middle of what seemed to be a three hour lunch break, but an unconscious fear of being put under her gaze once more meant that your response died in your throat.
“What exactly… can I do f-for you, Officer Miyawaki?”
“Sakura is fine,” she says under her breath as she finds her place in her manga. “Meet me in the precinct showers in two hours. Cancel any appointments you may have this afternoon.”
You are left a little stunned by her demand, and what it might have meant. The possibilities run through your mind at a million miles an hour; what did she mean-
“You can leave,” Sakura states, and not wanting to risk her ire by lingering any longer, you quickly turn and leave.
---
You’d been with your share of women who liked rough sex - Seulgi, Chaeyoung, occasionally Momo and Seolhyun. But those girls had always been interested in kinks that were at least somewhat consistent with their personalities. It wasn’t much of a surprise that Seulgi was into rough, occasionally painful sex; likewise, Chaeyoung’s preference for zip ties and name calling didn’t strike you as being out of character with the type of person she was outside of the bedroom.
Miyawaki Sakura was either lazy and airheaded or intense and intimidating, depending on what she was doing. Before you were made aware of this new facet of Sakura’s personality you’d only seen such duality before in Sana; but Sana’s personality swings didn’t surprise you like Sakura’s did, nor was the difference between her two poles nearly as extreme as that of the Japanese police officer.
Sakura was altogether different from those girls. She was two sides of the same constantly flipping coin, it seemed. At the moment you were finding out that this duality extended to her sexual pursuits, where she flipped between being an overly friendly, sugary sweet girl to a woman with very specific, very unique kinks on a minute-by-minute basis.
“I’m so sorry about earlier,” she states, the tone in her voice sounding much more pleasant than earlier in the day, especially as it echoed against the cold shower tiles. “I was in the middle of re-reading the Fate series. Did you know the third movie is coming out this summer? I’m sooo looking forward to it. Are you familiar with the Fate series?”
Speaking proved exceedingly difficult given the ball gag in your mouth, and so you settled for nodding.
“Ah, that’s good!” Sakura exclaims, “I’m such a big fan. I totally ship Shirou and Saber, although I’m also a fan of Shirou and Sakura - I bet you can guess why! I like both couples, though; it really depends on what mood I’m in! Sometimes I- whoops, is that too tight for you?”
It was. The girl knew how to tie a neat, tight knot (which itself raised several questions) and the thick nylon rope dug painfully into your wrists as she tied them behind your back, but you gave your head a shake nonetheless. The black cloth blindfold she’d tied around your head was similarly a little too tight for comfort and was beginning to give you a headache - not that you were willing, or even able, to tell Sakura as such.
Even if you could speak, you weren’t sure you would stop her from proceeding. You were equal parts terrified and aroused by the sharp, unexpected turn of events this afternoon had taken, but the thought of stopping the young woman hadn’t yet occurred to you.
“Good, I don’t want to hurt you. Anyway, yeah, I’m sorry if I came off rude this afternoon. I just don’t like to be interrupted during my lunch hour. That’s when I get all my reading done! Because the rest of the day I’m so busy with work, you see. Anyway… you’re all set!”
You obviously couldn’t see her through the blindfold, but the loud click-clack of Sakura’s high-heeled shoes against the shower tiles tell you she has stepped in front of you. The next few moments of silence provide no audible clue to tell you what she is doing, but you knew she was likely giving you a good long look from head to toe, as if enjoying the sight of you sitting on a stool, gagged, bound, and blindfolded.
“It’s time to begin, I think. Are you ready?” 
Her tone reminded you a little bit of any of a hundred anime voice actors, particularly those that voiced the sugary sweet and cute characters. And Sakura was nothing if not cute, although she also seemed to have a bit of a crazy side to her - a side it seemed you were about to get to know intimately, whether you were ready for it or not.
You nod, because there wasn’t much else you could do.
“Good! Let’s start!” she says, sounding a bit like an announcer for a game that involved Italian plumbers and dragon/turtle hybrids racing go-karts - and not like she was about to engage in a sexual act with very particular, very specific kinks.
So when she straddles you on the stool, her long, thin legs suddenly on either side of your waist and her small frame atop your lap, you were a little unsure about how to react to the juxtaposition between her tone and her actions. With other women you would have enjoyed the weight of her body on top of yours and the promise of impending pleasure. But with Sakura you were a little hesitant - and as much as you hated to admit it, almost a little afraid.
“So as I mentioned earlier, I’d be happy to set up a meeting with you and that Australian chick,” she says, her voice dripping with sugar even as you feel her trace random patterns with her fingertip on your jawline and chin. “But I’ll need to get something out of it.”
You are unable to manage anything more than a muffled groan, and so you settle for nodding your head once more.
“Good.”
Sakura’s hand drifts lower, her fingertip never breaking contact with you as it drifts down your neck and chest, eventually reaching the buckle of the jeans you wore. Her fingers work quickly, and before you know it she has your button undone and the zipper lowered, your quickly hardening shaft aching for its impending release from its cotton prison.
“Oh! You are quite eager for us to begin, I see.”
You nod.
“Well then, let’s see what you’re hiding under here.”
Sakura’s tone continues to be that of a cute, sweet girl. Her actions, as she frees your nearly fully hardened shaft from your boxers, are altogether the opposite.
You feel the breath leave your lungs in a rush as she grasps your cock in her small, dainty little hands for the first time and gives it a few small, exploratory pumps. It would have been utterly arousing at any other time. But now, wrists bound behind you and with your eyes and mouth rendered useless, it almost felt like your sense of touch was heightened - and it felt utterly sublime. It wasn’t long before you the Japanese police officer had brought you to full, aching stiffness.
“I see now why your team is full of those women,” she observes, a slight hint of edge appearing in her tone. “I bet they love taking turns being filled with this.”
“Mmmghmm,” you answer.
“What’s that? You fuck them on a daily basis? I bet you pump their thirsty mouths and wet little pussies just full of your cum on the regular, don’t you? Maybe those tight little asses too?”
“Yughhhm.”
“I bet they love it, too, don’t they? I bet you have them all bent to your will like the obedient, needy little fucktoys that they are. Is that right?”
“Mmmahghg.”
“I knew it. I knew all of those girls were filthy little sluts the second I saw them.”
To hear such filth come out of Sakura’s mouth - out of a girl whom you’d pegged as being adorable and cute if a little airheaded and lazy - was more than a little bewildering. Each of her words dripped with sweet sugar tone even if the actual content of her words was dirty and nasty. Two sides of the same coin. Two faces of the same girl.
“Well, I think it’s time for us to play a game. Do you want to play a game?”
For a second you are frozen as a shiver of fear crawls up your spine - you’d seen enough horror movies to know that nothing good ever followed that question. But you had to admit that it both frightened and aroused you. Part of you wanted to submit to her every whim, and part of you suddenly wanted to run away as quickly as you could. 
You nod.
“Good! I’m happy. Let’s lay down the rules. Hmmm… well, there’s actually only two! Are you ready for them? Are you paying attention?”
It was a little difficult to do so, truth be told. She hadn’t stopped pumping your cock, at an almost lazy pace, with her slender, soft hands. She had begun to squeeze on the downstroke and loosen on the upstroke, causing a delicious little jolt of pleasure to shoot right to your brain every few seconds.
You nod.
“Okay! Rule number one - every time you make me cum, I remove one item of your choice: your blindfold, your gag, or the ties at your wrists. How much time I give you with the Australian girl depends on how good you fuck, I guess! I’ll make the judgement at the end. Rule number two - you don’t get to say anything aside from a ‘yes’ or a ‘no.’ Pretty simple, huh? You understand the rules, right?”
Despite laying down the ground rules for what would likely be a filthy sexual act, Sakura sounds a bit like a voice actor reading the script to the tutorial level of a Mario Party game. The prospect of regaining your ability to see, touch and taste her was appealing, and with the ball gag filling your mouth you couldn’t exactly voice any objections to her rules even if you had any.
You nod.
“Good! Then let’s begin!”
Without giving you much time to ready yourself, Sakura presses her body forward on your lap - and almost immediately you feel the wet heat of her pussy pressed against the base of your shaft.
Before she put the blindfold on you, the police officer had been wearing a short blue skirt and black heels along with the blue blouse that formed her uniform. Had she removed her panties somewhere along the way? Was she ever wearing panties at all?
Your brain had little time or bandwidth to answer those questions - not as Miyawaki Sakura began to grind herself against the underside of your cock, her hips swirling up and down, finding and trapping your shaft between the splayed lips of her pussy and moving, slowly at first, up and down its length. She is absolutely dripping. Her flesh is hot and warm against your cock. Were your mouth not gagged, you would have let out a long, wordless moan - but it escapes your throat as a wet, guttural sound instead.
Sakura, her own mouth unbound, lets the first outward sign of her arousal escape her lips in a long, drawn-out gasp. The entire process - binding you, teasing you, explaining her rules to you - must have turned her on immensely. The slick, warm juices that coated your cock in a thick, glistening layer with each grind of her hips were clear indication of how turned on she was. You found yourself impressed that she was able to hide her need for so long behind her sickly sweet tone.
“Mmmm, that feels so good!” she gasps. “Mmm, you’re so big, and you’re not even inside me yet!”
You nod.
And so for a few delicious minutes you are content to let the small Japanese girl grind herself harder and harder against your cock, her slick, hot pussy pressed against the underside of your shaft, sliding up and down, up and down, up and down. The small shower room reverberates with the soft squeaking of your stool on the tiles, and the soft, pleasant moans of pleasure that leave Sakura’s throat.
“Mmm, fuck, I’m gonna cum already, fuck, you’re gonna make me cum so quickly, mmmmm, your cock is so hard! Do you like the feel of my pussy? The feel of my clit on your cock? Hmmm? Do you want to be inside me?”
You nod. 
You are surprised by how quickly she was coming to her first orgasm, even if the heat emanating from her splayed pussy lips as she grinds them against you, combined with the sheer amount of the juices that were now running down your balls, clearly indicated how needy and wanton she was even before she first touched you.
“D-Do you want me… oh, fuck… do you want me to-to cum all over your hard cock?”
You nod.
Sakura’s response is to orgasm. 
You’d been with plenty of women before, witnessed the many forms of the female orgasm and the differences in the bodies of each woman when she finally reaches her peak. Each was unique. But even given that fact, you knew that no other woman on Earth orgasmed like Miyawaki Sakura did.
She felt a little bit like she was being jolted with electricity - every fibre of her being quivered and shook like she had a thousand volts coursing through her veins. It was almost unnerving, in a way, and from the way her small body trembled atop yours you were worried that she had hurt herself somehow. 
Even the way she orgasmed was far from the norm. The more you knew about Miyawaki Sakura, the more and more you were frightened of her. 
But the same things that frightened you also aroused you.
It seems to last forever, her orgasm. When her body finally winds down, the loud breaths that leave her throat and the fact that she has slumped forward onto your chest imply that she is somewhat drained by the experience.
“That was pretty good!” Sakura exclaims once she has regained her energy, sounding once more like she were some sort of video game announcer. “As per the rules of our game, you get to remove one item. What would you like it to be?”
Your options run though your head, each with their own merits. You would’ve loved to finally lay your hands on the young woman, and the thought of watching her cum obviously appealed to you, but the opportunity to taste her won out.
“Mowwffth,” you manage to mumble. 
“Your mouth? You want to get rid of the gag? Are you sure?” Sakura asks, sounding the way a video game does when you decide to overwrite a game save and it wants you to be sure of your decision.
You nod.
“Okay! Away it goes!”
Sakura reaches behind your head and you feel the ball gag loosen before she rips it none-too-gently from your mouth. A drip of saliva spills from your mouth - one that Sakura is quick to lick off your chin with her tongue.
Her tongue, feeling long and particularly flexible, traces a path up your chin until it finds your lips. She crushes your lips with hers in a torrid, passionate kiss that had little affection but plenty of need, her hands quickly reaching behind your blindfolded head and pressing your head against hers as she sticks her tongue as far into your mouth as she could. Your tongue wrestles with hers, but she quickly gains the upper hand, and it is all you can do to sit there and submit to letting the young woman explore your mouth at her whim.
When she finally tears her lips from yours she lets out a satisfied sigh.
“Mmmm, that was a good choice. You’re a good kisser! And it will definitely help you when it comes to the next way you’re going to make me cum. Are you ready?”
“Yes,” you say, finally happy to be able to speak.
“Good. Get ready!”
Sakura climbs off your lap, and you lament the loss of her warm body for a split second - until you hear the snap of her foot meeting the stool you were sitting on, followed by a sharp thud of your butt hitting the floor as she kicks the stool out from under you.
You are about to groan in pain at your hard, unexpected landing, about to protest at the way she was treating you - when you hear Sakura step over your body, her crotch just inches from your face. She must have been lifting her skirt to get it out of the way, because when she presses herself against you, you find yourself face to face with her pussy.
There was no doubt in your mind now. Miyawaki Sakura was crazy.
But you weren’t in a position to complain, not with the girl’s juicy, slick, hot pussy suddenly and fiercely pressed against your face, her splayed lips immediately smearing your nose, lips and chin with her juices. By instinct your tongue darts out, almost like a defensive measure. You begin to lick her slowly, hesitantly, still caught a little wrong footed by her ridiculous aggressiveness - but Sakura was having none of that, and she quickly grasps the back of your scalp with one hand and presses it against her warm, wet folds.
“You can do better than that,” she says, her tone still that of the video game announcer, as though she were encouraging a kart racer who had fallen behind. “Eat my pussy like the hungry little fucktoy you are.”
You follow her orders, as much out of fear of upsetting her as the need to finally have your fill of the needy young woman’s body. You start by giving her long, slow licks from the bottom of her pussy to the top, ensuring to add a little swirl of the tip of your tongue around her engorged clit as  you reach it. Sakura moans in pleasure as you drink of her, enjoying the pleasant, sweet bitterness of the girl’s plentiful juices on your tongue.
When you decide that the steadily rising volume of her moans and gasps, enhanced by the echoing off the shower room’s tiled walls, has reached a high point, you quickly switch up your technique, latching your lips as best you could around her clit before swiping at it in broad, strong strokes with your tongue. You begin with strokes that begin and the bottom and end at the top. When she begins to quiver and shake, you begin to trace random patterns around her taut little bud.
“You’re doing so great!” Sakura moans, “I’ve never felt anything like that!”
You are almost annoyed now with her tone of voice - not that you were in a position to complain, not while her wet, slick lips were sweet upon your tongue and lips. You continue to swipe at her clit with your tongue, using the flat of it now to ensure maximum contact with the taut bud. Sakura begins to grind her hips against you, almost crushing her pussy against your face in an effort to draw every ounce of pleasure from your tongue as she could.
What a sight it would have been for anyone walking into the precinct showers at that moment. A man sitting on the floor, blindfolded and with hands bound behind his back, while Miyawaki Sakura stood over him, one hand pulling her skirt up and another gripping the back of his skull, pressing his helpless face against the wet, slick lips of her pussy.
Sakura grinds her face against you. You almost struggle to breathe - every time you come up for air, she presses you against the hot, slick flesh of her pussy with the hand grasping the back of your scalp. It was frightening. It was almost too much to handle. But it was also intensely, perversely arousing.
“Ah, stop, I need you inside me right now,” she snaps - the first time she’d broken her tone and shown the slightest hint of losing her composure. “Are you ready?”
“Fuck yes, Sakura. I want-”
Sakura silences you with a raised finger to your lips, just as she did earlier that afternoon on the rooftop.
“Just a yes or no, remember?”
“Y...yes,” you answer, suitably chastised.
“Good. Now sit there and be a good little cock for me to fuck.”
Sakura drops to her knees, straddling you once more. With your hands still bound behind your back you are unable to lie back fully, and so you settle into a sitting position as she sits on your lap. You would’ve given anything to get your hands on her hips, particularly as she adjusted herself for penetration - but you had to admit, not being able to see her or touch her beyond what she allowed your mouth and hips to do only heightened the intensity of your other senses.
She wastes no time. You felt her slim fingers on your cock for a moment, aligning your tip with her entrance, before she drops her hips and takes you inside her for the first time.
You both sigh out loud - loud, breathy sounds that echo off the tile surrounding you. Sakura gasps as you fill her completely, your crotches finally meeting as she fills herself with your stiff shaft for the first time. For a second you regret your choice to free your mouth and wish you’d freed your arms instead, as it would have allowed you to lie on your back and thus let Sakura penetrate herself more deeply - not that you were actually upset at being finally inside the needy, mewling young police officer.
“Oh my,” Sakura sighs, “you’re so fucking big inside me! Now I see, ohh! I see why those other girls keep you around! But now it’s my turn. My turn to use you as a fucktoy. Do you like being a fucktoy for me? Do you like being nothing more than a toy cock for me to fuck myself with?”
You want to argue with her, put her in her place, spit the same vulgarities and names right back at her. But there is a sharp, edgy undertone to Miyawaki Sakura, a kind of fierceness that made you fear what would happen if you did.
You decide to let her have her way - for now at least.
“Yes.”
“Good! Then get ready!”
Any misgivings you may have had about Sakura, about her double-sided personality, about her lack of professionalism when off-site and intimidating intensity when actually in the field, even about the way she spoke so casually and vulgarly about your relationship with your team - they all flew right out the window as she began to ride you. Every muscle in her small, lean body seemed devoted to driving your stiff shaft in and out of her body, each of her movements propelling her up and down as fast and hard as she was able. 
For all her faults and almost frightening instability, Miyawaki Sakura knew how to ride a cock.
You supposed you shouldn’t be surprised by the lack of build up to the way Sakura rode you. It was all you could do to grit your teeth and attempt to stay upright as her tight, lithe body rocked up and down, threatening to tip you over and onto your back, which, given your bound hands, would have been quite uncomfortable. Thankfully Sakura quickly grips onto your shoulders, helping keep you upright as she used them for more leverage, driving you in and out of the hot, wet flesh between her legs again and again.
“Oh, oh fuck, you’re so fucking big!” Sakura moans, seemingly barely able to turn her thoughts into words before she abandons the thought of speaking altogether, relying instead on a wordless string of gasps and sighs to articulate the pleasure coursing through her veins.
You grit your teeth, relishing the feel of her tight heat wrapped around your cock as she continued to ride you with fierce abandon on the shower floor. Eager to do something more than merely hold on, you lean forward, searching for and then finding her upper chest, pressing your lips against the small patch of exposed skin at the top of her blouse. 
Sakura catches on to what you were doing, and the next thing you hear is the sound of buttons ripping from fabric as she quite literally tears the blouse open.
Were any other girl to rip open a button up shirt to give you access to her chest, you would have been surprised with her recklessness - but with Sakura it was simply par for the course.
Your hungry lips press themselves against the newly revealed skin of her upper chest, greedly pressing against her pale, vanilla skin, licking and kissing and tasting. Soon you find her neck, latching onto the warmth you find there, sucking hard enough to bruise her and leave marks on her otherwise perfect skin. Sakura hugs you tightly against her body, not lowering her pace at all, still riding you fiercely, her hips not ceasing for a moment in their desire to fill herself over and over again with stiff, hard cock. 
The minutes pass as the tiny little police officer fucks herself on your stiff cock, the small shower space filled with your wordless moans and the wet slap of flesh hitting flesh.
The entire experience was torrid, fierce, intense. Sakura was so unpredictable, so unreadable - and that was even not counting the fact that you were blindfolded or had your hands bound. Her personality seemed to flip from moment to moment, and while a part of you missed the stability and predictability of your other partners, you would have been lying if you had said Sakura’s sheer craziness didn’t also turn you on in its own unique, special way.
When Sakura cums, her body turning into the same shaking, quivering mess she was when she came the first time, you are thankful - because you were close behind. Her flesh tightens and pulsates around you even more than you’d thought possible.
“I’m gonna cum, Sakura,” you hiss, forsaking for a moment her rule to limit your speaking to simple yesses or nos, and being thankful she was so far lost in the pleasure overtaking her senses that she was unable to pick up on that particular rule violation.
“Fucking fill my tight little pussy with your hot cum, you little fucktoy!”
Helpless to do much else, you allow yourself to finally fall over the edge, letting a deep, low groan escape your throat as your cock spasms and begins to spurt thick, hot cum inside the still-quivering Japanese girl’s wet, slick pussy. Even as your cock fills her with semen Sakura doesn’t stop, still riding you fiercely, still impaling herself with what was left of her energy, pushing your cum even deeper inside of herself with each thrust of your spasming cock. 
It’s almost painful the way she slams her entire weight onto your crotch and the cold, unforgiving floor beneath it. You would’ve given anything to just hold her down by her hips and savor the feeling of your orgasm, the feeling of filling a young woman’s pussy with your cum for the first time. But what you wanted didn’t matter. You were in no position to tell her what you wanted, and she probably wouldn’t have cared even if you were.
When she finally stops it is almost a mercy. You are drained of energy like you’d never been before - utterly physically and mentally spent. Your cock still embedded hilt deep inside her, she reaches up and finally slips the blindfold from your eyes. You spend a few seconds blinking rapidly, your eyes unused to the sudden brightness.
“That was a great job! You have one hour with Rose,” she says, her face bright and cheerful, as though she were congratulating the first place kart racer and wasn’t currently impaled with a recently orgasmed cock, filled to the brim with its fresh, hot semen. She grabs you fiercely by the skull and gives you a final, fierce kiss. 
“Will an hour be enough?” she asks when she finally tears her lips from yours. Able to see now, you lock eyes with her, and while her eyes are large and bright, you notice now that they are laced with more than a little crazy, brimming just below the surface.
It occurred to you at that moment just why Miyawaki Sakura had been buried in the records department of her precinct by her superiors.
She was a little crazy.
Too spent to come up with anything resembling a verbal response, you resort to following her rules once more.
You nod.
---
“I’m sure Officers Park and Douma have informed you of the charges that will be brought against you, and that your lawyer has conveyed the gravity of the situation you’re in,” Momo states, matter-of-factly. “The evidence is indisputable. Your future doesn’t look bright, Rose.”
“I’m aware that I’m fucked, yes,” Rose replies, making a dismissive gesture with her hands from the interrogation room’s table, where they are handcuffed to the thick metal bar in the middle of it. She had appeared to become even more of a mess since you saw her last at yesterday’s interrogation, with darker bags under her eyes and frazzled, messy hair. “So if I’m as screwed as you say I am, then why are you still here? Come to gloat, have you?”
“You’re here because we want to offer you something,” Momo answers.
“You? Offer me something? Hah! Unless it’s a ticket that lets me walk out that door a free woman then I’m not interested. What could you possibly have to offer me?”
Momo leans back in her chair. She had predicted that Rose would react the way she did during your preparation for this meeting. It was almost as if she had written a script for it - and it was your turn to speak your lines.
“Revenge,” you state, leaning forward on the table.
“Revenge? The fuck do you mean by that?”
“Let me ask you, Rose: how do you think we knew you’d be at that event a few days ago?”
“I dunno. Fucking cops have probably been tailing me from the second I touched down,” she spits with a dirty look towards the one-way glass, even if you knew there was no one on the other side. Sakura had made sure this conversation was strictly off the record.
“Nope. It’s because we received a tip - from one of your friends in Blackpink.”
Rose is unable to hide her reaction, her eyes going wide with surprise.
“You’re fucking lying. Why the hell would they give me up like that?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care,” you answer. “Maybe you pissed one of them off. Maybe they decided they didn’t need you anymore, getting caught doing shit overseas while they did the real hard work here in Japan and Korea. I don’t care. But if you help us find them, then maybe we can make sure they’re just as fucked as you are. If you’re especially helpful, maybe we recommend a lighter sentence for you.”
“You want me to rat on them? Give up my team?”
“Yes,” Momo answers. “Remember - it’s because of them that you’re going to be behind bars for a very long time, while they’re out there free as can be, living the life. This is your chance to take them down with you.”
“You must have had a safehouse or a base of operations here in Japan,” you add. “Give us the location of that base and we’ll make sure we take them down, without them being any the wiser that it was you who gave up their location.”
Rose bites her lip, staring intently at her own hands as she weighs her admittedly small range of options.
“If I give them up, you get me a lighter sentence? That’s it?”
“That’s part of it,” you answer, as Momo retrieves mugshots of the two Red Velvet members and from her briefcase and places them on the table. “We’re also tracking two fugitives from Korea that you might have heard of - Kang Seulgi and Kim Yerim. Do you or anyone in Blackpink know anything about them?”
Rose takes a quick glance at both photos, but there is no hint of recognition in her eyes.
“No, I don’t know either of those two. If it’s Koreans you’re looking for you’d best speak to the others. All my work was done overseas, as illustrated by your giant pile of indisputable evidence.”
Momo gathers the mugshots before taking a pad of paper and a pen from her briefcase and places them in front of Rose.
“We need you to write down the location of Blackpink’s safehouse,” she states. 
Rose takes a last moment of thought before she reaches for the pen.
“I want your word that I’ll get a lighter sentence for this. And that they’ll never know it was me that gave them up.”
“You have it. We can’t guarantee that the judge will honor our request, but I promise you they’ll be aware of your cooperation,” Momo replies.
Rose scribbles an address down on the pad of paper before sliding it across the table to Momo. Momo takes out her phone and opens her map app to confirm its validity. Satisfied, she gives you a nod.
“You’ve made the right decision,” you tell Rose as you stand up and get ready to leave. Momo packs up her things and follows closely behind.
“Throw those bitches into a hole and let them rot,” Rose hisses as you leave the room.
In the outside hallway, Sakura, wearing a garishly pink hoodie now given that she’d torn the buttons off her uniform blouse earlier that afternoon, raises her head from her phone as she notices you and Momo have left the room. Giving Momo a polite, cheerful smile and shooting you a suggestive wink, she enters the interrogation room, presumably to return Rose to her cell.
Also waiting in the hallway, sitting on a bench, are Nayeon and a third woman, who begins to speak as soon as Sakura has closed the door to the interrogation room.
“Did she believe it? That it was Blackpink that gave her up?”
“Yes, you answer.”
“You got the location of their safehouse?”
“Yes.” 
“What about Seulgi and Yeri? Did she know where they are?”
“No. I’m sorry, Irene.”
There is a flash of something resembling sadness and disappointment in Irene’s features. It is short and fleeting, but unmistakable. Soon it is replaced with the look of quiet determination that she had worn since the moment she’d joined you in Japan.
She rises from her seat. The short leggings she was wearing did little to hide the bulky tracking device around her ankle, but at least now her hands were free of the handcuffs she had on the last time you saw her.
“Understood. Let’s go - we have work to do.”
---
Author’s Note: Not my best work, I know, but I just wanted to get across how wild (in a good way) Sakura was during sex and I found it kind of difficult to get across that she was good crazy but not insane lol. Not sure how well I did or how clear everything came across as I’d never written anyone quite like her with those kinks. I always want to try writing new things and improving my writing, though. Let me know what you think. :)
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Note
allies + eje human au headcanons
I had to look up what eje meant, which was Axis in Spanish 🌮 (there's no sombrero emoji, and I'm mad about it). This is mostly a college Human AU, but there's still some future stuff in there. Enjoy the longest list of Headcannons in one post lol
Human AU Hetalia!
Allies:
America:
Has rich parents, but doesn't tell anyone, and somehow his big house that everyone parties at doesn't give it away.
The only person who knows is Japan, and that's specifically because Japan's dad works for America's dad.
Is a college student, hoping to go for some kind of music degree.
A first year.
Black T-shirt and jeans. Has a plaid button up for everyday of the month, usually has it tied around his hips.
Has like, one basic tux and refuses to wear anything but converse or airwalkers.
Space nerd #1, except he's more into what's beyond our boundaries, and loves the constellations.
One of the most popular kids, and no matter how hard you try he's not easy to hate.
Gives off dumb college kid energy even though he's one of the A+ students.
His glasses are for show. It was meant to be a rebellious thing since Canada use to get bullied about his own glasses, now it's just an esthetic.
Skate boards and plays the acoustic guitar in his free time.
Jeans are usually missing the knee section.
Once set off firecrackers in a metal trash can as a school prank.
England:
Last year of college, majoring in history after failing his cooking classes.
Graphic tee central. We are unsure how many he has but he's up to 43 different shirts worn on campus.
Usually has his earbuds in, listening to punk rock.
Has an ungodly amount of bracelets. His favorite one is a black snap bracelet with little pirate skulls.
Was practically raised by his older brothers.
Lives alone, but is secretly an amazing writer.
Has a Tumblr blog he writes spooky stuff on.
Top of his class, but can be a dummy if he's put on the spot.
France:
No one is sure how he's been allowed to take nothing but art classes. No English, or science, just art.
Is also a transfer student, he's probably the second richest thanks to daddy.
Is the school stud, despite not sleeping with a single soul, and is actually extremely nervous about dating, and is just more comfortable with playful flirting.
He wants to be a fashion designer, or Model. Mostly a Designer.
Loose shirts and tight pants.
Has a weird obsession with belt sashes.
Plays violin like a god, and is a senior.
China:
Another senior in college.
Had the unfortunate event of being in the same cooking class as England before Arthur decided to switch degrees.
Still hangs out with him and Japan.
One of the few who is taking advanced classes, and is literally everyone's tutor.
Going for a Degree in Cooking. Wants to be a head chef.
His parents are over seas, but he promised to get them to America as soon as he can.
He wears a lot of colorful shirts that is always tucked into his pants.
Most of which look like bowling shirts, but he likes to add little Chinese patches to them. Has a signature jean jacket that is overwhelmed with patches.
Has a panda beenie baby keychain, so everyone knows exactly who it belongs to when he losses his keys.
Very quick to panic, and hates to admit he's wrong.
Russia:
Third and final transfer student, along with Japan, and France.
Poor confused child is trying so hard.
He's kind of shy, and is fully aware his social akwardness creeps everyone out.
Almost cried the day America and Prussia adopted him into the cool kid circle.
His broken english is probably the biggest turn off for the people at school. It's why no one really talks to him, mostly because they can't figure out what he's saying most of the time.
Biggest sweetheart though, and is painfully smart, but do to the english thing he's stuck in the average classes, but China comes swooping in and his english gets almost fluent by his third year.
He doesn't own a single thing tech, minus a flip phone, but somehow knows all the hot keys on the computer to every program, and it's only because he's lazy about it and it's the funniest thing.
Space nerd #2 but knows more about the planets and can name every single moon, and knows the history of space discoveries by heart.
Secretly a hopeless romantic, and doesn't realize he reads England's blog.
Is pretty much a closet goth, but likes bright colors too much to be seen in all black.
Knows way to much about torture devices and learned very quickly that gets you out casted in a school setting.
Isn't upset that he doesn't have many friends, but somehow attracts all the little kids from the grade school.
He likes his northface sweater, and loose pants. But his shirts are pretty colorful, and he likes collecting shoelaces.
He spends a lot of time in the woodwork shop, creating amazing figures and such.
Canada:
I can feel the dissapointed stares of Matt not being a photographer. Welp, guess he also gets a degree in art then.
Second year, Because he skipped one year in college.
Clothing style is long sleeves and vests.
He likes feeling fancy, and owns an endless amount of beanies.
One of the few people who talks to Russia.
His locker has a snot ton of polar bear stickers that everyone stuck to it, and he loves it.
Is baby but can kick butt in the wrestling club after school.
Has a tiny white Pomeranian that he rescued from it's mother who wouldn't take care of it, probably because the puppy was the runt of the litter.
Has a Harley Davidson and it's been painted black with the aurora on it, making everyone think it was his non-existent girlfriend's or something. Now it's a running joke.
Axis:
Germany:
He's not a jock, but he's friends with them.
Military Dad.
Is usually found hanging out in the gymnasium on breaks. It's quiet and no one is going to bother him. Usually.
Senior, and so ready to get the heck out of college.
Ladies love him, but he really hates the attention, like please help him.
Style wise he's pretty basic, but really loves his camo print.
Has owned countless doggos, and only attracted so many girls the day he walked to school with a fluffy poodle that France Hijacked for the day.
Doesn't ever go to dances after the first one and everyone tried to get him drunk, to no avail.
Had out drank some of the dumber students to shut them up.
Can be mean if you persistently pester him for dumb stuff, especially if he's already said no.
He's into construction and is working on a degree in Construction Management.
Japan:
Exchange student number 3
Degree in technology is what he desires.
Style = Geek, but like a stylish geek.
Him and Canada are in photography class together.
Japan is also part of the cool kids, but only when they're about to do some dumb stunt, and need a camera man.
Doesn't mind, loves watching them make fools of themselves.
Has a rebellious streak, and tends to be a complete sass.
As soon as something seems to go bad, he gone. He's heading towards the door. Been in detention once, and that was it.
Why does everyone go to him for advice when china is literally down the hall?
Rich kid #3 and his parents are traditional and are having a crisis over their son's rebellious attitude.
Italy:
Is a first year, and is oddly enough, going for a degree in history.
Really likes antiques and old artsy stuff.
Has a few shared classes with France, and they pretty much own those classes.
Rivals America's charisma, but isn't as popular due to:
Being seen around France, and not doing dumb and entertaining crap like america.
Gets picked on a lot Because he doesn't understand you can't be nice to the Jock's girlfriend without everyone thinking your flirting, even though you just needed directions on your first day of school.
Germany is now his bodyguard and he was kind of like "???" But they get closer the longer they hangout.
Fancy shirt man, like hand me downs from his Italian father. So they're really nice, and a lot of eye melting patterns.
Gets attached to people easily, and is sensitive when he gets taken advantage of during assignments, but toughs through it because he has too.
Has two cats literally named Mona, and Lisa.
Has cried at least once at school because he's a soft guy, but he gets a thicker shell the older he gets and learns to just laugh off other people's stupidity.
Romano:
Protective older brother gooooo
Second year in school, and his first year made him want to eat brinks.
Doesn't know what degree he wants, but settled for a degree in cooking.
Shares his brother's shirts practically and it confuses everyone Because, didn't Feliciano wear that shirt last week?
Immediately thinks people don't know washing machines exist Because of this, so his sass factor is high up there.
Doesn't really have friends, and also does not care. He's a bit of a lone wolf and needed something to do.
The amount of not caring attitude contrasts his high grades and his teachers are painfully confused by it.
Will jokingly tell people to fight him at McDonald's, and almost fought someone but literally laughed, and suggested they got something to eat instead.
He's somehow, in a bizarre and unwanted sense, everyone's brother which is just...
No one understands him, but they like him, and he doesn't know why and it kind of bugs him.
He's usually in the front of the school daydreaming about, god only knows what...
Is the epitomy of the "she doesn't even go here" joke from mean girls, except he does go to that school.
Why did he need a degree? Oh yeah, Because work places don't care what kind of paper, you just need a paper.
Prussia:
Rival friendship with america, and Russia has had to step in to break up petty fights.
He's not sure why he's part of the popular kids since he's so fricken chaotic and obnoxious. Or so he thinks.
Genuinely a sweet guy in his last year, desperately wanting a degree in mathematics. Like, no one understands why mathematics until he starts pulling card tricks from his pocket that deals with it, and blows everyone's mind.
He is also head of the newspaper club.
Has the style of a teenage band member and will not apologize for it.
Has hijacked the schools speaker system to blast evanescence, which gave a huge boost to his friendship with Russia, since the big fellow shares Prussia's taste in music.
Can eat a whole ghost pepper without batting an eyelash, and this is only Headcannon and a worthy note because he became sick the day after and the whole school had "in loving memory of Gilbert's stomach" posters all over the place.
Teacher's are very much done with his harmless antics. They're noticably stupid pranks, but only to the point it's annoying.
Like he managed to make all the teacher's computer backgrounds as Brad Pitt wearing a sombrero. There's no joke, and no punchline. It's just a poorly Photoshopped sombrero?
Races his brother to school every morning, and afternoon. Cops have stopped them at least twice due to other bystanders getting freaked out.
Him and Romano don't mix well, but try to leave each other alone.
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shinahbee · 3 years
Text
December favorites 2020!
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GREETINGS
------------------------------------------
 Hello,
 So we have finally reached another year happy 2021! let's all hope this year will be kind to us, as I have mentioned in my previous favorites post, I finished my work term and now will be working on my art more
so please look out for more art coming soon!
also this maybe a little too early to think of but I was thinking of opening an etsy store to sells stickers/ keychains, this was a project that was on my mind for many years actually, but I have never really considered starting it
Please let me know if any of you would be interested if I do start one.
I would also like some ideas as to what type of characters from what show would you like to see merchandise from. I know there are some franchises that are not well known and most people wouldn’t be able to find so much as a fanart of that particular character/show
so if you could all let me know what you’d like to see in the shop I will highly consider it, with that being said I don't have any anime recs this month, mainly cause I was very busy in the month of December and have not watched any dramas or anime in a while,
so just a heads up, that part will not be included this month. The only thing I was watching is bunch of end of the year award shows, so like the drama awards and melon music awards and MAMA awards...haha that seems really boring to discuss so i'll skip that.
My friend and I were discussing and thought that they should rename these music awards as the BTS awards because they won so many lol.
 --------------------------------------------
MANHWA/MANGA/WEBTOONS
--------------------------------------------
 This section of the favorites is on fire! you don’t even know how far deep the rabbit hole i`ve dug myself into.
I finally was able to save my progress and crawl back up to list a few of my favorites/ updates of the old favorites and a special segment to ones that triggered a raging response due to utter frustration
Let’s start with a review of the manhwa I have read and discussed so far
 Recap:
 1) Whose baby is it? (ongoing)
2) Social temperature (ongoing)
3) Salad days (ongoing)
4) To be or not to be (ongoing)
5) Path to you (completed)
6) Here u are (completed)
7) BJ alex (completed)
8) No way, vampires don't exist (ongoing)
 so some updates on the previous ones that I have listed out so far, with the exception of the completed ones.
 1) Who's baby is it? ; last time I read up to chapter 72 and now they have up to chapter 126 and I have to say so much more has happened in terms of story and relationship development and I especially love the development between
yi yun and his relationship with jinyao, they are acting more and more like a married couple without even knowing it. You see a gradual change within the two of them that shifts from being very comfortably being able to talk about their problems to one another to
physical touches that would make them  both nervous, I don't mean physical in a sexual way...it's not at that point yet, it's just holding hands and being near each other makes them, nervous and as an audience I felt that nervous energy
and it makes as the audience appreciate the development even if it is slow, it becomes more realistic over time.
Needless to say, I am still a giant fan girl of this author and her story and I can't wait to see this week’s chapter
 2) social temp; I said that I have read the novel so I pretty much knows what happened in the new chapters that were just out, this manhwa is updating a little slow so I have to wait to really comment
When they go further, there is a scene soon that will be the turning point of their relationship so I am excited to see that in the manhwa
 3) salad days; There is also a slow development here as well in terms of relationship building, so far they are working on their careers as professionals and dealing with bullying and jealousy from their peers
But it's all part of life so I appreciate that the author included these aspects as an important part of the story and not just focusing on romance alone.
 4) To be or not to be; you'd think a person who had studied Chinese for 8 years would be able to read the raws....nope,LOL
So far the story is going into a good direction so I'm hoping to see how this new development will play out in their relationship
 5) no way vampires don't exist; I have and fanart and long post dedicated to this alone, so please refer to those for more details. I am happy this is updating again and hopefully all of it will be translated in no time for others to enjoy
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Welcome to heaven
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Okay so that is all for the old ones that I have read, I will include updates throughout my favorites now and then if it is still ongoing.
now let's look at some new ones that I have found this month, these are just a few of the ones I selected out to talk about, but I have read much more as I have said and these were the ones that were the most memorable
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 1) Unintentional love story- "Wonyoung gets unjustly suspended from work after getting caught up in a corruption scandal. But when he accidentally discovers the chairman's favorite artist Yoon Taejun living under an alias, he is tasked with a tricky new mission. Could this be Wonyoung's chance to get his job back?"
 This is the summary from the licensed lezhin website, and it pretty much sums up the story, it is still ongoing right now so I can only comment on how I feel about it so far.
I really like this story its really straight forward and focuses mainly on the two characters and how their relationship went from business partners to eventual lovers
it has minimal drama and works on moving the relationship buildup between the two main characters and I really appreciate that, it makes me less frustrated, since you know there is always that one a-hole that will never take no for an answer
i will discuss that later for the other ones I plan to discuss. But so far the story is straight forward and cute, and I really like wonyoung he is really adorable. This is a manhwa but not in the form of a webtoon, so it's black and white and read in traditional manga style
if you like a straight forward story and development please give this a read, you will enjoy it.
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 2) Karasugaoka Don't Be Shy!! - "Sou Izuhara, the leader of the crime prevention group "VOICE" that protects east Karasugaoka, realizes he's in love with the man he keeps butting heads with and leader of the rival group "Karasukai," Tetsuji Shinba...!?"
 omg finally a manga recommendation? lol. you have no idea how much trouble I had remembering the title of this manga, I didn’t save it into my bookmarks and I usually did that if I was going to talk about it in the favorites.
I went through 5 websites to figure out the name but at least it was found. This story is both comedic and cute and it was a perfect break from the dark stuff I have been reading, I don't believe it has been updated in while so I'm not sure if it will ever be picked up
but there is a decent amount of chapters to get started on. But as the description says that it is a story about two crime prevention group leaders, they look like thugs but they prevent crimes from happening, so like an anti bullying campaign that recruits volunteers. two of the leaders from the largest groups apparently doesn’t get a long
on the surface but one of the leaders Izuhara really in fact admires the other leader Shinba. they start to get along after shiba went to izuharas territory to take care of some suspicious activity on that side and accidentally discovers a whole new side to izuhara due to the fact that he wasn’t wearing his glasses and didn’t know he was talking to shinba
and invited him to hang out together for that day. lol. You probably know the direction this is heading; it all starts from interest in a person right?
anways, I never recommended a  manga yet so this would be a good one to read,it has a balance of a good romantic comedy.  
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 3) Semantic Error- "Computer science major Chu Sangwoo is the epitome of an inflexible and strict rule-abiding person. While working on a liberal arts group project with freeloaders who don’t put in any effort, Sangwoo reasonably decides to remove their names from the final presentation. But he didn’t imagine how involved he would become with the person whose study-abroad plans were messed up because of that project. The involved person: the campus star who everyone knows, Department of Design’s Jang Jaeyoung. He has everything from skills, looks, family background and good relationships except for 1 big problem: Chu Sangwoo. What happens when an engineer and an artist whose personalities are like oil and water have to work together? Jang Jaeyoung is like a semantic error in the perfect world of Chu Sangwoo. Will Sangwoo be able to debug this?"
 this has got to be one of the most accurate portrays of an antagonist relationship start off ever, it was really comedic and relatable at the same time, if you are in current group assignments and are or have suffered the same as sangwoo, please let me know cause I know I have.lol.
there’s only 16 chapters so far and I believe it hasn’t been updated in a while either so I don’t know if it is discontinued or not.
I can't wait to see the development between the two male leads, because their relationship right now in the manhwa is really hilarious and worth the read.
side note, not that this will ever be considered as a k-drama but I would like to see sangwoo being played by kim soo hyun, because he looks like him in the drama it's okay not to be okay.
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 4) Tied up in twins- " The story starts off with three friends Jiwoo, sohee and woojung who had been friends since high school began to developed complicated feeling towards one another, woojung had been in love with sohee and sohee had been in love with jiwoo who was in love with woojung, things turned for the worse when jiwoo got drunk one night out and decided to confess his feelings to woojung by going to his apartment, he found 'woojung' standing outside and invited him to go drinking, he finally was able to let out his feelings and 'woojung ' accepted them without hesitation. Jiwoo felt like he was on cloud nine at the moment and slept with 'woojung' that night after thier feelings were made mutual. Turns out 'woojung ' was not actually woojung himself but his twin brother sarang, not knowing this fact he spots sarang with a man from his past eunji that used to bully him during his military service which made him confused and angry that 'woojung ' might be playing with his feelings. Sarang then confessed that he is the twin brother  of woojung and both of them decided that that night was a mistake and that they should just forget about it as it didn't happen. Of course fate had other plans as they keep running into each other during difficult times and decided to become friends. It didn't take them long to be attracted to one another which lead them to end their previous relationship, sarang especially was suffering from his cheating boy friend's abuse and jiwoo with his one sided feelings for woojung. After a series of events sarang and jiwoo found that their feeling for each other were mutual and started to dating, which poses a lot more obstacles than either of the two had bargained for...."
 This is actually my very own summary since I can't find one for this manhwa, I also did and fanart and discussed why i really like this story in that fanart, so please check out my art for my thoughts on it! Shameless self promo....
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Welcome to hell
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ooo now it's time for the fun part.LOL. Now let me just say that there is sometimes a fine line that defines what shounen ai and Yaoi are, sometimes stories is listed as both because one story that starts off like shounen ai will suddenly become yaoi
I define yaoi as a story that includes all the things that i'm uncomfortable with, which is emotional trauma from sexual abuse, sexual harassment and rape, physical abuse, suicide etc
 these stories usually include some or all of the listed above and could make you uncomfortable in many ways, so as a warning if you are bothered by any of that even a little please don't read the ones I’m about to list, because there is a lot of it and there are situations that made me really sick while reading them. on the upside there is a lot of whole heartedness from the love scenes between the two main characters, although it’s like pages of sex scenes, you know from reading that it is between two people that love and trust each other.
 so you have been warned, i'm not going to spoil it in terms of story but there is something these ones i chose out have in common and that is a SICK A-HOLE THAT EVERY PERSON WANTS TO KILL.You should have seen all those comments about calling sangwoo (killing stalking) to kill theses mofos and I could agree more, these disgusting human beings made me sick.
 so let's begin...btw these are in no particular order, I was going to list these from the least worthy of dieing to most worthy of dieing but you know in the end they should just all die...lol.
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1) My Suha -"A skillful secretary by day and choosy cruiser by night, Suha is a young professional who’s in search of some no-strings-attached action. He hasn’t had much luck lately, though, since a handsome face doesn’t always match what’s in a guy’s pants. This might be why he finds himself wondering about his dreamboat boss, Director Park Jiwoon. But there’s no way he can mix business with pleasure… That is, until Jiwoon and Suha run into each other in the gay bar bathroom."
 so where to begin, um this pretty much includes all those listed above but it mainly focuses on the relationship between jiwoon and Suha, and it is not abusive and very loving in fact,I'm glad that they show the contrast between how suha's previous realtionships don't work out because of his trauma
and how jiwoon despite being an unwanted heir in his grandmother's eyes was able to give love and protection to the person that matters to him the most. So there's this scum bag...I even forgot his name but the red haired dude in this story he`s the legitimate heir to the family, who is the absolute worse and not only sexually abused Suha when they were younger and also emotionally scar both jiwoon and suha
making them feel incapable of being loved. I didn’t get a good feeling form him when he was first introduced and I was right...lol. But at least the comments section was in agreement; let me sum up my feelings in the form of this gif alone...
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 you get the point...
I heard it was going to finish soon so hopefully these emotional scars can be resolved and that suha and jiwoon stick together to get through it all. That would be a good ending for them after everything they have been through.You really need to read it in order to under stand why these events happen the way they do but please remember that suha`s inability to feel love stems from the all of his previous relationships not lasting long yes...but started with this red haired mofo. I am never going to let this dude live, let`s just say that.
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2) Crash into me- " Seung-chan is stressed. He has enough on his plate with the long hours at work, and now he can’t even get any rest at home! Every night, the lustful moaning and violent banging from the apartment upstairs keeps him awake. Just as he’s at his wits’ end, he chances upon the gorgeous, enigmatic Hyesung outside his building. Surely all those filthy sounds couldn’t be coming from such a pretty mouth? But as Seung-chan soon finds out, there’s a lot more to Hyesung"
 from that little description you’ve probably figured out what’s going on with the neighbour next door keeping seung chan awake right? well no surprise sexual abuse, after hyesung was forced to suffer from a ordeal that wasn't his fault the brother of the person that died made it seem like it was his fault and sexually assaulted him
and so this ongoing sexual abuse progressed for several years which lead hyesung feel like life is meaningless and he should just die, until he locked eyes with seung chan walking back to the apartment and thought of jumping out the window, because he had a strange feeling that seungchan who he has not met before would catch him if he did.
I just almost cried from what I just wrote...to think there’s is some a-hole out there that would drive a person to suicide like that just to satisfy his own needs or whatever...i don't even know cause it’s still ongoing...i don’t think any amount of back story will justify any kind of sympathy for this person..
from what I have read so far it seems so be going ending soon so i hope seungchan and hyesung will be able to get through all this and live in peace because of suengchan, hyesung was able to love again and find his worth and is able to fight for himself and I’m sincerely glad that he had met and trust him whole heartedly.
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3) Dine with vampire- "Caught in the clutches of an abusive relationship, Sooin longs to escape. A vampire who finds human blood repulsive, Chi-hwan only drinks the blood of other vampires. When chance brings the two together, Chi-hwan makes Sooin an enticing proposal. Chi-hwan will help Sooin get out of his living hell, and in exchange… Sooin has to let Chihwan drink his blood. Will this proposal change both their lives for the better?”
 y'all don't even get me started on the mofo in this story....I’ve never felt so much rage from staring at a 2D character on my screen, the amount of times I hissed at him...you don't even know
like I have mentioned before ever since my twilight phase I didn’t consume anything vampire related in a while, I don't really care much for the vampire aspect but I guess it's still important over all
once you start the first chapter you will immediately know why I hate the harry potter a-hole in this story..he is despicable and that’s putting it lightly...but you know he doesn’t last long cause vampire tsukiyama (lol, not his name but they look alike) shows up and kills the mofo
and saves sooin who is the person who harry potter had been sexually abusing...to the point where you guessed it, he wanted to die.
chi hwan agrees to grant any wish sooin wanted in exchange for his blood because being vampire by nature he had not been drawn to anyone’s blood for some reason and had only consumed the blood of other vampires.
of course it was a small price to pay for sooin considering all the misery he had gone through. slowly sooin discovered that love was not abusive through the many times chi hwan...lmao i almost called him tsukiyama again...and he had sex, he discovered that it was safe and gentle and enjoyable
nothing that he had ever felt before, and so they became drawn to each other more than they thought they would to the point where they genuinely care for one another, though of course chi hwan knows that one day sooin will die and he will have to live on forever alone, thus the fate of his vampire blood.
 but here’s the catch..it's not a spoiler really cause you knew it was too easy when main villain dies in chapter 4...and he’s on the front cover...which means yes harry potter mofo is back...ugh...he should have burned his body...WTF and as a vampire no less..
i'm like great now look what happened, you should have chopped him up and threw him into the incinerator!
you know that saying " mistakes were made..."
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anyways, now he's back meaning shits about to do down and i'm not ready to see it happen, right now they are going through his back story and i’m like sorry author...whatever you try to feed me there’s no way i can have any sympathy for this dick...
 so that's all i'm going to rant about for these yaoi titles...i had to go back and read some it again to know what i'm going to write about and i revisited a lot of things i’d rather not.I think the rage I felt was ignited again all of a sudden and I felt utter frustration to finish reading it again, what I am trying to say is, ya`ll need to read this once and that`s it...these aren`t stories you`d want to revisit.lol
so if you like this hell segment let me know and i'll continue it cause there’s an endless supply of content for this genre, I have a few more but i'll save those for next month.
and i'll probably come across more in the mean time to discuss, but I guess this is where fiction and reality divides, cause you know in real life if this crap exists absolutely no one will take this bull crap!
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MUSIC
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 I have been listening to the Start up soundtrack and found a lot of songs i like from it, I don't like the drama and have not finished it, but the soundtrack is bomb
I have also been liking some old pop songs and went down the rabbit hole of 90`s pop songs...Britney spears especially
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 so that is all I have for this month, I'm sorry its manhwa and manga focused, i'll have time to watch anime that I need to catch up on and start some drams now so i'll have more
to discuss in the next month hopefully, so please take care of your selves in the new year as well!
take care,
sheena
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SOCIAL MEDIA
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INSTAGRAM: shinb_art
TUMBLR: shinahbee
DEVIANTART: she-be.deviantart.com
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purplepints · 4 years
Text
Red Cross & Donations during Emergencies
You’re probably going to see a surge in posts about why you should not support Agencies like the American Red Cross because “they refused our donations” or "they steal donations" etc. so please read this first before posting anti-ARC/Non-Profit/etc groups mostly run by volunteers.
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE REBLOGGING NEGATIVE STUFF ABOUT THOSE GROUPS!!
Okay, let's talk about this. Food stuff first, then clothes, then a list of Things You Can Do.
Pay attention, people, because while our actions during events like Hurricanes or other events can save lives, our half-cocked reblogging of emotional anecdotes can make lives that much harder. I am not going to claim that the Red Cross (or any other similar Organization) are perfect or unproblematic, but I will say that it is better to light a candle than to refuse to provide batteries for a flashlight. Provide the names of groups you are donating to and the PayPal or site where those groups are accepting monetary donations, don't just fill timelines with anti-Whomever stuff without providing alternatives. Moving on to the Big Questions.....
WHY DO THEY REFUSE FOOD?
— Food can be dangerous.
Think about it. Kids have nut allergies, people are lactose intolerant, the dish could have been sitting somewhere for hours growing bacteria....
— Food can be divisive.
Think about it. Who gets the fantastic homemade lasagna and who has to be content with a bag lunch? Who makes that decision? What about areas populated by people with religious dietary restrictions? Are the items kosher or halal or vegetarian? Worse yet, could someone donate items to locations having high numbers of immigrants, people of color, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, LGBTQ, etc. that were made with the intent to harm groups of people?
Do you see how all of this could be a problem?
It is simply too much of a risk to trust that every person who cooks something followed all safety guidelines regarding ingredients, can provide accurate lists of ALL the ingredients (and no, not just "1/2 cup vegetable oil", because there could be differences between brands, someone may use olive oil or canola oil exclusively, or simply not think to mention that while they made the dish with ABC Brand 100% Canola, they sprayed the casserole pan with Pam or greased it with XYZ Brand Margarine) AND would leave their name & contact info in case people get ill from eating their food.
Businesses like restaurants have to follow certain guidelines and accept the risks, but private individuals? Not so much. Too many shelters/distribution locations simply don't have the fridges/freezers needed to store perishable foods for the number of people they are trying to help and are using what space they do have to store things like breast milk, formula, insulin, etc. Some shelters/locations are in places that face loss of electricity, disruption of utilities, you name it. They may or may not have generators. They may or may not have the resources to plate & provide utensils to every person. They may or may not have dishwashers or just several large sinks to clean dishes, and they can't just shove dirty dishes into a corner for people to come retrieve. Even if they do have sinks, they probably don't have the manpower to assign toward labeling dishes, storing them, reheating them, serving them and cleaning dishes/kitchen/etc to avoid contaminating other food.
Hate to bring this up, but it should be mentioned that many of those places also lack the bathroom facilities to handle the influx of victims, so a few dozen people coming down with salmonella (which, fun fact, can be spread by touching items which were touched by an infected person who wasn't as diligent as they could have been while washing their hands) or other common ailments caused by eating undercooked, poorly preserved or cross-contaminated items, especially in situations where clean water could be in short supply ...well. I think you can imagine how that would be an issue.
WHY DO THEY REFUSE CLOTHING?
— Clothing uses a lot of resources.
Think about it and you'll see similar problems to the ones regarding food. Some people are allergic to certain detergents, break into rashes when encountering pet dander or have other sensitivities.
— Like food, safety is a concern.
A lot of the clothing donated to shelters/organizations is nowhere close to new or in the ballpark of used: it skips directly to awful and most of it isn't laundered. Claims that all the items have been laundered doesn't change the fact that it has to be laundered again before it can be given to anyone due to the aforementioned issues. If possible, donate new, packaged unisex things like t-shirts. Leave the fancy stuff, out-of-season stuff and dress clothing at home unless you're told they are looking to collect heels, thick sweaters, ties, etc.
Laundering aside, the condition of items can be unbelievable. Pants with broken zippers or large holes in the crotch/butt, single socks, old promotional shirts covered in stains and holes, tops & bottoms stretched out or with blown seams. Soiled clothing (every kind of thing you can imagine), scuffed up individual high heels, bras with wires poking through other items, old prom dresses spilling sequins everywhere and all of this is shoved in garbage bags or boxes willy-nilly along with other random items....it is astounding what people will drop off with an attitude of "it's better than nothing" while failing to realize that all of those bags and boxes have to be sorted, laundered, grouped (child/adult, then sizes), then distributed. This is all worse than nothing and only eats up resources better spent on getting people help they actually need.
Again, many shelters/locations have a limited amount of resources and storage space. They may or may not have access to laundry machines. They may or may not have rooms to set up for sorting, nor space to keep the items for any amount of time. The volunteer hours spent digging through clothing hardly good enough for a rag bag would be much better spent on other tasks that can improve the lives of people impacted by these disasters.
WHAT YOU CAN DO:
If you want to provide food or clothing for people but don't want to donate money to the Red Cross/Other Large Organizations, here are some suggestions :
*** First, ALWAYS make sure to contact locations/groups and LISTEN when they tell you what they need! ***
FOOD:
* See if any restaurants are looking for volunteers to help prepare or deliver meals.
* Ask groups you're already involved with to host a shop-along to supply people returning to their homes with staple groceries. [Even if homes were not flooded or damaged, power outages could cause a total loss of all products in refrigerators and the majority of people who rent apartments do not have any type of insurance policy that pays to replace food.]
* Ask if specific items like bottles, sippy cups or reusable water bottles are needed, or if the location could use a reliable fridge/mini-fridge for storing insulin or breast milk, or offer up a hot plates or electric kettle that can be used to to boil water or prepare small amounts of food for ppl with special diets.
* Get with schools that have teaching kitchens (think Home Ec) and offer to help cook or buy supplies for use: this could provide parents who need a bit of time to check their property or fill out paperwork with that time while providing their child with an activity that results in cookies. Offer to do the same thing with entire families through the schools in the evenings, because a few hours away from a shelter, a hot meal and a bit of privacy can mean so much in times like these.
CLOTHING:
* If a group says they are accepting clothing, please only donate items without damage, without stains and make sure to ask if the location needs clothes hangers, special kind of detergents, mesh laundry bags for distribution, etc. If you have large-load capacity machines, offer use of them if you're close to the shelter or can lend them for a brief time.
* Most groups will ask you to only donate underwear and socks that are new and still in their packaging. Most groups don't receive new underwear and socks in packaging and I don't know of any group that will distribute used underwear or socks, so please think about providing child & adult sizes of those items.
* Consider a group effort to help specific groups of people: gather up gently used business/business casual attire for young adults seeking new jobs or returning to work; maternity clothing for all stages of pregnancy; or look into providing steel-toe boots, work gloves, jackets and safety vests for people involved in cleanup efforts.
* Look into sponsoring a future family event that was delayed by the emergency. Provide a dress and suits for a wedding, pairs of cleats for a soccer team, changes of school uniforms or go the services route by offering your own skills as a photographer, hairdresser, tailor, whatever, for free (or form a group that can provide several interconnected skills to work together over, say, 6 months-1 year post event for free or discounted for X amount of events) or at cost/discount.
* Ask groups if they need fabric or findings for arts & crafts and offer to bring items ready to go: bags of buttons, t-shirts cut into yarn, denim or other fabrics cut into sizes requested, etc. You'll be able to thin out your closet and provide a useful thing that can be used to craft a handy item or teach a new skill. This also applies to other art supplies & school supplies, as children in shelters aren't attending school and/or need an outlet for their feelings.
MISC:
** Masks, shower curtains, hygiene prpdicts: having mass shelter happening during this covid-19 breakout is a triple nightmare, so if you sew masks or have extra masks in any size offer them to the mass shelters.
* Different groups of people have different needs. Groups having more children may need more baby wipes or diapers ; groups having more seniors may need mobility aids ; groups having people with natural hair may need different shampoo ; groups having more autistic or special needs may need sense-friendly items, and so on. Help is “one size fits most” deal in many areas of care (like shelter, food) but there are many individuals who need something specific. Ask, listen, provide.
* Groups are almost always in need of translators, not just for adults & help with paperwork or other concerns, but to watch, entertain or otherwise provide assistance for children. If you are fluent in another language (or have books/movies in different languages) contact agencies and let them know.
* We rely on cellphones & electronic devices for much of our communication, so chargers, charger cords, battery banks, working phones and even laptops could help people find their families. Mobile wi-fi and pre-paid phone cards are things to consider, too. Battery or plug-in speakers with Bluetooth could be used for storytime or dance activities with children or audio books for adults, basically any extra electronics you have that are
fairly modern and can play video/audio would be a godsend. Older phones that have been factory reset while still able to work on modern system could help greatly, so call/check with providers and see if any older models you have will still connect & if they are doing anything with the phones themselves re: redistribution.
* Totes, backpacks, duffels and other reusable, durable bags can come in handy. Ziplocs too, to keep items dry. Often people only stay at a shelter for a few days while they're working on other arrangements so it's nice to have everything packed and secure as well as offer a bit of pride and normality rather than making everyone use hefty bags to carry their stuff.
* If you are a notary public or someone with special knowledge pertaining to documents, mortgages, bank accounts, medical POA, etc call and see if your services could be handy for people. A lot of victims lose their birth certificates and other important documents and will need help reestablishing their identity and proofs of ownership.
Most importantly, please make sure people you know understand that there are ways for everyone to help! There are reasons why certain things are not accepted, and it is frustrating, but keep in mind there are other ways to give. Right now, focus on ways you can help and encourage people you know to join your efforts. Please focus on what we can do to help!!
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haikyuuscreaming · 4 years
Note
hello!! can you write something fluff with kenma, please? some friends to lovers if possible. loving your blog 💕💕
OH SHIT SORRY FOR TAKING SO LONG SDFSDFJKD this is. 3.5k words roughly and im so sorry idk why my fics always come out longer than 1k words :(((
The first time you meet Kozume Kenma, he’s hiding behind the wall that is Kuroo Tetsurou and you’re both in your first year.
“Oh?” The Nekoma volleyball captain stares you down in the Chem class you share with him. “You’re [Surname]-san, right?”
“Yeah,” You say, never breaking eye contact with him but secretly eyeing the quiet boy behind him. He’s your classmate in a few other of your periods, but not this one. This class is an advanced Chemistry class, placing you conveniently with the second-years and a handful of equally smart first-years. “I need help with the homework and you’re my best bet. Could you help out?”
Kuroo narrows his eyes at you, which you don’t exactly appreciate but you don’t say anything. “You sure you don’t want me to just give answers?”
“I kinda need to understand this to pass the class, so no thanks.”
He hums in approval, like you’ve passed some test, and nods. “Sure thing. I wanted to teach Kenma this anyway.”
Oh, that’s his name… you think to yourself, and you noticed the mentioned Kenma doesn’t look up from his Nintendo Switch, even at the mention of his name. You watch Kuroo turn around to his companion, coercing him, “Kenma, get up, we’re learning Chem.”
“Can’t we do it later?” Kenma’s voice doesn’t hold anything akin to bitterness or complaint- it’s kind of devoid, actually, in a soft and cute way- and you try to tune out the sound of Kuroo scolding him but he’s so loud when he’s right next to you.
“C’mon, we’re about to go home now, we can stay after school a little longer. Plus, we get to teach this lovely lady about nuclei.”
“I’m right here, you know,” you roll your eyes lightly but before you know it, you’re defending Kozume-san. “We can always work it out, um… I dunno, maybe over lunch on Sunday? I mean, it is Friday and this thing’s due Monday and… we can have more fun studying this if we have food.”
Stupid fucking Kuroo only grins. “Oh, so you’re asking me on a date? Kinda bold, if I don’t say so myself, kouhai-chan.”
“Kuro, stop.” Kenma speaks up and his quiet voice somehow speaks volumes. “We can meet with her on Sunday to do it.” And just like that, he retreats to his Switch without another word.
Kuroo turns to you and shrugs indifferently, contrasting his previously provocative and shitfaced attitude. “The man’s laid down the law. How’s boba on Sunday sound?”
The second time you meet Kenma is on that promised study session.
He has inconspicuous earbuds in, his face illuminated by the glowing light of his DS. He has a DS, too? He still looks cute.
And there’s Kuroo of course, but he’s irrelevant to your case unless it has to do with your god forsaken chem homework.
“You want me to go order some drinks next door?” Kuroo quirks an eyebrow. “My treat.”
“Just a brown sugar milk tea, thanks,” You tell him gratefully. Thank god for men and their dead sense of chivalry.
“No boba? You’re crazy.” Kuroo scrunches his nose at you and you wish Kenma would start talking so you could avoid this big, annoying cat. “What about you, Kenma? Your usual?”
“Yeah,” is all Kenma says.
“Alright, see you nerds later,” Kuroo practically sings out, patting both of your heads like an old man, and takes something from Kenma that you don’t quite catch, but it makes Kenma glare at him.
As soon as Kuroo’s out of sight, you find it a little awkward to keep conversation with Kenma especially with his whole gamer complex, but-
Oh.
Kuroo took Kenna's DS.
“Kuroo-san’s pretty bothersome, huh,” you sigh out in an attempt to stir conversation. Lucky for you, Kenma goes along with the conversation without fight, his eyes peering over you like reflective pools of honey.
(They’re really pretty, you think.)
“Yeah,” Kenma slouches down a little bit more in his chair at the mention of his taller friend. “He’s kind of like my second mom… but not really. Always nagging me to do things.”
You laugh at his solemn, depressed answer. “It’s fun to have him around, though, right? He’s kind of funny sometimes-- the rest he’s annoying-- and he’s decently smart even though I’m pretty sure he’s got, what, three braincells.”
To your unprompted delight, Kenma laughs softly at you poking fun of Kuroo, and the conversation between you and him starts piling up into more, and more, and it all feels so short. You don’t even notice Kuroo coming back and hovering over the table.
“Eh? You and Kenma getting along without me? What a shame, you know. I really do get third-wheeled.” Kuroo lets out a wistful sigh akin to an old man and sits down, drinks in hand. “So, who’s ready to study?”
The third time you meet Kozume Kenma, it’s at your mall’s arcade.
You and your friends are playing one of those claw machines, trying to get that really cute Miku figurine and those adorable plushies, wasting all your coins on these sucker games like the dumb teenagers you are. But a glimpse of familiar, two-toned hair catches your eye.
“Hold on,” you tell your friends who’re still busy trying to get that stupidly gorgeous Sakura Miku figure. “I’m gonna be right back.”
You wander your way to the familiar head of hair, and gratefully, your instinct was right. “Kozume-san? What’re you doing here?”
Kenma practically jumps at the sound of your voice, turning around, eyes wide. “Oh. I just got lost from the team. You’re here too?”
“Mhm,” You smile, pointing at your screaming group of friends. “My friends and I are here just to chill out and have fun. You can hang with us if you want!”
He shakes his head, his hair gracefully framing his face. “Nah, I’m fine, thanks.. I’ll just hold out until Kuro sniffs me out or something.”
You furrow your brow- geez, this kid’s gonna get lost so fast-- and you gently clasp the phone he’s holding in his hand. “Can I give you my number? I’ll pick up immediately if you ever call, just give a ring.”
You fail to notice the surprise that flits over Kenma’s face, but he reluctantly hands you his phone and you tap in your number quickly. “See you around, Kozume-san. Don’t get into trouble.”
And Kenma smiles on his own accord, his face lighting up softly like a lamp under moonlight. “You too.”
The fourth time you meet Kozume Kenma, he’s at your house working on an Japanese Lit assignment.
“Oh? Kozume-kun!” You’re pleasantly surprised when your teacher pairs the two of you up. “Nice to talk with you again.”
“Yeah, “ Kenma blinks a little awkwardly and he shyly grins, which you find even more stunning than it already is because he’s usually held up such a calm, unaffected facade. “Uh. So do you want to meet up at… your house for this? So we can do the project.”
“Oh, yeah,” You wave dismissively, beaming at him because this is your chance to get closer with him. “My little brother’s a nuisance, though, so he might bother us. I hope you don’t mind?”
“No problem.. you can text me the address, because… yeah.” You find it cute how Kenma doesn’t want to mention that the two of you have been texting a lot more lately, and the slightest blush tints his cheeks.
“Of course!”
Flash to your house, the two of you are on the floor, slaving over a giant posterboard with paint and art supplies scattered about.
“I hate making movie posters, it’s so tiring…” You groan out, trying to paint Yukio Mishima’s face with the utmost care. “And this book’s so creepy… why would we wanna make a poster of it? He commits seppuku!”
Kenma grins a little bit and he looks really cute, with his hair tied up in the back and his gaze focused on the painting at hand. “You’re so easily grossed out.”
“But he made it so detailed! You're immune ‘cause you play all those gross horror games.”
He laughs quietly, and you think you're going to heaven. “You couldn't even handle Ao Oni, stop.”
You scowl at the mention of Kenma’s dumb horror games. “He’s this weird deformed grape, okay?? It was kinda scary!”
The two of you end up nowhere near finishing your poster, and you collectively decide to put it off for maybe another day. The rest of your day is spent-- c-cuddling? (no hetero, you reassured Kenma, although you were thinking otherwise)-- and playing more horror games, much to your chagrin.
(But it gave you a reason to hug Kenma tighter.)
You can’t even count the amount of times you’ve met up with Kenma now. You’re in your second-year of high school now and your bond with him as only strengthened.
He invited you eventually to walk to school with him, along with Kuroo, and you find out that it was Kuroo’s coaxing to do so. But you’re still delighted that Kenma agreed on, what, the second time Kuroo nagged him about it?
You and Kenma have gotten fairly close. You’ve vented to him, cried to him, he’s shown his emotional side, too. You’ve even gotten a little closer to Nekoma’s god, Kuroo Tetsurou (to which your friends always complain about- “you can’t take all the cute guys for yourself”). But, in your opinion, the most important part is that you’ve been getting closer to Kozume Kenma, who you once thought would always just be the quiet classmate to you. Who would always be your unattainable, close-guarded crush.
"Kenma!” You yell out, rushing over to him with your backpack practically bouncing off of you with each step. “Wait up, would you?! How do you get out of class so quick??”
 "I was waiting for you either way,” Kenma mumbles and hunches his shoulders together. “Do you wanna go to my house? I have new games and Kuroo won't be bothering us.”
“Can’t we get snacks first?” You know you sound a little bit whiny, but you’re hungry as fuck, and Kenma’s smiling either way.
“I guess.. you’re paying, though.”
“That isn’t fair at all!”
Eventually the two of you walk to your nearest 7/11 and get chips and snacks before leaving promptly, with you holding your chocolate milk and Kenma sipping apple juice. The walk to his house is full of conversation, Kenma equally engaged as you are. But as soon as you arrive at his front doorstep, the hollow noise of an empty apple juice box makes its appearance.
“You drink your juice too fast!” You tease Kenma lightly as he frowns, unlocking the door.
“You just drink too slow,” he replies and shoulders the door open. The two of you make your way inside and flop onto the couch, Kenma crouching near the TV to boot up his newest game. “Damn. I’m still thirsty, too.”
“Language, Kenma,” You chide him, throwing a pillow at him as soon as he sits down next to you on the couch. “And-” it takes every ounce of your willpower not to turn bright red. “-do you want some of my chocolate milk?”
The silence that follows is very short (probably only, what, a second or two?), but it feels like hours of painful quiet. Kenma blinks at you and the pink that dusts his ears becomes more and more prominent each second.
“Yeah… sure,” Kenma finally says and you beam so wide that you’re sure not even the sun could battle the brightness of your happiness right now. You hand him your nearly untouched chocolate milk and his fingers brush against yours as he takes it, sipping at it cautiously like he was afraid something would happen.
(Oh my god he’s so cute.. he looks so cute… he’s drinking my chocolate milk!! He’s so-)
“Oi, Kenma! My mom told me to pick up some tomatoes from y-” The door bursts open to reveal Kuroo Tetsurou.
You freeze, since Kuroo just witnessed you passing a chocolate milk box to Kenma and the latter sipping at the straw. Kenma kind of flushes, his mouth still wrapped around the plastic straw with chocolate milk halfway up.
“Eh? Sharing drinks now?” Kuroo tsks and shakes his head, a smirk gracing his stupidly arrogant face. “You know, you two could get mono. Or any other communicable diseases. Kinda risky, you know?”
“Kuroo, stop!” You’re wildly embarrassed to be caught in this not-so-platonic situation (in your opinion, at least), before Kuroo lets out a hearty laugh.
“You know, that’s an indirect kiss!”
“Didn’t I say stop?!”
“Ah, youth. Indirect kisses! You put your mouth on the straw, then he did. Romance at its finest!”
You know, deep inside, Kuroo just likes to rile you up, but you still bite the bait. “Kuroo, shut up, please??”
And Kenma speaks up for the first time during the whole banter. “Kuro, the tomatoes are on the kitchen table. Go.”
The Nekoma captain quirks an eyebrow before shrugging and heading towards the kitchen. “Thanks. Don’t do anything risky.”
“Kuroo!”
You and Kenma awkwardly glance at each other-- you note he’s still sipping your chocolate milk-- and eventually he stands off to ward Kuroo off (who keeps chuckling for no goddamn reason).
You two are alone again, and his burnt-gold eyes stare into yours.
“Did Kuro bother you?” His ears are still pinkish, but you notice that he’s still comfortable, although you can see a sheen of sweat starting to form on his face.
“Nah... “ You force your voice to stay level. “Why does he keep doing this?? God, he’s so annyoing sometimes… it isn’t like- it isn’t like we’re dating or anything.” God fucking damn stuttering.
Kenma’s eyes widen for a fraction of a millisecond, and you almost miss it, before he clears his throat. “Yeah. Not like that at all.. let’s just go back to playing.”
The atmosphere morphs into the usual, playful one that is held between the two of you, and you’re becoming proud of how much better Kenma is at redefining conversations and shifting the mood whereas in the beginning he would struggle in topic changes.
You’re so proud of him.
(And you’re kind of in love with him.)
You have a group chat with Kuroo and Kenma, unsurprisingly.
It’s, what, midnight on a school day, and the three of you are texting. Kuroo offers a game of ‘truth or dare’, and you accept out of sheer boredom. Plus, dares are so much easier to do online because you can fake nearly anything.
kuroo >:/: kenma truth or dare
kenma :): i’m not playing
YOU: yea you are !! ur not getting out of this
kenma :): fine
  don’t say anything stupid though
kuroo >:/: so whats it gonna b???
Kenma takes a good ten seconds to respond.
kenma :): truth.
kuroo >:/: you got a crush on anyone?
YOU: oooh spicy
kenma :): kuro why
Your heart races a little bit at the comment.
YOU: oh? kenma i thought we were besties :(( why wouldnt u tell me
kenma :): it isn’t that….
  kuro you already know why are you asking me that here
kuroo >:/: for my favorite kouhai [name]-chan
YOU: fuck off kuroo we all know im ur fav bc i pay for ur boba
kuroo >:/: fair
You get impatient with Kuroo’s mindless banter, so you end up texting Kenma privately.
YOU: so who is ur crush????
kenma :): why do you assume i have one
YOU: i mean….u wouldve denied it if u didnt have one?
He leaves you on seen for two minutes and you’re about to text him and complain but his reply shoots back.
kenma :): it’s you
And your heart doesn’t skip a beat. No, it just beats even faster.
The blood is rushing to your face, you can feel it, and a smile tugs at your face subconsciously. Your brain’s running a mile a minute, and you’re so outrageously shocked and unprepared that the aftermath of it all hits you just about a minute later.
(What if he’s lying? What if someone made him say that? What if-)
YOU: fr?
YOU: kenma dont mess w me
kenma :): i’m not
kenma :): you wanted to know so yeah. it’s you
kenma :): i like you and idk kuro says it’s “more than just like” and maybe he’s right
kenma :): see u at school tmr
YOU: WAIT KENMA COME BACK ???
You cute little rat, you seeth internally, happiness still radiating off of you. Is this a dream? Oh my god. Kozume Kenma likes me.
… Kozume Kenma feels the same way I feel about him.
The next day, you anxiously wait for Kenma at your doorstep. You even woke up early and had gotten ready as soon as you could, just so you could catch Kenma ASAP.
You slept surprisingly well, despite your anxiety from Kenma, and your body was filled with energy. You check your phone every two minutes, glancing at his ‘good morning text’ and praying for another one.
kenma :))): gm i’m still walking to school with u if you want… i’ll pass by your house just in case
YOU: oh!!!! yea id love to walk to school w u :))
Silence fills your ears as you anxiously pace back and forth from your doorstep to the curb of your neighborhood. You can’t help but worry as your gaze flits across every house, begging for a sign of Kenma.
(What if you’re too late, you realize in panic. What if your efforts weren’t enough?)
But then the sound of quiet-paced footsteps snaps you out, and you look up to see Kenma, standing in front of your house, an adorably shy expression painted across his face.
“Kenma!” You hate how your voice comes out kind of squeaky and high-pitched but you don’t care right now. You practically launch off of your doorstep and bound toward him, settling by his side.
He gives you a shy, adoring look but you can see the anxiety in his eyes as he points forward in the direction of Nekoma. “We can talk while walking, right?”
You smile breathlessly and your fingers brush against his. He smiles at you, and you notice the same pink dusting his ears like when he was sharing chocolate milk with you.
Two hands intertwine and the conversation begins.
You’re in your third year of college now, out on a “boys (and girl) night out”, as Kuroo deemed it.
Kenma’s got it well-made for him, striking good on his company to which you supported him through the entire time, and Kuroo’s on his way to be the scientist he’s always dreamed of being even as a nerdy-jock kid. He claims he’s practically a professional volleyball player, too, just on the side, but both you and Kenma know better.
You and Kenma have been dating ever since your second-year in high school. Which makes it just about… four-ish years now that you’ve been dating.
(Kuroo claims that in your first-year, you and Kenma were basically dating each other spiritually, but you pay him no mind.)
The three of you are out on the beach on an autumn day. It’s pretty empty, despite the warm evening sun that casts a golden shine on the sand and ocean, so you’re all making epic sandcastles in peace.
“We should make a moat,” Kuroo says, already digging out a ring around the lopsided sandcastle.
“We haven’t even finished the castle itself!” You protest, pushing him lightly as you use your other hand to pat down the base of the castle.
Kenma packs sand into a small bucket and delicately places it on top of the half-finished sand “castle” to make a tower. You find it cute how he’s the only one putting in decent effort, so you help him out by packing in another bucket of sand. “Kuro would be a terrible architect,” Kenma comments.
“You right, you right,” You sigh out while Kuroo squawks in protest. Kenma leans on you, out of instinct you think, and you kiss the top of his head gently. Kuroo covers his eyes and complains about his youth and young love before Kenma haphazardly bumps into you. Which leads to the sand castle collapsing.
“Ah- Kenma!” you cry out in panic, sweeping the sand together in a half-hearted attempt to piece it back into a cohesive castle. “Be careful!”
“No, look,” he says quietly, a small smile gracing his face.
“You worked so hard on the base too, to make it big and flat- oh?” You sit up a little bit when you see a small velvet box in the middle of the sand pile.
Kuroo gasps very loudly and you stare at Kenma in shock.
Oh my god. What’s happening, what’s happening, oh my god-
You slowly reach out for the box in the middle of the mess and take it delicately, brushing off the sand clinging to it. Your fingers pry it open with shaking fingers and you feel Kenma place his hand on your arm gently, his gorgeous honey eyes staring at you. The same honey eyes you fell in love with.
You're also in love with the gorgeous, sparkling amber ring that sits in the middle of the cushioned box.
“[Name]. I want to be married. To you. Will you marry me?” Kenma’s voice is soft and sweet but you know with the convincing sureness in his voice that he’s been practicing this line for at least a month and he’s become confident in it.
You start crying immediately (god damn it, you think to yourself) your heart blooming with joy and your entire body feels like it’s about to explode of pure happiness.
You kiss him, full on the lips with tears streaming down your face and he kisses back, his arms wrapping around you and you realize he’s crying too. With the possibly happiest voice you’ve ever used in your life, you cry out, “Of course I will!” on the beach with Kuroo clapping in the background.
Two years later on that beach, you two become the happiest couple on Earth.
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introvertguide · 4 years
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Hollywood’s Changing Depiction of Slavery
I am generally not that comfortable with discussing this kind of thing, especially the attachment it has to cinema, because it is a reminder that many of the people that created the art I love might not be the kind of person I would actually want to meet. In fact, the depiction of slavery in film over the last century can give you an idea of how the American population thought of slaves and the business of slavery in general. I am going to try and approach this objectively, not because I don’t want to offend (if you are offended by my personal abhorrence of slavery in any form than you can go someplace else for your movie commentary), but simply because I am a middle-aged white male who has never encountered slavery in person and everything I know is second hand. I have seen guest lectures that involved people who walked with MLK Jr in Alabama, but I know very little about black oppression and outright slavery in America beyond history books. So, to keep this educational and not slip into personal bias, I will describe what I have seen in some example films over the last century. You are more than welcome to view the films for yourself, however:
SOME SPOILERS FOR THE MOVIES ON THIS LIST!!! I STRONGLY RECOMMEND WATCHING ANY OF THESE FILMS FOR YOURSELF!!
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The Birth of a Nation (1915)
We are starting off rough with possibly the most controversial film of all time. There were protests against this film from both black and white cinema goers even at the time (according to the AFI blurb) and it is evident that the director, D.W. Griffith, overstepped some boundaries as he made the apology piece Intolerance the very next year to win back general audiences. The film depicts Abraham Lincoln positively, which was unexpected to me, and former slaves as animalistic and uncontrolled. The Klu Klux Klan comes along and “heroically” controls the former slaves and depicts the reformation as a time in which white women were afraid to walk the street for fear of attack by former slaves. The lack of support for this film by any black actors is apparent since almost all of offensive black men portrayed in the movie are white actors in black face. As difficult as it was for Black Americans to find work outside of farming and industrial labor in the early 1900s, you still couldn’t even pay them to be in this film. It is hard to gauge if many Americans agreed with the opinions reflected in this film at the time, but some people apparently thought that it was a mistake to free the slaves since black people needed to be controlled and why not get free labor for farm owners at the same time.
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Gone With the Wind (1939)
This is a favorite movie in my family so I cringe slightly watching this film now knowing about about Hattie McDaniel’s Oscar and legacy. The role of Mammy was played by McDaniel and she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress...but she had to get special permission to attend the ceremony since the awards were given out at a segregated hotel. She had to use a back entrance and was seated far in the back in an area that was roped off from the white guests. McDaniel was very good at her role since she had played a maid on over 70 occasions and was hassled by the NAACP to use her award as a platform to promote equal rights. I have little reference to what the world thought of the film, but the 13 Oscar nominations and this being the highest grossing film of all time when adjusting for inflation tells me audiences were OK with if not impressed by the portrayals. It seems that America was accepting of the “friendly and accepting” slave who was like a family friend who wasn’t equal but allowed to stay if they did a good job cleaning up around the house. This was not a very accurate portrayal of most slave-master relationships, which McDaniel admits, but she is quoted as saying “it is better to get $700 a week to play a maid then get $7 a week to be one.”
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The Legend of N****r Charlie (1972)
During the 60s and 70s, there was a genre of films known as “blaxploitation” which capitalized on the idea that black characters were portrayed stupid thugs that were easily subdued by intelligent white men. This genre did the opposite and featured black heroes who overcame adversity with their power and intelligence, normally over a white adversary. This particular film portrays a slave taken from Africa who is falsely accused of murder and has to run from a racist white sheriff. He turns into a gunslinger and makes a posse of other black gunslingers and this group defeats the evil sheriff and escapes. This portrayal seems as likely as that of Mammy, but the very poor production value and terrible acting (it is pretty difficult to get through) meant no awards. Noting that the box office sales were high almost exclusively at theatres in predominantly black neighborhoods, America was split on the depiction of slaves. White people seemed to be happy with the housemaid while black people wanted a tough hero that rises up and gets vengeance on their oppressors. 
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Roots (1977): 8 Part Mini-Series
I was unaware that this miniseries was shown over consecutive nights in January of 1977, but tens of millions of people watched all of it (that is 12 hours over 8 nights) and still talk of the impression it made. This movie showed Lavar Burton (you know, the guy from Reading Rainbow and the actor who played the blind guy on Star Trek) as a slave stolen from Africa who was shackled and beaten into a life of submission. This film portrayed slavery as an atrocity that planted seeds of hate and distrust that carried on through generations over hundreds of years. Judging by the ratings, this woke up a lot of Americans to the horror that was slave life. Portraying slaves as happy house maids or whistling old men with big smiles was no longer acceptable. The final episode of this mini-series remains the 3rd highest rated showing of all time according to the Nielson ratings. The series as a whole was nominated for an astounding 32 Emmy Awards and won 9 of them. The low win count was due to multiple actors from the series competing in every acting category. After Vietnam and going into the Cold War, America wanted gritty realism and this seems like exactly that.
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Amistad (1997)
I find this to be idea of slavery that I most relate to as realistic. It stars Djimon Hounsou as a slave that leads a revolt against the slave traders on the ship Amistad in which the entire white crew was slaughtered and the offending slaves were brought to American courts to stand trial for murder. This was based on a true account and directed by Steven Spielberg. One might note that the top billed actors are actually Matthew McConaughey, Morgan Freeman, and Anthony Hopkins, but Hounsou absolutely stole the show.  I hate courtroom drama in general, but the testimony of this slave was riveting. According to historian accounts, there was a point during this infamous crossing in which it was decided there was not enough food for all the slaves so a couple of dozen humans were tied to a rock and thrown overboard. It has been over 20 years and that still sticks with me. I wouldn’t expect this to be done to cattle, and the scene of the slaves screaming as they know the rock will pull them down and they have seconds to live still haunts me. It encouraged me to look up accounts of slaves and others who saw first hand how bad things got.
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I took a an anthropology class in the early 2000s and I remember learning about evidence that proved the horrific treatment of some slaves. It is true that some slaves were allowed to live in the house and treated like family. It is true that some slave owners paid their slaves a small amount or even freed them in their will. However, there are also many children of mixed heritage that prove the amount of rape that occurred. There are also bones in shallow graves in back of some of these old plantations that show evidence of multiple breaks, amputations, mangled limbs, and broken backs that have no sign of treatment but the wear and tear of continued use. These people were worked and beaten to death. If that is what happened, then I don’t want it glossed over with Hollywood scriptwriting. 
But I said I would be objective so I will stop there. I can feel myself getting angry and opinionated as I write. Learning about history and enjoying a story on film for entertainment can be separate things. Deep breaths.
There are many, many other movies that portray slavery including The Color Purple, Song of the South, Django Unchained, 12 Years a Slave, and Glory. I am not as familiar with these films as the ones listed above, in fact I still haven’t seen 12 Years a Slave. What I wanted to demonstrate was that films will often depict social issues in a way that is consumable by the masses, and changes in the way things are depicted can indicate a change in public opinion. From what I see in film, the American population once thought of former slaves as a problem that needed to be solved and bringing back slavery could solve that issue. It transformed to a feeling that maybe slavery wasn’t all bad and some slave owners were pretty good to their slaves. Black Americans responded with a genre that said that maybe slaves were tough and amazing which scared people into trying to control them. After the Vietnam War and Watergate, Americans wanted the gritty truth and films began portraying slavery as horrific and scarring to the point of affecting generations with hate. Todays movies seem to recognize the atrocities and to almost look at these actions the same way we look at genocides: how could we let this happen? The students that I work with are now assigned movies and readings that highlight genocide and enslavement, which means to me that we are not in denial of how bad it was and instead looking into keeping it from ever happening again. Perhaps there will be a different viewpoint in 20 years. Until then, I will keep watching movies to get an idea of what the public thinks. 
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cxmetery-gates · 3 years
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SURREPTITIOUS - DRACO MALFOY
CHAPTER THREE: DEFENSE AGAINST THE DARK ARTS
SUMMARY: After getting her schedule, Leslie realizes that exams and essays just might be the least of her worries. WORD COUNT: 2.7k NOTES: Hello! It’s been a century..... whoops. WARNINGS: none!
MASTERLIST
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THE NEXT MORNING, FOLLOWING THE feast the night before and catching up with others over breakfast, all the Slytherin six years patiently surround Professor Snape, the Head of Slytherin House, in the Great Hall as he files through their schedules thoroughly. Before the sixth years could be off on their way to class, their schedule had to be confirmed, ensuring they are fit for N.E.W.T.-level courses, considering how miserably difficult each class is.
Some of Leslie's housemates were already on their way, now leaving the young witch with just a few other students, all clad with a serpent emblem and matching emerald-and-silver ties.
"Greyscale," Professor Snape drawls.
The brown eyed girl takes half a step forward. He skims over her desired schedule, along with her O.W.L. scores, taking as much time as the previous students. Meaning, there was a heavy downpour in Leslie's racing thoughts for quite a few moments. Despite the beating of her heart, Leslie passed with high marks on her chosen classes. She was only worried about one in particular.
"Charms, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Potions, and Transfiguration are all fine. I must admit, I was pleased with your Potions mark and to see your continuation."
Despite Leslie's company and social inabilities, the long-time Potions professor (now Defense Against the Dark Arts) had a good standing with the girl. She did her assignments well and always lived up to his unrealistically high standards without complaint. Not many could say the same, so Leslie took his statement as a compliment. While the witch let out a breath of relief, Professor Snape had yet to confirm the last.
"But, I must ask: why the interest in Alchemy?"
Leslie had known her answer for a while. "My mother excelled in the practice, and I have always had an interest." Many years before Leslie was born, her mother had been gaining recognition for her work in the art, the Daily Prophet once even had a column titled "Witches You Should Know" with the mother's name at the top. Eve Greyscale was a talented, intelligent, and kind witch with a life ahead of her, but the world is unkind even to the most gentle of souls.
"Fair enough," the professor replies in understanding.
Professor Snape did not feel the need to question the girl further. After all, last term when she and the professor sat down for the mandatory meeting on what her last two years of Hogwarts should look like, Leslie informed him that she was still mostly uncertain which career path she desired. Perhaps Leslie would continue what legacy was stripped away all those years ago. "Lucky it was offered this term. Be sure you and Mr. Malfoy make Slytherin proud."
The girl could have blanched, but the parchment was held in front of her face, egging her to move and get on with her day. Leslie took the paper from the head of Slytherin House and glanced over to the pale blonde for a split second. As quickly as her eyes shot towards him, she looked away—she had not expected to see the young wizard already staring her down.
Leslie let out a long breath as she begun to head out of the Great Hall. Glancing down at the paper, her eyes absorbed her schedule for her sixth year at Hogwarts:
MONDAY:        10:00-11:00 : Defense Against the Dark Arts        11:00-12:00 : Lunch        13:00-15:00 : Potions
TUESDAY:        13:00-15:00 : Potions        15:30-17:00 : Charms
WEDNESDAY:
THURSDAY:
FRIDAY:        09:00-11:00 : Alchemy        11:00-12:00 : Lunch        13:00-15:00 : Transfiguration
The schedule is almost ideal, happy to see her Wednesdays and Thursdays would be free. Though, Leslie knows the off-days are intended for students to work on the vast amount of assignments. Nonetheless, she feels content.
"Hey, Leslie," a voice calls almost lazily.
Upturning her head, Leslie searches for voice, coming across a ginger boy. A distinct memory of her and different ginger boy, though a couple years her senior, alone and in very close proximity pops into her head and she feverishly tries to calm a blush. However, Ron Weasley spots it and it takes effort on his part to not laugh. Harry is with his friend and no doubt knows about the story in the two's head, having a twitch at the corner of his lips.
Leslie almost wants to run to the Slytherin common room, but instead, she smiles sweetly.
"Harry and I were comparing schedules," Ron informs her. "What's yours looking like?"
"Well, I have a free period now," - to this, Harry and Ron made a unanimous 'us too' - "And after, I have Defense Against the Dark Arts and then Potions later." Once again, the two Gryffindors make the same sound, the group pleased they share the same Monday schedule.
As the comparisons went on, Leslie discovered she also has Charms and Transfiguration with both Harry and Ron. It appeared the only class she had alone, at least so far to her knowledge, was Alchemy. The two Gryffindors made a face when they read the name on her timetable.
"Professor Snape said Malfoy is also in it." With a curl of her lip, Harry and Ron visibly see her lack of comfort in the ordeal. The duo understands all too well, and it only took befriending Leslie a year prior to propel their disdain.
"Malfoy is into that sort of thing?" Ron questions, his brow arched in disbelief. "Huh. I wouldn't have put him as someone interested in anything, except for being a royal git."
Leslie smiles though her eyebrows draw close. "Git or not, he's allowed to have interests. He's still a human, you know."
Ron scoffs, glaring at the platinum blonde now walking out of the Great Hall. "Hardly," is the ginger's reply which earns a good laugh from Leslie and Harry.
Now that the corridors were beginning to thin, Leslie decided she could afford to go back to the common room to grab more ink, having realize she only snagged a single bottle. "I'll see you in a few," Leslie tells her friends before taking the stretch to the dungeons.
══════════════════
Almost an hour later, Leslie's march ends at a queue leading to the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom. She was nearly late, but luckily, Professor Snape is very punctual about when to let students inside his classroom, leaving them all to wait outside until 10 o'clock exactly.
She just reaches the end of the line when the door is swung open, revealing the professor.
"Inside," is all he says.
Leslie did not miss Ron's bright hair and while she would have chose to sit next him and his friends, Professor Snape made it a habit to sort his students by House. So, Leslie took to one side as the other houses took to another. The Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws took the front while the house of serpents and lions took the back.
Unfortunately, due to Leslie arriving last, the very back row had the only available seating. And what made things worse was who sat in the spot next to the last stool.
Despite her glancing around, there was no other option but for Leslie to sit next to the blonde Draco Malfoy, not having realized (nor is she surprised) he was in the queue for the Dark Arts class. It appears his lap dog Pansy Parkinson and his goons did not pass or choose to take a N.E.W.T. level Defense Against the Dark Arts, otherwise he'd have his own posse to take up the remaining seats. For once, Leslie is upset she and the Parkinson girl do not share a course.
What had happened on the train did not falter in retellings. She felt almost thankful Malfoy created a distraction for her head, that much she will admit, but a giant part nagging at her was the fact that it simply was Malfoy who triggered the silence. She doesn't know whether her bumping shoulders was just a break in the wiring or if his presence meant something else. Leslie also was not wanting to find out. Not to mention, the ordeal made Leslie uncomfortable with their history considered.
"You are the worst person I have ever met, Draco!"
"If you would just listen to me, instead of acting crazy—!"
The witch blinks away a fight from last term and, ever so reluctantly, Leslie lowers herself on Malfoy's left, keeping her eyes far from his figure as a scar across her right hand replays a story. She sets her bag down, knowing Snape will use the first few minutes as an introduction to the course.
Leslie waits for a remark, something cruel to come out of the boy's mouth. But nothing of the such passes his lips. Instead, she finally notices his eyes are angled at her hand that was fiddling with the quill on her desk. Faster than a Golden Snitch, she redacts her arm under the table.
It was only then did Leslie notice how Professor Snape turned the old classroom into something of his own— truly his own. The atmosphere is heavy and gloomy, curtains pulled over the windows and the only source of light comes from lit candles. There were pictures, too, that rose goosebumps on Leslie's arms; they all depict what she assumes is the aftermath of evil curses and dark magic.
"I wish to speak to you, and I want your fullest attention."
Every wandering gaze fell upon the Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor.
"You have had five teachers in this subject so far, I believe. Naturally, these teachers will all have had their own methods and priorities. Given this confusion, I am surprised so many of you scraped an O.W.L. in this subject. I shall be even more surprised if all of you manage to keep up with the N.E.W.T. work, which will be more advanced." The statement did nothing to calm the nerves of each student. They all went in knowing the difficulties of N.E.W.T. classes, but the reminder from the monotone professor makes everything more real.
"The Dark Arts," Professor Snape continues having rounded the edge of the room towards the gruesome photos, "are many, varied, ever-changing, and eternal. Fighting them is like fighting a many-headed monster, which, each time a neck is severed, sprouts a head even fiercer and cleverer than before. You are fighting that which is unfixed, mutating, indestructible. Your defenses must therefore be as flexible and inventive as the arts you seek to undo. These pictures give a fair representation of what happens to those who suffer, for instance, the Cruciatus Curse" - all eyes absorb the sight of a witch shrieking an agony - "feel the Dementor's Kiss" - then a wizard with sunken, lifeless eyes huddled in a corner - "or provoke the aggression of the Inferius" - finally, a bloody mass.
"Has an Inferius been seen, then?" Parvati Patil asks. "Is it definite? Is he using them?"
The mere concept of an Inferius makes Leslie shudder. To reincarnate the dead to do one's bidding is far too disturbing for her to stomach.
Professor Snape's eyes shows he did not appreciate the interruption. "The Dark Lord has used Inferi in the past which means you would be well-advised to assume he might use them again. Now, you are, I believe, complete novices in the use of nonverbal spells. What is the advantage of a nonverbal spell?"
It was an answer every student knew, but Hermione Granger shot her hand up anyways. Leslie had to bite back the humored smile as the professor surveyed the rest of the classroom, hoping for another hand to raise. But no one wanted to deflate Hermione's ego.
"Very well. Ms. Granger?"
"Your adversary has no warning about what kind of magic you're about to perform which gives you a split-second advantage," says the Gryffindor.
"An answer copied almost word for word from The Standard Book of Spells, Grade Six..." Professor Snape says dismissively. Next to Leslie, she hears Malfoy snicker, leading the girl to roll her eyes, a small huff escaping her.
The boy shoots his eyes to the left, eyeing down and smirking at Leslie. "I see the summer did nothing to kill that newfound feistiness. I almost miss the old you."
"And I missed it when you weren't speaking."
Dark brown irises roll once more to glare at silver grays, though the later holds a mischievous glint. Malfoy makes an exhale, the sound of a laugh being hidden. Leslie knows he is trying to get under her skin. Part of her feels it working, the other part truly just wants the boy to shut up. "Those Gryffindors really did a number on you. Especially that one twin—"
Before Leslie can retort, a voice comes from the front of the classroom. "If your conversations during my lecture are so important, Mr. Malfoy and Ms. Greyscale, perhaps a free period would be better suited."
Eyes from all around shoot towards the pair in the back. Leslie notices Ron give her a sympathetic smile. "Sorry, Professor," Leslie utters, as Malfoy was too busy smiling to himself.
The rest of Professor Snape's lecture was simply instructions on how to cast a non-verbal spell. Luckily, Leslie was already halfway to success, having learned how to perform a Shield Charm thanks to D.A. last year. However, they never learned how to cast it without using words. Leslie felt her nerves kick in even with her professor preparing them with the essential steps.
"You will now work with the person next to you. One partner will attempt to jinx the other without speaking. The other will attempt to repel the jinx in equal silence."
Oh, how lovely, Leslie thinks bitterly.
The back of the classroom held a wide space, wide enough for each pair to have room to practice standing up. Malfoy stood before Leslie when Professor Snape sent them off on their way. Leslie suppresses a groan when she pushes her stool back.
From behind her, she hears Harry whisper, "Good luck. If he does anything stupid..."
Leslie tosses a reassuring smile to the boy. "I'm sure I'll be fine, but thanks."
Malfoy already stands waiting with his wand out as Leslie approaches. There's a sly smirk on his face. It makes Leslie uncomfortable: does he thrive on making her queasy? "I'll go first."
"Go figure," Leslie replies wandering a few paces away. A few feet from the Slytherins, two Gryffindor boys named Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnigan were paired to spar but only stood glaring at the blonde boy. Both boys made the assumption Malfoy was going to put Leslie in the hospital wing. Unbeknownst to them, however, the gift that allows her to know their very thoughts will aid her during the exercise, avoiding whatever the reason was behind Malfoy's smirk.
It took a matter of five minutes before Malfoy's smirk fell clean off his face. Much like the rest of the students, he had grown frustrated by the lack of progress. Leslie was gaining some improvement, but of course Hermione had seemingly mastered the skill before anyone else. Her efforts should have given Gryffindor at least 20 House Points, but all Professor Snape was interested in regarding that house was taking points away.
"Excellent progress," Snape tells the Slytherins. "But be more demanding, Greyscale. It is not your strong suit obviously, but defending yourself against Dark Wizards require it."
"Yes, thank you, Professor," Leslie responds as her professor and Malfoy share a brief moment of eye contact.
Malfoy twirls his wand and then goes still once Professor Snape moves on. "Try screaming the spell in your head. It's slowly working for me so far."
Leslie's eyebrow raises. Truthfully, the advice would have made her laugh if anyone would have given it to her. But she's stubborn, and not ready for Malfoy to earn her praise. "I didn't ask for your help."
He shrugs. "Yeah, well, the sooner we get this over with, the sooner we can go back to hating each other."
"I've always hated you." Her eyes narrow but it's a lie, and Malfoy knows that well.
The same sly smirk fell upon his face once more. "That's not how I remember things."
Malfoy would regret his advice a second later as he flies backwards, not yet ready to block the spell from Leslie's wand.
"Powerful, and effective. Twenty points to Slytherin," Professor Snape announces as Leslie wears the proud smirk Malfoy once had.
☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
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lalainajanes · 4 years
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You guys really came through with the mini prompts! I can’t do them all but I’m going to combo as many as I can. First up “Caroline assassin working in the coffee shop sequel” from @delightfullysunny + “How about Klaus awkwardly brings her flowers to acquit himself... cuz reasons.” from @eliliyah
Detente
The best part of her job at the coffee shop – and there’s not a whole lot of positives – is that Caroline’s typically off by 2:00 PM. She usually heads home, takes a nap. Checks in with good people of Port Charles and makes dinner.
Then she’s ready to head out for her real job.
She’d snuck into Klaus place last week (sue her she’s losing patience) and had planted a few cameras. She’d been a little shocked that they hadn’t been found but maybe Klaus is that arrogant. Or maybe he just trusts his security systems and, to his credit, they’d been a bitch to get through.
She’s nearing the sixth month mark of this assignment and she still hasn’t managed to kill him. Every morning he walks into the coffee shop, every morning she sets a test, one only she’s aware of.
And he keeps freaking passing.
The check in texts she gets from her handler have been coming more frequently and steadily growing testier. Caroline hadn’t bothered to reply to the last one and she knows she’s running out of time.
There’s no real opt out option in her line of work, not this deep into a job. Caroline has a call to make. Either she does it or she runs.
She’s taking advantage of some conversations she’s overheard – Klaus has business tonight, won’t be home until very late. Caroline’s planning to do a little snooping.
Okay, a lot of very thorough and invasive snooping, in hopes of finding something that’ll tip her into the right mindset – the ‘this guy is truly evil and should die even though he’s charming and looks me in the eye even though I’m a lowly service industry peon’ mindset.
She’s nervous as enters his building.
Last time she’d ducked in behind a couple, they’d been inebriated and handsy and hadn’t even noticed. She’d tripped the woman which had provided enough of a distraction that the concierge hadn’t spared Caroline a glance. She’s not going to count on that kind of luck a second time and she uses a back entrance this time. She’d found a reasonable copy of the coveralls the maintenance people wear, has her hair tied back and a pair of thick rimmed glasses perched on her nose. She’s quick enough at picking the lock that anyone who notices her on a security camera wouldn’t know that she hadn’t had keys.
Once inside, she’s invisible. Listings in Klaus’ building start at 5 million, the people who have that kind of cash to throw around tend to avoid eye contact with anyone in a uniform.
He’s on the top floor, of course. Has a private elevator. Caroline had picked his pocket and copied his keys early on and it only takes her a minute to figure out the correct one.
She takes a deep breath once she’s inside the car, rests her back against the wall and watches the numbers climb as she ascends. The hard part is over, she should relax.
Should.
She jumps at the ding that rings out just before the doors slide open, laughs shakily as she steps into Klaus’ apartment. Last time she’d been all business, hadn’t really taken the time to assess anything beyond the best, most discrete, places to set up her cameras.
She’s not on a time crunch now, finds herself soaking in the details. It’s a man’s place, clearly. All dark wood and muted colors. She’s surprised by how comfortable the furniture looks, it’s all upholstered in rich fabrics, plush and sturdy.
She’d spent a frankly shameful amount of time watching Klaus lounging on his couch in the last week. He keeps the apartment warm, Caroline notes, probably why he always sees to be half-undressed while home alone.
She’s drawn to a painting over the fireplace, is studying it so intently that she doesn’t realize she’s not alone.
Rookie mistake.
Caroline freezes when she hears a throat clear behind her, and she wishes she’d thought to take out a weapon. There’s a gun in her bag, a knife in her boot. She’s got no chance of getting to either of them and launching an attack if the person behind her is even halfway competent.
Given that she’s never seen a single person other than Klaus in this apartment, that she knows he keeps a second one in a sketchier part of town to meet up with various goons and allies, she’s pretty sure violence isn’t going to be the answer.
“You’re a bit later than I expected,” Klaus murmurs, confirming her suspicions. “Don’t you have an early morning tomorrow?”
She swallows a groan of annoyance – at herself more than him - this kind of sloppiness is galling. “I was thinking about taking a sick day, figure I…” the rest of her sentence trails off when she turns and sees that Klaus is holding flowers.
A pretty bunch, purple and white blooms, artful bits of greenery mixed in. She stares at it for a long moment before her eyes lift to Klaus, not even trying to hide her incredulousness. Klaus’ weight shifts, infinitesimally yes, but it does, the bouquet shifting from hand to hand.
Is he… nervous?
He’s dressed casually, dark jeans and a grey t-shirt. His feet are bare but his hair is neat.
“I made dinner. If you’re hungry.”
“Did you shave the garlic with a razorblade?” Caroline asks, glancing back down at the flowers again. She’s sure they’re for her and, as a girl who shamelessly likes pretty things and romantic gestures, she’s kinda flattered.
But mostly she’s confused.
Usually, Caroline suspects, when the friendly neighbourhood barista breaks into a mobster’s place she’s not greeted with gifts.
“I did not…” Klaus says slowly and Caroline cannot believe that he’s never seen Goodfellas, given his line of work. “The recipe called for minced.”
She can’t resist cracking a smile and Klaus returns it stepping forward, his frame visibly relaxing. “Can I take your coat, love? Perhaps your bag? I promise you don’t need the weapons I’m sure you’ve tucked away.”
Caroline grips the strap that crosses her chest. “How long have you known I’m not a barista?”
“Oh, ages.” He doesn’t even seem mad about it. “When did you decide not to kill me?”
“Who says I’ve decided not to kill you?”
The look he shoots her is amused and he clearly doesn’t believe her. At all. Super annoying because Caroline Forbes is a great liar, thank you very much. “Something tells me you’re the decisive type.”
Technically correct.
“Are you hungry? I thought we’d eat, discuss… our situation. We can go out, if you’d be more comfortable.”
“Probably not a good idea to discuss our ‘situation’ in public.” What with all the potential murder and crime.
Klaus inclines his head, “I can arrange for us to have privacy.”
With big fat wads of cash, Caroline assumes.
Caroline considers her options. Klaus obviously knows she’s not who she’s pretending to be. He’s had ample time and the means to eliminate her, if that’s what he’d wanted to do. Caroline’s decisive yes, but she also trusts her instincts.
She takes the flowers, brushes a fingertip over a petal. “I could eat,” she says.
Klaus smiles warmly, his eyes brightening and it really would have been a shame to remove those dimples from the world.
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unwiltingblossom · 4 years
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Queen’s Favor (Mysme Jumin/MC AU 6/?)
Summary: Being a maid would be much easier if the cat would just let her do her job.
AU - Instead of joining the RFA via random text, MC is hired on as one of the maids assigned to Jumin Han’s penthouse. Nothing else about the setting has changed, the messenger and the RFA still exist, only the MC’s position has been altered.
'No, I'm not wandering your penthouse naked. That's not what I do normally. Normal people don't do that, and I am a normal person.'
In the end, she made it through the night without being smothered to death by a cat, even though she accidentally fell asleep on the couch at some point. The sound of the door clicking open stirred her awake, and she shot up from where she'd sprawled out on the couch with enough speed that it was for the best Elizabeth hadn't decided to climb on her in the night.
"M'awake! I was on break!"
The blonde, bespectacled woman standing in the doorway blinked owlishly at her. That. Wasn't the owner of the penthouse.
Ah. And she also wasn't on break. As the fog and disorientation of the morning faded from her mind, knowledge of where she was (and why) drifted back to her. She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand and shook her head. "...Sorry...force of habit."
The look on the woman's face spoke of assumptions she really should clear up. She was, however, much too groggy for that.
Tomorrow. She'd explain it tomorrow.
Most of the instructions were pedantic, some were ridiculous, and a few of them were patently impossible. Thus, she treated Elizabeth the way she'd treated just about any other cat. As she did all the time, really, sans shooing. So far, she hadn't gotten any complaints from the cat, so she considered her job done well so far. Barring some lonely nights - maybe she'd leave the TV on or something, and definitely use the guest bed this time - it wouldn't be terrible to get paid five times the ludicrous amount she was already paid for a three day stint playing with a cat and not worrying about the cat hair.
She stretched as she looked out the window. Dawn barely colored the horizon that showed nary a bump from the other buildings in the city from the height of the penthouse. Whatever schedule he had for her replacement, she couldn't help wondering if the unusually early hour was some kind of slight against her, like a pre-emptive assumption her peasant-self would ruin the place living in it.
Well. She was a maid, not a peasant.
And this maid was definitely going to take advantage of the shower she'd cleaned so many times. Not the master one, as the blonde had (foolishly) decided to start off in the master bedroom, and first impressions had already built enough unpleasant assumptions without adding to them. In the end, though, it didn't really matter. The guest bathroom might have looked slightly less extra, but the shower and various soaps inside worked just as well.
She'd never experienced luxury in the form of a shower before. These days left watching the penthouse might just ruin her for ordinary, normal showers that rained down hard droplets of water on her and expected her to move around to clean herself.
No, but really. The shower gave her a massage. From every direction. And it sprayed a rainbow all around her for no other reason than to be pretty while it did it.
She'd never experienced anything that made her feel so much like a pleb while also making her feel so good before. It had been a mistake to miss out on using this shower her first day.
Stepping out of the shower, she couldn't help the odd urge to want to wave it farewell. Or maybe to take a glass of wine. She did neither, though, because the first important thing...was that she hadn't slept in the guest bedroom as she'd planned, so she didn't get the chance to grab a change of clothes from her bag of supplies before jumping into the shower.
Oh well. She sighed and wrapped a very oversized, downright ridiculously soft towel around herself and gave a little twirl in the full length, angled mirror in the bathroom. Honestly, it was thick and heavy enough to be an outfit itself if she just got a pin or something else more permanent to keep it from slipping through the day playing with Elizabeth. And besides that, maids have seen way more harrowing things than their female coworker in a towel. Even if her replacement happened to be in her neck of the penthouse, it wouldn't be a problem.
She did make extra sure her feet were dry before leaving the room, though. Even if it wasn't her responsibility right now, she couldn't bear tracking wet footprints across floors as expensive as these. Or the rug she'd grown fond of.
She stretched, popping her back a bit, as she made her way across the still quiet penthouse. Dawn colored the front room an apricot pink as the sun finally began to shake off its night-time grogginess, and she took a moment to appreciate the rare view. Normally when she showed up here, it was long after the owner had gone off to work - and thus, naturally past sunrise.
"What a waste, having the couch pointed away from the window."
The rattling of the front door cut through her thoughts, and she spun on her heel, hand immediately going to her chest. 'No, I'm not wandering your penthouse naked. That's not what I do normally. Normal people don't do that, and I am a normal person. You don't have secret cameras set up so you could plan this, right?' No, strike that. That last bit didn't need to be there if the owner of--
Oh.
A young brunette popped her head into the penthouse - gaze quickly scanning for the owner, likely, before falling on her. "Oh! Hey." It was Mina. One of the more seasoned workers in the definitely-not-a-company she, an independent contractor, definitely didn't work for.
Early maid service and two? Now, come on. Just what did that Mr. Han think of her?!
"Are you training the other girl? She got here about an hour ago." Admittedly, if the girl still hadn't left that bedroom after an hour, she probably needed the training. Were she actually working on a timer, that kind of a slow pace wouldn't work out for her at all.
Mina frowned in confusion, lips pursed. "Other girl? I wasn't told about anyone like that."
Wait...
what?
Mina didn't seem to be joking, looking genuinely bewildered. But there was definitely a girl who came in earlier. And that girl definitely hadn't left the master bedroom yet.
Cold dread seeped through the pleasant warmth left from the shower's magical watery fingers. No sounds came from that room. That room which had a whole treasury of valuables not all that well hidden away and a safe with...who-knew-what in it. She broke out into a run - a mad dash - toward the bedroom.
Okay, so in fairness, she was taking care of the cat, not the family jewels or whatever he stored away in there. But she sure as hell wouldn't be getting a positive recc for her next job if she let her boss get robbed while she was right there. Even if the jewel thief probably wouldn't do anything to Elizabeth.
She crashed through the bedroom door, skidding on the floor.
The maid froze, sitting on her knees on the bed. Biting Elizabeth's ear.
really?
Adrenaline pumped harder than her heart in her ears. It was, maybe, a calculated risk to take, but...she charged.
"Oh no!"  The 'maid' shrieked and, fortunately, dropped the cat (who skittered immediately off of the bed and away from her attacker) a few moments before her body collided with the bespectacled cat-napper. For a few moments, the world blurred. Blonde hair flew through the air, limbs tangled and spun, and she landed quite unpleasantly on the cold, hard floor of the bedroom. With another spectacular crash.
All the pains that the shower had hushed away rose up in a familiar, angry chorus.
The 'maid', now bereft of her blonde wig and with her (actually now that she thought about it, totally out of place) dress askew, was very clearly that same red-haired man from before. The very reason she was so sore now. Again. The hands at his arms gripped with renewed strength. And a bit of anger.
"You."
He blinked down at her a moment, as if he didn't actually recognize her - a fact she'd be less offended by if she weren't currently in pain and being crushed by his bony knee and arm right then - before his eyes widened. "Ninja maid! I didn't recognize you without any clothes on!"
A man in a disguise had no place to say something like that.
Also....right. She did forget about the towel thing there in the heat of the moment. The reminder caused her cheeks to heat and more than a few indignant squawks to escape her throat.
"Hey...don't take this the wrong way, but--" His hand snapped down to yank at her carefully tied knot, undoing the precariously positioned towel. Instinctively, her hands flew up to the knot.
Clearly according to plan, the man immediately took advantage of his new freedom by shooting off of her...and in the direction the cat had run off toward.
Sly.
Very sly.
As incompetent as he appeared to be at first glance (and...second), he'd come up with a strategy pretty quickly there, leaving a poor, innocent girl like her to choose between preserving her modesty and preserving the source of her money.
Honestly, it wasn't even a choice.
The wet towel wrapped around his ankle in a way she wanted to attribute to watching many a martial arts movie to, but was probably just blind luck. The fact that it actually succeeded in causing him to crash face-first into the ground probably had more to do with his attempt to run in killer stilettos than any kind of skill on her part, though.
As if she'd let a little thing like modesty stand in the way of her and another day with that shower.
She felt pretty awesome though, standing over his sprawled out form, gripping the twisted towel in both of her hands. Sort of like the ninja maid he'd characterized her as. For all of two seconds, before she remembered the nakedness. True, his face hadn't even attempted to move from staring at the immaculate floorboards underneath him, but even if Mina hadn't run out of the penthouse from the first scream (she definitely had), a situation like this could turn sour really, really quickly.
"If you even try to look, I'll tie you down and choke you to death on Elizabeth's stray hairs."
...Okay...so mental note: don't go with the first threat that comes to mind in the future.
"I-I mean, that isn't really a dealbreaker, but I won't move!" He honestly sounded a little condescending that time. Which was impressive, with his face pressed into the ground and his maid dress shucked up to show off...space shuttle underwear. "I'm not a pervert!"
"...Right."
"That's hurtful."
All of her clothes were on the other side of the building. Any attempt to get them would just mean his escape, but if she stayed put, even if Mina did call the security guards...she'd be the talk of the entire complex, being caught naked in the owner's bedroom, pinning down a man in a maid dress with her foot.
She sighed, releasing one end of the towel. Her foot remained planted very firmly on the back of his head, though, so if he tried anything...at least she'd break his glasses in the process of being bowled over. Given that he'd dressed kind of like a hobo last time she'd seen him, that might mean he couldn't afford just to replace them casually enough to try anything under those circumstances.
Anyway, she quickly redid the knot on the towel, and moved back a step, just to keep any wayward glances away. "If you go for the cat again, I know exactly where the taser is in this room, and I will not turn it off until the guards arrive." There. Better.
"...Geez. I didn't expect the villain to hire a prison guard for Elly while he was gone." He said that to the floor. Apparently he was still taking her earlier threat seriously? Or maybe he just wanted to stay put.
She walked around him, so that if he did try to make another dash after all he'd have to get through her first, and squatted--no, knelt. Must be mindful. She knelt down in front of him, watching him with an incredulous look. "You know that you can just buy your own cat, right?"
"ELLY ISN'T JUST ANY CAT!" His face shot up - as if he just knew it was safe to do so then. Or he was so passionate about the damn cat that he didn't mind risking his own death. "WHAT WE HAVE IS SOMETHING SPECIAL. I can't just replace her like that! And also, I'm not allowed to own a cat."
"I wonder why."
Okay, but really. Elizabeth the 3rd was a beautiful, friendly cat with an uncanny intelligence and a secret sadistic streak both wide and deep enough to drown a man in. But two men both seemed convinced she was literally a princess. In their own...special...ways. What she wouldn't give to have a couple of (moderately attractive, if she had to admit it) men so obsessed with her.
His lips pressed into a frown as he pushed himself up from the floor, mimicking her position. She tensed, ready to move if he sprung into action again. "It's not fair if he went and left her with a protector."
She squinted at him. "'Protector'? Didn't you say something about saving her?"
He pushed up his glasses, the lenses reflecting the dim light of the room, from where dawn filtered in through the open door. "Of course! I'm Hero Seven! Here to liberate the fair princess Elly from her evil captor." He leaned in a bit and winked. "You're the stoic but wily guard determined to keep her captive while the overlord is away."
"...So you're a crazy person."
He clutched his chest over the crumpled dress. "Ow."
She sighed and stood up, crossing her arms. "Look here, 'Hero'. This gig is really, really well paying, so I don't care if you're actually this eccentric owner's friend somehow. If you go for that cat one more time this weekend, I'm calling the cops and you can stay in jail until he comes home and bails you out."
He winced. "So harsh. Is the money truly worth such cruel behavior towa--"
"The only cruelty is your animal cruelty."
"Your words hurt more than your ninja attacks!"
"Anyway." She waved her hand, just...cutting through that nonsense. "You probably spooked Mina so hard she ran away and didn't call anyone. Since I now have to do a bunch of cleaning instead of her - that I'm not getting paid for - I don't have time to deal with the guards or calling up Mr. Han to explain to him that you broke in again. Get out of here and don't come back while I'm here and I'll let this one go."
He shot up, hands reaching for her shoulders. For just a moment, her heart skipped a beat in panic, hands moving up to grip his wrists in defense. Instead of some kind of crazed or aggressive expression, though, what looked disturbingly like genuine tears shone in his eyes. "Ah! So you are a ninja with a heart! I owe you my life! As will Princess Elly, one day!"
He provided her no opportunity to respond, turning and sprinting out of the room. Only the fact that he glanced over his shoulder, waved and gave a little "Another time~!" kept her from chasing after him - just in case.
The door slammed shut a few moments later, and a slightly frazzled cat peeked her head into the doorway.
She planted one hand on her hip, and with the other she pointed as sternly as she could manage down at the little terror. "....You're going to get me killed, aren't you?"
Elizabeth mewed.
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neshabeingchildish · 5 years
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Lady and the Tramp
I do not know why the chapters of this story suddenly got so long! I’ve just been unable to stop writing lately. Stress writing, mostly, which I hate to do because sometimes, that can send the story off track. Of course, it can also ignite some of my greatest ideas. Unfortunately, I never know until after y’all tell me what my stress writing came through with. 😭 At any rate, I definitely will cover the conversation later. I didn’t have the place in this chapter to do so. Your reviews are keeping me sane.
Lady and the Tramp
After the sophomore summer, Charlotte knew that she wasn’t going to be able to make anymore trips home. The amount of lab work that she would be doing, the conferences and a lot of the other workshops and stuff she had to do would pull most of her time and being Jasper’s #1 Fan would take the rest. He had several competitions, matches, and games. She was skipping every boxing match, because she didn’t want him doing it in the first place and had even told him that he should go back to kite disc, but without him, the school’s team dissipated and he didn’t have the time to commit to the league again. 
Whenever it was Dodge-a-leen time, though, Charlotte was in the stands in brightly colored high waisted leggings with a Big Dog T-shirt, tied up in the back, and dog makeup on her face. She could do that deep voice barking that the fans often did, but she gave it a shot. With her tiny voice, it always stood out and everybody began calling her “Little Dog,” which Jasper loved, because that was his girl. She… had mixed feelings about it. She didn’t know that she cared for the nickname “Big Dog.” Henry used to call him that sometimes, but this was different. This nickname had come about from something that she still found embarrassing, though Jasper never had taken it as such. And also, she felt like Little Dog was a hop, skip and jump from being his bitch, and well… She guessed as long as nobody ever said THAT, she was fine. 
Besides, he still called her Chef’s Kiss and she now called him F Sized. She didn’t explain it to other people, as it started out as a little inside joke during one of her sexy study sessions with Jasper. He couldn’t get the answers right, therefore wasn’t allowed to touch the parts. That was how it worked. A was her backside, B was her chest, C was down there, and D - he was able to take her hand and put on his down there. But, if he wasn’t getting the answers correct, there wasn’t touching. She moved or stopped his hand if it was going to the wrong spot. He was struggling with the mock test and began grumbling about how he’d “cockblocked himself with stupidity.” 
While stupidity definitely was a turn off, Charlotte hadn’t viewed Jasper as stupid in a long time and she certainly hadn’t called him that ever since finding out that his stepdad did. Whenever he called himself that, she verbally redirected him. This particular study session, he said, “I have a humongous head with a stupid tiny brain in it.”
“You’re not stupid and if you were, your brain wouldn’t be smaller.”
“It is though. You know brains develop differently when kids have trauma, remember?”
“Yeah, but…” She fumbled over her words and managed to say, “I love your fun sized brain!” He loved that compliment. Fun Sized Brain was his new handle on Twitflash because of it.
“I appreciate that you said fun sized, because that is actually exactly what I think of your cute little body as!” She frowned. He smiled and explained, “Because you’re petite.”
“I got it.”
“You have a full sized heart, though!”
She smiled and shook her head, “See, I would have called yours friend sized, but I dig that full sized still fits the alliteration scheme.” 
He took her hand and placed it on himself, “Mm hmm, and what is this sized?”
“Fuck sized,” she said, without a pause and they both started laughing. “By the way, the answer is D, so I’ll count that as correct.”
“I don’t remember the question…” 
The only person she told the meaning of Jasper’s  F Sized nickname was Henry, and she’d said, “Because his brain is fun sized, his heart is friend sized and his manhood is fu…”
“Let me stop you there, Champ,” he said, laughing and shaking his head. “I’m glad that you two fixed everything. You’re not worried that it might go off track again?”
“No, we’ve done a lot of work together to make sure that we’re actually on the same page and have the same goals for us. PLUS, I got us affirmation journals. We decorated each other’s and we keep them, filling them up with greatness as we see it - like the good things we notice about each other, the positives that we see and the accomplishments made by one another. If we have negative times, one can invoke the affirmation journal and either read in it to reaffirm ourselves OR, if we’re that much in our feelings, the one of us that hurt the other will read affirmations to the hurt party. We haven’t had to use them… much, and we’ve both written a whole lot inside of them.”
“So, you two just carry around paper books and write every good thing in it that you can think about each other, so that if you argue, you’ll have the positives on record already to counter the bad feelings?”
“Bingo!”
“That’s… brilliant. Your idea?”
“Sort of. It was my idea to make it into this type of practice, but that was motivated by how Jasper got me not to break up with him. He let me see his life goals journal and I saw these really beautiful things that he’d written about me and it changed my heart. So, I thought of this idea for us to make a part of our love culture.”
“This is so stinkin’ cute. I can’t even bear it!” Henry said with heart eyes. “Ugh. I gotta find myself a lil’ nerd girl.”
“Find a lovable jock,” she advised.
“Jasper’s considered a jock, now?”
“I mean… he’s involved in the athletics program. Let me show you something, I think you’ll appreciate this..”  She dug around for a book then showed it to the video call she had open with Henry. It was a red leather bound book with various rocks attached to it, kinda like it was bedazzled, but not with sparkly rocks, and the title was scripted on in some of Charlotte’s nice scripting: Jasffirmation Journal. 
Henry gasped, “You did a fun pun!” “I did!” she cheered. 
“That’s a nice journal. What are all those rocks?”
“Those are various forms of jasper that I procured myself on an excavation assignment.”
“You’re freakin’ awesome, Char.”
“I definitely agree with that, but thank you!” 
“I gotta see what his looks like,” Henry said and texted Jasper to ask him to send him a pic of the affirmation journal he kept for Char. Within minutes, he received it. “OH MY GOD!” Henry said. Charlotte just smiled as Henry fawned over the realistic sketch of Charlotte with stars in her hair and coils that spelled: I’m Charstruck. “He did a fun pun too!”
“We worked with you and Ray for way too long,” she said. 
“You’re welcome,” he said, putting his phone aside. “Man, Jasper’s drawing is amazing. Is he taking art classes?”
“No. He’s a tattoo artist, though. Remember?”
“OH! He finished his apprenticeship. That’s cool. Will tattoos money put him through school?”
“One of his accounting major frat bros has helped him with his budget, which I used to do but hadn’t had the time to try to reorganize it, so this guy did. Jasper gets some funds from his fanbase, and he gets free stuff from local businesses and companies - like he’s got all this merch that he basically is a walking ad for and I keep telling him to see about talking to someone about sponsorship, but he’s just happy to get free stuff just for being popular and likable. I’m like, you can get paid to get free stuff for the same thing, Dude! So, he is doing just fine.”
“Does he have any tattoos? I’m not gonna get a tattoo from somebody who doesn’t have a tattoo, just on principle.”
“He’s got a few little ones,” she said.
“Really? What of?”
She smiled and sent Henry texts. She had photos of Jasper’s tats. The one on his arm, which was a blend of a lion and a bull with touching faces (because those were the animals of their zodiac signs and he’d designed the drawing), a Captain Man symbol on his left wrist, small enough to cover with a watch, if he had to for work or something, and the back shoulder that had Lady and the Tramp characters. “Dude… what?” Henry said, “Two of these are kind of big and why in the world did he get Lady and the Tramp tattooed on his body? Does Jasper realize that these are permanent?” “Yes, he does. He’s not an idiot. He got Lady and the Tramp because of the whole Big Dog, Little Dog thing. Lady and the Tramp is us.” She blushed.
“Awwww, well then it’s cute. I thought that he just liked the cartoon or something.” It’s shocking that he doesn’t have your name or something on him.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Does he and you just didn’t show me?”
“No. But… he’s mentioned wanting to get a tattoo of me over his heart. I don’t know how he can. His chest is an erogenous zone for him.”
“His… OK! That makes all those hickies on his chest make more sense now!”
“Those what?” Her eyes were wide. How the heck did Henry know that she’d put hickies on Jasper’s chest? They DID discuss their sex life!
“I saw hickies all over him one time, senior week and he wouldn’t say anything about it to me. And scratches on his back. Is his back an erogenous zone too?”
“No. I just used to have a real problem keeping control of myself when I was finishing. But, he actually likes that kind of stuff, so win-win, I guess. Why are we so casually discussing this?” she wondered.
“We’re friends and it’s normal.” She nodded. She hadn’t really thought to discuss stuff like this before outside of Jasper, but it came out surprisingly smoothly when talking to Henry. She was able to talk a little more about things with him. But, they wouldn’t be able to see each other in person for a while. Their schedules were simply too demanding. She hated it, but it was one of the things that she’d mentally prepared for whenever she first left home.
.
Women make up 56% of the college population. 25% of college seniors are virgins. 32.5% of college relationships are long distance. 1 in 4 college students have an STD. 63% of college women hope to meet their spouse in college. By senior year, 72% of college students have hooked up. ⅓ college students have been on fewer than 2 dates. Quick Facts: One of the top reasons college students break up is cheating. College students prefer short-term, casual relationships over long-term relationships because it allows them to focus on their academic and career goals. Most college couples break up around spring break, summer vacation, and right before winter break. 28 % of married college graduates attended the same school, but only 2% of North American marriages are comprised of high school sweethearts.
With numbers like that, it was really easy for me to believe that with Jasper’s personality and follow through that we couldn’t possibly be a part of that 2%. And even if we had been, what about those other stats? How much of it would be applicable. Wouldn’t one of us hook up with someone? Wouldn’t someone cheat? Wouldn’t we break up? For a first time relationship to be the last one that you’ll ever have, these possibilities become more or less likely dependent upon what stage in the relationship I was in. It was a fluctuating scale, to be honest. But, by junior year, I definitely felt like I was in a confident place.
Jasper makes me proud, all of the time, His thinking has become much more critical. His plans make more sense. His ability to manage his time has improved. He’s been calling himself a “Textbook Leo,” which has been annoying, because the traits that you didn’t see before, it’s like he tries to make sure that he has them now. That’s fine for some things. Silly for others. But, he’s very focused and he’s going to be a very accomplished man. I believe that with all of my heart. 
One of the last times that Henry was able to visit was whenever Charlotte first moved into her new apartment after Rush Week. Jasper helped her to pack, but got the pledges to move all of her things. The apartment that she found was closer to Jasper, in a nice sized townhouse style apartment within walking distance of the frat house, but of course, the guys had to go to another side of town to grab her things from her previous dormitory. Jasper’s little brother was responsible for overseeing - making sure nobody damaged or tried to steal anything, holding on to the keys of her dorm, and personally handing them to her after her things were cleared out and he’d locked up. Charlotte liked him. She was the reason that Jasper had selected him and he was closer to her than to Jasper, but only because it was hard to get close to Jasper, especially now that he believed himself to be a king.
Henry helped Charlotte to unpack, wishing that he still had that hypermotility. Dang, that would have made this a breeze. Charlotte had a lot of stuff and she was very particular with how she set things up. One area that he was intrigued by looked like a shrine of sorts, with a shelf in the middle, and she hung a photo of her and Jasper above it. “What is that?” 
“My gift center,” she said, setting things there from a box marked Gifts From Jasper. “I keep stuff that Jasper gives me in an exposed and visible area. It helps the room to have a good attitude.” He made a confused face, but didn’t want to even ask. “I can feel the energy in these gifts, because I know the motivations and the emotions behind them,” she explained.
“You becoming all metaphysical on me?”
“Not all, but I definitely feel like… energy is something that can be manipulated by certain objects and intentions. Like, you ever meet someone and you can just feel that something is off about them? That’s how I was with Casper and I was absolutely correct about her, even though for a whole year she was nothing but pleasant to me, I knew that there was some negative vibrations there.”
“You do like tarot cards and stuff?” He asked.
“No. I don’t know enough about that area of spirituality and I honestly don’t feel like committing the time to learn.”
“Dang. I was gonna ask you to do a reading for me,” Henry joked.
“We can go to one. There’s a girl in the BSU that does them. I feel like she’s the real deal. She grew up in Louisiana in this matriarchal witch family. Though… I don’t know if witch is the right word. I can’t remember what she said. Jasper might, though. He’s fascinated by that stuff. They have an entire segment on the radio show for African spirituality and diaspora practices.”
“I… we should get a reading, just as a gag.”
“You don’t do it as a gag!” She complained, shaking her head. 
“Okay, we can do it for real, then.”
“Well, I’ll have to see if she’s available. She has an online business, where she prepares spells and herbal roots and oils and jewelry and stuff. I’ll check her prices for the readings.” She grabbed her phone and Henry kept unpacking. They were bringing the empty, broken down boxes to the recycling bin whenever Jasper’s truck pulled up. They heard him before they saw him. The truck was always so loud, but it was old and cheap, so that was why he had it. He didn’t want to spend a lot of money on something that he only planned on driving for now. Charlotte began buying her reliable but affordable car in high school. She made regular payments on it to try to help build her credit and by the time she was ready to leave for college, it was paid off. It was a metallic gold hatchback and had horse decals on it. Jasper’s big orange truck had all kinds of bumper stickers and window stickers that he’d peppered it with. Henry turned up his nose, “Why is it orange?”
“That was the cheapest thing that he could find when he was looking, and he loves it. He says that he’s always gonna have orange vehicles, now.”
“WHY?”
“Probab;y because he’s an attention whore,” she said. 
Jasper had a pretty booming speaker system in the truck and was blasting music, because that helped him not to hear the troubling sounds that the truck made. He turned off the car and got out with a little box, “Hey, Henry!” he said and waved at him. “Chef’s Kiss…” He slid the box to Henry and wrapped his arms around Charlotte. “Did New Henry give you your keys?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Did who?” Henry asked.
“His little brother,” Charlotte said.
“His name is Henry too?” Henry asked.
“No,” Charlotte said, but left it at that and asked, “What’s that?”
“A homewarming present,” Jasper said and took the box back. It made tiny whimper sounds and she noticed it had holes in it. 
“Housewarming, and Jasper, is that a living creature?”
“You don’t have a house. You have an apartment, and no..” he opened the box and said, “It’s TWO living creatures!” She looked to see two very adorable puppies with collars and tags… “Lady and the Tramp!” 
“Wow. All I got you was a cake.”
“I prefer cake,” she said, then to Jasper, “Jasper, you cannot just give people responsibilities as a housewarming gift! I don’t have time to raise two dogs!”
“I’ll be here like everyday. All you’ll need to do is be happy to see them when you get home.” She bit her thumbnail and stared at him, displeased. That was what that face was. He knew that much. He handed the puppy box to Henry again, pulled out his life goals journal, unlocked it and made an X on the list, which made Charlotte smile, in spite of herself. “I am willing to take on all of the responsibilities parts of them. I’ll make sure they’re fed and clean and…”
“You need to make sure that they know how to use the bathroom before they are moving in here, Dude. I’m not cleaning up dog poo from any surface of my new apartment.”
“That’s fair,” he said. Henry was already petting the boxed puppies and taking photos when Jasper reached for the box. “I’m gonna let them run around in the back of the truck while I’m here. That’s where I got the dog house, anyway.”
“The…” Charlotte looked and saw the doghouse that she didn’t know where the heck he thought that he was putting in her apartment. She turned around and went into the apartment, leaving both dudes and both dogs outside.
“I didn’t get a chance to tell her that they’re both girls because I couldn’t find a male Schnauzer for Tramp. I don’t think she’ll like me naming a girl Tramp, but it’s symbolic.”
“I don’t think that Charlotte likes animals,” Henry said, climbing into the back of Jasper’s truck. “And, she seems more like a cat person, right?”
“She just doesn’t have the time to raise them, but she’s gonna love Lady and the Tramp, once they’re ready to be civilized.”
“She didn’t love Katelyn. She barely acknowledged that she was alive and Katelyn was effing adorable.”
“She took care of Katelyn all of the time! You just weren’t there to see it,” Jasper fussed.
“Why are you getting pissed?��
“I’m not. I’m just irritated that you’re acting like you still know her better than I do.”
“That’s not what I’m… I’m sorry. How are you doing? What season is it for your sports?”
“Wrestling season is October until March. Boxing events usually begin in March. I have Dodge-a-leen practices all year, but tournaments are late spring, usually. Thinking about reviving kite disc for good on campus and just having it be among frats and stuff. I miss it, but I had to give it up. I’d give up anything for Charlotte.”
“Is… that why you felt like you had to give me up?” Henry asked. Jasper gave him a look. “I just felt like we could all still be friends. Whenever you left for college, you were really on this ‘of course we’ll still be friends’ thing, but we haven’t talked out what happened.”
“What’s there to talk out? I apologized and you said, NBD.”
“I said NBD because you apologized, but that doesn’t mean it was resolved. Especially because you told me that I never reached out to you, then when I did, you weren’t available,”
“So, I was supposed to wait for you to decide that you had some need for me? I have things to do, too. Maybe I’m not saving Swellview, but I’m not sitting around waiting to mean something to you, either.”
Henry set The Tramp down and clasped his hands together, “I’m still the same dude who was willing to give up Kid Danger for you. I’m still the same person who took on a full shift at Cactus Con so you could be on a date! I’m still…”
“You’re still the dude who was having wet dreams about my girlfriend right before we got together and acted like I was being an asshole for not wanting you to sleep in the same bed anymore!”
“Okay. Okay. Well, I apologize for making you feel uncomfortable…” 
“Being friends means respecting boundaries. This is the woman that I plan to marry. Your friendship makes me uncomfortable, but that’s not why you and me fell out. You and me fell out because whenever I expressed to you how I felt about it, you talked to me like I was a dumbass, and you accused me of mistreating Charlotte!”
“You were mistreating Charlotte!”
“That wasn’t the way to say it! When I’m trying to tell you what I don’t like or don’t want to happen and you respond that way, it makes me feel like not only did you not care about my boundaries, but you used her pain to try to attack me because you didn’t like me setting those boundaries! And… That’s just fucked up to do to both of us, yet I’m the only person who apologized for my behavior that night. I’ve been apologizing to people for standing up for myself for too long. I know myself better and I deserved better.”
Henry nodded his head and collected Lady to pet her and help him feel better. “That is a lot to process. That makes sense. I think you’re right and I never realized any of that before now, because we didn’t talk about it. But, no matter what kind of dreams I had about Charlotte years ago, mind you… I’d never try to do anything with her and even if I had, she’d shoot me down and probably clobber me. She’s been dickmatized by you since Day 1.”
“I don’t like…”
“I mean, she’s been enamoured with you. Most of the time we talk, it’s about your relationship and how much she loves you. I envy that and I would love to have that with someone, but that someone would never even cross my mind to be Charlotte. And I will sleep in my van before I make you feel that uncomfortable again, or before I won’t hear you out when you’re telling me about boundaries, or before I go without just kickin’ it with my bro for all this time. I’ve got an empty spot where you’re supposed to be, in here, Dude.” He pointed all of his fingers to his heart.
Jasper smiled and said, “You know how she got into her whole energy/vibrations thing? She was researching what Jasper meant, because she had this idea to gift me some Jasper stones and she wanted to know more about them. So, she read somewhere that Jasper is the “Supreme Nurturer,” a stone of grounding and stability, providing comfort and security, strength and healing. Its presence balances the aura to a level of wholeness and peace, and acts as a reminder that one is not here on the physical plane simply for oneself, but to bring joy and substance to others… and she said, “Babe… That is SO you!” And I cried and I started looking for the perfect ring… and she started looking into stones and energy and all that stuff.”
“She’s right, though, That is so you. Why do you think I miss you so much?”
“I missed you too.. I just couldn’t let go of my pride until you seemed like you really cared about what I was trying to tell you that I cared about.” They smiled at each other, then hugged it out.
“So… Did you find it? The perfect ring?”
“No. I think I may have to have it made.”
“Does she know that you’re looking?”
“I haven’t confirmed anything, but she’s the smartest person I know, so maybe.”
“Well, I won’t say anything, but damn it, I’d better be included on however it happens… Unless it's a private just you and her typed thing.”
“I’m trying to find the perfect way too…” Jasper admitted. “When you’ve been doing great things for somebody for a while, it’s hard to outdo yourself.”
“Yeah, the stuff that she brags on you about, I honestly don’t know how you can possibly top them, but you keep doing so, so…” Henry shrugged and sniffed around, “What is…”
“LADY!” Jasper said and Henry looked down at the puppy who peed on him. 
“That’s awesome…” he said, sarcastically.
.
It was good for Jasper to have Henry back, The dynamics of their friendship had definitely changed, as Jasper was less determined to lay himself down for Henry, but he still loved him and having him and Charlotte around when it was time to meet his dad was encouraging. It was a 4 hour drive, so Charlotte drove the way to get to Henry and then Henry drove the rest of the way to Mr. Dunlop’s place. 
Whenever they pulled into the address that had been given to Jasper online, the first thing that Jasper did was take the dogs to make waste. Henry and Charlotte were going to take them for a walk while he met up with his dad and not be too far away, in case he had to call on them. 
Charlotte was carrying Lady because, “She gets excited and runs off too much,” but, they both had leashes, so Henry was confused, but didn’t bother. 
Charlotte kept looking at the house, no matter how far they got from it and checking her phone. Henry realized that she probably was in protective mode. Whenever she thought her Jasper was in trouble, she was one feisty little woman. “Hey! Remember that time that Ray punched Jasper out and you came in and on sight, beat him up with your backpack?” She gave him a blank stare, unsure of why he was bringing that up. He smiled awkwardly. “That was funny to me… Albeit, terrifying.” He shut up.
“Trample, where you goin,’ Sis?” Charlotte said and Tramp turned around and came rushing back to her. “Here,” He said, handing Lady off to Henry. 
“Last time I held her, she peed on me.”
“Dude, that was months ago.” Charlotte said, dismissively and picked up Tramp. 
“They can walk and we have leashes, why do you keep holding them?” He asked.
“The musty lady in the apartments let her dogs free run beside her and one of them got hit by the public bus!” Henry gasped in horror and cuddled Lady close to himself. “Yeah. That public bus near the apartments is scary. I don’t want them to get used to just running around, unless I live somewhere with an open area and minimal vehicles. A college town is kind busy for that.”
He nodded, “Okay, okay… But… We’re not in town right now and I haven’t seen any vehicles since we got here. Let’s just let them use these for now and if something happens, we pick them back up.” She nodded and let him put the leashes on the girls and walk them. “Are you worried about Jasper, Dude?” Whenever she was worried, she was a little more high strung. She nodded. “His dad seems like he wanted to meet him. I think it’s probably going well.”
“Yeah, but… Jasper just got to where he’s able to balance his issues out with his current situation and I just don’t want anybody shaking him up and throwing him off of his center.”
“That’s not gonna happen as long as he has you. From how I understand it, you’re his center.” She took a deep breath and looked at the house again. “Let’s go back and see if we can check on him,” Henry suggested. 
A dark skinned woman with a huge afro, in draping, colorful clothes and a lot of jewelry opened the door and smiled at them. Charlotte and Henry glanced at their car in the driveway, then the house, then the woman. Charlotte asked, “Is… Is Jasper Dunlop here?”
“Yeah, he’s here.” She said and opened up to let them inside. “They’re in the meditation room. Mind taking off your shoes? Also, we’ll bring the dogs out back. It’s fenced in and covered. Hawks won’t get to them.”
“Hawks???” Charlotte shrieked. 
“Hawks WON’T get to them,” Henry repeated. “Thank you,” he said. “She’s kind of an anxiety mom.”
The Black woman said, “Well, I can make you some relaxation tea. It was helpful for Jasper. Passionflower with a little lavender and chamomile. You’ll calm down and also sleep like a baby tonight.”
“I… Are you a witch?” Charlotte asked.
“You can say that. I’m a healer, a practitioner of Hoodoo herbalism, tribal holistic care and divination.”
“Oh! Like your friend from Louisiana,” Henry said to Charlotte.
“They have a deep history with spirituality and healing in Louisiana, but I’m from Oklahoma. Descendant of African slaves and Native American slave owners, if you can believe it.While we were recently expelled from tribes as members, you can’t illegalize blood, therefore the magic of all of my ancestors is within me,” the woman said, nodding her head as she released the dogs from their leashes and helped them through a doggie door. “I began to seek out the meanings of my dreams and found a mambo who connected me to my roots. I began practicing, only first to see if I really had a gift, then years later, as a believer. It’s how I met Jack Leigh. He wanted help from some things and a friend told him about me. But, then he saw me and forgot what he wanted help with and asked me on a date, instead.” She laughed.
“I can see why,” Henry said. 
Charlotte mumbled, “I can see why Jasper’s mom hates me.”
The woman shook her head, “Is there anybody that woman doesn’t hate?”
“Herself?” Henry tried to guess.
“I wish that were true. That’s where she has to begin her healing and until she does, none of her intentions will be corrected.”
“Are you Jack Leigh’s wife?” Henry wondered.
“I am so sorry! I never introduced myself. Adanna Blackfoot.” She shook both their hands and led them to a sink in the little side area of the kitchen that looked out into the backyard. Charlotte could see the doggie enclosure. There were all kinds of plants and flowers growing on the fence surrounding them. The three of them washed their hands and talked a little while. Charlotte was fascinated with Jasper’s stepmom, though she said she didn’t feel that was a fair title, because she only knew Jasper from afar and word of mouth. But, Charlotte still wished THIS was the woman who’d raised her man. He’d be so much more in love with himself, and not just faking it. They eventually made it to the meditation room and Jasper was happy to see them. “Sorry, was I taking too long?”
Charlotte met him with a hug and a kiss, “I was worried about you, but Adanna eased my mind.”
“She and Uncle Rox would be great friends,” Jasper said.
“Uncle Rocks?” Jack Leigh repeated, confused, because Jasper didn’t have any uncles by that name.
“My uncle Roscoe,” Charlotte said.
“Roscoe Bolton?” Jack Leigh asked. From their faces, he could tell that was who they meant. “Wait a minute… You mean to tell me that your fiance is The Bolt’s niece?”
“Uncle Rox just became infinitely cooler because he is known as The Bolt. Say more, right now!” Jasper said, excitedly. Charlotte was more on the we all just glazed by that F word, huh? 
“Hell, The Bolt introduced me and Adanna! What’s he up to? I haven’t heard from that fool in years.”
“Still a fool,” Charlotte and Henry said, but Jasper had said, “He’s the best!” Charlotte looked at Henry and said softly, “So… did you hear him say…”
“Yeah, I did.”
“Okay. Tell me something,” she said and laughed a little. Fiancee? Was that how Jasper had described her? Because… YEAH - they most definitely were most likely gonna get married. She certainly hoped so, but they hadn’t discussed it in a solid form yet. It was more like how kids discussed graduation… an event that you look forward to and you know it’s happening and even have certain elements and dreams about it that you must include. But, not knowing what college you’d attend, what your GPA will be, what major you would choose. It was like, sure marriage was a real possibility, but it wasn’t something he’d asked her to do or something she had started preparing for - things that she associated with being a fiancee… Everybody was looking at her and she rewinded her mind a little to try to recall what they’d said in the background while she was in her thoughts. Think he’d mind if I got his contact info? “Uh, no. I’ll give him a call and verify, though…”
“Small world,” Henry said.
“It’s a huge world, but everything is definitely connected,” Adanna said, pouring the new brew of tea for the additional guests.
.
At some point, after a lot of laughter and stuff, Henry said, “Hey… Adanna, do you do like readings?”
“Not professionally,” she said. “I’ve limited it to friends and family, loved ones, for personal reasons.”
“Oh,” he said, sadly. “Char and I have been trying to make an appointment with her friend, but our schedules never line up with her available spots.”
“Well, for the two of you, of course, I would.” She said and smiled, getting up to retrieve her cards. Charlotte was staring at Jasper, still thinking about the F word and wondering what happened before they made it in. He’d definitely been crying at some point. He had his ‘crying bags’ under his eyes. He was in good spirits now, but she wanted to know what went on when she wasn’t there to protect and comfort him. He looked back at her and made a confused face. He was wondering what she was thinking about. She mouthed ‘I love you,’ to him and watched the smile on his face beam. “I’m so lucky,” he said out loud. Jack Leigh smiled at the two of them. Beautiful couple. Wonderful boy. He’d really messed up missing out on shaping him.
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fantroll-purgatory · 6 years
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Lalnah Dearth - Hopeless Romantic
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@chaoticevilfantrolls
(Breaking the streak of Teals I had going, here’s my Main Boy)
I gotta say, you’ve hit another one out of the park. I really love this boy from the get-go.
Planet: Alternia. Same AU as Lycosa and Vapula (age of conscription is 10 sweeps, minor social changes, etc.)
Name:Lalnah Dearth
Lalnah: Comes from Lana or Svetlana, a name which typically means Light, or Gift to the World, depending on the source. Also, in a more blunt and lowbrow manner, it’s a pun on ‘lol, no’.
Dearth: Meaning ‘a lack of’. A lack of light, of prospects, and of hope. It primarily ties into his dreary nature, and the fact that he is meant to be a void player at his core.
I’m tempted not to use Dearth if only because it Is straight up a highly recognizable word. I like it a lot thematically, though. Hrm… Maybe if we just translate it? Duurte, meaning dearth, scarcity… Lalnah Duurte. 
I do have to point out here that void isn’t about a lack of prospects or hope so much as an empty space… which I do really like for him. It’s the unexplored, the unknown, the blank canvas, the vastness, the beginning, that which isn’t but can become… Which can be really overwhelming and oppressing and lonely. But it’s not hopeless, even if it can feel that way in the beginning. Which I think ties beautifully into the title ideas you discussed, but we’ll get to that at the appropriate time.
Age:Typically 9-12 sweeps. He’s a little older than the rest of his friend group.
Strife Specibus: shotgunKind. It’s a reference to the original instance of Chekhov’s Gun, in which a shotgun over the mantle piece, mentioned off-hand in one of the earlier chapters of a story, was used as a murder weapon in the climax. It’s an important literary concept (not adding superfluous details unless they become relevant later), which ties into his writing theme as well as his plotline in the session he’s from.
I Love That Thanks. I was going to make a pen/sword joke here but I can’t when the Chekhov’s Gun reference is already perfect.
Fetch Modus:Hangman Modus. Lalnah needs to play hangman to retrieve the item from his sylladex. The phrase or word is always based on the item itself, becoming more complex the more powerful or important the item is. If he loses, the item is locked for a five hour period. 
Blood color:Burgundy. His particular brand of down-trodden resignation fits really well in the lower castes, I believe. Plus, burgundy is the name of a kind of wine, which fits extra well with his alcoholic author theme.
I definitely think so. It puts him in a really vulnerable social position that amplifies that ease of manipulation you mention later. I think it’s also an interesting assignation for an author because of the rust leaning towards adventure. I like the idea of him exploring more internally, through his art. 
Symbol and meaning:The Dele. It’s a symbol used to mark something for deletion in editing manuscripts. Primarily ties into his status as a void player, as well as his extensive writing theme. Also, when drawn a certain way, it resembles a bat.
Oh I just love this… I might have to adjust it a little to account for rust language, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
Trolltag: transientTechnicality
Transient: Something or someone who is temporary. Can be used to describe someone who is homeless or nomadic.
Technicality: A small detail in a set of rules. In Lalnah’s mind, a technicality is something that is easily overlooked, but can be used to win major battles in both law and war.
Quirk:He starts all of his statements with an arrow pointing to his words, as if drawing attention he can to what he’s saying. (->)
He capitalizes his Os, and his v’s become >’s, but otherwise types entirely in lowercase. This is primarily to show his manner of speaking (very empty and almost monotonous, with a bit of a lisp around the sound of V). He uses punctuation within statements, but does not use apostrophes or periods as ending punctuation. 
He has a tendency towards long, elaborate statements, spliced with commas and filled with florid and bloated prose. Expect a lot of ‘woe is me’ shit.
When he does use emoticons, he typically uses -w- for just about every emotion possible, using it to represent a bat’s face. Sometimes he’ll add carats before and after to represent perked ears (and curiosity), sometimes he’ll add an apostrophe as a sweat drop of exhaustion or weariness. (^-w-^ or -w-’)
“TT: -> cwm fjOrd bank glyphs >ext quiz” “TT: -> if yOu need a better translatiOn, the wOrds amOunt tO sOmething meaning, cOllOquially, symbOls car>ed On the mOuntain hOllOw irritate an eccentric” “TT: -> yOu, ah, wanted tO see every letter, thOugh… -w-”
I Adore All Of This. It’s interesting that you’ve given him the arrows drawing attention to his text when he’s themed around void/light. Maybe when he’s feeling particularly small and lacking in confidence and when he’s especially afraid of bringing attention to himself, he drops the arrows.
Special Abilities: Lalnah used to have a decent, if not exceptional, talent for photokinesis and photogenesis, which he could use to control and create light. Primarily he would use this for non-combat things like making reading lights and faerie lights or changing the intensity of light around him, although when pushed to it he would use the light to disorient foes so that he could escape. His drinking has severely dulled these powers, though, to the point he almost can’t use them at all.
Additionally, Lalnah hears the horrorterrors of the furthest ring, primarily manifesting as a dull mental static which he cannot pick out the meaning to. He hears them through his dreamself, which is sleepwalking in perpetuity, except while he himself sleeps. Because of this, he doesn’t necessarily have nightmares while he sleeps outside of sopor, and he’s more resistant to mind-control and telepathic psionics, if only for the barrier that makes it painful to dig too far into his pan. It doesn’t help much, because his timid nature makes it easy enough to control him in other, more mundane means.
Although not psychically based at all, Lalnah is also capable of using echolocation, thanks to his big ol’ sensitive batty ears. 
I love all of this, too! I keep saying that but god I really do adore all the little clever details about him. He’s so well-crafted. His photogenesis would be so handy. He could cast light however he wanted while writing a scene to better figure out how to describe it… I wonder why he started hearing the horrorterrors, though? Do they just have a particular fondness for him? Something about his aspect bleeding before the bounds of sburb and into his consciousness? 
Or did he dig a little too deep while doing some research for a book? Dip a little too much into the unknown and unlock something in himself he maybe shouldn’t have? The blankness of a page can be dangerous in that way.
Lusus: A fruit bat approximately the size of a house cat. Lalnah’s lusus is rather sickly and frail, and has been most of his life. In fact, by the time of the session, his lusus is typically dead of some illness. His lusus is a fruit bat primarily for the fact of Lalnah’s nearly vampiric appearance, the concept of being ‘blind as a bat’ (which Lalnah most certainly is), and an artifact reference to cannibalism (not nearly as relevant anymore, but Lalnah as a character is about 4 years old and I still haven’t weeded out all of the lingering teenage angst).
I do like the cannibalism reference objectively because he is, still, in some ways, self-cannibalizing. On a more emotional and identity level but still.
Personality: By all means, Lalnah is about as timid and self-pitying as a troll can get without it bordering on the obscenely pale-pornographic. He lets others speak over him, letting them form their opinions on him without so much as a whimper of protest. He has a(n earned) reputation as drunkard and a hopeless fool of a romantic, which he no longer attempts to protest. He’s been caught using his horns as a bottle opener. There’s no recovering your reputation after that.
In reality, Lalnah is incredibly talented, with strong skill in games of strategy and forethought, as well as proficiency with playing violin and piano. He avoids bringing attention to these things in fear that they will be used as a reason to manipulate him and take what little agency he has. This fear isn’t unfounded, but rather borne of his relationship with his ex-moirail, a blueblood who used his talents to make herself look more favorable, using recordings of him playing instruments as her own and forcing him to fit some visual ideal that she thought was fitting. 
He has the tendency to fall in deep, profound love with trolls who show him the smallest scrap of kindness despite his failings, opening up to them and showing only them his real talent and potential, no matter how much he comes to regret it later.
He tends to wrestle with perfectionism in addition to his need for passive mediocrity. His drinking, unfortunately, is the only way he knows to bridge between the two. Using his drinking as an excuse for his failures soothes the savage beast of perfectionism without forcing him to give up his sense of safety in being unremarkable.
I like the idea of him kind of idolizing the people he’s in love with. And then true to Aries-aligned form experiencing these cycles of disappointment when they don’t meet these expectations. But he keeps on loving anyways, clinging because of his self-pity. Maybe having a fear that if he loses This person he’ll never find love again. Wants to have a perfect love but he can’t stand up for himself in relationships or dedicate himself to even trying to change people. 
The drinking is also very fitting. We have seen pretty often that addiction is a very light/void phenomenon. Roxy’s and Rose’s own alcoholism, and Equius and Vriska’s addiction to breaking specific objects… An unfortunately realistic way that people attempt to cope with these internal conflicts. 
Interests: Lalnah’s primary interest lies in writing. Be it prose or poetry, political essays or pining exposes, he writes whatever he happens to be in the mood for, and with great proficiency. Even in his trademark stupor (which he no-doubt exaggerates), he writes. 
He has an interest in cooking as well, treating it as an art-form as high as any other. It’s one of the only things he’s willingly held on to since his moirailegence with the blueblood, besides perhaps his fashion sense. He absolutely has made a romantic dinner for his moirail out of instant noodles, and his habit of making the most of nothing really shines through in that.
Otherwise? He’s shoved aside most of his other interests. He doesn’t enjoy playing the piano or violin anymore, and his smaller hobbies that were discouraged or ignored fell to the wayside when he started hitting the bottle with some regularity. 
)^: I want to save him.
Title: I’ve been struggling with this a little bit, but for a very specific reason.
Part of me is drawn to making Lalnah a Mage or Seer of Void, for his deep understanding of nothingness and mediocrity, his greater-than-average knowledge of the horrorterrors and the way they work (if marginal), as well as smaller things like his use of echolocation and the fact that he’s nearly blind thanks to his shitty eye sight. 
Part of me is drawn to making him an Heir of Light, who spends most of the session in an unhealthy state of inversion, who then reverts to his proper classpect at a key moment, forcing himself to take on and handle the talent and relevance he’s been denying. 
I do like the idea of him being an Heir of Light a lot. A Lot. He can easily start and spend a large part of the session inverted to Mage of Void. He hears the voices of the horror terrors and understands the unknown and the blank, or at least Believes he does. As he starts to come into himself and his role, he gets to learn to understand himself and information and the nature of infinity far better than he ever believed he did. 
He takes on the relevance he’s been denying and that he has earned and would passively be able to manipulate and change information, the known, the present, as well as luck. And he would learn to actively comprehend the boundlessness of the void. He’d take all this passive change and this light inside himself and use it to understand that emptiness is not a dead end but instead a chance to fill it up with beautiful things. 
Land: Land of Echoes and Haze
His land is a sprawling port town, worn down and rusting, the air thick with salt and haze. Think Innsmouth from the H.P. Lovecraft Mythos. His consorts are salamanders, dull grey in color, and are surprisingly hostile to him, although not aggressive. They speak endlessly about the things that hide in the mists, urging him to leave the land and never come back.
Consorts begin disappearing as he continues on his quest, and it’s eventually revealed that the things in the mists are actually mutated consorts, ruined by the whims of his denizen, Dagon. Lalnah must complete some tasks to drive back the mist before bargaining with Dagon to turn the consorts back into the form they are meant to be in.
I love that because it really does imply him needing to take on the spot light, pick up the hero role, make a change passively, by convincing the Dagon. He’d probably have to do something with a fun loophole to bring in your Technicality trolltag. Make a contract and screw that denizen over, Lalnah. Overcome your base acquiescent nature. I believe in you.
Dream Planet:Derse. He’s a voidy boy, and has a lot of horrorterror influence to him. It’d be a waste of a good plot point.
Oh Yep it’s definitely the most thematically fitting And he has So much internal conflict it’s impossible not to consider him a derse player.
Design stuff!: 
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Yeah I had pretty much almost nothing to add here. Like quite literally almost nothing. 
Teeth: We’ve only seen one rust with visible teeth and even then they were nubby teeth, so I took the points off his fangs. I think it also works better for his submissive and dulled behavior. 
Symbol: It needed to be symmetrical to meet the rust sign language, so I worked with the idea of it looking a bit like a bat and added two equally lengthed wing edges. I also wanted to use a lot of negative space because Themes. 
Shoes: I changed the outline to a lighter one because the dark outline looked a bit awkward. 
This is a really amazing and well-thought-out character! I hope I was able to provide even a little bit of useful help haha. Thank you for sharing!
-CD
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four-leaf-fairytale · 3 years
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Day 3: Wedding
“Which story would you like tonight?” Rai asks, sitting at the foot of his daughter’s bed. She bounces a bit, bundling her knees up to her chest.
“The hero and villain who fell in love,” she says, and Rai raises his eyebrows.
“That’s a classic, isn’t it?” He turns to the bed across from hers, and sure enough, his son is listening too, with wide dark eyes. “You two probably know it better than I do at this point.” He lowers his voice into something softer; a bedtime story voice. “Once upon a time, there was a hero and a villain.”
“And they both had super powers,” his son says, hushed.
“Yes. The hero using his powers for good, the villain using hers for evil. He had a very important mission assigned to him.”
“She was his mission,” Rai’s daughter chimes in, her eyes glittering.
“Correct,” Rai says, smiling. “His mission was to take her out.” “On a date?” his son asks, and Rai falters.
“No,” he says slowly, trying to think of how to word this. “I mean, take…”
His daughter makes a cutting motion across her throat, sticking out her tongue, and his son makes a wordless noise of comprehension.
“I shouldn’t be telling you this,” Rai says, flustered, and is met with protests as the children plead for him to keep going. “I—alright, yes, I’ll keep going. But you have to understand, these were dark and confusing times. There was an enormous amount of turmoil between the people, and people in power.”
“Out of fear, and anger, and mostly out of love, a new kind of protector was created. Dangerous, independent fighters, whose powers were superhuman. Those superhuman fighters were superheroes.”
“And supervillains!”
“Yes, sweetie.” Rai’s mouth quirks up, and he dives further into his storytelling voice. “They were masters of the elements, stronger and faster than the rest of the human race, able to do things no one else could do. Each superhero or supervillain had a different power, each stranger and more wonderful than the last.” He thinks he can almost conjure the images behind the words—A blonde hero with vines growing up from the ground where she walks. A towering man whose face is obscured by a fog of purple haze, voices whispering around him.  A woman with glowing pink hair, drawing the blood out of her own body and shaping it into knives around her, a man in a pale yellow cowl, calling lightning down from the sky. Superheroes, supervillains. Strange and wonderful.
“The only thing superheroes and supervillains were truly afraid of? Each other.”
And Rai can see it again. The supervillain with her glowing pink hair, glowing pink eyes, rings of blood ripping themselves out of her arms and forming into a carmine scythe. The superhero, masked and hooded, leaving only a glimpse of dark skin under the pastel yellow. The storm he summons whips at them both, and torrents of rain lash across the rooftops.
“And so sometimes, a superhero’s mission was to stop a supervillain at all costs.”
The battles were hard, drawn out and bloody. They were kids in the beginning, but they quickly stopped being so. Rai thinks of police sirens, crashing lightning, bloody noses and hospital visits. He thinks of high school slowly passing, of four years of undergrad coming and going, turning sixteen while hiding a wound in his side and turning twenty three the exact same way. He thinks of grad school, like college, at home, so that someone could keep an eye on the villain and protect the city streets.
“She was the battle that would change his life. But when the moment finally came…” 
A meeting—an accidental one. They had been in civilian wear. The hero had been wearing a frayed sweater and his glasses, and the villain’s hair and eyes had been an ordinary dark brown. They had recognized each other still—locking eyes across a college classroom and instantly knowing. The hero’s eyes had widened. The villain had winked.  
“He couldn’t do it.”
Because the villain had walked into his classroom, and tapped her finger against her lips, and then she was giving a speech to the class about antiracist activism and issues the college needed to change. And when the hero cornered her that night, she had been robbing a store that had been in the news a month earlier for donating to conversion therapy. And the hero started to notice a pattern.
“She was different than he expected,” Rai says, softly. “Sure, she was…charming, and intelligent, but she was also…unexpectedly honorable.”  
The villain in a cape, wrecking police equipment. The villain in a dress, singing at an inner-city arts fundraiser. The villain at town hall, breaking into the mayor’s office and leaking documents to the public. The villain on campus, helping teach women’s self defense. The villain with pink hair, terrorizing protesters outside planned parenthood. The villain with brown hair, donating blood (and that one he should have seen coming, really, blood magick was her whole thing).
“And it made him realize…that maybe what he considered heroism was not the only way to make the world a better place.” After all, the status quo wasn’t always something that helped people. “And so they started talking.”
In the hallways. On the green. In the cafeteria, and then at restaurants, and on walks, and—
“That led to a few lunch dates. Very tentative. After all, they were on different sides, and they often disagreed with each other.”
And those disagreements happened on rooftops and in alleys, behind masks, in costumes. Just because they were dating didn’t mean that the villain would stop doing her work, and just because they were dating didn’t mean that the hero could let her. They still fought, tooth and nail.
“Dinner dates followed, even as they continued to fight on opposite sides.” Picnics in the daytime, electric shocks at night. Breakfast in bed in the villain’s apartment, bloody knuckles at the bank near the hero’s. Kissing in pajamas, in workout clothes, in formal wear, in capes and masks—whoops!
“And they fell in love.” Rai smiles, more to himself than to the children, now. “And so together, they decided to attempt the riskiest thing a hero or a villain can do.” He thinks of twin rings, one with a blood red ruby set in it, the other with a stormy sapphire.  “They decided to marry.”
“Wow,” Rai’s daughter says quietly, and he leans in to press a kiss to her forehead.
“Yeah, wow,” he repeats, chuckling a bit. “And on the hero’s wedding day, he felt he would rather brave a thousand deadly supervillains than go through with what he was about to attempt.”
“Why’s that?”
“Well, marriage is a wonderful thing,” Rai says. “But it takes work to make an entire life with someone, even if you love them. And the superhero loved the villain, but he was also afraid.”
“He was afraid of her?”
“No. He was afraid that they wouldn’t be able to hold this thing they had together. He was afraid that one of them, or both of them, would get hurt.”  
Rai lowers his voice back into something more suited for bedtime. Clever kids—if he keeps discussing the complexities of marriage, they’ll  never go to sleep. “But when he saw her, walking toward him?” And he pictures her then—Her dark hair tied back and up, under a veil of white. The white lace of her gloves against her smooth brown skin. Her footsteps steady, and confident, as if she was completely unafraid. The way she had looked up at him then, her dark eyes sparkling, and smiled—joyful and carefree and just a touch wonderstruck.
“He took her hand, looked into her eyes, and said the two most powerful, most trusting words a person can say to anyone.”
“What?”
“He said, I do.”
And for that moment, it had just been her. It felt like he could see her all at once—every version of her that there was. He could see her fifteen years old, in a black halloween cloak and fabric mask, still tripping over her own magic. He could see her at twenty, pulling blood across her own face to protect her identity, then tossing a reddened dagger at him. He could see her at college, giving speeches, protesting, on coffee dates, on dinner dates, just waking up, working too late into the night, fighting, laughing, crying, smiling. Smiling at him, dressed in white, saying I do.  
“Wow, that’s so cool.”
“Yeah,” Rai chuckles. “So… they retired. Settled down. Had a few kids. In a way, they traded one life of adventure for another. And… “ He pauses, trying to think of some way to finish the story. “They were better off. The end.”
His son tilts his head. “Don’t they live happily ever after?”
Rai thinks about it. Happily ever after? “You know what kiddo?” He says, standing up from his daughter’s bed. “I think they do.”
He turns off the lights. Heads down the hall to the other bedroom in the house.
Cora is sitting at her desk, hunched over some bit of work. She’s wearing an oversized cardigan and reading glasses, and her long dark hair is twisted into a knot behind her, with a few stray strands falling around her shoulders. Rai looks down at her, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. After all these years, this is his favorite version of Cora—soft and unguarded. Safe.
“What story was it tonight?” She asks, not looking up from her papers.
He takes a few steps closer to lean against the back of her chair, pressing a kiss to her cheek.
“Ours.”
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maneaterwithtail · 6 years
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Maneaterwithtail’s thoughts on"Is Another Mystery and Marco Jr"
I kind of feel Tom is being given the Whitney on Smallville or Mako post S1 Legend of Korra treatment.  He is seeing legitimate problems and TRYING to improve and be a better person but he's shown as adolescent and shallow while his girlfriend is this weird warrior for greatness who deserves... better?  It feels.. false or pandering... overflattering. A way so breaking up is socially justified besides "bored" or “I don't want to work things out with someone...I want someone who's more easy to get along with” when that means more effective at being servile. TBF Star only seemed into tom the LESS "monster" he was at first and so on. Now she's miss Monster crusader.  I wonder if they are going to take that angle? Naah, Tom will be revealed to be a little shit who doesn't deserve her and Marco and her will be perfect....
Now as for Marco Jr.  This was very VERY sympathetic to the parents with a small kick up their rear as well.  The passive aggressiveness is much with the Diazes.  I do like we run up but zigzag with some cliches.  
One example. Marco is put out about a little sib for a second but soon wants to welcome him.. albeity superficially.  which really ties into how Marco's ego, even while doing 'the right thing' is a problem with helping him being true and thorough.  His parents have similar too
I know nothing will kill Trans!marco fanon now.  its a religion, a thing its adherents BELIEVE IN for themselves.  but Marco literally got a magic portrait based on genuine Q&A that had to reflect his essence in truth, complete with acknowledgement of stuff he or his folks didn't consciously consider.  AND HE'S STILL MALE.  Princess Turdina was a drag persona and more contrary one for kicks and not quite "his trues self"
Is it weird how kind of...straightforward and different the show feels off Earth?  I mean its like EARTH supplied the wackiness...no I'm forgetting Stump Day. 
However Just seeing Gunter reminded me of how much has changed.  And if he'd even fit or the sheer implications of him with the setting/story now?
I do like the Diazes seem to have possible Same sex couple invites to their baby shower and the casual diversity of the background continues.  This also points to Marco being on mewni for.. well a LONG time.  Also he still isn't over his...issues that drove him to Mewni even with his initial disillusionment. What Squire thing could Marco have scheduled or be doing?  More self important ‘work” making?
It does feel we're clearing or arranging cast members for something.  I wonder where Meatfork or the other guy with the Antler are from the previous Buff Frog centric episodes? Also bothersome we got no feel or time with Star's changes.  I mean I feel we missed something. ONE ruined party and everyone is ready to bail?  The experiement is a total failure? Stuff feels weird.
Rich Pigeon....
Ya know I appreciate how they played the artist.  pandering eurotrash look.  and he's just the right amount of skeevy but isn't a conman.  He’s businessman selling a fiction and vanity but he’s not scamming, per se.  I figured he'd insult the family moment.  He still tries to hustle it but while you get he's about the money he's not...dumb or at least wrong about the art. He likes doing it and for money.  first time I’ve seen Atelier out of the darn videogame.
 Hell he even warned Marco legit about his process.  
Neat.  
A little put out stuff like this has to happen to force the Diazes to communicate.  but another reminder to maintain contacts with the folks.  It seems we are skipping to the teens being adults this season.. or at least with adult roles and ‘careers’ albeit in the bottom rung.  This episode felt more like Marco coming back from College or a an overseas assignment?  Then again longdistance exchange school wasn’t my thing.
@thelonefryman @sunder-the-gold @therscrooge @wedgekun
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