#I actually liked a couple of songs last year? I think aside from right place they were at least decent | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

rumpunch · 11 months

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HIIII so… i finally got to see hadestown this weekend (the national tour production) w two of my best friends 🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹 i knew we were gonna see it for months but i didnt want to post abt it beforehand / acknowledge it in any way after making plans bc i was scared i would jinx it like what happened when i posted / talked abt seeing shows on the west end and then covid hit and sent me home lol. but i can’t believe i finally saw it!! it doesn’t feel real and honestly didn’t until right now as im writing this….. being in the theater was truly an out of body (and mind lol) experience for better or for worse. this was my first time seeing a show since covid and im soooo glad it was this one given how much it’s meant to me for all these years 🥹💗

i have a lot of thoughts on the production and also the plot / story so here they are lol:

production thoughts

for context ive never seen a hadestown 👢 before, i told myself that i wanted my first experience of seeing it to be actually seeing it in person. but ive listened to the obcr 5798673594 times over the last 3 years and the songs have become thoroughly woven into my life... so that made for a really weird experience where i knew every word but was watching it unfold for the first time and yet i knew what was coming for the most part. that also could be chalked up to the fact that ive seen so many gifsets and have read so many posts about other ppl seeing the show so i did know about some visual things.. but yeah it was just weird what i knew / expected and what i didnt lol

my friends and i sat in the back right corner of the mezzanine (like the LITERAL corner. no chairs behind us or next to us and the exit right next to us) and sadly the balcony in the set was cut off for us so we had to keep leaning across each other or scrunching our heads down to see the action up there :~/ but it was ok

i think bc of the above two bullet points + the fact that i really did not let myself believe that i was going to see the show bc i was scared of jinxing it + me having depression / possible derealization issues that i did not have when i first got into this show... i was kinda numb the entire time which sucks a little. i cried a couple times (happy / disbelieving tears in road to hell (persephone's entrance specifically for some reason, idk why it wasnt the "aight"s LOL) and any way the wind blows, sad tears in doubt comes in) but i didnt really... process anything in the moment or really experience the epic highs and lows of it while watching it. i just generally wasnt very moved! and im processing the show right now for the first time. and that kinda sucks and is unlike me and unlike what i thought seeing it was gonna be like. in a similar vein i found myself really focused on whoever was in the spotlight and im kinda mad at myself for that bc this is a show where SO many little details / context clues are communicated when ppl are in the background. but its fine i guess, i may be in a weird place mentally but i got to see it and maybe i'll see it again someday and be more moved

the cast was PHENOMENALLLLLL. j antonio rodriguez was our orpheus and he was the standout for me, his singing and acting as were breathtaking! i was frustrated about hannah whitley (eurydice) though bc like (and i feel bad for saying all of this)... nobody can be eva noblezada but hannah was missing a lot of notes / singing off key and kept like.. idk what the technical term for it is but she was kinda singing on her own beat and adding in a lot of pauses or rushing into things instead of staying on pace with the music and also she kept kinda revving up into the high notes and all of it grated on me. but i grew warmer to her singing in act 2 and i really appreciated her acting throughout! i didnt rly have many thoughts about hades (matthew patrick quinn), persephone (maria christina oliveras), or hermes (nathan lee graham) aside from ADORING all of their performances and what they brought to the roles compared to the obc! and the fates (dominique kempf, belén moyano, courtney lauster) / ensemble (kc dela cruz, colin lemoine, sean watkinson, shavey brown, raquel williams) / musicians were INCREDIBLE and had such amazing chemistry with and between each other :~D

antonio made for a bolder more charming orpheus and hannah made for a darker moodier more tortured eurydice which was interesting. but (and maybe this was just me dealing with the whole numbness / already knowing what to expect thing) i wasnt really convinced about their love story (specifically the early parts of it in act i as they were falling in love) or that orpheus in particular was insecure and vulnerable to the fates. but they did have some good chemistry in act ii especially and i was rooting for them so hard despite knowing wht was to come :~(

i knew that on broadway they have that little elevator in the center of the stage so i was curious about how it would work in the tour and... they had this giant oven box thing with moving doors! i actually really liked that, it made the whole idea of traveling to / from hadestown seem more sinister. that said i was kinda bothered by it during doubt comes in because orpheus and eurydice had to walk around the entire stage to make sure eurydice was positioned in front / inside of the oven and it kinda spoiled the ending in a way (even though we all know how that ends)... im guessing that on broadway its less exaggerated and you dont see it coming bc all eurydice has to do is just move over to the side a little. but idk i'll finally let myself watch a 👢 and see what the difference is

i couldnt take my eyes off of hades and persephone during promises. they started the song with hades kneeling with his head against persephone's stomach and then he stood up and they just hugged.... for a LONG time. like at least 3-5 minutes. and i was like god i wish that were me and i was thinking about what that mustve been like for the actors playing them.. like if thats a moment that they share and look forward to or whatever bc i know i would. it made me think about jenna's dear baby monologue in you matter to me LOLLLL

i saw from another post i read on here (as i was pregaming for the show by scrolling thru my hadestown tag LMAO) that orpheus runs through the audience at one point? and he didnt do that for us that i saw which i was bummed about. maybe thats just a broadway thing

i had no idea the set splits open during wait for me!!! it was so cool

i also didnt know / fully realize that hades produces a flower for persephone during epic iii 😭 the tears in my eyes... also speaking of epic iii hades singing the lalalalalalalaaaa got a LAUGH and i was so MAD!!!!! i get that its kinda funny because it just sounds so weird in his voice and its a startling moment... but that pissed me off bc the moment is supposed to be so tender and heartbreaking and the audience didnt appreciate that.. augh.

since its pride month the set was initially lit up with rainbow lights and in act ii hermes had little rainbow tassles on the ends of his sleeves!! :~D

plot / story thoughts

another context bullet point to kick us off: i discovered hadestown in the spring / summer of 2019 which was an INCREDIBLY formative time for me and so many aspects of the show (creative expression as a tool / forum for bringing about the world as it could be (and illuminating the possibilities in the world as it is), discovering that you have agency, love / loyalty / betrayal / sustenance, finding your purpose, etc.) were profoundly relevant to things that i was awakening to at that exact place and time in my own life. so i went into this experience hoping to have more insights like the kind i had when i first listened to the obcr... and i didnt really. i mean i had some but they didnt feel as profound i guess? and again that may just be me having mental health issues now that i didnt have then.. but that was a thing that i was aware of and kinda sad about. so yeah

that said... the main thing along those lines that i did take away (which really only hit me while watching epic iii / promises) is like... love is agency is love is agency is love.... or something like that. at least that they coexist and happen together. the oppressive conditions in hadestown and the poverty in the overworld strip the gods and humans alike of... their humanity (which is weird to apply to the gods but still)! their sense of self, and their love for each other and the world. the moment that became clear for me was in epic iii when the workers took off their goggles one by one and it was like.. they could See again! they could see themselves and each other, they were holding hands with each other and singing together. and they saw a future that they could create together. and hades was letting persephone dance and she kept spinning away from him with her arms outstretched like a bird but then coming back... idk. im not articulating this well and i need to think about it more and let it simmer for a bit and maybe watch a 👢 to get all the details. but it was like yeah... the opposite of capitalism imperialism etc etc is love and agency and they go together and they are the same thing.

another thing i need to think about more: orpheus went to hadestown all by himself to get eurydice! how come he was so confident then? he was LITERALLY alone. he didnt know where she went or if she would come back with him. and he didnt have the workers following him (though they were there in wait for me swinging the lamps, but i interpreted them as being like... part of the scenery i guess). he was completely alone and operating off of hope AND THE FATES TAUNTED HIM TOO and he was like... fine! so then in doubt comes in.. when he has all these people including eurydice following him... like idk. maybe its just because he'd confronted hades who couldnt fully be trusted and he knew that eurydice had turned her back on him and stuff... like maybe its just because on the journey back he'd experienced things that caused him to doubt / mistrust the people he was journeying with / from and that's what made him vulnerable, not so much the physical loneliness but the emotional loneliness that comes with a betrayal. which is something i just realized typing it out lol. but that kinda agitated me bc its like... he was FINE the way up so why did he crumble on the way back :~(

doubt comes in is such a fucking GUT PUNCH btw. i wanted to cry harder but didnt let myself bc i didnt want to be too loud or soil my mask. but i was so so scared to see it and it devastated me. its just so... SAD. and its so... like i relate to / identify with orpheus SO much yes in part because of the creative expression / seeing the two worlds thing but also because of doubt comes in specifically. its just so so so sad. he had all of these people including the person he loved most cheering him on and echoing to him. and he couldnt hear them. and he couldnt internalize how much they loved and believed and trusted in him. and he turned. that is so wrenchingly real. and it hurt so bad to see it playing out on the stage knowing what was about to happen and then WATCHING it in all the brilliant horror. like thats another insane thing the way the lights get so wildly bright. actually now that i mention that i think the lights are brighter in hadestown when bad things are happening. like hades saying I CONDUCT THE ELECTRIC CITY etc etc. that could be a whole post. someone should make that

im thinking a lot about The Song and whose song it is and actually WHICH song it is. bc if you think about it... so we're introduced to the lalalalalalalaaaa and whatever song that is which builds in the epics. and that song incites a lot of action like orpheus (quite literally!) tuning out eurydice which causes her to choose to go to hadestown, and hades realizing what love is and whatever. but another song that is equally if not more catalytic is.... IF IT'S TRUE!!!! bc thats the song that sparks the revolution among the workers and gives orpheus hope that he almost lost after learning about eurydice's betrayal and inspires eurydice to fight for something instead of succumbing to her fate. and in wait for me reprise when eurydice is singing "echoing OUR song" "the falling of OUR feet" ... like they're not alone as just the two of them, the workers are coming too!! so which song is she referring to! what if it's actually "if it's true" and the hopes that orpheus has stirred up about what the world could be?

btw speaking of orpheus tuning out eurydice... im sure this point has been made 5476463979 times but its rly interesting to think about how love languages (for lack of a better way to put it, ik that can be kinda reductive) work in this show. eurydice and orpheus both attempt to address the storm but the ways they choose to do it are different / dont align: eurydice tries to manage the short term by searching for food and firewood, while orpheus works on the song that will bring spring back and stop this kind of disaster from happening again. but iirc they dont talk about how they're going to take these two different but equally important strategies — eurydice at least interprets the song as being unimportant and orpheus just... straight up seems unaware of the food / firewood thing also being important. so theres a communication failure and eurydice interprets the silence as abandonment (for good reason, also relatable) and turns her back (ha!) on orpheus. and then with hades and persephone... hades does all these big flashy power gestures to show his love for persephone but it's the exact opposite of what she wants and they dont see eye to eye about how to express their love for each other either. yeah

speaking of eurydice making that choice... like yeah. sigh. betrayal is such a huge thing in this show. trust and betrayal. eurydice was (kind of) leading orpheus through the immediate short term danger of the storm and she turned on him. and the fact that she did was part of the reason orpheus turned on her. they made their vows in promises that they would walk side by side but he couldnt get over it (partially bc they literally weren’t allowed to physically walk as they planned but still). and eurydice said "im right behind you and i have been all along" and its like no you havent been thats the entire plot of the show lol (again for understandable reasons but still!)

another thing im sure has been analyzed 456456984 times but its interesting to think about hermes watching everything playing out while knowing how it will end and not choosing to intervene. idk what that means and my laptop is running out of battery so im not going to dig into it but im just thinking on it. BUT ALSO THAT GOES FOR US AS THE AUDIENCE like so many ppl probably know how it ends and maybe some ppl are seeing it multiple times and its like... anyone could intervene and change the story (within reason ofc). also goes for the other ppl on stage too like the musicians etc. its just interesting to think about the implications of that and what would happen if someone tried it both "in character" and "out of character" i guess

its interesting to think about the role walls play in the show too. like the wall hades is making the workers build to keep out the "enemy" and keep them (him) powerful and prosperous in their (his) isolation vs the walls repeating the falling of feet, echoing songs... letting people know theyre not alone. and the fact that that doesnt happen in doubt comes in even though orpheus is being followed by a whole crowd basically. idk. fascinating

ok those are all of my thoughts i think! i also saw some interesting posts / takes that im going to rb again bc theyre on my mind as i interpret the show but i dont want to put them in this post bc theyre not my original thoughts. ty for reading if you did :~D this is a glorious new era in rumpunch nation im so glad and grateful that i can finally say ive seen this beautiful show!

#tess talks #hadestown

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outeremissary · 6 months

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9 People You'd Like to Get to Know Better

Tagged by @turbulentpumpkin43. Thanks for thinking of me! I know I haven't been around much (for reasons we don't need to get into), but truly nothing summons me faster than the email notification about a tag game where I know I'm going to have to say something horribly embarrassing about myself.

Three Ships: I mean, if we're counting stuff with OCs then obviously anyone following my knows Balthazar and Tristian (and the wonderful polycule with Vio) is my number one. Aside from that, the latest volume of Witch Hat has fully converted me into an Agott/Coco true believer. I actually did like the Coco/Tarteh vibe but Agott's special brand of slowly changing rival just has me by the throat. Aside from that? Ummm. Elliot and Leo from Pandora Hearts? Does that count? I did my full reread of Pandora Hearts while afk in September and those two have had me since like 2012 or 2013 or whenever they were introduced in the English release. But now that I'm older and more mature I can better appreciate what the messy later arcs had to give, and that's the beauty of a relationship between equals corrupted by a growing imbalance no one has the strength to acknowledge and devotion so deep it tears both of their lives apart. That's awesome. 11/10, everyone read Pandora Hearts and I'm not even joking

First Ever Ship: Gamers, back in early 2012 when I was in middle school and could only see images on the computer at school because searching for anything visual online was mega bad for rural internet, a friend of mine used a science classroom computer to discover you could find non-canon images of The Legend of Zelda if you searched terms like "Link blue" and scrolled down a couple rows. I distinctly remember this as the first ever time I really understood the concept of "fan art," and more importantly as my entry into fandom as we all began to realize many of these came from the same site: a place called "DeviantArt." Some of these contained such salacious and unthinkable things as two boys holding hands and blushing, and also both of those boys were Link. I was so captivated by these mysterious images that I followed them to their Four Swords Adventures manga RP fandom source, where I am not proud to say the first "ship" I adopted as such was Vio (Violet Link for people who spent their time doing better things at thirteen) and Shadow (Shadow Link, of course). That's right, everyone! It was edgy Link selfcest yaoi between a traitor and an angsty villain all the way down!!! And you know what? When I write that I don't think my taste has changed. Except the selfcest. Mostly.

The other, more respectable first ship I remember not long after that was Ulquihime. What can I say, there's just something about the Stockholm syndrome of it all.

Last Song: No title - REOL. Narrowly missed this being edgy early Vocaloid. I've been revisiting old favorites recently.

Last Movie: I'm pretty sure it was Surf's Up. For whatever reason my friend decided we should rewatch it when I visited him a few weeks ago. Holds up better than it should, but I've rewatched it twice in little over a year and truly that is my Surf's Up limit. That trip was also when my friend forced me to watch Barbie and the D&D movie. Look at me catching up on relevant pop culture only for fucking Surf's Up to be what made this list.

Currently Reading: I'm pretty sure this came up last time, but because I haven't gotten started on a better book since then I'm unfortunately still periodically chipping at The Thousand Deaths of Ardor Benn. This book fucking sucks. Don't read it. If we could manga and stories that are actually good I recently did a Witch Hat Atelier reread after getting volume 11!!! That volume is. So painfully personal.

Currently Watching: Cyberpunk: Edgerunners and Jujutsu Kaisen season 2. JJK is with my friend for weekly hangout, but Edgerunners is a solo endeavor because it was bumming him out way too much. Good show though. Also JJK was way more of a bummer than expected in ways that caught me off guard??? I'm not getting over what happened to that girl, I really got fucking got by that scene. Jesus

Currently Consuming: Nothing. Just finished dinner, where I had a chicken sandwich and fries. I need groceries. It's dire.

Currently Craving: doing something creative, but that would require moving the giant zine pile on my chair........ this is how I'm procrastinating

I'm sorry, but I'm actually not tagging anyone on this tonight! I haven't been on enough lately to know who has or hasn't done it, and frankly I'm not ready to be back on Tumblr enough to map that out. If you're seeing this and want to do it, please go ahead and do it. Tag me like I tagged you, we are collaborators in this and I want to see what you say.

#I'll be real gamers the selfcest devil has whispered in my ear a time or two as I've continued to workshop my DUrge #I'm not elaborating on that.#anyway with this up it's time to move the zine pile that also stopped me from adding a Spotify link and try to do some stuff #my terrifying backlog won't work through itself...#tag game #turbulentpumpkin43 #I feel like I've told one or two of these stories before so Ash. I'm sorry if any of these bits are played out.

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traayaa · 1 year

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✨️Get to know me!✨️

Tagged by @anotherghoul666

Share your wallpaper:

To no one's surprise, it is Dew choking Rain. But it might be getting rotated out soon, Swiss has taken over my brain and heart for the minute.

Last song you listened to: I'm Just a Kid - Simple Plan

Currently reading: Aside from fics I don't actually have a book on the go right now, I do have a couple on my bedside table waiting for me to start though.

Last movie: Avatar: The Way of The Water

Craving: A solid night of restful sleep... and a break.

Currently wearing: Drag Talk long sleeve and hoodie and yoga pants/leggings

How tall are you: tol - 5'10/5'11

Piercings: One in each ear, septum and nose. I have had several more but have taken them out for one reason or another.

Tattoos: Left wrist: Family and a semicolon. Right wrist: A flower in a triangle. Back of neck: two snakes with the Gemini constellation. Right leg: A lion and a girl with flowers on my thigh and Stitch on my ankle (He covers a '?' that was done questionably in a tent at a music festival and yes I know that was not wise but I was young and reckless and didn't care.) I have plans for more.

Glasses/contact lenses: I've had glasses since I was 12. I am very short-sighted.

Last drink: Water, it's my main drink.

Last show: Leverage: Redemption.

Last thing you ate: Barbeque chips or crisps (depending on where you are)

Favourite colour: Purple. But I am quite fond of black and teal/darker green too.

Current obsession: Ghost, and Sleep Token are staples and AG got me onto Gaerea, so I'm trying to listen to them and find some favourite tracks.

Unrelated obsession: I guess gaming? Been playing PlateUp! a heap at the moment.

Pets: Two cats. Both are 5 or 6 years old, and both are male. One is white, a bit chonky and has a weeee bit of separation anxiety. The other is brown and he is scared of anything and everything. Loud noise? Looks like a startled llama. Strange person? Startled llama.

Do you have a crush on someone? Romantically? No. Friendship wise? Hell yeah. I have some adorable and attractive friends and I love them all.

Favourite fictional character: If I had to pick one, it would be Parker from Leverage. Her character development and her growth is such a joy to have watched over the original show and the spinoff. I'm very much a character-type fan, a show can be a bit mid as long as I can find some joy or interest in the characters of it.

Last place I travelled to: Aside from trips to my local shops, the city when I saw MCR the other week. My last international trip was to Malaysia in 2015. I do want to travel again soon, I have a few places/people I want to visit.

Tagging: I think @iamthecomet @crimsonclergy (I think everyone else has been tagged)

#tag games

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myucornerorg · 1 year

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Thanks @real-life-senshi for the tag!

The Rules: Tag (9) people you want to know better and/or catch up with, then answer the following:

Four Ships:

Oh boy. TBH I'm not that into shipping really. I guess I have a few though.

Brainy x Nia (CW Supergirl): Definitely the beta couple of the last couple seasons of the show. I do kinda wonder how their relationship would've developed had Season 5 played out as planned (the ending of the season got kinda messed up due to COVID lockdowns, which is why the "beat Leviathan" plot got carried over to the beginning of Season 6). They got a fair amount of focus in Season 6, as they dealt with how Brainy's actions in Season 5 affected them (also they had to write Kara out for most of the season because her actress was on maternity leave, forcing them to instead focus episodes on the rest of Supergirl's team). I felt it was a strong ship, with two goofy, geeky people - one an alien genius who's not very used to having emotions period and the other a half-human, half-alien girl with dream-related powers - who both clearly like each other but don't know how to spit it out. The "Prom!" two-parter, where they go back in time to get DNA to help track down Kara, had them try to fit in in late-90s small town America, which was hilarious. Also, in general, even with all the hype over Nia being the first transgender superhero ever (she's also played by a real-life trans rights hero, Nicole Maines), aside from a little focus when she was first introduced, they haven't made it her sole defining trait, and have developed her beyond that, which I appreciate. I'm not sure their relationship had its full time to develop - towards the end it seemed doomed to fail since at some point Brainy was going to have to go back to the future time he came from. But in the finale he decided to "screw destiny" and came back for her, so they still have a chance!

Pokéshipping (Ash x Misty): From Pokémon, obviously. This is Pokémon's oldest ship and I have stood by it for years (to be fair, I haven't seen enough of the anime to justify the other Ash ships anyway). But then I'm biased, since Misty has long been a favorite character of mine from Pokémon. It's been cool seeing her come back in more recent seasons and still have a dynamic with Ash. It started with him accidentally frying her bike with Pikachu, and her tagging along to make him pay her back, but they ultimately developed a strong friendship, which I think is only rivaled by his friendship with Dawn probably. Of course, since I ship them, I wish there could be more - and there are songs showing Misty has feelings for him ("Misty's Song," "He Drives Me Crazy," "I've Got a Secret" from Pokémon Live). The second movie also teased the idea, though Misty strongly denied it. As for Ash, we have no idea how he feels. But let's be fair, he barely acknowledged Serena's feelings, and hers as far as I can tell were WAY more obvious than Misty's (Serena pretty much started traveling with Ash cause she had a crush on him). So I'm guessing he's just completely oblivious. He'd have to grow up a lot to realize how Misty feels. And now Ash's time in the anime is basically over. Though, they did leave things pretty open-ended with him, so...

Yowzah (Doctor x River Song): This is basically my main ship from Doctor Who (though I do also support Tenrose). For this ship, I usually define it as Eleven x River specifically, since they interact the most. Though their relationship is crazy complicated, their banter is always fun to see when they do meet. Because I didn't watch Doctor Who quite in order when catching up on old seasons, I actually saw their romance in basically chronological order - starting with Series 5-7 and ending with 4, where Ten meets her but she ends up dying - which somehow made it even more poignant. I did appreciate that before Steven Moffat left, he resolved their whole thing by having Twelve finally take River to Darillium (the last place River saw "her" Doctor before traveling to the Library and meeting Ten), and having Twelve come to terms with her being gone. While there are still Big Finish audios coming out to flesh out River's personal canon, I consider her timeline with The Doctor finished, and I don't expect her to show up again (although, they brought back Jack Harkness, so I guess no one's safe). I don't feel like there's any sort of future they could give them - "The Name of the Doctor" already showed River post-death. I suppose they could delve into their past still, especially if they keep the Timeless Child plotline when Russell T. Davies takes over again. I'd kinda love for River to meet the Fugitive Doctor. I feel like they would be BFFs in a heartbeat. At any rate, River is a fun character, and for now I've been indulging my interest in this ship via the Eleventh Doctor fanfic I've been working on for years (I have an idea for a ship fic with them too).

Mamoru x Hina (PGSM): So not sure this is even a ship but decided to add it anyway. When it comes to Sailor Moon, I'm typically in the Usagi x Mamoru camp pretty strongly. Especially in the manga, where their relationship really gets some deep development (it gets development in the anime too, but not in the same way I feel like). But the live-action series Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon just didn't do their relationship justice. I get that they had limited episodes to work with, but they could've done better. They also tried to make things more dramatic by revealing Mamoru was engaged, right at the point of the show when Usagi was starting to think maybe he wasn't so bad after all. And then try to twist the knife even more by making Usagi realize that "OMG this guy's girlfriend is actually NICE." Hina, meanwhile, didn't get much development beyond being the "other woman" who clearly loved Mamoru more than he did her. That she was the "childhood friend" in this scenario probably didn't help either (anyone who's watched/read enough shoujo knows that the "childhood friend" rarely wins in a love triangle). She did at least respect that Mamoru had a lost past he was trying to find clues to, and tried to be supportive as much as she could. And when Mamoru got cut off from a call with her when Kunzite attacked him, she seemed genuinely upset. (She also got upset when she found Usagi's handkerchief in Mamoru's dresser, but that's more like a "OMG are you cheating on me?" kind of upset). Ultimately she saw the writing on the wall and broke up with Mamoru. I mean, sure, if the show was going to follow the original Sailor Moon plot, Mamoru and Usagi were going to have to end up together somehow. But instead of trying to create a genuine love triangle with actual drama attached, they had Mamoru in a relationship he didn't really care about and Usagi, as much as it pained her, willing to honor that relationship. Thus they started to kinda reluctantly become just friends instead. But while it can be argued they did develop some feelings for each other eventually, their whole romance seems to be based on the fact that they loved each other in their past lives, and fate is doing its darnedest to bring them together again. Except that in the past that caused the destruction of the Earth, a fact that initially no one remembers except Sailor Venus, Zoisite, and Kunzite, which is why those three are pretty strongly against Usagi and Mamoru getting together (Beryl also tries to split them up later, either personally or through her "shadow" Mio, since the Beryl/Serenity/Endymion love triangle is also still a thing). Then they get separated since Mamoru goes to study abroad in England, and then later lets Beryl capture him to save the Shitennou, causing all this angst where Usagi tries really hard not to make the Silver Crystal activate, as this would not only make her hardcore "I don't care about anything but my prince" Princess Sailor Moon side come out, but it also inadvertently powers Queen Metallia, neither of which is good for the safety of the Earth. Even once Beryl is defeated and Usagi and Mamoru are *finally* set to get married, it's clear Mamoru is not that enthusiastic about it, which is what leads to Usagi breaking things off and Mio showing up and being like "I'M BAAACK" and kidnapping Mamoru to be her groom in her circus-inspired base. So...anyway, it's just hard for me to ship Usagi x Mamoru in PGSM for these reasons, so I lean more toward shipping Hina with Mamoru. After all, the short "Hina Afterward" made it clear that she still thought about him after they broke up.

Last Song: Not a song per se, but...the Suzume soundtrack on Spotify. It's actually quite a good soundtrack. Sadly, they didn't include the songs Serizawa plays in his car during the road trip part of the movie (probably for copyright reasons), but I found a couple Spotify playlists people made of the songs he plays: this one and this one. One of them is "Rouge no Dengon," the opening song to Kiki's Delivery Service, which I recognized immediately when I first heard it as that's my favorite Ghibli film.

Currently Reading: This translation of Virgil's The Aeneid, translated by David Ferry. It was the one recommended by Blue of the YouTube channel Overly Sarcastic Productions in his Virgil video, so I figured it had to be good. Now, being a mythology buff, I knew something about the Aeneid going into this (I also watched OSP's video covering it), but I'd never read it in verse before now. And it is actually quite good. Sure there are boring lists of people at times, and Virgil spends like 10 stanzas describing the decorations on Aeneas's shield in great detail, which I could care less about. While I definitely had to consult the list of names in the back a few times to know what stuff was, the text was otherwise quite understandable as is, which isn't easy with old texts like this as far as I can tell. Ferry does a good job making it readable but not TOO modern. Would recommend.

Last Movie: The anime movie Suzume, directed by Makoto Shinkai, who did Your Name and Weathering With You. As I mentioned in this post, it's REALLY GOOD.

Craving: I'm looking forward to the game Hogwarts Legacy. The Switch version got delayed till July and it bugs me a lot. Also, this game called Sea of Stars is finally coming out soon that I backed on Kickstarter. I've never backed a video game on there before, so that's exciting! Besides that...I bought a TON of 3DS and DS games in my pursuit to get the games I wanted before the 3DS eShop shut down a couple months ago, so looking forward to those. In the process, I found out my DS Lite can still read GBA cartridges, allowing me to replay old favorites like Kim Possible 2: Draaken's Demise and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon as well as games I missed (like all of the Gen 3 Pokémon games - if I can track them down - and Tales of Phantasia, which I just recently found out even HAD a GBA version).

As for non-gaming things...I haven't been to Disneyland in years, despite living less than 2 hours away from it. Sure, as an autistic person, theme parks can be kind of a nightmare, but I really love Disney movies. Also, I haven't been there since before the Star Wars land was completed, so I really want to go there and see that, as I'm also a big Star Wars fan.

Also I do miss doing covers on my YouTube channel, I'll admit. I'd also like to do more collabs, but the SeraMyu cover community seems kinda dead now, especially since our sort of Fearless Leader (and the one who encouraged me to join in the first place) @sailorzakuro seems to have moved on.

Tagging: @ainomessage, @fyeahsailormoon, @glitzyglee, @galaxia-gorgeous, @gracemyhearto, @kosmosinusa, @katieban-kaiteiban, @love-boat, @sailormoonsub

#off topic #supergirl #doctor who #pokemon #pgsm #suzume movie #the aeneid #hogwarts legacy #sea of stars #3ds #ds #gba #disneyland #star wars #seramyu #sera myu #sailor moon musicals

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anosci · 1 year

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(91-105 albums etc that I’ve listened to this year, copied from twitter) (now with art. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8])

names and thoughts below cut

91/ KNOWER - Think Thoughts (2011) peppy! bright and loud! well ok that might not be true for every track, but like. slapping those fakebrass chords feels great. shining characteristic.

---

92/ Photek - Avalanche / 101 (2011) (i have decided to be extra harsh on dnb) …oh its not dnb. actually this is a case where each track is stronger than the last. i didnt rly care for "Avalanche" but "Slowburn" is hitting HARD.

---

93/ Photek - Aviator EP (2011) i guess ive missed a few chapters of photek because this aint dnb. to my ears its hella 2011 but thats not inherently bad. overall i just think this one's ok. it kinda looks like a companion to Avalanche/101, and...sorry but i love that one far more

94/ Kryptic Minds - Can't Sleep (2011) dark! id call it ukdubstep but it clearly isnt. peak nighttime music tho. good shit

---

95/ Floating Points - Shadows (2011) the above is possibly the most apt word cloud for the sound of the ep. gentle punch. sleepy even. exactly the level of chillout i need.

---

96/ Joseph Nothing Orchestra - Super Earth (2011) joseph nothing has a melodic style that sits just right with me, coupled with a really playful ear for sound design. im happy to see it still hits just as hard a decade after his debut

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97/ Secret Mommy - The Mall (2011) exactly what i remember 2011 sounding like. clicky choppy something. i feel like i enjoy this nostalgically now, instead of directly. like a layer of abstraction. kinda odd to realize.

--- April ---

98/ Towa Tei - Sunny (2011) this feels like that soulful type of uh… what do you call shakatak? that thing. but towa tei. really poppy sometimes. generally all over the place. i'd describe it as "peak sunshine music" which is funny because the album title agrees

---

99/ VA - Attaxolotls: Amphibious Fisticuffs Anthology Album (2023) a grab bag of styles and vibes. plenty of slappers. 2 specific hilites that make me want to type exclamation marks: "Arcadia Prime" "Minor Infraction"

---

100/ Ryuichi Sakamoto - CHASM (2004) a beautiful album that simultaneously embraces intimate acoustics and some of the dsp trends that ive noticed in 2004. a touch of oval, even? it's a really lovely take. im not a huge fan of the vocals but that's entirely personal preference.

---

101/ Ryuichi Sakamoto - Bricolages (2006) remix comp version of CHASM. surprised at how each song has a similar essence, but i unanimously prefer ryuichi's take on the tunes with rapping. that aside, i love how unabashedly ELECTRONIC this feels.

---

102/ Asking Alexandria - Stepped Up And Scratched (2011) vocals :\ wobs :) yeah idk im just not vibing with the metal side. the wob side is fun as a nostalgic romp but even then... eh. HOWEVER: "To The Stage (Bare)".

---

103/ nagz - Good (2020) the album lives up to its name. future music that you just don't get anywhere else. for me this feels like a sequel to hringur, in that I think that was the last EP to make me feel like this.

---

104/ Nondi_ - Flood City Trax (2023) incredibly shocked at how well this fits after nagz, at least in timbre. future sounds. alternatively: it embodies the "for vibin" attitude that early 90s warp/rephlex had, but applies it to modern styles. im into it.

---

105/ Selfmademusic - Kinema Ikon Soundtracks Remixed (2008) shimmering, lingering electric soundscapes. hazy, but specifically the warm summer haze that you see on urban roads.

#media thread

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oslo-snowball · 4 months

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post #2 - yesterday i woke up sucking a lemon [1/2/24]

hello, not much to write about today -- spent today largely in the company of others, without much time allotted for the mind space of focused work. i'm getting a little bit anxious about the time running out but i still think today was good. i find myself returning to the idea of setting aside dedicated weekly time for artistic exploration/enrichment that i read about a few months ago in the first few pages of The Artist's Way, which i later threw out for reasons unrelated to the book's integrity/validity (although i instinctively doubted that as well). not sure why my gut felt so distrustful of that book, but it's probably because i first heard about it on TikTok and something felt quite gimmicky/commercial/disingenuous about it upon actually cracking upon the pages. but i am quite open to giving it another chance later on.

went to berkeley for a little day trip with my friend who just returned from her hometown. we went to a little crystal/occult shop that i'd been to once before and enjoyed, and then to the Guitar Center in emeryville. i got some various trinkets and gifts for my family, and a couple music books; she finally got a dj kit, which we'd been talking about for ages, and i'm very excited for her. we also found ourselves lost under a random overpass, getting pulled over by the cops for an illegal turn (immediately following me exclaiming "right next to the police station, too"), getting called by an ex, and driving through solidly "dreadful" (as my friend put it) weather: rainy, cold, and dark, complete with a flock of tritely ominous birds. overall, a very strange and liminal vibe. i instinctively enjoy experiences like that, though. makes me feel very aware of the unpredictability of everything. comforting, in a way, because it means that anything can happen. you never know what the universe will bring you next (although that's a very cliché/uninteresting way of putting it -- i think there's definitely more complexity there that i'm not interested in attempting to develop further right now). i think i've always been drawn to fear in some way, for that reason...

not much in the way of work, except that i finished the radiohead book yesterday and made some good progress on the czikszentmihalyi book today (will likely finish it tomorrow), and also learned the piano parts for EIIRP (hence today's choice of song) and pyramid song, and the beginning of Lake Shore Drive/Coming Back. have been compulsively playing EIIRP and pyramid song since learning the parts last night, and played around a bit with garageband on my ipad last night. still in an exploratory phase. waiting for my midi controller to come in on friday... i know i will need to just face things and start at some point. constantly caught between the tension of allowing for creative percolation/a productive patience with myself after the literal years of stagnancy and the very real challenges i faced (which took me a long time to even acknowledge), vs. the knowledge that there will never be a perfect time and things will always feel hard at points. very much attempting to maintain that dialectic and navigate it in a way that productively and intelligently balances logic, emotion, intuition, etc....

i always enjoy the BART ride as optimal reading/thinking time. so much so that i ended up immersed in my book and doing an accidental loop that cost me an hour and $17 in a last-minute necessary uber trip the last time i went to berkeley. ordered another book on the BART ride back that should be coming tomorrow -- leslie jamison, whose work i've enjoyed since randomly coming across her essay, Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain, sometime in the second half of high school. this essay resonated so much with my little angsty teenage self that i incorporated it into a capstone piece i really enjoyed working on for my senior year english class. i'm not sure how i discovered leslie’s work -- maybe through her aunt, Kay Jamison, who i became aware of around 10th grade. i know i already have much more reading material to get through, but i can't seem to help myself from compulsively buying more and more. in any case, i do think i'll actually finish the works that i care most about this time (as i have been doing), which is a very very comforting respite from the years of not even being able to read, let alone write. i have been focusing on leaning into doing what feels good, thinking about what i truly want to read and what i enjoy reading and just allowing myself to pursue that feeling. it also helps that i finally stopped deluding myself that i could read ebooks. nope. i am a massive lover of physical books, which seem to be the only medium through which i can actually *finish* a book, and now that i'm no longer in denial about that, reading's been an absolute joy.

i also feel some anxiety over the implications of reading while not really writing (another iteration of the consuming vs. creating problem that's been nagging me), but felt some comfort/reassurance in Czikszentmihalyi's remark that all the writers he interviewed were also compulsive readers/that reading was an essential component of the writing process. i know that intuitively and logically but i still worry that i'm not doing enough. maybe this is all just an exercise in getting out of my head. banishing the worry. idk. i am getting self-indulgent again. i don't really have much to say today. still wanted to get something onto the (virtual) page. there's also definitely more i could've said about today's choice of song, as i have a long history with this song, and the lyrics of today's title are also somewhat topical, but to write all that out doesn't feel quite right at the moment.

i may continue reading, i may continue working on the course i started/exploring with the tools i've been working on, i may just go to sleep and call it an early night, i may do some random internet wandering. i have been extremely tired to the point where i texted two friends that "i think i have narcolepsy" (only somewhat facetiously) and fell asleep on BART. i suppose that means that i should take care of myself and go to sleep earlier, but willfulness has always been one of my character flaws. welp.

thinking vaguely about love, generosity, dependability, and the best ways to show up for those you care about.

bye for now.

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liinos · 3 years

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I want to know how chuang gave us outlier (not only their best song but one of THE best songs to come out of the produce series there is not a single flaw in that song) and then it’s a bomb for the final as if that song is not fucking AWFUL 😭

#not that phoenix is a Great song but it uh. wasn't that so a win #like nene baby I'm so sorry you were SINGING but the song was just so bad <///3 and like zhuai's rap was good #but it's soooooooo bad #I'm hoping that maybe since the 3rd stage songs this year were... not particularly outstanding the final will have good ones #I know they can't have a vocal heavy song bc there are Not that many Vocals left #but like. just a good song that's all I ask #I actually liked a couple of songs last year? I think aside from right place they were at least decent #right place was a mess and a half like idk what the hell happened with that #and then I remember not loving the song nene's group had but honestly 90% of that was that someone was out of tune #and their guest really wanted to sing but... he could not #idk I thought jade was good this year but other than that I didn't really care for the songs... adventure sort of #but like even nene couldn't make me like that vocal song I'm sorry I know I like ballads but I couldn't back it #but like... as long as the songs aren't worse than it's a bomb I guess I'll live #and as long as bo yuan is given the main vocal parts I NEED that man to be singing bc him and linmo are carrying rn #imagine this year is the one they give a vocal oriented song I'll 😭#still can't get over netizens complaining about how most of the top contestants aren't Singers like okay but YOU picked them #it's y'all fault we lost yu yang I don't want to HEAR it :|#*y'alls #we could have had him WE COULD HAVE HAD HIM #THE vocal THE singer THE talent but noooooooo #honestly tho... idk what fucking song he would have done for the 3rd round bc i don't think he suited any of them #like assuming he actually got free pick... I guess the one with nene? or maybe the other vocal one but I don't think that's his vibe #either way... I think he's too good for them

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divinegrey · 2 years

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SMOKE AND MIRRORS / vi x f!reader

POP ROCKS & PUNCHES, part 9

masterlist here

here's the long-awaited (not really) part nine to PR&P! enjoy, everyone! the series is in the final stages of completion and we're nearing the end (sort of)

prompt: smoke and mirrors, oil and water. what do you know now? the answer is more clear than you think it is.

words: 3509

warnings: canon typical cursing

God damn.

The bridge explosion did a number on you, but the grenade fucked up your shield to hell and back. It’d be worthless to fix it with no tools and nothing to repair it, but hell, you’re going to try.

You break off a piece of bent metal from the shield. The mechanism barely functions and you’d be surprised if there’s anything left to salvage from the actual shield itself. It’d done the job of absorbing the grenade’s impact, and frankly, that’s simply a testament to the metal of the shield itself.

“Here you go, sweetheart.”

Mr. Kiramman appears on the balcony, placing a plate of hot food in front of you. Your first gut instinct is to push it away and reject it— why would you trust someone from Piltover? The rational part of you kicks your brain; this is Caitlyn’s dad. If he’s anything like Caitlyn, then you can extend a little bit of trust, right?

“Thank you, Mr. Kiramman,” you say, putting your shield and gauntlet aside. You clear your throat. “And thank you for patching me up last night. I’m— I’m sure that having not one, but two Zaunites show up in your house isn’t the greatest.”

“Nonsense, it was the least I could do. And call me Tobias. I’m not as formal as my wife,” Tobias says with a gentle, fatherly smile that reminds you a little too much of someone you used to know. Tobias takes a seat at the chair adjacent to your own. “The moment Caitlyn heard your voice, she demanded that I bring you inside and help you.”

“She’s good at doing that, isn’t she?” You joke, causing Tobias to laugh in agreement. You take the fork and start eating the food and it melts in your mouth. You chew, then swallow. “I’ll pay you back, somehow. Your kindness won’t be forgotten.”

He leans over and puts a hand on your knee. “You kept my Caitlyn safe. That’s more than enough payment for a lifetime, Rocky.”

You’re tempted to tell him about the time Caitlyn saved your ass from Sevika, but you’re sure he’s already had enough stress as of late. Caitlyn can protect herself, but a part of you is glad that you and Vi were there to help her navigate the Undercity, even if it did lead you three to where you are now.

In a couple of hours, you, Caitlyn, and Vi will be approaching the Council to make a case. It’s a terrifying thought— of all people, you never thought it’d be you to make a stand against the leading clans of Piltover. In fact, you never thought you’d be inside of a Councilor’s house at all.

“Well, I’ll leave you be now,” Tobias says. As he stands, he snaps his fingers and puts a hand on his hip. “Does your bandage need changing?”

“No, I did it when I woke up, thank you though.”

“Alright. Caitlyn will come and get you when it’s time to leave, then,” Tobias says. He swiftly exits the balcony and you turn back to your shield gauntlet.

It’s wrecked, there’s no doubt about that. You’d need a shit ton of scrap metal and tools you’re positive the Kiramman’s don’t have to fix it. You can try and get the folding mechanism to work again so you can carry it with you, but even then, it’ll still be nonfunctioning. For now, you just shovel the rest of the breakfast into your mouth and set it aside. You can at least attempt to get the mechanism functioning before leaving.

Mindlessly, you begin humming a song, whispering the lyrics under your breath.

“Dear friend across the river, my hands are cold and bare,” you sing softly, wrenching a few wires out of place. “Dear friend across the river, I’ll take what you can spare. I ask of you a penny… my fortune it will be.”

It’s a song you could never forget. One of those things ingrained in your brain from years of whispering the lyrics into Powder’s ear at night when she snuggled close to you with her stuffed bunny in her arms. Sometimes, Vi would snuggle with you two— a lump of three skinny bodies clumped together for warmth. Both of them would insist you had the better singing voice.

Your throat bobs with a heavy swallow.

Footsteps come from behind you. You don’t even need to turn your head to know that it’s Vi. From behind, she wraps her arms around you, leaning down to place a healthy smattering of kisses on your cheek and jaw. The smile that comes to your face is giddy, and for a brief moment in time, you forget everything else other than Vi.

She sits down on the other side of the couch beside you on the balcony. The air is crisp, ripe with the early morning breeze filtering through. Your hair is, admittedly, still a bit damp from last night’s shenanigans that bring a blush to your face. Vi watches you tinker with your gauntlet for a few moments, then pulls out two freshly washed strips of cloth.

The springs of the mechanism retract, folding the remains of the Sentinel shield back into the gauntlet.

“Fucking finally,” you say, putting the tech down.

“I don’t know how the fuck you just did that,” Vi says, a brow raising. “But it was kinda hot.”

“Shut it,” you remark. You turn your body and hold out your hands. “May I?”

“Sure,” Vi says softly. “You remember how to do this?”

“How could I forget?” you reply with a raised brow. “Start at the wrist to protect the hand.” You move the cloth seamlessly over her skin. “Then once you’ve got enough there, wrap the knuckles, starting at the pinky.” You smooth out any and all wrinkles as you wind the cloth around Vi’s hands, desperately trying to banish the thoughts of those fingers inside of you last night. “Wrap the hand again to secure it, then come down to the wrist.”

When you tie the end neatly, you find that Vi isn’t looking at her hand, she’s looking at you. It’s the kind of look that makes your insides start to melt, all ooey-gooey and ridiculous. Younger you would absolutely be rioting if she knew that Vi would ever admire you like this. You just smile and wrap Vi’s other hand before you get any more distracted.

“Hey, Rocky?”

“Hm?”

Vi exhales. “Are we… dating? Or are we still just friends?”

You finish the second arm wrap. With them on, Vi’s confidence visibly shifts. She looks more assured, stronger posture and hardened eyes. To that, you say, “If you want to be my girlfriend, then I would be more than ecstatic. If not, then that’s okay too. Having you here is enough, Vi.”

Vi’s eyes on you are nothing short of warm. She leans forward and presses her lips to yours. There’s a mintiness to her breath— she must've brushed her teeth— and you smile into the kiss, your heart full of wonder because this woman has you by the throat and you don’t even think she knows it. The answer goes unsaid, Vi’s physical nature taking the lead and making your chest giddy.

“It’s about time.”

You pull away and look over your shoulder to see Caitlyn in the doorway, arms folded over her chest. There’s an obvious smile on her face.

“So are you two together, or are we still playing oblivious to our feelings?” Caitlyn steps onto the balcony, sitting down on the chair that Tobias sat in.

“We’re girlfriends,” Vi says and she’s never sounded so damn assured in her life. You’re sure that the look on your face betrays absolutely everything because Caitlyn is laughing. Vi sneaks her hand into yours, and though the air soon becomes filled with chatter about the game plan of the Council, you feel calm. Grounded.

You have a feeling that it’s because of the woman next to you.

***

The Council Chamber is even more daunting in person. Caitlyn takes the lead, walking in front of you and Vi. She’s in her Enforcer regalia, shoulders squared back and her chin held high. On the other hand, you’re wearing your mended pants and the only shirt from Caitlyn’s closet that wasn’t ridiculously frilly or expensive, considering your former clothes were blown to smithereens.

“Councilors,” Cassandra Kiramman says, holding her hand to the door. “My daughter has a unique insight into our situation.”

“Thank you,” Caitlyn says primly, standing tall. You share a glance with Vi behind Caitlyn and the slightest purse of her lips tells you that this is our only chance. Caitlyn clears her throat. “Councilors, this is Vi, born in the Undercity—” she gestures to the pink-haired woman, “— and Rocky, a migrant from Noxus who lives in the Undercity.”

How the hell did she get that right? Regardless, you take a small step forward to show yourself. You’re putting everything you have on the table right now— if anyone in this room is smart, they’ll make the connection. If they even care to know who Pop Rocks is at all. When you survey the table, you catch the eye of Councilor Medarda. She’s staring at you with some intrigue in her hazel, gold-flecked eyes.

“Even though we failed them in countless ways, Vi and Rocky risked everything to show me what life is truly like in the Undercity,” Caitlyn continues, the eloquence of her words and speech passing over the room like warm water. “People are starving, sick, ravaged by Shimmer. They live in constant fear of the coordinated efforts of violent crime lords. One man leads these efforts— Silco.”

The room is sent into a squabble, the Councilors speaking out of turn and out of place as the finger has been pointed to Silco. You watch with an annoyed eye roll because how do these people ever get anything done if they’re constantly arguing.

“We’ve done investigations of Silco,” a councilor pipes up.

“And who led these investigations?” Caitlyn replies with a sharp eyebrow raised. The answer hangs in the air.

“And what does this Silco even want from us?” Another Councilor asks. You step forward.

“Silco wants independence from Piltover. He calls the Undercity the Nation of Zaun,” you say, much to the displeasure of the Councilors. To your surprise, none of them say a damn thing against you, just staring at each other with wide, confused eyes.

A man speaks up— Jayce Talis, the Man of Progress himself. He holds up an extremely familiar looking grenade in his hands, but you see the wires have been cut. It’s disarmed; a small sigh slips through your mouth. He asks, “What about these? Do you know who made them?”

For the first time in a little while, Caitlyn looks caught off guard by the question.

“Her name is Jinx,” Vi says, speaking up for the first time since you all walked inside.

“This… Jinx has the gemstone?” Jayce continues, eyebrows raised.

“She does,” you answer. “We fought briefly and she had it.”

Jayce puts the grenade down on the table in front of him. “Then we have to go in by force.”

Councilor Medarda says with ire in her eyes, “That could trigger war.”

You know a Noxian accent when you hear it.

“There are good people down there,” Caitlyn argues.

A Councilor in red clothes scoffs. “And bad people.”

Beside you, Vi starts shifting restlessly. Her hands are clenching and unclenching and you make the immediate decision to grab one, intertwining your fingers and squeezing the tension out of the muscles in her knuckles. Only then does she seem to relax, but only by a fraction.

“Even if we wanted to invade, they have Shimmer,” a robotic Councilor says, raising their fist and curling it.

Jayce frowns. “We have Hextech.”

Caitlyn looks absolutely appalled by Jayce’s words as if she’s staring at someone she doesn’t even know. She told you this morning of her close friendship with Jayce, but right now, it isn’t looking close at all. “What happened to you?”

“We’ve been talking about talking for weeks now, they are still cleaning blood off the bridge,” Jayce says. If only he knew, you think to yourself, flashes of the fight replaying in your mind. It’s Vi’s turn to reassure you, tapping her thumb on your knuckles to bring you out of your mind. Jayce continues, standing straight. “When do we say enough is enough?”

Councilor Medarda puts her hands on the table, nearly glowering at the Man of Progress. “Jayce, you don’t know war. I do. It must be our last resort. There may be a diplomatic solution.”

The Councilors start talking again, voices clattering over each other as fingers are pointed and words are thrown left and right. You’re starting to get a headache from all of this, and when you turn to look at Vi, you can practically see the steam coming out of her ears. Her shoulders are pulled back and down, the veins in her arms flexed and her jaw set.

“This is insane!” Vi shouts. The whole room goes silent, turning to look at the Zaunite. She pulls away from you, stepping towards the center of the room. “Did you learn nothing? You can’t talk to Silco! He hates you. All of you! Everything you stand for! He will never back down.”

You walk past Caitlyn. “She’s right. Vi was put in Stillwater for six years because of your former Sheriff, but in the span of a few days, she’d seen every inch of the hell that Silco has made the Undercity because of Piltover’s need to keep them choked down. I’ve lived there for my entire life. My lungs have breathed their fair share of toxic fumes and until Silco gets the freedom he wants from you… he won’t stop. He will keep killing anyone to get what he wants, including his own people.”

Your words combined with Vi’s vitriol is enough to have all of the Councilors speechless. The room is dead silent, your shoulder side by side with Vi’s, and you feel her fingers tap your wrist. The truth hangs over everyone’s head like a knife, poised and ready to fall.

You’re not sure who says it.

“Enforcers, please escort them out.”

You should’ve known the Council never would’ve listened. They never listen to anyone but themselves. With a sharp huff through your nose, you turn around. Vi waves her hand at them dismissively, gritting out, “Forget it. We remember where your fancy damn door is.”

It’s pouring when you both reach the outside, and the coldness of the water does well to cool the heat roiling beneath your skin. You’re pissed, just like Vi.

“Nothing’s ever gonna change, is it?” Vi asks, the water soaking the strands of her hair and turning them a dark hue of pink. You feel the droplets sliding over your skin, a few of them going into your mouth.

Even the rain up here is better than it is in Zaun.

“Not unless the entire world burns to ashes,” you say. You keep walking down the street.

Streetlights overhead illuminate the way. It doesn’t come as a surprise when Vi grabs your hand. You’re all you have left of your former life. With every second that ticks by, hopelessness creeps into your body. You recall the last time you felt like this— the empty hole of dread in your chest.

It was when you were crumpled in the alleyway, bleeding out from a wound given to you by someone you never thought capable of such bloodshed. The knot in your throat makes it hard to breathe and you don’t even realize you’re crying because of the rain pelting your shoulders and causing goosebumps on your skin. You cling tighter to Vi and it goes without saying that you’d be a wreck without her here.

She’s quiet.

You lean into her.

“Any ideas?” You ask softly.

“N—”

“Rocky! Vi! There you are!” The sound of Caitlyn’s voice sends you both on guard, faces neutralizing as you turn to see the Enforcer running down the street towards her, rain soaking her clothes and smearing her inky blue hair to her face. “Where are you going?”

“I don’t know,” Vi says, her words hostile. “Back where we came from.”

“Probably what everyone in that room wants us to do, right?” You say, licking your teeth and exhaling.

“I can fix this,” Caitlyn pleads, taking a step toward you two. The genuineness is there behind her eyes— you know it’s true. There isn’t a part of her that isn’t kind. She’s got a heart of gold.

Too little too late, though.

“You don’t get it, Cupcake. This is how things are. How they always will be,” Vi says, turning to look at Caitlyn with her brows pulled together. For a moment, her resolve flickers. “I was so stupid to think it could change.”

“Zaunites are stubborn, just like their city,” you say, trying to ease some of the tension out of the air. You point to the Council Chamber. “It’s going to take them being in agreement in order for anything to change. That many people can’t agree on one thing— it’s why Zaun functions with one leader, even if he is the dirt underneath our boots.” You swallow. “Some of us aren’t much better than him.”

Caitlyn frowns. “We— we can come up with another plan, there has to be another way. We have to try, right?”

“We tried, okay?” Vi exhales. “We had Rocky, we had Ekko and the Firelights. We had some of the best fighters on our side down there and it still wasn’t enough. Topside and bottom. Oil and water. That’s all there is.”

The silence is thick.

“But…” Caitlyn looks down at the ground. She blinks. Her face hardens for all but a second before it crumbles. “What about us? We— we work so well together, don’t we?”

“Oil and water,” Vi says again. “Wasn’t meant to be.”

“Well, technically, oil and water can mix,” you chip in. They both look at you. “You just need an emulsifier, which will help the two liquids mix—”

“Rocky.” Vi’s voice is exasperated.

“Right, sorry.”

Vi doesn’t look too annoyed at you ruining her metaphor, which is a good sign. She glances at Caitlyn but looks far too pained to even do it for more than two seconds. “You tried, Cupcake. Can’t fix what's been broken for years.”

Vi turns and starts walking away. Intrinsically, you know you need to follow, but god damn it. You look at Caitlyn and put your hand on her arm.

“She’s right. You did try, but sometimes… these kinds of things are too big to take on by yourself,” you say gently. “I’ve been trying for years.”

You drop her arm before she can move, walking backward. The way her face sits in an expression of pain breaks your heart, but you won’t ever be a Piltovan. Your allegiances lay with your home. Your home isn’t Zaun. It’s Vi. You know that for a fact. You make a small salute, then turn around to follow Vi, leaving Caitlyn Kiramman in the rain.

You don’t stop walking until you start nearing the bridge.

Vi stares at it.

“Did you hurt her?”

“No,” you answer truthfully. “Ekko almost had her. She tried detonating a grenade on us. I used my shield to cover it and blew myself off the bridge.”

“Shit,” Vi says. She pushes her hair back. “Shit, Rocky, I should’ve stayed with you.”

You put your hand on her cheek. “We hashed this out already. What happened can’t be changed. We’re still here, together. That’s what matters. I love you, okay?”

Vi stares at you for some time, soaking the words in like the rain pelting her shoulders. Finally, she nods. She leans down, sliding her hands around your waist and pressing her lips to yours. Despite the coldness of the water soaking your clothes and skin through, her body is warm. You dreamed of a moment like this, kissing the person you love in the rain. Kid-you would be giddy to know that it’s Vi kissing you like this. Tender. Soft.

Everything she feels she isn’t.

You slide your hands into her hair, holding her close as the rains rage on.

You’ve never met a woman like her in your life.

You’re not a huge believer in fate and love at first sight, but you realize that it wasn’t love at first sight a few days ago. It was when you first met her. A special kind of love, harbored for individuals who grow close together as they grow up themselves. A special kind of love that didn’t flicker out when you were torn from her.

“I love you too,” Vi whispers into your mouth. You smile and peck her lips. Vi opens her eyes and you’re looking into pools of grey. “I have an idea.”

“I’m all ears.”

~~~~~

A/N: looks like there's gonna be 4 more parts left to the series! that's including the epilogue, but things might change

#vi x reader #arcane vi x reader #vi x you #arcane vi #vi #arcane vi imagines #arcane imagines #arcane netflix #arcane #pop rocks & punches

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pumpkinpaix · 3 years

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Pleeeeeeease get into the class one at some point because I very much want to understand the class dynamics happening in the story but I have yet to find a meta that dives into it

god anon you want me dead don’t you alsjdfljks

referring to this post

okay, so -- my specific salt about class interpretations in mdzs are very targeted. I can’t pretend to have a deep understanding of how class works in mdzs generally because uhhhhh yeah i don’t think i have that. i’m just not familiar enough with the genre and/or the particulars of chinese class systems. but! i can talk in general terms as to why I feel a certain way about the class dynamics that I do think I understand and how I think they relate to the themes of the novel! i’m gonna talk about wei wuxian, the daozhangs, xue yang, and 3zun with, I’m sure, a bunch of digressions along the way.

the usual disclaimers: i do not think you are a bad person if you hold opinions contrary to my own. i may disagree with you very strongly, but like. this isn’t a moral judgment, fandom is transformative and interpretive etc. etc. and i may change my mind. who knows what the future will bring!

OKAY so let’s begin!

here’s the thing about wei wuxian: he’s not poor. I think because characters use “son of a servant” kind of often when they’re trying to insult him, a lot of people latch onto that and think that it’s a much stronger indication of his societal status than it actually is. iirc, most of the insults that fall along the “son of a servant” line come after wei wuxian starts breaking severely from tradition. it’s a convenient thing to attack him for, but doesn’t actually indicate anything about his wealth. (exception: yu ziyuan, but that’s a personal familial issue) this is in direct contrast to jin guangyao who is constantly mocked for his family line, publicly and privately, no matter what he does.

so this, coupled with all the jokes about wwx never having any money (wei wuqian, sizhui’s “i’ve long since known you had no money” etc.), plus his like, rough years on the street as a child ends up producing this interpretation of wei wuxian, especially in modern aus, as someone who is very class conscious and “eat the rich”. but the fact of the matter is, wei wuxian IS rich. aside from the years in his childhood and the last two years of his life in yiling, like -- wei wuxian had money and status. he is gentry. he is respected as gentry. he is treated as a son by the sect leader of yunmeng jiang -- he does not have the jiang name, but it is so very clear that jiang fengmian favors him. wei wuxian is ranked fourth of all the eligible young masters in the cultivation world -- that is not a ranking he could have attained without being accepted into the upper class.

wei wuxian’s poverty does not affect him in the way that it affects jin guangyao or xue yang. he is of low-ish birth (still the son of jiang fengmian’s right hand man though! ok sure, “son of a servant” but like. >_> whatever anyways), but for most of his life he had money. he, jiang cheng, and their sect brothers go into town and steal lotus pods with the understanding that “jiang-shushu will pay for it”. this is a regular thing! that’s fucking rich kid behavior!!! wei wuxian is careless with money because he doesn’t have to worry about it. he still has almost all the benefits of being upper class: education, food security, respect, recognition etc. I think there may also be a misconception that wei wuxian was always on the verge of being kicked out by yu ziyuan, or that he was constantly walking on eggshells around her for fear of being disowned, but that is just textually untrue. i could provide receipts, but I admittedly don’t really feel like digging them up just now ;;

even in his last years in yiling, he was not the one who was dealing with the acute knowledge of poverty: wen qing is the one managing the money, and as far as we know, wei wuxian did little to no management of daily life during the burial mounds days -- mostly, he’s described as hiding in his cave for days on end, working on his inventions, running around like a force of chaos, frivolously making a mess of things -- it’s very very cute that he buries a’yuan in the dirt, but in classic wei wuxian fashion, he did Not think about the practical consequences of it -- that A’Yuan has no other clean clothes, and now he’s gotten this set dirty and has no intention of washing them. is this a personality thing? yeah, but I think it’s also indicative of his lack of concern over the logistics of everyday survival, re: wealth.

furthermore, i think it is important to remember that wei wuxian, when he is protecting the wen remnants, is not protecting common folk: he is still protecting gentry. fallen gentry, yes! but gentry nonetheless. wen qing was favored by wen ruohan, and wen ning himself says that he has a retinue of people under his command (the remnants, essentially). their branch of the family do not have the experience of living and growing in poverty -- they are impoverished and persecuted in their last years, but that’s a very different thing from being impoverished your whole life. (sidenote: I do not believe wei wuxian’s primary motivation for defending the wen remnants was justice -- i believe he did it because he felt he owed wen ning and wen qing a life debt, and once he was there, he wasn’t going to stand around and let the work camps go on. yes, he is concerned about justice and doing the right thing, but that’s not why he went in the first place. anyways, that’s another meta)

after wei wuxian returns, he then marries back into gentry, and very wealthy gentry at that. lwj provides him all the money he could ever want, he is never worried about going homeless, starving, being denied opportunities based on his class and accompanying disadvantages. who would dare? and neither wei wuxian nor lan wangji seem to have much interest in shaking up the order of things, except in little things like the way they teach the juniors. they live in gusu, under the auspices of the lan, and they live a happy, domestic life.

were his years on the street traumatizing? yes, of course they were, there’s so much delicious character exploration to be done re: wei wuxian’s relationship to food, his relationship to his own needs, and his relationship to the people he loves. it’s all important and good! but I feel very strongly that that experience, while it was formative for him, did not impart any true understanding of poverty and the common person’s everyday struggles, nor do I think he ever really gains that understanding. he is observant and canny and aware of class and blood, certainly, but not in a way that makes it his primary hill to die on (badum-tss).

this is in very stark contrast to characters like jin guangyao and xue yang, and to some extent, xiao xingchen and song lan. I’ll start with the daozhangs, because I think they’re the simplest (??).

I think both xiao xingchen and song lan have class consciousness, but in a very simplified, broad-strokes kind of way (at least, given the information we know about them). we know that the two of them share similar values and want to one day form their own sect that gives no weight to the nobility of your lineage and has no concern with your wealth. we also know that they both disdain intersect politics and are more concerned with ideals and principles rather than status. but, I think because of that, this actually somewhat limits their perception and understanding of how status is used to oppress. as far as we know, neither of them participated on any side in sunshot and they demonstrate much more interest in relating to the commoners. honestly, i hc that they were flitting around trying to help decimated towns, protecting defenseless villages etc. I ALSO think this has a lot of interesting potential in terms of xiao xingchen and wei wuxian’s relationship, if xiao xingchen is ever revived. regardless of whether you’re in CQL or novel verse, xiao xingchen really doesn’t know wei wuxian at all, other than knowing that he’s his shijie’s son. he knows that cangse-sanren met with a tragic end, like yanling-daoren before her, and that he wants to be different. but here is cangse-sanren’s son, laying waste to entire cities, desecrating the dead. I would very much like to get into xiao xingchen’s head during that period of time (and i think, if i do it right, i can write some of it into the songxiao fixit), but that’s neither here nor there, because i’ve wandered off from my point again.

i would posit that song lan is used to an ascetic lifestyle, and xiao xingchen probably is too -- but that’s different from poverty because there’s an element of choice to it. I also think that neither of them is particularly worldly, xiao xingchen especially. he lived on an isolated mountain until he was like, seventeen, and he came down full of ideals and naivete about how the world worked. I think that both of them see inequality, that they are angered by it, and that they want to do something about it -- but their solution is neither to topple the sects, nor is it to reform the system. rather, it seems to be more about withdrawing and creating their own removed world. I think that the daozhangs embody a kind of utopianism that isn’t present in the minds of any of the other characters, not even wangxian. honestly, baoshan-sanren’s mountain is a utopian ideal, but one that is not described. it exists outside of and beyond the world. i have a lot of jumbled, vague thoughts about utopianism generally, mostly informed by china miéville and ursula k. le guin, and I don’t think i have the ability to articulate them here, but i wanted to. hm. say something? there is something about the inherent dystopianism contained within every utopia, that utopias are necessary, but also reflections of the existence of terrible things in their conception. idk. there’s something in there, I know it!! but i suppose what I want to say is -- i do not think the daozhangs understand class and social hierarchy very deeply because they don’t see a need to examine it deeply. for their goals, the details aren’t the point. they’re not looking to reform within the system, they’re looking to build something outside of it. I think they spend a lot of time concerned with alleviating the symptoms of social oppression, and their values reflect the injustices they witness there.

regardless, even if their story ends in tragedy and there is a certain amount of critique re: the utopian approach, i think the text still emphasizes that xiao xingchen left a utopia and that he thought that people mattered enough for him to try, and that was an incredibly honorable, kind, and human thing to do.

YEAH SURE THE DAOZHANGS ARE THE SIMPLEST ok ok RETURNING to class and moving forward: xue yang.

i also don’t think xue yang has class consciousness lol, or not in any way that really matters, but I do think poverty impacted him in a much stronger way than it impacted wei wuxian. wei wuxian spent some years on the street as a child. xue yang grew up on the streets. chang ci’an’s horrific treatment of him was directly due to his class and social standing: chang ci’an is a nobleman and xue yang is not even worth the dirt beneath the wheels of his cart. what I think is the seminal point though, is that this does not make xue yang think particularly deeply about systemic injustice, because xue yang is so self-centered, self-driven, and individualistic. he is not even slightly concerned about how poverty and class might affect other people -- they’re other people. what he takes away from his experience is not an anger at being wrongfully cheated by a system, but an anger at being wrongfully cheated by a specific man.

xue yang is not particularly concerned with the politics of the aristocracy -- he has no obvious ambitions other than, “i want to eat sweets whenever i please”, “i want to hurt anyone who wrongs me”, and “i want to be so strong that no one can hurt me”. like, he just doesn’t care -- it’s not the kind of power he wants. he sneers at people for like, personal reasons, not class reasons -- “you think you’re better than me” re: xiao xingchen and song lan. to him, all people -- poor, wealthy, noble, common -- are essentially equal, and they are all beneath him. after all, what does he care what family someone comes from, how much money they have? everyone bleeds when you cut them. some of them might be harder to get to than others, but xue yang does not fear that sort of thing. it’s just another obstacle he needs to vault on his way to getting revenge and/or a pastry.

ANYWAYS onto jin guangyao (wow this is hm. getting rather long ahaha oh dear): I would argue that the two characters with the most acute understanding of class/societal politics and the injustice of them are jin guangyao and lan xichen. i’ll start with jin guangyao for obvious reasons.

where xue yang took the damaging effects of poverty as personal slights, I think jin guangyao is painfully aware that there is nothing personal about them, which is, in some ways, much worse. why are two sons, born on the same day to the same father, treated so differently? just because.

he watched his mother struggle and starve and work herself to the bone in a profession where she was constantly disrespected and abused for almost nothing in return, while his father could have lifted her out of poverty with the wave of a finger. why didn’t he? because he didn’t like her? no -- because he didn’t care, and the structures of the society they live in protect that kind of blase treatment of the lower class.

“so my mother couldn’t choose her own fate, is that her fault?” jin guangyao demands. he knows that he is unbelievably talented, that he has ambition, that he has potential, and that all of it is beyond his grasp just because his father didn’t want to bother with it. his mother’s life was destroyed, and his own opportunities were crippled with that negligence. it isn’t personal. that’s just the way things are. your individual identity is meaningless, your humanity does not exist. when he’s kicked down the steps of jinlin tai, it’s just more confirmation that no matter how talented or hardworking he is, no one will give him the time of day unless he finds a way to take it himself and become someone who “matters”.

jin guangyao’s cultivation is weak because he had a poor foundation, and he had a poor foundation because he was denied access to a good one. he copies others because that’s all he can do at this point, and he copies so well that he can hold his own against some of the strongest cultivators of his generation. he’s disparaged for copying and “stealing” techniques, but -- he never would have had to if only he had been born/accepted into the upper class. the fact is that i really do think jin guangyao was the most promising cultivator of his generation that we meet, including the twin jades and wei wuxian: he had natural talent, ambition, creativity, determination and cunning in spades. in some ways, I think that’s one of the overlooked tragedies of jin guangyao: the loss of not just the good man he could have been, but the powerful one too. imagine what he could have done.

jin guangyao spends his entire time in the world of the aristocracy feeling unsteady and terrified because he knows exactly how precarious his position is. he knows how easy it is to lose power, especially for someone like him. he’s working against so many disadvantages, and every scrap of honor he gets is a vicious battle. jin guangyao fears, and I think that’s something that’s lacking in xue yang, wei wuxian and the daozhangs’ experiences/understandings of poverty. i think it’s precisely that fear that emphasizes jin guangyao’s understanding of class and blood. jin guangyao exhibits an anxiety that neither wei wuxian nor xue yang do, and it’s because he truly knows how little he is worth in the eyes of society and how little there is he can do to change that. to me, it very much feels related to the anxiety of not knowing if tomorrow you’ll have something to eat, if tomorrow you’ll still have a home, if tomorrow someone will destroy you and never have to answer for it. it’s the anxiety of knowing helplessness intimately.

moreover, jin guangyao is the only person shown to use the wealth and power at his disposal to take concrete steps to actually help the common people typically ignored by the powerful -- the watchtowers. they’re described in chapter 42. it’s a system that is designed to cover remote areas that most cultivators are reluctant to go due to their inconvenience and the lack of means of the people who live there. the watchtowers assign cultivators to different posts, give aid to those previously forgotten, and if the people are too poor to pay what the cultivators demand, the lanling jin sect pays for it. jin guangyao worked on this for five years and burned a lot of bridges over it. people were strongly opposed to it, thinking that it was some kind of ploy for lanling jin’s personal benefit. but the thing is -- it worked. they were effective. people were helped.

i believe CQL frames the watchtowers as an allegory for a surveillance state/centralized control (i think?? it’s been a minute -- that’s the hazy impression i remember, something like a parallel to the wen supervisory offices?), but I personally don’t think that was the intent in the novel. the watchtowers are a public good. lanling jin doesn’t staff them with their own sect members -- they get nearby sects to staff them. it’s a warning network that they fund that’s supposed to benefit everyone, even those that everyone had considered expendable.

(did jin guangyao do terrible things to achieve this goal? yeah lol. it’s not confirmed, but his son sure did die... suspiciously...... at the hands of an outspoken critic of the watchtowers........ whom he then executed....... so like, maybe just a convenient coincidence for jin guangyao, two birds one stone, but. it seems. Unlikely.)

lan xichen is the only member of the gentry that ever shows serious compassion for and nuanced understanding of jin guangyao’s circumstances. lan xichen treats him as his equal regardless of jin guangyao’s current status -- even when he was meng yao, lan xichen treated him as a human being worthy of respect, as someone with great merits, as someone he would choose as a friend, but he did so knowing full well the delicate position meng yao occupied. this is in direct contrast to nie mingjue, who also believed that meng yao was worthy of respect as a human being, but was completely unable to comprehend the complexities of his circumstances and unwilling to grant him any grace. you know, the difference between “i acknowledge that your birth and status have had effects upon you, but I don’t think less of you for it” and “i don’t consider your birth and status at all when i interact with you because i think it is irrelevant” (“i don’t see color” anyone?)

to illustrate, from chapter 48:

大抵是觉得娼妓之子身上说不定也带着什么不干净的东西，这几名修士接过他双手奉上来的茶盏后，并不饮下，而是放到一边，还取出雪白的手巾，很难受似的，有意无意反复擦拭刚才碰过茶盏的手指。聂明玦并非细致之人，未曾注意到这种细节，魏无羡却用眼角余光扫到了这些。孟瑶视若未见，笑容不坠半分，继续奉茶。蓝曦臣接过茶盏之时，抬眸看他一眼，微笑道：“多谢。”

旋即低头饮了一口，这才继续与聂明玦交谈。旁的修士见了，有些不自在起来。

rough tl:

Probably because they believed that the son of a prostitute might also carry some unclean things upon his person, after these few cultivators took the teacups offered from [Meng Yao’s] two hands, they did not drink, but instead put them to one side, and furthermore brought out snow white handkerchiefs. Quite uncomfortably, and whether they were aware of it or not, they repeatedly wiped the fingers they had just used to touch the teacups. Nie Mingjue was not a detail-oriented person and never took note of such particulars, but Wei Wuxian caught these in the corner of his eye. Meng Yao appeared as if he had not seen, his smile unwavering in the slightest, and continued to serve tea. When Lan Xichen took the teacup, he glanced up at him and, smiling, said, “Thank you.”

He immediately dipped his head to take a sip, and only then continued to converse with Nie Mingjue. Seeing this, the nearby cultivators began to feel somewhat uneasy.

all right, since we’re in full cyan-rampaging-through-the-weeds mode at this point, i’m going to talk about how this is one of my favorite 3zun moments in the entire novel for characterization purposes because it really highlights how they all relate to one another, and to what degree each of them is aware of their own position in relation to the others and society as a whole.

1. nie mingjue, who is a forthright and blunt person, sets meng yao to serving tea and is done with it. he notices nothing wrong or inappropriate about the reactions of the people in the room because it’s not the sort of thing he considers important.

2. meng yao, knowing that his only avenue is to take it lying down with a smile, masks perfectly.

3. lan xichen, noticing all this, uses his own reputation to achieve two things at once: pointedly shame the other cultivators in attendance, and show meng yao that regardless of others’ opinions, he considers him an equal and does not endorse such behavior--and he does it while taking care that no fallout will come down on meng yao’s head.

is this yet another installment of cyan’s endless lxc defense thesis? why yes it is! no one is surprised! but this is my whole point: both meng yao and lan xichen understand the respective hierarchy and power dynamics within the room, while nie mingjue very much does not. this is not because nie mingjue is a bad person or because nie mingjue is stupid--it’s a combination of personality and upbringing. nie mingjue is straightforward and has no patience for such games. but then again, he can afford not to play because he was born into such a high position: that’s a privilege.

to break it down: meng yao knows that he is the lowest-ranked person in the room, sees the way people are subtly disrespecting him in full view of his general who is doing nothing about it. in some ways, this is good -- nie mingjue’s style of dealing with conflict is very direct and not at all suited to delicate political maneuvering. after all, the way he promoted meng yao was actually quite dangerous to meng yao: he essentially guaranteed that his men would bear meng yao a grudge and that their disrespect for him would only be compounded by their bitterness at being punished on his behalf. (it’s like, why often getting parents or teachers to intervene ineffectively in bullying can just be an incitement to more bullying -- same concept) meng yao’s reaction during that scene shows that he’s pretty painfully aware of this and is trying to defuse the situation to no avail. nie mingjue gives him a bootstrap speech (rip nie mingjue i love u so much but. sir) and then promotes him, which is pretty much the only saving grace of that entire exchange, for meng yao at least.

lan xichen, on the other hand, understands both that meng yao is the lowest-ranked person in the room and that any direct attempt to chastise the other cultivators in the room will only serve to hurt meng yao in the long run. he knows that if this were brought to nie mingjue’s attention, he would be outraged and not shy about it -- also bad for meng yao. so he uses what he has: his immaculate reputation. by acting contrary to the other cultivators’ behavior, he demonstrates that he finds their actions unacceptable but with the plausible deniability that it wasn’t directed at them, that this is just zewu-jun being his usual generous self. this means that the other cultivators have no one to blame but themselves, nothing to do but question their own actions. there is nowhere to cast off their discomfort. meng yao didn’t do anything. lan xichen didn’t do anything -- he just thanked meng yao and drank his tea, isn’t that what it’s there for? he doesn’t disrupt the peace, he doesn’t attack anyone and put them on the defensive, but he does make his position very clear.

i know this is a really small thing and i’m probably beating it to death, but I really think this shows just how cognizant lan xichen is of politics and emotional cause and effect in such situations. certainly, out of context I think the scene reads kind of cliche, but within the greater narrative of the story and within the arc of these characters specifically, I think it was a really smart scene to include. it also showcases lan xichen’s style of action: that he moves around and with a problematic situation as opposed to moving straight through.

not to be salty on main again, but this is why it’s very frustrating to me when I see people call lan xichen passive when he is anything but. his actions just don’t look like traditional “actions”, especially to an american audience. it’s easy to understand lan wangji and wei wuxian’s style of problem-solving: taking a stand, moving through, staying strong. lan xichen is juggling an inconceivable number of factors in any given situation, weighing his responsibilities in one role against those in another, and then trying to find the path through the thicket that will cause the least harm, both to himself and the thicket. lan wangji and wei wuxian are not particularly good at considering the far-reaching consequences of their actions -- again, not because they are bad people, but because of a combination of personality and upbringing. they’d just hack through the thicket, not thinking about the creatures that live in it. that is not a terrible thing! it isn’t. it’s a different way of approaching a problem, and it has different priorities. that’s okay. there are advantages and disadvantages on both sides, and where you come down is going to depend on your personal values.

okay we’ve spiraled far and away from my original point, but let’s circle back: i was talking about class.

I think it’s undeniable that class, birthright, fate etc. are some of the driving forces of thematic conflict in mdzs, and the way each character interacts with those forces reveals a lot about themselves and also about the larger themes of fate, chance, and what it means to be righteous and good and how that is and isn’t rewarded. a lot of the tragedy of mdzs (the tragedy that isn’t caused by direct aggression on the part of one group or another) stems from the injustices and slights that people suffered due to their lot in life. it isn’t fair. none of it is fair! we sympathize with jin guangyao because we recognize that what he suffered was unconscionable, even if we don’t excuse him. i sympathize A Lot with xue yang as well for similar reasons, though I understand that’s a harder sell. this is a story focused on the mistakes of an entrenched, aging gentry and the effects that those mistakes had on their children, and a lot of it has to do with prejudice based in class and birth status. whether the prejudice was the true reason or whether it was just a convenient excuse, the fact remains that the systems in place rewarded and protected the people in power who used it to cling to that power. mdzs is also a story of how the circumstances of one’s life can offer you impossible choices that you cannot abstain from, and it asks us to be compassionate to the people who made terrible choices in terrible times. it’s about the inherent complexity in all things! that sometimes, there are no good choices, and i don’t know, i’d like to think that people would show me compassion if I had to make the choices some of these characters did. not just wei wuxian, mind you, every single one of them. except jin guangshan because I Do Hate Him sorry. and i guess wen ruohan. i think that’s it.

good. GOD this is clocking in at //checks notes -- just over 5k. 8′D *stuffs some weeds into my mouth like the clown i am*

(ko-fi? :’D *lies down*)

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ktheist · 3 years

Text

girls like you [don’t] run ‘round with guys like me | m

characters. popular!reader x shy!jimin

genre. college au. rich kids au. fwb au. eventual ceo au. eventual racer au.

words. 4k

warnings. 18+

note. this is a repost. tumblr messed up my exposure last time. this fic didn’t show up in search and it’s probably a third post of mine that ends up like this. this one probably won’t either but posting bc someone might see it and like it.

It’s easy to tell when Park Jimin is in love.

Unlike Kim Seokjin, his eccentric, dad joke-loving friend, Jimin would only wear the pastel pink when he’s feeling giggly and shy and mushy inside.

The source of said feelings being either the barista he goes to get his daily dose of coffee from, or the girl at the library he studies at during finals or well, right now it’s the girl he’s fucking almost every day of the week - you.

“What are you doing?” Seokjin looks at him like he just dumped a spoonful of salt in a broth that needs a little, teensy bit of sugar.

Or his face seems to say that as he goes on, “she’s a mean girl. She’s mean.”

Jimin isn’t sure if Seokjin’s aware that he’s just repeated the same thing twice.

“She calls you Chim!” The older man reiterates.

“Yeah, it’s…” Jimin trails off, the heartwarming image of you cuddling into him after yet another mindblowing sex, flashing at the back of his mind, “...her pet name for me.”

“Sounds to me like she can’t remember your actual name,” Min Yoongi interjects from the couch he’s claimed for himself ever since they got to their usual hangout.

It’s a penthouse Jimin’s parents bought him on his 18th birthday. Him and the boys would hang around there after they’re done with classes or just need a place to crash whenever they have problems with their girlfriends or boyfriends or parents or any sort of problem that renders their usual room not sleepable.

“I think we can just agree we have different wants,” Jeongguk - or the sanest of them all, as Jimin likes to call him - chirps in, taking a bite of the apple he got from the fridge.

“Exactly,” Jimin throws his hands up as if freed from his elder friends’ judge-filled eyes. The vibration of his phone in his lap gives him even more comfort to know that he finally has an excuse to slip away - he checks his phone, your name flashing in the bubble that says ‘hey, wyd?’

“I have to go, it’s ___.”

A series of groans and hollers equally erupts from the men in the room at the realization of what Jimin’s ‘having to go’ means.

And so it goes. Jimin finds himself under your blanket that smells like fresh laundry - it’s a nude green color compared to the pleated black and white from last time. Your head is on his chest and he’s caressing your hair like it’s the softest thing he’s ever laid his hands on.

Besides your boobs, that is.

“I was thinking… since we have Monday off… maybe we could-”

It’s the way you push yourself off him, eyes that are onto him gazing straight into his soul, “oh shoot, Monday’s a public holiday. I totally forgot! I have to meet my parents. My dad’s been nagging me to come back since I skipped Christmas and New Year.”

And there goes his chance to ask you out on a date.

“Oh yeah, what were you saying about Monday?”

Jimin wears the biggest fake smile he can muster, “just that… me and the boys are gonna hang out and we’re bringing our girlfriends and boyfriends and uh- doesn’t have to be someone you’re exclusively seeing,” he almost chokes at the almost-admittance that he has the fattest crush on you and wants to make it official by inviting you to a couple’s-only hang out, “but like, I don’t think I’m going, it’s boring anyway.”

He waves his hand dismissively, trying to play it cool.

You make a cooing sound, eyebrows knitting together as your lips pout cutely before a playful smile blooms on your face, “I know what you’re trying to say.”

“You do?” Jimin thinks he heard his heart dropping to his stomach.

“Yeah, you’re single and all the boys have someone special they’re gonna bring… it’s gonna be awkward as hell because they’re gonna act different because they’re around their special someone so you thought if I was there, it’d be more fun because at least you have a friend with you that’s not gonna act fake the whole time there but I can’t go so you decided you’re not going too like a minute ago.”

Silence lulls in after your analogy that you sound so sure of when, in fact, he has a whole list of things he’d do on the date which he may or may not have gone over a hundred times in his head.

Doesn’t matter now, since that date is a no-go.

He’s going to delete that list off his phone once he gets to his place and drink himself silly until he wipes it out of his mind.

“Yeah,” Jimin says a moment later, “yeah… I mean, girls in love are cute but boys in love are just… annoying.”

The week flies by without Jimin ever mentioning Monday and you’ve showed him the clothes you’re going to wear to visit your parents because apparently-

“It’s lunch at some five star Michelin restaurant and I think they’re gonna tell me they’re getting a divorce,” your voice drifts into the room from the open, walk-in closet.

“If they’re not in some long, dreadful battle on who gets the holiday house with the pool and the dogs - how do I look?” You step out, in a frilly creme sweater with a black ribbon tied around the collar of your white undershirt with a black pleated skirt that stops mid-thighs, just inches from your black stockings.

A glaring contrast to your collection of washed out skinny jeans, plain t-shirts and sneakers.

“You… look…” Jimin knows he should stop openly ogling at your never-before-seen drip but there’s just something about the creme colored sweater.

“Like a good girl?” You offer with a smile Jimin couldn’t quite put a name to. Somehow he notices a trace of sadness in your eyes, but you disappear into the closet too soon.

“I’ll think about what to wear the morning I need to wear it,” you’re in the middle of pulling off the sweater when Jimin comes up behind you, kissing your neck and grabbing your boobs like they’re his.

The sound of your giggle is music to his ears.

That is, until his boner brushes against your butt and you gasp, “Chim! We just did it.”

“I know but you look so cute in that sweater.” He sounds exactly like Jeongguk. Like a fuckboy.

Like one of the boys you got tired of before you finally noticed him, the quiet, shy guy who’s friends with the outgoing, baby-faced Jeon Jeongguk whom - Jimin hates to admit it but he thinks about this every once so often and gets jealous all on his own - you’ve humped and dumped.

How you and Jeongguk still manage to stay friends and tease each other about the other’s choice of partners, Jimin doesn’t know.

It’s like a twin calling the other ugly.

He wonders if you and him will still stay friends after…

Jimin pushes the thought out of his mind. It’s not hard to forget everything when he’s with you - when he’s kissing you on the mouth like you’re the only girl he’ll want to spend the rest of his college life with and maybe his old days with together too.

“Chim, I can’t get my shirt creased,” you say but you’re already dripping wet and laying down in said shirt that’s half ridden up from him sucking and biting on your nipples.

He stopped you when you tried to take off your clothes.

“I’ll wash it and iron it for you,” he negotiates just as he rolls the condom over his length.

The sound of your giggle makes his heart skip a beat. Or maybe that’s the libido?

Either way, your mouth clamps shut when he pulls you down against him by the dip of your waist.

A different kind of hymn leaves your lips as Jimin throws his head back, relishing in the feeling of you around him.

When Monday rolls around, Jimin’s lying on the bean bag with his two legs sprawled over the floor. The boys are all out with either their significant others, working part-time or at a party.

The worn out baseball Jimin’s been tossing in the air and catching with one hand finally hits him square in the face when he hears the doorbell, signaling the presence of someone at the door and that someone being none of the boys because they would just punch in the code and strut in like they own the place.

Jimin thought maybe it’s Yoongi - the guy couldn’t even remember what he had for dinner and actually forgot the passcode to his own rental room once.

So he didn’t think to check who it was.

When your bright smile and slightly puffy eyes flash in front of him, Jimin thinks his soul just yeeted itself out of his body.

“Hey!” You sing song, holding up two plastic bags of beers and snacks.

It takes a moment for him to snap out of his stupor and grab them from your hands and then stepping aside to let you in.

“Is… everyone late or am I just early?” You sound increasingly confused as you step further into the center of the room, standing right next to the bean bag he was laying in just a moment ago.

“Oh-” he says once before he opens his mouth the second time, ready to spurt out another lie, “oh yeah… we decided not to ‘cause why hang out in a group when you can hang out with your significant other… you know, just the two of you… doing what couples do…”

“Huh,” you say, nodding though not quite believing him but you being you, easily lets it slide, plopping on the bean bag and grabbing the closest thing to you which is the ball that hit Jimin in the face - he’s sure he has a circular mark smack dab in the area on the top of his nose bridge, in between his eyes.

The dress you end up wearing is creme colored and riding up your thighs - Jimin swallows thickly and give extra attention to the bottle opener.

“So… how did lunch go?” He pops two beers open and hands one to you, taking a seat on Yoongi’s favorite couch and admiring how your dress is taking the shape of your body as gravity pulls it down.

“Oh, you know, everyone was being fake and acting like the perfect role in the family,” you put the beer down a few inches above your head so as to not tip it over with the ball you’re waving around but not throwing in the air like Jimin did.

“Sounds suffocating,” Jimin repeats a similar answer he gives whenever you use that dismissive tone while talking about your family.

“...are you okay?” Then he asks - and he’s genuinely asking - about your state of mind while casually downing the beer and feeling the bitterness lessen with every gulp.

The silence that lapses in between you is familiar.

“If I say no, can I get a hug?” It’s the look in your eyes, glimmering like the lake he used to go to in summer.

“Always,” he sets his beer down on the table next to the couch and goes over to you, standing on his knees before bending down and engulfing you in his arm.

You’ve always had a knack for picking yourself up.

When he sees you the next time, which is on instagram and a post of you having lunch with your friends, Jimin could hardly believe that’s the girl who asked him for a hug as if she’s afraid she’ll be putting him in an uncomfortable spot by asking for too much.

But there’s something…

Like an invisible wall made of ice that he can’t thaw through nor can he climb over to get to the other side where you are. Where you keep the people you love the closest. Closer than he’ll ever be.

Jeon Jeongguk is one of them.

In the picture of five people huddled close to fit in the frame, Jeongguk has his arm over you with a peace sign while you lean your head on his neck but not actually resting on it - like it’s an unconscious action you’d do because you’ve done that plenty of times.

Is it when you two were together?

Everyone he knows, knows that you and Jeongguk used to be more than just friends at some point.

Sometimes he still hears people talking about you two in passing.

‘Did ___ and Jeongguk get back together? I saw in Jeongguk’s snapstory - they were in a club or something.’

‘No way. There goes my chance of getting close with Jeongguk.’

‘Girl, with ___ hanging around him 24/7, do you think he’d look at girls like us?’

‘A girl can dream though.’

Jimin wanted to open his mouth and tell them they deserve way better than Jeon Jeongguk - though they’re not prettier than you.

He thinks you’re the loveliest girl on planet earth and if there was another life form on another planet, he’s almost a hundred percent sure you’d still be prettiest being in the universe with your obsession for skinny jeans and the way you’d unconsciously pout when he talks about how things weren’t going his way that day as if you would’ve exchanged your abundance of luck with his shitty one just because you’ve got that big of a heart and how you’d be walking with your friends, laughing and giggling and when you see him, you’d wave at him like you’re good friends.

Second only to Jeongguk and your friend group that you’re always hanging out with.

“Oh, ___? We were childhood friends.”

“Hmm… Gguk and I became friends because our parents are friends.”

The two of them say at different times and settings when Jimin asked, trying to play it cool. Like he isn’t just brimming with jealousy. Like he’s not half-way to losing his mind because the girl of his dreams just went to a retreat with his friend-of-a-friend-turned-actual-friend together when everyone else in the group who was excitedly planning for the trip - couldn’t make it.

The rooms at the inn weren’t even pre-booked. It was owned by Jeongguk’s family and they didn’t deposit any money for the trip for them to rationalize going on that trip anyway despite everyone else not being to go.

“The trip? It was fun, if you want we can go together next time.”

Jimin isn’t sure if you even mean that when he asked how the trip went after you’re glistening with the glow of after sex and scrolling through instagram, liking posts of everyone you know.

But then three months later, on your break, Jimin is hit with a ‘keep your schedule free next week for a whole week!!!’

Then he finds himself at a five star hotel by the beach with the most breathtaking view of the sea.

It wasn’t the inn owned by the Jeon’s but Jimin liked the fact that you brought him to a place - and he hopes his assumptions are true - your friends have never been before. Especially Jeongguk.

“Woah, this place is better than I thought,” a king sized bed lies directly across from the balcony where you’re standing, hair flying behind your back as the seaside breeze blows into the room.

“We can watch the sun rise and set from our bed,” Jimin comments for the sake of saying something.

He’s not sure what this means. He’s not sure if he should be having a boner at the thought of the two of you being together for a whole week without any other person getting in the way. He’s not sure if his heart should be thumping this fast.

For the first time since he’s known you, Park Jimin is the most unsure he’s ever been.

“You know what I wanna watch?” Your hands slip in his as you stand between him and the open balcony door, “you under me, biting your lips because you’re still shy about the sound you make.”

So when you tug him back into the bedroom just minutes after checking in, naturally, Park Jimin follows like he’s been bewitched by your ungodly beauty.

Once the one week of nothing but heavenly morning wishes and passionate night kisses - oh, there was more than just kissing but Jimin remembers how your lips meld so perfectly together with his the most - Jimin is sure.

‘Something definitely changed.’

He thinks maybe it’s not impossible to dream of a future with you even after college.

“Jimin I-... I’m not at a point in life to be thinking about relationships,” you say, hand gripping your arm, head lowered as if your whole body is saying sorry.

“O-oh,” is all he says, he hearts his heart breaking and his chest caving.

All of a sudden, the lights in Gangnam city doesn’t seem so bright anymore.

You both live your last year pretending like the other doesn’t exist. He doesn’t look at you when he passes you and neither did you. Only talks to Jeongguk even though you’re right next to the aforementioned man - granted you were talking with your other friends like you didn’t even notice him there.

But Jimin’s never felt so invisible in his life than he does now.

Then, graduation rolls around and he thinks finally, he won’t have to walk through the hallway and pretend like he didn’t see you. Don't have to keep a five feet distance whenever you meet up for a group project.

Park Jimin doesn’t need to see your pretty face and starry eyes anymore.

“Jimin… do you have a minute?”

Or so he thought.

“So… congrats on surviving college,” you make small talk while standing just ten feet away from the boys whom he’s sure are speculating on what you’re talking about.

Jimin never got to prove to his friends that you’re not the mean, name-forgetting girl they all thought.

Jeongguk knows you’re not. He’s always backing Jimin up when Jimin’s debunking their passing accusations about you.

“Sometimes things just don’t work out between two people but doesn’t mean one of them is the bad guy.” Jeongguk's words put an end to their debate of whether Jimin deserved better than you or not.

For someone young, Jeongguk spoke his mind decidedly.

Jimin felt ashamed that he’d ever been jealous of Jeongguk’s relationship with you.

“I just… didn’t wanna leave things on a bad note. I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings when I said no but I really like spending time with you - whether it’s sex or just staying over and cuddling for hours… I like it all.” You say the word sex and cuddle like they’re used interchangeably and Jimin thinks his heart just fluttered.

And you’d said it in public where your everyone can see or possibly pick up on what you were saying, at that.

Well, one thing’s for sure, you’ve got bigger balls than he does.

“My feelings are the same as six months ago and call me crazy but I don’t think you dislike me either.” He finally says and it feels like a deadweight has been lifted off his shoulders.

There comes that pout, as if something is bothering you and you always ever pout like that when that something concerns him.

“You kidding me? I can never dislike you.”

The Jimin from six months ago would have stared at you with disbelief and a dust of pink on his cheeks. But the Jimin he is now simply smiles, heart thumping in his chest. He nods.

“Thanks for telling me that,” and Jimin knows that’s the closest to an ‘I like you’ he can get with the girl who builds an ice fortress around her heart.

A whole year passes by and Jimin finds himself in different shades of grey every day, working at his dad’s company and attending dinner meetings. Life comes to a standstill while time passes him by.

“So, like, you have a sports car, right? Why don’t you come over to the race circuit after dinner? Everyone’s gonna be there.”

Jeongguk tells him over the phone.

And by ‘everyone’ he means the sons and daughters in the corporate world. It’s networking at its finest.

When he’s there, three cars are already racing in the circuit. The smell of burnt rubber and the sound of tires screeching against asphalt isn’t exactly his favorite but they have cheap booze instead of fine wine and he knows the people here are in for the same thing as he is.

An escape.

Away from the grandeur of fine wine and dinner dresses and the elders breathing down their necks and having to act like the next heir to the legacy they were born to carry.

“That Chevrolet over there,” Jeongguk comes, hand on Jimin’s back as his other one that’s holding a bottle of beer points at a red car that looks like a racing fireball, “everyone’s betting on that one tonight.”

Jimin doesn’t know there’s a bet.

“I’ll skip the bet this time ‘round. Haven’t seen the driver yet,” he shrugs dismissively.

Even in stock investment, he’d learned to study the market first before placing his best bet.

Jeongguk leaves his side when his friends - he’s got new ones now - beckons him over. At the same time, the Chevrolet passes the finish line seconds before the Ford Mustang and McLaren 720s, making it the winner of the night.

The driver seems like a show off with the way the car rolls up to the audience, the sound of its engines revving into the night being met with cheers of half-drunk young adults.

Arrogance is a man’s downfall.

Jimin’s about to turn around and head for the exit when the door of the car gets pushed open. The driver steps out, decked in black and red leather jeans and jackets that seem to match the car.

But it’s the smooth, silken hair that cascades past the helmet that catches his eyes.

Park Jimin’s seen many arrogant men in his life but he’s only ever seen one woman with balls and looks good wearing them.

“___! ___! ___!” The crowd starts cheering as you pull off the helmet, holding it underneath your arm and waist.

Your eyes are as brilliant as the night sky full of stars. They’re tinged with shock and then recognition. And finally, you smile that gorgeous smile that gets you misunderstood often as a woman who doesn’t need anything or anyone but uses them as they come.

But Park Jimin knows better than anyone, how wholeheartedly happy that smile looks when you see him.

Like meeting a good friend after a long time.

Seven months down the road, Jimin finds himself with just a blanket draped over his waist while you’re taking a shower in his bathroom to get ready to head to Hong Kong for a business trip.

He hears the sound of the shower head being turned off. The tapping of your foot around his bedroom as you pick up your clothes that are strewn all over the floor.

Then the bed dips ever so gently under your weight as you climb over to him, the fresh scent of shower get filling his senses. Lips press a deep, lingering kiss on his. As if you don’t want to go to a place where he won’t be.

A few socials and midnight races after his first meeting with you after a long time, you asked him if he’s seeing someone.

“If I say yes, what will you do?” It’s playful at first, because Jimin didn’t want to get himself hurt the second time.

But it’s the way you tilted your head, a finger tapping on your chin as you pondered on his words, “that’s a problem because I don’t want to be that girl that steals another girl’s man,” then you looked at him like you know he’s the one you want to wake up to every morning and the last face you see when you sleep at night and if you can’t have that. then-

“Can you be mine… just for tonight?”

“I don’t think I can.” The crestfallen expression you wear makes his own heart break, even if it’s just for a split second-

“Because I’m not seeing anyone but I’m in that point in life where I want a serious relationship or nothing at all.”

But what he doesn’t tell you is how he doesn’t want a relationship if it’s not with the girl who still haunts his dreams even after all this time.

Just like how you’d turned him down because you weren’t looking to be in a relationship before, you’d courted Jimin like you’d want to spend your whole life with him now.

Flowers got sent to his office everyday until it smells nothing short of floral. You’d be there, waving at him like he’s your savior in that dreadful social you were both attending. Every week, you’d plan dinner dates under the guise of catching up.

Before you race, you’d look over to where he’s standing, as if saying ‘this one’s for you’ before slipping into your car and coming out first every single time.

As if you were making up for every month of the year that you’d let life pass you by.

Now you’ve won a total of 36 races since he met you and the metal band you gifted him on the night of your 12th win feels warm against his skin. As if it’s absorbed all the love and adoration you poured into it.

And you’re wearing that ring he got you on your birthday on your finger that’s resting on his chest where his heart is as he kisses you back just as reluctant to let you leave.

But Park Jimin knows wherever you are, wherever you will be - you will always find your way back to each other.

Back home.

#bts smut #jimin smut #bts fics #jimin fic #bts fanfic #jimin fanfic #jimin x you #bts x you #bts x reader #jimin x reader #jimin fics #bts fic #bts fanfics #jimin fanfics #jimin scenarios #bts scenarios

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babyjamiebarnes · 3 years

Text

Build-A-Bear

Part One

Featuring: Bucky x Stark!reader, dad!Tony, Peter Parker (platonic), background MCU characters

Warnings: [chapter] language; [series] language, smut, violence

Summary: The only people who knew she was actually a Stark were her dad, her step-mom Pepper, and her “uncles” Happy and Rhodey. A promotion within Stark Industries takes her from an already-sought after position in the Weapons Anaylsis Unit straight to the Avengers as a Weapons Enhancement Specialist... which means her dad is her new boss. There’s only one rule at work: no fraternizing with coworkers. There’s one more rule at home: no dating any Avengers. So what is she supposed to do when a grumpy super soldier becomes not-so-grumpy around her? At 25, do her dad’s rules still apply? Or is her entire livelihood at risk?

Author’s Note: I’ve written a decent portion of this but know I won’t keep writing it or post it unless I hold myself accountable and get it out there in the first place 🙈 I haven’t written much for Marvel yet but I’ve read plenty and have written for other fandoms in the past (not to mention the writing degree on my wall lol). I’ll try to post every 2-3 days to keep this moving! And if you like it and want to, buy me a coffee!

No one knew Tony Stark had a daughter. No one but Tony Stark and his daughter. Well, and her step-mom Pepper. And her godfather Rhodey. And her uncle-not-uncle Happy. But no one in their everyday lives knew. She was given her mother’s maiden name and kept a secret, even when she turned 17 and moved to a small apartment near NYU’s campus (with Happy stationed right next door, of course) to start life as a truly normal adult, or as close to normal as an undercover Stark could be. When she graduated with her PhDs in robotics and electrical engineering at 25 — proving brains really do run in the family — she moved into her own apartment in Manhattan, funded by her father under the pseudonym “Michael Myers.” Subtlety was never his strong suit.

Fortunately for you, growing up without the Stark name let you live a relatively normal life. It also allowed you to apply for a position within Stark Industries without being ushered past any red tape because of who your father is. Outside of the financial advantage you had, you worked for your spot in a STEM career. You suffered through every man in your field belittling your work despite knowing less than you. You dealt with the constant interruptions and “well, actually” because of your gender. You powered through late nights and early mornings when your mind was flowing too smoothly to quit.

The last thing you wanted to do was have all that work disregarded because you shared a name with genius billionaire playboy philanthropist Tony Stark. So you filled out the application, sent in your resume and cover letter, and attached three letters of recommendation from your professors. You went through hours of interviews, background checks (conveniently redacting your father’s name), and polygraph tests until that offer letter showed up in your email. You even had to sign the Non-Disclosure Agreements that would bar you from discussing *anything* work-related with anyone outside of your department.

You spent your first year in the weapons analysis department, evaluating alien weaponry and determining how it worked and how to disable it. You had your fair share of mishaps, of course. Holes blasted into walls, fried robot dummies, even burnt animal carcasses. By the end of your first year, your supervisor sent a commendation and proposal for you for an undisclosed promotion. After Pepper Potts “thoroughly examined your resume, cover letter, and accomplishments during your tenure with Stark Industries,” as the letter read, you were awarded a position working on the Avengers’ weapons as a Weapons Enhancement Specialist. You’d never see a fight in-person, but you were assigned to work on advancements and post-battle repairs for everyone, from the Winter Soldier’s arm to the Falcon’s wings to Vision’s... everything. The only heroes you wouldn’t work on were Iron Man and War Machine (those were your dad’s territory) and Spider-Man.

On your first day in your new position, the one and only Pepper Potts showed you to your new lab on the 47th floor. It took all your willpower to look your step-mother in the eye and say, “Wow, Miss Potts. This is amazing. It’s such an honor to meet you,” with a straight face to convince any passerby that you had no outside affiliation with her. Even if her eyes stayed steady on you, you could see her mentally rolling them.

Once you were alone behind the doors of the elevator, conversation changed course.

“You’re going to be sharing a lab with someone else,” Pepper said.

“Sweet. As long as they’re competent, that’s fine by me,” you shrugged. Part of earning your degrees was learning to share a workspace with others, even those who bumbled and fumbled with no idea what they were doing. You’d had more hair singed by nearby explosions than you’d like to admit.

“He’s still in college so he’s not here as often as the others. Most of his work will be on Spider-Man’s gadgets and suit, but you can use him for any help you need.”

Walking past the familiar faces of Dr. Banner and Dr. Cho in their respective labs, Pepper ushered you into your lab, where you were met by your father and put on the same excited facade you did with Pepper.

“Oh my god, you’re Tony Stark! This is incredible! It’s such an honor to meet you, sir!”

He shook his head at you and reluctantly accepted your outstretched hand. Oh, the jokes you’d be making at family dinners.

“Yeah, anyway, this is your new lab, Miss [Y/L/N]. Make yourself at home. This lab rat over here is mister Parker. If you have any questions, he can at least bullshit an answer for you.”

The young man on the other side of the lab perked up at the sound of his name. He tugged the goggles off his face and set down his soldering rod to rush over to you.

“Hi. Hi, I’m Peter,” he said, reaching his hand out to you.

“I’m [Y/N]. It’s nice to meet you, lab partner.”

He looked to be a bit younger than you and at least relatively smart, if the MIT sweatshirt peeking out from under his lab coat said anything. If your dad gave him an internship like this, you knew you shouldn’t question it. He had to be a genius.

The kid just smiled at you, continuing to shake your hand past what most would deem socially acceptable.

“Okay, enough of that,” Tony said, pushing on your joined hands to separate you two. “Mister Parker might be in and out of the lab from time to time. He joins the Avengers on the occasional recon mission for immediate repairs but since he’s on break from classes, you’ll see him more often than not. Play nice.”

When he noticed you surreptitiously looking Peter up and down, he added, “Remember, no fraternizing with coworkers.” He pointed a finger directly at you before he spun and pointed to your fellow lab mate, realizing he should warn Peter too to save face.

“All the blueprints you need for the Tin Man’s arm are in the system. We’ll have you start on that and see what you can do about minimizing the sound that thing makes. Any other questions, give Pep a call.”

“Thank you, mister Stark. I really do appreciate everything,” you said genuinely.

“Yeah, well… don’t let me down,” he replied, patting you on the shoulder on his way out. Pepper followed close behind, leaving you alone with Peter Parker.

“So Peter,” you started, sliding onto the lab chair next to where he remained standing, “tell me about yourself.”

“Uh… what do you want to know?” he asked as he shoved his hands into his coat pockets.

“How old are you?” you asked immediately.

“I’m 21.”

Only four years younger than you. So you’d probably get along just fine.

“I assume you’re at MIT?” He nodded. “What are you studying?”

“Biomolecular and mechanical engineering.” He said it so casually, you’d think he was talking about the last song he heard on the radio.

“Damn,” you responded, eyes wide. “I thought robotics and electrical engineering was wild but fuck, that sounds like hell.”

He laughed and nodded, letting a bit of the tension in his shoulders fall. “Yeah, it’s not easy. But it’s worth it.”

He shot you a small smile before gesturing back at his project. “I should probably get back to work and let you get started.”

For the rest of the day, you familiarized yourself with the Winter Soldier’s arm to figure out how to… turn the volume down? You assumed it was the gears inside causing the noise, but part of you wanted to outfit an audio jack and speaker just to fuck with your dad.

You and Peter worked in relative silence, aside from the playlist he had quietly playing through the lab sound system. When lunch rolled around, however, you finally spoke up.

“Hey Peter,” you called, his eyes flicking from the chemical beakers in front of him up to you. “First of all, what are you doing?”

“Um, it’s Spider-Man’s web fluid. Just trying to find more durable combinations.”

“Interesting.” As much as you wanted to touch the stringy substance, you knew better than to fiddle with someone else’s lab work. “Okay so second thing, in my last position, I’d just order food and have it brought to my floor but now that I’m on an exclusive floor, what do you do for lunch?”

“Oh, there are a couple security guys who have clearance to come into this floor. They just can’t get into any rooms so you’d have to meet them at the elevator. But I usually find something in the kitchen down the hall.”

“Oh, sweet. Thanks!” you said as you made your way out the door. Before you could fully exit, you turned back to see if Peter wanted you to grab anything. Once he promised he’d take his own break ‘once I get this one thing figured out,’ you continued to make your way to the kitchen.

As you drew closer to the doorway, you could hear three voices speaking over each other. They didn’t sound angry, but they were definitely arguing. You opened the door anyway and almost immediately froze in your tracks. The Falcon stood with one hand on his own head and one on the Winter Soldier’s head while Captain America rolled his eyes before those same eyes landed on you, along with the rest of the room.

“Perfect,” Sam started. “Hey new girl, between the three of us,” he said, pointing to himself, the Soldier, and the Captain, “who has the best hair?”

“First of all, my name is [Y/N]. Second,” you continued, making your way past them to the fridge you hoped your dad kept stocked with goodies, “that’s an unfair question.”

You grabbed a soda and popped it open before turning back to the three men. “Your hair suits each of you. Cap wouldn’t look good with Winter Soldier hair and Falcon wouldn’t look good with Cap’s hair.” You took a few steps closer, leaning against the island counter between you and eyeing each of them. Your eyes settled on the Winter Soldier, unashamedly flitting across his face and admiring the sharpness of his features. “You,” pointing at him, “could probably pull off either of their looks, though.”

Bucky smirked at you, but his rosy cheeks gave away a hint of embarrassment at your compliment. Steve and Sam, on the other hand, weren’t taking it quite as gracefully.

“What?!” Sam shouted. “Okay, now I know you’re lying. I could pull off Cap’s hair for sure.”

“You know, I think shaggy hair would really suit me,” Cap said, only half sarcastically.

You giggled to yourself as the three of them started talking over each other again, all dead set on their own hair being the best of them and positive they could pull off the others’ looks. While they bickered, you searched the pantry until you found a snack to at least get you through the remainder of the day.

“Alright boys, it’s been fun but I have work to do,” you said as you walked past them again. “Actually, wait. Bucky — can I call you Bucky?” He nodded even though you continued anyway. “If you could stop by lab six today, I’d love to check out your arm in person. The digital renderings aren’t quite the same.”

“Uh, okay. Sure. I’ll find you,” he said quietly.

“Sweet, thanks!” And with that, you skedaddled back to your lab.

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x Stark!reader #Stark!reader #bucky x reader #bucky barnes fanfic #bucky barnes series #bucky x Stark!reader

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