#(- it contradicts with everything else going on so strongly. I wish people would own up to their faults and not take on more than they can-)

[buysomecheese]

Fellas, tell me-

Is it very ESTJ, 6w5, 269 tritype of me to kin Upside Down & Inside Out (OK Go), Humpty Dumpty (AJR), Belonger (Maxton Waller), It’s Called: Freefall (Rainbow Kitten Surprise), Northern Attitude (Noah Kahan), All’s Well That Ends (Rainbow Kitten Surprise), Upside Down (Jack Johnson), I Won’t Let You Down (OK Go), Real Men (Mitski),? Is it?

#anyways if you know anything about enneagrams or grottoes or mbti please. tell me about myself (/nf) #(/nf) #the rest of my tags are venting feel free to ignore those #I’m not going through anything rn #I’m feeling totally fine #(I want to Punch some Certain People in the ducking stomach) #(I haven’t had a menstrual cycle in Months and I’ve been literally feeling entirely fine and I’m healthier than ever otherwise so-) #(- I’m worried about that. I think English is incredibly fucking stupid as a class. I cannot Wait until college. this is such a period of-) #(- growth and change for me. I’m getting a job. I might ask someone out. I still can’t drive and I’m upset about that. I know who I want-) #(- be friends with now. things are coming together and I am weeding out things that are bad for me. I’m so derealized half of the time and-) #(- it contradicts with everything else going on so strongly. I wish people would own up to their faults and not take on more than they can-) #(- handle. I have so much confidence in myself and my abilities but I don’t think I’m worth anything. I know what I deserve but that’s-) #(- the bare minimum and nothing more. I know that if I Left today I’d believe that everyone would love on within the week but I also know-) #(- there are people and organizations that would Not work the same or nearly as smoothly as they do now. I don’t know what to do with-) #(- myself but I have Everything planned out. maybe I just need to work out and be active idk I’ve been in a car all day.) #estj #6w5 #269 tritype #what is a #tritype

[problematicgardener]

Can I be so for real. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. With my whole being I desire something different, anything different, and I know I have the power to change things. I've dealt with death, trauma, bad family, depression, suicidal thoughts, and I've come out on top of everything. But now, with nothing standing in my way, I'm at the bottom. If you had asked 17 year old me what I'd be doing at 21, he'd say I'd be dead. If you asked 19 year old me, he'd say something great or amazing. If you ask me now, I have no clue. I'm stuck in a fucking tar pit of my own creation right now, and I yearn to crawl out, but my body will not move. I'm a walking contradiction. Highly skilled in many fields, but doing nothing with them. Filled with emotion, but not able to express it. By human standards, I have a luxurious life with no struggles to eat, drink, or anything. But somehow the mind still creates them.

I'm tired. I wish that my mind would let itself rest. All I hear every day is more and more about things I "should be doing." But it's scary man. I've never held a job more than six months because they've been overstimulating, the people have been bad, any number of special reasons that the man behind my eyes doesn't like. I always say to myself that the next thing will be better. After I do this, I can take a break to focus on helping myself. After I finish this course, I can get a good paying job that won't make me want to pull my skin off. I look to the future because if I stay in the present, I'd be sucked into despair. I can't let myself do that. I have one good thing about me and it's my resilience and I cannot let myself lose it. It's all I have now.

I really seem fine to others. I have this persona that I put on when I'm with even my most trusted of friends. I know intuitively that I can talk to them candidly and openly, but I just can't. And now I'm wondering if I stop myself for their sake or for mine. Because when I'm forced to sit down and articulate my thoughts, it opens up sides of me that I'm honestly fearful of. I've done more introspection than everyone around me, and I'm still fucking scared. Are you kidding? This was supposed to get fucking easier. How in the hell is it getting harder.

I dont know if I should go to bed right now or not. I usually have a rule where if something bothers me, I fuck off and sleep or eat or do something else for a while, and if it still bothers me after, then it's an actual problem. But I'm not sure if this is something that can be slept off. I fear of what could snowball if I do just sleep it off.

It's difficult feeling so very strongly and not being able to express fucking any of it. And every positive emotions HAS to come with a negative one jammed in there. Like a diamond with one lace of uncrystallized carbon running through it. I can't feel joyous without the tinge of anxiety if my friends don't care as much as I do. I can't feel content without the guilt of needing to get something else done. I can't feel proud without fear of coming off as arrogant. I can't love without pulling back. What am I supposed to do.

I know that this makes me human, I know that I'm not above feeling these things. But does it really have to be all the time. When my mother asks how my date went, how could I have the heart to tell her that I hated it despite nothing going wrong. I share the good aspects, because that's what people need. People need to know of the abundant good in the world so that they don't end up like me. But I know of the abundant good, yet I'm still me.

I'm still me. What does that mean. Am I the man that got into one of the most prestigious schools in my field and decided to quit after a year? Am I the kid that told off and abandoned my only true supporter? Am I the kid that beat up someone just for hitting on my girlfriend? Am I the kid that spread a rumor about a girl doing sexual things? Or am I the kid that tried every day to delight his friends despite the shitshow that was storming just behind his eyes. Am I the kid that led his group into their version of greatness. Am I the kid that spent countless hours doing repetitive tasks so that his organization could run smoothly. Am I the man that helps people. I suppose I'm both. But I only share the good, because people only need to know the good that's in me. Or maybe I'm just afraid of what could happen if people knew what I've done.

I am okay. Or at least I will be. In this moment, I'm being thrown around by a self created storm, but I've done this before and come out standing, so I know I will be okay. I have to.

[thuskindlyshescatters]

Okay I’ll bite. What was the cause of that last post?

Anonymous also asked: “I’m asking. This is your invitation to go off about tragedies and narratives disagreeing with their own events (I’m actually super curious. I kind see where you’re coming from, but I don’t 100% get it)”

A popular argument I’ve recently seen passed around among people dissatisfied with Penny’s death is that it contradicted Volume 8′s themes.

Yep. For sure. That was the point.

The moral argument (one of the themes) of Hamlet is that power corrupts, and revenge is equally corrosive. Is there a version of events where these themes where fulfilled by having Hamlet defeat his uncle, ascend to the throne, and lay his father’s soul to rest? Certainly. But the tragedy of Hamlet is that these themes were reaffirmed by showing that that didn’t happen. There is catharsis in everything falling apart when we all wish it wouldn’t, because tragedy is a better way to prove this point than heroic resolution.

Now, I’m not going to compare RWBY to Hamlet. Instead, I’ll do the same analysis with Volume 8, because they’re both tragedies (stories in which the main characters don’t attain their goals).

One of the themes of Volume 8 is that risks must be taken and sacrifices must be made when the stakes are this high. (Think about Ironwood’s motivations, May’s ultimatum with Team RWBY, the title of 8x11, Hazel’s choice, Cinder’s bargain, etc etc etc). Is there a version of events where these themes were fulfilled by having Penny only risk her life to defeat Cinder, somehow also saving Winter and taking back the Relics and doing whatever else you think would constitute a victory in this situation? Sure. But the tragedy of Volume 8 is that these themes were reaffirmed -- strongly! -- when that didn’t happen. The heroes’ marginal victory of preventing Cinder from obtaining the Winter Maiden’s powers is perfectly aligned with the theme of risk/sacrifice, but it’s a tragic end because they lost anyways. Sacrifices must be made when the stakes are this high, yet sacrifice wasn’t enough.

Penny’s death is a tragedy because it is in line with the narrative’s argument, but they still lost. It proposes an antithesis to these themes, challenging them, and setting up an interesting exploration of them in future Volumes (because this isn’t where the story ends, and I think some of you need to be reminded of that.)

In conclusion, stories are about exploring themes, so if an event midway through the story proposes a contradiction, but is still about that same theme, it’s unfair to claim that the story should have made a different argument in the first place. Rather, take my genuine sympathies that it was your favorite character that best told this story.

#rwby #rwby8 #few posts of mine have ever looked more like a bat swung at a hornets nest #my asks

[asprettyasyourown]

How/Where do you think Jon and Arya will meet again? And how/where do you think Dany and Arya will meet?

Honestly, I can’t see Arya and Jon meeting anywhere else other than Winterfell. It would be such a satisfying “conclusion” to this aspect of their storyline. For Arya, both Winterfell AND Jon have been associated with home. She has tried since day one to return to either of them, and to see her do both at the same time would be so lovely. And Jon too, who has struggled for so long with his desire to have Winterfell (feeding his rivalry with Robb and his conflict with his status as a bastard) and Arya (contradicting his position as a member of the Night’s Watch, who have no family), would then get both at the same time. I know GRRM doesn’t like to hand things on a silver platter, and that “Be careful what you wish for” is a massive theme in the series, but come on. You can’t tell me they had it easy, and that they didn’t fight for it.

Now how and when is a little trickier.

Unfortunately, it won’t happen before a loooong time. Arya has a long way to go before leaving Essos, let alone reach Winterfell. She still needs to: 

Tie the story with the FM (including a “training” with the courtesans/the Black Pearl, and of course leaving them);

Deal with the wildlings women and children that are stranded in Braavos now that the Sealord captured the ship (= slavers) that intended to sell them;

As I’ve mentioned before, I very much see the Iron Bank being involved in her storyline, so there’s that to deal with as well;

Meet Dany (I’ll go back to this later);

Go back to Westeros;

Deal with the Riverlands, the Brotherhoods Without Banners and, most importantly, Lady Stoneheart;

Reconnect with Nymeria.

And all that doesn’t even take into account what GRRM could throw in her way on top of all of this. That’s a lot. And since Arya will definitively not see Jon anywhere outside of the North, it could only happen after she resolved all those things.

Jon too has a lot on his plate. He first needs to be resurrected (duh). He also needs to deal with the traitors who stabbed him and his future in the Night’s Watch. If you omit the whole murder thing (kinda hard to tbh), there is still the fact he broke his vows for Arya. He was already set to leave before he died. And since his last thoughts were about Arya, and we know the dead who get resurrected focus on their last conscious thoughts, his resolve to get her back will not be lessened.

Honestly, I think he’s done with the NW. I think he’s gonna do what he intended to before dying, aka kill Ramsay and get “Arya” back, whether by allying with Stannis or at the head of his own wildling army. I don’t know if he’s gonna become King in the North like in GoT, but he’s definitively going to be considered for the role; and since Bran, the legitimate heir, is still alive and will one day return to Winterfell, this could be the catalyst for the tension between these two George planned in his original draft. Not to mention the tensions it would create with the other northern lords, who would not see with a kind eye a bastard allied with the wildlings (enemies of the North for generations) and Stannis; or those who simply won’t appreciate a king not as malleable as a child (side-eye to the Manderlys).

(Oh, and there is also the matter with fArya and Theon. I’m going on a limb here, but I doubt he’s gonna be happy to learn that what he thought was his precious “sister” is really an impostor (though he might be happy to know the real Arya didn’t get what Jeyne had to endure). Or that she’s bringing along the guy who betrayed the Starks and supposedly killed Bran and Rickon. His first reaction definitively won’t be good, though it will probably soften once he learns what happened to them and how Ramsay is the real culprit. But I’m not anticipating much benevolence from him, especially since he’s in dark mode now).

So yeah. Lots of issues to be resolved before they can be reunited, and that’s without counting on the threat of the Others or what other characters might do. Honestly, I’m anticipating a reunion between the end of TWOW and the beginning of ADOS. On one hand, I think it would be more impactful in TWOW; most specifically, the last act of either Jon or Arya’s chapters. It would be a nice conclusion for the both of them, before the Others mess everything up. But I’m also aware that all the issues I’ve previously mentioned might not be resolved in one book, and that it might spill on the second one.

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

Now Dany.

Honestly, it’s kinda hard to be sure of how they’re gonna meet. They will, that’s a certainty. There is so much hints, since the first book really. Remember this?

This time the monsters did not frighten her. They seemed almost old friends. [Arya, IV, AGOT]

Which is exactly how I’m anticipating their relationship. At first, things are going to be tense, especially on Dany’s side who has been fed lies about the Starks and their role in her exile (and who could blame her). So there’s definitively room for Arya to be frightened. But once she gets Dany to see her side to the story, and her vision of the events become more balanced, they’ll become fast-friends. They have so much in common, it’s impossible for them not to.

But, once again, the details of how they’re gonna meet is blurry. Arya will need to at least be done with the FM. And Dany... Dany has a lot on her plate too. She’s gonna need to deal with the khalasar she hears at the end of ADWD, and a possible confrontation (alliance?) with the Dothraki. She will also need to end the plot in Meereen (aka choose between “fixing” its whole culture or do what she always intended to, return to Westeros and seize back the Iron Throne). Of course, we know she’s gonna choose the latter - but a bunch of things can happen between that, and with them time passing.

At this point, Arya and Dany are very far away, each at one extremity of Essos. For them to have a chance to meet, I anticipate that Dany will end things with Meereen at the same time Arya closes the storyline with the FM (maybe even before, so Dany could already be on the road towards Braavos). Now is the tricky part. I have two theories on how they will meet: through the lost Wildlings and through the Iron Bank.

The lost Wildlings

We know the wildlings women and children in Braavos were “freed” when the Sealord seized the ship carrying them. Unfortunately, others were not so lucky.

“I know why the Sealord seized the Goodheart. She was carrying slaves. Hundreds of slaves, women and children, roped together in her hold.” Braavos had been founded by escaped slaves, and the slave trade was forbidden here. “I know where the slaves came from. They were wildlings from Westeros, from a place called Hardhome. An old ruined place, accursed.” Old Nan had told her tales of Hardhome, back at Winterfell when she had still been Arya Stark. “After the big battle where the King-Beyond-the-Wall was killed, the wildlings ran away, and this woods witch said that if they went to Hardhome, ships would come and carry them away to someplace warm. But no ships came, except these two Lyseni pirates, Goodheart and Elephant, that had been driven north by a storm. They dropped anchor off Hardhome to make repairs, and saw the wildlings, but there were thousands and they didn’t have room for all of them, so they said they’d just take the women and the children. The wildlings had nothing to eat, so the men sent out their wives and daughters, but as soon as the ships were out to sea, the Lyseni drove them below and roped them up. They meant to sell them all in Lys. Only then they ran into another storm and the ships were parted. The Goodheart was so damaged her captain had no choice but to put in here, but the Elephant may have made it back to Lys. The Lyseni at Pynto’s think that she’ll return with more ships. The price of slaves is rising, they said, and there are thousands more women and children at Hardhome.” [The Blind Girl, ADWD]

So the Goodheart was too damaged to go to Lys, but the Elephant wasn’t. It means there are still hundreds of wildlings women and children enslaved there. Honestly, I’m not sure how Arya could be involved in freeing them. Lys is a long way from Braavos, which means she would have to travel down there (with no resources and the other half of the wildlings), free them and get back up to sail across the Narrow Sea, deal with the Riverlands and then go North. It’s a little much for one girl, even one as resourceful as Arya. Sure, she could ask help from the Iron Bank (see my second point), but I doubt they would indulge her (high risk for no rewards).

But. You know who is as strongly against slavery as Arya, whose path might make her travel to Lys and who has the resources to fuck shit up? Yep, Dany.

The way I see it is, after being disheartened by Meereen and her failure to change the slaver(y) culture, Dany could very much decide to go home to Westeros - and set everything ablaze in her path. If she failed to abolish slavery from the inside, she might decide to do it by force, as a last FUCK YOU to the masters. This could be the beginning of her rock bottom, before she rises back again. It’s also coherent with the Dothraki culture of “Submit or be killed”, which could play a part if she allies with them again.

So I could see her attacking the big cities of Essos, destroying the masters and freeing the slaves as she goes along, until she reaches Braavos - who may be protected since 1. she would use its port to journey across the Narrow Sea and 2. they’re famously known for being founded by slaves and anti-slavery as a whole (and they actually enforce that rule, not just preach it and close their eyes when it counts). There, she could meet Arya through the wildlings women reuniting. Like I said, things would be tense at first, but if they might not be friends at first, they might respect each other for having their hearts set on the same goal (protecting their people). Friendship would come later, I’m not worried about that.

The Iron Bank theory

For me, the Iron Bank doesn’t get the recognition it deserves as a threat, and I fully anticipate them having a much larger role in the next book.

I really believe they will have a hand in Arya going back to Westeros. After she leaves the FM, I very much see them stepping in to offer their “help” to Arya. Personally, I believe the Kindly Man informed them of her real identity (though his motivations are yet unclear). I believe he’s aware of her value as a princess, and the (supposedly) last heir of the North. Look how people are rallying for her in the North when they hear “Valiant Ned’s precious little girl” is being brutalized. Do you think the Iron Bank is gonna pass on such a prize? I can see them trying to do to her what the Manderlys are doing with Rickon, or what Illyrio tried to do with Dany - offer their protection and help so she would be/feel indebted. They could get ahold of the North through Arya, and of the other Kingdoms through Stannis/the crown’s debt. Not too shabby.

But wait, there is a problem arising. A problem named Daenerys, who fully intends to take back the Iron Throne - and if she does, she’s not gonna care about reimbursing the debt her predecessors/usurpers left, thus lessening their leverage (and with three dragons, a Dothraki army and the Unsullied, threatening her is not gonna fly well). I can see them trying to step in too, promise the same things to her they did to Arya - except she’s not gonna fall for the same ploy like Viserys did with Illyrio.

(Btw, I’m sure Arya too will see right through them - she had a whole training dedicated to make her see beyond appearances, and she’s always been pretty observant (like when she didn’t fall for trap Cersei laid for her, with Lannister soldiers dressed as Stark men in AGOT). But she also don’t have the same resources Dany has, and if she frees the wildlings, she’ll have hundreds of mouths to feed and transport back to Westeros. I can’t see her do that without external help, so she might be playing along til a better opportunity arise.)

Now, both these theories have their flaws. The biggest one, for me, is time. Meereen is not gonna be resolved in a day (unless Dany just sets everything on fire the moment she arrives and takes off into the sunset, but I doubt that). She still needs enough time to travel to Braavos. Even if George takes his sweet time closing the FM storyline, dealing with the wildlings in Braavos and the Iron Bank, it’s not gonna take a million chapters. Unless he throws something in there to delay her departure, something that wasn’t foreshadowed yet? Because I don’t see them meeting first in Westeros. What would be the point of having them on the same continent if they don’t meet there? As always, there’s a lot left hanging in the air.

#asoiaf #arya stark #jon snow #daenerys targaryen #asoiaf meta #jon x arya #jonrya #daenerys x arya #dany x arya #my metas #Anonymous #god #it's been so long since i've published on this blog #also why are my metas always so long #but here ya go #my two cents

[theramblingvoid]

2, 26 & 44 ? :)

Do you mourn for a place or person you’ve never known?

Some questions can be answered, and some must be answered around. As a kid I would run off down what my parents always called "rabbit trails" when we were out hiking, those little unofficial paths that never lead anywhere in particular but always might next time. I built fairy houses and stacked branches and leaves on top of each other to find them scattered by the next rainfall. I read books about children being swept away through mysterious portals to their destiny in another realm, and I always cried when they returned back to regular, non-magical Earth for their happy ending, because they had freedom and companionship and the sweet joy of being needed by the world held in the palm of their hand, and they threw it all away. I looked behind the clothes on racks in stores and checked my house for secret doors.

I think I may mourn for that person, but I do not mourn for those places. I know where I am meant to be, now. I have the means to find my center when I feel displaced. Maybe I wish I could go back and give that kid her portal, take her on that adventure, but I'd have to take her back to Earth in the end and I know she would cry. Maybe instead I just miss the urge to check every junk drawer for a magical amulet, even if my old reasons for needing one were lonely.

(other two questions under the cut because rambly and oversharing)

What’s the most life-changing choice you’ve made so far?

Welcome to tone whiplash city, population one! :] Yeah this one doesn't really lend itself to the flowy writing style above because the answer really is just Boy Howdy, last summer was a trip. It turns out that there is actually a maximum amount of dissonance and contradiction one person can take between their inner and outer life, and when that limit is reached sometimes you end up sitting on the floor frozen in time for an hour with a very clear crossroads between spilling your whole being out into the open purely as it is or sitting there speechless until someone comes to take you away. As you can probably tell from the fact that I'm in a desk chair two cities over and not still on my parents' floor or in a mental hospital, I picked the option where I came out twice to my family and also left my religion in one big run-on sentence. So that was sort of...life-changing is certainly the right word. I can't describe how much lighter and much more disorienting it is to not have a single Big Secret to keep after three years of having so many. Out of all the effects of that moment, that might not be the most influential, but it's the one I remember most clearly.

How often do you lie? Is all lying inherently bad? Are you generally truthful?

Oh this one is fun, this is one of my long standing pet peeves actually. I'm strongly against the idea that lying is universally immoral. Sometimes lying in a situation causes much less overall damage than telling the truth would, whether it's to oneself or someone else, and putting a simplified moral standard on that is super pedantic and counterproductive in my opinion. Also: not everything falls in the category of either a lie or the truth! In fact, I'd say that most things probably don't! A thing can be a partial truth, truth taken out of context to produce an assumption that is a lie, a fact that is later disproven or expanded upon, a guess that can prove to be right or wrong later - so many things! Not to mention that some people can't afford not to lie for the sake of safety. At that point, being legalistic about whether "lying" as a concept on its own is right or wrong really loses relevance to any real life situation.

I don't lie much at the moment, because I don't need to. When I do need to I prefer to use half-truths or truth with context that leads to a lie, just because that's easier to have sound honest and harder to disprove than an outright falsehood. (Welcome to resume writing :) /hj)

#voidrambles #religion mention

[milkmateartist]

HEAVENS Black Garden English Translation 【 Eiichi & Eiji's Route Pt. 1 】

[ --- I do not own Black Garden, HEAVENS, Utapri, or any of the characters. This is a fan translation using a combination of google translate and my own japanese knowledge --- ]

// Translated by MilkmateArtist

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

▽ You

"Someone may come back, so I'll wait here."

I might get lost if I walked around recklessly in an unfamiliar place.

I also didn't have the courage to wander about in the dark.

▽ Eric

"You're awake……?"

▽ You

"Eric! !!"

I turned around to see Abel and Eric.

▽ Eric

"Sorry, did we surprise you? We ran out of firewood so we went out to get some more".

He held some pieces of firewood in his hands.

▽ Abel

"This area gets cold at night".

Abel said this as he added wood to the fire.

Embers from the fireplace flared up and the room became brighter.

▽ You

"Where are the others ...?"

▽ Abel

"They're back in their room and resting. Everyone was pretty energetic today so they're probably tired."

▽ You

"I'm sorry, you two remained because I fell asleep, huh?"

▽ Abel

"I thought about picking you up and carrying you to your room, but Eric thought it would be pitiful if I woke you up, so I didn't do so."

▽ Eric

"Jeez, Nii san! That was supposed to be confidential. "

As if a bit flustered, Eiichi's words got the better of Eiji.

▽ You

"Thank you for your concern. "

▽ Eric

"Um……. If you'd like, would you like to talk a little more?"

▽ You

"Of course! To be honest, It's rather lonely being on my own".

The drowsiness I had before seemed to disappear as if it were a lie.

▽ Abel

"So what would you like to talk about?"

(A) Hear about Abel

(B) Hear about Eric

(C) Hear about life in the mansion

(A) Hear About Abel:

▽ You

"I want to hear about you Abel."

▽ Abel

"I'm pleased by your request, especially since you're lonely, But I think it's better to talk about something else."

Abel seemed to care about Eric being there. He seemed to cherish his younger brother.

▽ Abel

"Instead, tell us about yourself.. I'm sure Eric wants to hear too."

Then as requested, I started telling them about myself for a while.

(B) Hear about Eric:

▽ You

"I want to hear about Eric".

▽ Eric

"About me……? I don't know if it's that interesting. I'm not very good at conversation."

Eric looked down with little confidence. I felt his humble nature.

▽ Eric

"Um ... if you don't mind, I'd like to hear about you. We'd like to get to know you better. Right, nii san?"

Then as requested, I started telling them about myself for a while.

(C) Hear about life in the mansion

▽ You

"I would like to ask about life in the mansion.".

▽ Abel

"Though the work is split between all of us, with the exception of my own work, there is much to do."

▽ Eric

"There are only 7 people, so we have to work together. When we finish our work we have free time so it's enjoyable."

Excited, the conversation piled up regarding their mansion life.

CONTINUE:

How much time had passed? The firewood they had put down earlier had gotten smaller.

I felt that I became a little more familiar with things regarding the mansion.

▽ Abel

"Thank you again for coming. You're a person suitable for the mansion."

▽ You

"Me? Really ...! I still think it's a dream."

I couldn't believe someone with such a wonderful mansion was my relative. The world they live in is too different.

▽ Abel

"You don't have to be modest. Just by being here your beauty accompanies the flowers. More than anything, you have a radiant personality. There is no boundary to your virtue."

I could tell he was speaking from the heart as he emphasized and gestured with grandeur.

▽ Abel

"Your soul is resonating, do you understand...? You're a necessity."

▽ You

"I'm a ... necessity ...?"

As though captivated, I was drawn in by the fiery zeal in Abel's eyes. A hypnotic floating sensation dominated my body.

▽ Eric

"It's unusual for my brother to like someone this much".

To relieve the tense atmosphere, Eric got up from his chair and added wood to the fireplace.

▽ Eric

"Even though Nii san was better than anyone, and was the envy of others, he never sought out anyone."

▽ Abel

"That's a misunderstanding. I can't do anything on my own.. I think it's all thanks to everyone and especially Eric that I can maintain this life."

▽ Eric

"That's very like you Nii san. You're as special as always. I'm always chasing after you. For me that's always so..."

Then he closed his mouth and looked down.

▽ You

"That's not true. The food today was really good and the garden you take care of is more radiant than any other."

Is there anything I can do? I thought I'd try to encourage him in the least.

▽ Eric

"…………."

Perhaps he was surprised by the sudden words, seeing his startled expression.

▽ You

"Ah……. I just got passionate.. I'm sorry, I just met you and all."

▽ Eric

"No, Thank you. As Nii san says, you really are wonderful. I'm happy that we met."

▽ Abel

"We should wrap it up. It's getting later in the night. You should go back to your room. "

Heeding Abel's words, the fun time came to a close. The two sent me out beforehand since they had to clean up.

It seemed that the rain had stopped before I knew it.

On my way back to my room, I couldn't help worry about something.

"Don't enter the garden at night"

When it came to the garden at night, everyone spoke as though they were hiding something.

And above all, I was struck by the desire to see the beautiful garden at night.

▽ You

"I wonder if there is any place I can go to get outside."

The doors and windows of the building were locked and unlikely to open. I tried many ways, but even the smallest window was locked.

The back road that I passed in the daytime was also closed.

It felt like I was trapped in the building itself.

▽ You

"Over there……".

While wandering around the hall, I found a corridor through the window. There was a tower at the end of the passageway, and it seemed like it could go outside.

I put my hand on the door to the crossing corridor.

▽ You

"It's open! "

The cool outside breeze stroked my cheeks.

When I leaned out from the railing in the corridor, I could see the garden through the gaps between the trees.

Now I can go out to the garden. I broke into a walk as if I were drawn in.

▽ Abel

"What are you doing."

Abel appeared from the entrance of the tower.

▽ Abel

"You didn't go back to your room?"

He gave a sharp look that pierced through me.

▽ Abel

"You weren't going to the garden, were you?"

(A) Be honest

(B) I got lost

(C) I wanted some fresh air

(B) I got lost

▽ You

"When I tried to return to the room, I got lost ... "

I mustn't tell the truth. I felt so instinctively.

▽ Abel

"Lost, huh ... Don't you think that sounds rather unfortunate?"

He looked at me with mercy and approached me.

▽ Abel

"I hate lies."

(A) Be honest

▽ You

"……I was. I was really curious about the garden."

It was useless hiding it. I answered honestly.

▽ Abel

"I see.. You answered well. It's good to be honest."

I thought I would be scolded, so I was surprised at his words.

▽ Abel

"However, there are rules in the world that must not be broken."

▽ You

……! !!

Someone smote the back of my head and I fell down there. A red stain spread on the floor.

▽ Abel

"Good night. Sleep for eternity ..".

BAD END

(C) I wanted some fresh air

▽ You

"I wanted some fresh air ..."

Even if it wasn't correct, I immediately gave an excuse not too far-fetched.

It was also true that I wanted to get out from being indoors.

▽ Abel

"Well said, but all doors and windows are closed at night. Except for this passageway."

He spoke in an inquiring tone.

▽ Abel

"Why do you think that is? If you are that clever, then you know the answer?"

Abel walked slowly and lined up next to me.

▽ You

"..... I - I don't know. "

▽ Abel

"It's to catch anyone trying to break into the garden."

CONTINUE

Abel strongly grabbed my shoulder and pushed me back into the mansion.

▽ You

……! !!

Unable to resist his power, I was at his mercy.

▽ Abel

"Those who break the rules need appropriate sanctions."

My dread prevented me from speaking.

Abel roughly opened a door and I was thrown into a room.

My body hits the back of the wall in recoil.

▽ You

"...... Kya! !!"

Abel hit the wall with his hand as if to corner me, and peered into my face with a bloodcurdling expression.

▽ Abel

"Didn't I warn you enough? Why did you not take it?"

▽ You

"I- I'm sorry ..."

▽ Abel

"...... I'm disappointed in you."

He let me go, expressing a bit of sadness.

▽ Abel

"It must be seen that bad (girls/boys/etc) be punished."

The key ring in Abel's hand made a noise as it swayed..

▽ Abel

"Cool your head in this room. If you wish to live here, change your behavior."

▽ You

"Abel, please wait!"

I desperately clung to his hand. Feeling really guilty, terror started to seep into the gloomy room.

▽ Abel

"Understand that there are things in the world that should not be known."

He shook my hand off and I slumped to the floor.

(A) Ask the secret of the garden

(B) Contradict him

(C) Obediently comply

(A) Ask the secret of the garden

▽ You

What kind of secret is there behind the garden at night?

I said I had been wondering for a long time.

▽ You

"When the topic comes up, everyone acts as though they're trying to hide something. As if they're scared ..."

The secret that casts a dark shadow on this happy mansion. The circumstance was so unnatural that I felt a sense of discomfort.

▽ Abel

"I have no obligation to tell you."

(B) Contradict him

▽ You

"If that's so, then why did you tell me?"

"Don't enter only the garden at night"

Everything started with Abel's advice.

▽ You

"If I didn't know, I wouldn't even be interested in it in the first place".

Yes, he dared to give me that information.

▽ Abel

"…… Huh.."

As if delighted, he smiled as his eyes shined suspiciously.

▽ You

"Are you testing me?"

▽ Abel

"As I thought, this is only what I expected. Your attitude in pursuing the truth and unyielding to fear is to be praised."

Abel pushed my chin up with his finger.

I immediately pushed away his hand.

▽ Abel

"II ! I like you more and more ( ___ ) . "

(C) Obediently comply

▽ You

"I understand……"

I sensed it was meaningless to resist anymore.

▽ Abel

"I wish you had taken my advice from the beginning."

Abel muttered the words under his breath as he moved towards the door.

▽ Abel

"But it's all in the past now".

The door closed mercilessly, locking with a loud noise.

I wondered how much time would pass here.

The windows were tightly fitted with iron bars and unescapable.

The door never opened, as if my existence had been forgotten.

BAD END

CONTINUE:

▽ Abel

"It's all for you."

He muttered the words as he left, and then the door was mercilessly closed.

I ran up to the door, put my hand on the doorknob and moved it as hard as I could.

▽ You

"It's no good.. It's locked and it won't budge."

I tried various ways to get out of the room, but none of them worked.

The windows were tightly fitted with iron bars and I couldn't escape..

The only thing that seemed to move was time.

…………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Suddenly the room was unlocked.

▽ Eric

"Are you all right?"

▽ You

"Eric ...!"

▽ Eric

"I didn't see you around so I went looking, but it seems you were here."

I was relieved seeing his gentle smile. Without thinking, I rushed to him.

▽ Eric

"I guess you're being punished by Nii san?"

▽ You

"You know that?...! "

Without having to explain what had been so far, he seemed to know everything.

▽ Eric

"This is the room for that. A place where those who break the rules are trapped. Though I have never been myself though."

He shrugged with a bitter smile.

▽ Eric

"Regardless of how you look, you're pretty bold if you upset my brother."

▽ You

"In the end, I was curious about the garden at night ..."

I honestly confessed my feelings.

▽ Eric

."..... It wasn't enough huh...."

▽ You

"Eh……?"

His muttered voice was so quiet that I couldn't hear it well.

▽ Eric

"No. Nothing. I was just thinking how I should have paid more attention to you."

▽ You

"You didn't do anything bad. My thinking wasn't sound after all..".

Even though I said that, my questions lingered.

Why couldn't I enter the garden and what were they hiding ... My anxiety only increased.

▽ Eric

"Did you still want to see the "Night Garden"? "

(A) I want to see

(B) I do not want to see

(C) I'm not sure

(A) I want to see

▽ You

"I want to see it. I want to see it with my own eyes. "

I answered with clear intention. I couldn't lie to my heart.

▽ Eric

"I thought you would say so. You have strength that I don't, and I find that attractive".

▽ You

"Eh……? What do you mean by that..".

I couldn't hide my confusion from his straightforward words.

▽ Eric

"It means just that. It's rather dazzling. Pure and fearless. That kind of freedom is like a flower blooming in the field."

(B) I do not want to see

▽ You

"I don't want to see it. It's been a lot."

There was no need to anxiously make a decision.

▽ Eric

"I ... understand. You definitely must be tired from all the stuff that's been going on".

I nodded at his words, even though something about the phrasing made it seem like it held hidden connotations.

▽ You

"I want to get back to my room soon to sleep."

▽ Eric

" If that's the case, you should drink this. It's a medicine that makes you feel tired. I created it from the plants I've been nurturing."

Eric had a purple vial in his hand.

▽ You

"Thank you".

Upon receiving the bottle, I opened the lid and put the medicine in my mouth. A thick, sweet liquid spread across my tongue.

I was enraptured by a flower-like scent and an indescribable sense of happiness.

I closed my eyes as if I were dreaming.

I didn't want to wake up anymore.

I found that my heartbeat gradually slowed down and my consciousness went away.

BAD END

(C) I'm not sure

▽ You

"I don't know. I want to see it, but I'm a little scared to know the truth."

I was hesitant to step further.

▽ Eric

"Are you worried about my brother? About if you'll be scolded again?"

I nodded honestly.

▽ You

"But I don't know if it's right to keep lying about my feelings."

I was wondering if at this rate, I could still live here while raising all this distrust.

▽ Eric

"Haha. You answered for yourself just now, right? It's okay. I'll support you."

CONTINUE:

▽ Eric

"Come……."

Eric took my hand and we left the room.

▽ You

"Eric! ??"

He held my hand strongly as we walked down the corridor leading to the garden.

▽ Eric

"One cannot overcome curiosity. Once you're obsessed, you can't escape."

Guided by Eric, we headed to the garden at night.

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

Go to Black Garden English Translation Directory here for more routes.

#heavens black garden english #heavens black garden english translation #black garden #heavens black garden #utapri black garden #uta no prince sama black garden #black garden english #utapri heavens #utapri heavens black garden #eiichi otori #eiji otori #eiichi ootori #eiji ootori #black garden eiichi #black garden eiichi otori #black garden eiji otori

[beevean]

SEGA and the eternal issue of “Sonic’s girlfriend”

[Translator’s note: here is the original article written by @latin-dr-robotnik​​, originally written on the 18th of May 2020]

Today we’re going to talk about one of the aspects SEGA is more secretive about: Sonic’s relationships.

[Translator’s note: this article was written to celebrate Seaside Hill Paradise’s 200th entry. If you’re fluent in Spanish, I highly recommend you to check it out! And if you aren’t, go follow Latin’s Tumblr blog if you haven’t already and you’re into Sonamy, analyses, gushing about music and shitposts.]

This article concludes my Sonamy trilogy, and I recommend you to read the previous two articles: “SEGA and the eternal issue of the Sonamy dynamic” and “’I love you’ – forbidden words in Sonic”. This means this is a shipping article – if you’re not interested into another essay about the love life of a blue hedgehog, I can redirect you to other articles such as “Sonic and speed: are we misunderstanding them?” and “What went wrong with Classic Sonic��s music in Sonic Forces?”.

Everybody else, welcome to today’s article!

It should be noted that this article focuses more on the semi-official and strictly official aspects, since there is really not much to say about the fandom. Nowadays the fandom has a relatively peaceful coexistence, creating art, fanfics and more, for all kind of ships; sometimes there’s an occasional fight between ships or a ship that clearly is not appropriate… but besides that, everything seems relatively calm, at least in my experience and compared to other fandoms.

Too cool for relationships...

Few things are as mentioned and yet silenced by the official SEGA media as the fateful words “girlfriend” and “Sonic” put together. In official terms, Sonic has always been this young, cool hedgehog, with a pure love for nature and never too worried about life, but with a moral code that makes him fight against injustices. During his first years, Sonic was almost impatient and a little emotionally distant, although as it was the ‘90s and things were not so clear for the young SEGA star, different interpretations would take the character through different paths - some more radical than others. As the years went by, and going through many redesigns, certain aspects of his personality would be perfected, exaggerated, or even flanderized. His position on relationships, on the other hand, would remain relatively constant over the decades, with a few particular exceptions.

The this is that Sonic, in the words of his own creator Naoto Ohshima, has always been considered “a young man with a child's heart”, which has helped to substantiate and understand why the character would remain relatively distant from his feelings, and much closer to his own interests associated with the life of adventure.

... or is he?

Despite everything I just said, they tried in many occasions, if not succeeded, to give Sonic a girlfriend, with various results.

As carefree as Sonic is, and as much as SEGA tried to clarify this point over and over again, the people behind his character have always tried to introduce one or more relationships into his life. Even Naoto Ohshima himself has made his own suggestion as to who might be a hypothetical partner for his character. The different interpretations I’ve mentioned have tweaked Sonic’s character to make it more apt to certain types of dynamics, and the cultural gap between the East and the West (which I analyzed a few years ago with the first article of this “trilogy”) also has a considerable impact on the type of relationships that would be established for Sonic from very early in his history until today.

Author’s note: the concept of “Sonic + human woman” of 1990 wasn’t completely forgotten, no no, it was brought back 16 years later, in… well… the worst way possible.

Let’s see an example. Going back to his very origins, in his pre-Sonic 1 sketches Sonic was often depicted with a stereotypical damsel in distress, Madonna, his own “Princess Peach” that ended up being scrapped for many reasons, including the similarities with Super Mario. As the years have gone by, this concept has not disappeared, but rather the writers and directors of the series have taken it down different paths over time. While Madonna was too cliché, other candidates for the role of “Sonic’s girlfriend” would quickly appear to try different dynamics, directly or indirectly endorsed by SEGA.

Sally Acorn

For many years, Princess Sally was for Western fans the first person who came to mind when they thought of “Sonic’s girlfriend”. Since 1993, and for 2 more decades, her relationship with Sonic has gone in many directions, but fundamentally the most amazing thing about this whole situation was that she was Sonic’s official girlfriend (at least in the Archie Comics canon). It was also one of the many headaches for SEGA in the last decade.

Originally a fellow fighter against the macabre Robotnik from the 1993 animated series Sonic The Hedgehog, Sonic and Sally’s relationship was always marked by their opposite personalities; while Sally tends to plan ahead and is much more focused on the seriousness of the task, Sonic was the type to destroy robots first and think later. “Opposites attract,” they say, and by the (premature, I might add) end of that series both were already more than friends. They had already kissed a couple of times.

At the most critical moment in their relationship, Sonic, after a year of being missing in space and presumed dead by everyone, returns to Mobius only to end up back in potential danger, decides to ignore the wishes and warnings of Sally, who’s clearly emotionally traumatized and stressed by both the general situation and the responsibilities she had to carry out for her kingdom in the absence of her parents. The result of this explosive cocktail was one of the most infamous scenes in all of Archie Sonic, "the Slap", where Sally finally reacts violently to Sonic's selfish statements. The hedgehog's response? Well, a long exposure to the screams about her experience - also traumatic - up to that point. In the end, both end up screaming and crying in front of virtually everyone.

What followed in the next decades was an expansion of that original SatAM canon in the Archie Comics, in which its various writers introduced varying degrees of drama and increasing conflict to demonstrate the strong bond between them, destabilizing or even stabilizing it again, multiple times. They would be together for some time, then they would be apart, eventually rekindling the flame of love passionately, until a final sacrifice on their part and the eventual resetting of the entire Archie Sonic canon.

In their last years, after the Super Genesis Wave, Sonic and Sally’s relationship went back to being platonic. a good friendship with the advantages and disadvantages of their personalities - Sally’s leadership and Sonic’s extreme confidence - while the focus was put on the flourishing relationship between Sally and her best friend (and old computer!) Nicole.

Regardless of the way their relationship ended, it's undeniable that Sally has left a huge mark. Being a product of the West, her existence was never really accepted by the Sonic’s Japanese creators, but because the bulk of the fandom is here in the West, Sally's presence has been strongly associated with Sonic, the Freedom Fighters, the comics... and also the ship wars between her and the character we’re going to talk about next. Her very existence was a living contradiction to the Japanese central canon, an official girlfriend who broke all the ideas that existed for Sonic in terms of his conception of relationships and lead him through unique paths. Whether for better or worse, Sally broke the mold.

Eimi. Rosy. Amy Rose.

On the opposite side of the spectrum there’s Amy, a character that was originally conceived as the Minnie to Sonic’s Mickey, but with her own dynamic.

Despite Amy’s existence being strongly tied to Sonic’s, once again Sonic Team tried to avoid the classic cliché (in this case to copy Mickey and Minnie), opting then to establish Amy as the one interested in a relationship, while Sonic runs away from this idea. For this dynamic to keep working, Sonic’s feelings have to be kept hidden, with excuses like his “shyness”, which leads to ambiguity, or because, as said before, of his “child’s heart”.

The most interesting thing is that Amy kept her canonical status of “self-proclaimed girlfriend” since 1993, which makes her “official” and “not official” at the same time, but there are some traces left from the Sonic manga of 1992 (which in turn influenced Amy’s original design), where a prototype version of Amy (or, as it was spelled there, Emi/Eimi) played the role of Sonic’s girlfriend (or Nicki’s, to be more precise). With this detail in mind, Amy can be considered, at least in the East, the very first “Sonic’s girlfriend”, even before Sally – but her situation is much more complex.

Sonic Mega Drive (top) and Sonic Boom (bottom), representing some differences in different Sonic continuities.

In any case, the manga would be the first and only time Amy was officially considered “Sonic’s girlfriend”, because in the following decades and in several continuities the core of their dynamic shifted to Amy chasing Sonic. Both would get closer or further away depending on each case (in Fleetway, for example, Amy ends up marrying another character, while in Archie Sonic there would be only a few instances of potential interest, quickly overshadowed by convenience or other things directly or indirectly related to Sally), but generally no continuity would establish an official relationship. In some cases, such as Japan, it wouldn’t even be necessary to clarify the state of the relationship, since their cultures accept more easily the dynamic that Sonic Team proposed as an “official relationship”. Just looking at the artwork highlighted on Sonic Channel (run by SEGA of Japan) shows how much more accepted the relationship is, even though Sonic Team’s official artwork still avoids any kind of public confirmation. (Author’s note: I’ve written more about Amy according to the East and the West in the first article of this trilogy)

Unlike Sally, there is no “opposites attract” situation between Amy and Sonic, and, at first, there is no prior friendship from which a potential relationship could flourish. We witnessed their dynamics from the first moment they met, and it would not be until years later that there would be a minimal basis for interaction from which various official continuities would bring both characters closer together.

Technically Amy already knew that her destiny was tied to Sonic and the events of Sonic CD on Little Planet, thanks to her tarot cards (an element that has disappeared since then), but for Sonic it was just another day of adventure, and although we’ve seen how Amy's feelings have progressed, mostly in Adventure 1 and 2, Sonic has never reflected on his personal feelings; it’s an aspect of the hedgehog that to this day remains a mystery to the audiences.

Also unlike Sally, Amy has appeared in multiple continuities of all kinds and because of that her relationship with Sonic has been affected in various ways. The main videogames canon has remained ambiguous and unchanged for 25 years: Amy would stay close to Sonic and offer some good moments to reflect on her feelings about him (some of which I mentioned in my post about Sonic Unleashed and Amy’s emotional support), while Sonic would remain distant, uncomfortable, shy, and, more recently, potentially affected by her apparent loss.

Sonic X is the first official attempt (by Sonic Team no less) to offer an expanded view of our characters. There’s a lot of discussion about how Sonic is slowly opening up to Amy’s advances, and these developments follow a line that we discussed in previous articles of this trilogy, and how, during the 2000s, the Japanese writers of the series kept slowly deepening the interactions between the two, reaching very important symbolic moments like Sonic X Ep. 9, 52 and 76, among several others. I am purposely leaving out specific details to direct your attention to this fantastic thread by Yvanix Rose that highlights some key details about how this continuity worked the Sonic-Amy dynamic. [Translator’s note: the thread is in Spanish]

Sonic X, episode 76.

Another essential continuity for the development of this dynamic was Sonic Boom, since, despite having been a separate continuity with its own interpretation of the characters, its existence managed to influence the main canon in some way in the years that followed its original release in 2014.

Sonic Boom made two important changes in the dynamic: Amy did no longer externalize her feelings with the same frequency or intensity (speeding up a process that already started in the main canon in 2008), and Sonic was noticeably more nervous and insecure of his feelings for her, even being jealous in several occasions. These changes got the dynamic closer to the “friends who have secret feelings to each other but they’re too shy to admit it” trope, and in the second season it could even be said that there are signals of the “secretly dating” trope. Nothing was officially confirmed yet, but the changes to the dynamic offered a fresh perspective to work from: winks and inferences about a relationship that was not talked about but seemed to happen behind the scenes.

Sonic Boom S1E16.

Sonic Boom’s approach also opened the door to working a little more on the characters’ new personalities. Taking a little inspiration from the original foundations of Sally and Sonic’s relationship, Boom now presented situations where Sonic and Amy’s perspectives actively clashed with each other, leading to discussions and moments that showed a little more of the mundane details of the friendship they had, rather than appealing to more classic behaviors of the main canon, like Sonic leaving the scene in a hurry. Considering the way things turned out the last time we saw this kind of dynamic on screen, it was pretty safe to assume that their new opposites were now attracted; the implied secret dating and so on only helped to give it more sustenance - which the fandom would eventually take to the extreme.

And lastly there’s IDW Sonic, the comic series that replaced Archie Sonic after its cancellation in 2017, and the most recent arc that offers an interesting perspective. Starting its continuity from the end of the events of Sonic Forces (which at the same time took on certain characteristics from the post-Boom era, particularly as far as Amy is concerned), IDW Sonic didn’t waste any time in presenting the way in which it would carry out its dynamic between Sonic and Amy.

Amy makes her feelings for Sonic very clear, and he is surprised but unable to match them. However, Sonic doesn’t want to outright reject her, and suggests that she come with him; she refuses, claiming that she has duties to the Resistance, setting the tone for the rest of the series. (IDW Sonic #2)

“Sonic’s girlfriend” today

As I mentioned earlier, after the reboot Sally was no longer considered Sonic’s girlfriend, and her disappearance after the cancellation of Archie Sonic in general is a sign that we may not see her ever again, even as a friend. As of today, in 2020, only Amy has been left in her “unofficial, but…” state, with various minor events taking place both in the main canon and in IDW Sonic:

In 2018 the official SEGA shop wrote a description for a piece of Amy Rose merchandise that said “celebrate 25 years of Sonic’s girlfriend”; the mistake wasn’t immediately corrected, despite the fandom pointing it out immediately.

The video game canon has remained dormant, with Team Sonic Racing in 2019 featuring more of a regular friendship between Sonic and Amy, sharing rivalries and quiet moments alike.

On the other hand, since IDW Sonic and Sonic Boom laid their foundations, we've begun to see a certain shift in the way the two characters are presented. While we’ve talked about IDW Sonic already, Sonic’s social medias have done multiple “Twitter Takeovers” where Sonic characters answer questions from fans, and Sonic has always answered more like his version of Boom to the inevitable question about Amy and his “feelings”.

Recent official animations like Sonic Mania Adventures and Team Sonic Racing Overdrive have shown Amy flirting with Sonic in a more casual way.

The current dynamic seems to be pointing towards “Sonic’s hidden feelings”, and I think we are at a perfect point to change the approach. SEGA in general seems more open to the idea of bringing these characters closer, probably as a marketing strategy, but without yet separating themselves from the central ideas that defined the dynamic for the last two and a half decades.

Conclusion

The idea of “Sonic’s girlfriend” has been one of the most experimental and controversial in the almost three decades that this series has been around for. SEGA has opened the door to all kinds of ambiguities, developments and interpretations, all with their pros and cons, instead of settling on a definitive position. As iconic as these characters, conceived as Sonic’s “romantic interests”, have become, they have also had their share of criticism and controversy, especially in the fandom.

The presence of Amy as the only “official but self-proclaimed girlfriend” today says a lot about the control SEGA (specifically SEGA of Japan) regained over the characters, after decades of interpretations that offered different alternatives with various degrees of success. At her best, Sally represented an ideal relationship with Sonic, much more complete and profound than the back-and-forth game between Amy and Sonic. But at her worst, this same relationship represented everything wrong that could happen by associating Sonic with the emotional spiderweb of a romantic relationship. SEGA hardening its control over the characters seems to have put an end of this type of situation where Sonic ends up being involved in a romantic telenovela, but at the same time it has revitalized the flirting game and the implicit associations that give fuel to the fandom fire.

From my humble interpretation, I think we’ve reached a point where Sonic and Amy have shared enough stories and moments to solidify the core aspects of their personalities and their friendship, allowing them to take the next step, which is to play around with the idea of “something else”. 25 years ago it was hard to see how these two characters could work together beyond “it’s SEGA’s word”; today there’s enough of a story to find a rhythm and chemistry for them, and the series of situations they've put themselves in (e.g. IDW Sonic’s plot arcs) are increasingly helping this case. The topic of “Sonic's girlfriend” may be a controversial one for SEGA and the fandom in general, but the doors have slowly been opened for this debate to develop and be investigated with interesting results, and I think that, in this new decade of 2020, there’s a unique potential to explore this kind of discussion, without sacrificing in any way the central principles of Sonic as a character. Thank you for joining me in these 200 entries, and hopefully we’ll see each other for many more.

#sonic the hedgehog #amy rose #sonamy #translation #analysis #long post #happy birthday latin! #this one was so hard #i had to cut a lot of shp-related parts sadly #but this whole project was very fun and enlightening

[linklethehistorian]

Randou and the Sins of Season 3's Fifteen Adaption (Interlude)

Episode  27 — The God of Fire: A Post-Section Addendum

Forgive me for backtracking for a brief moment, but in hindsight, there were two small things — particularly relating to the subsection of this section, which is titled “The Confrontation with Sheep at the Arcade” — that it seems I failed to properly address in my initial posts on this subject.

After realizing this mistake during the long struggle to get back on track with rolling out the rest of my article, it became apparent to me that I had three choices: I could go back and try to edit this information into the main article, hoping that it would fit well into what already existed without clashing with the carefully written transitions between sections, I could wait until the very end of my article and then make a post addressing the matter in hindsight, risking my audience becoming and remaining conflicted over certain bits of information until then, and being totally unaware of the one thing I accidentally skipped over, or I could simply make a separate addendum such as this to address it here and now, as soon as possible, and not have to worry about fitting it directly into the previous section for the time being — without having to give up either the chance to talk about it now or even to potentially go back at the end and try to fit it back into the main article at my leisure, as well.

Naturally, as I’m more than sure you can already see for yourself, given that you’re reading this, I decided to go with the last of these options, as I felt that this was the one that would offer the greatest amount of opportunities, with the least amount of potential problems that could come out of it. As for whether or not I will eventually, upon the completion of this very long analysis and review, attempt to backtrack and merge this added data into its rightful place in the main piece, that is something which I will have to decide when the time comes, even if I have a very optimistic outlook on this prospect right now, but in the meantime, I will just be sharing it with you here, and placing the link to this post somewhere in the Masterlist between the discussions on Episode 27 and Episode 28.

On one final note before we jump into this, if this post seems a bit sloppier than usual or just flows less smoothly than the rest of the article in any way, I truly apologize, but if that is indeed the case, it is likely due to the fact that I have had much less time to plan for my discussion of these things than I have had for everything else I’ve talked about up until this point. I promise that if in hindsight I should sense any need for it, I will attempt to re-write it in a better, more comprehensible format at a later date, but at the moment, I’m afraid that this is the absolute best that I can do if I am to get this information out in a timely manner.

Now, with that said, let’s go ahead and get into the actual things I’d like to talk about.

Dazai’s Previous Invitation to Join Sheep, and the Gang’s Initial Misunderstanding About His Affiliation

Okay, so this one is honestly a little embarrassing for me to admit to forgetting in hindsight, purely because of how often the subject is referenced in the novel despite being completely removed from the television series’ adaption, but in earnest, part of the reason I didn’t even think about it at the time was due to just how inconsequential this information was in the grand scheme of things; nevertheless, for those of you who truly want to know everything that was changed or omitted from Fifteen in the anime — or even just want to know more about the events and details of Dazai’s life — these facts probably still will be of some interest, so I will mention them anyway.

Contrary to how the show presents it, in the original version of the tale, Sheep actually do not immediately look upon Dazai as a threat when they first meet him in the arcade, nor does it even cross their minds that he might be a member of the Port Mafia; rather, their first thought upon seeing and conversing with him was simply that he had to be someone whom Chuuya had been looking to recruit into their own ranks.

Interestingly, it was also very briefly mentioned much earlier in the novel by Dazai himself — back during his and Chuuya’s initial meeting in Suribachi City — that the bandaged brunet actually was once handed a formal invitation by Sheep to join their organization but ultimately refused their offer, although this does not appear to be the reason why the gang now mistakes him as a potential new member of their group, given that, at the very least, the members there in the arcade seem not to recognize him whatsoever; in fact, they even question Chuuya’s behavior in seemingly having chosen to induct him without first receiving the council’s pre-approval — an accusation which Chuuya curiously, actively chooses not to correct, likely purely because he does not want to look like a traitor in their eyes, should they realize Dazai was actually with the Mafia. Indeed, it isn’t until Dazai purposefully outs himself as a mafioso in order to stop them from taking the redhead away with them that Sheep realizes the truth of things — at which point Dazai ends up having their captive members released in order to appease them, as we see in the anime, and things then go on to unfold as I have described previously in my article.

However, while of this might be very intriguing and, at the least, a bit insightful into how Dazai knows as much about the organization as he does, to be totally earnest about the matter, I must reiterate all the same that the removal of this information from the show was on the whole a very wise one that I can wholeheartedly support, for its existence truly doesn’t affect the overall storyline in any majorly impactful way, whatsoever — so much so that even I, a very dedicated Fifteen enthusiast, was able to easily forget about its existence during every one of the multiple times I wrote, read, and re-wrote the section dealing with the episode in which it mostly would have been present.

Looking back on it from that angle, I suppose, then, that my failure to bring it up prior to this probably did not change all that much, but still, in the interest of transparency and thoroughness, I wanted to make a small addendum post about it, anyway — and besides, there was already another matter regarding the arcade scene that I needed to speak on to begin with, so why pass up the opportunity to do this at the same time? There was genuinely no reason why I should have resisted.

Sheep Truly Being the First to Leave the Arcade in the Novel & DarkestJay8686’s English Translations

Now, in regards to that other matter I needed to address, for anyone who might have already read and/or started reading only DarkestJay8686′s English translation of the Fifteen light novel upon discovering my article, I am sure that there is probably a lot of confusion resulting from the conflict between my assurance that Sheep were the first to leave the Arcade before Dazai and Chuuya, and DarkestJay’s translation, which depicts the exact opposite of this, and for that I deeply apologize — not because I am wrong about it (as I am not), but rather, because I failed to discuss this apparent contradiction back when I first brought it up, even though, rightfully, I should have.

Be that as it may, I need you to understand that I did actually have a specific reason for why I had previously chosen refrain from talking about it, as although I did sincerely think about and even strongly consider adding mention of this whole ordeal to my disclaimers and notes at the beginning of this article back when I had first prepared to post it, in the end, I was simply too concerned that it would be considered somehow rude or unfair for me to do so.

My train of thought back then was — mistakenly — that to express anything other than complete praise and pure, unconditional endorsement of DarkestJay’s work would be to instantly and irrevocably make myself come off as a disrespectful, ungrateful monster who has no appreciation for the people who dedicate their free time to making these stories available to non-Japanese speaking members of the fandom, no matter how kindly I may have tried to word what I had to say. I was utterly terrified that, even if I spoke highly of the translation as a whole and encouraged people to read it, if I also had explicitly addressed the reason why I personally did not recommend using it as the sole source of knowledge of the book at the same time and mentioned any of the mistakes I found to be made within their interpretation of events, then I would be seen as criticizing the author for things that truthfully were likely to largely not be in any way their fault. Obviously, in hindsight, this line of thinking was not the best to listen to in light of the misunderstandings it could cause, and I realize that, but these were nevertheless my thought processes at the time; having had time to think deeper on the circumstances now, though, I of course have also come to the conclusion that none of these other concerns of mine need be had, so long as I try to approach the matter as delicately and respectfully as I can, however big these fears may have been at the time, and so, I intend to finally speak about it at long last.

Furthermore, while I in no way want to seem like an opportunistic profiting off of someone else’s misfortune — as I assure you that I, too, was quite saddened to hear of their struggles and wish it hadn’t happened — seeing as that their work was nonetheless sadly removed from WattPad, and they had to relocate to another platform where they wouldn’t have to fear censorship again, thus requiring me to have to provide y’all with a new link that actually works and leads you to where you need to go to read it, I think that is really the perfect time for me to preface my sharing of that new link with this little PSA of a sort.

So, if you’re keen on getting that new link I mentioned and want to learn about the reason why my information about Sheep’s departure from the arcade doesn’t line up with their translations, as well as why it’s inadvisable to use their otherwise mostly excellent translations as your sole source of info on Fifteen rather than reading it alongside the other trusted translation I have provided at the beginning of my article, feel free to hop on over to this post to find out.

[View the masterlist]

#linklethehistorian #bungou stray dogs #bsd #bsd spoilers #spoilers #bsd season 3 #bsd novels #fifteen #Arthur Rimbaud #bsd arthur rimbaud #Randou #justiceforrandou2k19 #justiceforrandou2k20 #justiceforrandou2k21 #fifteen article #Randou and the Sins of Season 3’s Fifteen Adaption #Episode 27 — The God of Fire #writing #My writing #my thoughts #The Confrontation with Sheep at the Arcade #Interlude #Post-Section Addendum #Sheep Truly Being the First to Leave the Arcade in the Novel & DarkestJay8686’s English Translations #Dazai’s Previous Invitation to Join Sheep and the Gang’s Initial Misunderstanding About His Affiliation

[alittlebitgoofy]

hihi for the au/trope/prompt game !!! au 1, trope 1 and prompt 5/24 (either or both!! im indecisive lol) <33 OH and lemyanka ofc did u expect anything different from me

HI, so ik this took a while (the other ones will but i will get them all done i s2g) but i got a bit too into this one so here it is and it’s like 1.4k :)

1. roommate!au 1. friends to lovers  24. “you have the emotional capacity of a brick”

Priyanka was conflicted, she adored her best friend but Lemon wasn't the one you went to for emotional consoling. She could provide one hell of a distraction but she wasn’t good with her own emotions, let alone someone else’s. She could listen but couldn’t help the lack of emotive energy she had a lot of the time. 

“Girl, something is clearly bothering you, you can talk to me.” The concern on the blonde’s face was appreciated, no matter how little she could do to help the situation. How do you explain to the person trying to console you that they’re the problem?

“Lem, I love you but I’m not coming to you for advice, you have the emotional capacity of a brick.”

“Bitch! Fuck, Priyanka, I just don’t like seeing someone I care about unhappy, is it bad to try and help you?” The genuine hurt in her voice shook the brunette. It wasn’t like Lemon to get so riled up over a joke but maybe now wasn’t the most appropriate time. She let out a dejected sigh, attention falling to her lap as she tried to avoid the prying eyes of her roommate. 

“I’m sorry.” The meekness made Lemon do a double-take, even when she was upset, Priyanka would have some kind of witty response to most things. Even when they squabbled, she rarely submitted with such sadness. Something was truly wrong.

“It’s fine Pri, just talk to me, doll, even if you don’t want to talk I just wanna help you feel better.”

Priyanka left the thoughts of the clear care and concern lemon had for her aside, with her feelings they’d easily get misread as romantic. That was impossible, lemon rarely held more than a slight crush on someone before getting bored as they never fit her standards. 

“Alright, there’s this girl. But there’s nothing I can do about it, she’s not into me.” the immediate interest lemon showed hurt, Priyanka sighed inwardly, this was going to be a long conversation. 

 “Have you asked her?”

 “No? Who asks people, you flirt, and if they don’t flirt back to go and cry yourself to sleep because you know you’ll never find love.”

Lemon looked even more concerned, it sent Priyanka through a loop to see such compassion on her face. There was no trying to hide it, just some sort of love and care for her that made her broken heart feel that much better. 

“Maybe she’s just dumb,” Lemon said with a soft giggle, the kind of noise that would melt anyone’s heart and sent Priyanka into orbit any time it came out of her. 

“Oh, she is, the stupidest person I know. But I love her, and I'm too scared to say anything and ruin our friendship”  

“It’s not good to bottle up your feelings, you keep quiet about it so long and you just want to die every time they go on a date or get their heartbroken, but you can’t say anything or give it away because it’s been so long. It’s scary Pri, but don’t let yourself get to that position. You’ll never know if you don’t try.”

That was a lot, Lemon realised how much she’d spilt but couldn’t find the energy to hold up her walls. She trusted Priyanka more than anyone, how much was it to let her know about her long-running crush that she had no intention of acting upon and fuck up her one good relationship with a person that wasn’t her dog. 

 “Lem, why don’t you try? If you feel that strongly about someone, surely it’s worth trying?” 

 Lemon scoffed at Priyanka’s romanticism, life wasn’t like a romcom. People didn’t fall in love with their best friends and live happily ever after, they suffered from the burden of loving someone who crushed on someone new each week and came back to them heartbroken. There was a reason she couldn’t deal well with emotions, she was scared to show them.

 “She doesn’t like me like that, it’s painfully obvious cause she likes someone else.”

 “You’ll never know if you don’t try.”

 “I actually hate you, oh my god!.”  Twisting her words was a low move but it wasn’t surprising. Priyanka was just like that and as annoying as it could be it was one of Lemon’s favourite things. She always had a quick wit to bounce something back. It made arguments a nightmare, she’d pick up on any contradiction but it was hilarious in the right context. 

“You love me, who wouldn’t” Though she’d glanced away, lemon would hear the smirk in Priyanka's words. She wanted to rub the smug look off her face, it was infuriatingly adorable when she got all cocky about her appeal 

 “Most people.”

 “Bitch! You’re lucky you’re cute, cause you’re an ass.” the brunette laughed at the deadpan delivery. Lemon loved to fight back with her lack of emotion and it never failed to get a laugh. 

“I’ve got a nice ass thanks for noticing, doll.” The pair erupted in giggles at the absurdity of it all, the spilling of emotions before falling back into the comfort of their jokes. It felt good to be understood by someone, but they both yearned for something more while thinking the other was yearning for someone else.

Priyanka convinced Lemon into laying close to her as they both chilled, looking on their phones, comfortable in the company of each other. It took her by surprise when the smaller girl cuddled into her. Affection was rare from Lemon, it made her heart pound in her chest as she continued to lay her head onto her shoulder and latch her arms around the closest arm. 

Priyanka couldn’t help beginning to stroke her hair, she started slowly attempting to gauge the reaction from her before continuing as Lemon relaxed into the touch. She let out a soft sigh, completely letting Priyanka be as affectionate as she wanted. 

Lemon felt her fear melting as they stayed like that. She wished she had the courage to speak up about her feelings but the words eluded her. Something about now felt like the right time if ever. Courage slowly bubbled up, leaving lemon dead silent in the arms of her roommate wishing she could telepathically communicate her feelings and avoid this whole headache.

“Hey, Pri?” Lemon whispered, turning her head to face her friend with an apprehensive look. It would normally be enough to worry Priyanka but something felt serious about this like she shouldn’t interrupt. Lemon glanced around, attempting to avoid the problem of speaking despite having started the conversation herself.

“I just…” She trailed off, wondering if she could even say it. Was it worth it? For a chance with Priyanka, she had to try. “I love you, Pri. I’m glad you’re in my life.” 

She wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but earnest words of appreciation from Lemon wasn’t it. The feeling it brought her was euphoric though. It warmed the brunette to her core to know that her best friend liked her that much. Lemon wasn’t one for soft sappy moments, she showed her affection through playful banter and the occasional compliment. Something was different, she meant everything so clearly with her heart that it made Priyanka question if she could just kiss her right there.

“I love you too Lem, you have no idea how much.” Though it sounded innocent, she didn’t know how much

She didn’t know how Priyanka spent nights on end thinking about Lemon lying next to her, making snide comments about the most random things to get a laugh out of her. She didn’t know how every heartbreak fades quicker around her, how the feelings for her were the cure for anyone else. She was why dates failed. They weren’t Lemon, and that was all she wanted. 

Their eyes met, wordlessly exchanging affections with soft smiles. Priyanka couldn’t help but lean ever so much closer, Lemon soon mirroring her action. Was this about to happen? Was Lemon aware of what she was doing? Before she could overthink too much more, their lips met. It was as soft as she thought Lemon would be. Though neither wanted to end, they had to break apart for air soon enough. It took one soft, dopey grin from Priyanka to send the blonde’s heart fluttering in her chest.

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

#lemyanka #lemongivesyoulife #priyanka #priyanka love #rpdr fanfiction #requests #lau

[pumpkinpaix]

hi again! previous anon here, just remembered a question. there's something that's been nagging at me about the show's lan parents storyline — LXC tells WWX that story about his parents and it seems like it's meant as a parallel for LWJ and WWX. But the Lan parents thing sounded like a super toxic/unhealthy relationship? like their mom was literally being kept against her will... maybe i'm just missing the nuance for the parallel? would love to hear your thoughts on this!

(ask con’t, sorry it’s long) i’ve just gotten out of a bad relationship not too long ago and gets really leery of cdramas portraying control as love (ie one love interest preventing the other from leaving, or clear power imbalances as with period dramas). i really don’t think that’s what’s happening here but got kind of uncomfortable too at the “i want to bring someone back to gusu/hide them away” line LWJ had earlier. might you have an alternate interpretation? i’m almost sure i’m misreading!

So a couple things first: thank you so much for asking me this question because my thoughts about the untamed/mdzs have been so much and turbulent that having a specific thing to focus on is really helpful, AND it’s also really flattering that you think I??? would have worthwhile thoughts???? about this really complicated thing.

Second: I want to make sure to say that no matter how strongly I feel about my interpretation, no matter how long I spend composing this response, you are not obligated to change how you feel. If that line still bothers you, it still bothers you. Our experiences are different! And it’s okay! That being said, haha, buckle up I guess, because WOW do I have a lot of things to say.

Spoilers up through episode 43, obviously, with allusions to the novel. I will try to keep any details about things that happen post-43 vague.

Let’s begin with this moment:

“Was he right to do this?” || “I don’t know.”

[id: image 1 is a screenshot of lan xichen asking “was he right to do this” and image 2 is a screenshot of wei wuxian responding “i don’t know” from episode 43 of the untamed /end id]

I think we need to think about how to answer this question before we can answer your question: how can we interpret the relationship between lan wangji and lan xichen’s parents? Was it moral? Was it okay? Was it right? This is clearly a question that lan xichen has been wrestling with his whole life. And from this scene, I think that he’s made his peace with the fact that it’s always going to be a question for him, not because the inherent morality is unclear, but because of the emotional subjectivity he’s always going to hold for it. He doesn’t expect wei wuxian to have an answer because he doesn’t have an answer himself.

Something that I remember from the novel that doesn’t make it into this scene, though, is what wei wuxian says after lan xichen asks, “can you understand why my father acted this way?” and he nods, is the explanation he gives: he hated the person who had murdered his mentor, but he also loved her so much he couldn’t bear to see her destroyed. Unable to live with himself, he married her, swore to protect her, and then imprisoned her for the rest of her life. Tormented by his contradictions, he then locked himself away as well. lan xichen agrees.

lan wangji and lan xichen were raised without their parents—largely, they were raised by their upright uncle, who, due to his brother’s behavior, took up the responsibilities of sect leader and parent at the same time. (It’s really no wonder that lan qiren has such a vicious dislike for wei wuxian: he loves lan wangji so much, and he’s so afraid to watch the child he raised repeat history. Beyond that, I think it’s pretty safe to say that lan qiren probably harbors not insignificant resentment towards his brother for the harm he did to both his children and to lan qiren himself.) Lan qiren is not married and as far as we know, never has any romantic entanglements after he begins raising the lan brothers. So where does that leave lan wangji and lan xichen in terms of models for romance? All they have is the fraught relationship between their parents. 

lan wangji is not good with words. He expresses himself primarily through action, which we see time and time again. When lan wangji says to lan xichen, “there’s someone I want to take back to the cloud recesses. take them back and hide them away,” I think he’s trying to explain (with words) his feelings for wei wuxian in the only way he knows how: by making a reference to the only romantic relationship to which he and lan xichen were firsthand witnesses. lan xichen canonically understands wangji better than pretty much everyone: he sees straight through him at Biling lake when he invites wei wuxian and jiang cheng along to hunt the water spirits because he knows lan wangji wants wei wuxian to come. He asks if he wants loquats even when wangji refuses them. So when lan wangji says that, lan xichen first repeats the statement carefully to make sure he understands what’s at stake, and then he says something very crucial: “you only fear that he isn’t willing”.

I think this says a lot— specifically, that both lan xichen and lan wangji understand firsthand the pain their father caused and what exactly was wrong about it. I think what lan wangji is saying between the lines is, “I’m in love with someone. I want to take them home with me. I want to hide them away from the world to protect them. I fear this makes me like our father, whose love led him to do such terrible things to our mother, and by extension, to us and our uncle. I can’t repeat his mistakes.” And lan xichen, understanding all of that, gets to the heart of lan wangji’s inner conflict: wei wuxian is not willing, and lan wangji refuses to follow in his father’s footsteps, no matter how tormented he feels about the person he loves, no matter how much he wants to.

Every time lan wangji tries and fails to get wei wuxian to return with him to gusu, it’s with the intention of trying to help him, trying to protect him from the other sects, trying to pull him back before he does something unforgivable, much like his father’s motivations for bringing his mother back to gusu (“he swore that this was his beloved wife and that anyone who wished to hurt her [for her crimes] would have to go through him”), but unlike his father, lan wangji never forces wei wuxian to do anything. He never keeps him locked up, never forcibly kidnaps him. Not only that, but lan wangji is also willing to fight wei wuxian when he believes that wei wuxian is doing something inadmissible: heis the only one to stand against his initial forays into demonic cultivation, and physically confronts him on the roof at the nightless city. Would he have actually followed through on killing him, had things gone differently? Maybe, maybe not, but at the very least, it shows that he, unlike his father, was willing to try to destroy the person he loved when he crossed the line.

Anon, you’re right that there’s a parallel between the lan parents and wangxian, but I think the key is how they parallel each other. Lan wangji doesn’t repeat his father’s mistakes. When he finally does bring wei wuxian back to gusu and hide him away to protect him, wei wuxian is not there against his will, and, I think also importantly, lan wangji is with him. It’s no accident that lan wangji’s residence is the jingshi, the place his mother was imprisoned for his whole life, and it’s no accident that he brings wei wuxian there. But lan wangji doesn’t lock him there and abandon him like his father did with his mother: he’s there with him the whole time. Lan wangji, when all is said and done, is finally ready to stand by wei wuxian in spite of everything he did, unlike his father, who couldn’t do so with his wife: couldn’t destroy her, couldn’t stand with her. lan wangji makes his choice. “I regretted that I couldn’t stand with you at the nightless city.” The parallel is one that emphasizes contrast in spite of similarity.

All this ties vaguely into bigger themes present within the story, particularly the tensions between freedom/restriction and parents/children. These are like, two whole other essays haha, so I won’t get too deep into the weeds (unless you or anyone else wants to ask me!!! bc, anon, believe me, I would BE WILLING!!!) but:

1. lan wangji and wei wuxian are fundamentally very similar people, even if their personalities are not. They have incredibly strong moral compasses and want nothing more than to be righteous and to live with clear consciences about their choices. The difference is in how they go about that. wei wuxian chafes under rules, breaks them when he finds them unjust or unimportant, and thinks that he doesn’t deserve to be punished. When lan wangji finds that his moral compass conflicts with the rules he chooses to live by, he prioritizes his own sense of justice, much like wei wuxian, but he also accepts the punishments that are given to him without complaint. wei wuxian cherishes freedom over all while lan wangji lives under strict regulation, but the point is that they both take it too far. wei wuxian is righteous to the point of arrogance, flaunts his peers’ judgments and warnings to his eventual downfall. lan wangji, after doing what he thinks is right, allows himself to be punished without protest so severely he’s bedridden and imprisoned for three years. I would say neither of these approaches is… ideal, and I think that’s part of why wangxian feels so profound. They temper each other’s worst weaknesses. (rereading this, i’m not sure i’m 100% behind everything I just said lol, but again, an essay for another time)

2. Like lan wangji is paralleled with his father, wei wuxian is paralleled with his mother, zangse-sanren: free-spirited, mischievous, and ultimately meeting a tragic end for the choices she made out of that desire for freedom. He too is able to eventually escape his mother’s fate, just as lan wangji escapes his father’s. The parallels between parent and child are strong for almost all the mains, though not all of them manage to free themselves and achieve some measure of happiness, and this in itself relates to the even bigger questions of what matters more: your heritage, or your actions? Your heritage, or your upbringing? What can you do to avoid making the same mistakes as your predecessors?

I’ve already talked about this wrt wei wuxian and lan wangji, but the same goes for characters like jiang cheng, jin zixuan, wen qing, wen ning, mianmian, jin guangyao, su she, nie huaisang, jin ling, lan sizhui, ouyang zizhen, xiao xingchen, song lan, xue yang etc. like the list is endless. Part of why mdzs/the untamed is so heartwrenching is watching history repeat itself while the protagonists, who are also acutely aware, are nearly powerless to stop it. The juniors end up being the breaking from all that: willing to defy their parents, make their own decisions about right and wrong, recognize that a person’s actions should speak louder than the rumors that run on their account.

tl;dr: the lan parents’ relationship is toxic and hurtful to everyone around them. wangxian absolutely parallels it, but in a way that highlights how they differ from their predecessors, tying into larger thematic issues of the story.

eek that was almost 2k words yikes!! I hope my enthusiastic rambling helped you see that “take them back, hide them away” line in a different light haha, but I want to say again: you’re not obligated to take my interpretation as fact, and you also don’t have to think everything about wangxian is perfect to still like it. We all consume and like imperfect stories! I totally get your feelings on weird power dynamics/inequalities in relationships because… it’s abusive? it’s terrible? It hurts to see?? esp given what you said about your own experience, like yeah, for sure!!! but for me? when lan wangji says, “I want to take someone back to the cloud recesses—take them back, hide them away”, it reads as a really powerful, self-aware expression of what it means for someone like him to fall in love.

EDIT 16 APR 2020: I find myself only agreeing with ~85% of this after many months of reflection. /o\ *hides face* leaving it as-is because it’s what I wrote at the time, but! you know. I have changed some of my views.

#the untamed #mdzs #mo dao zu shi #wangxian #陈情令 #魔道祖师 #meta #mine #anonymous #asks and replies #this is so long i'm so sorry!!! #this is also an open invitation for everyone to come talk to me about the untamed/mdzs #please #let me put my literary and film analysis training to any use at all please #mymeta

[peanutparade]

Someone asked me what my process was, and I’m not sure I gave her a satisfying answer in the PM, so here I will attempt to explain how I make a game from start to finish.

*Please note the the drafts above are not for the same story, but for the purpose of illustration.

**Also please take this advice with a grain of salt. I’m not a published author (though I do know a bit about the publishing industry), and I’m definitely not a perfect writer. This is my process, and the things I try to keep in mind when I’m writing, and you may find this advice to be complete garbage.

Step one: Get an idea for a story. I can’t really give any tips on how to go about doing this. I tend to take inspiration from other works of media (classical literature is my favorite, though I have taken cues from more contemporary sources as well).

Step two: Consider who your characters are going to be. It’s okay if you only have one or two characters in mind at first. I’m pretty utilitarian about my characters, so most of them don’t get created until step three.

Step three: Open a word document and just start typing shit out. (I use Google Drive so I can access it from anywhere, and for another reason which I’ll get to later.) Don’t stop to think, don’t even breathe. Just type. Any idea that comes into your head goes in the document. Some of it won’t make sense with everything else, some of it will contradict other things, some of it will be vaguely defined. You will fix that later. This is the most important part (especially the way I write), because it’s where you’re going to get an idea of how your story starts and how it ends, as well as cement your cast of characters. If you need a scene where your main character goes to a lighthouse, then you know you’ll also need to come up with a lighthouse keeper (see my comment above about being utilitarian with characters. I’m no authority, so if you do things differently, that’s fine, but I don’t like making characters that don’t serve a purpose).

Step four: Annotation, annotation, annotation! (This is the other thing I use Google Drive for, as it has a comment feature that I heavily rely on.) Go through all your scribbling and make notes for yourself. Be a little hard on yourself here, because this is the part where you’re going to try to make everything you’ve written in Draft 1 cohesive. This will be a long process, as you need to think about how all of this is connected, as well as think about what sort of arcs your main characters are going to go through. I read somewhere once that ALL of your characters have to go through an arc, but that’s a bunch of wacky nonsense. Some characters are minor characters, and thus do not require depth. The only character arc that MUST be included is the main character’s arc. Remember: character arc ≠ character motivation. ALL major characters (protagonist(s), love interest(s), villain(s)) MUST have motivation for what they are doing. The motivation doesn’t have to be anything too complex, just so long as the audience understands why the characters are doing what they’re doing. (Minor characters with motivation can make the world feel more real and lived in, but they can also make the story feel bogged down. Brevity is key here, and sometimes less is more.)

Step five: Draft 2 All of that plotting you just did? Throw it away! Just kidding, don’t actually throw it away. BUT you’re going to rewrite your plot outline, tidier this time, and only refer back to Draft 1 when you get stuck. Feel free to come up with new ideas during this time; Draft 1 is not your story’s final form. If you think of scenes or quotes, feel free to include them in this draft, but you’re mostly just outlining right now. (As you may notice in the image above, Draft 2 is also subject to annotation.) Draft 2 is where you should be solidifying the themes of your story. Character arc(s) should tie into and support this theme. This is also the draft where you should be catching any plot holes (especially if you don’t have an editor/beta reader), as once you’ve begun actually writing the story, any problems here will only compound as you go.

Step six: Write the story It’s pretty straightforward. Follow Draft 2 (and any additional annotations you made on Draft 2), and go scene by scene and write. I never skip around, as it makes it hard to keep track of what characters know at what time, but I know of authors that do skip around, and they seem to do okay. You’ll have to figure out what works best for you.

Step seven: Edit, edit, edit! Aside from the obvious (typos and spelling errors), look out for:

Scenes that are too long or too short. Counterintuitively, these may be the result of the same problem: a lack of purpose. Ask yourself, “Does this need to be here?”

Long-winded info dumps. Consider the old adage, “show, don’t tell.” Whenever information can be conveyed through action or reaction, write it that way. If you can convey two things at the same time (i.e. something about a character and also something about the world--bonus if these two things are actually unrelated to each other), do it.

Information that your audience wouldn’t logically have being the key to resolving the plot. Especially in sci-fi and fantasy stories, if the conclusion of the story relies on knowing something--even if it’s something that the characters all know--you need to make sure your audience also knows this, or else they will be frustrated. Keep in mind the Rule of Threes.

And that’s the story portion done. If you’re making a visual novel/dating sim, there are other steps you need to do. (I usually do this stuff while writing the story so it doesn’t get tedious, but if you’re hiring people to do this other stuff, you should probably have the writing done ahead of time. If you’re hiring writers to help you, you should have Draft 1 done, at the least. Your writers can probably take it from there.)

NOTE: Any job you don’t do yourself is something that will cost you money. If you can find other aspiring creators to volunteer their time to your project, good for you, but please do not approach anyone directly unless you plan to offer to pay them (”for exposure” is not payment).

Step eight: Character sprites Major characters are going to need to be represented visually in your visual novel (go figure!), so... draw some people? I know some people make character design sheets, but I just jump right in, and then later, make microedits to the sprites as the mood strikes me. The design sheet thing is probably a smarter way to do it. I use photoshop, and I would strongly encourage keeping hair, clothing, and facial features on separate layers until you know exactly how you plan to code them into your game.

Step nine: Backgrounds Same as the sprites, except places instead of people. I’m bad at this, so I have no right to give anyone advice. I use a 3D interior design app to create a guide for what I want rooms to look like, and then I use that to get my vanishing points and furniture sizing right. This method is 50% tracing, 50% wishing I was dead. I do not recommend it.

Step ten: Audio If your game will have voice acting, get that together now. If you’re composing your own music, you’re more talented than I am. For my first game, I utilized royalty free options (incompetech and bensound), but now I hire a composer (I do still supplement my soundtrack with royalty free options if it’s for something inconsequential). I don’t use many sound effects, but when I do, I just look for free options online.

Step eleven: Coding I use Ren’py because it’s free and easy to learn (provided you don’t want to do anything too complicated). There are tons of resources online to teach you how to use Ren’py, both from official sources and unofficial sources. I’ve never posted in the forums myself, but the people there seem very kind and helpful if you get stuck. (If anyone wants to see how I code, specifically, I’ll do a Part Two for it, but I have to warn you that my games are the coding equivalent car repairs done with bubblegum and duct tape.)

Step twelve: Playtesting Make sure your game works. It’s pretty straightforward. You can even recruit some guinea pigs--I mean, friends to help you. (I don’t have any friends, so I do this part on my own.)

By this point, a year or so will have passed (give or take, depending how long your game is, how much time you have to work on it, and how much of the work you plan to do by yourself), and with any luck, you’ll have a game! Posting your game on itch.io is free, but putting your game on steam will cost you $100.

Like I said to the person on patreon who originally asked me about my process, making a visual novel is a lot of work, but I encourage everyone to at least try it and see if you like it.

I look forward to hearing your stories!  ♥

#peanut parade #peanutparade #peanut parade games #indiedev #gamedev #writing #visual novel

[littlesailorinthesun]

elf primer

As part of a larger joint project (a lore reading order timeline), I wanted to write a post documenting all of the elf and kindred-related weirdness in the story. Once you start diving really, really deep into trying to piece elfkindred information together, you'll find that lots of things contradict each other or become jumbled. This is in part due to our server's translation and in part just because the story legitimately retcons itself. There were also a lot of theories and misconceptions which I wanted to spend some time discussing. So here is some information that will help those who are interested in reading.

By the way, huge spoilers ahead for the newest CN hell event, which has been given the fan nickname “Moonless Voyage”. The translations I used are linked at the end!

Main Cast

Chloris: The duty-bound Prince of Forest Elves. He participated in the war between kindred and elves a thousand years ago. He has very few desires as he's very focused on the well-being of the forest. He's also very powerful. Has been kept in the dark about his family history.

Cesare: The brother of Chloris and the current Lord of Kindred. He was exiled to Shadow City, the world within Lake Bovaly, a thousand years ago. Strongly wishes for Kindred to be simply allowed to live in the forest again, after that right was stolen from him when he was young, and secretly wishes he and Chloris could be normal brothers. Now, he also wants to break the Blood Curse because it affects all Kindred even if they just have the desire to hurt others (not for the same reasoning as Nidhogg). 

Lakris: The second Prince of Forest Elves. Stated by Cesare to simply be "a part of him" that was taken. Looked just like Cesare. 

Elven Queen: The mother of Chloris and Cesare. Anti-war and fiercely protective of the elves even at the cost of her own Kindred loved ones. 

Helsin (Blood Lust): The Lord of Kindred who served as the leader of Shadow City while Cesare was missing. Her primary goal is to break the seal of Shadow City once more.

Evelyn (Flickering Pistill): An elf who was invited to Shadow City by Helsin and subsequently tortured. She became the final seal for Shadow City, never truly dying. Her story is well-known among those in the Pigeon Forest and Shadow City.

Timeline

(Note: Next to the occurrence, I wrote where you can find the source/a more detailed description of the lore.)

Many years ago: Forest Elves (Chloris' kind) guarded the Pigeon Forest since it came into existence.  (Chloris 1)

Elves who sought to cleanse the world were corrupted by the miasma they encountered, and became the Kindred.  (Moonless Voyage)

>1000 years before Year 680, New Era: Chloris and Cesare were born to the Elven Queen and the Lord of Kindred, who were lovers but could not be together. The two twins did not meet.  (Jealous Phantom)

~1000 years before Year 680, New Era: Tensions broke out between Kindred and Elves. The Elven Queen persuaded the Lord of Kindred to take all of the Kindred out of Pamir Forest (north of main Pigeon Forest) and bring them to Shadow City so there would be no more war. Lord of Kindred obliged, and opened up Shadow City, an action that took most of his strength and ultimately killed him. Every Kindred in Pamir Forest went to Shadow City.  (Jealous Phantom)

Cesare's father died, Cesare became the new Lord of Kindred, and the Elven Queen made one last visit to him to say her final goodbye. Cesare pleaded with her to change her mind, but she turned her back on him and left.  (Jealous Phantom)

The Elven Queen died (as was told to Cesare) or went missing.  (Jealous Phantom/Wake Up from Dream)

Cesare would occasionally watch Chloris play the harp from the other side of the lake, aware that Chloris was his brother.  (Jealous Phantom/Flower Feather)

Cesare continued to fight the elves. During a fight, the Elven King (Cesare's uncle on his mother's side) told him that his mother had left some words for him before she died. This was a ploy to distract him and disarm him. Elven King then picked up Cesare's sword, Dark Verdict, and stabbed him with it. Cesare sank to the bottom of the lake.  (Moonless Voyage)

Lakris appeared under the Tree of Life for the first time. However, he was asleep during the war.  (Wake Up from Dream/Chloris 4)

At some point, the King also died in battle.  (V2: 4-2)

[Assumption] Any remaining Kindred that were in Shadow City left, and so did Elaine, leaving the elves and her sister Rachel behind in the forest. The seal between Shadow City and Pigeon Forest formed.  (Minstrel of Time)

Helsin became the Kindred Lord and the most powerful person in Shadow City and amassed many followers that feared her but respected her.  (Moonless Voyage)

Helsin, who wants to break the seal between Shadow City and Pigeon Forest, invited Evelyn to Shadow City to torture her. Evelyn doesn't die; instead, she ends up becoming the final seal, believing it to be atonement for everybody who participated in the war.  (Blood Moon)

Year 670, New Era: Cesare stayed at the bottom of Lake Bovaly for nearly a thousand years until Nidhogg one day swam down and retrieved the Dark Verdict sword, stabbing him and releasing him from the seal that the Elven King had placed on him that trapped him there. (Mentioned in Ice Abyss Echo, Dark Verdict suit, and V2: 4-SS2. The year and more clarification on what happened is given in the Miraland Civilization Files book.)

Cesare returned to Shadow City, to the surprise of Kindred there, who worshipped Helsin and viewed Cesare as only a legend considering how long he had been in the lake.  (Moonless Voyage)

Infighting began between Kindred who were loyal to Helsin and Kindred who were loyal to Cesare, but Helsin declared her loyalty to Cesare, who went forth and did his best to improve the quality of life in Shadow City.  (Moonless Voyage)

Year 680: Cesare and Kindred spirits gather power in Pamir Forest again, using Noah as an agent to stir up chaos and attract the attention of Chloris. Chloris and Lakris go to investigate, and Lakris disappears into a heavy fog as they walk. Chloris goes to the Kindred castle alone and meets Cesare for the first time. It's implied that Lakris was the elven part of Cesare all along, and Cesare reclaims Lakris. Cesare disappears in the light of the Dawnblade.  (Chloris 4)

Nikki, Mela, and Momo accidentally get hoodwinked and sent into Shadow City where they nearly get eaten alive by some hungry Kindred. Chloris finds this out and makes the decision to remove the seal between Shadow City and Pigeon Forest to save them.  (V2: Chapter 3)

Most of Chloris's strength is used in removing the seal. Cesare escapes Shadow City and bites Chloris, transferring his memories and weakening him further.  (V2: 3-SS2)

Elaine and Rachel (boat lifetime sisters) along with Nikki and co attempt to find a way to heal Chloris but he falls unconscious.  (V2: Chapter 4)

When the seal is removed, Evelyn (Helsin's prisoner) disappears. Helsin goes mad with desire and experiences severe backlash from the Blood Curse, so she asks to be restrained.  (Moonless Voyage)

At some point, Chloris wakes back up.  (That one Pigeon welfare suit)

Cesare decides to break the Blood Curse. He recruits Helsin for help and they leave Shadow City and go back to Pigeon Forest. Helsin fights off Elven soldiers with her whip while Cesare tries to remove a giant crystal within the Tree of Life that binds Kindred under the Blood Curse.  Chloris approaches and Cesare explains his reasoning for trying to remove the crystal, also dropping the bomb about the secrets behind their parentage.  (Moonless Voyage)

Chloris conducts some elfin glowing crystal magic that renders the Kindreds immobile. Peace falls over the entire forest. The backlash of the Blood Curse that the Kindred constantly experienced disappears.  (Moonless Voyage)

Cesare orders all the other Kindred to return to Shadow City. He does another bonding ritual with Chloris which seems to transfer energy to Chloris. Though it's not over between them, Cesare returns to Shadow City once more.  (Moonless Voyage)

NOTE: Some assumptions had to be made for this timeline. The biggest one is that even after Shadow City had been opened, the war between Kindred and Elves continued until the seal was formed at a later date. Without this assumption, multiple events described in the story do not make sense.

FAQ

How much time passed between the war and the year 680?

Certain parts of our translation refer to it as "thousands of years", but truthfully, it was actually just a thousand years that passed. (Thank you Athena for clearing this up!)

This is almost definitely not an exact number, especially given everything else that was happening with the timeline across Miraland, as well as how many different events were written as occurring a thousand years ago.

Are Chloris and Cesare half brothers?

For a long time, this is what most people (including myself) believed. This is at least in part because of a few lines within the story suit Jealous Phantom which stated:

"Cesare often think[s] about his mother while sitting on bough in the forest, imagining how his brother, who has the blood of the Elven Guardian, spends days with mother under the bright sunlight."

This seemed to indicate that Chloris had some elven parentage that Cesare did not, which both made him a "full" elf and afforded him privileges Cesare couldn't have.

However, we learned recently that this is not true. With the release of the most recent hell event, both Chloris and the fandom was confronted with the truth, which is that Chloris is also born of Kindred and they are full brothers.

Cesare: “and you, the great Elven King, my fated twin, are also born of kindred blood.”

[...]

(a truth he has tried to ignore revealed, Chloris felt dizzy. He closes his eyes tightly.)

(Translation: RavenBlue)

We also learn that the old Elven King was actually Chloris' (and Cesare's) uncle, not his father.

What if Cesare was lying? To tell you the truth, it is highly unlikely that that's the case. Firstly, even Chloris himself recognizes the truth that he was born from a kindred. Secondly, it's very uncommon for half-sibling twins of different parentage to occur, to the point where even fans were second guessing and wondering if this was really what the writers meant to imply. Thirdly, we now don't even have another candidate for Chloris' dad now that we know the king was his uncle and not his father. 

Does this make Chloris kindred, per se? Not really. He doesn't display any of the symptoms of being a kindred. The most likely explanation is that he just "didn't get the Kindred gene" while his fraternal twin Cesare did. 

How did Cesare fall to the bottom of the lake?

There are now three different versions of this, only one (the most recent one) which actually seems canon-compliant:

First Wind: The Elven King stabs Cesare with the Dawnblade; his body is later dropped in the bottom of the lake.

Jealous Phantom: Cesare was watching Chloris play the harp when his sadness and the light overwhelmed him and he toppled into the lake. (This one could be metaphorical, even though the metaphor doesn't match the other explanations.)

Moonless Voyage: The Elven King stabs Cesare with his own Dark Verdict; his body falls to the bottom of the lake. 

The most canon-compliant one is the Moonless Voyage one, which matches the other bits of interconnecting lore about how Nidhogg acquired the Dark Verdict.

Is Evelyn the mother of Chloris and Cesare/the Elven Queen?

This is a long one so buckle in. (Yes, I touched on this briefly in my last post.)

First of all, I want to reiterate that this was never explicitly stated anywhere. Evelyn was never called the queen and was never described as having children, and the Queen's name was never given. I still believe this is up to interpretation. So here, I'll just lay out all the evidence for both sides. Right now, I don't think it's possible to say one way or another.

Some of the evidence for this theory includes the following:

In Chloris' fourth Dreamweaver, Moon Night Poem, Chloris' mother is mentioned by Cesare. 

Duke Cesare: "He was so brave and fearless... even when all hope was lost, he refused to surrender, going so far as to put his life on the line. I simply obliged him... nothing more. That's typical of the forest elf, just like your mother."

This indicates that Chloris' mother had sacrificed her life or was self-sacrificing in some way. Of course, Evelyn is also well-known for her sacrifice, as she became the final seal of Shadow City, and her sacrifice is discussed throughout volume 2, chapter 4: 

Nikki: "Those Kindred and elven specters in the Shadow City... They longed for sunlight even they knew it would burn them. Evelyn wanted no bloodshed and she sacrificed herself for peace."

Does Cesare and Chloris' mother make a sacrifice? Well, it's said in Jealous Phantom that it's a very difficult decision for her to banish the Kindred, including her lover and Cesare, to Shadow City for the sake of the elves. That's the only thing I can think of that would qualify as a sacrifice. 

One potential hint that Evelyn could have been the queen is from this line from Flickering Pistill:

Evelyn guards the quiet Pigeon Forest. When she bleeds, the reflection of stars will turn to white flowers.

However, in my opinion this is pretty weak evidence because pretty much every forest elf is said to guard the forest (as stated in basically any Chloris dreamweaver you look at).

As well, their circumstances also seemed to line up. In the spirit items from Chloris' fourth dreamweaver, Destined Twins and Wake Up from Dream, it's stated: 

Every generation, elves will have 2 guardians who protect the Pigeon Forest in turn, a Sword and a Moon.

Chloris is the first guardian and Lakris didn't appear under the Life Tree till Elf Queen went missing.

We also know that Evelyn herself leaves Pigeon Forest to go to Shadow City forever and act as the seal. However, this is largely viewed as a choice (a "sacrifice") and Evelyn herself was willing to take this on. Again, it's really up to how you read it.

Here's the evidence against Evelyn being their mother:

In the most recent CN hell event (Moonless Voyage), we get confirmation that Helsin was the Lord of Kindred while Cesare was in the bottom of Lake Bovaly for nearly a thousand years. Now that Cesare has been woken up, Helsin is subservient to him. The story of Evelyn is mentioned to him, and he knows about it, but he simply does not care. It's explicitly stated that he has no interest and only cares about Helsin for her power.

Cesare’s Underling: “Ever since the seal of Shadow City was broken, Evelyn, who was previously imprisoned, disappeared. Since then, master Helsin’s desires became more and more cruel, and the backlash on her body became stronger and stronger…..”

(Cesare has heard of the struggle between Helsin and the elf she imprisoned. But he holds no interest in this. All he needs is Helsin’s power.)

(Translation: RavenBlue)

Cesare was told that his mother was dead (mentioned in both Jealous Phantom and Moonless Voyage). In the year 680, he also still seems to believe his mother sacrificed her life for something (see the quote from Chloris 4 I posted above). It's incredibly weird that he would show no interest in this development if she was his mother; it's displayed elsewhere in Moonless Voyage that he still showed interest in his mother even after she abandoned him. But it makes perfect sense narratively if Evelyn is not actually his mother and is just the self sacrificing elf of legends.

The next part is that the timeline does not line up. 

It makes much more sense if everything regarding Evelyn, and all of Blood Moon, happened after Cesare fell to the bottom of the lake.

The war between Kindred and Elves already seems to be over as described in Flickering Pistill, as Evelyn is "atoning" in part for the winners of the war.

Helsin is described as the Kindred Lord in Blood Lust, but we know from Jealous Phantom that Cesare inherited the position from his father. Considering we know Helsin was the one in power while Cesare was at the bottom of the lake, it only seems logically consistent that she would only obtain that title after he disappeared.

Lastly, there is simply no reason to not say so if Evelyn is Chloris and Cesare's mother. The story of Evelyn is well known in both Shadow City and Pigeon Forest, and even Cesare who has been asleep for a thousand years knows it. If Cesare knows they are the same, and a great deal of Kindred lore is told from Cesare's perspective and centered around his character development, I literally see no point in continuing to talk about both Evelyn and their mother and not just say they are the same. The same is also true for Chloris, who would also have heard of Evelyn. There is nobody left who cares about Chloris and Cesare's mother to reveal the plot point to. But LN definitely seems to be fond of pulling stunts like this, so it's still hard to say.

What about Wind's Whisper?

There is another character called Evelyn in Wind's Whisper. Evelyn is described as a tree spirit in this, and it distinguishes her from "Pigeon Elves" because she hibernates. However, after asking about the original Chinese text, I have learned that there was a word left out in our translation; Evelyn is a tree elf/spirit, but she hibernates unlike other Pigeon elves. 

The words for spirit and elf in Chinese are related, and it's possible that Evelyn is the same type of elf as Chloris even though it's written differently in Chinese. 

While I'm not really sure if the Evelyn from Wind's Whisper has anything to do with the rest of the story, it's a moot point to me because whether it does or doesn't, it doesn't add any additional understanding or insight.

Thank you to Athena, RavenBlue, and bamboo snek for clearing this up!

Translation Credits

RavenBlue#2752

for their wonderful and speedy translations of the new hell event stages

for their official Miraland timeline translation

As well to athena#2202 and bamboo snek#3897 for sharing and explaining the original Chinese meaning for parts where our translation got butchered! (Noted above)

#love nikki #love nikki lore #love nikki theories #elves #character: chloris #character: cesare #character: evelyn

[venus-is-in-bloom]

[steven universe] the false kind of love: Spinel and the Diamonds

Spinel is involved in four of the Steven Universe movie’s musical numbers. She sings in three of them, and stars in two: Other Friends and Drift Away. But although the last two of those both centre around Spinel as a character, they could hardly be more different in tone.

In the Other Friends sequence, Spinel is fierce, angry, and dangerous; but in the Drift Away sequence, her voice is sad, longing, and helpless. As far as stories go, it’s pretty common for a villain’s tragic backstory to contrast in tone with their present actions—to seem almost at odds with who they seem to be, even as it explains how they got here. But I find this contrast especially remarkable in Spinel, because one of the most important things about her in the movie is the intensity of her anger. Everything she does, and everything people do to her, is because she is angry. And yet in Drift Away, when she talks about the person responsible for hurting her—Pink Diamond—there’s hardly any sign of that anger. It’s only when her story ends that the fire in her voice ignites again.

I think this contradiction holds the key to Spinel’s motivations. Although her fury is depicted as petty and childish—a feeling she only has to learn to suppress, a problem that’s solved as soon as she stops being mad—the story of her life points to something different, something that better explains her anger, and why it seems to define her so completely.

We know that, in Homeworld’s old social system, each Gem was given a particular task, one that was decided for them almost from the moment they were born. If they failed to do as they were supposed to—or did anything against the norms of their role, such as fusing with a different gem, or joining a rebellion—they would be severely punished. This is how it was for Ruby and Sapphire, for Bismuth and Pearl, for Peridot and Jasper. So we can assume that Spinel’s situation was similar—that she was assigned to be Pink Diamond’s best friend and playmate from the moment she came into existence, and wasn’t given the option to change her mind or do anything else.

One might think of this as a privilege. She was born in servitude to a Diamond, and therefore had the fortune of enjoying luxuries such as the Garden. But the task she had been set was tremendously difficult and complicated: despite being created as an entertainer and nothing more, she had the duty of keeping Pink Diamond happy, and being at her beck and call no matter what.

At the time, Pink Diamond was immature, mercurial, and prone to tantrums. Not only that, she was also at odds with her own family, and repeatedly upset by the way they treated her—something no amount of games and frivolity could fix. All this would have made Spinel’s task positively herculean. Her place in Pink Diamond’s life was small, yet she was completely responsible for how Pink Diamond felt. Every shout of anger, every sneer of disgust and contempt, every dismissive wave and sigh of resentment, would have been a mark of Spinel’s failure: not just a blow against her self-esteem, but against her actual value in Homeworld society—a step closer to being worthless, to being cast away.

What’s more, if Pink Diamond’s final cruel act against Spinel is anything to go by, she wasn’t in any way above tormenting and punishing Spinel just for being an annoyance—despite knowing that Spinel’s life depended on her approval.

In short, Spinel’s entire existence, from the moment she was born up until the moment the movie begins, has been about serving Pink Diamond, catering to her whims, and making her happy no matter what.

From what we see of Spinel, she throws herself entirely into her labour. She never frowns, complains, or shows any negative emotion around Pink at all. And when Pink Diamond asks her to stand, very still, in the same spot, until such time as she returns, she does so—perfectly and obediently—for six thousand years.

This is no surprise, of course. In the context of Spinel’s servitude, Pink Diamond’s words to her are not a request but a direct order. Spinel is Pink Diamond’s playmate, and what kind of playmate would she be if she ever said “no” to a game, or broke the rules? To disobey is to violate the contract that governs her life. So she stands there through her weariness, so absolutely still that roots grow around her legs, accumulating dirt, scratches, and chips. She’s not happy! She’s not having fun! Quite the opposite—she’s clearly miserable in her condition, and yet she doesn’t even shake her leg, or wipe the dirt off her shoulder, or sit down. She doesn’t think of herself at all—only whether she’s “doing it right”.

There’s something I strongly believe is relevant: People do not exist to be other people’s servants. And this goes for Gems too—time and time again throughout the series we see the stories of escaped Gems, how they were trapped, unhappy, often fearful in their roles—how as soon as they were given the opportunity, they decided to do something with their lives drastically different from their assigned purpose. It isn’t normal to wait like this, to suffer like this, all for the sake of someone else’s entertainment. Spinel waits for Pink Diamond, suffers for Pink Diamond, thinks only of Pink Diamond, not because she chose it, but because she has no other choice, because she was raised in a society where this is her only purpose and the only way for her to live.

In other words, the relationship between Pink Diamond and Spinel isn’t just a bad friendship between equals. It isn’t even a bad relationship between, say, a worker and her boss. It is, in plain terms, a slaveowner’s cruel treatment of a slave who’s been forced to serve her since she was born.

The movie never quite acknowledges this out loud. Instead it calls Spinel and Pink Diamond “friends”. And yet, this is the obvious interpretation of the narrative that is shown. Throughout Drift Away, the sequence leading up to it, and all that follows, we see that even now, Spinel is still utterly devoted to Pink Diamond. She still doesn’t realise there’s any other way to be. At the climax of the movie, she says to Steven:

“I used to just be not good enough—just not good enough for Pink!”

and

“Why do I wanna hurt you so bad? I’m supposed to be a friend! I just wanna be a friend...”

The first quote shows how Spinel understands her situation—that all the cruelty she has suffered, and all the anger and resentment she feels, is her own fault for not being “good enough” at her task. She believes that the reason Pink Diamond made her suffer isn’t that Pink Diamond was a cruel person who had absolute power over her life, but that she failed in her task, and so she was a failure of a person, and she deserved whatever she got.

The second quote shows that even at this point, the deepest, truest wish Spinel can think of is to get another chance to prove her worth—to serve someone again, to give up all thoughts of her own happiness and devote herself to another person, to maybe, just for a moment, earn a smile or a laugh. It hasn’t occurred to Spinel that freedom is an option, or that she doesn’t have to be anyone’s slave to have worth as a person, or that Pink Diamond did anything wrong to her. She never realises any of this—no one ever tells her.

So together, these two quotes set up the miserable, ironic resolution of Spinel’s character arc.

(Pink Diamond, of course, shows no matching concern for how Spinel feels, nor any indication that she remembers her at all. The movie implies that she may have had access to the Garden warp pad, or at least its communicator, all along from Earth—yet she never returned, and never sent a message.)

It follows from all this, naturally, that Spinel doesn’t want to direct her anger at Pink Diamond, where it truly belongs. Spinel still believes everything that happened is her fault, and that if anything, it’s Pink Diamond who should blame her for being a bad playmate. And yet, Spinel is angry. At the beginning of the movie, when Steven transmits his message, when Spinel finally sees that she never mattered to Pink Diamond—or to anyone else—she reacts with such rage that she breaks out of the fetters that have governed her life (even though, in her worldview, this dooms herself in the process) and heads for Earth, where Pink Diamond went.

It’s important to note that when Spinel shows up for the Other Friends scene, it’s only been a few days, maybe just a few hours, since she left the Garden—since she escaped the abuse, exploitation, isolation, and neglect that has constituted her whole life. At this point, she hasn’t even had a chance to calm down. She’s suffering an emotional crisis of terrible proportions. The fragile remains of her life have been utterly destroyed. She has nothing left in the world. She isn’t in a reasoning state—there is nothing to reason about, since she has nothing and is nothing. All she has is anger, an emotion she’s never allowed herself to feel before. And she doesn’t know what to do with this overwhelming anger—she has no idea how to acknowledge it, validate it, or work through it in a healthy way. Even if she did, this is the moment of her life when she’s most volatile and vulnerable, when it’s hardest to put things in perspective, when she needs help the most. She needs safety, reassurance, and something that can at least point her on the path to healing—and she doesn’t get any of those, in the end.

Because she cannot be angry at Pink Diamond, she instead tries to find something else to blame. The things that replaced her in Pink Diamond’s eyes are first on that list: Steven, the Crystal Gems, the Earth itself. She decides that she wants to hurt them, to damage them as she has been damaged. She cannot say this, but she wants some way to make them care about her.

(There is a scene where Garnet regains her memories, fights off Spinel, and sings the beautiful True Kinda Love. During this scene, Spinel’s reaction to the sight of the Crystal Gems, finally reunited, is one of the most telling in the movie: disbelief, fear, shame. She has spent her life isolated, interacting only with Pink Diamond—this is, perhaps, her first time seeing love between equals, love that makes people happy simply because they get to be with each other. She sees love that is grateful, unconditional, unbreakable, powerful.

This love defeats her. It destroys her. It represents everything that Pink Diamond left her for. She doesn’t think of it—she cannot think of it—as something which she, too, might experience one day, because her entire life has taught her that she isn’t good enough to ever deserve love. In fact, at this very moment, she is an obstacle that true love will sweep aside and shortly forget about. She is unloved, unloveable, and so it makes perfect sense that Pink Diamond would have thrown her away in order to join these people who are full of love. Spinel is worth nothing to them, not even as entertainment. They will never care about her. She’s a thorn in their side, and they just want her gone.

Anger and shame is the only way she can respond—and after her anger dies down, only shame is left.)

Of course, in lashing out like this, it’s very strange that Spinel achieves anything more than fruitlessly flailing at the Gems for a few minutes before running out of steam or getting poofed. Where did she get a mysterious Injector that an Era 2 engineer like Peridot is helpless to power down, and enough poison to kill a planet? How did she beat three seasoned warriors in a fair fight, having never raised a finger against anyone before the moment that fight began? If things hadn’t gone that way, we would probably have a very different movie.

But such is the narrative we’re given—which is unfortunate, because Spinel in the movie is set up as such an enormous threat that it ends up eclipsing the truth of her story, rather than highlighting it. Apart from one or two lines at the end of the Drift Away sequence, everything Steven says is focused on mollifying her, calming her down, and getting her to deescalate so that she won’t destroy the entire planet. Meanwhile, all the other Gems are busy trying to save people from the Injector’s poison—so there’s no room to actually address her problems in the story.

She is a victim of a monstrous system, in desperate need of help and understanding. But she is instead cast as a monster herself. She doesn’t get any attention for being hurt: people only care about her because she might hurt someone else.

Perhaps the greatest injustice to Spinel is that she isn’t given any kind of resolution for her situation. Instead, Steven’s words confirm the harmful beliefs she holds about herself. Her feelings are her own fault, and her suffering is her own fault. The only chance she has to redeem herself is to go back into servitude, to be a playmate and an entertainer, and to carefully soothe, cheer, and cajole people into tolerating her company—knowing that the love she will therefore win is false and conditional: knowing that if she fails, if they ever get tired of her, she will be left in the dust without a second thought, and she will deserve it.

Poetically, her new owners are Diamonds once again. In order to make them laugh, she makes a joke that belittles her own trauma, and stands on her head. Blue Diamond thinks it’s cute. Yellow Diamond thinks it’s hilarious. Neither of them consider her feelings, or what she might have gone through. Once again, she’s no longer a person—just a toy that reminds them of Pink.

This will be the rest of her life.

#things venus said #steven universe #steven universe: the movie #reflections #spinel steven universe #spinel su #you could perhaps interpret the ending as poetic justice against an unsympathetic villain #but strangely enough that isn't how the movie casts it #anyway guess who's still doing hecking steven universe analysis in the year 2019 /shrug #slavery cw

[thecoleopterawithana]

The Painter of Sunflowers and The Man in a Red Beret

— The Painter of Sunflowers (Portrait of Vincent van Gogh), by Paul Gauguin (1888).

— Paul Gauguin (Man in a Red Beret), by Vincent van Gogh (1888).

–

It’s like trying to compare Gauguin and Van Gogh. They were friends, as well.

— John Lennon talks with Robert Hilburn from The LA Times (10 October 1980).

–

Certain relationships are charged with an intensity of feeling that incinerates the walls we habitually erect between platonic friendship, romantic attraction, and intellectual-creative infatuation. One of the most dramatic of those superfriendships unfolded between the artists Paul Gauguin (June 7, 1848–May 8, 1903) and Vincent van Gogh (March 30, 1853–July 29, 1890), whose relationship was animated by an acuity of emotion so lacerating that it led to the famous and infamously mythologized incident in which Van Gogh cut off his own ear — an incident that marks the extreme end of what Sir Thomas Browne contemplated, two centuries earlier, as the divine heartbreak of romantic friendship.

— ‘Gauguin’s Stirring First-Hand Account of What Actually Happened the Night Van Gogh Cut off His Own Ear’ by Maria Popova for Brain Pickings.

–

Imagine all the people living life in peace

Arles [town in the South of France where van Gogh had moved to on February 1988]; Wednesday, 3 October 1888

My dear Gauguin,

[…]

I must tell you that even while working I never cease to think about this enterprise of setting up a studio with yourself and me as permanent residents, but which we’d both wish to make into a shelter and a refuge for our pals at moments when they find themselves at an impasse in their struggle.

[…]

Now I’d like to see you taking a very large share in this belief that we’ll be relatively successful in founding something lasting.

[…]

I believe that if from now on you began to think of yourself as the head of this studio, which we’ll attempt to make a refuge for several people, little by little, bit by bit, as our unremitting work provides us with the means to bring the thing to completion — I believe that then you’ll feel relatively consoled for your present misfortunes of penury and illness, considering that we’re probably giving our lives for a generation of painters that will survive for many years to come.

[…]

About the room where you’ll stay, I’ve made a decoration especially for it, the garden of a poet […]. And I’d have wished to paint this garden in such a way that one would think both of the old poet of this place (or rather, of Avignon), Petrarch, and of its new poet — Paul Gauguin.

However clumsy this effort, you’ll still see, perhaps, that while preparing your studio I’ve thought of you with very deep feeling.

Let’s be of good heart for the success of our enterprise, and may you continue to feel very much at home here.

Because I’m so strongly inclined to believe that all this will last for a long time.

Good handshake, and believe me

Ever yours, Vincent

–

We’re all going to live there, perhaps forever, just coming home for visits. Or it might just be six months a year. It’ll be fantastic, all on our own on this island. There some little houses which we’ll do up and knock together and live communally.

— John Lennon, on his plan to buy a Greek island where the Beatle family could live together (1967). In The Anthology.

–

We were all going to live together now, in a huge estate. The four Beatles and Brian would have their network at the centre of the compound: a dome of glass and iron tracery (not unlike the old Crystal Palace) above the mutual creative/play area, from which arbours and avenues would lead off like spokes from a wheel to the four vast and incredibly beautiful separate living units. In the outer grounds, the houses of the inner clique: Neil, Mal, Terry and Derek, complete with partners, families and friends. Norfolk, perhaps, there was a lot of empty land there. What an idea! No thought of wind or rain or flood, and as for cold… there would be no more cold when we were through with the world. We would set up a chain reaction so strong that nothing could stand in our way. And why the hell not? ‘They’ve tried everything else,’ said John realistically. 'Wars, nationalism, fascism, communism, capitalism, nastiness, religion – none of it works. So why not this?

— Derek Taylor, in his autobiography Fifty Years Adrift (1984).

–

— Self-Portrait with Portrait of Émile Bernard (Les misérables), by Paul Gauguin (1888).

Readers of the Mercure may have noticed in a letter of Vincent’s, published a few years ago, the insistence with which he tried to get me to come to Arles to found an atelier after an idea of his own, of which I was to be the director.

At the time I was working at Pont-Aven, in Brittany, and either because the studies I had begun attached me to this spot or because a vague instinct forewarned me of something abnormal, I resisted a long time, till the day came when, finally overborne by Vincent’s sincere, friendly enthusiasm, I set out on my journey.

I arrived at Arles toward the end of the night and waited for Dawn in a little all-night café. The proprietor looked at me and exclaimed, “You are the pal, I recognize you!”

A portrait of myself which I had sent to Vincent explains the proprietor’s exclamation. In showing him my portrait Vincent had told him that it was a pal of his who was coming soon. 

Neither too early nor too late I went to rouse Vincent out. The day was devoted to getting settled, to a great deal of talking and to walking about so that I might admire the beauty of Arles and the Arlesian women, about whom, by the way, I could not get up much enthusiasm.

The next day we were at work, he continuing what he had begun, and I starting something new.

— The Intimate Journals of Paul Gauguin by Paul Gauguin (1936).

–

I don’t admire the painting but I admire the man. He was so confident, so calm. I so uncertain, so uneasy.

— The Intimate Journals of Paul Gauguin by Paul Gauguin (1936).

–

My memory of meeting John for the first time is very clear. … I can still see John now - checked shirt, slightly curly hair, singing ‘Come Go With Me’ by the Del Vikings. He didn’t know all the words, so he was putting stuff in about penitentiaries - and doing a good job of it. I remember thinking, ‘He looks good - I wouldn’t mind being in a group with him.’ … Then, as you all know, he asked me to join the group, and so we began our trip together. We wrote our first songs together, we grew up together and we lived our lives together. And when we’d do it together, something special would happen. There’d be that little magic spark. I still remember his beery old breath when I first met him here [Woolton church fete] that day. But I soon came to love that beery old breath. And I loved John. I always was and still am a great fan of John’s.

— Paul McCartney, in Bill Harry’s The Paul McCartney Encyclopedia (2003).

–

In the beginning he was a sort of fairground hero. He was the big lad riding the dodgems and we thought he was great. We were younger, me and George, and that mattered. It was teenage hero worship. I’ve often said how my first impression of him was his boozy breath all over me—but that was just a cute story. That was me being cute. It was true, but only an eighth of the truth. I just used to say that later when people asked me for my first memory of John. My first reaction was never simple—that he was great, that he was a great bloke, and a great singer. My REALLY first impression was that it was amazing how he was making up all the words.

He was singing “Come Go with Me to the Penitentiary,” and he didn’t know ONE of the words. He was making up every one as he went along. I thought it was great.

— Paul McCartney, according to Hunter Davies annotations of their phonecall on 3 May 1981.

–

And if I say I really knew you well  What would your answer be?

Between two such beings as he and I, the one a perfect volcano, the other boiling too, inwardly, a sort of struggle was preparing. In the first place, everywhere and in everything I found a disorder that shocked me. His colour-box could hardly contain all those tubes, crowded together and never closed. In spite of all this disorder, this mess, something shone out of his canvases and out of his talk, too. […]

In spite of all my efforts to disentangle from this disordered brain a reasoned logic in his critical opinions, I could not explain to myself the utter contradiction between his painting and his opinions. […] 

One thing that angered him was to have to admit that I had plenty of intelligence, although my forehead was too small, a sign of imbecility. Along with all this, he possessed the greatest tenderness, or rather the altruism of the Gospel.

— The Intimate Journals of Paul Gauguin by Paul Gauguin (1936).

–

I could just often be the sort of baddie in a situation, and he could be a real soft sweetie, you know? Took everyone by surprise, that!

— Paul McCartney, interviewed by David Frost (1997).

–

I was feeling insecure…

From: Vincent | To: Paul | Wednesday, 3 October 1888

I find my artistic ideas extremely commonplace in comparison with yours.

I always have an animal’s coarse appetites. I forget everything for the external beauty of things, which I’m unable to render because I make it ugly in my painting, and coarse, whereas nature seems perfect to me.

Now, however, the energy of my bony carcass is such that it goes straight to the target; from that comes a perhaps sometimes original sincerity in what I make, if, that is, the subject lends itself to my rough and unskilful execution.

–

Tony Sheridan: [John] never saw himself as a very good singer, for instance.

Interviewer: Really?

Tony Sheridan: No. He never saw himself as comparable to Paul McCartney, even. Which, you know, he was playing with a guy, writing songs with a guy whom he thought was better than he was in many ways. So he had this immense ego and this immense sort of – it was like a motor in him that had to go to new lengths and reach new heights in order to impress somebody or the whole world or whatever.

— In A Long And Winding Road (2003).

–

“Most people in Britain think I’m somebody who won the pools, you know,” he says drily, drawing on a Gauloise. “Won the pools and married a Hawaiian dancer or actress somewhere. Whereas in the States, we’re treated like artists. Which we are! Or anywhere else for that matter,” he added. “But here, it’s like, the lad who knew Paul, got a lucky break, won the pools and married the actress.”

— John Lennon, interviewed for Melody Maker (2 October 1971).

–

It may have been the one that had my song, 'Here, There and Everywhere.’ There were three of my songs and three of John’s songs on the side we were listening to. And for the first time ever, he just tossed it off, without saying anything definite, 'Oh, I probably like your songs better than mine.’

— Paul McCartney, interviewed by Joan Goodman for Playboy (1984).

–

Knowing that love is to share

From the very first month, I saw that our common finances were taking on the same appearance of disorder. What was I to do? […] I was obliged to speak, at the risk of wounding that very great susceptibility of his. It was thus with many precautions and much gentle coaxing, of the sort very foreign to my nature, that I approached the question. I must confess that I succeeded far more easily than I should have supposed.

We kept a box, – so much for hygienic excursions at night, so much for tobacco, so much for incidental expenses, including rent. […] We gave up our little restaurant, and I did the cooking on a gas stove, while Vincent laid in provisions, not going very far from the house. Once, however, Vincent wanted to make soup. How he mixed it I don’t know; as he mixed his colours in his pictures, I dare say. At any rate, we couldn’t eat it. And my Vincent burst out laughing and exclaimed: “Tarascon! La casquette au père Daudet!” On the wall he wrote in chalk: Je suis Saint Esprit. Je suis sain d’esprit. [I am the Holy Spirit. I am sane.]

— The Intimate Journals of Paul Gauguin by Paul Gauguin (1936).

–

You’ve got to hide your love away

On several nights I surprised him in the act of getting up and coming over to my bed. To what can I attribute my awakening just at that moment?

At all events, it was enough for me to say to him, quite sternly, “What’s the matter with you, Vincent?” for him to go back to bed without a word and fall into a heavy sleep.

— The Intimate Journals of Paul Gauguin by Paul Gauguin (1936).

–

All I can ever say about it is that I slept with John a lot because you had to, you didn’t have more than one bed - and to my knowledge John was never gay.

— Paul McCartney, in The Brian Epstein Story (2000).

–

To say “I love you” would break all my teeth.

— The Intimate Journals of Paul Gauguin by Paul Gauguin (1936).

–

You can actually say, “I love you,” to someone, but it’s quite hard. And so that’s why it’s usually easier when you’re a bit drunk. It’s like ‘Here Today’ [on 1982’s Tug of War], which was for John, and there is the line, (sings) “Du du du du du du du, I love you,” and it is a bit of a moment in the song. It would be a bit like Keith Richards saying to Mick, “I love you.” I mean he does, but I’m not sure he’s going to say it. I’m sure the Gallaghers love each other on some level, probably quite deeply, but that certainly isn’t going to get said soon. I think it’s quite an interesting subject and I felt it most recently with [wife] Nancy, I knew I loved her but to actually say, “I love you,” you know, it’s just not that easy.

— Paul McCartney,  interview with Pat Gilbert for MOJO (November 2013).

–

Hear me, my lover  I can’t be held responsible now  For something that didn’t happen  I knew you for a minute  Oh, it didn’t happen  Only for a minute  

–

During the latter days of my stay, Vincent would become excessively rough and noisy, and then silent. […]

The idea occurred to me to do his portrait while he was painting the still-life he loved so much – some ploughs. When the portrait was finished, he said to me, “It is certainly I, but it’s I gone mad.”

That very evening we went to the café. He took a light absinthe. Suddenly he flung the glass and its contents at my head. I avoided the blow, and, taking him bodily in my arms, went out of the café, across the Place Victor Hugo. Not many minutes later Vincent found himself in his bed where, in a few seconds, he was asleep, not to awaken again til morning. 

When he awoke, he said to me very calmly, “My dear Gauguin, I have a vague memory that I offended you last evening.”

Answer: “I forgive you gladly and with all my heart, but yesterday’s scene might occur again and if I were struck I might lose control of myself and give you a choking. So permit me to write to your brother and tell him that I am coming back.”

My God, what a day!

When evening had come and I had bolted my dinner, I felt I must go out alone and take the air along the paths that were bordered by flowering laurel. I had almost crossed the Place Victor Hugo when I heard behind me a well-known step, short, quick, irregular. I turned about on the instance as Vincent rushed toward me, an open razor in his hand. My look at the moment must have had great power in it, for he stopped and, lowering his head, set off running towards home.

Was I negligent on this occasion? Should I have disarmed him and tried to calm him? I have often questioned my conscience about this, but I have never found anything to reproach myself with. Let him who will fling the stone at me.

With one bound I was in a good Alesian hotel, where, after I had enquired the time, I engaged a room and went to bed.

I was so agitated that I could not get to sleep till about three in the morning, and I awoke rather late, at about half-past seven.

Reaching the square, I saw a great crowd collected. Near our house there were some gendarmes and a little gentleman in a melon-shaped hat who was the superintendent of the police.

This is what had happened.

Van Gogh had gone back to the house and immediately cut off his ear close to the head. He must have taken some time to stop the flow of the blood, for the day after there were a loto f wet towels lying about on the flag-stones in the two lower rooms. […]

When he was in a condition to go out, with his head enveloped in a Basque beret which he had pulled far down, he went straight to a certain house where for want of a fellow-countrywoman one can pick up an acquaintance, and gave the manager his ear, carefully washed and placed in an envelope. “Here is a souvenir of me,” he said. Then he ran off home, where he went to bed and to sleep. […]

I had no faintest suspicion of all this when I presented myself at the door of our house and the gentleman in the melon-shaped hat said to me abruptly and in a tone that was more than severe, “What have you done to your comrade, Monsieur?”

“I don’t know…”

“Oh, yes… you know very well… he is dead.”

I could never wish anyone such a moment, and it took me a long time to get my wits together and control the beating of my heart.

Anger, indignation, grief, as well as shame at all these glances that were tearing my person to pieces, suffocated me, and I answered, stammeringly: “All right, Monsieur, let us go upstairs. We can explain ourselves there.”

In the bed lay Vincent, rolled up in the sheets, humped like a guncock; he seemed lifeless. Gently, very gently, I touched the body, the heat of which showed that it was still alive. For me it was as if I had suddenly got back all my energy, all my spirit.

Then in a low voice I said to the police superintendent: “Be kind enough, Monsieur, to awaken this man with great care, and if he asks for me tell him I have left for Paris; the sight of me might prove fatal to him.”

— On the events of 23 of December 1988. In The Intimate Journals of Paul Gauguin by Paul Gauguin (1936).

–

Auvers-sur-Oise, c. 17 June 1890

My dear friend Gauguin,

Thank you for having written to me again, my dear friend, and rest assured that since my return I have thought of you every day. I stayed in Paris only three days, and the noise, etc., of Paris had such a bad effect on me that I thought it wise for my head’s sake to fly to the country; but for that, I should soon have dropped in on you.

And it gives me enormous pleasure when you say the Arlésienne’s portrait [above], which was based strictly on your drawing, is to your liking. I tried to be religiously faithful to your drawing, while nevertheless taking the liberty of interpreting through the medium of colour the sober character and the style of the drawing in question. It is a synthesis of the Arlésiennes, if you like; as syntheses of the Arlésiennes are rare, take this as a work belonging to you and me as a summary of our months of work together. For my part I paid for doing it with another month of illness, but I also know that it is a canvas which will be understood by you, and by a very few others, as we would wish it to be understood. 

–

There are only about 100 people in the world who understand our music. George, Ringo, and a few friends around the world. Some of the artists who recorded our numbers have no idea how to interpret them. […] When Paul and I write a song, we try and take hold of something we believe in – a truth. We can never communicate 100 per cent of what we feel, but if we can convey just a fraction, we have achieved something. We try to give people a feeling – they don’t have to understand the music if they can just feel the emotion. This is half the reason the fans don’t understand, but they experience what we are trying to tell them. Lack of feeling in an emotional sense is responsible for the way some singers do our songs. They don’t understand, and are too old to grasp the feeling. Beatles are really the only people who can play Beatle music.

— John Lennon, Lennon & McCartney Interview for Flip Magazine (May 1966).

–

My friend Dr. Gachet here has taken to it altogether after two or three hesitations, and says, “How difficult it is to be simple.” Very well - I want to underline the thing again by etching it, then let it be. Anyone who likes can have it.

Have you also seen the olives? Meanwhile I have a portrait of Dr. Gachet with the heart-broken expression of our time. If you like, something like what you said of your “Christ in the Garden of Olives” not meant to be understood, but anyhow I follow you there, and my brother grasped that nuance absolutely.

[Here Vincent drew a sketch of the “Cypress with Star.”]

I still have a cypress with a star from down there, a last attempt - a night sky with a moon without radiance, the slender crescent barely emerging from the opaque shadow cast by the earth - one star with an exaggerated brilliance, if you like, a soft brilliance of pink and green in the ultramarine sky, across which some clouds are hurrying. Below, a road bordered with tall yellow canes, behind these the blue Basses Alpes, an old inn with yellow lighted windows, and a very tall cypress, very straight, very sombre.

On the road, a yellow cart with a white horse in harness, and two late wayfarers. Very romantic, if you like, but also Provence, I think.

— Road with Cypress and Star, by Vincent van Gogh.

I shall probably etch this and also other landscapes and subjects, memories of Provence, then I shall look forward to giving you one, a whole summary, rather deliberate and studied. My brother says that Lauzet, who does the lithographs after Monticelli, liked the head of the Arlésienne in question.

But you will understand that having arrived in Paris a little confused, I have not yet seen your canvases. But I hope to return for a few days soon.

[Here was drawn a sketch of “Ears of Wheat.”]

I’m very glad to learn from your letter that you are going back to Brittany with De Haan. It is very likely that - if you will allow me - I shall go there to join you for a month, to do a marine or two, but especially to see you again and make De Haan’s acquaintance. Then we will try to do something purposeful and serious, such as our work would probably have become if we had been able to carry on down there.

Look, here’s an idea which may suit you, I am trying to do some studies of wheat like this, but I cannot draw it - nothing but ears of wheat with green-blue stalks, long leaves like ribbons of green shot with pink, ears that are just turning yellow, lightly edged with the pale pink of the dusty bloom - a pink bindweed at the bottom twisted round a stem.

— Ears of Wheat, by Vincent van Gogh.

After this I would like to paint some portraits against a very vivid yet tranquil background. There are the greens of a different quality, but of the same value, so as to form a whole of green tones, which by its vibration will make you think of the gentle rustle of the ears swaying in the breeze: it is not at all easy as a colour scheme.

— Unfinished unsent letter from Vincent van Gogh to Paul Gauguin.

–

— Auvers-sur-Oise. — Sunday 27 July, a man named Van Gogh, 37, a Dutch fellow, painter, on his way through Auvers, shot himself in the fields and, being only wounded, returned to his room where he died two days later.

–

Here is what I know on his death.

That Sunday he went out immediately after breakfast, which was unusual. […] When we saw Vincent arrive night had fallen, it must have been about nine o'clock. Vincent walked bent, holding his stomach, again exaggerating his habit of holding one shoulder higher than the other. Mother asked him: “M. Vincent, we were anxious, we are happy to see you to return; have you had a problem?”

He replied in a suffering voice: “No, but I have…” he did not finish, crossed the hall, took the staircase and climbed to his bedroom. I was witness to this scene. Vincent made such a strange impression on us that Father got up and went to the staircase to see if he could hear anything.

He thought he could hear groans, went up quickly and found Vincent on his bed, laid down in a crooked position, knees up to the chin, moaning loudly: “What’s the matter,” said Father, “are you ill?” Vincent then lifted his shirt and showed him a small wound in the region of the heart. Father cried: “Malheureaux, [unhappy man] what have you done?”

“I have tried to kill myself,” replied Van Gogh.

[…]

Vincent had gone to the wheat field where he had painted previously […]. Vincent shot himself with a revolver and fainted. The freshness of the evening revived him. On all fours he sought the revolver to finish himself off, but could not find it (and it was not found the following day). Then Vincent gave up looking and came down the hill to regain our house.

[…]

In the morning of the following day, two gendarmes of the Méry brigade, probably alerted by a public rumour, appeared at the house. […] The gendarme then entered the room, and Rigaumon, always in the same tone, questioned Vincent: “Are you the one who wanted to commit suicide?”

- Yes, I believe, replies Vincent in his usual soft tone.

- You know that you do not have the right?

Always in the same even tone Van Gogh replied: “Gendarme, my body is mine and I am free to do what I want with it. Do not accuse anybody, it is I that wished to commit suicide.”

[…]

Theo arrived by train in the middle of the afternoon. I remember seeing him arrive, running. […] But his face was marked by sorrow. He immediately climbed up to his brother who he kissed and spoke to him in their native language. Father withdrew and did not help them. He did not go back in during the night. After the emotion that he had felt on seeing his brother, Vincent had fallen into a coma. Theo and my father kept watch on the casualty until his death, which occurred at one o'clock in the morning.

— Memoirs of Vincent Van Gogh’s stay in Auvers-sur-Oise (1956), by Adeline Ravoux (aged 76).

–

Paris, 5 August 1890

To say we must be grateful that he rests - I still hesitate to do so. Maybe I should call it one of the great cruelties of life on this earth and maybe we should count him among the martyrs who died with a smile on their face.

He did not wish to stay alive and his mind was so calm because he had always fought for his convictions, convictions that he had measured against the best and noblest of his predecessors. His love for his father, for the gospel, for the poor and the unhappy, for the great men of literature and painting, is enough proof for that. In the last letter which he wrote me and which dates from some four days before his death, it says, “I try to do as well as certain painters whom I have greatly loved and admired.” People should realize that he was a great artist, something which often coincides with being a great human being. In the course of time this will surely be acknowledged, and many will regret his early death. He himself wanted to die, when I sat at his bedside and said that we would try to get him better and that we hoped that he would then be spared this kind of despair, he said, “La tristesse durera toujours” [The sadness will last forever]. I understood what he wanted to say with those words.

A few moments later he felt suffocated and within one minute he closed his eyes. A great rest came over him from which he did not come to life again.

— Letter from Theo van Gogh to Elisabeth van Gogh.

–

Vincent van Gogh did not kill himself, the authors of new biography Van Gogh: The Life have claimed.

Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith say that, contrary to popular belief, it was more likely he was shot accidentally by two boys he knew who had “a malfunctioning gun”.

The authors came to their conclusion after 10 years of study with more than 20 translators and researchers.

It has long been thought that he shot himself in a wheat field before returning to the inn where he later died. 

[…]

But author Steven Naifeh said it was “very clear to us that he did not go into the wheat fields with the intention of shooting himself”.

“The accepted understanding of what happened in Auvers among the people who knew him was that he was killed accidentally by a couple of boys and he decided to protect them by accepting the blame.”

He said that renowned art historian John Rewald had recorded that version of events when he visited Auvers in the 1930s and other details were found that corroborated the theory.

They include the assertion that the bullet entered Van Gogh’s upper abdomen from an oblique angle - not straight on as might be expected from a suicide.

“These two boys, one of whom was wearing a cowboy outfit and had a malfunctioning gun that he played cowboy with, were known to go drinking at that hour of day with Vincent.

"So you have a couple of teenagers who have a malfunctioning gun, you have a boy who likes to play cowboy, you have three people probably all of whom had too much to drink.”

He said “accidental homicide” was “far more likely”.

“It’s really hard to imagine that if either of these two boys was the one holding the gun - which is probably more likely than not - it’s very hard to imagine that they really intended to kill this painter.”

Gregory White Smith, meanwhile, said Van Gogh did not “actively seek death but that when it came to him, or when it presented itself as a possibility, he embraced it”.

He said Van Gogh’s acceptance of death was “really done as an act of love to his brother, to whom he was a burden”.

— by Will Gompertz for BBC News (17 October 2011).

–

Now everybody seems to have their own opinion  Who did this and who did that  But as for me I don’t see how they can remember  When they weren’t where it was at 

–

For a long time I have wanted to write about Van Gogh, and I shall certainly do so some fine day when I am in the mood. I am going to tell you now a few rather timely things about him, or rather about us, in order to correct an error which has been going around in certain circles.

— In the introductory chapter of The Intimate Journals of Paul Gauguin by Paul Gauguin (1936).

–

I’d like to say this is just as I remember it, if it hurts anyone or any families of anyone who’ve got a different memory of it. Let me say first off, before you read this book even, that I loved John. Lest it be seen that I’m trying to do my own kind of revisionism, I’d like to register the fact that John was great, he was absolutely wonderful and I did love him. I was very happy to work with him and I’m still a fan to this day. So this is merely my opinion. I’m not trying to take anything away from him. All I’m saying is that I have my side of the affair as well, hence this book. When George Harrison wrote his life story I Me Mine, he hardly mentioned John. In my case I wouldn’t want to leave him out. John and I were two of the luckiest people in the twentieth century to have found each other. The partnership, the mix, was incredible. We both had submerged qualities that we each saw and knew. I had to be the bastard as well as the nice melodic one and John had to have a warm and loving side for me to stand him all those years. John and I would never have stood each other for that length of time had we been just one-dimensional.

— Paul McCartney, in the introduction of Many Years from Now.

–

All the rest everyone knows who has any interest in knowing it, and it would be useless to talk about it were it not for that great suffering of a man who, confined in a madhouse, at monthly intervals recovered his reason enough to understand and furiously paint the admirable pictures we know.

The last letter I had from him was dated from Anvers, near Pontoise. He told me that he had hoped to recover enough to come and join me in Brittany, but now was obliged to recognize the impossibility of a cure:

“Dear Master” (the only time he ever used this word), “after having known you and caused you pain, it is better to die in a good state of mind than in a degraded one.”

He sent a revolver shot into his stomach, and it was only a few hours later that he died, lying in his bed and smoking pipe, having complete possession of his mind, full of the love of his art and without hatred for others.

In Les Monstres Jean Dolent writes, “When Gauguin says ‘Vincent’ his voice is gentle.” Without knowing it but having guessed it, Jean Dolent is right.

You know why… .  .

— The Intimate Journals of Paul Gauguin by Paul Gauguin (1936).

–

At one point during the evening at the Waldorf-Astoria, McCartney answers a random question with, “No, I always felt much closer to John.” Out of the mouth of anyone else, “John” is just a name, a mere monosyllable. But when the name is uttered by McCartney, the ghostlike presence of John Lennon suddenly descends on the evening. Lennon’s name, so simply invoked by McCartney, takes on the power of a talisman, conjuring up an entire shared cultural scrapbook of images defining musical collaboration and the purest of camaraderie. McCartney owns the pronunciation of “John” the way Katharine Hepburn made “Spensah” Tracy her own.

— In the Paul McCartney interview The act you’ve known for all these years: McCartney today, by Andrew Marton for the Boston Globe (3 December 2000).

–

How long did we remain together? I couldn’t say, I have entirely forgotten. In spite of the swiftness with which the catastrophe approached, in spite of the fever of work that seized me, the time seemed to me a century. 

Though the public had no suspicion of it, two men were performing there a colossal work that was useful to them both. Perhaps to others? There are some things that bear fruit.

— The Intimate Journals of Paul Gauguin by Paul Gauguin (1936). 

–

[And amalgamation of often imperfect (and other times scary) parallels that possibly led John to compare his relationship with Paul to that of Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin. An overly long self-indulgent post.]

More on the painters series:

The Surrealist | Lennon - McCartney & René Magritte

#lennon mccartney #macca #johnny #vincent van gogh #paul gauguin #we were more artsy #the person I actually picked as my partner #meta #my stuff #Early Days #The Pound Is Sinking #Here Today #Imagine #Jealous Guy #here there and everywhere #Hide your Love Away

[aotopmha]

Attack on Titan Chapter 123 Thoughts

I feel like this chapter was actually the most straight-forward chapter since Eren got his head blown off back in chapter 119 - for real this time.

The nuanced character writing and the context-driven, interpretation-based storytelling is still there in moments - I feel like Eren's character and the current situation needs that to work, but other than that, I think it's really self-explanatory and I actually welcome that.

AoT's meta level narrative structure is once again connected to the story's point, themes, emotional beats - after several chapters of a lot of fairly complex and dark material we get a little bit of a breather and so do the characters.

The chapter still has some heavy material (it kind of does end with Eren basically declaring to commit mass genocide) and you might argue the lightheartedness might be a little jarring in light of all the dark stuff that came before it and comes after it, but I really did welcome this as a breather.

As I said in my initial post, I think it also does have thematic significance in that it once again reminds us of the good in the world, I'd add to that, though, that, not only from the perspective of Eren picking those that are innocent to have this horrible fate, but also from the perspective of those he sees are worthy of his protection and showing what he sees as the good that is worth protecting.

He declares to commit mass genocide, but does it with the purpose of protecting those he loves.

This is also a twisted version of the standard "Shounen protagonist fights for everyone he cares about" idea.

I really admire how the story manages to twist these standard tropes while still feeling sincere, making sense and having a point character writing-wise - again, so many stories that try to twist tropes this way feel like they are just dark and shocking for the sake of being dark and shocking and with that comes insincerity and non-believability of the drama in the story and ultimately lack of investment in it.

I’ve seen comparisons of him to Lelouch around, but that series drove me away from the very first episode, so I can’t comment on those (I know the ending of that series, but I feel like I’d need the whole picture to truly comment), but I could talk about possible comparisons to Light Yagami (Eren even almost looks like Light in this chapter, too). While I think it fits in some ways (self-righteous young man executing his justice) and I think Light is an entertaining villain, I don't think he's nearly as complex as Eren or even as complex in a general sense as I often see people claim he is.

I feel like Light didn't really have an arc and had his mindset basically set from the start, he just gradually executed it on a increasingly larger scale. Light’s goal of justice didn’t really ever have any sort of goodness to it. Eren genuinely wishes to protect those he loves, Light’s “justice” is just unnuanced self-righteousness with a dash of god complex thrown in there. I’ve seen the argument that it’s the power of the Death Note that corrupted him around, but I feel like he had the same perspective from start to finish.

I think it’s an interesting comparison.

I think you could technically make a similar argument for Eren - you could see this as just an reinterpretation of his character, rather than development, but I myself feel like his path to this point is much more complex than that and depends of several factors and events leading up to this point in the story.

Despite all the talking about how Eren might've "never changed" by the characters, I think there was a character development process that lead Eren here.

He wasn't so accutely aware of the humanity of the "other side" he was fighting against back when he was a kid.

Again, I don't think Eren ever fought for freedom at specifically the *cost* of others before Marley. His desire for freedom back then felt much more neutral to me:

(Chapter 14)

There were elements of his cynical side showing here and there, just not to the extremes he goes to here.

He wasn't this pragmatic as his 15 year-old self, in fact, at one point, he was the one looking and wanting for other ways out than plain sacrifice:

(Chapter 25)

Chapter 25 specifically concerns him, but you can also see this in much more recent moments:

(Chapter 90)

Most importantly, though, here:

(Chapter 107)

I feel like, both, him understanding the impact of what he's about to do and the choice to destroy the world are character development results.

Him seeing the humanity of his enemies leads to the positive conclusions he comes to (his current, more nuanced world view) and him being surrounded by all this negativity and more importantly, his hyper-focus on this negativity induced by the many horrible things he has experienced himself and in his father's (and the other shifters') memories leads to him being unable to see any other way out of this than the one he chose here.

In this chapter, Eren couldn't see the beauty of the world and the one time he chose to do so, he did it with a sort of sense of finality and decisiveness.

He waited as long as he could bear, but from his perspective ultimately just didn’t see any other way out.

His negative and positive growth also sort of contradict each other - he understands what he's about to do is so horrible, but does it anyway.

You could see it as a contradiction coming from how his mind has twisted because of everything negative he has experienced, ranging from his trauma from loss to him gaining his father’s and other shifters’ memories. 

You could also, though, see this as a contradiction that might have more to it.

If Eren has enough perspective now to know what he's doing is horrible, why doesn't he have enough perspective to not commit mass genocide? Then, perhaps he does and there is more to his plan?

It's either that trauma and negativity is one hell of a mindscrewer and it's just his mind coming to very twisted conclusions or there is more to his plan.

My guess in the case of the second option would be that he's attempting to unite humanity against him (Willy already started this) and the purpose of his announcement is for all the Eldians across the world to inform everyone else and with that help them evacuate before the rumbling arrives at their location, giving the rest of the world more positive actions to go off of when judging the Eldians.

This could paint even all the Eldians on Paradis as victims of the "main villain" Eren Jaeger and the Titans and since this is something world-wide, this perspective could spread.

It's unbelievable everybody would listen because of the discrimination, but it's also unbelievable that nobody would listen as there are always at least some understandable and kind people out there.

We’ve seen this with the volunteers growing to see the Eldians as more human, we see this in Magath’s character arc and even in the small moment of the guards protecting Gabi. There is good in here, it’s just buried.

Perhaps there could’ve been peace at some point with some countries if Eren hadn’t acted as he did in Liberio. But at the same time Marley had their plan to attack Paradis in the near future to begin with, so even the small moments of goodness come with the constant caveat brought up over and over again of there being very little time.

What would you expect from Eren in this situation?

Eren framing himself as the villain could change nothing and it could change everything depending on how it's done and how deep the hatred against Eldians truly runs.

Perhaps some Eldians wouldn't even want to tell anyone anything because of how poorly they've been treated.

This plan would rely on the existing goodness on all sides.

Taking Eren down might need the combined strength of the Titan society in Marley, the Paradisians and the collected army of the world and the losses here might be massive enough where the aftermath might force some sort of changes to happen for this to never happen again, the only (very large) side note here, again, being that those proposed changes might just still involve the complete extermination of all Eldians after this.

Moving on from the larger scale stuff though, the other big, a little bit more interpretive scene of the chapter was Eren's moment with Mikasa.

I've been iffy about the possible romantic nature of their relationship since Grisha called Mikasa his daughter back in chapter 121 - if there was already a familial bond like that there, it really veers into squicky material to me, but it's still ambigious enough that I'm still letting it slide for now. It's only on Grisha's part still and Mikasa never calls Eren's parents her own parents - Carla is always auntie and Grisha is Dr. Yeager.

It's always been sort of awkward because of how Mikasa's backstory worked out, but for now I still consider it fine.

As far as that scene, though, as it's been like across the story, I feel like it's definitely shown as romantic on Mikasa's side, while I think it's similarly neutral as it's always been on Eren's side.

Much more important here is what it means, though - what could the subtext here be?

Did Eren look for confirmation for putting the idea/plan he had in mind in motion - confirming that Mikasa didn't care that strongly for him and thus wouldn't miss him that strongly/could defeat him when the time came for him to die (if that's the plan he's going with)?

Was it confirming to himself that what he's about to do would be worth it for if not nobody else, then at least her because she cared, not even necessarily about him, but in a general sense was a source of goodness within all this negativity he's been seeing, confirmation that Paradis was worth protecting at the cost of the rest of humanity because they were good and the others were bad, then actually looping back to his old attitude in some ways, basically looking for confirmation for his faith in the goodness of humanity?

Did he in his desparation turn to Mikasa to somehow give him another option to the one he saw or did he hope her answer would somehow change his mind when it came to executing his plan?

Maybe it was partially all these, maybe it was something entirely different, but I'm leaning on the third option the most myself.

It might just have been a secret cry for him to be protected from himself.

The gist of it seems to be him asking about the sincerity of Mikasa's feelings and whether she cares about him, doesn't matter if you see it as romantic or not.

I'm not sure if she could've changed anything because Eren was already isolated and stuck in his negative thoughts - a simple love confession wouldn’t fix all the baggage Eren has been collecting.

On the flip side, Armin thoughts when switching back to the present involved believing in the goodness in Eren - that he was on their side and he is, the problem is that Eren took his gained pragmatism too far.

Personally, I lean on the option of there being more to Eren's plan, but I can also see him just being stuck on just not seeing another option. He got his view of there not being another option confirmed many times across the 4 year timeskip and this chapter continued to show that to him.

Putting Eren aside, though, as said, this chapter was also the funnest and lightest since forever - the group reacting to a car, the group reacting to ice cream, Levi's interactions with the clown and everyone getting drunk was a blast.

It amplifies the tragedy, but is also fun.

As said, a lot of this chapter was actually very straight-forward. They all visit the outside world and have some fun and strange encounters with it. It was nice, but pretty simple so there isn’t actually much more for me to say about the more light-hearted elements of this chapter.

Finally, again on a less lighter note, I think this chapter sadly might've confirmed Historia's pregnancy. She seems to be in the Paths with a belly and since everyone's bodies seem to correspond to their real bodies in paths, unless there's something else to it, it feels like a pretty clearly-defined confirmation.

I could see Ymir undoing it, but I don't see how it could be fake now unless that girl in one of the final spreads of the chapter is a red herring and not Historia.

I think the best way the pregnancy could go to me is if it genuinely was Historia's decision (not her going back to her sacrifical self, but her very own sincere decision). You could still nitpick it to death and this plot point would have messy implications no matter what you do, but I think that would probably the best way it could go aside from her pregnancy being removed because it would at least in the very basics align with her arc.

Meanwhile, AoT continues to at least have my undivided attention because of Eren's very unique arc and the gripping plotting.

I thought this was a great chapter as what kind of chapter it set out to be - equally a breather and a setup chapter.

It had great staging, great lightheartedness and a great cliffhanger.

#Attack on Titan #Shingeki no Kyojin #AoT 123 #SnK 123 #Chapter 123 #AoT #SnK

[jinniesmeow]

In My Feelings - Lee Felix

MASTERLIST - REQUEST [links in bio]

➵ Pairings : felix x gender neutral!reader

➵ Warnings : depression ; anger issues ; suicidal thoughts ; explicit language ; panic attack ; mentions of blood ; sensitive topics 

➵ Summary : Everything hurts when you’re alone. Maybe it would hurt less, together with your soulmate. If you have one, that is. Did the Universe let you down again ? Would it be better if it had ? You’re not so sure yourself.

➵ Genre : soulmates!au ; angst with a fluffy ending

➵ Word count : 12.7k

➵ Note : This is very, very long, as you can see. It can also be hard to read, emotionally speaking and is very angsty. Please, pay attention to the warnings. I really hope you like it if you read it though, I poured my whole heart and soul into this. Also, I would highly appreciate it if you read the note at the end !

SOULMATES SERIES : chan . woojin . minho . changbin . hyunjin . jisung . felix . seungmin . jeongin

You sighed as you fiddled with your pencil, head in your left palm and elbow resting on your desk while the teacher went on with the lesson at the other end of the classroom. 

You looked out the window, watching the clouds in the blue sky. You wished you were a cloud. Anything but to be in school. You regretted coming today, but you had already skipped the day before. And the one before. Actually, it was your first day attending class this week.

Saying you were bored was an understatement, it didn’t even come close to the reality of your situation. School was literal hell to you. Probably more than it was to anyone else, but you couldn’t be sure. You weren’t in their heads. 

You sighed again, still watching the clouds as they drifted away in the sky, pushed by the wind as they kept going their own way. You wondered if your soulmate, too, was sitting in class right now. You wondered if they were bored just like you, if they were watching the clouds too, if they were thinking about you too. 

As far as you knew, they could be on the other side of the planet at this very moment, partying somewhere, or asleep, comfortably lying in their bed. You weren’t even sure you would ever meet them, or that you even had one. Some people never found their soulmate. Some people didn’t have a soulmate. 

The Universe had done a weird thing with soulmates : wasn’t it supposed to make it fair for everyone to have someone they were destined to meet and be happy with ? Then, why didn’t it work ? Why did some people never find their soulmate ? Why did some people not have one ? If it had been written somewhere that one person in particular was your best match, that you were linked to them, why wasn’t it written that you should meet ? 

You couldn’t understand. You were mad at the Universe for it. It had the audacity to choose a special someone for you, in your place, and it couldn’t make you find them ? Why weren’t you free to choose whoever you wanted to fall in love with ? Why wouldn’t the Universe let you be happy and ensure you would find your soulmate ?

Your thoughts were contradictory. You knew it. But the Universe itself was a huge contradiction. You wished it would give you a sign that it hadn’t let you down. That it hadn’t forgotten you. 

You didn’t have any tattoo on your skin to indicate you had a soulmate. You didn’t have any dreams that allowed you to meet them. You didn’t have anything. At your age, it was weird that you’d had no sign of having a soulmate. Usually, if nothing showed before you turned twenty, it meant the Universe had nothing in store for you. 

In a way, you would feel a little relieved if that were the case. That would mean choosing the most important person in your life was up to you, if you wanted to have one, that is. But you would definitely feel abandoned. You already felt like you didn’t belong where you were, so if the Universe had forgotten to plan anything for you, you would take it as a sign that you were right. 

But as much as you wanted to be free of your choices, you couldn’t feel lonelier. Even surrounded by thousands of people, you would still feel alone. You wanted that feeling to go away. You wanted to believe that there was at least one person out there who could understand you. Having a soulmate didn’t mean you had to fall in love with them : it meant having someone, a best friend, someone who could understand you better than anyone else, someone who would listen to you. Some people didn’t fall in love with their soulmates. Some people didn’t fall in love at all. 

But that was okay, of course. The point of having a soulmate was to have someone you could always rely on, and vice versa. Another half of you. And that, you longed for. You wanted a friend. The Universe could give you that at least, right ? 

You thought you deserved it.

Felix thought he deserved it.

He had gone too far this time, and he knew it. But he couldn’t help it. No matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t prevent it from happening. 

He rubbed his jaw with his left hand, where the bruise was beginning to form. He sighed. He had done it again. He had snapped at some poor kid that had just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and ended up hurting him. 

He hadn’t beaten him up. He had barely touched him. But surely, he had hurt his feelings and scared him. Maybe he would get a bruise on his left arm, where Felix had been gripping him a little too strongly, though.

Felix didn’t even know the kid’s name, he just knew he had been standing in front of his locker, laughing with his friends, exactly when Felix needed to access it to retrieve his books for the following classes. And that he wouldn’t move out of his way, since he was too busy cracking jokes for his dumb friends to laugh at and hadn’t heard Felix kindly ask him to step aside. Or ignored him, maybe. 

Felix had grown frustrated. He’d gotten angry, had grabbed him and said things he shouldn’t have. Degrading things. Unnecessary things. And then, a teacher had arrived and pulled Felix away. It was not like he would have done anything more, though, but the teacher didn’t know that. Only he did.

Of course, he got sent to the principal’s office immediately. He had called his parents, and then sent him home. 

And as usual, he had been welcomed by his oh ! so happy father who had lectured him for a good thirty minutes—which had felt like hours to Felix—before he had punched him in the jaw, again. 

It was always the same. Someone did or said something stupid, it frustrated Felix, he got angry, he snapped. Then, people asked him why he would get angry when there was nothing to be angry about : it was so futile ! Why would he get angry when his mom asked if he wanted her to pour him some soup too ? Why would he look at her like it was the dumbest question ever and answer with such a harsh tone ? It was like that every time, with everything, and it hurt people. 

But that was not what Felix wanted. He didn’t want to hurt people. He didn’t understand how his actions and words hurt others, he didn’t exactly understand why, since that was not the point. But people didn’t understand why Felix acted this way, and they didn’t try to understand him. Never. 

He was just so frustrated. People were so dumb all the time, not that he felt superior, but why did they feel the need to act stupid about everything ? Why wouldn’t this kid step away, why would he stand in front of a locker when he knew it was break time and that people were going to want to get to their lockers ? That was an amazingly dumb move, and Felix couldn’t understand why anyone would do it, it lacked logic. Why would his mom ask if he wanted a bowl of soup too when it was dinner time ? Of course, he would. That was a stupid question to ask. It didn’t make him angry, but it sure frustrated him. And at some point, frustration turned into anger. It made him grit his teeth and clench his fists. Sometimes, he felt the need to punch something to let it all out, but he never did. He would just clench his fists so hard it would hurt. And then, he would find someplace to be alone—his room if he were at home—and isolate himself to cry. Cry out of anger, cry out of frustration, while he let his thoughts go crazy in his head, until eventually they got tamed, or he got too tired to keep crying. 

Why couldn’t people understand it was hard for him too ? That it hurt him too ? 

He just wanted someone to understand him. Someone to tell him it was okay and that he could get better, someone to help him.

Felix lay on his bed, flat on his back, as he let out a sigh. He closed his eyes for a few seconds, taking a few breaths in, slowly. He tried to empty his mind. He could feel the pain in his jaw spreading, still throbbing in the spot where his father’s knuckles had met with his face. 

He opened his eyes, squinting them a little to protect himself from the sunlight. He turned a little and stared out the window, eyes trailing after the clouds drifting in the sky. He wondered if his soulmate could understand him. He wondered if he had one. He sure wished he did. He needed someone, and he hoped the Universe was not mad enough at him not to give him one. At the same time, he hoped he didn’t have one. He didn’t want to hurt them too. 

He felt alone. He was alone. Even though he had a few friends he really loved, he had hurt them before at some point, and he was scared he would do it again. It was bound to happen. He would be better off alone, away from everyone. Or more like everyone would be better off without him, away from him. That way, he couldn’t hurt anyone but himself. 

He had wanted to cut ties with his friends. He had thought a lot about it and had come to the conclusion it would be better for them, that they would be happier. He hoped if he did that they would miss him a little, at first. He wanted to believe there were people who actually liked him no matter what, because Felix loved them a lot, and he would do anything for them. 

Except leaving them. No matter how much he wanted it, he could never do it. He hated himself for it. He was sure they would be much better without him, and he only wanted the best for them. But he never left. He was selfish. He was a coward. He hated himself. 

A tear rolled down from his eye to his ear, as he was lying down, still watching the clouds. What did it feel like to be a cloud ? Surely, it must feel amazing to float, to fly, to have the wind guide you without knowing where you were going, to just enjoy the journey. To see everything, and yet, be so far from it. To feel so light you could float over the world, even though in fact you were not, because Felix knew how heavy clouds actually were. He thought he was a cloud, in a way, except he couldn’t float. His burden was too heavy. 

He thought about his soulmate again as more tears rolled on the sides of his face without him noticing. Were they okay ? Were they, somewhere, having the time of their life ? Were they like him, watching the clouds right now, and wishing they were one too ? Maybe they were sitting in class, looking out the window, staring at the same sky. He should have been in class too at this moment if he hadn’t gotten expelled. 

He just hoped whoever they were, wherever they were, his soulmate was doing better than he was. He prayed for the Universe to send him a sign that there was someone out there, waiting for him too.

You choked on your cereal after cracking a lame joke, which didn’t make your mother laugh at all. As you coughed, you thought it was a sign from the Universe telling you to shut up. 

You finished your bowl quickly, forcing its content down your throat. You didn’t like eating in the morning, but you didn’t exactly want to faint when you’d be running around in the gym forty-five minutes later. You put your bowl and spoon in the dishwasher and went back to your room where you picked up your stuff before leaving, all in absolute silence. 

Your mom was in the shower when you closed the door behind you, so you felt no need to yell a ‘goodbye’ that she wouldn’t hear anyway. You locked the door and started walking, plugging your earphones in. You hit the ‘shuffle button’ and let Spotify choose which songs to play for you. 

You couldn’t help a cynical laugh when you heard the first notes of Car Radio by Twenty One Pilots. Was the Universe messing with you because you were doubting it ? 

Ignoring it, you tried to enjoy the song anyways and tried not to get drowned into the lyrics because of your bottled up emotions. You could have just changed the song, but you didn't want to let the Universe win. Indeed, there was no distraction to mask what was real. And it hurt. But you kept going. You didn’t know why. Maybe you were too scared to put an end to it. Or maybe you were not, and you knew you could do it anytime, and that scared you, too. 

But you kept going. Without any reason to, you still did. Maybe you were a coward. But that wasn’t a bad thing, was it ? Did you not have the right to be scared ? Was it not your life to live, after all ? Maybe the Universe had chosen a specific person to get along best with you, but you could still choose who you wanted to be, right ? You hoped you did. If not, what was it good for to live a life that had been entirely planned by someone else—or something else ? 

You bit your lip. You were letting your thoughts and feelings get the best of you again. You could feel the lump in your throat and blinked a few tears away. You had to pull yourself back together. Gosh, you were such a crybaby. Why so sensitive all the time ? You had even cried for a yogurt commercial once. 

You sighed. Fortunately, you didn’t have to stay focused on where you were going : your feet knew the way to school all too well and had brought you there automatically. A new day was beginning, and you weren’t looking forward to it.

Still, you had to go. You couldn’t play truant every day, no matter how much you wished you could. So you headed towards the gym and stepped in the lockers room, still empty at this hour. You quickly changed, happy that there was no one who could see your body. Not that you really minded what they thought, you just didn’t want to know that people could be looking at you when they could just mind their own business instead. 

You packed your stuff in your bag and put it in your locker before making sure the small lock was in place. You just liked things to be in order, no one was actually going to steal anything from you. There was nothing to steal anyway. 

Sighing in anticipation, you walked into the gym, over to the side where you knew the teacher would be giving instructions. With a grunt, you plopped down and sat on the cold floor, bringing your knees to your chest. You could hear the first people—after you— who were getting ready in the changing rooms. Class would be starting soon. 

As time passed, more people arrived and filled the gym, joining you on the floor. You chatted a little with some of them to kill time. Soon after, the teacher walked in and started giving instructions, making you roll your eyes as you got up to stretch. 

Then the teacher chose four boys—of course he would choose boys— to be captains of the teams. It was basketball, today. You weren’t especially bad at it, and you kind of enjoyed playing it as long as everyone played fair. Otherwise, it was annoying and there was no point in playing, and you would just stand on the court waiting for the game to be over.

You were on team orange. Not exactly your color, but you didn’t have much of a choice anyway, so you prepared with your team. Your captain was a boy named Jaemin. As you and the other people on your team gathered around him after he had called you, he started talking about some sort of strategy. He didn’t say anything specific, just that you should be careful, because you were against Felix’s team and he was pretty good. At everything. He was pretty good at literally everything. And he was pretty cute, although you noticed a bit of purple on his jaw, close to his neck. It made you mad, in a way, that the Universe was so unfair and had given so much to some people, like it had done to him, and all you got was too many feelings to count and the complete lack of motivation to do anything. You were pretty sure it was his Australian side that made him good everywhere. How unfair. 

You had never really talked to Felix. He had transferred to your school about two years prior, barely able to speak three words in Korean at the time. He was much better at it now. You could have helped him learning, since you spoke English fluently too, but no one had asked you to do it, and you sure wouldn’t have suggested it yourself. You didn’t want to seem full of yourself, and you were a little too shy to do so anyway. He was a nice kid, but often got himself in trouble, for some reason. He seemed very hotblooded. 

Not thinking too much of it, you just got on the court, in position, and waited for the game to begin. It wasn’t any of your business anyway.

Basically, all of you just ran around and stole the ball from each other to try and score. As the game progressed, both teams started playing more carefully, better. Your team was losing, behind by a couple points, and the game was coming to an end. 

You wiped some sweat off your forehead with your arm, the other hand resting on your knee as you were slightly bent, catching your breath. You were glad you had eaten something in the morning, because although you felt a little nauseous after running around like that since you hadn’t digested everything yet, you knew you wouldn’t faint, at least. This game was much more intense than you had imagined. You were surprised at yourself and how invested in it you were, it was almost like you discovered new skills. You had never played this well before, running from one side to the other, shouting for your teammates to do this or that, even further : to pass you the ball. 

You could tell everyone was pretty involved, somehow. At this point, you were all panting, not even hearing the screams of the other teams playing on the court next to yours. You were too focused on finishing what you had started, and you wanted to win, for once. 

You weren’t even screaming anymore. It was kind of like you were all connected, you just knew what was coming and anticipated the other team’s moves, but so did they with you. You were running out of time. Only a few seconds were left. You were still losing.

Out of nowhere, Jaemin darted towards Felix, who had the ball in his hands, as he was going to shoot, getting in position. 

The ball was in his hands. He was still holding it when Jaemin snatched it from him. Jaemin did not push it out of his hands or anything. He grabbed it from him. He then proceeded to turn on his heels to pass Felix and shoot a three point. He scored. The teacher blew his whistle. 

You were frozen in shock. That had happened so fast you had barely been able to follow. Were the last three points valid, though ? Your teammates were screaming. They must have been, then. You felt happy you’d won. It had ended brutally though, but still, you joined your orange-bandana-wearing mates at the center of the court, gathering around Jaemin, your team captain and the one who had brought you victory. 

But the closer you got, the more you felt something weird inside of you. Something ripped inside of you. It felt like you were getting split in half. Not physically, though, but as though your feelings were getting divided into two different parts, and you could feel it somehow. The sensation was the weirdest you had ever experience, without a doubt. Something started creeping up inside of you. You slowed down. Was that anger, you were feeling ? It was strange, because you should have been happy at this moment, right ? You had played an amazing basketball game and had won. But the worst thing was, you knew it wasn’t your feelings. That anger was not yours. You could feel both sides : your happiness after victory, and the anger, at the opposite. Somehow, you could tell which feelings were yours and which were not. You knew how you felt. 

But still, you could feel everything. It was like being angry without actually being angry. You could feel every second of it, every drop of anger, if you had to put it into an image. You understood it. It felt legitimate. And strong. 

You heard your teammates praise Jaemin and high-five each other. The feeling inside of you morphed. It was not just anger anymore. It was disappointment. It was a feeling of unfairness. It was frustration. Each so strong it made your throat dry and your stomach burn. You brought your hands to it, gripping at your sides. You felt sick. 

Whose feelings were those ? How could they bear that ? 

You didn’t understand anything that was happening. It made no sense at all. You couldn’t possibly be feeling what someone else was feeling too. But you knew these were not your feelings. You just knew. You were sure of it. You were going crazy. 

You were bent in half, hands clutching your sides. You barely heard the conversation everyone was too focused on to notice you, the pain too strong. 

Felix was standing in front of Jaemin, lips pursed in a line so tight it made them turn all white. He shoved his shoulder, hard enough to get his attention and make him understand that Felix had something to say but not hard enough to hurt him. Jaemin turned to him, eyes a little surprised and a slight glint of exasperation at whoever was interrupting his moment of glory.

“That was unfair” Felix spoke up, voice deep and stable. He definitely was intimidating. It would make mice crawl back into their holes. “The way you stole the ball, it’s against the rules. The last three points shouldn’t count” he said, his gaze was hard but his tone was still quite neutral. 

Jaemin turned to him, looking him up and down with an expression of distaste. “Is that so ?” he asked, uninterested and showing it. 

Felix bit the inside of his cheek. He could feel it rise inside of him. His frustration. His anger. It was becoming too much to handle. Soon, he would fail to contain it.

“Yes,” he said, trying not to let his voice crack, “That’s why we should cancel them and play the last minute again” he offered. That would be fair. Right ? A lot could happen in one minute in basketball, and at least he wasn’t telling Jaemin his points should just be cancelled so his team would win. He was suggesting forgetting Jaemin had gone against the rules and play again instead. Jaemin’s team could still win. 

“Dude,” Jaemin started as he looked at Felix with a mocking smirk, “I know you did your best but, just accept it” he paused. “You lost” he snickered. He turned away to leave but looked back and shot : “It’s just a game, dude. Chill.” before he started walking away to some other spot in the gym, over to his friends. 

Felix was on fire. He had been nothing but nice and had suggested an option so as to make the victory fair after Jaemin, and not him, had gone against the rules. He had cheated. It had been hard for him to say it out loud, hard to suggest. But instead of directly snapping at Jaemin, he thought it would be a better solution, a more pacific one. For once, he thought he would be doing the right thing. Felix already could hardly stand losing this way. He knew it was just a game, but he couldn’t stand the unfairness. He couldn’t stand seeing the other team win wrongfully, but he would have gotten over it easily. But that ? That was way too much. He couldn’t stand being spoken at with such a superior tone. He couldn’t stand being mocked, ridiculed like that. 

Felix burned. His breathing was getting faster. Soon, he would be crying, and he knew it. He clutched his fists so hard his nails dug into his palms, cutting through the skin. He wanted to strangle him. He could picture himself doing it, wrapping his hands around Jaemin’s neck and tightening them. Felix was pretty sure it would make him feel much better, but imagining the scene in his head only fueled his anger. He wanted to punch something, to exteriorize everything. He felt the first tears sting in his eyes. He turned away, to the opposite direction of where Jaemin had gone. He was going to leave the gym. He had to. Class wasn’t over yet, and he was well aware of that, but he didn’t care. He had to leave. He started walking.

Hands still clutching your sides, you felt sweat dripping from your forehead. The feeling wasn’t going away. It was getting worse. You were still burning.

You fell to the ground.

Felix fell to the ground.

He was having a hard time breathing, and each time his lungs filled or deflated, he felt the air burn in his system as it came in and out of him. He didn’t even know where he was, only that it was somewhere near the gym and that there was—fortunately—no one around. He was trembling and a shiver ran up his spine. At the same moment, a drop of sweat fell down from his nape and slid along his back. He hated himself. He hated himself so much. What had just happened was literally nothing. He knew it. But he was angry at himself for being affected by it. He was so mad at himself for being like that. It was these feelings that made it worse. 

Because no matter what everyone thought, it was himself he was angriest at. It was himself he despised most. It was himself he hated most, and no one hated him as much as he hated himself. 

What was wrong with him ? What had he done in his past life to suffer this much in this one ? 

He was sick of it. The pain was too much. He wanted it to end. It was all his fault. He hurt others too. It was all his fault. All his fault. 

He screamed. He screamed until his lungs felt like exploding. 

He started punching the ground with his fist. Again, and again, and again. 

He cried. He let his head fall back and hit the wall he was resting on, behind him. He closed his eyes and let the tears flow as he kept punching the ground until he bled. He punched. He punched. He punched, until his whole arm went numb and he could feel the warm liquid around his knuckles, coating them with a dark color. He gripped his trembling arm with his other hand. 

He cried his heart out. He cried until he couldn’t anymore. Then, he just sat there on the ground with his hand bleeding. He breathed in. He breathed out. In. Out. 

He focused on breathing. He was too tired to think of anything else. He stayed there, unable to move. His whole body hurt. It was fine, he deserved it anyway. What he didn’t deserve was a soulmate. 

Felix opened his eyes and looked at the sky. His soulmate. He hoped, if he had one, that he would never meet them. That they were far away from him. That they were safe from him.

You opened your eyes. 

The first thing you saw was the sky outside, and you had to squint to look at it without your eyes hurting. 

You looked around you. You were in a bed. Pretty much everything around you was white. You sat up. You were in the hospital. 

You sighed and rubbed your eyes. You sighed again. 

Well, you had still fainted in the end, stomach full or not.

You laughed lightly at the irony of your situation. You knew it had nothing to do with eating, but still, it made you laugh. While some people would be scared, it made you laugh. You were like that. You couldn’t help it, it was your sarcastic nature, and it was always the first thing you saw in every situation. It made people mad sometimes, how you took things so lightly. You had no idea what had just happened to you, you’d literally been burning on the inside and fainted, and you were laughing because you had thought of eating in the morning so as not to faint. What was wrong with you ? 

You shrugged to yourself. Whatever. It wasn’t a big deal, anyway. Either the doctors would tell you what had happened to you or you would never know. If it was the latter, then maybe it would happen to you again but since the doctors wouldn’t know what it was it could not be helped anyways. In conclusion, there was nothing you could do about it yourself, so you had no reason to panic. 

That was just how you worked. You were very rational. Much more than normal. You didn’t feel such things like pressure or stress. Well, you did, but not like everyone else. You really thought there was no such thing as a big deal, so nothing really mattered. You didn’t feel stressed for the same things as other people, like when you were taking an exam or something. In the worst scenario, you would fail. It would get your grades down. Maybe you would have to do the same year twice. But that was it, you wouldn’t die. And even if you did, that was not a big deal either. To you, it was just another step. Why would you care if you died ? Once dead, you couldn’t feel anymore, right ? And even if you could, why would you be scared when everyone was going to die in the end, either way ? 

You shook your thoughts off. You were drifting again. It happened to you all the time. That was why you didn’t sleep at night. You thought too much, but you couldn’t help it. You looked around again, searching for the small button to call the nurses. You knew there would be one, most likely on your bedside table. 

And you were right. You pushed it and waited. Thirty seconds later, a nurse walked in with a glass of water. She greeted you with a warm smile, which you returned. 

“How are you feeling ?” she asked. “Do you remember what happened ?” she inquired further. You nodded. 

“I’m okay. Great, actually,” you told her. Your voice came out weirdly, as your throat was a bit too dry. “And yes, I remember what happened” you said. 

She nodded in return as she handed you the glass of water. You gladly took it and downed it in one go. 

“So, you fainted,” the nurse spoke again, “You had a pretty high fever,” she continued. You looked at her. By the way she was speaking and behaving, you knew she had something to ask. You thought it would be the second option which you had thought about earlier, that the doctors had no clue what had happened. You were going to see if you were right. 

“Yes ?” you said, almost as a question. Your voice came out more smoothly this time, after you’d drunk a bit. 

She smiled sweetly. A bit too much. 

“Had you eaten in the morning ?” she asked. You refrained from rolling your eyes. You were right, they had no clue. 

“Yes, I ate this morning” you stated blankly. 

“Okay,” she whispered. “We ran a few tests while you were out, with your mother’s consent. We found nothing, so you’re free to go with her. She’s waiting in the hall” the nurse said and you nodded again. 

You got out of bed and stretched before walking out. You thanked the nurse and bid her goodbye as she stepped out of the room behind you. 

In the hall, you found your mom. She asked if you were feeling fine. You said you were. You got in the car and she drove you home. She told you the doctor had said to go to the hospital if it ever happened again. You told her you would.

You went up to your room the second you stepped into your house. You threw yourself on your bed. 

That was it. 

That was your sign.

It was the only plausible explanation you had. There was no scientific explanation, so it had to be a metaphysical one, right ? 

That was your sign from the Universe. 

Those feelings inside of you that were not yours. They were your soulmate’s, right ? 

They must have been. That was the only way. 

You turned on your back and looked out the window. You looked at the sky and its orange and pinkish tones. The sun was setting already. How long had you been out ? 

You sighed of relief. You smiled lightly. A chuckled escaped from your lips. 

You had a soulmate. You were sure of it. You remembered the sensation of getting ripped inside, split into two. One half for you, one half for your soulmate.  You laughed out loud. That was a pretty angry soulmate you had. 

You were laughing, but you knew it wasn’t funny. You knew they were out there somewhere, hurting. It wasn’t just anger, there was much more to it. Lots of emotion, powerful, that they didn’t know how to deal with. 

You were still smiling. You wanted to meet them. You wanted to help them. Hopefully, they could help you too. 

The next day, you didn’t even care about having to go to school. It didn’t bother you. You were too excited about what had happened the previous day and what your conclusion was. Not only did you have a soulmate, but you were pretty sure they were in your school and that you had at least one class with them : Physical Education. 

Some people would have thought you didn’t have enough intel to analyze things so deeply and come to these types of conclusion and being so sure about it. You were convinced you were right anyway. You trusted yourself on these kins of things, you knew how clever you were, and no one could take that from you.

You had spent the night thinking about it. You had reviewed every element of the incident, relived every second of it in your head a million times. You had thought about every possible answer and every scenario, and what each answer would lead to, just as if it were an algorithm. 

From what you had found after spending so long on thinking about what you had felt and what had been going on around you, you had come to find that your bond appeared to be an emotional one, and that it worked especially better with a close distance. You remembered how the feeling had grown inside of you the closer you were getting to the center of the basketball court. The closer you were getting to your soulmate. It was where both teams had been gathered. And your soulmate was one of the persons on these teams. 

You just had to find who it was now.

You sat in class, quieter than usual as you observed the people as they entered. You concentrated on your feelings as you watched each of them carefully. You payed zero attention to the lesson, but you didn’t care, you didn’t especially need to anyway. 

You spent your whole day looking out for the people who had been close to you the day before when it had occurred. You kept on focusing on what was going on inside of you, trying to see if you could feel like you were ripped into two again, or if your insides took fire once more. 

You got nothing. You went home, defeated. 

The next day, you did it again. And the one after. And the one after this one. And the one after the one after this one. Until the weekend came. 

You stayed in bed late, as you usually did on a Saturday morning. You were starting to doubt. Maybe you’d gone too far with your whole theory, after all. 

But you were so sure of it ! You trusted your brain, you trusted your mind, even though it was very complex and weird, sometimes it was too much to deal with, but you still trusted it. 

Sitting on your bed, you glanced at your school bag half open on the floor, next to your desk. You had homework to do. It would be nice if you did it this time, so you didn’t get yet another zero for not giving anything in. You sighed. 

You would do it later, as you told yourself each time. You knew deep inside that you wouldn’t do it anyways, but you didn’t actually care. It was just homework, and you didn’t feel like doing it. You already spent ten hours of each day working in school, why did you need to work at home too, on top of all that ? 

You took your head in your hands, elbows resting on your knees. You knew you were stupid. You should be doing it. But you were incapable of it. It was like your body rejected it completely. You were physically—and pretty much mentally as well—incapable of working. You’d never had to when you were younger, seeing as you always got the best grades in all classes, so you’d never learned to work. You had literally never studied for a test in your life. You had never had to do more exercises at home to understand the lesson. When you got into high school, you got slapped in the face hard with the amount of work you had. 

You couldn’t keep up. But you were still bored in class. You just couldn’t keep up with the amount and rhythm. Still, you aced your tests and exams, all without having to work. It made your teachers pull their hair out. Your classmates didn’t understand you, they always told you how they envied you and how easy things were for you. 

Things were easy for you ?

It made you sick every time you heard that. You would gladly let them have your brain and take theirs if it could make you sleep at night and not cry every day. They had no idea what they were talking about. You wished they would just shut up. 

You let yourself fall back on your bed. You watched the clouds in the sky. It was all grey this time. It looked like it was about to rain. You chuckled again at the irony. Were you in some type of gothic fiction, now ? With the weather mirroring the character’s set of mind and feelings ? Damn Universe. 

You grunted in frustration. “You better not let me down this time.”, you spoke out loud, as if it could hear you. 

And it did not. 

What you had not expected was for things to happen the other way around. 

Monday came again, and you forced yourself to go to school instead of pretending you were sick again. You were already fed up even before you’d stepped inside the classroom. This day felt awful and it had just begun.

You sat at your desk, took out your stuff and payed close to no attention to the lesson. You had always had a hard time concentrating. Even when you tried, you were thinking of something else at the same time and eventually, it took over and you lost track of what was being said. Every time you realized you had done it again, you mentally cursed yourself for it. You literally couldn’t stay focused for more than ten minutes straight. 

But this class was an especially boring one. Who cared about geography ? It would be interesting if you actually learned about the scientific aspects of it, like the earthquakes or floods. You didn’t care about how humans were scattered all over the surface of the Earth and all that went with it. So you just rested your head in your palm as you let yourself daydream, eyes looking nowhere in particular as if you were staring into another dimension. 

You snapped out of your daze when your seat mate elbowed your ribs and you almost jumped to the other side of the classroom. You were already pretty sensitive and ticklish, but if they took you by surprise, things could go wrong. 

However it worked as it made you look up and notice the teacher was collecting the homework. 

The homework. 

Which you had not completed. You closed your eyes and sighed. 

You waited for the teacher to arrive at your level, already expecting the look he would be giving you when asking you for it—knowing there was a huge chance you wouldn’t have done it—and the one he would give you after you would have told him you hadn’t done it, yet again. Truth was, you didn’t even know you had geography homework and hence had no clue what it consisted in.

Felix watched you from where he was sitting, two rows behind you to the right. He wondered if you had done it this time. 

As you had predicted, the teacher gave you a hard look when he turned and saw you. He extended his hand for you to give him the paper. 

Usually, people would feign looking for their work in their notebook, pretending they couldn’t find it as they swore they had done it. You didn’t even bother doing that. You saw no point in lying. If you couldn’t undertake the consequences of your actions, that meant you shouldn’t be doing it. 

You turned your face to look up at the teacher. Felix watched your lips part as his eyes scanned the side of your face. “I didn’t do it.”, you stated blankly. You didn’t even feel bad about it in the slightest. 

If Felix was being honest, he was starting to get worried for you at this point. The teacher’s face was starting to contort weirdly and he flushed red. 

He started yelling at you. 

Not that you cared, but you were too tired to have someone scream in your ears so early in the morning. He kept lecturing you on how you never turned any paper in, how you thought you could afford never working but that “at some point, it would not work anymore for you and you would suffer” and you laughed internally. As if it weren’t already the case. He kept on going with life lessons and you watched him, unfazed, face clear of any emotion. You barely heard what he was saying. 

However, your hearing suddenly sharpened right when he opened his mouth one last time to say you were unworthy of anything and that all you did was waste other people’s time. That you were a disappointment.

Something broke inside of Felix. He jumped slightly at the feeling that was spreading in his chest, surprised. His lungs hurt. It went up to his throat. It felt dry. It tightened. It hurt. 

He furrowed his eyebrows in confusion, hand coming up to his chest to grip at his shirt, right next to his heart, where it seemed the pain was coming from. It felt like... he wanted to cry ? 

But he didn’t. For once, he was doing okay. And he could feel it. He felt that the feeling in his chest, no matter how real, was not his, because he could still hear his own thoughts and distinctly make out his own emotions. It was almost as if he had been split into two. Was he going crazy ?

You bit your tongue. You could feel the lump in your throat forming and your chest burning with the urge to cry. You fought it. You had to. You bit your tongue harder. You felt the familiar metallic taste in your mouth. Your eyes were stinging too. 

You felt like you were on the edge of breaking down on the inside, but none of it showed on the outside. To anyone else, it was like you hadn’t even heard anything, or didn't give a shit about it. But you did. You truly did. His last words had been very hurtful. He had no idea. Did he think you didn’t already know all that ? That you didn’t deserve anything, not to have friends, not to be happy, not to live, not even to die ? That you were a waste of time for everyone, including yourself ? That you were nothing but a disappointment ? Did he seriously think you were not aware of that ? Heck, you hated yourself for it every day. You hated yourself. Much more than he could ever hate you. Much more than anyone else could. 

You felt ashamed. He had dared to say all of this to your face, and in front of your whole class. 

You were falling to pieces inside. Your walls were still up outside. For how long though, you didn’t know. You could feel your face burning up, adding on to the pain in your chest from how hard your feelings were hurt and you were trying not to cry because of it. 

Felix coughed. Was there something in his throat or ? And what the hell was all this about ? Someone else’s feelings ? That was impossible. Unimaginable. But it felt like he was right. Almost as if, somewhere deep inside of him, he knew it was. 

You didn’t move. Your eyes flickered over to the clock on the wall in front of you, above the whiteboard. You stared at it, watching the clock hands ticking. You counted the minutes left. Thirty-two more. Thirty-one more. Thirty. Twenty-nine. Twenty-eight. 

The pain wasn’t going away. It was only getting harder to endure. Felix was having a crisis. Whose feelings were those ? How did they bear with this ? 

He looked around, as if the answer were somewhere in this room. His eyes fell on you. His eyes trailed up to where yours were looking fixedly. The clock. He looked back at you. You showed nothing. It looked like you were incapable of any emotions. Somehow, though, he was convinced it was not true. He had never really talked to you, but he knew perfectly who you were. You had quite a reputation. You were ‘the-clever-one-that-everyone-envied-but-still-not-too-much-because-you-never-turned-in-any-homework-so-you-had-pretty-bad-grades-overall’. That was pretty much how people had described you when he had arrived. And they were pretty much right, in his eyes, you were basically a genius. You never worked and didn’t hide it, and still, you always got amazing marks on almost every test and got the answer right every time the teacher asked you a question even though you weren’t paying attention. And to top everything, you were pretty cute. The Universe was so, so unfair.  He felt drawn to you, as if he had to watch you. He didn’t realize he was staring.

You felt something sting. Not physically, though, like some alarm at the back of your head that was advising you of something. You felt... watched. 

Hesitantly, you turned your head to the back of the class, as slowly as you could. Your eyebrows were slightly furrowed as your eyes scanned the people. In under a second, your eyes found Felix’s. 

Instead of feeling insecure and uncomfortable, you got lost into his brown—almost black—orbs. It was like they were so deep you could fall in them and drown, never finding your way back. It felt right, and a sudden wave of peace washed over you into you. Every other feeling disappeared. It was just you and him. You almost forgot the ache in your lungs from just a few seconds before. 

Felix felt it too. When he saw you turn around, he didn’t look away. He could have, that would have been the most normal thing to do. He didn’t. He didn’t feel the need to. He didn’t want to. And when your eyes finally found his, it was like everything in the world was finally righted. The burning in his chest was gone. It was like it had never even been there. He was drowning into your eyes, and you were letting him. He didn’t dare blink, scared it would all stop.

The bell rang. His seat mate stood up, pushing him. He barely caught himself from falling. He’d lost the eye contact. 

You threw your stuff in your bag and dashed out of the room.

Felix. 

That was the only thing on your mind. Or more like the only one. 

You couldn’t sleep. You kept turning and tossing around in your bed like one would do to a pancake when cooking it. 

You felt dumb. You could feel—and hear—how fast your heart was beating and just how hot your face was. It was a good thing you were in the dark so you couldn’t see how red it was too. You felt ridiculous, as though you were a character in a stupid teenage romance movie, falling head over heels for some boy at first sight. 

Except your situation was much different, and you weren’t exactly helplessly in love with him. You didn’t even know him for real. 

However, after what had happened today, you were convinced he was your soulmate. And you didn’t know how you felt about it. 

You didn’t know what to do. How were you supposed to handle things from this point ? You were convinced it was him, but you didn’t exactly have proof, so you could still be mistaken, right ? What were you expected to do now ? 

Why wasn’t there a ‘Soulmates for Dummies’ guide ? Literally, how had no one thought about doing it, when it would clearly have been the most useful thing in the Universe ? 

You whined and kicked your feet in your blanket. Why did it have to be so complicated. 

Did he even feel that too ? Did he know ? Did he have any idea what was going on ? 

It was torturing you. You had to know. You were scared, yes. Oh, you had never been more scared in your life. The unknown was always scary. But you had to. What if you didn’t, and missed your chance to get to know your soulmate ? You had to talk to him. You just had to. 

You shot up in your bed, rubbing your hands on your face to wake yourself up, as if you had been sleeping. It was probably more of a gesture to pull yourself together. 

You picked up your phone. You knew you were following Felix on instagram. You opened the app, sitting back on your bed, back against the puffed pillows. 

You typed his name and clicked on his profile. You gulped as your finger hovered over the “message” icon. You quickly let your finger down to click on it with a bit too much force before you could chicken out. 

You were panicking and you hadn’t sent anything yet. 

You bit your lip. Your nervousness was ridiculous, pathetic even. It was literally nothing. And if you were meant to be, why would you care anyway ? 

Oh, right. Because you weren’t sure of anything. And because nothing told you that, even if he actually were your soulmate, things would go well for the two of you and you would become friends. Maybe more.

You didn’t know what to type. You thought the more you would think of what to send, the worse it would be, so you just typed a typical message and tapped the “send” icon before you could regret anything. 

You asked him if he were awake. You tapped your feet in impatience. Not even after twenty seconds, the three dots indicating he was typing something showed up, and you felt both relieved and terrified at what was about to happen at the same time. 

You felt a bead of sweat form on your forehead. 

After what felt like years, his answer popped up too. “We’ll talk about this tomorrow.” he said. 

You bit your lip.

Felix bit his lip. 

Had you felt that too ? Or were you just scared he was stalking you ? 

He was nervous. He hadn’t been able to focus on anything all day after this had happened, unfortunately, in first period. You had been avoiding him all day, and he had noticed. It was obvious because you weren’t exactly friends, hence you didn’t exactly care about passing each other in the hallways, so when you turned around after spotting his ginger hair from the other end of the hall, he saw. He wouldn’t have tried to talk to you anyways, he was too weirded out by the whole thing, if he were honest. 

He was confused, to say the least. It really felt like everything had stopped, like they did it in movies and books, when he had looked into your eyes. It felt like you were connected. Were you, though ?

He thought perhaps you were his soulmate. He had no other explanation. 

And he didn’t know what to think about it if it happened to be true. He didn’t know much about you, after all. But he didn’t want to hurt you, either way. He was scared. He really was. He wanted to have someone, and he was almost excited at the idea of it actually happening and no longer be alone, but he didn’t want to make you suffer. He had done too much of that already. He should be the only one to deal with it all. And besides, you had no idea what was going on with him either. It would have been best if you did not have to.

He wasn’t that surprised when his phone buzzed next to his leg as he lay on his bed, eyes open and staring at the ceiling in the darkness of his room. He wasn’t that surprised to see you had messaged him, no. You were probably the cleverest person he knew, so if he had thought about you being soulmates, you would have too.

However he thought it shouldn’t be a conversation over text. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.” he said. 

He didn’t know what he was going to say. He would improvise. It would depend on the atmosphere, probably. Maybe you would be the one to speak first. It would lift a burden off his shoulders. 

He sighed as he let his phone drop from his hand to his mattress again. 

This night was going to be a long one.

The next morning, both Felix and you got out of bed without having slept for more than about eight minutes consecutively. 

Both of you felt both nervous and expectant at the same time. 

Both of you felt your palms get sweaty approaching school. 

Both of you avoided eye contact when you walked into first period. 

Both of you ignored each other until lunch. 

Then, both of you thought it was about time you stopped being cowards. 

From where you were sitting, you could see Felix eating with his friends. He didn’t seem in the mood to joke around with them, though. You could understand why, you didn’t exactly feel very relaxed yourself and didn’t listen to a word that came out of your friends’ mouths. 

You knew he had spotted you too. You stared at him. You knew he could feel it. You were trying to make him look back at you. 

It worked. And when he did, you just got up from your seat without a word, leaving your food untouched for your friends to pick at. You hoped he would get the hint you wanted him to follow you. 

He did. He mumbled some sort of excuse to his friends before he got up too, tripping over his bag when he started walking after you. 

You made sure he could see you when you turned left into another hallway, and when you got into the empty music room. 

He entered after you. 

Your heart was beating like crazy. Felix’s was too.

Your back was facing him, for now. You tried to steady your breath before turning around. 

Slowly, you spun on your heels. 

Your eyes fell on Felix’s face. He licked his lips. You could tell he was just as nervous as you. Not because he was actually fiddling with the end of his shirt or because of his foot rapidly tapping the floor. You could tell because you felt it. 

It was terrible feeling the stress of not one person but two. 

You didn’t know what to say. What were you supposed to say ? ‘Hey, I think we’re soulmates and it sucks for you’ ? 

But before you could think any further, Felix spoke up. 

“So... you felt that too, right ?” he asked. God, his voice was so much deeper than you remembered. You didn’t even know how it was humanly possible. It sent a shiver down your spine and made something twist in your gut. Now that you were face to face with him, you realized he was actually really intimidating. 

You pursed your lips and nodded. “Yeah, I did.” you answered, voice so small you weren’t even sure he’d heard. 

He had. He nodded back and looked down at his feet before you spoke again, clearing your throat first. You hoped your voice wouldn’t crack. 

“I felt it yesterday,” you said and he looked back at you and nodded once more. 

“Me too,” he said. 

“And I felt it the day before, too” you added. 

Felix’s eyebrows furrowed. What ? The day before ? What the hell were you on about ?

He looked at you in confusion. “What ?” he asked out loud, this time. 

You bit your lower lip. “The day we had a basketball game,” you started, trying not to look away from his eyes, “at the end, after my team... no, after Jaemin cheated.” you corrected yourself. Felix was starting to panic. “When I... when I tried walking over to the center of the court, I felt like... like I was being ripped in half.” you explained. “And then,” you took a sharp breath in before continuing, “then it was like I was burning inside. I could feel anger, frustration... I could feel someone else’s feelings. Your feelings” you finished. 

Felix couldn’t believe his ears. He had no words. His mind went blank. He had to prop his arms up on the desk behind him to support him.

You looked at him worriedly. You weren’t sure what to do or say. 

“Felix,” you called him softly. He looked into your eyes. You could see the fear in his brown orbs, although you weren’t sure why it was there. “Are you okay ?” you asked, genuinely concerned about his state. 

He blinked a few times before he chuckled lightly. “That’s... that’s a lot to process, Y/N, he said” and you shook your head. 

“That’s not what I meant,” you told him. “I mean... are you okay, in your everyday life ?”.

Felix’s heart sank. You felt it too. He knew you did. He looked away. 

He felt tears well in his eyes. Oh no. That was the last thing he wanted. He tried to fight them and swallow the lump forming in his throat. He was not okay. Not now. Not ever. The last thing he needed was to cry in front of you. 

But he couldn’t fool you. You felt everything. You stepped closer to him, hesitantly resting your right hand on his shoulder. He didn’t look at you. 

“Don’t fight it.” you said. This time, he looked up at you, eyes shining and top lip quivering. When the first tear fell from the corner of his eye, you pulled him to your chest, arms wrappings around his shoulders and hands running in his hair soothingly. He wrapped his arm around your waist and pulled you closer as he let it all out. 

You felt it all. You felt his pain, both emotional and physical, as he choked on his tears and sobs. Powerless, you kept running your left hand in his hair while your right arm kept him close. You couldn’t help but cry, too. 

Felix had anger issues. 

There was no doubting it anymore. He had told you. 

You couldn’t imagine how hurt he must be. Just how hard it must have been and how much he must have suffered. Because he was also emotionally hypersensitive, like you were. You could only imagine how affected he must be by other people’s reactions. 

You had spent the whole lunch break comforting him, or more like crying with him. That was not exactly how you had pictured meeting your soulmate when you had first heard about it, but it was what had happened. 

Then, you both had gone back to the cafeteria to get your stuff and pretended nothing had just been going on and acted like you hadn’t just spent forty-five minutes crying in each other’s arms. You just went back to class for the rest of the day. Except this time, you didn’t go straight home when it ended. 

You texted your mom you were going to a friend’s house and would be coming back in a few hours. She only replied with an “Ok”, but you didn’t care. You knew that was because she trusted you. 

You then went with Felix over to his house, as he had said his parents weren’t home yet. He told you they would be back around seven, so you set an alarm at 6:30PM on your phone to remind yourself of going home (and avoid having to meet his parents already). 

Somehow, it didn’t feel weird to be around him, like you had feared. It felt natural, and you felt comfortable, although a bit shy. 

He had brought you to his room. Then, you had spent the whole time you had talking about everything, from the smallest things to the most detailed ones, from the weather to the meaning of life. 

He had talked to you about his anger issues, and how people always mistook it for violent impulses. Sometimes, he did want to hurt people, yes. But most of the time, he just felt the need to punch something to let go of all this frustration. 

You had attentively listened as he explained his feelings to you. You had nodded, and decided you would do everything you could to help him deal with it. It was your role, after all. Then, you had decided it was better to talk about a lighter topic, less sensitive and emotionally heavy. Icebergs.

“Wait,” he had suddenly said at some point, cutting you off mid-sentence while you were going on about the penguins and climate change. 

“What, now ?” you had asked, frustrated you had to stop. 

“I always wanted to ask you...” he had looked you in the eyes. “Are you like, a genius or something ? I mean... are you gifted ? Intellectually, I mean.” he had felt the need to precise. It made you grimace a bit. “Because it really looks like you are” he had added.

You had just looked down to your feet. “Yeah, I guess that’s how you call it when you have a higher I.Q than most people” you had said with a bitter smile. 

But Felix had just nodded. He hadn’t asked for your I.Q nor commented on it. You were grateful. 

You thought you owed him a little more than that after he had been so open with you. So you started explaining that, because of it, you had fallen into depression, because that was just how your brain worked. You knew Felix had depression too, and that he was aware of it. So you felt more comfortable talking about it with someone like him, who would easily understand. You had told him that your mind was always running and overanalyzing things, that you were always asking yourself too many questions, that it didn’t really allow you to see the good in things. Basically, to you, the cup would always be half empty. 

Before you knew it, your alarm was beeping on your phone and you had to leave, ripping you out of your bubble and bringing you back to reality. 

You noticed Felix was uncomfortable as to how you should say goodbye, especially after having such a conversation. You just shrugged it off and hugged him as you stood on his porch. He was caught off guard by your sudden action, but still collected himself and wrapped his arms around you too. 

You made sure he knew he could call you anytime if he needed. He made sure you understood it worked both ways. 

You went home, smile never fading. For the first time in forever, you felt genuinely happy. 

The following days were the most memorable of your life. You had never felt so good in your life. Just knowing that you had a soulmate made you feel better. The Universe hadn’t let you down, and maybe, just maybe, you did belong here after all.

Naturally, you started talking to Felix during breaks. Then, you started eating with him and his friends at lunch, and he ate with yours too, until at some point, both groups merged. Days turned into months. As you grew closer, your bond strengthened and you didn’t have to stand next to each other to feel everything. You felt it at all times, now, no matter where you were.

Felix felt like he had known you for his whole life and at the same time, he had missed you so much and wished you had been there before. 

You saw each other every weekday in school and as often as you could on the weekends. 

Things weren’t exactly better. You still couldn’t sleep at night and hurt inside, and Felix still cried himself to sleep every so often. He was still having a hard time with everything, and so were you. It wasn’t exactly as if you could get rid of your burdens. 

But to know that there was someone there for you, that someone understood you and shared your pain made it more bearable, and you spent countless nights on the phone with him, just letting your feelings flow out together. You could feel the ache in Felix’s heart every time he was crying. You could feel your stomach burn every time his anger was getting out of hand. He always came to you apologizing about it in tears. You always stroked his hair softly as you told him it was okay and that things would be fine. 

You hurt him too, after all. Every night you spent torturing yourself with your darkest thoughts, every day you spent thinking about the end, every time you let yourself be hurt by others. You never found the courage to apologize, and it hurt you even more. You really were a coward. 

Your bond was one of the worst the Universe had ever created. When it could have enabled soulmates to feel their other half’s happiness and joy, it had been given to Felix and you, making you experience each other’s sadness and despair. 

It was toxic. 

And you knew it.

But neither you nor Felix were at fault. It was the Universe who had done this to you. After you had almost been grateful for having a soulmate, you were mad again. You wished it had never done that to the both of you. You hated it for making Felix go through this and for putting yet another burden on him : you. You wished you could release him. You wished he didn’t have to be tied to you, unable to go forward. Because you loved him.

You loved Felix. In every possible way. You didn’t care about him returning your feelings or the whole supposedly ‘best match’ thing. If he had told you he loved someone else and they made him happy, you would have been happy too. If he had told you he wanted you out of his life, you would have disappeared, because you knew it would be best for him anyway. 

And still, you were here. You were selfish for staying. But you thought it would be selfish to leave too, if that was not what he wanted. 

You were feeling torn about this. Lying with Felix on his bed, head on his chest, with his arms wrapped around you, you were thinking about it all. He could sense your fear and mixed feelings, but fortunately, he could not read your thoughts. 

You had been lying there together without exchanging a word for about an hour when he let out a long sigh and sat up, making you do so yourself so you could face him.

“Okay, what’s wrong ?” he asked, brows raised questioningly. “And don’t tell me ‘nothing’, I can feel my guts being cut by a hundred knives and it isn’t exactly enjoyable”. 

You bit your lip, looking down. He took your face in his hands and forced you to look at him as he caressed your cheekbones with his thumbs softly, staring into your eyes worriedly. 

You couldn’t resist the look he was giving you. You were defeated. You sighed.

“Felix,” you licked your lips before continuing. “I love you.” you said. “I’m in love with you.” you repeated. Your heart beat like crazy in your chest.

His expression didn’t change, but you failed to notice his eyes softening. 

“I know” he whispered. “I can feel what you feel, remember ?” he said without it being a real question. 

The air that filled your lungs felt like liquid. You could barely breathe. 

“Then, why didn’t you say anything ?” you whispered back. He pushed your hair out of your face with his right hand before placing it back on your cheek.

“Because I thought you could feel mine too, what happened to the bond ?” he said, smiling lightly. Your heart felt like it was going to explode. You still couldn’t breathe. Felix ran his left thumb on your cheek, right under your eye. “I love you too” he said as he still stared into your eyes, boring holes into them, reaching your soul. 

This time, your heart exploded, twice as much as it normally should have, because Felix’s heart exploded too. 

His eyes trailed down to your lips. Slowly, he leaned in. Your noses touched. You felt his breath on your lips as yours got stuck in your throat. 

He tilted his head a bit and stopped for a second, as if to see if you would stop him. You didn’t. He finally let your lips touch. 

You let yourself get lost into the kiss as Felix poured all his passion into it, letting his hands trail down to your waist and your thighs, pulling your legs closer so you would straddle him. You focused on what you felt. You focused on what Felix felt. Everything was burning inside of you, but it didn’t hurt, unlike the previous times. It felt amazing. Warm and exciting. You could feel his love this time, both in your heart and on your skin as he left your lips to kiss along your jaw and down your neck, setting it on fire. Your hands tugged at his hair gently as he went back up, teeth grazing your skin gently before he reached your lips again, hovering over them for a second as he let you both catch your breath before crashing his lips on yours once more. 

You couldn’t describe any of the things you were feeling when he finally pulled away and rested his forehead on yours, hands still gripping at your thighs firmly. You would probably get bruises, but you didn’t care. Your mind was completely blank and yet, at the same time, you had never been thinking about so many things and so fast. You couldn’t keep track. You finally understood what the whole point of experiencing your soulmate’s feeling in addition to your own was.

“I’m sorry” you whispered. You had done it. You had apologized.

“For what ?” he asked you, breath mixing with your own with the closeness.

“For everything.” you said. 

“Don’t be.” he answered. You felt a weight being lifted off your shoulders. It was all good. All good.

As both your chests still heaved up and down, you dared to peck Felix’s lips once more. You smiled, chuckling. 

“What ?” Felix asked, chuckling lightly too. You wanted to hear him laugh more often. 

“I was stupid” you said and he stood back a little to look at your face, quirking an eyebrow. “Of course you would know I love you,” you continued, “I got you in my feelings, after all” you said and let your smile grow bigger. 

Felix’s face fell into one of disbelief and disappointment. You pursed your lips to contain a laugh. 

“I can’t believe you’d ruin this like that,” he said as he shook his head but still couldn’t help the smile that stretched his lips right after. But it went away just as fast as his eyes grew big in realization. “You ruined the mood” he said in a small voice.

You burst out laughing. His face was priceless. Was he scared you would never kiss again or what ? 

He pouted at you as you made fun of him. 

“See ?” he said, still pouting. “Ruined !” he added. Your eyes softened a little, but you were still feeling like laughing. 

“It’s not ruined,” you defended yourself and took his face in your hands the way he had done to you right before. You looked at his lips. You looked at his eyes. Your eyes trailed over his whole face. You ran your fingers on his face, tracing his freckles. He was so beautiful. You kissed him again, slowly, and made sure he would feel just how much you loved him too. 

You pulled away and he chased after your lips, making you smile before he buried his face into the crook of your neck, head on your shoulder. You wrapped your arms tightly around his neck. 

You wouldn’t let go now.

You would be happy now. At least, sometimes. You would be happy to make Felix happy too. And you would make him happy so as to be happy yourself. It was a virtuous circle. 

In the end, you realized your bond could be the end of the both of you, but it could also be your new beginning. You just had to choose wisely. 

You kissed Felix again.

—————

Author’s Note : hi ! it’s me again. I just wanted to thank you if you’ve read this (and if you’re taking the time to read this note), because it took me a hell of a lot of time to write and I really put so much of myself into this. The point of view and feelings depicted here regarding the issues the characters are facing come from my own experience, everyone who might be going through something similar has a different experience and might not feel the same. I really wanted to talk about and try to explain important things that aren’t given enough attention, and I hope I succeeded. I will do it again in future works—like this whole soulmates!au series—with different topics, as I wish my writing could help anyone and maybe raise awareness about such things. Hopefully, some will relate and maybe find comfort in seeing that there are others out there who are going through the same thing. I hope you’re all safe and nothing triggered you, please don’t forget to always read the warnings before you read something ! If anyone wants to talk, I'm always here, no matter what it may be about. My inbox is open to all. 

And if you need to read something a little lighter after this, you can always one of the cheesy fics I've written, all linked in my bio (masterlist) if you want. You do you. 

Thank you !  :)

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