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vermin-disciple · 3 years

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Fic Writer Interview

Thank you to @sapphosewrites for tagging me!

Name: Vermin

Fandoms: Currently Star Trek, and DS9 specifically has eaten my brain. But I’ve been in and out of fandom for the past 20 years, so there have been many. I’ve more often been an avid reader and lurker than an active participant, though. The last fandom I was most actively involved in (and wrote the most fic for) was Life on Mars (UK), and that was a while ago. Other fandoms have included: Good Omens, Due South, Sherlock Holmes, and of course my very first gateway fandom, Harry Potter.

Where you post: AO3 and Tumblr. You can still find a lot of my older fic posted on my LJ, although I don’t post there anymore. Every once in a blue moon I get a notification from FF.net and am momentarily reminded that I still technically have an account there (though I can’t remember the last time I used it).

Most popular one-shot: That depends on your definition of a one-shot, lol. My top fic in terms of kudos is False Friends and False Prophets, which is technically part of a series (Where No Occult [or Ethereal] Being Has Gone Before), but then again, all the works in that series are written to work as standalones while existing within a shared crossover universe. If we exclude those then the next option is Freedom’s Just Another Word, except that while that is not currently listed as part of the This Be The Verse series (for thematic reasons), it is based on a flashback in Tell Me You See Me and I do consider it part of that universe, even though it can be read independently.

So I guess my most popular indisputable one-shot would be my first Garak/Bashir fic, Bound in Shallows and in Miseries.

Most popular multichapter: Tell Me You See Me (not that I have a lot to choose from)

Favorite story you’ve written so far: This was more difficult than I expected! Here are the ones that particularly stand out in my mind:

Tin Star (Life on Mars, 2009): Not counting a few drabbles, this was my second work for LoM. The first one, Convergence, is from the POV of a character who doesn’t appear onscreen in canon (and probably doesn’t exist), so Tin Star was my first real attempt at writing the POV of one main cast. I found the idea of writing Gene Hunt pretty intimidating, and was (and still am) very pleased with how this came out. Also, my favorite LoM writer, @lozenger8, beta-read it and told me it was awesome, and 11 years later I still feel all warm and fuzzy about this.

Mater Familias (I, Claudius, 2009): My first and longest work of I, Claudius fanfiction, written for a once annual ficathon on LJ called Femgenficathon (shoutout to @gehayi who modded it - it was a great event). I’m not entirely sure why I landed on this particular idea. I’d been joking about writing IC fic for years, but if you’d asked me prior to writing this what characters I’d most like to write about, Antonia the Younger wouldn’t have been high on the list. But once the idea occurred to me, I really relished delving into Antonia’s psyche. I’m also fond of this fic because there’s so little IC fic out there, and I’m rather pleased to have contributed something. (There was a point a few years ago when there were 6 works of I, Claudius fic on AO3 and 4 of them were by me.)

On the Benefits of a Classical Education (Jeeves & Wooster, 2012) – To quote my author’s note: “at about 1:00 a.m. after a round of grading undergraduate papers, I reached that point of giddy insanity where the idea of writing one's grading comments in Wodehousian pastiche seems like basically the funniest thing, ever. My coping mechanisms, let me show you them.” This is definitely one of the weirdest and silliest things I’ve written, but it still makes me grin when I reread it. (Yes, I do laugh at my own jokes.)

On Transmutation [and Tortoises] (Good Omens, 2011): As someone who has studied (and now teaches) evolutionary theory, I got a big kick out of writing about evolution in a universe where creationism is canon. Not to mention telling jokes about Darwin riding tortoises. (I make a point of reading that particular passage in The Voyage of the Beagle to my students.) And I owe @anthean some credit for giving me the prompt that produced this. :)

Writ in Water (Sherlock Holmes [ACD], 2015): This is essentially an interplay between two brilliant people trying to suss each other out while avoiding talking about their own respective existential crises. There’s no romance between them – it’s just Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler having a meandering conversation while meandering around Rome, after an accidental meeting during the Great Hiatus. My characterization of Irene Adler came out of my dissatisfaction with her characterization in recent adaptations. I think I started c. 2011, and I didn’t finish it until years later. There’s a lot of self-indulgence in this one. I majored in Classic Civ and spent a semester abroad in Rome, and my love for the city is pretty evident throughout. It’s littered with references to ancient history, there’s some gratuitous poetry, and the climax is set in the Protestant Cemetery, which is one of my favorite places in the city.

I honestly think it’s one of the best things I’ve ever written.

This Be The Verse (Star Trek: DS9, 2020): This fic is about my strained relationship with kidfic as a genre lol. I periodically get the urge to binge-read all the kidfic for a particular fandom/pairing, but then I usually end up being disappointed by most of it. So this started with me idly contemplating why kidfic often doesn’t work for me (and why I keep reading it anyway). And because of my current fandom preoccupation, this inevitably involved taking a hard look at the delightfully dysfunctional DS9 cast and wondering just what sort of parents they would be, and how their flaws might affect their children, and how the found family aspects of the show might manifest in the next generation. (Not sure how all this idle speculation ended up spiraling so wildly out of control, but here we are, and now I am just overflowing with ideas for this universe.)

I’m not 100% satisfied with all of this fic, but the epilogue is definitely one of my favorite things I’ve ever written. It also has a special place in my heart for being the first multichapter fic I’ve ever finished. (And the first one I’ve posted since I was in high school.)

Fics you were nervous to post: I used to get nervous about all of it (less so, these days). But one of the ones I was most nervous about was probably Convergence, which was my first substantial work in Life on Mars (I’d only written a couple of drabbles prior to this). I was really nervous about writing for LoM, because the setting and the dialogue style were pretty far outside my wheelhouse. Being a 21-year-old Californian, 1970s Mancunian copper slang wasn’t exactly part of my day-to-day vocabulary. (Oh, hey, I’d totally forgotten that you beta-read this for me, @sunnyrea!)

How do you choose your titles: I tend to gravitate to quotes (usually poetry or song lyrics) and/or wordplay of some kind. Sometimes I just pick out a significant word or phrase from the fic itself.

Do you outline: Frequently, although I rarely stick to my outlines religiously.

Complete: Nearly everything I have on AO3 is complete

In progress: Just counting posted WIPs, there’s Tell Me You See Me and Attack of the Giant Mutant Killer Rabbits

Prompts: Sure, but you have to come write them on my shower notepad. ;)

Upcoming work you’re most excited about: I have a number of ideas for additional works set in my This Be The Verse AU, but the one I’ve already written a substantial amount of (~13,000 words) is tentatively titled A Bag Full of God. This I originally had saved as ‘The Other Kind of Kidfic,’ although that’s misleading: it is de-aging fic, but they’re de-aged to 19-year-olds, so they’re not technically kids. It’s one that starts off fairly comedic and then gets progressively darker.

Worlds I would love to write for in the future: No idea. Fandoms tend to sneak up on me. But I have a feeling I’ll be stuck in the ST universe for a while. There’s just so much to play with, there. And I’ve found the fandom a very hospitable place to hang out in both on and offline (talked to a lot of lovely people at ST Las Vegas when I was there a few years ago, for instance). That said, I wouldn’t mind trying my hand at writing more Sherlock Holmes fic some day. (I have a thing for old school fandoms, apparently.)

Tagging everyone I’ve already tagged in this and anyone else who wants to fill it out!

#about me #vermin rites #my fanfic #wow I really do ramble on don't I

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recurring-polynya · 4 years

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oooooo, Renji drabbles! you’ve mentioned before how you suspect that Renji and Shuuhei were a thing once upon a time... is it possible you can write a drabble where they’re on a date together? They’re only two of the hottest guys in the realm

Abarai Renji was on a date.

He’d been on a few dates in his life, disastrous occasions when Momo had stuffed him in a yukata and sent him out with some fresh-scrubbed, extremely nice girl she had dredged up somewhere. The girls would talk and talk and steal glances at his tattoos and guilt would well up in his chest until he wanted to vomit and at the end, they would kiss him on the cheek and he would make it a point to never see them again.

Today, he was wearing yesterday’s uniform and wandering around a flea market in a weird, eclectic Seireitei neighborhood that he’d never been to before, watching Hisagi Shuuhei root through a bin of Living World automotive parts. His boyfriend, Hisagi Shuuhei.

Renji had slept with Shuuhei enough times that he no longer kept count. Shuuhei cooked him dinner at least twice a week and Renji would bring over beers or sake. They usually sat next to each other at the bar, and he’d throw his arm around Shuuhei’s shoulders and Shuuhei would put a hand on his knee and it was very comfortable like that. Renji had started keeping a toothbrush at Shuuhei’s place, and then decided that he didn’t like sharing Shuuhei’s hair gel, and now probably three quarters of the shit Shuuhei’s bathroom was actually his. People would constantly call his phone asking for Shuuhei, because Shuuhei’s phone was perpetually out of battery, not that Renji’s was ever at more than a single digit’s worth of charge.

So last week, when Shuuhei asked him if he wanted to be boyfriends and Renji said “no” and then Shuuhei asked him which part of this he wanted to stop doing, he said “none of it” and then he was forced to concede that maybe he did want to be boyfriends and now they were on a date.

It wasn’t so bad.

The weather was nice, and Renji was eating a taiyaki at 10am, which was, in his opinion, the very acme of gratuitous self-indulgence. Shuuhei had bought it for him because he said “he looked extra cute in the morning” and also, he’d found some money in his pocket that he forgot he had.

“Oi, Renji, do you know what a spark plug actually looks like?” Shuuhei shouted from neck deep in his bucket of parts. It occurred to Renji that Shuuhei usually called him Abarai in public, but maybe first names were part of this new regime they were now operating under.

“I do not,” Renji admitted. “Maybe we could try to find one on the motorbike and take it out and bring it with us next time. You have that book with the diagrams, so we can probably figure out where to find it.”

“Ah, you’re so smart!” Shuuhei exclaimed and Renji blushed because no one ever said that to him, maybe not in his entire afterlife.

The Guilt curled in Renji’s stomach, slow and throbbing, but it wasn’t choking, consuming, like it used to be. He had always thought the Guilt was for Rukia-- that he was betraying her, cheating on her, somehow. But he didn’t owe Rukia anything, to be honest, any more than she owed him. She was living a fantastic life somewhere, probably having pitted cherries placed directly in her mouth while someone else painted her fingernails. She sure wasn’t waiting around for him to show up and shout his undying devotion to her. In fact, he could practically imagine the horrified face she would make at him if she found out he’d been pining over her.

No, the Guilt was for the other girls, Momo’s pretty, doe-eyed friends that he was never, ever going to fall in love with, no matter how much they flipped their hair at him. His heart was burnt down to a cinder-- a black, dusty thing, too hot to touch, and in danger of falling to ash if someone were to try. You could only love for so hard, for so long without getting anything back. Then, you started burning yourself up instead, from the inside out.

That had been a long time ago, though. Even if he still missed Rukia like hell, there were other good parts of life these days. His fights with Ikkaku were getting pretty even these days. He even got to spar with the Kenpachi once in a while, which was both exciting and flattering and then, two minutes later, deeply, deeply painful. He liked being Sixth Seat, not just because it paid well, but because he liked working with the unseated guys, liked teaching them how to be real swordsmen, not just loud goons. After years of Yumichika making him rub flowery smelling stuff on his face and in his hair, there was a pretty good looking guy staring back at him when he looked in the mirror. A guy who felt good about looking good, a guy who now knew how to pick out his own flowery smelling face goops.

“I think,” he had explained to Shuuhei, the only person to whom he had ever explained the burnt-up cinder heart theory, “that there might be a little chunk of it, like the size of my thumb, that’s not all the way toasted, just maybe really tough and chewy, like beef jerky.”

And Shuuhei had looked him in the eyes, real soft-like, and said, “Pal, your tiny little dried up beef jerky heart probably has more love in it than most people have in their entire body. You have been up front with me, which I respect a lot, and I’m willing to take my chances anyway.”

Shuuhei currently was surveying the street like an explorer deciding which path he wanted to take through a jungle. “You wanna go see the leatherwork stall? They had some sweet wrist cuffs last time, really gorgeous tooling.”

“Why do you always want to look at stuff that you can’t afford?” Renji groused. He’d been trying to start saving again, since he got his raise, something he hadn’t done since he was at the Fifth. He couldn’t decide which it was that was making him more grouchy-- having to put limits on his expenses, or how little was actually piling up in the bank account he’d opened. He wasn’t even sure what he was saving for. It just seemed like money was something a functional adult should have. He wasn’t exactly sure he would classify himself as a functional adult, but it was something to aspire to.

Shuuhei stretched, and rested his hands on the back of his head. “Sometimes it’s fun to just browse,” he shrugged. “You’re so practical, Renji, you should let your imagination out a little, once in a while.”

Renji’s face must have done something stupid, because Shuuhei quickly followed up with, “Things don’t always have to pan out to be worth dreaming of. C’mon, I know you’re dead jealous of those flashy goggles Iba’s been wearing lately.”

Renji wrinkled his nose because he was. Iba’s new shades were cool as fuck and expensive as fuck, too. Iba had offered to let him try them on, and Renji had said no because he was almost positive he would look better in them than Iba and he didn’t want to have to go around thinking about that all the time.

“We can go to the used book place instead,” Shuuhei offered. Shuuhei was really good at hopping off subjects that Renji was sensitive about. He’d probably been doing it for a while, but Renji had just gotten around to noticing. “It’s all shitty, falling-apart paperbacks, but they’re pretty cheap, plus I have a bunch of credit, because I trade mine in when I’m done with ‘em.”

“Ah, that sounds nice,” Renji, who had a great love for shitty, falling-apart paperbacks, replied. “But let’s swing by the leather place, too.” He crumpled up the paper from his taiyaki and threw it in a high arc into a nearby wastecan. Then wiped his hand on his hakama, and held out his hand, flexing his fingers obnoxiously. “I bet I would look good in wrist cuffs.”

Shuuhei grinned and immediately lowered his hands from his head so he could grab Renji’s. “You would look so good in wrist cuffs.”

And off they went, together.

#happy birthday renji!#renji abarai #shuuhei hisagi #my writing #drabbles

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selfindulgentpoorlywritten · 5 years

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Home (T. Konecny & N. Patrick Imagine)

I didn’t finish this, but I don’t have the motivation to either. So enjoy 3k of self-indulgent bs I wrote when I was upset.

Rating: T

Pairing: T. Konecny/Reader/N. Patrick

Words: 3008

Warnings: Food, general negativity

Requested: yes / no

Summary: *Daniel Powter voice* You had a bad day...

Life sucks.

Life sucks and everything is terrible and you’re so fucking tired.

Your shift had gotten changed and no one bothered to tell you, so you woke up at 5:15 to your manager asking why you weren’t there yet, even though you usually don’t start until 7. Thus, you had to scramble through getting ready and driving to work in record time, except you didn’t realize until you’d gotten to the stadium that you’d forgotten your badge, so not only were you late, but they had to make you a temporary. Luckily you’re generally a good employee, so you just had to apologize a thousand times and work a little faster than usual, which is objectively better than getting fired. But it also sucked extra, because the reason your shift had been changed was due to them accidentally giving too many people the day off, so you were understaffed with a 3 o’clock 76’ers game to prepare for. Even on a calm day, hauling around boxes of food and delivering them to the kitchens was enough of a workout to justify not spending money on a gym membership, but with being half staffed and starting late, you were ready to collapse by time you were finished. Your entire body ached.

It would have been bad enough if it were just a rushed day, but everyone seemed to be in a pissy mood as well. The cooks snapped at you, because the chefs snapped at them, except the chefs also snapped at you, so you just got the business end of everyone’s bad mood. Plus you always felt bad when you were late to work or late with a delivery anyway, and you’d barely been sleeping, and you were constantly hungry but too nauseous to eat, and you couldn’t sit still for five minutes but moving was exhausting. So you were just guilty and irritated and mad at the entire world but mostly at yourself.

Once you clock out, you don’t even bother pretending to consider going back to your place. Traffic is a bitch, because you head out at the same time everyone is coming in for the game. You want to scream. You may or may not roll your windows up and do so, but no one can prove anything.

By time you reach your destination, the frustration has faded to leave you empty and apathetic and more tired than you’ve been in a long time. The doorman greets you, and usually you’d ask how he is and make small talk for a minute, but right now all you can do is shoot him as much of a smile as you can manage and thank him as you enter. The elevator ride feels like it takes a thousand years. The sight of their door is your first bit of relief in days; you don’t even have to dig out your key because it’s unlocked. Leaving it unlocked is probably not the most responsible decision, but they’re not the most responsible pair out there, and you might have sent them several frustrated texts during stolen seconds throughout the morning that would imply you’d be coming over.

You stop in the entryway to drop your bag and kick off your (ugly) regulation non-slip shoes. Just being here allows you to take a deep breath and relax, even minutely. You find Nolan in the kitchen, leaning on the island as he reads something on his phone and snacks on something definitely not on his diet plan. For a moment, you allow yourself to simply look. To appreciate the strong cut of his jaw, the constant flush of his cheeks, the curl of his hair against the nape of his neck.

“Hey nerd,” you greet, padding over to wrap your arms around him from behind. He hums, pressing back into you a bit. With your face buried into him, eyes closed, you can hear the quiet clack of him putting his phone down.

“Bad day, huh?” he asks, already knowing the answer. You just groan, pulling away enough to grab his hand and pull him out of the kitchen and toward the couch. He sits obediently, propping his feet up on the ottoman so you can spread out over the rest of the couch with your head in his lap. One hand on the side of your neck, he uses the other to play with your hair and scratch your scalp. It can’t be pleasant for him. You’re still sweaty and grimy from work, desperately in need of a shower, but he continues nevertheless.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks. You don’t really want to, and you know he probably doesn’t want to either, so you save both of you the trouble by shaking your head.

“When’s Travis gonna be home?” you ask after a few minutes, turning onto your back after breaking the peaceful silence. Nolan checks his watch.

“Like twenty minutes,” he says, settling his hand over your collarbone now that you’ve turned. You let out another groan. Twenty fucking minutes.

“He’s at a meeting, he’ll be home soon,” Nolan mumbles, trying to appease you. Soon, hah, not soon enough. It was nice to mope with Nolan, doing nothing but laying around and letting his calm demeanor soothe you, but you always prefer to have them both around. Nolan can settle you like no other, but Travis was better at actually cheering you up. Working together, they made the perfect resolution to a shitty day.

Twenty minutes ends up being closer to thirty. The first half is spent with Nolan stroking his thumb along the skin under the collar of your uniform shirt, until you start feeling too gross and decide you should definitely get a shower. They have way better water pressure than you do, and you savor the hot water beating over your sore back until you hear the front door open. Trav is home. After giving yourself a cursory towel-dry and wrapping the (ridiculously) soft towel around yourself, you don’t bother getting dressed before bounding out to intercept him before he can even make it through the bedroom door. He laughs when you catch him in a hug, but squeezes you back nonetheless.

The two of you get changed together, chatting a bit about your days. He switches from his suit to a t-shirt and athletic shorts, and you pick out something cozy from your designated drawer. The urge to steal something of theirs to comfort yourself is powerful, but you resist, because you have them already. Who needs one of their oversized shirts when you have the real deal?

Once dressed, Travis wraps his arms around you from behind, huddling up against your back and enveloping you in his perpetual warmth. He waddles the two of you to the living room, keeping you plastered to his front, like a parent helping their child work out their first unsteady steps. The exaggerated swaying is exactly ridiculous enough to get a laugh out of you, the barest giggle that feels cathartic after the awful day you’ve had. The sound makes Travis cheer, pulling your arm up into a fistpump of success, which only makes you giggle more. As previously stated: Travis is really good at cheering you up.

During your time in the master suite, Nolan has gathered various pillows and blankets from around the condo and made a sort-of nest on the couch. You grab your favorite stuffed animal from the pile the second Travis lets you go, fussing with the pile of bedclothes until it’s arranged to your satisfaction. Then you proceed to arrange Travis and Nolan to your liking; Nols on the left with his feet on the ottoman as he likes, Trav wedged into the corner on the right, one leg spanning the back of the couch until his foot can bury itself behind Nolan, while the other leg is bent at the knee to settle his left foot flat on the floor. They are both more than adequately propped and padded with pillows, allowing them to be comfortable whilst providing you the perfect resting place.

The moment you’re fully settled in-- head on Travis’s left thigh, feet on Nolan’s lap, angled perfectly to see the TV without straining your neck or eyes, nor sacrificing full view-- Nolan hands you the remote without debate or question. You click through the usual streaming services for a few minutes, finding nothing of interest. Honestly, you already know what you want to watch, who are you kidding. Rather than continue the charade of considering other options, you click through to a less-than-savory streaming app Trav had installed a while back, despite Nolan’s concern for viruses. You go straight to the search bar and quickly to your favorite cheer-up movie, lodging the remote half under your forearm after pressing play. One final adjustment in position, and you’re set for the next two hours.

Throughout the movie, Nolan absently massages your calves and ankles, which he’s unusually good at, probably from getting so many massages at the rink. Travis scratches your scalp gently, rubbing at the base of your skull now and again, lucky to get you post-shower. They both let you make your commentary without complaint, even throwing their own comments in here and there. Maybe you got a bit too into the things you liked, and learned a gratuitous amount about them, and occasionally wanted to share your knowledge, despite it being entirely useless. You didn’t need to feel smart, necessarily, just heard. Understood.

The screen finally fades to black, jumping back to the preview screen automatically. Though Nol maneuvers your legs so he can stand and hobble to the kitchen, shaking out his knees along the way, you simply close your eyes and appreciate the situation. Yes, you had a shitty day. But you also have two wonderful, loving boyfriends who put off their game tape to watch your favorite movies for the millionth time, curl up with you for hours even if it makes their joints go stiff, listen to you ramble about the things you’re passionate about with admiration rather than complaint… You’re burrowed under your favorite comforter, with your favorite people, in a safe place, with the promise of forever under your tongue.

Nolan brings back two bowls with a properly portioned amount of diet-appropriate snacks, that he hands to you and Travis to hold while he settles back in. One bowl has these weird “bites” that only Nolan likes, so that ends up in his hands before you start the next movie, Trav holding the bowl of home-made trail mix the both of you will presumably share. You all snack and watch your favorite rom-com, probably more invested than you should be after having seen it this many times. But it serves as an adequate relief from the leftover stress of your day. Plus, witnessing TK and Nolan evolve from pretending not to care about the story, to nearly screaming at the TV when the characters do stupid things, is always a bonus and a privilege. It’s difficult for them, especially as professional hockey players, to express anything both genuine and outside the scope of traditional masculinity, you know that; that’s why it’s such a stunning scene to be allowed to witness. Any time they allow themselves to openly feel around you, you feel more trusted, more loved.

After the fade to black snaps back to the preview screen, it’s roundabout time for a slightly overdue dinner. The three of you debate the merits of ordering out versus making the lemon garlic tilapia you’d picked up the ingredients for the other day, deciding to be responsible and cook the fish before it spoiled. They’re both useless in the kitchen, so they mostly sit at the island and provide entertainment while you cook, occasionally bringing you something you need. In the past, you’d attempted to teach them some culinary skills, but in the interest of not burning the condo down most of the cooking is left to you or their chef. Because they have a personal chef, like the rich bastards they are. But again, you’d rather they not die in a grease fire, so maybe that’s for the best. Even if you’re a little jealous.

The recipe is fairly straightforward, so it’s not too much work after your long day. And making food always makes you feel a little better anyway, especially if you’re making it for other people. Food is love, and all that, so it was just nice to work on something and have someone actually appreciate it (instead of yelling at you for being ten minutes late). The boys get into an argument about the best way to counteract some opponent’s play style, or something like that, and you have to give them each a good whack on the arm with the spatula to get them to disengage. Luckily, dinner is ready not long after, so they don’t have time to work themselves back up.

They both help you serve the food, setting out plates and glasses and silverware on the small wooden table as you dish out fish and rice and squash. The larger filets go to them, as well as a heartier portion of sides. They’re gonna need as much as they can get before the official season starts and they end up losing all the weight they’d gained over the summer. When you’re at home, dinner is a quiet affair. Usually it’s just you eating on the couch as you watch a show or scroll social media. With Travis and Nolan, however, dinner is loud and long and engaging. The both of them talk throughout the meal, pulling you into the conversation so often that your rice is almost cold before you finish it. For as long as you’d lived alone, you’d convinced yourself that you were okay with the silence-- enjoyed it, actually-- but after your first dinner with the boys, you couldn’t deny that the commotion was infinitely preferable.

Clean-up is a breeze between the three of you, Trav and Nolan doing the bulk of the work to make up for not cooking. All you have to do is hand the dishes to Nolan so he can wash them, handing them off to Travis to dry and put away. Trav had been banned from washing after a few too many arguments about what constituted “clean”. You’re not entirely sure it wasn’t a ploy to get out of the hardest work, but you and Nolan love him, so you’ll let it slide. On occasion, you’ll play background music while you clean. This is one of those occasions, and you’re caught off guard when Nolan perks up and Travis drops the plate in his hands to the counter with a clatter.

“It’s our song!” he says, almost loud enough to make you worry about retaliation from the neighbors. But it is your song, so you’re not particularly worried about what Mr. Steinberg thinks.

The three of you move at the same time, Nolan placing the cup in his hand into the sink and you setting the pan you’re holding back into the pile, letting Travis lead you into the more open space between the stove and island, where you’re less likely to break something. As the music plays, you all move more-or-less in sync. Travis and Nols swing each other around as you spin around them, only to be pulled in so Nolan can push and pull you around while Trav shimmies around you. You’re all laughing, singing along to the old jazz song, Sinatra’s deep croon guiding you around the tiled floor. This is one of those rare times that Nolan really lets himself go, allows himself to smile and laugh and dance like no one is watching. Or maybe like you and Travis are watching, and he feels safe enough to be open and happy in front of you both.

After the four or so minutes of the song ends, the three of you converge in a standing pile of smiles and laughter. The three of you exchange kisses and nudge heads and shoulders, just enjoying each other’s company. Enjoying the fact that you get to have this, this overwhelming, chest-bursting happiness. But eventually, you have to return to the dishes. Instead of being a chore, it’s significantly more an activity to do together. The three of you chatter as you wash, unable to wipe the smiles from your faces-- even Nolan.

As Travis places the last cup in the cabinet, you allow Nols to wrap his arms around you, enveloping you in his warmth. Rather than complain, as he usually does, Travis simply joins in, wrapping his arms around the both of you. You’re entirely encompassed by their affection, doing your absolute best to radiate appreciation and affection. You’re not sure that you’ll ever be able to express how much their care means to you; but you’re also not sure you’ll ever truly understand how they feel about you, either. But no one does this for someone they don’t love dearly. They don’t watch shitty movies, or pet your greasy hair, or dance around the kitchen to your old music-- not even just to cheer you up. Just because that’s who you are and what you like, and they want to be a part of that-- no one does all of that unless they love you.

Time passes; maybe a minute, maybe an hour. All you know is the hard stretch of Travis and Nolan’s chests against your back and front, their heat, the softness of their lips against your cheeks, neck, forehead, shoulders, nose, jaw…

Eventually, you have to part. It takes a bit of effort to slip out from between them, partially because you’re pressed so closely together, but mostly because you don’t really want to leave this place, ever. If you could stay pressed between them forever, you would, without question. They’re your safe space, your home. More than any physical location could be.

#Travis Konecny imagine #nhl imagine #Nolan patrick imagine #RI #tkonecny #npatrick #andis coping mechanism

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happymetalgirl · 4 years

Text

September 2020

As quickly as I caught up, I fell behind, and I’ll explain it all later, but that’s why some of the review blurbs here are really short while others are much longer. I still tried to make the shorter ones as expressive and dense as possible, even though I personally don’t like that approach so much. Anyway, September 2020, still a hellhole.

Faidra - Six Voices Inside

Drawing very obvious influence from Burzum’s Filosofem for the ambient portion of its sound, Faidra’s atmospheric black metal debut manages to marry both the snow-hazy ambience of Norway’s second wave with today’s more full-bodied naturalistic ambient black metal in a ceremony rather respectably elegant for a debut.

7/10

Heathen - Empire of the Blind

One of the more anticipated thrash metal releases of the year, Heathen’s more intensely melodically focused and unbalanced approach only drags their lethargic Testament-sequel brand of melodic thrash down, as Empire of the Blind trades out the genre’s hallmark spitfire aggression for dull guitar leads and uninspired operatic vocal lines that leave only a desire for the former.

5/10

Oceans of Slumber - Oceans of Slumber

A demonstrably competent, but woefully soulless and bloated display of neo-classical prog metal chops, Oceans of Slumber’s self-titled fifth LP is one of many of the genre’s avatars for much of its impressive face-value and numb delivery.

5/10

Corey Taylor - CMFT

We all knew this day would come, the charismatic Slipknot and Stone Sour frontman has finally released a solo album. And you could tell from the rollout with the star-cameo-studded music video for the lead single, “CMFT Must Be Stopped”, that Corey was going to lean in on it. But honestly, for as much natural swagger Corey Taylor can wield and showcases on the track, his straightforward rock songwriting that has graced Stone Sour’s discography is astoundingly weak, and this song’s more exuberant egotistical indulgence amplifies it rather than remedying it. It’s definitely one of the worst singles I’ve heard all year, especially for a project so highly anticipated as this, and there’s really no excuse for it to be this bad. If the general goal of a solo project is to transcribe your creative DNA onto an album as authentically as possible, and if this is an honest portrait of Corey’s creative core, it really just affirms for the many people annoyed by his media omnipresence that his main talent is just being the great big mouth. It should be obvious, but I’m not saying this to disparage in any way his massive contributions to the legendary legacy of Slipknot or even the genuinely important role he’s taken up as metal’s de facto representative press secretary. It’s not unheard of, and probably more normal than the opposite, for group-embedded artists to struggle to get a strong solo venture going. Thankfully, the lead single is the lowest point this album stoops to, but with its generic 80’s hard rock and glam anthems, it frequently gets pretty damn close. And look, I can tell it’s an album that’s supposed to be more about having a good time than any of that other artist DNA shit I brought up earlier, but its only routes there are through cheap imitation of other artists’ styles, and this still wouldn’t be anywhere near my first well of songs to draw from if I were making the most drunken of tailgater playlists.

4/10

Skeletal Remains - The Entombment of Chaos

Relatively new on the wider death metal scene, the Californian four-piece show once again, on their fourth album, why there remains such an appetite for old-school death metal with effective beating sessions and shredding clinics like The Entombment of Chaos.

7/10

Messiah - Fracmont

Originally part of the movement of early intensifying that inched fast, heavy, growly metal closer and closer to, and eventually over, the line that would separate thrash from what would become the vast world of death metal before their lengthy disbandment, Switzerland’s Messiah are fortunate to return to a world still hungry for new and old flavors of death metal with the stylistically and compositionally vintage (if not rusty) but somewhat technologically updated death-thrash of Fracmont, but they will need to do more than just pick up where they left off and acclimate their approach to the modern era if they intend to stick it out in today’s harsher death metal ecosystem.

6/10

Stryper - Even the Devil Believes

The Christian glam metal outfit have really leaned into the power metal glory that their high-soaring brand was always kind of adjacent to over the past few albums, and to their benefit, and despite what their goofy striped outfit look back in the day would have led you to predict, the steadfast veteran Christian rockers have aged far better than most of their 80’s hair metal contemporaries. Nevertheless, the walking oxymorons’ cheesy, on-the-nose, and occasionally preachy lyricism remain a pesky turn-off to both the religion they espouse and the medium they evangelize through. Frontman Michael Sweet took a bit of a misdirected offense from another reviewer who pointed out exactly this about his band’s new album, taking some media time to play the insufferable persecuted god-fearing follower of Jesus that so many Christians so delusionally imagine they are as a majority religious group with more political power than any other. Now with Michael Sweet claiming that his band has it so rough because they’re openly Christian, I say it really comes down to how you present it, and he especially presents it kinda goofy. One of the songs I’ve been getting energized by a lot on my workout playlist is “Devil’s Den” by Impending Doom, an also openly Christian band. And apart from the nasty 8-string groove, the song’s central refrain “slaughter the demons that are clawing on my brother’s back, until my brothers fight back” about support through spiritual struggle against one’s vices is a thrilling lyric that frames that aspect of Christian spirituality in a much more relatable and sympathizable manner. I’m not expecting Stryper to go into gratuitous deathcore brutality to deliver their message, but they can’t be mad about receiving criticism when they haven’t evolved the 9th-grade-reading-level lyricism that was begrudgingly accepted in the 80’s. Sociopolitical stuff and frontman antics aside, Even the Devil Believes is an instrumentally solid, but exceptionally lyrically corny record full of Bible verse quotes and Sunday School rhymes. I’ll highlight the song “Do Unto Others” for beating the odds on this album with its invigorating sing-along power metal melody, but that song is perhaps the sole reason my feelings in this album are more neutral overall instead on negative, while the vast majority of this album is just begging to be instrumental or at least tuned out.

5/10

Mastodon - Medium Rarities

Mastodon really could have just saved the earth-quaking opening single for their next album or released it as a stand-alone single instead of with the other forty minutes of entirely unnecessary of instrumental versions and live cuts among the other worthwhile material to compile for an album like this.

Fallen Torches/10

Ihsahn - Pharos

The now prog-immersed enigmatic Emperor frontman put out a pretty solid EP earlier in the year, but I was still hoping that Ihsahn would come through with a more essential addition to his solo catalog, and even if it’s a small one, his second EP of 2020 is that addition. Pharos is a succinct, five-song display of proggy melodicism much more confident and infectious than the still-respectable Telemark, further bolstering Ihsahn’s prog credibility and proving to anyone skeptical that he was all esoteric experimental bark and no substantive bite that he indeed has the songwriting chops to thrive in the genre.

8/10

Uniform - Shame

The New York duo’s sardonic and noisy industrial metal neither progresses nor regresses on their fourth album, Michael Berdan’s nasty vocal delivery and the backing industrial instrumentation lose steam and effectiveness rather quickly and the numbing experience ends up being over before you know it for the wrong reasons. It has its moments, but they are brief and few in number.

6/10

Cloudkicker - Solitude

Through an eleventh album under the name of his occasionally djenty instrumental prog studio project, Ohio virtuoso Ben Sharp once again flexes his technical and compositional prowess in an entertaining rather than self-congratulatory manner.

7/10

Marilyn Manson - We Are Chaos

This was a bit of a weird one, and it definitely caught me off guard for a few reasons, mostly for how it flows and for my own not hearing the title track previously when it was released as a single. The iconic 90’s boogeyman of the religious right wing in America is on his eleventh album now and (I mentioned it when I reviewed his tenth album, Heaven Upside Down, in 2011) it seems like people are finally accepting that the Antichrist Superstar’s fire-stoking strategy of blasphemous industrial metal last century was something that served its purpose for a time that has now passed. With Manson now on the more mortally introspective side of 50, the more measured rock of the latter portion of his catalog is starting to outsize what so many see as his grotesque golden age, which has seen him dip occasionally into the sounds of his beloved trilogy, but mostly dabbling in glam and indie rock sounds to find a late-career footing to sustain him. And on this album’s collaboration with country outlaw Shooter Jennings, I think the aging provocateur has found a direction that could be promising. Now I say it that way because I don’t think they gave us more than a tantalizing taste of it on this album, but I would love for Manson to further pursue what he and Jennings pull off together at the beginning of We Are Chaos. It took me a little while to warm up to the hammed up spoken word intro and industrial rock body of the opening track, “Red, Black, and Blue”, but I do think it does kick the album off well, albeit deceptively. It’s easy to forget how well Manson can hold himself on a ballad, not just on his meditation on his own aging during “Running to the Edge of the World”, but also on several cuts in his famed trilogy like “Lamb of God”, “Man That You Fear”, and “Coma White”. But after the somewhat tame fire of the intro track, Manson jumps straight into three songs of completely unexpected indie rock balladry that capture his mission to soundtrack every listener’s individual apocalypse at this time. Going through a lot of changes in life myself, I had a bit of unexpected catharsis with these songs that I think I’m going to be unable to dissociate them from with future listening. Unfortunately, Manson doesn’t re-engage ballade mode until “Broken Needle” closes the album, with the middle portion of the album having some good moments of industrial rock swagger, like “Perfume” and “Infinite Darkness”, but also some songs like “Half-Way & One Step Forward” that are just too dry on energy to be worth the time. But overall, I think the brightness in this album’s best spots make it well worth more than just a cursory listen, and I just hope that this album is a turning point for Manson and a step toward finding his groove without the flagrant heresy that built his youth.

7/10

Derek Sherinian - The Phoenix

Meandering through a generic prog rock instrumental wasteland and picking up the occasional morsel from between the dried out cracks of desert floor, The Phoenix is barely even a hearty display of the prog metal skill and street cred we all know the talented keyboardist to have.

5/10

Napalm Death - Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism

British grindcore legends Napalm Death need no introduction at this point, and with plenty of excitement behind their most lengthily-awaited LP after 2015’s well-respected Apex Predator - Easy Meat (and the sizzling appetizer the Logic Ravaged by Brute Force EP gave us), the band’s fifteenth full-length onslaught of deadly grindcore, Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism is a satisfactory dose of the band’s usual black-pilled rage against political and societal ills at most, with a few odd, to say the least, stylistic choices to say the least that beg the question of why this took so long.

6/10

Finntroll - Vredesvävd

While its adherence to the band’s boundaries within the niche genre they occupy makes it unlikely to take its established Finnish masterminds to any new heights, Vredesvävd is a professional, yet still fun serving of Finntroll’s black-metal-flavored folk metal brimming with energy and optimism.

6/10

Proscription - Conduit

Another Finnish outfit making their mark on 2020, Proscription still have some important ground to cover in ironing out and more specifically differentiating their blackened death metal sound, but Conduit is hardly a timid debut, providing a solid foundation for the four-piece to build upon.

6/10

Carnation - Where Death Lies

Not the faintest hint of a dreaded sophomore slump can be heard on the Belgians’ unflinching, merciless follow-up to their sizzlingly nasty 2018 debut album, Chapel of Abhorrence. Where Death Lies is as unyielding of a continuation as it gets, and in the best way such a straightforward trajectory can be. Nothing but skin-shredding, means-tested death metal in its most fibrant Floridian Form from front to back, Carnation showcase their skills from groove to solo in another stellar all-around display of force that provides a perhaps necessary reminder to the fans and critics annoyed by its ubiquitousness of the raw power that can come from unadulterated death metal.

8/10

Fit for a King - The Path

Fit for a King deliver perhaps the most convincing pathos yet for their more brightly melodic brand of Architects-like metalcore on their sixth album, putting on an exquisite balancing act that could sway even the most stubbornly cross-armed observer who likes the breakdowns but hates the clean singing.

7/10

Kataklysm - Unconquered

Kataklysm’s 2018 album, Meditations has ironically stuck out to me in retrospect because it was the shortest full-length review I had ever done, simply because there was so little to say about the unmemorable melodeath on that record. The band have definitely bounced back with some potent fire in their belly on the metalcore-infused Unconquered. Boasting more infectious grooves and more crushing breakdowns with a notably greater sense of urgency behind them, it’s still a pretty unambiguous and unambitious record, but it makes a far more convincing case for itself.

7/10

The Ocean Collective - Phanerozoic II: Mesozoic / Cenozoic

After a largely forgettable preceding act from all the way back in 2018, The Ocean Collective Return much more revitalized and sufficiently warmed up for a much more engaging 51 minutes of progressive metal that checks both classical and modern boxes.

7/10

Fires in the Distance - Echoes from Deep November

The debut album from the Connecticut four-piece offers a rather compositionallly directionless and standard take on the death-doom it offers. Even while taking a melodic approach very similar to that of a Khemmis or a Spirit Adrift, the attempted soulful guitar leads come off as aimlessly noodly and unplanned as the structures enclosing them, whose dynamic shifts feel more like repeated defibrillation attempts for unlively songs.

5/10

Darkcluster - Spirit of the Void

The debut album from this Canadian one-man-band studio project makes its intent to fill the sci-fi extreme thrash void that Vektor might not get to return to in the wake of the revealing David DiSanto’s domestic violence toward his girlfriend, and while Darkcluster’s mastermind clearly has the technicality down, the atrocious vocals across the rather lengthy and largely compositionally aimless project greatly hold this album back.

4/10

Swine of Dissent - An Uprising

A safer and more measured, but more successful black-metal-flavored thrash debut record, Swine of Dissent still have some work to do on the compositional floor as well, but with not as many glaring flaws, they have enough to start with and move forward with this type of thrash metal.

5/10

Gazpacho - Fireworker

The artsy Norwegian outfit returns to the more sprawling prog rock that hooked me into their music on Night for their eleventh album, but Fireworker is far from the kind tepid, nostalgic return to normal that a late-stage revisiting of older styles often suggests of other acts. Elevating their already lofty sound and massive scope to new cinematic, choral, orchestral heights with astounding ease, the soulfulness contained within the band’s clinical execution of such a daunting series of tasks makes Fireworker their most accomplished and enrapturing work yet.

9/10

Sumac - May You Be Held

While far from fatal, after the enthrallingly eccentric and humblingly heavy sludge experimentation of 2018’s Love in Shadow, the slightly tempered creativity and muddied production of May You Be Held is a mildly disappointing fourth LP simply for how high its creators have set their own bar. Nevertheless, Sumac continue to impress with a noisy, explosive, yet hypnotic approach to post-metal that thrives in the band’s love to draw outside the lines and with a deluxe box of crayons.

8/10

Obsidian Kingdom - Meat Machine

Priding themselves on their eccentricity, Obsidian Kingdom come through with one of the most stylistically diverse, genuinely experimental, and entirely entertaining sludge albums of the year, if not recent memory. Taking the thunderous sludge of Mastodon and going at it with the mindset of a band like Sumac, the quirky Catalans pack operatic vocals and even Slipknot-sequel passages into the intricate compactor that is Meat Machine, and it’s a feat they can certainly take pride in.

8/10

Deftones - Ohms

Coming from a big fan of both Gore and Koi No Yokan, Deftones’ plunge deeper into the elegant shoegaze of this later stage of their career on Ohms was bungled far too much by a lapse in the critical compositional organization that has allowed their ventures into spacey alternative metal territory to succeed.

5/10

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shealwaysreads · 4 years

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16 and 25 for the end of year asks please! 💙💙💙

Hello darling! Thanks for playing, and apologies for being...days late with my reply 😅❤️

16. fic(s) you completed this year

So, every fic I’ve ever written for the Harry Potter fandom has been done this year - and every single one has been a joy and a journey of learning.

Here they are - all 15 (FIFTEEN?!) of them!

Heaven’s Embroidered Cloths -

In which the Yule Ball opens Harry's eyes to beauty and splendour, and it takes him eight years to find someone who realises exactly what he wants. Magical fabric, solstice celebrations, and first kisses in borrowed clothes.

My first ever fic for Harry Potter, my first every drarry! Encouraged, aided and abetted, by @diligent-thunder @tepre and @bixgirl1 and our collective obsession for Wizarding clothes. Looking back I can see the flaws and my baby-foal fumbling with characterisation, but this was the beginning of my little fandom frolic (and ongoing kink obsession with their clothes) so I love it dearly!

Simple Little Kiss -

Harry slid his knife and fork together, and leaned back in his chair to watch Draco finish the last sip of wine in his glass, the long line of his neck exposed as he tipped his head back. Satisfaction and longing vied for the top spot in his mind. One appetite had been thoroughly sated; another was growling its hunger in his chest.

Prompted by the lovely @malenkayacherepakha this little ditty was based on: ‘One Small Kiss, Pulling Away For An Instant, Then Devouring Each Other’. Needless to say, that was right up my street 🙌

Those Who Favor Fire -

In which Harry and Draco ride out the effects of a potion, revealing every feeling that lies beneath.

My first ever Drabble for the monthly Drarry Discord Writers Corner Challenge - this server full of talented, creative, and encouraging folk has absolutely been pivotal in my swan dive into writing this year ❤️

Crow’s Feet - a gift for @erin-riwen - and a very self-indulgent one at that. I’m a sucker for love, and gentleness, and life well lived for my darling Harry and Draco and this was me just revelling in that!

Writing’s On The Wall -

In which the Auror department is surprisingly artistic, Draco is still an overdramatic shit, Harry still makes the most of any trouble that finds him, and getting horizontal is the solution to everyone's problems.

This is really showing up my terrible summary habits isn't it 👀 ANYWAY! This is another fic inspired by the fabulous drarry squad server - and my first attempt at being funny? (Also, Draco is fresh out the shower and if that isn't entirely on brand for me idk what is)

Honesty Is The Best Policy -

In which Auror partners Malfoy and Potter discover a trunk full of depraved tools, and Harry might have to explain himself.

Another Drabble for the Drarry Discord gang!

A Shorts Story About Love -

House-sharing with Slytherins, student life, magic weed, and short shorts. Harry's life at university might be strange, but he wouldn't change it for the world.

Entirely inspired by the lovely @rose-grangerweasleyisbae and her prompt over on the Drarry Discord. I had a ball writing this, it was one of those pics that just flowed, and I loved the little world I dreamed up - might even revisit it at some point...

Sunkissed -

Burnt toast, international Portkeys, ancient ruins, and Harry's own special brand of support.

Written for this years @hpdrizzle - my first ever fest fic, prompted by @maraudersaffair who I have to thank for igniting my lowkey head canon of freckled!Draco into a full blown writing brand™️ ❤️

Patient, Hungry, Waiting -

“Potter looked every inch the picture of the war hero that the Ministry loved to trot out for events like this, and nothing like he had on the day he actually did end the war. A decade of rising through the Auror ranks and hunting down dark Wizards, with all of the efficacy and subtlety of a natural disaster, had turned a skinny boy with knobbly knees into a strong, self-assured man who fairly commanded the room. He was resplendent in wine-dark robes, gold buttons and epaulettes, and a profusion of medals; a world away from the exhaustion, grime, and worn out jeans he wore during the Battle of Hogwarts. Draco, for one, approved of the changes.”

...

Unspeakable Draco Malfoy has learned the value of patience, the scintillation of delayed gratification, the thrill of waiting out his prey. Tonight, he's going to show Potter that good things come to those who wait.

A gift for my darling @tackytigerfic on her birthday, and one of my favourite fics of mine. As much as this was written to indulge her every whim, her tastes align so closely with mine this felt pretty damn self indulgent - can I say leather thigh wand-holster anyone? 😉

Pathless Woods -

“There is a pleasure in the pathless woods” Lord Byron.

Harry finds himself unexpectedly reacquainted with Draco Malfoy when his work as an apprentice wandmaker takes him to Wiltshire. Amongst the trees Harry finds magic, growth, and a man who might finally be proving he’s worthy of the wand that chose him.

Hawthorn, Unicorn hair, 10 inches, reasonably pliant.

A story of found family, trees with feelings, belief in the power of growth, wandlore, and gratuitous description of Handsome Estate Owner™ Draco Malfoy swanning around in white shirts and leather boots.

Written for @hd-fan-fair and it’s my longest fic to date - a little out of my usual wheelhouse - it’s gentle, more of a tale than a rollicking ride, but I adored writing it, and love the way it turned out.

Logical - Inspired by this stunning art by @potter-art! I just couldn’t help myself, I was thirsty enough for Draco in leather to be one of the many to prompt her the outfit in question for drawing - and then the finished product was so GODDAMN hot I had to write poor Harry having to deal with it! ❤️🔥

No Absolutes - The first of my ‘I finished all my fest deadlines for the year prompt me Hozier songs for ficlets’ project (all of you who prompted, I promise I haven't forgotten, I’m working on them!)

This one is for @littlebozsheep who suggested Take Me to Church, and I had a lot of fun making this not-quite-poetry-not-quite-prose little baby of mine.

And my rarepair babies:

A Study In Contrasts -

In which Neville grew up hot, but still doesn't quite remember it all the time, and Theo is freckled, handsome, and likes plants. You know what happens next.

Okay so the lovely @drarryruinedme7 slid into my DMs and started talking HP rarepairs with me and when she started talking about Neville x Theo my eyes lit up and my writerly ears perked up - think excited meerkat, that's about how it felt.

After rummaging through the internet for their facecasts - see Neville and Theo (important research okay, the fact they're devastatingly gorgeous is neither here nor there) I had the delightful excuse of the @growing-neville fest to light a fire under my arse and write a fic, which I gifted to @drarryruinedme7!

All Our Strength, And All Our Sweetness -

In which Neville cooks, Theo is seriously into being manhandled, these two finally get each other naked, and it turns out they're compatible outside of the greenhouse too.

I was NOT DONE with these two! I still have lots of feelings about this little ‘verse I created and I will be playing with these delicious toys again soon 😉

Devil’s Snare -

In which some late night extra-curricular work in Greenhouse Nine turns into a whole new Herbology discovery for Neville Longbottom.

Did I ever see myself writing Neville x Devil’s Snare? No. Did I commit 100% once I decided to go for it? Yes. Do I entirely blame the kinky gang on the Drarry Discord? Also yes.

21. a fic you read this year you would recommend everyone read

Gosh, okay Corie pick the hard questions why don’t you?! I have read so many incredible fics this year - let’s face it - every fic I’ve read is brilliant in it’s own way (and I’m thinking of doing a ‘this is what I read this year’ list to cover them all) but I’m going to try and nail it down to...5...okay so, 10. Alphabetical, cause these are all adored equally.

amid this warm and steady sweetness by warmfoothills (drarry)

All Bets Are Off by @dualwieldteacup (drarry)

Before the World Was Made by @13pawns (drarry)

Brick by Brick by agentmoppet (drarry)

Cupid Disarmed by @chromat1cs (wolfstar)

Offer Up Our Hearts by @tackytigerfic (drarry)

Trouble, My Old Friend by @tepre (drarry)

You Burn Me by @etalice (linny)

White As Snow by @bixgirl1 (drarry)

with exactness grinds he all by @thistle-verse (drarry)

I’m playing the Fanfic end of the year asks game!

❤️

#drarry #drarry fic rec #drarry squad #lovely people being lovely #coriesocks #ask me #fanfic ask meme #isobel talks #isobel writes #things to read #hp

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spamzineglasgow · 5 years

Text

Bon Iver’s hauntological i,i (William Fleming)

Image Copyright: Bon Iver / Jagjaguwar

In this essay, William Fleming takes a detailed look at bon iver’s new album, i,i: through acid communist hauntology to oedipal melancholia and the future’s cybernetic fracture.

> This week I’ve been reading Mark Fisher and listening to Bon Iver’s new album on repeat so I combined the two.

> Mark Fisher, in his Ghosts of My Life (2014), laments the dearth of creativity in popular music after the turn of the century, the loss of experimentation and of hearing something New and Radical, and the persistent replication of past methods, sounds and images. Fisher was no Adorno though (I don’t think anyway?). His essays are emotive and developed from a deep desire for a compassionate politics; Ghosts evokes the pathos of his seminal Capitalist Realism (2009). One of the key themes associated with his work on pop culture, is the use of the Derridean term ‘Hauntology’: the haunted ontology of futures that never came to be, the spectral disturbance of time and place as the possibility of political becoming dissipates. As he details in Ghosts, Fisher initially used hauntology as a genre-defining term for music. He identified artists which were 'suffused with an overwhelming melancholy; and they were preoccupied with the way in which technology materialised memory', this results in us being made 'conscious of the playback systems’ and of ‘the difference between analogue and digital’, 'hovering' out of reach behind the media’. Fisher uses this conceptual framework to analyse a raft of musicians and their work but there is a consistent emphasis on the political narratives of class and race which shape these cultural offshoots.

> Despite being one of the biggest records of this summer – and thus perhaps a bit bait for me to discuss? – Bon Iver’s i,i bares all the hallmarks of the hauntological genre: melancholia, the clash of digital and analogue, anachronism, the suggestion of political solidarity, artistic experimentation.

> First a confession: I first listened to Bon Iver because, in 2011, there was a girl on twitter I fancied who posted a video to Birdy’s Skinny Love. Birdy’s rendition is a wisp of a song, sad and grasping and completely lost on a shallow sixteen-year old and probably rightfully so. Failing to select the next song, I’m guessing Bon Iver’s original version played. For the first time I felt I’d discovered adult Sad Music. None of the ghd straightened, dip-died, angst-ridden emo tunes I’d gotten into a few years prior to impress my first girlfriend; or the one ballad acting as the penultimate track on one of the indie-rock albums from my older brother’s excessive collection. (- Does anyone know how to recycle these properly?). I would wallow in performative sadness playing immediately gratuitous and instantly gratifying XBOX games, quickly repeating the heartbeating guitar of Lump Sum on For Emma, Forever Ago or the wails of Holocene from Bon Iver, Bon Iver as I pined for my yet-to-be second girlfriend.

> I went off Bon Iver for a few years: these days, the quiet acoustic melancholia of these first two albums doesn’t fit with any aspirational sense of masculinity of mine. Being a man and being non-toxically emotional isn’t about listening to acoustic guitars and barely audible snares whilst you lie sulking in your room or on the drizzled walk to the library or job you hate. Instead it’s about communication, solidarity and empathy – ‘I’d be happy as hell, if you stayed for tea’. And so, when 22, A Million came out I was into it. Everyone thought it was a bit shit the first time few times they listened to it but this gave me cover to pretentiously purvey that they just didn’t get it and listen to it over and over. It was still the same anguished voice of Justin Vernon – but it was finally coming to life. Revived through stretched synthesizers, neologisms which made you question the contributors on A-Z Lyrics, and deconstructed bass. The piano riff on 33 “God” interrupted by alien helium-infused voices and the stammering, looping saxophone of 45 are still highlights. Listening now, 22, A Million initiated the hauntology of Bon Iver.

> At times, i,i feels like Bon Iver’s latest album is a playback of their first album, but one done through a signal sent by an analogue walkie-talkie found on the abandoned spaceship from Alien: Isolation – itself maybe the most harrowing video-game I’ve ever played, one which is played in constant anticipation of being found. Listen to the intermittent signal of Holyfields,: the bleeps and radio fuzz a beacon we sent out into space, only for it to sporadically and hauntingly talk back at us – a cultural SOS signal.

> i,i is the same guitar riffs from albums one and two but cybernetically fractured through time. The same syncopated kick drum but ripped out from the mid noughties and dumped in a Iain M. Banks novel or an episode in Love, Death + Robots. Fisher, quoting Derrida, quoting Hamlet: ‘the time is out of joint’. In these time fractures, it’s not just the music’s original location which is torn into the future, but also objective fragments of past culture: the sax (Sh’Diah) and violin strings (Faith) torn from eras when politics and music were still intertwined.

> The first track on the album, Yi, is garbage. But it is orbital astro-garbage – a notable anthropocenic feedback loop! – sitting uncomfortably at the stratosphere of an album which explicitly reflects on ecological destruction. Yi’s inaudible conversation and the ‘Are you recording, Trevor?’ set it up as a soundcheck for the album too. Including a soundcheck evokes Vernon’s emphasis on the album as a performance piece in the accompanying mini-documentary Autumn. In the doc, Vernon mentions the problem of ‘How is it going to be played live?’. Immediately, we are forced to imagine i,i as more than just another album on Spotify.

> Yi bleeds into iMi, a psychedelic echo of a track built from interspersing a melancholic vocals/arpeggio combo and an encroaching synth/dub beat combo. We is similarly eclectic, digitalised vocals juxtaposing with endearing, major-key sax. Following is Holyfields,, perhaps the most alien but most beautiful song on the album.

> Hey, Ma is the headline single from the album. An ode to Vernon’s mother and a sense of the sunrise walk home after the summer party (I’ll try and avoid further seasonal references: the four albums are set up to represent the four seasons, i,i being autumn, but IMO this is pretty naff).

> There is a sense of time passing in Hey, Ma, a nostalgia for the yet to be – ‘Well you wanted it your whole life’ – but with this passing is a sense of desire – ‘I wanted all that mind, sugar / I want it all mine’ – and of becoming or evolving – ‘You’re back and forth with light’. Becoming is the famous Deleuzean postmodern motif; i.e. being is constantly flowing and reforming. Bon Iver’s becoming, however, is not a flow, but a hauntological wrench into the future state. The entire album feels as though you’re experiencing the tech-enhanced evolution of Bon Iver’s music. That skipping between soft indie and futuristic synth reminiscent of the OG Pokemon games when your Pokemon was evolving and it would flicker between its past and future states. But becoming is never complete. As Fisher highlights, ‘futuristic’ no longer refers to a time/space but is now merely an adjective. We’ll never hear the Bon Iver made entirely on digital tech.

> For Fisher, melancholia is a productive force of political resistance. He distances his ‘hauntological melancholia’ from that of Wendy Brown’s ‘left melancholia’ which ‘seems to exemplify the transition from desire (which in Lacanian terms is the desire to desire) to drive (an enjoyment of failure)’. Fisher’s melancholia, ‘by contrast, consists not in giving up on desire but in refusing to yield'. Under scrutiny, Bon Iver’s first two albums fail this melan-test – they are a spectacular, self-pitying self-indulgence. Self-pity as a common form of masochism. For Deleuze, thinking through Jung, thinking through Bergson (yeap, I know), masochism is always regressive, flipping the Oedipal on its head as a form of un-becoming.

> Is Vernon’s song to his mother a masochistic form of melancholia; a self-pitying reversal of the Oedipal? ‘I wanted a bath / “Tell the story or he goes”’; ‘Tall time to call your Ma / Hey Ma, hey Ma’. The type captured by Maggie Nelson in The Argonauts (2015) when reflecting on Ginsberg’s poem Kaddish, which is dripping in, in Nelson’s words, ‘misogynistic repulsion’. Or is Bon Iver’s a hauntological melancholia? One of stubborn resistance. The type of mother-son relationship photographed by Donald Weber in his response to Alison Sperling and Anna Volkmar’s conversation on the post-atomic (Kuntslicht, 39: 3/4). Weber’s photographs were taken over two years in Chernobyl. The, now fetishised, explosion in Chernobyl perhaps the example of the nuclear, a hauntological theme post-WWII, made material. The bursting of a political, biological and biopolitical reality which was never meant to be. Weber’s photo of a middle-aged man and his elderly mother is captioned: ‘Mothers sought to be photographed sitting close to their sons, in domestic scenes of proud companionability. Their eyes signal an unalterable communion. And more – elevation. A man’s mother transcends the material order, and rises easily above even the most squalid circumstances. It is the frank declaration of her biological supremacy: This is my child’. If it is this relationship captured in Hey, Ma, it may promise a spectre which can be made material. An artefact which can continue its evolution, its becoming. ‘Let me talk to em / Let me talk to ‘em all’.

> Finally, that Hey, Ma’s nostalgia is a culturally productive one is suggested by one of its more memorable lines: ‘I waited outside / I was tokin’ on dope / I hoped it all won’t go in a minute’. In Fisher’s posthumously published Unfinished Introduction to Acid Communism, he, when imagining the process of resistance and a new politics whilst citing Jefferson Cowie, writes 'these new kinds of workers – who “smoked dope, socialised interracially, and dreamed of a world in which work had some meaning” – wanted democratic control of both their workplace and their trade unions’. The curious, outdated use of ‘dope' in Vernon’s lyrics then mirrors Cowie’s use of 'dope', echoing Cowie’s nostalgia for a lost working-class culture of 1970s America. Fisher uses Cowie’s argument to piece together an acid communism, which I will return to, but this, surely consequential, similarity further constructs i,i as a contemporary hauntological album.

> Following Hey, Ma comes the Sunday-school piano of U (Man Like). Raising an image of a crisply ironed, white America, like that depicted in Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone (2000), which acts as a reminder that nostalgia isn’t always productive. However, the nostalgia is continued with Naeem ‘Oh, my mind, our kids got bigger/ … / You take me out to pasture now’. Fisher asks ‘is hauntology, as many of its critics have maintained, simply a name for nostalgia?’. However, he argues that it is not a ‘formal nostalgia’ but one of solidarity and of a longing for the process of social improvement. Naeem, despite its nostalgia, continues the flickering between hope and despair. The joyful ‘More love / More love / More love’ and ‘I can hear, I can hear’; the anguished ‘I can hear crying’ and ‘What’s there to pontificate on now? / There’s someone in my head’. The latent and angelic child-like choir on Naeem another hauntological theme. As Fisher declares, ‘no doubt there comes a point when every generation starts pining for the artefacts of its childhood’. However, Vernon’s evoking of childhood is one perhaps linked to the, at times damaging, trope of ‘future generations’ in environmentalism. It is still a political longing though – ‘I’d Occupy that’. Occupy: that great post-2008 political uprising which dissipated into a mere exemplar in an undergraduate geography textbook.

> Next, Faith brings back the aliens from 33 “God” but this time, for attention, they’ve brought their clean guitar and slowly morph into the catholic choir we began to hear on Naeem. God died and, despite the sexy, liquidity of our modernity, we miss him.

> Marion momentarily brings us back from the cybernetically fractured semi-future. Back to the £3-coffee coffee-shop where you’re telling your friend that you think you and that girl will probably get back together but you need the time to be right. The hope is sucked back out; we’re back in capitalist realism and Arctic Monkey’s fourth (fifth?) album. Luckily, Salem restarts the signal to bring us back from our self-pity, dragging us to the obfuscation we were enjoying. Salem’s witches are still here and they’re pretty good at Ableton.

> Next, Sh’Diah grows from an autotuned prayer – ‘Just calm down (calm down) / And she’ll find time for the Lord’ - into a yearning saxophone riff/rift. But, alas, RABi, the album’s final song, returns us to a blues guitar and Vernon’s vocals. If the oscillation between past and future throughout i,i was a dialectic, the depressing outcome is ‘consumer capitalism’s model of ordinariness' (Fisher) of the neoliberal present. As in Fisher’s hauntology, the technologically-infused creativity of i,i is a lost future. Watching Vernon being interviewed feels like this. He’s got the Pacific-North-West hipster look: vegan but drives a V6 truck. Goes to the craft brewer’s bar and talks about that latest public health campaign to encourage men to talk about mental health over a pint but refrains from actually talking about depression. (Maybe serving beer in 2/3rd schooners means you never end up getting to the important part of the conversation?)

> But why does it matter? Because it’s about political and cultural (and creative) imagination. Fisher’s last big, and tragically but appropriately unfinished, philosophy is that of Acid Communism. Maybe there is a future !

> Fisher mourned not only the flattening of pop music, but also the ‘culture constellated around music (fashion, discourse, cover art)’. In contrast to a digital album which you never perceive in any physical manner, Bon Iver have emphasised various forms of art in their work, ensuring a communal creativity. There are multiple iterations of the album cover art on public posters and on social media. More excitingly though, is the collaboration with WHITEvoid, a Berlin-based sculpture group/company, which is discussed on Autumn. Prepared for live performances, WHITEvoid have constructed an ensemble of floating mirrors and kinetic lighting made from ‘space-age metal’ and motion tracking sensors. An artistic contribution as ethereal and tech-enhanced as the accompanying music and one which aestheticises our material sciences. The lighting provided by WHITEvoid in collaboration with the experimentation in sound system, similarly shown on Autumn, constructs the performance of i,i as an ongoing innovation and experimentation. The effort put into the upcoming live performances of i,i ensure that it is a music to be experienced not merely consumed. In another discussion on Autumn, Michael Brown, Bon Iver’s Artistic Director, says ‘you have to be in the moment with other people, you have to be able to know that the person next to you is having the same communal experience’.

> In Krisis (2018:2), Matt Colquhoun sees acid communism as a “project beyond the pleasure principle” (2) and of an “experimental” politics. If the sounds of i,i are hauntological, then the spectre it suggests is one of acid communism. The acid is provided by its accompanying artistic experimentation and the communism is its emphasis on the political and the communal.

Text: William Fleming

Published 30/8/19

#SPAM #essays #music criticism #bon iver #ii #Mark Fisher #acid communism #hauntology #Derrida #capitalist realism #ghosts of my life #William Fleming #essay

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honeylikewords · 5 years

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That disco scene where he sticks his butt out is hilarious.

OH MY GOD YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW MUCH I HAVE TO SAY ABOUT THAT SCENE

Here’s. Like. A stream of consciousness ramble about how fucking goddamn wild the Ex Machina dance scene is. I am haunted, eternally and perpetually, by the Ex Machina dance scene.

First, we gotta talk about what Ex Machina is.

Ex Machina is an Alex Garland (director of Annihilation, another Oscar film) written and directed film which is 100% an existentialist drama centered around the axis of identity in artificial intelligence. However, artificial intelligence is more of a metaphor about other aspects of human life; the way we perceive gender, race, sexuality, and personal identity as seen through the lens of what we define as human-- specifically, the question of “is this robot a human person” and “if so, what rights does this robot have”? The film is rooted very heavily in the male perceptions around beauty and femininity; how attraction to a female-percieved image biases the perception of its goodness or worth, and how abuse can stem from that.

It’s a very deep and very thoughtful film that pushes at a lot of the boundaries we associate with robot and AI stories; we all know the question of “what makes a human mind human”, but this one also incorporates concepts of othering, self image, the concept of beauty, attraction, supremacist ideals, et cetera. It’s well worth watching just for the questions it probes and the performances it delivers, so don’t read any further if you don’t wanna get spoiled. Anyway, TL;DR: it’s a really intellectually challenging and existentially probing film that’s clearly a work of drama and seriousness.

Which is why it’s so fucking wild that there’s this entirely gratuitous scene of Oscar Isaac, as his character says IN THE FILM, “tearing up the fucking dance floor”.

I have so, so many thoughts.

So, in order to contextualize some of why this is so weird, we also need to know who Oscar is playing in this movie. Because that’s part of what makes it so god damn WILD.

Oscar’s character is Nathan Hamlet Bateman, CEO of the tech company BlueBook. He’s a famous recluse who is secretly developing self-sentient AI robots (all women-modeled) in his distant, secluded home. Nathan is a heavy drinker with an insane narcissistic streak the size of the Grand Canyon and a God complex to rival Frankenstein himself. He’s self-indulgent, manic, calculated, and a fantastic character to watch within the confines of the film. He’s also openly (and rather aggressively) sexual with one of the robots in his house, Kyoko, who cannot speak and follows orders without question. Kyoko is the woman seen dancing with him in that scene.

What’s wild is that the particular dance he does with her? Is nearly, if not entirely, nonsexual.

In that scene, Nathan just intruded on Caleb (the main character) trying to turn down Kyoko as she sexually offered herself to him. Caleb is panicking, trying to re-button Kyoko’s blouse as she approaches him when Nathan tells him it’s a waste of time for him to try and stop her, but “you wouldn’t be wasting your time if you were DANCING.”

The sexual overtone of the scene is totally apparent.

Which is why it’s so completely batshit that the dance he does with her is some synced up, choreographed, boy-band ass dancing that never involves them touching or even really looking at each other! It’s not a bump ‘n grind, not a salacious, sensual, body-to-body tango; it’s... disco. And they’re, like, three feet apart.

I have so many questions.

Why would Nathan program her to do such an UNSEXY DANCE? Why would HE PRACTICE SUCH AN UNSEXY DANCE? He’s clearly made the robots to be as sexually gratifying to him as possible, so WHY WOULD HE SPECIFICALLY PREP HER FOR D I S C O?! WHY?!

I know that outside the movie, it was basically just to show off how talented Oscar is; he loves to dance and is very, very good, so I know Alex Garland just kinda wanted to flex that a little, give us fans some fanservice with him dancing around in sweats with an unzipped, no-shirt-underneath hoodie look, but...

STILL.

IT’S SO WEIRD!

lowkeykindahot but SO WEIRD!

Still, not gonna turn my nose up at gratuitous Oscar dances, so... go Ex Machina?

#messages #i have. so many thoughts #ex machina #Anonymous

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baka-tsumibito · 5 years

Text

VKC/VME SECRET SANTA FIC 2018 [REPOST]

Couldn’t find it in the tags, so reposting! Let me know if you see it orz

Gift recipient: @foliefolio

This is for the wonderful Folie!! (Whose writing sustained me almost single-handedly since the end of the anime 😭) I can’t put into words how nerve-wracking writing this was, especially since I’ve had a ton of fic planned out that have gone unpublished for like...3-4 years?? Anyway, I guess this is finally my foray into ‘posting’ for VKC....and what better way to do it than to write for my idol ✨ !! I love you so much Folie, and I hope this suits your tastes. (And feel free to say if it doesn’t!!! I had a bunch of other ideas, and have another idea draft written out 😂) You’ve been such a big inspiration to me for the past ~16 months ❤️ I hope I can keep reading your writing for a long time to come!!! (Especially Vatican fics ehehe) And above all, I hope your holidays went wonderfully!!✨

(and if you didn’t see this yesterday, I’m sorry it’s late!!!!!!!)

The prompt was pretty open, and suggested some seasonal touches such as Christmas in Rome, night, gold, bells, cold, etc. I think I used most of them to be honest! There is quite a bit of ahem, non-2019-tumbr-appropriate content, so be warned (I was rather careful with the vocabulary though *shrugs*). Actually, 3/4 of it is priests doing the do, with lots of gratuitous Hiraga family mentions (JIN IS CANNON AND I LOVE HIM). [I guess I’ve never really posted publicly above my love for VKC, but I am a die-hard HiraRobe (esp. bottom Roberto) lover. Roberto will eventually cry (before/during/after or all 3) when they consummate their relationship 100%. I don’t think I did my thoughts of them justice here, and if I ever manage to publish again, there will definitely be more angst ; __ ; (There also needs to be more weirdness/religion too.) My current biggest thing is Vatican politics, and the logistics of priests in relationships despite their vows, how they make moral justifications and types of penance etc.etc. which I did not go into almost at ALL, so yeah...] Tumblr formatting is not ideal, so this will probably go up on AO3 once I get a chance to edit. I have a ton of miscellaneous commentary too, so that’ll probably be there as well. Sorry for the long preface, onto the actual gift! [Couldn’t find the read more button, I’m sorry :’) ] *** The winter wind is cold and brisk, blowing across the balcony and permeating the thin blanket draped around Roberto’s shoulders, useless against the frigid air. He cannot hold back a shiver, then another, and he desperately wishes for some form of heat. The door slides open and shut behind him with a click, bringing no respite from the chill. Hiraga, then? Both his brother and his father are asleep in the room behind him. Roberto had been nodding off on the sofa himself, but despite the late hour, it’s time for him to go and give the family some privacy.

Hiraga would be against that; luckily, Roberto can try to convince him out here, in the relative privacy of the balcony. Only God will be their witness – and perhaps, the smoker in the hotel across the way if he stays out much longer. “Roberto,” Hiraga murmurs at his back, arms wrapping around his middle and firmly anchoring themselves around his torso.

Oh.

Perhaps it is not time for this particular discussion then. Maybe, Roberto can allow himself to indulge for a few minutes. But alas, nothing with Hiraga ever seems to go according to plan. For Hiraga’s hands are already beginning to wander, and with them Roberto’s composure is already starting to break. “Hiraga,” Roberto begins, train of thought nearly derailing when a fingertip purposefully flicks against a hardened nub. He supresses a sigh. “Isn’t this a little…” Tasteless? Improper? Ryouta is on the other side of the balcony door, in their room; so is Hiraga Jin –

(kind, wonderful Hiraga Jin who had spoken with him about opera for hours at length, only pausing for a second when Roberto shuddered, expression falling, at the mention of Puccini who had followed Rossini, Verdi and before that,Weber, Wagner and Wetz and Jin had been delighted to find Roberto knew even obscure German composers “Ah, I suppose no Tosca for you then, Roberto-kun,”and when Roberto smiled back weakly, almost in apology,

“That’s alright,” he murmured consolingly. “I can’t say I’m very fond of Madama Butterfly myself.”)

– Jin who has shown nothing but tremendous kindness to Roberto from the moment they met in the train terminal. Jin, who Roberto has only known personally for less than twenty hours and is desperately trying impress, and keep face in front of him at the very minimum. (Jin, who had smiled at Roberto with as much kindness as either of his sons after a single conversation; who had welcomed him into the family – immediately, as Roberto would find out from the paperwork he would receive a few weeks later – Jin, who had insisted Roberto call him by his given name, insisting that any other title would be too stuffy and that one “Hiraga” was more than enough.) (And Hiraga, his lovely partner Hiraga, had made an undecipherable expression upon realizing he was now the only one being referred to by surname.) Ryouta and Jin are only separated from them by a glass door; Hiraga’s delicate hands are currently worming their way through the layers of blanket and underclothes to Roberto’s skin and he can’t— “Hiraga…!”

We can’t, Roberto needs to tell him, not here. No matter how much his body desires, blood thrumming through his veins at the proximity he has barely had enough days to get used to, if at all– since Hiraga kissed him on the stroke of midnight as the crowds on the television in front of them began screaming in celebration, soft mouth pressing against Roberto’s frozen smile, still with surprise and fear, buried underneath the building euphoria – since Hiraga took his bare hand a day later, telling him “My family is coming to Italy to celebrate with us; won’t you join me?” And Roberto hadn’t known what to do with the burst of adrenaline that sent his heart pounding loud enough to drown out Hiraga’s soft explanations of travel plans and cheap hotel rooms post-holiday season – since Hiraga had shown up at his door at 5:50 in the morning, dressed casually but smartly as he usually did on their days off together, taken one look at the circles under Roberto’s eyes and dragged him back to bed (where they had laid together and Roberto hadn’t managed much rest at all when they were forced to rise or be late to Rome) – since touching Hiraga to his heart’s desire became allowed, and now Roberto feels the precarious grip on his self-control he has clung to all this time begin to slip. “Roberto…” comes Hiraga’s voice, cutting quietly through the night air. Rome is much more crowded than the Vatican. Booking a room on an upper floor has its advantages, Roberto muses in an attempt to distract himself from the warmth and pressure at his back. The night view is rather enchanting, what with the colorful array of lights spreading out in the distance. “Roberto..!” Hiraga calls more insistently this time, startling Roberto out of his reverie. He is not accustomed to being ignored, and Roberto must apologize. A kiss to his spine signals that he is forgiven. Roberto lets out a sigh in response. “Bend down please,” Hiraga murmurs at his back, and Roberto reflexively complies. As he slowly hunches over the railing, Hiraga’s lips find the back of his neck. Roberto shivers, not out of cold alone. Each kiss leaves a trail of ice in its wake, as Hiraga makes his way down the slope of one shoulder, then the other. His fingers are occupied with Roberto’s buttons, and as they slowly come undone, more and more skin is revealed to the biting wind, immediately covered by Hiraga’s eager mouth. After some time, Hiraga begins to tire of this, and slips both arms under Roberto’s shirt. He cannot supress a whimper. Thus spurred on, Hiraga’s hands come to rest on his bare chest, caressing him lightly. Still, there is intent behind each stroke, and as one hand flits over his hardened nipple, the other slips lower, stroking the curves of Roberto’s torso and muscles as it descends down his stomach. “…ah… Hiraga, w-wait…” Roberto stifles a gasp as a fingertip brushes the skin along his waistband. Don’t stop, he contradicts himself internally. Please don’t let go of me. He wonders if Hiraga can hear him anyway, intuiting his desires, but reluctantly, Hiraga’s hands do come to a halt before pulling away entirely. “Nnn…!” Roberto lets out unintentionally. The movement of Hiraga’s arms has caused the blanket to shift, leaving his upper body uncovered, bare from the shoulders where Hiraga had worried at the skin with his lips. They are only apart for a few moments, though it is enough for a sudden draft to send him shivering. Hiraga struggles with something behind him. “It’s alright,” Hiraga soothes, “It’s alright. Roberto.” He returns with the blanket, fumbling to wrap it snuggly around the two of them together. Roberto begins to find this struggle endearing as his bare skin is covered once more, although Hiraga’s comfort takes priority. He twists around slightly intending to take over, but Hiraga’s palms come to rest on his shoulder blades, stopping him halfway. “Let me please,” he chastens. Who is Roberto to say no? “Alright,” he allows. He strains to keep still, as his instincts urge him to turn around, to take Hiraga into his arms and keep him there indefinitely. If only, if only… Hiraga’s fussing continues on, and Roberto’s left hand is captured by both of Hiraga’s during the struggle, right hand bracing them both against the railing. Their entwined limbs are somehow even colder – an uncomfortable cold Roberto cannot shake off when Hiraga’s fingers glide away to continue tucking the sheet elsewhere. He struggles to shake his hand free – an attempt to bring it up to his lips and warm it with his breath – but when his hand emerges from the tangle, Roberto’s eyes immediately zero in on the metal band settled snugly around his finger. Behind him, Hiraga has stilled; finished fiddling with the blanket then, or waiting for Roberto’s reaction? A quick glance tells him that the sheet is stretched taut around his chest, already beginning to slide down and bringing his unbuttoned shirt with it. Hiraga is a priest; he has, then, undoubtedly attended the same classes Roberto has, and Roberto aches, aches, to believe that not even Hiraga would mistake the significance of putting a ring. on someone’s. left.

(ring finger) He desperately wants to see what expression Hiraga is wearing at the moment, but his partner’s face is currently buried between Roberto’s shoulder blades, showing no signs of emerging. His own face must look something scary, for Roberto can feel himself start to tear up, wind attacking him mercilessly and deepening the ache. Roberto struggles to rotate his upper body, disturbing Hiraga’s careful wrapping and unsettling his hiding spot. With this new angle, his hip is digging into the metal bars of the railing. Roberto pays it no mind, cupping Hiraga’s cheeks and bringing their gazes level. Hiraga is flushed, eyes darting left and right before slowly looking up at Roberto through his long lashes. His chin is lowered, and he is biting his lip. Goodness, how many times must he be told not to, Roberto thinks with a level of fondness. He reaches out to free Hiraga’s poor lip with his left arm, and both of their eyes are drawn to the shining ring. Hiraga lets out a deep breath. “I,” Hiraga falters, looks away. “Is it… alright now? That is, to…” His voice is soft from embarrassment, but hope shines through in his gaze, drilling holes into Roberto’s breastbone. Roberto cannot tear his eyes away. He gently calls for Hiraga’s attention, and Hiraga jerks his head up, making eye contact. Roberto can spot the moment Hiraga begins to panic, eyes dilating in alarm – after all, Hiraga has always been weak to crying, and Roberto has felt the urge to bawl building since that precious celebratory kiss. “Yes,” Roberto breathes, somewhat tearfully. “I could never say no to you.” Hiraga makes to wipe Roberto’s eyes, but pauses halfway. Roberto can only hold still, anticipation rising with each passing second…… until Hiraga raises himself on his toes to kiss the corner of his mouth, fisting the fabric pooled at Roberto’s waist. *** Hiraga’s lips flutter around the shell of Roberto’s ear, and he whines, softly. He can feel Hiraga, pressing into his hip unashamedly. He craves it, has been craving it maybe since they began their partnership, when Roberto began to feel like the hole in his chest could possibly be filled by the presence of this wonderful man. But right now, they’re outside and clearly visible to anyone who might happen to be watching. The alternative is a room containing the two people he wishes to impress the most, Hiraga’s family. There is no escape. And what about preparation? He hasn’t, oh heavens, hasn’t cleaned, has nothing to ease the slide of Hiraga inside of him, and what if it chafes? Hiraga would hurt, and they’d never attempt it again out of fear, and maybe regret – And what of their respective positions? Caught up by the mood, Roberto has forgotten – or purposefully put aside, as he can never truly forget – what of their vows? Hiraga has told him, the moment reality and dread set in after the midnight kiss, that the Church and God are separate; that God will forgive them this, will grant them this much, that love is beautiful in all forms. He’d quoted scripture and philosophies en masse and while Roberto had been struggling to wrap his aching head and heart around them, daring to hope, he’d forgotten to consider why Hiraga had done so much research. Now, it was all coming back to bite him. Not yet, his heart whimpers. We can’t, not until – until what? Will discussing his deepest fears quell the clamour in his heart, the noise that has refused to subside through time and effort? Hiraga bites down, drawing Roberto out of his spiralling thoughts. His ear stings pleasantly, Hiraga soothing the bite with tiny licks. Not wanting his dismay to be noticed, Roberto turns fully away, grasping the rail with a quiet click from the ring. If Hiraga has noticed anything, he stays quiet, only pressing even closer, throbbing length nudging the backs of Roberto’s legs. Ah. What if he took me like this?

And Roberto imagines Hiraga, slick between his thighs, hidden from any prying eyes by the folds of the sheet carefully draped around their waists. He visualizes the slide, smooth and warm, and aches in empathy. He’d have to cover his face, hide his expression, his tears borne from enjoyment and desire. He keens softly, and Hiraga’s arms tighten around his torso. “Roberto,” Hiraga pants, breathing rather heavily. “Let me see your face please.” And Roberto’s plans go out the figurative window .“…Alright,” he swallows, grasping the blanket and desperately trying to compose his expression while Hiraga manoeuvres him eagerly until they are face-to-face. He ducks his head, and Hiraga takes the opportunity, pushing forward until their lips meet tenderly in their first proper kiss of the night. It does not last nearly long enough. Roberto is left to savour the taste of Hiraga on his lips as Hiraga’s mouth wanders, destination clearly in mind. Roberto’s body takes this moment to remind him that a certain areahas been lacking attention; with a cry, his lower body jerks forward when Hiraga’s teeth brush the spot where jaw meets neck. His front, bulging prominently, hits something – Hiraga’s leg? – and he rushes to apologize. “Ah..Hiraga! I’m sorry—ahh!” Unbothered, Hiraga continues to move lower, shifting his stance until they are touching, chest to groin to thigh. Roberto can’t help but moan at the pressure, their hardness aligned as much as possible with their differences in height. Hiraga rolls his hips forward, lips buried in the crook of Roberto’s neck. Roberto presses his face to Hiraga’s hair. He cannot stifle the outpouring of groans and embarrassing noises he is producing in the face of such intense pleasure. “Ngh, aah… Hiraga, Hiraga, Hiraga…” Hiraga’s name is a litany of pleas on Roberto’s lips. Hiraga shudders in euphoria, rubbing their hips together. Calling his name in return. “Roberto...!” Hiraga pulls away, and the feeling of loss on Roberto’s neck is palpable, but then Hiraga presses their foreheads together and the pang is instantly soothed. Hiraga’s hand scrabbles with the too-tight front of Roberto’s pants. “May I? Please, I, oh, please allow me this…” he pleads, and Roberto has hardly breathed his assent before Hiraga is reaching into his undergarments and pulling him out rather hastily. But it’s enough, more than, even. “….Ah!” Roberto exclaims, head falling back. It’s been a very, very long time since he has touched himself this way; as little faith as he held in his own lifestyle, something about living up to Hiraga’s ideals (or so he imagined) had prevented him from indulging in this particular pleasure, at least in his conscious moments. In his sleep, he might be graced with Hiraga’s warmth only to regret his weakness in the morning, then spend days repenting. Or, he would find himself absently wondering about the stretch of his jaw when contemplating food, imagining the sensation of something inside him when cleaning the bidet (or using it). He’d promptly banish these thoughts, face flushed and guilt building, but. It was impossible to repress his sinful desires for long before they would surface, often at the most inconvenient of times. However, now he is keenly feeling the aftermath of abstaining. The pleasure is all-consuming. His body is ready to give in, limbs wound up tense, focus narrowed in on the tightness and particular sensation of Hiraga’s fist. But he cannot give in, not without giving something in return, not without seeing the rapture he is experiencing reflected in Hiraga’s own self. “Let me,” he rasps, fumbling towards Hiraga’s own straining erection. Hiraga sighs in response, pushing up into Roberto’s palm the moment he is freed. His free arm searches out Roberto’s, and Roberto starts as Hiraga winds their fingers together, jostling the cool metal around his ring finger already warming up in response to Hiraga’s touch. Hands clasped, they tug on each other frantically, racing to completion yet not awaiting the finish. “Roberto…” Hiraga exhales, smiling up at him. The city lights aren’t bright enough for Roberto to make out his eyes with their usual clarity, but they shine nonetheless. Hiraga is beautiful no matter where he is, Roberto reflects, and he leans in to capture that beauty for a fleeting moment. Hiraga kisses enthusiastically, all lips and tongue, and Roberto is content to let himself be kissed, thoroughly. Were this the private fantasy of his dreams, or the corner of his mind he dares not allow his mind to wander, he would take Hiraga’s jaw in hand and show him delicacy. Gentle, slow, yet warm… except, crouching on this freezing balcony, Hiraga is his only source of warmth, and Roberto desires his heat from his toes to his mouth to the depths of his core.

It is, he considers with what little sanity that remains, all too much. Hiraga has barely had his hands and lips on him, and Roberto is already at his limit, approaching climax at an alarming rate; he cannot spare anymore thoughts for the eyes that might be on them, whether it be the smoker from the hotel across the way, or even innocent Ryouta, who would surely come to resent him should he catch the two of them in such a compromising position. Roberto defiling his precious older brother – The sudden glare that blinds him even through his half-closed lids is regrettably not due to their climaxes. Roberto pulls away, however reluctantly, from Hiraga’s demanding kisses, letting go of Hiraga (to their mutual dismay) in order to lift the blanket even higher. He squeezes their entwined hands in apology; thankfully Hiraga does not respond by tightening his hand where it rests around Roberto.

The least he can do is shield Hiraga’s body from sight, as he scrambles for a way to do damage control, although the situation is not promising. Against him, Hiraga is pliant but confused as he tries to figure out where Roberto’s attention has gone. It takes a few, loaded moments before his attention is directed to the room behind him. By fault of pleasure or exhaustion, Roberto is not sure, his eyes take what feels like minutes to adjust. What had seemed blinding a few moments before is only a small lamp, mounted next to an empty armchair where Ryouta had curled up for the evening despite the inviting bed beside him. Jin takes up half of said bed now, spread out on top of the sheets and still in his day clothes. He doesn’t seem to have moved from where Roberto had last seen him before heading outside, unsure if pulling the blankets up around him would be too much, or. Well. All the more he should leave them be, before he intruded too much, Roberto had reasoned, then promptly fled to the balcony. Roberto stiffens as he spots Ryouta exit the bathroom, rubbing his eyes blearily and looking very much half-asleep. More or less relaxed, Hiraga leans against his chest, exuding more calm than Roberto feels as Ryouta climbs onto the bed and settles in next to his father. They observe silently for a little longer, perhaps bound by some mutual understanding built after years of partnership, watching him slip deeper into sleep. The lamp is left forgotten. Hiraga is the first to break the silence, laughing softly. He turns back to Roberto, looking pleased. “Roberto,” he begins. “Shall we head inside? So you don’t fall ill.”

How he is so unruffled when they were nearly caught in the act, Roberto cannot fathom. Still, he would hate to ruin the moment, to burst the bubble with whys and what ifs. Steeling himself, he leans in to rest their heads together. Moving their coupling into the room where Hiraga’s family is sleeping is unthinkable, and the inevitable end to their encounter if they do go inside hurts just as much. Hiraga’s hand is hot and fidgeting around him, and a distant part of Roberto is ashamed that his erection has not flagged in the slightest. Not yet. I don’t want this to end yet. “Hiraga,” Roberto tells him. “Please…don’t stop.” And with that, Roberto gently grabs Hiraga’s length, bringing them together; the heat of them combined is electric. He can hardly keep his eyes open wide enough to take in the details of Hiraga’s beautiful face: eyelids fluttering, mouth gasping, bangs sticking to his face with what must be a cold sweat. “Roberto…hnngh…” Hiraga groans, letting go and allowing Roberto to take care of bringing them over the edge. Roberto is infinitely grateful that Hiraga, intentionally or not, takes the blanket in hand briefly before allowing his free hand to roam around Roberto’s bare chest once more. It’s much warmer without the slick from their pre-cum freezing in the breeze. Hiraga’s hand wanders up to Roberto’s right cheek, pulling him back in for another kiss. He licks into Roberto’s mouth, tongue wandering up and down teeth, along the roof of his mouth, and twining their tongues together. The intensity of it all brings Roberto right back to the precipice he had been teetering on the edge of not long before. It’s all he can do to keep stroking them, although admittedly Hiraga thrusting against him is doing much more than the periodic buckling of his own hips. “Hiraga, Hiraga…” he whispers into the kiss, and Hiraga sucks Roberto’s tongue into his mouth. “Nnn…” When Hiraga pulls away, Roberto follows. The next words he speaks are against Roberto’s lips. “Roberto,” Hiraga forces out. “Please.” His voice takes on a deeper timbre, lower than Roberto has ever hear from him. It’s incredibly attractive, just as much as the near-growl that comes out next. “Please,” “call my name.” Roberto’s heart lurches. (And oh, if this hasn’t been building all day, since he’d caught Hiraga staring at them wistfully) (“Here, Roberto-nii-san!” “Thank you Ryouta-kun.”) ( “Has Kou been giving you much trouble, Roberto-kun?” “Not too much, Jin-san. It’s nothing I can’t handle. Right, Hiraga?”) ( “Onii-san, your expression is scary…”) A swell of affection rises in him, and Roberto presses his lips to Hiraga’s ear before he whispers, “Kou.” The effect is instantaneous; Hiraga cries out, jerks his hips into Roberto’s hand, and squeezes Roberto’s other palm. The ring digs into his skin, and the reminder that Hiraga had gotten him a ring paired with the sudden, aggressive crash of lips on his is enough to knock enough awareness into him. Oh, Roberto thinks, feeling somewhat removed. This isn’t a dream.

He’s embracing (making love to?) Hiraga for the first time; the thought consumes him, sends his eyes watering, and his body chooses that moment to give in. *** Roberto is vaguely conscious of Hiraga calling his name during his release. When Hiraga captures his lips once more, softly this time, he feels himself returning to the present. Hiraga pulls away gradually. “Have you come back to me yet?” he murmurs, and the words are endearing enough that Roberto kisses him again, and again, until his cooling body interrupts, and he must pull away to stifle a sneeze. “Oh, Roberto,” Hiraga says dreamily. Roberto stares at him. “You were so beautiful when you came.” Roberto cannot help the flush that rises to his cheeks, his ears, and quite possibly his neck too. The tears he has been holding in all night decide to overflow, much to his embarrassment. “Aah, uuuu…” Roberto turns his head to the side, extricating his left hand from Hiraga’s grasp to cover his face. Surprisingly, Hiraga lets him, and does not startle at the sight of his tears. Instead, he wraps both arms around Roberto’s waist and holds him close.

It’s warm. What is also warm – and somehow still not deflating – is Hiraga’s member, still grasped in Roberto’s grip with his own, softening and growing oversensitive, length. Hiraga has not come yet. Staring at the crown of Hiraga’s head, Roberto’s muddled mind reaches this conclusion much too slowly. Mustn’t it be painful? Why hadn’t he said – this is Hiraga, selfless to a fault. Of course he hadn’t said anything. Roberto must take care of him. It’s partially a selfish desire: what face would Hiraga make, trembling in the arms of ecstasy? How would his limbs tense, back arch, expression contort? Would he come with Roberto’s name on his lips, begging for a kiss, or for release? Roberto needs to find out. “Hiraga,” he says, letting go of them at last. Hiraga whimpers, face still hidden in Roberto’s chest. “Hiraga,” he tries again, this time moving to release Hiraga’s tight grip around his back. Hiraga does not give. “Yes yes,” he wants to laugh, but settles for pressing a kiss to Hiraga’s hair part, then suddenly drops to his knees. Hiraga’s hands, now left grasping at empty air, immediately find purchase in Roberto’s curls. Roberto takes a second to look up at him, framed by several lights from surrounding buildings and the clear night sky. Hiraga has always looked lovely, but this view of him, hair and clothing disheveled, zip opened and framing his aching hardness, staring down at Roberto with eyes filled with something he desperately wishes is love, this view of him is nothing short of angelic. He commits the view to memory as he leans forward to nuzzle Hiraga’s shaft. “Roberto…” Hiraga sounds dazed. Roberto’s tongue darts out to lick along a protruding vein, and Hiraga’s hips buck forward. “Roberto!” But Roberto gives him no time to apologize. He takes the head – that had only nudged his cheek – into his mouth, and sucks. Hiraga hisses, fingers tightening in his hair. “R-Roberto…it’s aaah… so w-warm…” Hiraga stutters, hips moving erratically. Roberto’s hands reach up from where they grip Hiraga’s thighs to trace his protruding hipbones. Remembering himself, Roberto’s dominant hand dips down to cup, then gently tug on Hiraga’s balls. Hiraga sighs. They are already wound close to his body; is he close? More than likely, Roberto assumes. While Hiraga has been surprising him left and right recently, the idea of Hiraga getting himself off frequently enough to build up a decent amount of stamina is still improbable, at best. Roberto mulls this over while taking Hiraga further into his mouth, redirecting his line of sight low enough to ensure his lips stayed folded over his teeth. Hiraga is part of the science division, and Roberto would not be surprised at this point if their personal doctrine concerning abstinence is less strict than what is expected by the Church. For ah, health reasons, perhaps. After all, the human body is designed for periodic release and tension does build up. But Hiraga is not good at taking care of his own needs, Roberto muses as he bobs his head. Hiraga cries out his name above him. Occasionally perchance, but Hiraga touching himself with any degree of frequency is about as unbelievable as Hiraga having a wedding night… and Roberto’s pace falters as the band on his finger grows unbelievably heavy. Hiraga strokes through Roberto’s hair, and it serves as a reminder to concentrate on his task. Thoughts of how Hiraga gets himself off, and what Hiraga’s intentions are should be saved for later, in the privacy of his home. Or, ah, bed. Roberto makes a questioning sound, almost as if to say does it feel good? and Hiraga groans before telling him yes, of course--oh!.. yes, very much so--ahhh... If only he could take him all the way down, Roberto despairs, but his jaw is already nearing its limits. He swallows in an attempt to relieve some of the pressure – but this must feel incredibly good, as Hiraga’s hands clench in a vice grip. His hips pick up the pace and Roberto keeps himself still as to let Hiraga take his pleasure. Roberto, Roberto, Roberto….. Hiraga calls out his name over and over, and Roberto wishes for this to last just a little longer. Hiraga’s hips stutter, and Roberto takes over as best he can, until he can taste Hiraga’s release pouring down his throat. He comes rather silently, Roberto notices, staring up at the long line of Hiraga’s throat. His expression is hidden by his chin and his hair, Roberto observes regretfully. Either way, he is still the most beautiful sight Roberto has ever laid eyes upon. He keeps his lips fastened around Hiraga until he has emptied himself. Roberto gently licks him clean before pulling off and swallowing the load. He stays on his knees, staring up at Hiraga and gently stroking his legs until Hiraga comes back to himself, looks down at Roberto in awe and tugs on him lightly until Roberto gets to his feet. Hiraga leans against him as Roberto wipes first his hand, then Hiraga’s softening shaft with the dirtied blanket. Hiraga’s warmth is akin to a fire, and Roberto basks in it (being outside shirtless in January means it is most likely his sense of temperature that is off). He won’t regret anything if he gets sick, although maybe if either of them had had more presence of mind, they would have made better use of the now-sticky blanket. Hiraga takes hold of a corner to wipe up the small smear he made under Roberto’s eye. Roberto tries to tidy them up as best he can, tucking them carefully inside their underwear, closing buttons and zippers and hiding skin once more. And combing through hair (or at least Hiraga’s; with the way Hiraga had been tugging on his own, he’s not sure he can face the damage without a mirror or two). He leaves his shirt half-buttoned, only for the way Hiraga’s gaze lingers (dare he say, appreciatively). Thus groomed, Hiraga leans in to kiss him. Roberto quickly reaches up to place three fingers on Hiraga’s lips. “Nn?” Hiraga looks up at him in surprise, thrown off. “I, I just…” Roberto does not know how to put this into words without embarrassing himself even further. He settles for pointing at his throat. “Swallowed..” Expression determined, Hiraga reaches up with unexpected strength, pulling Roberto’s fingers away and sticking his tongue inside Roberto’s mouth. He licks him more thoroughly than before, and Roberto is helpless to stop him, mind blank. “It’s alright,” Hiraga tells him as he pulls away, wiping a suspicious wetness off his bottom lip with his thumb. (Roberto doesn’t want to know.) “Of course I don’t mind that. I love you.” In the silence, neither of them expect the second deluge of tears of the night. Ashamed, Roberto prays for the earth to swallow him up. Maybe then, he can spend eternity contemplating Hiraga’s revelation, or giving thanks for this encounter. And then plead for a second. Hiraga leads Roberto, sobbing silently, inside. If the constantly-changing temperatures don’t make him sick, maybe dehydration will. He decides to turn a blind-eye to the blanket dumped on the floor between the empty bed and the wall – he does not have the energy to deal with it now. It is only when Hiraga pulls Roberto into his lap on the unoccupied bed that Roberto remembers his resolve to leave the family their privacy. It quickly crumbles faced with the stream of uninterrupted tears. Roberto is quick to hide his face in Hiraga’s arms. Hiraga strokes his head for as long as it takes Roberto to reign himself in. When his shoulders cease their trembling, at last Hiraga speaks: “Roberto? Did I do something wrong?... Have you, come to hate me?” Roberto’s head snaps up immediately. “No!” He takes a deep breath, and reminds himself to speak quietly as to not wake up the rest of the room. Hiraga’s face is already showing signs of relief.

“Of course not,” he continues in a whisper. “How could you think that? I,” and here Roberto pauses. This is not the ideal place to confess. Hiraga deserves much, much more than a sobbing mess and a soiled sheet on a cold balcony in an unfamiliar room, but. But.

Hiraga has given him so much today. (A confession, a ring, an experience of family. A hand, a mouth, and pleasure Roberto could never put into words.) It’s not fair to keep him waiting still.

“I love you more than anything,” Roberto confesses to him quietly. “I will never, ever come to hate you. I promise.” Hiraga smiles up at him, eyes glittering. “I know!” That throws Roberto off. “Eh?” Hiraga’s grin is infectious. “You told me earlier, when you, ah…” Hiraga’s eyes dart over to where his brother and father lie sleeping. He meets Roberto’s eyes, blushing slightly but with a playful smile. Roberto cannot believe his ears.

“I did?” Hiraga nods happily. “Ah. I see. How unfortunate,” Roberto continues. “I had hoped to remember at least that much.”

Hiraga nestles up to him, seemingly unphased. “It’s alright. I’d be happy to hear it again.”

And with that, every unsettled feeling in Roberto’s heart is swept away.

(I love you, he whispers, and will continue to all night, face hidden in Hiraga’s hair.)

Hiraga wipes away the wet streaks that adorn his face. They take a blanket from their own bed to cover Jin and Ryouta, lost in slumber. The lamp is switched off. The used blanket is adequately hidden, and Roberto washes his face while Hiraga dries his hands. Roberto runs his fingers through his hair, though it is likely a lost cause.

Once they’re done, Roberto allows Hiraga to tug him into their own bed with no complaints. He embraces him tightly.

“Hey,” Roberto whispers to him. “Let’s go buy your ring soon, alright?”

“Make,” Hiraga corrects sleepily, and Roberto is once again sent reeling. He holds Hiraga as he falls asleep, whispering promises of love, and tries to pray, to offer what thanks he can to God for this blessing. (The next day is truly just as exciting: Jin and Ryouta wake up disoriented but happy when they see the couple embracing in their sleep, Roberto discovers that his ring is gold – he won’t find the inscription within until they get home – and Hiraga gets flustered when Roberto calls him “Kou” in front of everyone. Hiraga gets teased about his new, form-fitting wardrobe much to Roberto’s delight, Jin tries to teach them all about adoption processes and family registries in Japan – to everyone but Hiraga’s confusion – and Roberto nearly damages something when he finds several red marks covering his nape, in plain view despite his shirt collar.)

#foliefolio #Vatican Kiseki Chousakan #Vatican Miracle Examiner #Hiraga Josef Kou #Roberto Nicolas #平ロベ #fanfiction #平賀ヨゼフ庚 #ロベルト・ニコラス

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alo-piss-trancy · 5 years

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Hello, you have been identified as An Awesome Writer™! Congrats, you rock! So that all of your readers can shower you with some extra love today, please tell us your favorite five (or as many as you want) stories of yours and why you like them and then send this to another five fic authors you think deserve this title! ❤

Gee, I wonder who this could be from? c; (Thank you so much I love you!)

Okay so I’m doing seven because as you all know from my zillion ships and characters I’ve written for/screamed about, I’m incapable of picking a specific favourite lmao. But it’s still less than half my fics so it’s fine. Also none of these are ranked, I enjoyed them all equally tbh. (Forgive my lack of heart emojis RIP, I’m on desktop for this one)The Troubles Rain Can Bring (Pers/ona 5) : Of course I have to bring this one up, since it’s the one I consider my first legit omo fic (Jade was my first foray, but since it’s unfinished and I picked a dead fandom specifically so I had less chances of getting mean comments, I consider it more of a practice run). This was my first time writing for a very active and current fandom, so it was really intimidating, but I was also really excited to participate in creating for a game I was so passionate about! Also that fic was just a total labour of self-indulgence and love (excuse for fluff with my otp? combining all my fav tropes? Gratuitous Akira Suffering? Including the others for fun towards the end? I was in hog heaven!) While I definitely can find parts where I could improve the writing now, I still love it for all of the effort I put into it, and I got such a lovely response that made me feel really welcome on ao3, the omo tag on tumblr, and in the p/5 fandom! It’s kind of nostalgic for me, even if it was only written like a year and a half ago, haha.All Bottled Up (Dang/anRonpa: THH) : I’m just really proud of this fic, and I had so much fun writing it! I think it’s probably one of the few fics I’ve written that was a completely smooth ride of inspiration and fun from start to finish, without any hitches in the writing process or me getting bogged down with other projects. Seriously I think I hammered the entire thing out in like a week or two lmao. I love Naegiri so much, and the idea was a treat to work with even if it’s some of the most cliché omo scenarios, it was just a nice relaxing bit of indulgence! Also I got to dig into Kirigiri’s character, which I didn’t get to do in my other fic of her (since that one was so short and oddly styled). My favourite bit was probably getting to mess with the drawbacks of her gloves/hand injuries, and of course those fluffy bits with Naegi! Getting Your Feet Wet (Pers/ona 5) : This one, hoo boy. Definitely one of my longest fics, and while at the time when I posted it I kind of hated half the stuff in it (just because I had been nitpicking it for so long lmao), now that time has gone by I can genuinely say I love it and it’s probably one I’m proudest of. Not only was it my first full dive into snut (and I’d like to think it isn’t too shabby), but I got to work with a rarepair that I’ve been intrigued by, with two of my fav npcs from the game! So fun times all around! It was great to imagine how Sae might have changed and opened up since the game’s ending, and what Tae could do to help draw her out of that strict shell while still making her feel secure and comfortable. Also I got to include pet/p.lay which is something I’d been dying to write since I started that account, so bonus points for that! And I got a way better response than I was expecting, so that was nice!A Sinking Ship (Pers/ona 5) : ((Okay I swear I still plan to update the other half of this one someday soon, I literally have the draft halfway done I just haven’t been able to get it finished to the level I want.)) Anyways, I have a soft spot for this one because 1. It’s Makoto, and you all know how much I adore her, 2. I finally got to write some legit palace battling and shenanigans, which I really enjoyed and want to include more of in future projects, 3. I literally put so much detail into this one, from the setting descriptions to the dialogue and going out of my way to include the entire team interacting with her instead of just one or two chars, and I’m giving myself a fat pat on the back for that. And then throwing in actual anxiety and plot issues instead of just making her desperate for the sake of it, which may have been ambitious (hence why it’s kind of on a cliffhanger right now while I finish the comfort half), but I really just wanted her to have one of my best fics possible because Makoto deserves the best (of the worst suffering oops sorry bby). Also did I mention The Shumako Bridal Carry scene? That was absolutely necessary to include okay? Also there’s gonna be quality Shumako bonding in the second chapter so I’m biased to love this in advance. Basically I love this one specifically because it’s my own self-indulgent bullshit, which is kind of every fic I write but this is definitely one of The Most Indulgent. I also consider this one my very best omo fic in terms of the actual omo writing/content, even if it’s long AF, because at least you’re getting desperation and wetting for pretty much the entire thing, even when other stuff’s going on around it. So yeah I guess if you don’t mind a cliffhanger ending (for now) and have a decent knowledge of p/5, this is the one I recommend reading!Conundrums Lead to Collapse (Doc/tor Who - 13th Doc/tor) : I really liked writing this one because of the whump, actually. I rarely have excuses to injure characters for Even Worse Omo Suffering/Comfort, so the fact that I could write based on a canon injury was the perfect excuse! Also I’m just weak for the 13th Doctor so I’m always down for omo of her, but it was also a fun excuse to explore her character. We hadn’t gotten to see her angry or broken down at the time it aired, so I enjoyed getting to play around with how things affect her when she does finally lose the positive attitude and confidence, and bringing a character as powerful (and semi immortal I guess) as The Doctor to the floor was just a fun exercise. Also it’s kind of hard to find whump fics focused on female characters that don’t involve a certain kind of violence (or just female whump in general actually), so I just really enjoyed using all of the fandom tropes I’ve read over the years in those fics to create something for those of us who wanted it the other way around! I would also like to say this one gave me the excuse for Found Family Coddling, everyone comforts and helps her towards the end which is perfect for my fluff-craving heart after all of the angst.Holding More than Cards (Ka/kegurui Compulsive Gambler) : Oh boy, I’ll be honest the reason I love this is purely because it’s pretty much the only fic for this pairing that I’ve found for my tastes and I had to make it myself dang it (They basically had a whole two episodes where Midari creamed herself for Yumeko and they had that scene where they held each other’s faces staring into their eyes, HOW is no one jumping on this ship??? There’s literally 5 fics total on ao3 I’m not joking). I really enjoyed getting to dig into Midari’s characterization for this one, especially since I had such a tiny bit of canon to go off of and had to set it after the anime’s s1 developments. I got to write Yumeko being a dom and dropping her cheerful attitude too, which was really satisfying. Also while this doesn’t have full on snut in it, it was the closest I’d come at the time, so that was an interesting challenge. This was a rare chance to indulge in unhealthy ships too (bc literally every ship in that show is unhealthy on some level lmao) so that was entertaining to try and navigate.Capture the Fly with Nectar Sweet (The Ch/illing Adventures of Sabrin/a) : I just posted this one recently but I’m adding it anyways, because I had an absolute blast working on it. It’s so starkly different from anything I usually write, because you all know I love close friendships and found family and all that quality fluff and caring. But instead this one was me staring at my laptop thinking of how I want to tell this character to go to hell, except that would be pointless because that’s literally where she came from. I really got to stretch my wings outside my comfort zone and dig around in the dark, manipulative side for a while, and it was so much fun to study one of my favourite villains (anti-hero? she’s such a mysterious mess idk how to classify her) and her relationship with Sabrina. I also got to attempt writing desperation from the outsider’s perspective instead of the victim’s, and while I feel like I definitely still have room to improve with that, it was a nice break from the way I usually write my omo fics. I also got to shift around my writing style for this one, using words like ‘betwixt’ (which I love but never get to use lol) and using a bunch of metaphors and similes to showcase how Madam views Sabrina. This is probably the fic that makes it obvious that Language Arts was my favourite subject in school and that I’m Extra when it comes to predator/prey comparisons lmao. (Note: Please read the tags on this one, the Dead Dove: Do Not Eat warning applies here.)

I actually don’t know who else to send this to that I haven’t already, since like half the omo tag has vanished and I’m blanking on usernames, so if any of y'all are reading this post and you write fics: consider this me asking you to do it so I can hear about your fics! :D

#bear gets a letter #omorashi #fandomo #fictomo #ao3fic #might as well tag that since I have all the links here lmao

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snicketsleuth · 6 years

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Slackin’ with the Sleuth: reviewing Netflix’s “The Ersatz Elevator”

At this point in my review of Netflix's adaptation, I feel like I should clarify something: in spite of everything, I love the show so far. As negative as my observations can be, they also reflect how tricky the original work was to adapt. Some polarizing choices were made, but we have yet to see or watch anything that would make us doubt the dedication and talent of its production team. The writing team has obviously spent sleepless nights trying to understand the point of the books, and the reason for their success.

Most Hollywood adaptations consist in superficial copy-pasting of "memorable" plot points, conglomeration of cliff notes devoid of any themes or commentary, stripped of all depth and substance. Mercifully this was not a case for "A Series of Unfortunate Events". In fact, the directors have repeatedly agreed to transgress unwritten rules of television writing and to push the boundaries of their format in order to deliver a satisfying adaptation. Fans whine, and they snicker, but that's their social function. Criticism hurts the most when it comes from people who know you the best and are actively trying to like you.

"The Austere Academy" was somewhat of a dud, so let's try to begin our analysis with something more positive. I have two questions: what is this second season's greatest accomplishment and why is it Esme Gigi Geniveve Squalor?

The answer, in both cases, actually owes to the books themselves. Watching the final result, it becomes obvious that Esme was actually easier to adapt on screen than Olaf, for one reason and one reason only: Count Olaf is not funny. Yes, you heard me, and it bears repeating: Count Olaf is not "funny". That's a revisionist narrative (to which Daniel Handler sometimes adheres himself). Olaf makes jokes, jokes are made about him, and he has ridiculous moments, but that's true of ANY character in "A Series of Unfortunate Events". He's no more farcical than, say, Justice Strauss or Violet Baudelaire. We'll get back to that in my review of "The Hostile Hospital". Olaf as portrayed by Jim Carrey and Neil Patrick Harris is a perfectly fine character, who works within his setting, but it's essentially a new antagonist. Esme, however? Now that's a laugh riot. Whenever she's not being terrifying, she's being ridiculous and delivers some real gems in terms of ridiculousness. All in all, Esme, throughout the books, was already delivering what the Netflix writers needed and wanted. No adaptation necessary.

That's why Lucy Punch does justice to her book counterpart in a way Neil Patrick Harris and Jim Carrey never could. The fandom's reaction to her casting was, to put it fairly, lukewarm: there had indeed been a strong demand for a big-name actress to play the part. But as much as I dreamed of Lady Gaga embracing the role she was born for (if "American Horror Story: Hotel" is any indication), there is no room for improvement in Lucy Punch's performance. Actually, the casting of a too-well-known actress could have been a distraction: as hard as Neil Patrick Harris works to give Olaf his own personality, it's sometimes difficult not to see Barney Stinson or Doctor Horrible through his facial expressions. He does share an excellent chemistry with Punch, however, and her comical timing is golden. But most impressive, I think, is her ability to give that awful woman some manner of warmth and congeniality in her most despicable lines. Her upper-class flair and superficial, glossy smiles fully sell the viewer on the character. You can fully believe that Esme would thrive and gain popularity in the right circles, and heap praise for being an awful person.

Punch's successes almost outshine the presence of Jerome, which may be the entire point. Tony Hale is genius casting, but thankfully he seems to have toned down his usual persona, focusing more on Jerome's genuine kindness and crippling self-deprecation rather than his gullibility and cowardice. Painting Gunther as a parody of Karl Lagerfeld is also pretty on-the-nose, but it makes for hilarious scenes. One does wonder why Olaf doesn't just spend his entire life as Gunther, though. He seems to be everything Olaf aspires to be. With Esmé to support his career, why not just become a handsome foreigner? It's also noteworthy that the young actors' casting does improve in this episode, particularly in the elevator shaft. Klaus' girlish screaming and Violet's mixture of exasperation and panic as she lands into the net are especially memorable. The Baudelaire orphans are not written as typical teenagers: it's understandable that their stiff, overly intellectual lines are usually delivered in a likewise manner. And therefore, it's in the more comedic moments that Louis Hynes and Malina Weissman feel allowed to come out of their shell.

But enough with the niceties: alas, the subplot regarding the V.F.D. investigators once again rears its ugly head... with terrible pacing. To its credit, this episode attempts to tie in the conspiracy to events directly related to "The Ersatz Elevator" itself, rather than the disposable seasonal arc regarding Olivia. But this is somehow undermined by the outright futility of these distractions: Larry and Jacquelyn force us through an interminable lunch scene, which showcases Neil Patrick Harris' most gratuitous and unnecessary musical number to date. The entire scene is a shameless repetition of the Anxious Clown diversion in "The Wide Window". These long scenes of witty banter, where characters sit at a table and do nothing, are bizarrely reminiscent of Quentin Tarentino's worst indulgences. As pleasant as "Keep chasing your schemes" sounds, it's barely diegetic and mostly serves as a vanity project. It takes the viewers out of the entire experience. We do not see Olaf, but rather Neil being showcased as a singing prop. There is such a thing as Emmy-baiting, after all.

To add insult to injury, the ordeal only exists to justify a "rescue attempt" of the Quagmires by Jacques and Olivia... which is bound to fail as the Baudelaire orphans investigate the scene at the exact same time and find them on their own anyway. What are we supposed to think of this? That Jacques and Olivia peeked into the penthouse, never saw the Baudelaire orphans hard at work, went through a few rooms and climbed down the 667's facade to have a milkshake? I would call them incompetent volunteers, but Jacquelyn and Larry seem to have already taken that crown. I had not anticipated to address my annoyance at this show-only addition so soon, but the fact is that this experiment in narration really struggles to prove its relevance. I had thoroughly enjoyed Jacquelyn's adventures in Season 1, as they streamlined the handling of the Baudelaire will in a more satisfying manner. Here, however, her presence seems to add more plot-holes than it solves.

Baffling choices in direction also continue to elude me: "Dark Avenue" has been renamed "Dim Avenue". Apparently, all it takes to evoke darkness is to dip the pellicle into a sepia filter. An especially egregious example comes to mind as light becomes "in" and the curtains of the penthouse open up, revealing sunlight... except the lighting of the scene doesn't change in the slightest, it was already bright as day! The sets are gorgeous as always, however. The director has successfully conveyed the pomposity and immensity of Jerome's apartment, which suggests a lack of supervision on the director's part: it seems that the directors keep latching onto one aspect of set design they like and tend to forget about the rest. Take the Quagmires, who look positively chipper and clean for people who have supposedly spent days locked into a dusty cage with the same raggedy uniform. I would argue that Duncan and Isadora are so far the worst adapted characters. They're admittedly pretty bland in the books, but the Netflix team has somehow managed to give them even LESS material. The depiction of the trauma they suffered down in the elevator shaft is one of the series' most horrific moments, and another emotional scene from which we were robbed.

The Netflix series also seems to drop the ball on the tantalizing return to the Baudelaire mansion. It's a shocker in the books, but here it's almost an afterthought. Instead of seeing the scene through the Baudelaire orphans, we're first introduced to... Jacques and Olivia flirting. Not nearly as heartbreaking, isn't it? It's about as off-key and off-tone as the episode's music.

And yet it's all fine. And why? Because Daniel Handler wrote this double episode, which proves I'm wrong about all of this. Or maybe he is, who knows? Sometimes a book is so great it escapes his own author. There is not one definitive version of "A Series of Unfortunate Events", but several, each revealing a different facet of an untouchable and intangible diamond. The Netflix version is simply the only one which happens to have been filmed in its entirety.

#0540 #Lemony Snicket #ASoUE #a series of unfortunate events #violet baudelaire #klaus baudelaire #Sunny Baudelaire #count olaf #esme squalor #netflix #asoue netflix #neil patrick harris #lucy punch #tony hale #jerome squalor #review #daniel handler

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