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harlowcomehome · 4 months

Text

Decisions, decisions:

Series link!

The week you had with Jack had flown by so quickly, the both of you weren’t ready for it to be over just yet.

It was your last night together before you flew back to Atlanta and you had noticed something was off with Jack.

He had been acting strange all day, you assumed it was because you’d be leaving again but you still wanted to make sure things were okay between you two before your dinner reservations.

“Jack, baby? What’s going on?” You placed your hand on the small of his back. He jumped slightly, unaware of your closeness to him as he folded his clothes, stuffing them into his suitcase.

“Mmm, fine” he mumbled, giving you a weak smile.

“You look beautiful by the way.”

“Thank you honey but we’ve been together for far too long now for you to lie to me. I know somethings wrong” You wrapped your arms around his waist, leaning your head into his back. You felt him sigh, letting him go so you could both sit on the bed beside each other.

“That's kind of what I wanted to talk about” he avoided your eye contact before continuing. “We’ve been together for a long time and I just feel like you’re still apprehensive.”

“Apprehensive?” You hadn’t the slightest clue where this was coming from. The past week had been fine, and you had no indication that he felt differently.

“I gave you a promise ring, and you still won’t come work for my team. I just don’t get it” his tone was heightened, he was growing emotional and it showed.

You immediately felt an ache in your stomach.

“Is that why you gave it to me?”

“No! Why would you think that?” His eyes were full of hurt, he was shocked you’d even suggest that.

Your mind wandered as you felt like the night was officially ruined. Jack felt it too, panicking and wanting to fix things. He turned to you, his eyes fixated on your pouting lips.

“Baby, I got you that promise ring as a sign of my love. I don’t get to love you out loud like I want to, so I wanted to show you somehow.”

The two of you had many conversations about going public with your relationship and although you were both ready and willing, his label didn’t think it was a good idea.

Something Jack had consistently been fighting behind the scenes.

“Of course, I’d love it if you came and worked with my team but I don’t want to force you to choose me either.”

“Do you feel like I’m not choosing you?”

“I didn’t say that” his face was growing flush, he never dealt with confrontation well and the last thing he wanted to do was argue.

“You know I’d shout it from the rooftops if I could too, you know that right? And, the plan was always to leave my job, the timing just wasn’t right yet.”

Jack shrugged, he definitely didn’t feel the love right now.

A knock on the hotel room door made the both of you freeze for a moment, Jack looked out the peephole and noticed it was Neelam and Urban, and opened the door.

“Alright love birds! Who’s ready for dinner?” Neelam looked Jack up and down realizing he hadn’t finished getting ready just yet.

Urban knew immediately that something wasn’t right, urging Neelam to go to the car and wait for you two.

You smiled, a silent “thank you.”

When Jack was finished getting dressed, he didn’t say a word to you. It wasn’t until the hotel room door slammed shut that you realized just how upset he really was.

“Babe” you whispered, trying to get his attention discreetly as you followed as quickly as possible, his long legs making wider strides than you.

“NDA remember?” He was being petty, and you knew it. You both had never cared about that, it was a small business detail in the grand scheme of things.

“How did we get here? Why are we fighting about this?” You half whispered and half yelled knowing he heard you but ignored you anyway.

When the two of you got into the car, you barely spoke, your legs usually touched, your hands, something usually did, but not this time.

Jack's chest felt tight, a panic attack near. Having to put his career first was always an easy choice until you came along.

“Babe” you scooted closer, whispering in his ear.

“Mmm, not now.” He had a lump in his throat that made him want to gag.

“Are we almost there?” He managed to speak up, his tone breathy.

“Two minutes” Neelam nodded before going back to her phone.

When you got to the restaurant,everyone was eager to get out of the car. You stopped Jack, slamming the door shut before he could get out of the vehicle.

“Babe, I love you. I need you to know that. You know that right?” You grabbed his hand.

He watched as Neelam and Urban walked inside the empty restaurant.

“I just hate this sometimes. I feel like I have to live a double life” You rarely saw this side of him, he consistently made a conscious effort to keep it together.

You sat back, thinking of a solution as the man you love was clearly distraught before you.

“Jackman, do you trust me?”

“With everything” he spoke softly, realizing you had a plan.

“What? Why are you looking at me like that?” You smirked knowing he was catching on.

“So technically my NDA states that I can’t tell anyone the nature or details of our relationship right?”

“Right?” He was still confused but followed your lead.

“It says nothing about paparazzi catching us kissing outside this restaurant” You had said it so fast your words ran together.

Jack's eyes opened wide, the panic immediately settling in.

“You’d do that? But wouldn’t that change everything? I don’t want you to feel forced to do that. I don’t want the fans to be rude to you, and I don’t-“

You interrupted his rapid thinking, “I’m sure. I’ve thought about it all, I know this changes everything.”

“I can ask Layla to call and give an anonymous tip that we are here when we are almost done with dinner if this is what you want.”

Jack nodded eagerly, he was ready to get this out into the world, leaning in to kiss you with excitement.

“Are you sure? We can’t reverse this. Once it’s out there, it’s out.”

“I’ve never been more sure” you nodded, leaning in to kiss him again.

#Jack Harlow #Jack Harlow x reader #jack harlow concepts #jack harlow blurb #jack harlow imagines #Jack Harlow fanfic

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dovithedarklord · 4 months

Text

Stucked

You're trapped in a game and a new threat is lurking.

..............................................

Pairing: John "Soap" MacTavish x reader

Tags: Mentions of death, Mentions of blood and gore, Blood and Violence, Sexual Scenes, Alternate Universe, No use of Y/N, Not Beta Read, AFAB Reader

Trigger Warning: Contains violence, blood and smut in detail. Please, keep that in mind!

⚠️MDNI⚠️

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Author's Note

This idea came to me while I was running and I had to write it down.

Just a short story that will have a sequel, I guess.

The story is inspired by this manhwa: https://cloudrecess.io/manga/dreadful-night

If you can, read it, it's great!

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You stare out of the car window with glassy eyes, and although it's not the first time that the lush green of the forest bathed in the light of the setting sun slips by on the horizon, it still manages to put the tension back into your stomach every single time. The peace out there could lull anyone into a false sense of security. But not you. It can't fool you anymore.

The same female voice comes from the radio, and you already know every single word of that damned song by heart. But even if you would show your displeasure, even if your companion sitting in the passenger seat would look for another radio station, the next time still the same godforsaken music would be playing. This is the background noise every time you return to the starting point, and it has almost become a habit that this melodic introduction starts your suffering all over again.

At first, as you woke up from your slumber in the back seat, the unfamiliar surroundings made you feel as though the vague world of your dreams had bled into reality, and now you found yourself in some bizarre fairy tale. But this is the twenty-second time that you come to your senses in the vehicle moving down the bumpy forest road, and you slowly start to get used to the stomach-turning cheerfulness repeated in a loop, which welcomes you every single time. And it was enough for you to feel the metallic taste of the blood filling your mouth once, and find yourself here again after feeling the icy pain of the knife slitting your throat, to understand that you are not in reality. Although the rough material for your jeans under your fingers, the floral scent of the perfume in the car, and the bitter taste of stomach acid creeping into your mouth seem perfectly real, just like the agony of your latest death, but you've learned that it's all just an appearance. An illusion. In which you have been imprisoned for weeks, and for exactly that long you are forced to die again and again, because you won't escape until you finally find the way out at the end of the mysteries that keep multiplying.

You don't know how you got here, but that doesn't matter anymore. The important thing is that you’re stuck in a game, and you have to find out how to get out of it before this madness consumes the last shred of your sanity.

A loud laughter comes from the front, the blonde girl sitting behind the wheel recounts with a grin, how her ex-boyfriend tried to perform an erotic dance to this song, and how it ended in a late-night visit to the ER. Pam is that typical obligatory extroverted character, whose only role in such games is to be brutally murdered when she's about to get naughty with someone. She's a nice but stupid girl, and it's not her fault that whoever created her intended her to have this tragic end.

Rebecca, your other companion, who only laughs at Pam's story while sitting in the passenger seat, shily hides the blush rising on her face with her hand. And although she's a charming girl, you've seen her bloody corpse too many times for you to remember her blank, worldless eyes and her pale mouth frozen in an eternal scream instead of her radiant smile. She is the first to die. Always. And you might have felt sorry for her in the beginning, but you no longer have the strength to have compassion for someone who only exists in this nightmarish world.

As soon as the outline of the homey cabin appears at the end of the road, the foreboding appears in you like a familiar friend, which slowly closes your insides in an iron grip, as if the pull of the stress that awakens in your veins would help anything. After all, it always ends the same. You search for a clue, you die and you end up here. And the only thing that keeps you from going crazy is the faint hope that the more secrets you uncover in this goddamn purgatory, the closer you get to the exit. Maybe.

The car slows to a stop in front of the location of your late autumn vacation, and the two girls jump out of the car with excited laughter, arguing over who will occupy which guest room in the huge house. The same dialogue, the same room layout, the same ear-splitting giggles from Pam's mouth that remind you of her screams cutting through the silence of the night, as she gets gutted like a trapped deer. You've seen her mangled body too many times for her laughter to revive the images of the delicate, wet glistening of her intestines, as the pale light of the moon surrounds her lifeless form on the cold wooden floor.

With a weary sigh, you grab your backpack resting next to you, mentally preparing in advance to once again suffer through the excruciating play that, like a prologue, leads up to the horrors that await you in the night. You list the thousand steps you have to take to find out where you are in the game, to discover if your previous death was in vain. Did you get a new puzzle that brings you closer to the finish line? Has another path been revealed for you to continue on, one that might finally take you back to the real world? Your chest hurts when you realize that you don't even remember what it was like to not live in this hell. With each passing night, the memory of reality floats further away, and the ghost of tears burns your eyes when you realize that even your real name sounds like a false fabrication in your brain. As if you never existed outside the confines of this dreadful place.

The door of the cabin opens with a loud creak, and this disturbs you from your thoughts that are spiraling into ever darker depths. And as a man appears on the doorstep, you almost taste the bitterness of anger on your tongue, because although anyone would be fooled by the wide grin on his face, anyone would be enchanted by those vivid blue eyes, and anyone would be swept off their feet by the playful friendliness he embraces your two traveling companions in his strong arms with as a greeting, but you already know him all too well. After all, Johnny has killed you at least eleven times, with the same sickly sweet smile on his curved lips, with which he now turns to you again.

"Bunny!" He beams, and you have to use all your strength to suppress the stomach acid rising in your throat from the nausea that fills you from the fake kindness emanating from him. "It's good to see ye again!" He pulls you into a tight hug, as you shamble to the small terrace, and as he presses you to his broad chest, his scent, which you would recognize from everywhere, creeps into your nose. The aroma of his cologne, the saltiness of his skin, and that smell that you couldn't quite place before. The smell of blood clings to him like a faint, barely perceptible phantom that only you can sense. You've witnessed it too many times.

"You too, Johnny." You reply, each word burning your tongue like poison, but that's the script. You have to get into this act because there's no point in resisting. The story progresses the same whether you oppose it or not. The weirder you act in their eyes, the more the game will punish you later. And so you lose the chance of finding that tiny crumb that might help you get closer to your escape.

And from this point on, time crawls on leaden legs, and you sit through the impromptu dinner with gritted teeth, which was made by the man for you, while he was waiting for you to arrive at his modest little shack. He invited you here to celebrate your birthday. Your birthday according to the game, that is. You remember your own more and more faintly, and this makes you fall into despair enough to drag yourself through the events with a forced smile, like a puppet being pulled on a string by an unknown hand.

Sometimes you have the stray thought that you might be stuck here forever, and that you are forced to fight again and again in an endless circle, without end, without hope. And this suddenly makes the food taste like ash, which you force into your mouth with automatic movements.

"Is somethin' wrong, hen?" Comes the worried question, and blinking in confusion, you look up from your plate to Johnny, who is eyeing you with his dark brows furrowed in worry, as if your behavior would really disturb him. And you just shake your head with practiced happiness, putting a faint smile on your lips that doesn't reach your eyes.

"No. Not at all. My stomach is just a little upset. But it'll pass." You explain, quickly gathering your faux, artificial cheerfulness, because you can't deviate from the story now. Tonight you might have a chance to discover where the last clue leads to, and you shouldn't attract any unnecessary attention if you want to continue your search later. Let everything go in its own way until the shit inevitably hits the fan. But you still have work to do before that. It's only a few hours. You just have to bear it for that long.

This seems to calm him, for in an instant the lines of doubt disappear from his features, to be replaced by that disgusting kindness. And you are already familiar with the barely visible glimmer in those beautiful eyes, which makes you feel like a startled little rabbit being cornered by a fox. Johnny is a threat wrapped in honeyed words and friendly smiles, which was able to lower your guard one too many times. And you paid the price of your carelessness every single time.

And when the whiskey bottle, which was brought out in your honor halfway through the dinner, is finally empty, and the cake, which the man so generously bought for you before he came here, has been eaten, then the essential part of the evening arrives. Rebecca's phone rings, and she hastily apologizes so that she can go out into the cool night and immerse herself in the argumentative conversation she is having with her boyfriend. And you almost start to feel sorry for her, that death finds while she tries to get her love life straight. She doesn't even notice how deep the forest swallows her in the middle of the fight, and she is easy prey in the desolate wildness of trees and bushes. After the first three times, you no longer go after her or try to save her. You can't protect either of them. They are all animals for slaughter in the eyes of the game.

Johnny also retires for the night, claiming that the alcohol has gone to his head, and wishing you a "good night" he goes upstairs to sleep. For a while, you believed that he was indeed sleeping every time, and you honestly fell for the innocent performance he gave you, when the corpse of one of your friends was found. You seriously wanted to believe that he wasn't a threat to you. But then he broke your neck as easily as a twig. You will never be naive enough to trust him again.

"What a pity that you can't fuck your friends." Pam sighs longingly, and she almost undresses the man walking up the stairs with her eyes, biting her lip as her gaze glides over his broad back hidden trapped in the tight shirt. There is no denying that Johnny is an attractive man. It's a shame he's so handsome and even knows it. But the most evil creatures tend to be the most beautiful. You have learned this well.

Finally, you are alone after Pam has also left to take a shower, and you can begin what every nerve fiber of yours has been screaming for for hours. You jump up with nimble movements and hurriedly head in the direction of the kitchen, dropping the feigned serenity from your face. Last time, you found a dirty, yellowed picture in the woodshed, which took a while to decipher, but then you realized where to look. As you enter the small room, you pull out the photo to hold it up in front of you, comparing it to the room bathed in the warm light coming from the living room. Although Johnny renovated this house, you can still easily find the wall where a refrigerator now rests, but based on the bright red circle in the photo, you have to look for the next clue somewhere there. You slip the picture back into your pocket and try to search for something suspicious with the flashlight of your phone, so you can better see what you're dealing with, there's no other use for this damn device anyway. You can't turn on the lights because that would immediately alert the other killer lurking outside. You learn a new lesson every time you fuck up, but you get smarter with each attempt. You'll be out of here soon. You have to get out of here.

As you peer under the fridge on all fours, squinting, a board creaks under your palm, pressing down a bit under your weight as you lean on your hands. You know that this is a sign, and as you kneel up to look for something to pry open the wood with, your eyes settle on a knife left on the kitchen counter. The whipped cream is still smudged against the cool metal, and suddenly the unwanted image enters your mind as the same blade slowly sinks into your chest, breaking through the protection of your ribs to then penetrate your lungs, pouring warm blood into your throat. You swallow hard, forcing the memory of the metallic taste out of your mouth, and steeling yourself, you wrap your fingers around the knife so you can get back to work, because you can't dwell on this right now. There's no point.

You stick the knife under the board and carefully pry it open, making sure to stay as quiet as possible because you don't know what will trigger the next death flag. Even though you are now aware of the signs and actions that lead the attacker to find you, this miserable game still has many surprises in store. With a soft squeak, the wood pops open, and as a small dark hole is revealed underneath, you take your phone in your hand and cast light on it, and like a wild animal pouncing on its prey, you reach for the small object shining in a golden light. Your fingers find the relic resting there, and you examine the key in puzzlement, as you pull it out of its hiding place. What does this open? Too small to be for a door. Maybe a lock?

The realization hits your brain like a bolt of lightning, and you spring up and turn back towards the living room. The hope that you might find something valuable rises in you, so you hurry through the room still shrouded in intimate silence, to sneak upstairs with silent steps when you reach the stairs. You know, if Pam shows up to the noise, she'll be on your trail the whole time, and that way you'll only attract trouble sooner. It might be selfish, but it's easier to let her die alone than to be hunted down together. You need time, and the more you waste on supporting characters, the less you have left to progress. But even because of this, your sense of guilt is starting to fade.

As soon as you reach the upper floor, you see the door at the end of the long corridor, on which even at such a distance you can faintly see the padlock that keeps it closed. Until now, this fact wasn't important to you, because it immediately became clear that you can only get in if you have the key. You can't hack it with anything else, you can't tear it down, this damn diabolical place will only let you in if you find the right clue to it.

You stalk like a cat in the darkness of the corridor, and the sound of your footsteps is absorbed by the soft carpet running along the floor. You consider your every move, because a new way out is possibly within your reach, and you fear that the chance to find the next important hint may disappear at any moment. Your own soft breathing sounds deafening to your ears, and each heartbeat feels as if your heart would want to burst out of your chest. Every inch of your body fills with anticipatory tension as you creep closer and closer…

And then you hear the voices.

At first, the muffled sighs seem like nothing more than the soft snores of one of your sleeping companions, but then you hear a moan, and you are overcome with confusion. The closer you get to the door opening from the middle of the corridor, the louder the panting and the gentle rustling of the bedsheets become, and you try to recall who could be hiding there according to the script. But nothing comes into your mind, because that room has been empty until now, without role or importance.

And as soon as you get close enough, you understand what is going on behind the door left ajar. The only source of light in the darkness of the room is the moon peeking through the window, but you can perfectly make out the movements of the tightly entangled figures. Johnny looks almost otherworldly as the pale light paints the dance of the corded muscles on his back as his mouth smooths over Pam's throat, eliciting a lustful moan from her. One of his strong hands slides along her breasts, and soon after his lips stray there, he almost viciously bites her nipple, to receive a pained gasp in response. His palm rests on her hips, and as he digs his fingers into the soft flesh, his hips only meet hers with vigorous movements, filling the heavy air with almost obscene, wet sounds. And as he kneels up, his fingers glide along her thigh almost teasingly, so that, hooking his hand in the bend of her knee, he directs her leg to his shoulder, locking it in a vise-like embrace that makes his biceps bulge. He brushes his lips against her calf, and you see his teeth flash for just a moment before he sinks them into the delicate skin, drawing a lewd whimper from her mouth opening in surprise. His movements are restless, each thrust seems violent and desperate, and she just grabs at the sheet and starts pleading, encouraging him in tears to sink his cock into her pussy just a little bit harder. And with each passing moment, Johnny looks more like a beast lost in his pleasure, as low grunts and moans erupt from his throat as he pushes himself closer and closer to the edge. And your feet are almost rooted to the ground, and you're unable to tear your eyes away from them, as you lose control over your body from shock and disbelief. Even though you know you shouldn't be here, you shouldn't be watching them, suddenly too much information rushes through your senses into your brain to process what is happening.

But as Pam's back arches with a loud cry, and Johnny's hips stutter with a growl-like sound, the surreal image ends, because the man turns his head towards you as if he knew you were standing in front of the door, frozen in astonishment. Your stunned gaze meets his eyes, dilated pupils swimming in lust, and you feel like a deer stuck in the headlights, waiting to be hit by a car speeding towards it. His mouth stretches into a lazy, satisfied grin as he slides out of the panting girl and slowly begins to rub his cock, as if to tell you that it could be you if you would just give in to the temptation.

And that clears your mind in the blink of an eye, and you back away hastily, almost running to the door resting at the end of the corridor, before you would have time to further analyze the features of the man's face filled with post-orgasm bliss. What the hell is this new scene? This has never happened before…

You reach for the lock hanging on the door with trembling hands, but your fingers are still clumsy from the adrenaline pumping through your veins, and they only find the keyhole after many tries. And in the middle of your fumbling, you don't even notice how a dark shadow appears behind you, and you only realize that you're late and have failed, when a gloved hand grips the back of your neck and smashes your head into the hard wood of the door with an almost painful strength. The force of the impact resonates through your skull, and you clench your teeth with a yelp as the sharp pain rips through your head.

Black spots swim into your field of vision, and you have trouble when you try to focus your eyes to decipher who attacked you this time. And as soon as you catch a glimpse of the skull-like mask out of the corner of your eye, you realize that this time you only managed to get this far. When the knife glints in the killer's hand as he strikes you, you only bitterly realize through the blood filling in your mouth that the game is trying to divert you from the escape with more and more vile methods. Because you're convinced that Johnny's action was just another death flag that ended your search prematurely. And you surrender yourself to the darkness with the knowledge that you cannot let this happen again...

When you come to, you're sitting in the back seat again, and the melody of familiar music reaches your ears only as a low hum, because you know you're back at the beginning of the game. But what worries you much more is that you walked into a scene the previous night, which not only completely deviates from the usual pattern of all the events until now, but also represents a downright disturbing new development. So far, the script hasn't gotten sidetracked from the main story in the case of the supporting characters, and Pam should have been waiting in the shower for the killer to appear when you sneaked up to find the door with the lock. The fact that this story has changed so drastically helps the icy fingers of dread wrap around your stomach. Because you have no idea what kind of difficulties this will cause you.

The usual conversation takes place between the two girls, and when you arrive at the wretched cabin, they leap out of the car with the same enthusiasm, as if they weren't heading towards another painful death. But it doesn't matter to them anyway, because surrounded by carefree ignorance, they don't even know what awaits them.

When the door opens and Johnny's well-known figure appears, his face filled with desire flashes before your eyes almost on a cue, and you forcefully push the memory out of your head. This little interlude distracted you just enough to know you shouldn't fall for the game's nasty tricks again. Because you are more and more certain that it actively wants to hold you back and trap you here forever. The heated spectacle of the previous evening can only be due to this…

"Bunny!" The man greets you with the same bursting, false joy that he always shows you, but now you have to forcefully drive away the moans echoing in your ears, which surface in your head when you hear his deep voice. "It's good to see ye again!" He says enthusiastically, and as his strong arms wrap around you, every single muscle of yours tenses, as the stress wakes up in you as a result of the fear that grips your insides. But it's even more worrying, as new fragments of memories flood the canvas of your mind, because the experience of seeing those hands glide over the body of your companion is too fresh to quickly overcome your embarrassment.

But you don't have time to think about how to get over these tangled emotions and continue the play, because suddenly you feel the man's hot breath on your ear, and in an instant, every part of you freezes like a frightened animal when the predator digs its claws into it.

"I hope ye liked what you saw, bonnie." The man grunts softly, and for a moment you think you misheard it. But as one of his hands creeps down to rest on your waist, and he presses you closer to him, the air gets trapped in your lungs with an almost painful force. "Because ye'll be next..." He whispers, and in his voice lies such a dark promise that it makes your blood run cold.

And as if nothing had happened, the moment ends suddenly, and as he steps away from you, he only looks down at you with his usual nauseating smile. But you see the dangerous predatory sparks in his eyes, and his gaze makes the little hairs rise up on your neck. And you soon realize that something is very wrong with the game. Fuck.

#call of duty #john soap mactavish #cod #johnny soap mactavish #john soap mctavish #soap #soap mactavish #john mactavish #johnny mactavish #soap cod #alternate universe #horror #soap x reader #soap x you #john mactavish x reader #john mactavish x you #soap mw2

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nhasablogg · 3 months

Text

Are you falling in love? I've a feeling you are

Fandom: Red, White and Royal Blue

Characters: Shaan, Henry

Summary: Once Shaan notices Henry's crush on Alex he can't not notice it.

Words: 1.1k

Shaan, despite what people might think, doesn’t spend his days watching Henry. Helping Henry, yes. Being close by and attentive and adapting to what is needed of him from both a professional and a personal standpoint, yes, but he knows the prince needs his space and therefore doesn’t linger unless he needs to. This means it takes him a while longer than he’s willing to admit to realize Henry has a crush on Alex, who always seems to sneer whenever Henry is near. Shaan thinks it might be a problem for only a second before he starts feeling sorry for him instead.

Once he sees it he can’t unsee it. Henry forcing himself to look into Alex’s eyes. Henry fidgeting with his shirtsleeves whenever Alex is near when he thinks no one is looking. Shaan knows that Henry’s gay - got to witness him coming out to him during a very low point when he thought nothing was worth it after his father’s passing. Shaan knows he’s gay and he knows why Henry can’t let it show that he might be falling for the First Son of The United States, but it doesn’t mean that behind the scenes, when he squints and pretends Henry is just a normal 20-something-year-old, it’s not strangely cute how flustered he gets about it. How he seems perfectly fine to never interact with Alex ever again while simultaneously doing everything but somersaults whenever they do.

“Alex is coming, right?”

Shaan looks up from his crossword. Henry’s sitting across from him on the jet, his own face stuck in a book, as if his question was simply a passing thought he’s nearly forgotten about already. But Shaan can see the tint of pink on his cheeks. Can see the way his knee is bouncing.

“I would assume so.” They’re alone in this part of the plane, so neither of them bother with titles or formalities. “I’m sure he will be delighted seeing us there.”

Henry cracks a smile, which makes him look so much younger than he is. Shaan sometimes sees flashes of Henry as a teen, especially when he’s being vulnerable or relaxed. Before the tragedies, when he had an easier time smiling.

“He’s a pain in the arse,” Henry says fondly. They are still teetering on the line between acquaintances and friends, but Shaan expects them to tilt over soon. Expects being dragged to the States more often than not in only a few weeks, which, secretly, he’s quite happy about.

“He can certainly be quite an interesting character.”

Henry snorts and puts his book down. “Tell me about it. The other day he insulted me by calling me pretty. Isn’t that strange?”

Shaan leans back and watches the blush spread over Henry’s face and tries not to smile. “How exactly did he turn it into an insult?”

“He said something along the lines of my face being so pretty he wants to punch it.”

“That sounds like a threat.”

“But then he started laughing.”

“Ah.”

Henry ducks his head, maybe realizing he’s treading dangerous waters. “Maybe it was just an insult.”

“Did you think it was a compliment?”

“No-”

“Did you want it to be a compliment?” Shaan has never tried to approach Henry about his feelings like this before. Not because he thinks he will be overstepping - Henry has spent many drunken nights describing certain activities with slightly too much details to him and Bea - but because he’s not certain if Henry’s coping with this crush by pretending it’s not happening at all. Shaan thinks, rightfully so, that he has enough on his plate already for him to be forcing confessions out of him as well.

But he doesn’t regret what he said, he realizes as Henry snaps his mouth shut. He has a feeling they’re about to see much more of Alex Claremont-Diaz soon, and he needs them both to be prepared for it.

“I, uh.” Henry twists his head to the side, but no one else is around them, and so he turns back to him with a hushed, “Maybe?”

Shaan does smile then. Can’t help it when the prince is sitting bright red in front of him, squirming like a teenager. “Good to know.”

Henry’s laugh is nervous, high pitched and giddy. “God, I’m so fucked, aren’t I?”

Shaan pats his knee. “We’ll figure it out.”

Shaan does watch him now, wondering if Henry will be able to handle the blooming friendship. He admitted to how long he’d been crushing on Alex and Shaan mentally facepalmed at not having caught it.

“It’s okay,” Henry said with a laugh. “I was very good at hiding it. I do admit it was easier when we only saw each other twice a year though.”

So Shaan now watches him to make sure his feelings are hidden well enough and hates himself for it.

It’s different when they’re alone and Shaan can hear their laughter through closed doors, sometimes with Nora and June and Pez and Bea. Whatever Henry chooses to display then is up to him, though Shaan has a theory that Henry would rather die than confess to having feelings for Alex. It’s a bit of a shame, because Shaan is pretty certain Alex has a crush on him too, but doesn’t really know it yet himself. But the times he gets to watch them, whether they’re in a booth or walking through corridors, and Alex goes out of his way to touch Henry (which Henry will be freaking out over later, he’s sure), he notices how Henry leaning into the touch doesn’t deter Alex at all. On the contrary he seems to start touching him even more, all arms slung over shoulders and knees knocking into knees and squeezes to sides and thighs once he realizes Henry’s ticklish. Shaan watches his prince giggle under Alex’s hands and is struck with such sadness that he has to keep this hidden.

Shaan keeps watching them, mostly to make sure no one catches them. Seeing Henry happy and in love is just a bonus. Because he is 99% sure Henry’s in love with Alex and that their friends with benefits situation is going to ruin him if it ends badly. He watches them and tries to determine if this is simply a good time for Alex, and he feels it isn’t. He feels he’s just as into it, just as invested, and then Henry of course starts pulling back because he can’t for the life of him figure out how he will be able to keep this up while living the type of life he’s living. Shaan hates that he can’t blame him for it.

For a while, before Henry tries to end things, it’s all hotel rooms and secret meetings and flying across the ocean too many times than he can count. It becomes a bit tedious, but Shaan never complains. Not when Henry all but glows every time he sees Alex.

“I’m not glowing,” he protests when Shaan brings it up, and Shaan doesn’t say anything about the way he smiles when he says it.

#ticklish!henry #rwrb fic #rwrb #shaan srivastava #henry fox mountchristen windsor #shaan and henry #n writes #are you falling in love? I've a feeling you are #I'm ready for this to flop but I had fun <3

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jiminsass-istant · 2 months

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Today I read something on Reddit about how many idols have done the choreo for Lie, but no one has attempted to sing it.

I don't know if this is true, but it ought to be.

I have seen some idols do the choreo for Lie. (Sorry, I do not know their names.) And they were competent, proficient, even good, but there was something lacking. The movements too sharp and perfect, without the fluidity and feeling Jimin creates, seemingly so effortlessly.

You did say you wanted to talk about Jimin's music, didn't you?

Hi Anon, I did want to talk about Jimin's music. So thanks for the ask.

LIE by JIMIN (Choreo)

To properly understand, I searched up a stage fancam of Lie on YT. Here it is for reference-

youtube

Also, this one-

youtube

(I also used the Lie short film behind the scenes from a bangtan bomb as reference)

As we can see, the Lie Choreo is NOT heavily dependent on the back up dancers. All the back up dancers do is showcase the chaos- by doing the same moves but in different angles, facing different directions to show chaos, and in the end when they lift Jimin during the bridge. Lie stage is not heavily dependent on back up dancers like in LC or Set me free pt2.

As you can see, the distinctive characteristic of Jimin's dances are -

1. His fast and slow movements, requiring extreme core strength.

2. His beautiful dance lines. Due to his professional background and again, core strength- that lets him always maintain those lines. Pause the choreo at any point and you'll get a pose. You can even compare his lines to the back up dancers and see how prominent they are.

3. Story telling via body language. Lie is a sad song. Like a cry for help. And that shows in his body language, even though he's dancing perfectly, he looks defeated, a little dizzy in between movements, hence bringing out the emotions.

4. There are particular parts of the choreo which I have personally used to compare the idols' performances. One of them being Jimin's body movement during the lines "smooth like-a like-a snake" and the other "순결했던 날 찾아줘"(Please find me who was innocent).

Let's look at the dance covers by idols/trainees-

NIKI-Enhypen

youtube

Out of all dances I saw, when it comes to technicality and detail, I think Niki's cover was the best. The only area he lacked in was body language. The way jimin carelessly lets his head dangle during the chorus, showing despair, the way he extends his arms in abandon during the choir part of the song etc- all of those movements generate the emotions of the song. Niki did it exactly the way a skilled, versatlie dancer would do it. The only thing he lacked was the body language of 'despair'. And I also need to applaud him for taking care of the dance lines. He did a great job.

Byeongkwan

youtube

Even though technically, Niki was more detailed, I enjoyed Byeongkwan's performance a lot because of the emotions he put. His head movement, hands, expressions - he was using them all to evoke the same emotions of the song. Technically, he missed some details of the original choreo and his body lines were not perfect. The central body movement during "Sungyeolhaessdeon nal chajajwo" was not that fluid. Some dancers do not pay attention to their central body movement when there is already a lot of limb movement (like tiktok dancers). Even though he was not technically accurate, he was a pleasure to watch because of his confidence and emotions. Even though his emotions were more about 'sexy despair' than just 'despair' lol.

YG treasure box (Junghwan vs Hyunsuk)

Won't even bother putting a link because these two are trainees and really really not upto the mark - both vocals and dance. So, I'm sorry I won't be evaluating them lol. You can find it on YT if you wish to. They shouldn't have chosen such a tough song for a battle, especially for trainees. Jimin is called 'idol of idols' but only those who are extremely hard working and daring enough to try to embody Jimin's power should attempt his stuff. It's very easy to fall short if they are not serious about it.

Dongheon from Verivery

youtube

A decent attempt for a rookie, I would say. He missed a lot of details and in some places, the popping was non-existent. Dance lines were also not taken care of. But overall, I think if he had practiced more, maybe with another pro-dancer, he could do better. He definitely tried to put in the emotions via body language, and I do appreciate that. Again the lack of torso movement during "Sungyeolhaessdeon nal chajajwo" was apparent. Such a simple thing, but such an easy catch when you need to distinguish idol dancers vs professional dancers.

All said and done, I see he is just a trainee, but I do see the passion, even in dingy practice room, recorded using a phone camera probably.

Tae Young, Seven o' clock

Again, I won't comment because this was done as a gag for an interview. It's not a serious performance or practice. Something you or I would do in the privacy of our homes or around friends lol. You can watch the video on YT.

That's all the covers I could find on YT.

A short note on LIE vocals: You are right, no idol has attempted to sing it. At least no well established idol. I saw some vocal covers by YT singers, but they all did it in their own style. Honestly, Jimin's vocals are not easy to replicate at all. Maybe a song like Serendipity is still okay to attempt, with the intention to sound like Jimin. But Lie?? No way. Because in Lie, Jimin doesn't use falsettos or soft voice (only bridge has falsetto) . It's all raspy, boyish voice and head voice. The high notes in Lie are not falsettos either. It's not just the emotions, but also his pronunciation, vocal fry, vocal texture and vocal cracks that come into play. They are simply not imitable. If you want to cover Lie, just do it in your own style.

Anyway, if you want to read more about Jimin, here's another post by me about his music which didn't receive a lot of attention, go read it if you can:-

#bts jimin #park jimin #bts analysis

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icedmetaltea · 3 months

Text

(tw: scissors, needles)

Pov: you get your friendship bracelet from Moon cut off :( (no literally that's the plot I'm not even joking)

Reblogs greatly appreciated!

Not his official outfit! I've since then made an actual design I like for him and will post that once I finish Moon's :> BUT I liked this pic and didn't feel like redrawing so gonna just have to deal

Details abt this one bc I feel like oversharing and have nothing better to do

. Y/n is a socially anxious nighttime security guard. They have no friends + are mega depressed + self-conscious and hide their face behind a pair of sunglasses even at night + chubby bc I SAY SO. Started a fic with them a long while ago but deleted it cause depression, they liiiiive

. Sun has access to a sewing machine (terrible idea on staff's part btw) in the crafting room and is obsessed with sewing costumes, needles, sewing scissors, that kinda thing bc of course he is. His outfit has degraded over the years so he tries to put it back together with random scraps of red fabric. He has a bunch of needles on his lil waist thing for easy access

. The daycare is actually shut down and has been for a long time, but y/n doesn't know that since they only see it at night. Sun has gone stir crazy without kids to take care of and spends his day making costumes and other crafts, preparing for children to arrive... even though they never will.

. Moon is dormant most of the time bc Sun keeps the lights whenever possible; he's very passive and sweet, and will tell bedtime stories to plushies as a way to cope with the loneliness. He's kind of aware Sun's gone batshit but can't really be bothered to do anything about it, at least not till he gets to know y/n better

I'm not sure if they're separate animatronics and Moon just goes offline when the lights are off cause like I'm prolly gonna give him a different outfit so

. Basic story idea: Y/n is doing one of their night shifts and gets a noise notification coming from the daycare. Since they never got the memo about it being closed down, they assume there's a break in and goes to check it out. Sun is nervous as shit when the two encounter each other, way out of practice with socializing, but quickly warms up and decides he must become their best friend at any cost. Y/n on the other hand is awkward as hell and doesn't know how to act around him. Sun makes as many efforts to lure them into the daycare as possible, and slowly becomes more and more obsessive, going so far as to hack into the webcam of their laptop, the security cams to see what they can see, watching them at the start and ends of shifts to make sure they don't interact with anyone else

Just as y/n begrudgingly starts to warm up to him, the power goes out and they meet Moon for the first time. They have this rlly wholesome plushie bedtime story scene but Moon soon lets slip about the daycare being closed-

Y/n starts to realize some shit is going on and confronts Sun about it but at this point he's way too cheery around them and is always dancing around them and showing them his latest sewing creations... so instead they begin turning off the lights manually every night at set times, telling Sun it's for "routine maintenance" or something but really it's to get more info out of Moon

Perhaps Moon starts to become a lil protective of them too~ They are after all a lot better of a listener than any plushie...

At this point they're both fiercely protective/possessive of y/n and don't want them being friends with anyone else. Cue jealousy and the two fighting for their attention~

At some point or another Moon makes them a friendship bracelet since he knows that'll get to Sun since he likes them so much, and also to mark Y/n as his

Sun finds it the next day, grabs a pair of sewing scissors and cuts it off in his first display of outright anger

Beyond that?? No clue 🥲

I feel compelled to refer to this ver of him as Pincushion...

#inverted au #Metaltea rambles #yandere #tw yandere #tw scissors #tw needles #scissors #needles #just to be safe

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meyousing · 1 year

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ᴄʜʀᴏʟʟᴏ, ᴄᴀɴ'ᴛ ꜱʟᴇᴇᴘ

ꜱʏɴᴏᴘꜱɪꜱ: as chrollo reads you to sleep, his attentiveness to your needs has you reconsidering how you feel about him after all he's done to wrong you.

ɴᴏᴛᴇꜱ: chrollo x reader, sfw, implied yandere, mentions of past kidnapping, implied manipulation. not super proof read, i felt like writing something short n sweet for chrollo :V

Delicate fingers were tangled, stilled through your hair, the sound of a calm heart beating beneath your ear pressured you to relax further into the embrace that you were trapped–or rather, delicately held in. This was always how your repetitious days ended; forced back into the arms of your captor for “bed time,” forced to drift off against him until the next dull morning. You’d wake up when he did, be forced to stay in this god-forsaken bedroom all day long with nothing but a small bookshelf and its limited selection, along with an (annoyingly) comfortable bed to rest in as you read. On your first day here, before leaving for his work he assured you that this wouldn’t be where you were to stay forever, just for the time being until his current mission was over, then onto the next location, and so on. Indefinitely. That did nothing to ease the current-you and your worried thoughts about the future with this criminal, but it wasn’t like that was his intention anyway.

You had already read each book on the shelf, coming up on your second re-reads as the duration of your stay here felt never ending. He told you that he would get some more books for you when he could, maybe a typewriter too so you could pass the time making your own material to read. The clock on the wall was broken, so you were never sure of the time, it had been awhile since he said that he would replace that for you as well. You could only rely on where the sun shone in the sky to try and predict when your captor would come back to you from his job–which you weren’t interested in knowing the details of, no matter how many times he would ask “do you want to hear about my day?”

You did not want to hear about his day. In fact, you wanted nothing to do with him, too upset by his delusion and thinking that this was “what was best for you” and how he “knew better.” The remembrance of these words leaving him so assuredly made you scoff as you recalled the scene of it; him gripping you so tightly as he spoke, eyes intense and never leaving yours until he was pleased with your enforced complacency. Your scoff had slipped out audibly as this segment played over again for the nth time behind your shut eyes. You winced, hoping that you hadn’t woken him up. You weren’t sure if he was a light or heavy sleeper, this had never happened before. You were typically rigid and silent in his grasp, unmoving so as to not crack, to not let him see you calm in his grasp since he didn’t deserve to.

You waited, holding your breath as if that scoff meant that every sound from here on was forbidden, lest you wake Chrollo up and have him scold you for not being asleep (he never really scolded you though. He would just look disappointed in you and try to reach a resolution of whatever kind he saw fit). You would usually force yourself to stay awake for as long as you possibly could as a show of some kind of rebellion, yet the culmination of your weariness from such a dreary day combined with the gentle warmth coming from Chrollo’s body always had you falling asleep sooner than you’d like. Right now, you knew you could stay awake for longer, but not if Chrollo woke up too.

Nothing happened, not right away at least. You exhaled quietly, lungs relieved, though they hitched when the fingers in your hair unexpectedly moved to stroke through it, detangling a strand and reaching back to your roots to continue the process.

“Having trouble falling asleep?” his voice was raspy with fatigue yet still so smooth as he questioned you. You felt his chin press against the top of your head, the hand that wasn’t entwined within your hair squeezing your waist impossibly closer to him. What you wanted to say was that you were having trouble relaxing, since being caged into your kidnapper’s clutches every night wasn’t exactly the most alleviating scenario to fall asleep to.

You learned quickly that retorting his inquiries was always going to be unsuccessful. Any smidge of a snark in your tone only ever had him smiling, voice condescending as he said that he would give you some space to cool off before allowing you to answer him properly this time. You knew there was some kind of dark implication behind his words, but thankfully you’d smarten up by that point to ever find out what he could have truly meant.

You wanted to nod but your current position made that difficult, so you begrudgingly whispered a “yes” as a lie, absolutely not revealing the real reason why you made a sound of upset. He stroked your hair for a bit longer before relenting his hold on you, moving aside and allowing you to fall gently back onto the mattress and sitting up himself. You peeked an eye open to watch as he flipped the bedside lamp on which made you squint. He fiddled around within the little drawer of the end table before turning to you with a book in his hand. He opened his arm to you then, leaning back into the pillows.

“Come, let me read you to sleep.”

You blinked before you acted. You didn’t want to interact with him at night, since night time brought fatigue, which also brought vulnerability. Though when you were still for too long Chrollo’s head began to tilt curiously. Your movements were slow with hesitance as you pulled yourself against him, hoping he mistook your reluctance as sluggishness instead, when realistically you wanted to take this opportunity to slip out of bed and run for the door–despite knowing that it was locked. He didn’t question your pace though, only wrapping his arm around your back securely once you were nestled against him, holding the other side of the book then. He cleared his throat with elegance, reciting the text before him, his voice buttery as each word melted off of his tongue and reverberated through his chest; against your warm cheek.

You wanted so badly to be disgusted by him for what he had done to you–to hate him–yet when his tone was beguiling as it was, his body so warm and his touch so tender, you just couldn’t. This man kidnapped you; became the dictator of your freewill, yet he still made sure you had an annoyingly cozy bed to rest in. He made sure you had books to read, even if the selection had remained the same for much too long. He brought your favourite clothes along when he had taken you, even taking other personal belongings of yours in remembrance of how you’d expressed your love for them in the past (even though now you kept them shoved away in your closet, you couldn’t look at them just yet without being reminded of your old life and becoming sentimental to the point of tears).

He was undeniably attentive, always reassuring you that he would replace anything that you were unhappy with in spite of the delays. He actually did bring you a shining, brand new wrist watch one day when you mentioned the broken clock on the wall, but he turned severely apologetic when he realized that he had forgotten to grab batteries for it on his way home–his tasks that day were much too frantic and restrained for him to find the time.

Perhaps all of this could have been a lie; could have been a way to earn your complacency instead of forcing it, making promises to tend to every complaint you had (except for your freedom) in due time as a ploy to get you to believe and rely on him for it. Yet now, as your muscles softened into jelly and your eyes became too heavy to follow along with his place on the book’s page, you couldn’t help but finally relax in his hold and let woes of those potential misleading matters dissolve away. If Chrollo was only acting with you, you couldn’t care less right now.

Your breathing slowed, the last thing you felt being Chrollo’s gentle lips against your forehead, before finally succumbing to the darkness behind your eyes. One thing in this new life of yours was for certain; it was a nice change to be treated chivalrously for once.

#✧meyou #✧musinghxhmasterlist #chrollo #yandere chrollo #chrollo x reader #chrollo lucilfer x reader #chrollo lucilfer #phantom troupe #hxh #hxh x reader #hunter x hunter #hxh chrollo #hunter x hunter x reader #chrollo x y/n #chrollo x you

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valentinedaughtler · 6 months

Text

Tainted Opal (Part 6)

Kaz Brekker x fem!reader

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

T/Ws: violence, romantic feelings, blood, mild spice scenes sometimes, fem!reader and she/her pronouns, sexual abuse/trauma (not explicit)

Synopsis: Your boat has been docked in Fjerda and you forgot your coat…. (But Kaz has a coat…👀)

REQUESTS: OPEN✅

____________________________________________

6 - Kaz Brekker Always Had a Reason

The ship was docked on the west coast of Fjerda, frozen plains stretches over the horizon into a snowy oblivion. The ocean was deeply frigid, an innocent plunge would send you to a numbing death.

Everyone, except prepared Matthias, was painfully underdressed. Jesper reminded us all frequently through whiney griping. We teased him about it, saying his fancy hats would not even be able to warm him up. My social circle included all the Crows, but I lingered longer around Inej and Nina. We all seemed to feel a feminine connection to one another; an easy group to complain about the boys' nonsense to.

As Nina and I shivered, we huddled near one another, the long trek around the Fold just beginning. Matthias held Nina close, insuring that she would be warm, despite her heartrender abilities.

Eventually, Nina moved between the cold Crows, circulating their blood into a more rapid speed to keep their temperatures up. Thus, I was left with the massive Fjerdan man. I'd seduced many men, but only a few looked like they could snap me in half like a twig for a fire like he did.

"Do you miss Fjerda?" I asked with an inquisitive tilt of the head. Matthias's face contorted slightly, his jaw shifting and eyebrows stitching together. He stayed silent for a moment before sighing,

"I do miss my people in some ways, but sometimes you find a person who changes your values...," he replied with a thick accent. It was sharp and pronounced, I had a feeling if he yelled at you it would feel like a brick to the face. I nodded as he watched Nina. "Do you miss your life before Ketterdam swallowed it up?"

"No-...," I tried to articulate how I felt about my past, but I guess I wasn't too sure. "I miss the specifics, the small details. Though, when I think about the big picture, I don't miss any of it." I let out a shivered breath before speaking again, "I don't want to think back fondly on what my life had been, trying to write an edited version with only the good plot points. It's easier to not think about it at all, no story is better than a bad one, don't you think?" I craned my neck to look at Matthias's eyes, they looked harsh and painful, but maybe they were pained instead.

"I think you should just keep writing the story," he acknowledged my thought with a nod. "Maybe find new characters to add to it rather than making it a one-man narration." I laughed softly, an unexpected response from him.

"Nina seems to be a good influence on you," smirking at him with a knowing glint in my eye. He really loves her, I thought as I made my way to the heartrender herself. "Nina!" I waddled my way across the tundra to her and Kaz. She seemed a bit exasperated as the dark haired boy begrudgingly allowed her to use her small science on him.

"Y/n, can you tell him that I will not be stopping his heartbeat?" She huffed as Kaz squirmed away from her slightly.

"That's enough," he said, but I heard his teeth chatter a bit through that gravely voice. I laughed, asking Nina to warm me up instead. She excitedly obliged, leaving Kaz to sulk in peace.

She began to chuckle to herself as she contorted her soft fingers to work her 'majik'.

"What is it?" I inquired with growing curiosity. She turned to me with a suggestive smile and a wink.

"Kaz was watching you, earlier, when you were taking to Matthias." Her grin widened, showing her pearly, white teeth. My cheeks burned when the meaning behind her words clicked in my brain. She continued, "I may have called him out on such. He got real defense," she dragged out her words with a mischievous glint in her eyes.

"He's always defensive. He's basically a human defense system; a wall." I said, attempting to use logic. He barely knew me, unless we had met somewhere before, Kaz wouldn't trust me this early on, I knew that much.

"Well, yes, but you did pay upfront, he doesn't really need you alive, so..." Nina batted her eyelashes at me, mimicking a lovestruck girl. I flushed as I looked back at Kaz, limping a few feet behind us, when he met my gaze I spun back around, tensing up. Nina leaned close to my ear, "you're blushing... and I can tell your heartbeat has fluctuated frequently when he is near you-"

"Okayy, thank you, my darling, Nina, but I should really be going-,"

"You should be discussing plans with me since we are getting closer to the main path," rasped Kaz from behind me. I stifled a startled scream. Geez, what's with me? I'm never actually flustered around people and I've... been in intimate situations during heists many a time. Nina flashed me a smile and a wink before leaving Kaz and I alone. I sighed with relief as I know her torment would be at bay, for now.

"When we get to the trail's end, we should find shelter for the night, there are abandoned cabins all over Fjerda. That's what my dad told me, atleast," my voice was still a bit shakey as I tried to slow my heart rate down. Kaz nodded.

"It's the safest gamble to set up camp at the first cabin we see that doesn't have occupants in it," his tone was somehow more formal than it generally was, his body seemed tense. Had he heard what Nina had said? I looked at the cheery woman far up ahead, her bubbly laugh echoing across the frozen wasteland we trekked.

I walked with Kaz in silence, maintaining a couple feet of distance between us, I wasn't sure why, but I felt that if I touched him that he might snap. Whether that indicated him imploding or killing me, I wasn't sure. But I respected his need for space. I felt like I yearned to be alone often, since intimate touch was an important part of my job. It often wasn't by people I wanted to touch me too. Maybe it bothered me because I was so young, but no one in Ketterdam stayed young. Instead of a slow climb to adulthood, it was a drowning process. Before, you were something, but after you plunged up for air, you weren't much anymore.

A gust of wind blew hair into my face and sent a shiver throughout my body, like hitting a metal drum and watching it vibrate. Kaz seemed to suppress the chill he felt, huffing slightly as the wind blew towards us.

"Why didn't you bring a jacket?" Kaz grumbled, his glare colder than the snow melting in my boots. "Your chattering teeth is starting to irritate me."

"I originally thought we'd be headed through Shu Han," I said through long breaths. I suddenly felt a thick jacket be placed.., no, more so dropped onto my shoulders. I turned to the Crow beside me, who refused to meet my gaze. With a breathy laugh, I slipped my arms into the jacket. It was soft and warm, but oversized on me. I dug my chilly hands into the lined pockets. "Thank you."

Kaz stayed silent, but I could tell he was cold in only his shirt and vest. "We need you in good health. The Crows, especially Matthias, need your tailoring skills to disguise us. I assume your business partner also knows of me, so that would be a problem." He explained, as if justifying his decision to himself.

We eventually reached a fork in the road, both paths leading to long, winding expanses of lifeless tundra. I indicated the correct road, but as we made our way, we saw a small shack.

The skeleton of the building was stacked logs and eroded wood was sparsticslly laying in chunks near the house. The inside had creaky wooden floors, a small kitchen area and bed rested on opposing sides. Fur hanging from the walls, for decor and warmth probably, a small fire place, and a couch were the only other things of note in the barren room.

"Oh, it reminds me of how Matthias and I had spent our first night together," Nina purred with a silly smile.

"Wylan and I are too fancy to sleep on the floor," Jesper said while sprawling out on the make-shift mattress. No one objected, but Matthias and Nina called the couch. Us single three left mutually decided we were on our own for sleeping areas.

"There's enough fur for the rest of us to just sleep on the floor separately," Inej pointed out, "but I'm okay sharing with Y/n if there is a shortage of blankets." She smiled at me and squeezed my hand. I returned her sentiment by promising to braid her hair later.

Jesper's eyes wandered around the room in observation, eventually landing on jacket-less Kaz and my body that was swallowed by said-jacket. His lips crooked into a sly grin.

"Nice jacket, Y/n," Jesper said and his eyes landed on the coat's owner, who froze.

"I'm going to collect firewood," Kaz grumbled and made his way outside the cabin quite quickly.

"I'll be right with ya', boss!" Jesper shot up from the bed and jogged after Kaz, his giggling and teasing still audible.

"Should we leave them alone in the woods?" Nina asked, "Kaz may kill the poor boy." Everyone laughed a bit, knowing looks shared between everyone besides me. I've been too casual, I've grown too close to them. Maybe... I should stay away from Kaz a bit since we aren't trapped on a boat together any longer.

✵ ♣ ✵

"He gave you his jacket?" Inej repeated the words I just spewed out nervously. I nodded in response as she turned to look at me with shock.

We sat together on the roof, which was very difficult for for me to get up to after Inej did so with grace. Stealth was not my thing. She sat in front of my crossed legs, leaning on me slightly, as I braided her hair ornately. The repetitive motions soothed me as I felt the pressure of the coming heist. "The last couple nights on the boat we've both gotten nightmares from too much time on the sea," I explained. "We've been talking from late to early, until the sunrises, or just sitting in silence."

Inej giggled a bit, I felt her shake against me as the laugh vibrated through her. "He doesn't grow fond of people quickly, I can't be sure, but I want you to stay with us after the heist," Inej said softly.

I hummed in response, "we'll see. Even if we part ways, I'll stay in touch with you and Nina." I couldn't see her face, but I could tell Inej was smiling.

We both looked down to see a babbling Jesper walking next to an exhausted looking Kaz. Inej turned to me as I had just finished braiding her long hair. Her lips were crooked into a michevious grin.

"Let's scare them," she whispered softly. I was pretty sure Kaz would have seen us by now, knowing how observant he is, but the idea was too tempting. We slid behind the slant of the roof and Inej silently leaped to a nearby tree, her wire-y figure wrapping around the limbs on it, gripping the bark. She chucked a pinecone at Jesper, knocking the eccentric hat off of his head. He squeaked as he attempted to get the snow off of his hat. Inej disappeared behind the tree as the two boys looked up at the direction the pinecone came from. As I aimed to hit Kaz with a pinecone, I slipped slightly. His keen eyes landed on the roof, but not before I hid myself from his line of vision.

"Shit. Shit. Shit." I whispered, still wearing Kaz's coat. I stayed silent for a moment before hearing the crunching of boots in the snow. I quickly hurled the pinecone at Kaz's head, but he swung his cane, hitting the pinecone perfectly. He didn't even look up. Before I realized it, the pinecone was headed straight for me. He was aiming for me. I dodged it, but in the process my grip on the roof loosened, causing me to slide down the roof towards Jesper and Kaz. They looked up at the roof, and the sharpshooter leaped to catch me. I fell into his arms with a thud.

I smiled nervously, "hey guys..." Inej shimmied down the tree and quickly came to check on me. Jesper let me down, laughing the whole time, but Kaz had an indescribable expression on his face.

"I told you we can't have you dead," his tone was serious, my smile dropping abruptly. "Stick to what you're good at; making your presence known, Seductress." He admonished my actions as he walked inside with firewood in one hand, cane in the other. Why am I so foolish when I'm around him?

Inej followed after him, sternly explaining it was her idea. I felt a warmth in my heart as she defended me.

"Come, Y/n, let's talk," Jesper said. He had a pelt of fur draped over him, keeping him warmer. I followed him in the frosty woods behind the cabin. He smirked a bit as we made our way around trees and fallen logs, as well as other suffering vegetation.

"Is something wrong? Do you need relationship advice for Wylan?" I asked with a twinge of concern.

"Oh, no, no. It's about Kaz," his self-assured demeanor stayed strong as I attempted to keep pace with his long-limbed figure. "He's taken an unusual liking to you." He gestured to coat I was wearing.

"He was just being polite," I said, but even I had a hard time saying it without becoming skeptical.

Jesper snorted and shook his head, "Kaz isn't nice to for no reason, Y/n. Despite was people say, Kaz Brekker always has a reason."

_____________

Word Count: 2344

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I realize this seems more like a fast paced romance, but don't worry, the girl falls first in this story. We'll get there...

-Valentine

#fanfic #inej ghafa #jesper fahey #kaz brekker #kaz brekker x reader #kaz brekker x y/n #kaz brekker x you #nina zenik #shadow and bone #six of crows #soc #grishaverse #matthias helvar #fjerda #wylan van eck #fem!reader #fem reader

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literary-illuminati · 1 year

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Book Review 13 – A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

Okay, getting back into writing these reviews before I fall so far behind that catching up is just impossible. Memory is the first book this year that I’ve actually read before; I’m rereading as the first choice for a theoretical book club with some friends. Honestly quite enjoyed the experience, if only because trying to jot down some things to say when discussing it forced me to take it a little slower this time.

To get the technical details out of the way – the book won the Hugo, and did basically deserve it. The writing’s lovely and occasionally downright poetics, the two leads are both insanely compelling, and the court intrigue is appropriately convoluted and byzantine for what is obviously Constantinople IN SPACE. It’s just overall a joyous read.

So Martine’s clearly very fascinated by the experience of having your standards of aesthetics, and sophistication, and civilization defined by a culture which has never even bothered to notice your existence. The simultaneous rapture at being in the heart of the universe that you’ve read about your entire life, and deep alienation knowing you’ll never actually be a part of it. How ever most of the people trying to be friendly and compliment you don’t even notice how patronizing they’re being. And so on and etc. Mahit’s internal monologue does a really good job of selling the ambivalence of it, especially in the party scene.

The book does an excellent job of actually selling the palace district as a site of imperial grandeur, too, every building buried in symbolic aesthetics and ritual significance. But also just, like, actually impressive and grand to read about. All the contrasts between the oveflowing abundance in the city and life on Lsel are fascinating too – Martine makes really good use of the little worldbuilding quotes at the start of chapters to sell the difference. The one that really stuck in my head was a quote from a tourism

guide explaining all the myriad fine dining choices for tourists visiting the City followed directly by a Lseli agricultural report about how new hydrophonic techniques had increased rice yield sufficiently to support a whole hundred non-replacement births in the next generation (it helps that all the Teixicalaanli food legitimately sounds pretty amazing). Though the time where Mahit’s internal monologue short circuited over the idea of carrying a pregnancy to term in your own body – wasteful! Depriving the station of a necessary laborer for months and months when perfectly good artificial wombs are right there! So decadent – is a close second.

Martine is, as I understand it, a Byzantinist, and oh boy can you tell. The city’s a little bit Tenochtitlan in the aesthetics and the religion, but it really is overwhelmingly space Constantinople. The theoretically absolute emperor dealing with mobs in the streets willing and potentially able to acclaim a usurper, the constant risk of legions doing the same, the basic fact that there’s a vast empire which is viewed as nothing but an adjunct or extension of the capital city which is the entirety of all political life and the place everyone whose anyone needs to be, and so on.

In a way, the obvious Byzantine-ness of the Teixicalaanli makes them seem less imperialist than just imperial, at least from Mahit’s perspective. Which is to say, well, first of all that ‘empire’ has far too many meanings and distinguishing them is hard, but the Teixicalaanli don’t expand like the British or French, in constant competition over captive markets and strategic locations, they don’t feel some glorious burden of manifest destination or a mission civilisatrice that requires universal dominion. They already are the universe, or at least everything worthwhile in it, they go to war like medieval kings or Roman princeps – to win glorious victories and so show the empire they have the right to rule it.

The relation between Lsel and Teixicalaan – well, if suffers from the standard space opera lack of scale, first of all. The stationers number in the tens of thousands – the empire must be in the hundreds of billions, minimum. ‘Realistically’ Six Directions would never have found out about the imago device because relations with them would have been handled by some mid-ranking provincial governor, only showing up in travelogues and fanciful ethnographies. But leaving that aside, Teixicalaanli myopia also means that the cultural imperialism that the book’s so fascinated by is oddly...blameless? Teixicalaan presumably has brutal campaigns dedicated to stamping out native cultures and integrating them into the empire, but there’s hardly one directed at Lsel. The general sense you get is one of vaguely tragic inevitability – that the mismatch in size and wealth is such that of course any sort of even slightly free exchange of media and ideas will lead to Stationer culture being overwhelmed. Makes me think about arguments around CanCon regulations.

(The whole Roman, medieval feel of the empire means it all kind of calls to mind various Germanic elites actively reaching for Roman iconography and institutions to legitimize themselves as much as anything, though of course that’s not really right.)

The book’s politics are, I think, a bit limited by the degree it’s laser-focused on the very uppermost tip of imperial society – the book seems to know this too, given the thirty page digression into cyberpunk two thirds of the way through (speaking of which, I absolutely adore the fact that the elegant, ritually harmonious and utterly aesthetic architecture lasts about three metro stops away from the palace before everything starts turning into economical concrete blocks). Which isn’t really a knock on the book, but I do think some of the praise of it does get a bit overblown; there’s a limit to how much insight you can really have on imperialism when you’re so focused on the stories an empire tells about itself in its most rarified and luxurious heart.

In much the same way there’s something very, I don’t know, ‘written in America in the late 2010s’ about the political imagination the book allows itself. There are people who don’t want the world to be the world, and maybe they can help a bit, but the actual players in the game of thrones are corrupt oligarchs and populist warmongers, you know?

All that said, the book sure does portray a city that views itself as synonymous with civilization. I only realized there was a Teixicalaanli word for foreigner that wasn’t ‘barbarian’ when one of the probably-terrorists made a point of using it during the whole cyberpunk interlude. Which retroactively makes, like, every single other Teixicalaanli character in the book waaaaay more of an asshole. (fanfic thought - Teixicalaanli attempts to talk even vaguely respectfully to/about foreigners as analogous to people trying to be gender neutral or talk about nonbinary people in really strongly genedered languages, right down to the awkward neologisms that the ‘average citizens’ rolls their eyes at. What’s the Teixicalaanli term for ‘the woke plague.’?)

Also – not really a better place to put this in, but something I really do like about the worldbuilding is that no one has anything like the same ideas of what constitutes political legitimacy as the contemporary liberal default? Lsel is a corporatist state, where political power is divided between what are basically guilds who seem to have wide remit to make policy within their jurisdiction, with only one seat on the council seeming to have any sort of election. And Teixicalaan is, of course, a bureacratic-verging-on-stratocratic monarchy, with a strong sense of popular involvement in government, but through demonstrations and rioting instead of any formal process. It’s enjoyable that neither place is actually, like, familiar.

The motor of the book’s plot is byzantine (or Byzantine, I suppose) court intrigue, and as someone who loves polite conversations and poetic allusions followed directly by assassination attempts, I adored it. That said, I’m going to be a slob demanding everything be hand fed to me for a minute and saying that it all got positively opaque by the end. Which is, I suppose, entirely realistic, given Mahit’s position and role in everything, but still I wanted an Agathe Christie drawing room denouncement so bad. Was Ten Pearl actively backing the coup? If not, what was up with the Sunlit? And the Cityshocks? Why was the Information Ministry so politically passive and uninvolved in a literal coup attempt? How was Eight Loop involved in the whole final resolution, given it was her people keeping the emperor safe but it was Nineteen Adze who was with him on camera? All these questions and more, unanswered and, probably, irrelevant! But like, inquiring minds want to know.

Though speaking of the coup, I really did absolutely adore how, like,incompetent and amateurish both coup attempts were? Which seems like it would be a plot hole, but actually it’s probably the strongest argument the book can make for Six Direction’s immortality plan – the empire has been peaceful for so long no one remembers how to do a coup.

Anyway, yes! Extremely good book, Mahit and Seagrass are absolutely great protagonists. Not at all sorry I’m peer pressuring people into reading it.

#book review #a memory called empire #arkady martine #book club #sff

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ailendolin · 4 months

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Here are my first thoughts after finally having watched the 2023 Christmas Special for the first time:

Positive:

Baby Mia is absolutely adorable and Alison and Mike are wonderful parents. They've grown and matured so much throughout the series and it's lovely to see that in the way they are with Mia and take care of her

and speaking of growth: I think it's lovely that in the end, the ghosts are ready to let Alison and Mike go. They've really come full circle from trying to get them to leave in the beginning to begging them to stay in series 5 and finally, to encouraging them to leave because that's what's best for Alison and Mike's family

I love that Alison looks like the tired, exhausted mum she is. These days, characters often look picture perfect in film and TV, no matter the situation, and Ghosts has always felt like a breath of fresh air because people are allowed to look normal. It's little things like Alison's yellow coat that she's worn throughout the show hanging by the door, her wearing Mike's flannels or having bags under her eyes that make it feel beautifully real down to Earth, and I'm glad the downsides of having a child didn't get glossed over

one of my favourite moments was the shrug Humphrey's body gave when everyone was looking for its head. That genuinely made me laugh because of course the body would not care whether the head would get exorcised or not

and omg, the exorcism scene was so well done! I love the music in the background (I so hope we'll get a soundtrack one day), the panic on Mike's face when he quite literally runs to warn Alison, the panic on Alison's face when she's faced with the possibility of losing the ghosts, the fear when she can't find them (which parallels 5x01) and finally the relief and smile when she hears their voices. That whole sequence was just perfect

I love that it's Thomas who says, "Because they just can't help being who they are," because it's not an excuse for his behaviour but an explanation - and a recurring theme for him. Right in the beginning of the show, he said, "We stay how we die," and I think for him, those words have proven to be true. He is heartbroken and he'll stay that way. He can't help that. He does not want Alison to go ("Why did I vote for this? I hate it.") but in the end he knows it's what's best for her and for himself, even if it breaks his broken heart a little more.

seeing Button House in all its glory in the end. It still being called Button House. Fanny and Humphrey's portraits on the wall (and the third one might be Kitty's?). Higham Suite (which was the thing that made me tear up because my first thought was that it's meant to honour Isabelle and I love that (although I realise it's probably meant to honour Kitty but I'm choosing to ignore that)). Thomas still complimenting Alison even though she's grown old and thus making a point that his affections for her were never just about her looks

Neutral:

I would have preferred if Alison and Mike had stayed at Button House because for me, the show has always been about family and I don't think they had to leave the ghosts behind to find their own way. BUT the way the Idiots wrote and executed it - with the ghosts encouraging them to leave, establishing that Alison and Mike regularly come back to the house and with details like Higham Suite that clearly show that Alison and Mike had the ghosts in mind when they made the contract for sale - makes it okay for me.

I'm a bit sad we did not get to see more of the ghosts interacting with baby Mia but what we saw - Pat and Cap especially - was very sweet

Negative:

the pacing. I am so sorry but I think they crammed too much into the episode. They either should have cut the exorcism storyline (as much as I loved it) or gone for a 60 minute special. There's just too much going on for 30 minutes, and too many time jumps (I wasn't a fan of them in the 2021 Christmas Special either) that sadly make the whole episode feel very rushed

and because it felt so rushed a lot of plots did not have the impact they were meant to have, at least not on me. Robin's feelings about Christmas for example.

also what was going on with Kitty and the baby at the beginning? Her being jealous is obviously not a new thing but the issue did not really get resolved, did it?

the latter also goes for Thomas's feelings for Alison which brings me to my biggest criticism of the whole show: he never got the character development he deserved (and, to an extent, neither did Fanny). The whole baby storyline would have been the perfect set up for him to move on from Alison (including discussions about different types of love and him realising that Alison does love him platonically and that that's enough) but it never happened. I feel like he was done dirty in that regard because every other character except him got to grow

I have probably missed a ton of moments - and I will rewatch the episode once I've rewatched series 5 - and likely repeated things here that others have said before. Since I had blocked all tags blocked when the Special aired I have no idea how the fandom's reaction to it was but if anyone still wants to talk about it, my asks are open.

#bbc ghosts #mp bbc ghosts #bbc ghosts spoilers

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unboundprompts · 9 months

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Hello! i was wondering what tips to use to avoid a story to become just dialogue and not look like a script from a play. The whole he said she said and there's only so many synonyms to use. Like the in between parts the actually story telling from the author is what I've been struggling with. I hope that makes sense. thanks!

What to Do With Too Much Dialogue

Thank you for the ask Anon! Honestly, this is something I struggle with as well. My characters just love to hear themselves talk.

What Does Dialogue Add to the Scene?:

Dialogue is a very easy way to reveal a character's personality. It makes them more fleshed out as an individual and it's a way for the reader to decide if they like the character or not.

Two characters exchanging a conversation can also reveal back story, add conflict to a situation, tell the reader something about themselves or about another character, and it can reveal a characters goals and motivation.

Even though dialogue does all of these useful things, there are other elements that can do the same. By all means, continue using dialogue in your writing, but don't allow it to take over a story.

Summarizing Dialogue:

If you want to show your reader that you have two characters talking to one other, but it doesn't add anything to the story, you can summarize it.

Let's say two characters are exchanging small talk about the weather. You don't need to write out exactly what is being said line for line. Cut it down to something like "They talked about the weather for a few moments."

The same thing applies to a conversation that is important to the story, but knowing exactly what is said is not necessary. You can summarize what they talked about, and even share what the characters thought about it, what they were doing as they talked, etc.

Find What is Missing and Add It:

When you find a scene that has a lot of dialogue, the best thing to do is add information that is missing from the scene.

I read that if a conversation ever exceeds six lines of dialogue back and forth with nothing in between, your reader will get bored.

A few ideas:

Give a description of the setting

Share something relevant about the characters that are talking

Have your characters move around during the conversation

Share what one of the characters is thinking

I'll share a scene from one of my WIPs (This is not a prompt, just an example), so you can get an idea:

Dialogue with no breaks:

"You wouldn't understand!" "You're right, I don't understand. Not yet at least. Will you help me understand?" "I don't want to talk about it. I don't even want to think about it." "I want you to know I want to listen if you need someone to talk to. I won't force it out of you." "Why are you taking care of me? What did I do to deserve your help?" "It's incredibly sad that you feel that you have to ask that, you realize?"

Notice how it just runs on and on? Even if you add "he said," or "she said," it doesn't add anything. There's conflict and lots of emotion, but the reader can't tell what the characters are thinking or what they're doing during this conversation.

Here is the same scene (still not a prompt), but now with added information:

“You wouldn’t understand!” Red stared at her, taking in every miniscule detail of her face. The freckles that dotted her nose, the stray hair that cascaded down her face, no matter how many times she tucked it behind her ear it refused to stay. He examined the bruise that colored her left cheek, dancing up to her eye and down to her jawline. The scar: the faintest white line he had ever seen that traveled her forehead and disappeared beneath her brow. His eyes lingered on the bandage on her neck, the red irritated skin that peeked out from the edges. He saw the devastation in her eyes, an emotion he now saw that she had masked with anger. “You’re right.” He told her, “I don’t understand. Not yet at least. Will you help me understand?” June was the first to break eye contact, instead fixating on a mark in the wood. “I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t even want to think about it.” A sigh from Red. “I want you to know I want to listen if you need someone to talk to. I won’t force it out of you.” “Why are you taking care of me? What did I do to deserve your help?” It was a question Red was not anticipating. His brows furrowed. “It’s incredibly sad that you feel that you have to ask that, you realize?”

The added information to the scene shows how the characters feel about the conversation and how they view each other. The reader is more engaged because they're not overwhelmed by the dialogue, and it gives them insight to the personality of the characters, making them seem more human.

Editing:

When I write, I find it easier to write out the dialogue first. My main goal is to get words on paper. I'll add who is talking and how they said it, but other than that it's just dialogue. When I finish, I go back and look for those dialogue-heavy scenes, and that's when I add the information that is missing.

Other Resources:

Too Much Dialogue - The Editor's Blog

Do You Have Too Much Dialogue? - Fiction University

#writeblr #creative writing #writing dialogue #character dialogue #writing community #ask box prompts #my writing

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thatgirl4815 · 8 months

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Intimacy (Ep4)

So there is a lot of behind the scenes work happening in this episode, diving into character histories and further developing how they've come to find themselves in the relationships they're in. All of these details will likely play a large role in how each couples' bonds deepen or widen.

RaySand

Ray's behavior gets a lot of context this episode, particularly in regards to Mew, who he is still crushing on. Because this is such a big plot point this episode, it has a lot of subtle implications for Ray's burgeoning relationship with Sand. Forgive me while I go on a tangent about Ray...

It's become clear--and I think Ray himself even realizes this--that Ray's feelings for Mew are more about the role Mew can fulfill rather than the person Mew really is. How many times does Ray say "No one loves me" in that opening scene? Ray needs so desperately to feel that someone loves him, and he's grown accustomed to being called a brat and a burden because he sees himself that way too.

Ray tells Mew that he isn't looking for a real relationship, but he seems to crave one. I think though that if Ray did date Mew, he would find himself in a similar situation as what he is (eventually) going to find with Sand: having someone love him is all he wants, but the threat of that person leaving him is worse than receiving no love at all. The thought of having Mew return his feelings is perfect because it's just a fantasy--a reflection of what he needs to feel whole again.

Ray turns back to Sand to distract himself from Mew, but Ray's relationship with Sand is going to show him what happens when the fantasy of being loved by someone becomes a reality. Being loved means acknowledging all of the hurt and pain that Ray has likely worked so hard to suppress in the years since his mother's death.

Ray and Sand are edging closer and closer to the edge of the "feelings" abyss, and at the moment, Sand is still the only one who seems aware of it. They've already developed an intimate relationship physically, but small gestures like this reflect the emotional intimacy they're working towards. That's what could end up destroying both of them.

TopMew

Top and Mew make more headway as far as physical intimacy this episode, but their emotional intimacy has taken a few steps back from the steady incline it's been on so far...Mew just doesn't know it yet. The trust they have in one another is going to be put to the test again and again as Top tries to conceal the truth about his hookup with Boston.

While I admire how strongly Mew holds to his convictions, particularly where sex is concerned, something still feels missing from their relationship both emotionally and physically. I can't decide if it's intentional or not. If it's intentional, perhaps it's meant to reflect that all is not as it seems between them, that there are still substantial barriers they'll have to overcome to make their relationship work (trust issues, for one). Part of it might also be that we have witnessed Top try again and again to win Mew over, but Mew still seems resistant in any case. Again, I don't blame him given Top's reputation, but even when he opens up, Mew still comes across extremely guarded, almost as if he isn't completely sold on being in a relationship at all.

This might just be my take on it. I'm curious if anyone else feels similarly. I want to be invested in Top and Mew's relationship, but the very obvious cheating and lying going on is making it difficult for me to anticipate a happy ending, and it casts a cloud over their intimate scenes already. (Again, probably intentional. I'm anxious to see where it'll go from here.)

BostonNick

Boston never changes. He plays Nick like a fiddle. The only change we see between them this episode comes from Nick's side, with him finally admitting verbally that he's into Boston (as if we did not already know that). I find it funny that Nick agrees with everyone who tells him that Boston is bad news, yet he's just as down bad as before. I think Nick takes the cake for most pathetic character on the show (*affectionate*)...can't say I condone his obvious spying and breaking into Boston's phone though. At least Nick has flaws too, otherwise Boston would be blowing him out of the water as far as negative traits are concerned.

Boston's ego is also extremely apparent in every scene with Nick. I think Boston likes knowing that Nick is developing feelings, even if he has no intention of returning them. He sees himself as a prize, and Nick's affection just reaffirms that (something he desperately needs while Top is rejecting him).

Boston and Ray both take the cake as far as getting back into Nick and Sand's good graces though. Those cheek kisses and puppy dog eyes haven't failed them yet.

(Not entirely related, but I am not ready for Boston and Nick to crash RaySand's makeout session next week. Let the boys kiss in peace please.)

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gatheringbones · 2 years

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[“In talking about gentrification in New York City, you write about the “New People” who flocked to New York when it became a whitewashed symbol of post-9/11 patriotism. You say, “Their newness is not the problem,” since new people have always flocked to New York. What is the difference now?

It has long been a struggle to come up with a name for these people. When I started my blog, Vanishing New York, in 2007, I called them “yunnies,” a riff on yuppies that stood for Young Urban Narcissists. But that was too limiting, and too cutesy, so I dropped that. For the book, I wanted to coin some great term, but ended up with New People, which I’m not satisfied with either. What I mean is that these people are a new kind of personality type in the city. They’re not New because they’re newcomers; they’re New because they’re not like the sort of people who’ve historically flocked to the city and, specifically, to countercultural neighborhoods like the East Village. They often don’t feel quite human. They feel android-like, manufactured, and this is because — I believe — their personalities have been engineered by the culture of neoliberal capitalism, especially in the 2000s when social media spreads neoliberalism like a virus. In The New Yorker, Jia Tolentino just published an essay about “Instagram face,” what she calls a “single, cyborgian” look, and this is part of what I’m talking about. The New People are perfect neoliberal subjects, engineered to conform, perform and succeed, and this makes them quite violent in the way they enter and commandeer urban space — and in the way they approach people who are unlike them, who they see as beneath them. They are also violent toward themselves through de-subjectification, the process of hollowing themselves out. I find it difficult to empathize with them, though. I keep trying, but I feel so assaulted by them, I just can’t.

I love how you eavesdrop on your influencer neighbors to give us the flattened details of their lives. Surveillance has stifled so many of the possibilities of urban life, and yet here you’re flipping the gaze to examine the gawkers and their “contemptuous disregard.” What do you find?

“Flattened” is a good word and it describes well what happens when someone de-subjectifies themself; they smooth out all the bumps that make them human and particular. They are the cyborgian Instagram face, the flat sameness of the glossy catalog image, drained of all personality. And — here’s their violence — they aim to de-subjectify everything and everyone around them. This goes way beyond gentrification. This is about turning the entire urban landscape into a slick, frictionless, endlessly repeating Instagrammable scene, devoid of affect, risk and surprise. To create this nightmarish hollow city, many of us will have to be removed, and if we refuse to go, we will be controlled — by the police, by systems of surveillance, and by the contemptuous disregard that the New People throw like poison darts from their eyes. They are trying to annihilate us. To make us not exist.

At the beginning of COVID lockdown in New York, so many of these “New People” left the city.

The day lockdown began, in March 2020, they fled in droves. The people who stayed behind and roamed the streets were the sort of New Yorkers I used to know. I’m talking about the ordinary people who aren’t cyborgian, along with the poor and working class, the nonwhite, the queer, the weird, the unhoused, the old, the artists, basically everyone who’s not a New Person. So the city refilled with all this gorgeous subjectivity! It was like a cloud lifted and we could see each other again. We could feel each other and look at each other. We became un-alienated.”]

#wasteland radio

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effloradox · 2 years

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musical!beetlejuice + 5 love languages

(a/n: i have big brain rot for this trash man and i wrote this entire thing in like 2 hours which never happens 😅)

physical touch

Given how big a game Beetlejuice talks, it initially surprised you to find out that your ghost with the most is massively touch-starved. You'd been warned by both the Maitlands and Charles that Beetlejuice might be...intense in his feelings for you, and it had initally made you nervous when the demon started to seriously pursue you. You'd heard some of the comments he made (mainly about Adam) and at the beginning of your relationship you worried about how quickly your relationship would take to become more physical.

Imagine your surprise when the first time you try to hold his hand, he goes bright pink (including his hair and suit) and vanishes from sight. It makes the others laugh when you tell them but even they admit they're surprised that he suddenly seems so shy when it comes to any kind of physical contact.

It takes progress but you're finally able to hold his hand without him vanishing from a room for an hour. He still goes bright pink, but it's progress and you'll take it.

It's when it hits summer that things start to make good progress. The Conneticut summer seems to get worse every year but when a heatwave hits and you're staying at the Deetz-Maitland house (which for some reason doesn't have a decent AC) and you're struggling to deal with the heat, it seems like the perfect opportunity to spend your free time cuddling with your undead boyfriend, who acts as a perpetual iceblock in bed. Or at least, that had been the plan.

He'd stayed up late watching The Exorcist with Lydia, and as a result you'd stayed up because you were simply unable to fall asleep. It was too hot, and you missed your boyfriend, but it felt rude to disturb his movie night with Lydia so you settled for your heat-induced insomnia and figured you'd wait for the movie to finish. It took time but you've finally got used to your boyfriend just showing up in bed next to you. It used to scare the shit out of you but over time you've gotten used to it. It's why when you turn over and your ghost with the most is suddenly next to you, you don't hesitate to throw an arm over him and lean into his chest.

"Woah babes, thought you went to sleep hours ago. You miss me that much?" He laughs as you nuzzle into his neck and make yourself comfortable.

"Was too hot. Needed you to cool me down."

"Huh, never had someone say that to me before. Cuddle away babes." With the decline in your body temperature, you finally feel sleep coming over you. You vaguely feel Beetlejuice pulling you closer to him before you start to drift off.

"Love you bug."

"Love you too babes."

words of affirmation

Beetlejuice knows he's many things: a demon, a liar, a sharp dresser. He's also a screw up, a disappointment to his mother, and a mess. Some days he looks at you and wonders why the fuck you're dating him. You’re a hell of a breather, you could have anyone you wanted, and for some reason you chose him.

You know Beetlejuice gets insecure. He thinks he's hiding it from you, but you see the purple in his hair sometimes when he thinks he's screwed up your relationship, when he pisses Lydia off with a prank that goes too far, when the flirting with Adam seems to push the limits of the Maitland's patience. It feels like there’s something going on behind the scenes that he won’t tell any of you about, some fear that one day he’ll screw up so bad that everyone will leave him.

The Maitlands and Lydia have filled you in on some details from his past; how Juno treated him, how he thinks everyone will leave him. It weighs heavily on your mind when you first find out. You want him to feel supported in your relationship, he’s always talking you up (both in appropriate and inappropriate ways) so when you find out his fear you make a conscious effort to try and return the favour.

The first time your new mindset comes into effect is when Beetlejuice is telling you about his latest scare attempt on one of your neighbours. You’d mentioned once that he’d not taken a hint when you’d turned down a date when you first moved in and Beej had taken that information and made him a primary target. A small part of you felt bad that the guy now thought he was going crazy but if it made your boyfriend happy, who were you to deny him? It’s when he’s telling you the latest scare, something to do with making all the furniture in the guy’s apartment stick to his ceiling. He makes a comment about all the little touches and you can’t help but let out a laugh at his enthusiasm.

“That’s great Bee, I’m really proud of you.” He goes very still when you say that and you worry for a moment that you've upset him, he'd been so animated as he told you about the haunt. But then you watch as his hair change from green to pink and he slowly carries on as if nothing has changed. Weird.

From then on, you make a conscious effort to praise Beetlejuice whenever he's telling you about work, or making progress with life in the Deetz-Maitland household. It all comes to a head when you praise him for scaring away some creepy old guy from Lydia. You'd gotten into the habit of praising him just to watch his face and hair flush pink, and you thought he hadn't caught on but the gleam in his eyes and the fact you were initially on the other side of the couch to him and in the blink of an eye you're sat in his lap makes you think that he's been playing you for all this time.

"You say that one more time and we're gonna be heading to the bedroom babes. You wanna praise me in there too?" This time it's your turn to blush. Shit.

acts of service

It’s taken a while to get Beetlejuice to the point where he wouldn’t scare people away from you on the spot but you’re happy to say you’ve made progress. It's been almost a month since he scared the living daylights out of any who dared ring your doorbell (without your permission anyway), and your favourite pizza place has tentatively started delivering to your house again to your delight.

Sometimes though, it pays to have a demon with no concept of personal space sharing your home though. Like now, when you just wanted to walk home from the store in peace and was interrupted by a group of drunk men. You tried to bypass the group and thought you'd succeeded, but the shouts of the group didn't seem to be getting quieter and you got the distinct impression that they were following you. You risked a quick glance over your shoulder to check, and upon noticing they did in fact seem to be following you, you started to panic. Any hope you had of them not noticing you turning round faded when one of the men seemed to light up when you caught his eye.

"Hey, you wanna come hang with us baby? We can show you a good time." The yell makes a shiver run down your spine, and your pace quickens. When it sounded like the footsteps behind you also pick up, it feels like the right thing to do to summon your ghost with the most, if only for a sense of security.

"Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Be-" A hand grabbing your arm stops you in your attempt to summon your boyfriend. You turn to see the man you made eye contact with doing what you're assuming he considers to be a charming smile, but in the dimming light it comes off as more unnerving than comforting.

"Hey! My friend asked you a question! Don't be rude and ignore him!" You try to pull your arm away from him, and when his grip tightens in response, it solidifies in your mind what you need to do next.

"Beetlejuice!" The summoning was instant, and with a cloud of green smoke your boyfriend (ghoulfriend?) appeared with a flourish. The exclamations of shock from the group distracts you for a moment but your boyfriend (who's practically shaking with excitement at being allowed to scare people) with his too-sharp grin and fiery red hair brings you back to the matter at hand. He takes one look at the hand that's still wrapped around your arm and the air temperature seems to drop almost instantly.

"Didn't anyone ever tell you fuckers that it's rude to shout at strangers?" You're borderline numb to most of Beetlejuice's scares at this point but these strangers are not. So when his jaw unhinges to show more sharp teeth than should be able to fit in a human mouth and hundred of insects appear from his feet making their way to the group, you can understand their alarm.

The effect is instant and the man gripping your arm finally lets go as him and his friends bolt away from the two of you. Once you're finally alone, you reach out and entwine your hand with Beetlejuice's and watch as the red slowly fades from his hair as it settles back into its usual shade of green.

"Thanks Beej." He gives you a toothy grin and in another blink you're back at your apartment.

"Anytime babes, you know I love making people scream."

gift giving

“Hey babes! Come check this out! I brought you something!" It's his tone that gives away that whatever present Beetlejuice has brought you isn't going to be all that it seems. Praying it's not another baby sandworm, you walk into your living room to see your boyfriend holding a medium sized box in his hands. It's black and white striped (of course) and topped with a bright green bow. It all seems innocent enough, but you know your boyfriend well enough to know that it's definitely more than it seems.

"What's the occasion Bug?" You watch the box for movement, or any sign that whatever contained inside it is alive and only feel slight relief when you don't see it move. Your unease lessens slightly but the gleam in Beetlejuice's eyes doesn't let up and so neither does your concern.

"Hey, can't a demon give his favourite breather a gift every now and then?"

"It isn't another sandworm is it? Because I only just finished paying the guy who fixed the wall from the last time."

"I offered to fix that for you! Babes c'mon, trust me!" Your uncertainty causes you to hesitate but at the first sign that Beetlejuice's hair has started to shift to blue, you're quick to take the box off him, if only to stop him from looking so despondent. He perks up immediately and you can't help but get the impression you've just sealed your own fate.

"Before I open this answer me one thing: did you consult the Maitlands before you decided to give me this?" His grin slips for a second and you know that he definitely did not consult anyone about whatever's held in the box.

"Pfft, what do those squares know about big romantic gestures. You know Adam, he's so boring. You really hit the jackpot with me babes." Everything about this situation is making you more uneasy but you want to trust your boyfriend, and the soft shade of pink in his hair is making it harder for you to refuse to find out what you're holding.

Taking the lid off the box, the first thing that hits you is the smell of iron. It's sharp and acrid, and makes your nose twitch. Not a good sign. It's when you fully remove the lid that you freeze at what you're holding.

"Do you like it? I got it 'specially for you!"

"Bee, is this what I think it is?"

"Sure is! I had to get it fresh for you!"

"...is it real?"

"Babes! Don't question a guy in your own home like that! Of course it's real, only the best for my breather!" The shock wears off hard when you hear that it's real and you drop the box to the ground.

"We need to have a conversation about appropriate gifts with the Maitlands at some point. Bug, as much as I appreciate it, you can't just give me a heart as a gift!"

"But babes! I don't have a heart to give you, it had to be someone else's!"

quality time

"Tell me again why we're doing this babes?"

"Because it's fun! And because you promised to come with me if I let you scare that delivery driver last week and didn't tell Delia why her crystals were smashed." Your boyfriend groans but continues to follow you as you make your way to the mall. "It'll be quick and if you don't freak anyone out we can pick a horror movie to watch tonight."

That perks him up and the beginning of your shopping trip goes fairly well. At one point you lost him and (unsurprisingly) found him haunting around the lingerie section of a clothing store, but apart from that he was surprisingly complacent about the whole trip. A tiny part of you is suspicious as to why he's being so blasé about the trip but you're trying not to look a gift horse in the mouth and make the best of the situation.

Picking out a film goes surprisingly well too. Normally Beetlejuice beelines for the goriest horror movie he can find (he tried to get Lydia to watch Cannibal Holocaust once, he's no longer allowed to pick films unsupervised) but he picks Halloween fairly quickly and seems satisfied with his decision.

It's unsurprising that you're somewhat dazed by the time you get back home. It hasn't slipped your notice that your boyfriend has been both very well behaved for a demon and also very quiet. It does start to concern you after a while, he's literally never been like this. Part of you wants to call Lydia but he'd been fine with you this morning. You can't think of anything going wrong that would ruin his mood.

"Bee, are you okay? You've been kind of off since we got to the mall." You notice the sickly shade of yellow creep into his hair and the laugh he comes out with is nervous.

"I'm fine toots, don't you worry about little old Beej."

"Bug. Please." You hold eye contact with him until he turns away, and the yellow fades into a soft purple.

"You mentioned to Barb that you wanted a normal date a while ago. Figured the least I could do was try y'know?" Oh. Oh.

"Oh Bug, when I said that I didn't mean I didn't want you to not be yourself. I meant I wanted to go to a nice restaurant or something. Get all dressed up. You thought I wanted you to not be yourself?"

"I know I can be a lot. Didn't want you to get bored of me."

"Beej, as long as I'm spending time with you I'm happy. I'll never get bored of you."

"Promise?"

"Promise. You want to order pizza so you can scare the delivery driver with the clones?"

"You know me so well toots."

#i love this bastard man so bad #my writing #drabbles #beetlejuice x reader #musical beetlejuice x reader

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