#Where was everyone else involved in the BBC

[be-with-me-so-happily]

To Make A Girl Blush

*header created by @hstylesicons

ONE SHOT

Summary: Harry Styles is performing at the BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge, where y/n works as a studio assistant. She tries to keep her cool while being around her celebrity crush, but he isn't making it easy on her.

A/N: I'm obsessed with his Wet Dreams cover and couldn't get this little story out of my head. Sorry, I'm a major tease...

>> Warnings: 18+ only - Flirting, male self-pleasure

~~~~~

"He's so hot. I don't know how I'm going to keep my cool."

"He's probably used to having that effect on women." You chuckle.

"How are you not freaking out? You're like, the biggest Harry Styles fan I know."

"Oh I'm internally squealing. Trust me. I'm just super aware that he's Harry Styles. Like, the Harry Styles."

"Yeah, Y/N, that's the point. Harry Styles is going to be here!"

Harry is coming to the BBC Radio 1 studio to do a live lounge performance. You and Christine are station assistants, so you get to help him and his band with whatever they may need.

"And I'm just… me. I'm trying really hard not to want to throw myself at him." You laugh.

"I can feel the sweat coming already." Christine jokes. You both fan yourselves.

"Geez, look at us, how old are we?"

"Fourteen." Christine giggles. "I think today we are going back to being fourteen year old fangirls."

"Oh god, please, no."

~~~~~

The morning was full of prep work, which involved lots of running around. You and Christine will basically be at their beck and call, which definitely isn't a downside to your job today.

Your boss instructs you to meet the singer as soon as he arrives to his dressing room, to immediately check if he is in need of anything.

You knock on the door with his name boldly printed on a taped up piece of paper.

"Come in."

"Hi, Mr. Styles. I'm Y/N. I'm an assistant here, so if you or your crew need anything, just let me know."

"Alright." You see him try to subtly look you up and down.

Don't activate your inner fangirl in front of him

"Umm... a bottle of room temperature water would be nice, actually."

You are slightly confused. "Room temperature?"

He nods. "It's actually better for your vocal chords than cold or hot water." He strokes down his gorgeous neck, as if to demonstrate how the water flows down his throat.

"Okay, I'll go grab that now. Anything else before I go, Mr. Styles?"

"Umm… yeah, please just call me Harry." He grins widely, showing off those deep dimples that everyone is obsessed with.

"Sure. I'll be right back with that water... Harry." You nod and notice a small smirk on his face before you turn around and exit the room.

Once out the door, a loud exhale leaves your lips, as if you hadn't taken an actual breath that entire interaction.

Christine shuffles up to you. "Oh man! I'm so jealous! What's he like?"

You roll your eyes. "I don't know. Like every other famous singer that comes in here…"

"Really?" She asks, looking a little disappointed.

"No, are you kidding? He's beautiful! But we didn't really talk much so I don't have much to tell you."

She puts her hands on her hips and frowns.

"Y/N, I don't think you're appreciating this enough. You were in the same room as Harry Styles!" She scolds, still with a smile on her face.

You definitely appreciate the sight of him

"Geez, do you want to take his room temperature water to him?" You offer.

She grins and nods her head. You hand her the water and head off to see if anyone in the band needs something.

You find them all in one of the bigger rooms, sitting around on couches, doing some vocal warmups.

"Hi there! Sounds great." You chuckle. "I'm Y/N, an assistant here. Do any of you need anything? I'm happy to help! And don't be shy about asking."

You bring them some water as well, and chat with them for a few minutes before you head back out to hunt for Christine.

You find her, beaming with joy, as she rushes over to you and grabs your shoulders.

"Thank you for that Y/N! He is so nice, and so sexy. He let me take a selfie with him and everything!" She squeals.

"How old are you again?" You joke.

"I'm fourteen. Apparently today I'm fourteen." She jokes back, skipping off to do whatever is next on her list.

You decide to do the rounds again, and check in on Harry.

"Hi, uh, Harry. Just wanted to check back in with you."

He quickly turns around, apparently caught guard, and that's when you realize he is wearing a pair of flared blue pants... and nothing else.

That's just plain rude

"I'm sorry, I'll come back." You cover your eyes, and then turn around to walk out.

"Y/N!" He laughs. "S'alright. I could use your help. You mind?"

"Oh! Um, no, not at all."

"I just accidentally knocked two of my rings off the table, and I can't see 'em anywhere." He states, searching the ground with his eyes. "I'm going to sound like a diva, but I just put my pants on and I don't want to wrinkle them."

Well, just take them off… oh god, just stop

"Okay. Where should I look?"

He has one hand on his hip, and the other one up to his lip, still looking at the ground. He points under the table. "Maybe there?"

You get down on your hands and knees to look, and quickly find them laying near where he had pointed. As you stand and stretch out your hand to give them back, he slides his body closer to you so you are only about one foot apart from each other. You think you see him start to bite his lower lip before correcting himself, and his hand is lingering on yours a little longer than would be normal as he takes his rings back.

"Thank you so much." He utters, winking when you meet his gaze.

What a flirt, but who could resist those gorgeous eyes? And that toned, tattooed chest…

You clear your throat, as you snap your eyes up from his chest. Your cheeks get red with embarrassment, and you are really hoping he can't see that.

He smirks slightly. You feel yourself getting more flustered, so you finally take a step back.

"So, uh, I'll head out, unless you need anything else?"

He smirks again, and this time you know for sure that he looks you up and down.

"Not unless you want to help me finish getting dressed…" He chuckles.

How many girls would say yes? All of them

You chuckle and walk out the door, commenting before you're out of view. "I'll be somewhere out here if you need me."

He flirts with everyone right? Not a womanizer, but a big flirt… right?

~~~~~

Everyone is set up in the studio and ready to go. You and Christine go around to each band member, checking in one more time with everyone before they start. Christine, of course, checks in with Harry. He smiles politely and shakes his head, assuring her that he doesn't need anything. He looks at you and smiles when you fully meet his gaze. You smile back and look down, trying not to blush again.

Calm down, he's been with super models, he's just being a big flirt, or at least you want him to be

You and Christine get off the set and stand right across from Harry.

The introduction plays and the band starts the opening chords for 'As It Was'. You are watching Harry Styles play his new songs right in front of you and your skin is itching with excitement.

You sing along. The song is so catchy, how could you not? He dances around a little and you find yourself matching his movements.

Thank god his eyes are closed, or you'd be completely embarrassed

The song ends and you subtly make sure everyone has what they need.

'Late Night Talking' is the next song and once again you find yourself unable to hold back from dancing. This time Harry does open his eyes a bit more, especially during the second chorus, and he dances more after looking at you.

He's a performer, has nothing to do with you

The more he sings, the more flustered you feel. The more he looks at you and smirks, the more heated you get.

Might need a cold shower later

Once again, you double check that everyone is comfortable, as Harry talks to the radio dj.

They change it up and start to play 'Boyfriends'. The mood turns emotional. You've definitely had your share of bad breakups, and you realize there's a couple tears trickling down your cheek. Just as you wipe them away he quickly glances in your direction, and you turn your head away.

The song finishes and he motions to you for some water. Luckily, you brought a few bottles with you and place one down by his mic.

"You alright, love?" He whispers.

You look up at him, a little surprised he noticed your reaction to the song, and that he cares.

"It's a really good song." You quickly reply. He smiles as you stand back up to meet his gaze. You're a couple feet away and unintentionally look at his lips, down to his neck, admiring his upper body in his tight T-shirt, and making your way down to view the flared blue pants you saw earlier.

Your eyes shoot back up as you realize that you literally just checked out Harry Styles right in front of him. You feel like you could just die of embarrassment right then and there.

He giggles under his breath and you clear your throat to ask, "need anything else?" He shakes his head, smiling widely and showing off those deep dimples.

You feel sensation between your legs and you quickly head back to the spot you were standing, opening a bottle of water for yourself and gulping about half of it down.

The DJ announces that he will be covering a song by Wet Leg called 'Wet Dream'. You almost squeal, knowing and loving this song too.

Ironic song considering what you're feeling at the moment.

This time, you don't care if Harry sees you dancing around, and he definitely does.

is no one else around you

He opens his eyes to see you and starts moving around, touching his body and putting his hands up.

If only he knew what was going on in your head right now…

You continue to sing the lyrics and dance around. He squints his eyes open again, singing the next line.

baby, do you want to come home with me

You gulp down some more water.

You almost lose it completely when he starts the second verse and seems really into singing the next line of the song.

what makes you think you're good enough to think about me when you're touching yourself…

Well, you don't feel you are good enough, but you are definitely heating up enough to want to.

Absolutely going to take a cold shower later

The heat is just rising in your body as he sings about blushing. He ever so slightly moans with the lyrics and bounces up and down as he sings about it being enough.

You're getting so uneasy at this point that you think you may have to leave the room. Thankfully the song ends shortly after, but not before you see him look straight at you while singing the last two words.

let's begin

As soon as it all ends, Harry thanks everyone and actually excuses himself quickly. You're a little relieved, being able to calm yourself down and breathe now that he's out of the room. You check in with the band to see what they need. You help them tidy up a little and carry some of their stuff to the big room they had been in.

You decide to check on Harry too and make your way to his dressing room. As you get to the door, you grab the handle and you hear him say your name, so you open the door.

"Oh my god! I'm so, so sorry!" You exclaim, covering your eyes from the sight of him sitting in the chair, pants unzipped, pumping his hand up and down his length.

"Shit!" He blurts out, covering himself up with a pillow, then proceeds to laugh. "Thought I locked the door."

"I should've knocked. I'm so embarrassed!" You state.

"You're the embarrassed one? I was saying your name while touching myself, and you just saw it."

"Wait, what??" You ask, jaw dropping in disbelief.

"M'sorry." He smirks as he bites his lower lip. He is squirming under that pillow, probably still aroused and needing some relief. "I just couldn't stop watching you dancing to the Wet Leg song, and, well…" he looks down at the pillow covering himself.

"I… uh…" you stutter.

"Could you shut the door, love?" He begs.

You do, locking it and keeping yourself in the room. He laughs.

"So you want to stay?"

You blink a few times, realizing that he was probably asking you to leave.

"I'm sorry." You frown, feeling so stupid.

"S'alright." He smirks, yet again. "Could… umm… could use some help here…"

"I'm pretty sure there's twenty hot girls around here that you could call on." You blurt out.

"Maybe, but…" He frowns. "I'm in this predicament because of you…"

You lick your lips and then bite your bottom one.

What do you do? What do you do?... Go for it!

Confidence surprisingly kicks in, so you walk over to where he is sitting and kneel down.

"Well, it is my job to get you anything you need." You giggle.

"Yes, please, I definitely need this."

~~~~~

Taglist: @watermelonsugacry @tw1nflamebruis3 @slut4lilyrose @pinktakeaway @hopefulwastelandcreation @tenaciousperfectionunknown @his-only-angel-1989 @queenmadi2 @runway-to-my-aid @theekyliepage @be-yourss

~~~~~

You can send some extra support here if you feel inclined -Bee xx

#harry styles #harry styles x reader #harry styles fanfic #harry styles x y/n #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles imagine #harry styles angst #harry styles fluff #harry styles x you #harry styles smut #harrys house #bbc radio #live lounge

[intoloopin]

A CHAPTER: THE SHARP AND THE BLUNT (PART 1/2).

tw(s): panic attack. dubious consent (haruki is very weird and forward about initiating sex!). alcohol abuse & alcoholism. semi-smut? (there is making out). miscommunication (a warning because I personally think it's constant and frustrating). insinuation and direct discussions of sexual trauma, abuse by a past partner, abuse of workplace power and stalking. internalized homophobia (in part one, a hint). If I missed anything, please tell me! starring: Lee Hanjae. Fukunaga Haruki. featuring: Dylan Hwang / Hwang Chihoon. Their fellow LOOPiN members (old OT10, no Gyujin, a lot of Beomseok). Delilah Franco. Oh Sunyoung. Choi Sangwon. Blonde Bob Piss Girl (a serious character).

timeline: quick flashback to 2018 | early to the end of mid 2022.

word count: 13,405 words. author's notes: welcome everyone to hanruki fuckery part 1 a.k.a the most frustrating and life draining four months in Hanjae's whole entire life a.k.a big sadness, the piece split into two. this one is over 23K long, and was originally intended to be read in one go but! It Got Too Big. The conclusion will be coming out later this week! prepare for a Haruki all in par with the one in the prologue, which falls in between this mess on the timeline. this is a work of a whole month, but it's also a work of two years: a whole central plot, planned and done. title's from this song! give it a listen once you get trought the bigger picture, maybe, for catharsis purposes. stay safe! remember you deserve to be safe, always!

November 12, 2018.

Hanjae had vowed not to cry anymore when he got this job – in the same vehement way he had promised at twelve that he would no longer make a sound if he wailed after school, face buried under piles and piles of unfinished homework, to medium success, just the right amount of it to call it success.

He could still tear up once in a while, if things got though, and that was it; a clause added after his first exhausting week as a trainee. The number escalated to once every two business days after he was shoved to debut on LOOPiN, out of all the upcoming boy groups there were.

There was a story taunting the New Wave Music corridors back then. Someone did something unspeakable to someone else, and it caused an expulsion, followed by the immediate need for a new rapper, a new dancer. And there was Hanjae; a BBC trainee for three months, far removed from the Boy Of The Week gossip, who couldn’t exactly sing but had great enunciation, and had been dancing before he was even walking…

He cried now, openly, defeated. It had been an awful day for LOOPiN 2on1.

Their short lived promotions had played out like a sunset: a big golden start – so much press, so much momentum, so many views on the ‘Baby Don’t Stop’ dance practice video, where he and Haruki were using plain shirts and even plainer jeans – quickly diluting into the darkest of times – the controversies, LOOPiN first ones, and exclusively about them.

A resurrected Facebook photo of Hanjae on his graduation with a bandage around his hand, matched with the lingering traces of his poorly removed tattoo there painted him as a school delinquent; Haruki’s drop out stories reintroduced him as the big drunken failure of KArts’s international program.

They were going to stop going to music shows, the company had decided that day, and Sangwon told them on the drive back that they had just done their last one. They had gone up on stage as a duo for the last last time.

With a strong sniff, Hanjae unburied his face from in between his knees and looked at his hand, at the faint shape of a badly drawn rose on his skin. His dad had been adamant about getting it out the moment he took a look at it, still involved in protective plastic. He used the little money off his college safe to arrange a laser session that Hanjae skipped. A year later, Hanjae managed to schedule another one with the partial sponsor of MBN, the company he was stuck on before BBC. He had to do it in a shady place, at a bigger cost: bad skin scarring.

His mom had been relieved to see it fade even more nonetheless, up until the black tattoo turned into something that almost looked like a peculiar and old scar, if you didn’t give it a second glance; and no one was ever giving Hanjae a second glance.

“Let that be a lesson,” she told him, nose turned up and away from him. “Don’t jump head on into things again, Lee Hanjae. That’s no way to live. Watch yourself, watch your company. You’re not a kid anymore. Do you have no goals? Do you want nothing for yourself? Are you that selfish? Can’t you think, for once, about something that isn’t–”

Haruki was the one who found him, sitting on the floor, small and tense against the laundry machine, waiting for everyone’s clothes to be cleaned – the member’s, Sangwon’s, the cleaning auntie's aprons she had forgotten on top of the dinner table last week. Cleaning was always his scapegoat way of attending to something, even if very small.

Maybe if the company decided to drop him, he thought, Hanjae could still be around as the dorm’s janitor.

“So you’re not from Seoul,” Haruki said, leaning against the door frame with an air of mischief around him, something light on his step despite it all.

It was a statement, not an ask, because he knew this. It was one of the few trivia points they had exchanged during pauses on music shows or water breaks in between choreography practice – ‘What’s your age? What’s your blood type? How many siblings? Oh, none? You’re so lucky, Hanjae, so lucky. All siblings are demons. You aren’t missing a thing.’

Hanjae didn’t even startle; Haruki often popped up at places like that, picking up conversations from days, weeks ago like they were merely put on pause.

Without uttering a word and barely looking up, he still nodded his head no.

Haruki nodded back, a pacifying smile showing up on his face, said, “Cool. Great. How about I show you a place?”

‘The place’, he informed Hanjae, was not all that nice, or clean, and he really shouldn’t wear nice shoes or nice clothes tonight, but at least it wasn’t far, at least they had permission.

“Who’s permission?” Hanjae asked, taking the pile of clothes to the dryer, smoothing wrinkles off them just for something to do.

Haruki waved manager Choi’s front keys in his hand, and Sangwon’s horrendous keychains clanked against each other: a green pine tree and a colorful ball. “The one that matters. What do you say, uh? You’re in? Can I count you in?”

He could count Hanjae in.

[...]

They stopped by a convenience store on the way, some couple of blocks down the dorm, and by then night had already conquered all of Seoul. Inside, the middle aged lady behind the counter rushed to give Haruki a hug, a paper bag and a discount.

“He’s a street cat I found,” she leaned in to explain when she caught Hanjae anxiously looking at him going straight to the back of the store, near the freezers, near the alcohol, with the ease of someone who could do so with his eyes shut. “He’s a good foreign friend.”

“I’m not!” Haruki shouted back, but he was grinning. “Are you not watching the news?”

The noona playfully rolled her eyes, joked back, “What news? You’re not on the news!”

She hushed Hanjae to go catch up with him with an enerved wave, told him to take a look around. “It’s on the house,” she winked. “You’re both so skinny, and you must be working hard, so just take something tasty and leave quickly.”

Trailing a couple feet behind Haruki on the aisle, Hanjae picked up a package of noodles and a modest four-set of Terra cans to accompany his endless Heineken bottles, light green on light green. While Hanjae bagged everything with caution, Haruki slipped a red won note on the balcony when the owner stopped paying attention to them, and off they went again.

Haruki made them walk ten more minutes to the left, and the left, the left again, coming to an abrupt stop in front of an abandoned lot, pure dirt and weeds, the sort that seemed to have turned into an open dump for the neighborhood. It looked no different or less disgusting than the million of others around less central Jungnang; it didn’t look like it could be a spot.

Yet Haruki kept braving straight through the grass without stopping, guiding Hanjae behind him to only step where he was stepping, to keep his eyes glued to the floor and watch out for broken glass. He settled when they were deep into the lot, mere feet away from a big hill. There was a clean view of an uneven street if you looked down, he said, filled with houses that were almost all pretty. Hanjae chose to just trust Haruki’s word on that; he couldn’t dare to come close enough to the drop to peek and see.

Haruki standed the bag of drinks for him to hold, and Hanjae had to do so with both hands. From a spot behind them, he pushed two retriable chairs out of a bulk set against a moldy tree, the metal in them corrupted by rust on the edges, and set them up, sat down, tapped at the other seat with his foot in invitation.

Hanjae took a long and anxious moment to comply. Under him, the chair dangled sideways even if he stayed very, very still.

With the convenience bag back in his domain, Haruki cracked three beers open, and handed Hanjae one, kept the other two: one in each hand, a Heineken and a Terra.

“Never had this one. I heard they’re the same thing,” he said, taking a sip from each and frowning, analyzing them. Hanjae stayed quiet.

He had only drank with his dad and uncles one time, at last year’s Chuseok, and hadn’t been much of a fan of anything. Still, he took a sip of beer.

Haruki at least had grace enough to let him swallow and contain a grimace before asking, with a strange edge to it, “So are you? A bully. A problem child. Part of a gang.”

“No,” Hanjae said, too quickly, too eager. He cleared his throat. “I’m really not, hyung, no.”

“How did it get there, then?” Haruki's look was razor sharp on Hanjae’s once tattooed hand, hard enough to make him freeze. “And why did you remove it? Just to be a trainee?”

Hanjae opened his mouth, but only to take a shaky breath in, swallow a bit more of bitter alcohol. In front of his fleeting eyes, Haruki eased just as quickly as he had hardened.

“Hanjae, we’re teammates now,” he told him. “I showed you my good spot. You can’t give me one word sentences anymore. You can’t lie.”

Hanjae considered this, and considered him from the corner of his eyes. Haruki was the LOOPiN member that Hanjae had come to know best, mostly because they didn’t have a choice, but still, he made an effort, he talked to him; he didn’t let Hanjae fall adrift. And he could have easily turned into an island: from the moment he had been transferred to New Wave, he had been an outsider, a last minute solution to a problem no one would explain to him – who left? Why? Was he worse than them? Was he better?

“You’re better,” Haruki had said, when Hanjae brought it up, late at night while they had dinner alone, in the practice room, sweating and panting – a week until their debut happened. He was the only one who had bothered to tell him so. He sounded like he meant it, too. Hanjae remembers catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror over his shoulder, hair bright brown and unfamiliar, thinking even for a fleeting moment: I’m doing enough.

It was fair for him to be the first to know – the first for Hanjae to disappoint.

“I got it removed before,” he heard himself say. It was a secret, so it came out like one: whispered, slow. “Before I wanted to train. I got it with friends– my dance crew friends. It was our logo, or at least, it was going to be, one day. But I… I did a bad thing, and it stopped making sense. It didn’t fit. I didn’t fit, so. It had to go.”

The vagueness did nothing but pique Haruki’s interest. He seated more properly, then less properly; ended up putting his feet on the seat of the chair, slouching with his head supported on his knee, the exact body language of, ‘Tell me, tell me, tell me.’

“My friend– my best friend, from childhood, our team captain. He used to have a girlfriend. A girl from our class, a dancer too, someone he had been in love with forever. Later she became part of the group, and we got close, we turned into friends, and then not. Not quite that. They broke up and one hour later we got together, on the same day. We got caught. It was a mess. Everyone thought it was a shitty thing to do, that it was cheating, cheating on everyone. But I just wanted her to be my girlfriend, back then– Back then, I wanted a girlfriend more than I wanted anything...”

Hanjae felt it coming, again: the desire to recoil a bit more on himself in shame. How pathetic he had been, then; how miserable, how sad, how lonely.

He took a timid peek to the side, ready to see an irk of dismay on Haruki’s face, some justified disgust, and was surprised to not see any of that. Haruki had grown passionate and invested in the whole story, something new in his eyes, a third bottle halfway drained in his hand.

He moved his chin up, as if saying, ‘Go on’, but Hanjae couldn’t. He drained the rest of the beer.

Haruki clicked his tongue like that wouldn’t do. He shoved his chair a few inches closer so he could grab at Hanjae's arm and said, all at once, “We can not– Hanjae, look, listen, we can not be blamed for all the things, the crazy things we do when love…!” He didn't finish the sentence, just amended it into another one: “You were a teenager, you both were, and very, very brave. Very brave to tell her and date her and keep dating her even if. They were just– bad friends. Just bad friends.”

They weren’t bad friends, Hanjae knew; they weren’t the ones in the wrong. But it hurted to say it out loud, to admit what he knew was still true: how easily he burned bridges for attention, for affection, so he never did. He just knew – looked at his reflection on surfaces and knew.

He rolled and rolled the tap of the Terra until it fell off, into the can. “Did you really quit college, hyung?” Was what he asked the wind.

Haruki shifted on his seat; Hanjae could only tell because of the way it creaked. “More like college quit me,” he said, with a sad huff of air that might have been a laugh, and dropped Hanjae’s arm, drank from his bottle too.

Sadness fell over them like a veil from then on. The Terras ended and Haruki didn’t mind sharing all the other stuff he had, and the longer it went on the less shy Hanjae felt about asking. At some point Haruki said, “I guess we really fucked up, uh – with 2on1,” and Hanjae, whipping a foam mustache off his face, “Minwoo’s not talking to me,” and Haruki, almost falling over with laugher, “Oh, my, I bet not! Ha. I bet not…”, and turned reticent, fell quiet.

His eyes, Hanjae had noticed, kept darting to a spot ahead in between conversation, beyond the drop of the hill, dazed. He violently shook his head sideways everytime he caught himself drifting too far away, and ran a hand over his face, rubbing at it in a way that made Hanjae look at him in worry.

Haruki found it hilarious each time. “What is it,” he eventually said, slower than normal, harder to understand, “With you, your face?”

He got up from his chair, a sudden move that sent it falling to the floor, a loud squeak, and walked even closer.

In front of Hanjae, right in front of him, he leaned forward until he got both his hands on his face, and said, pushing the corners of his mouth up, “The mood is so– Bad! So bad! Smile! Big smile! C’mon, give me a big smile!”

There had been dirt on Haruki’s hand, and Hanjae could vaguely taste it, with how close to his lips he was pressing. He still wore his inner braces back then; he kept cutting his tongue on the same spot, never healing, never telling, and he could feel the inside of his cheeks pressing onto that sharp place, about to be pierced through.

For a moment, they stayed quiet, looking at each other head on. Hanjae was not smiling. His heart had picked up a quick pace inside his chest, was drumming – Haruki was so close, and he was so beautiful, a true magazine type beauty, all symmetry, and Hanjae knew this, but not with this much conviction, not with so much emotion.

“Ah, you know what? I like you. I decided. I do like you, now…” Haruki said, and then he grinned, bringing his face even nearer. He took a breath and Hanjae felt it on his own nose, and didn’t know what to do about it; his mind, for a moment, went static. “Nothing will happen to you, friend. I promise it. ‘Will not let it.”

Hanjae’s held breath was a painful thing to let out of his chest. “Was something– Was something going to…?”

Haruki huffed a laugh and gave his cheeks two playful taps, said, with a new found determination, “Handsome guy. Do not get sad. I will fix this for you,” and let Hanjae’s face go.

He straightened his back up and swayed slightly to the side, running a hand over his hair, fixing his bangs back into place. Haruki told him, “Late. No booze. Night over”, and extended that same hand for Hanjae to take – Hanjae who still felt like his face had gone numb, blood rushing to it.

He took the hand, and they made their way back to the dorm that way, hanging close; Like magnets, Hanjae remembers thinking, idly, and then not idly at all. Haruki’s hands were leaving behind a pressure everywhere they touched, a heat that Hanjae couldn’t shake off – he just couldn’t shake it off.

Later, when Hanjae layed in bed, sheet drawn over his entire body, he could still feel it. When he woke up the morning after, nauseated but still in the group, still safe, he could still feel it.

If he closes his eyes now, right now, he can still feel it – the sad sort of burn of a premonition misread.

January 13, 2022.

Los Angeles is sunny in a way Haegon would love to see and pretend to hate – a saddening thought Hanjae had since they landed, and that comes back to haunt him while he looks at the city passing by on the van’s window, sidewalks all golden.

Haegon’s not a loud person in his eyes, but his absence is a loud thing, pouring the life out of everyone, mostly because of the way it had been forced on them.

It had been a horrifying way to open the year: having to come forward right on the first day of 2022 to the press, headlining Haegon’s mugging and the accident, his follow up hiatus and excuse out of their ‘We Do’ promotions in the USA. And then there was having to deal with Haegon in private, angry and disappointed, not wanting to take his pain medicine, shoving his room’s door in everyone's faces, dismissing every checkup attempt with an annoyed, “It’s just a minor concussion, what the Hell! I’m not fucking dying! Get the fuck off me, I’m fine, get off, just fuck off already to the States without me! Go on! Just– just leave me already!”

They’re driving out of some media company studio around the center of Los Angeles, where they filmed two twenty minute videos in a roll, more embarrassing games than actual interviews, and Hanjae has already spent all of his ability to mend English words together.

It could have been more fun, one of their staff said, but they had to pass on the puppy interview format because of Taesong’s allergies, and Jiahang’s been dead set on pretending to be sad about it during the entire ride back to the hotel; crocodile tears and all.

Hanjae has to deal with him from the last seat on the far opposite side of the van, resting his fried blonde head against his shoulder, sighing loudly, because Dylan is also not here to amuse him – he took a bus home to Santa Monica and will stay home until they leave in two days time.

Hanjae doesn’t like provoking Taesong, doesn’t like to spoil Jiahang, but that means very little in the grand escape of the group, that goes about poking fun of Taeng like it’s a sport, that’s stuck in a position where they really can’t say no to J.J, who owns company shares; he shoots the meek figure of Taesong an apologetic look as Jiahang’s act carries on, trying to tell him: ‘I’m not a part of this, I just don’t know how to stop it.’

Thankfully, the hotel isn’t that far away, and it’s a quick torture – up until things takes a turn for the worse.

As they park and start to step out, Beomseok’s long arm blocks the door before he and Jiahang can put a single leg outside of the car.

“Stop,” he tells J.J, harsh enough to make Hanjae stumble a step back. Beomseok points a finger right at Jiahang’s face, and inch from touching his nose, says, “Stop being a fucking problem. Stop.”

It makes Jiahang livid, turns his ears bright red. He takes long stomps to the elevator, and Hanjae has to jog to keep up with him – Jiahang really has the longest legs Hanjae has ever seen on a person.

“He’s got such a stick up his ass!” He keeps on saying, barging into the room they’re both sharing with Dylan and Zhiming – angrily tossing his bag into his ‘cheap dollar store bed with the cheap dollar store sheets’ that made him go into a very similar rant last night. “He thinks he’s the only one who cares about Gon, the only one who can bother. He’s so wrong. I’m fucking worried too! I’m calling him too! I miss him! I’m more of a friend to him than that weirdo is. He’s so weird. He thinks he owns Haegon and everyone and everything, just because he’s older, just because he trained for like, one billion years! Like it’s my fault Starship thought he was too ugly to join NO.MERCY!”

“You were being annoying, Jiahang,” O.z deadpans from the corner he’s tucked in, without looking up from his manhwa.

Jiahang grunts louder. “Yeah, that was the point. Taesong knows I’m just joking around! Everyone knows!”

Zhiming lowers the comic from his face, flipping a page. His eyes have deep dark circles behind his thick glasses, marks that never go away. “Unnecessary.”

Jiahang rolls his eyes, putting his hair up on an ugly bun. He turns his back to Zhiming’s bed and mouths at Hanjae, mocking, ‘Unnecessary’.

Hanjae shrugs at him, and that annoys J.J too. He angrily puts on a movie on the tiny TV, gets a hold of his bed’s pillow and wraps himself around it, mumbling something under his breath still. The tags on the streaming app read comedy, musical. He chews on a poor nail while humming along the first song, and Hanjae tries to humor him with a tiny, “Is that Ariana Grande sunbaenim?”

It doesn’t work. Jiahang shoves his face into his pillow and says, miserable and muffled, “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t hang around with you, you’re so lame. I miss Dylan so much.”

“He invited you to go with him,” Hanjae says, helplessly. “You said you didn’t want to.”

“Of course I didn’t want to! I would have to sleep on the floor. In a bag, on the floor. And I don’t think his grandma would like me – I don’t think anyone in his family would like me,” he turns his face around, off the pillow. Hanjae can hear clearly when he says, “He needs time alone with them. For the anxieties.”

“The anxieties?” Hanjae asks him, very slowly.

Jiahang presses his mouth shut tight, straights himself up again. He undoes his ponytail, tosses his long, long hair from one side to the other, behind his ears.

He takes a quick look at Zhiming, and Hanjae does too, and they go by uncaught; O.z’s got his big headphones in now, eyes glued to his comic book.

Jiahang is still careful to whisper, “The rest of you don’t get what it's like, when you’re away from your home every day, when you know all the people you’re going to see aren’t all the ones you know – when you got family that’s like, old, and you know that time’s passing. You’re losing days with them. It gets scary, after a while. Dylan’s grandad will be 82 this year, hyung – that’s a terrifying number, that’s a maybe. That’s the anxiety. Mine, his– Zhiming’s, too. Foreign member anxiety.”

Hanjae nods, sharp. Jiahang makes a face at him, brighter – smiles, says like a tease, “Not Haruki’s, though. Haruki doesn’t miss Japan at all, if that’s what you’re wondering. He’s not anxious about that.”

Hanjae blinks. Opens his mouth, closes it, blinks again. “I wasn’t going to ask–” 

“Sure thing. Suuuuure,” J.J says slyly, and goes back to watching TV, and Hanjae does too. Gulps, keeps looking at the movie, tries to pay attention.

Jiahang put on korean subtitles for him, yet he keeps talking – explaining everything. It’s a nice enough movie, he says. Good songs, nice enough movie.

They’re reaching the end of it, seeing every main character gather in a protest around town, when Haruki barges into their room.

“Are any of you not gonna rot inside this hotel?” He asks, loudly, quickly. “Is anyone going to do anything? Catch some sun?”

“Hanjae’s supposed to be going out,” Zhiming tells him. He’s also watching the movie now, has Jiahang by his side, explaining to him what he missed.

“Oh?” Haruki says, and looks around the room, eyes a little clouded, until they land on Hanjae. He smiles, and it stretches across his face quick and big, like he’s actually glad to see him, like the effect is instantaneous. Hanjae can’t for the life of him look at it head on. “Perfect. That’s just perfect, I’m going with you, Hanhan, just wait for me to get changed!”

“Okay,” Hanjae says, and hops off the bed too quickly, sits back down. “I– Waiting.”

Immediately after Haruki leaves Jiahang gives him a long look over Zhiming’s shoulder, and Hanjae pretends not to see it.

“You’re too easy,” he says, with a disapproving nod of his head, and Hanjae pretends he doesn’t hear it, pretends it doesn’t sting.

It’s humiliating, being reminded that people know – that they look at him and know, and he’s reminded of it constantly.

“Hanjae’s sad, sad bisexual awakening,” was how Jiahang put it, sing-a-song in the studio, while making this very single they’re promoting now. “Worse, worse than Minwoo’s– Is that a verse? Can we put that on a song, on the album?”

Minwoo said, for the two of them, “Fuck you.”

And there that one time, the one he remembers clearly, when Seo CEO said he wanted to sit down to watch them practicing ‘Love Me Right’ before the big release, and Taesong pushed Hanjae aside, told him, “Hanjae, you– if you need to check the choreo, please look at the instruction video. Don’t look at Haruki like that, there’s no need to look like you–”

There had to be a separation, he realized; he had to get it under control.

So Hanjae made friends with the people Haruki seemed to not stand, which sometimes meant everyone, but mostly meant J.J and Beomseok – two extremes of very opposite lines. He’s built a line of separation, wrapped himself up in Haruki repellent, and he tries to live by it.

It’s a frail line, a shitty line, and it comes crashing down all the time, with the little moments; single minutes where things feel kind between them, different. A bottle of water and a perfectly folded towel passed to him backstage, a group conversation where Haruki eventually says, like clockwork, “And you, Hanjae? What do you think?”; no one else says that. There’s this lingering nearness coming from him, like there's always something Haruki wants to say or do but can’t, something he wants to check.

It makes Hanjae wonder – makes him come back to that one friendly night, hang on to it. The way Haruki had been so near, his exact tone of voice when he said that he liked him, considered him a friend, thought he was handsome, was going to fix whatever was wrong.

[...]

“So what are we doing?” Haruki asks when they step onto the sidewalk.

“Just filming my Loop Log,” Hanjae responds. “Deadline’s tonight.”

“Shit, that,” Haruki groans, taking his cap off to push hair out of his eyes, putting it on again. “I forgot all about that. ‘Haven’t filmed mine either. ‘Think I lost my camera.”

“I can help you look,” Hanjae offers. “When we get home.”

“Well, thank you,” Haruki says, and steps closer, slides an arm over Hanjae’s shoulder, tells him, “For now, I guess we’ll just have to stick tight. LOOPiN 2on1, reunited in L.A…!”

At Hanjae’s timid request, Chihoon made him a list of what he should get to ‘live his best tourist life’, what the fans might want to see him try: pancakes, bacon and eggs, ice cream, anything in the menu that looks like it could have come off a cartoon, any ‘house specials’.

They go into the nearest place listed with the camera on hand, and have to explain with their Frankenstein English that they want to make a vlog, can they make a vlog? They can, a waiter says, but only in a specific area; they get taken there.

Hanjae orders the house special, and it's a crazy looking Banana Split. Haruki settles for waffles, and they decide to start filming when the food arrives.

Any chance of small talk between them goes fully stall when Hanjae asks, right at their waiter steps away, as the opening topic: “Have you talked to Haegon?”

Haruki’s dangling hand on the table stills. He smiles weird, notices it looks weird, drops it: “Ah, no. No…” and goes silent, makes Hanjae go silent too.

The food comes, they start filming. Hanjae’s meticulously trying to extract a tiny piece of strawberry from a block of ice cream, all while only looking through the camera’s lens, when Haruki’s phone jumps to life, ringing.

He takes it out of his pocket, places it screen flat on the table without looking at the receiver once, mutes it with one hand, adds a mountain of maple syrup to his food with the other.

“Not important,” Haruki reassures Hanjae when he catches him looking at the buzzing phone, an inch away from falling off the edge. He forks the food and stands his hand across the table, says, with his Idol voice, “Wanna try?”

It’s good sweet food, all of it. The camera goes back and forth between them, hand to hand. Haruki makes him pretend they’re shooting a commercial, at some point, makes him do a different pose with every bite, and Hanjae tries to not lose control of his face with all the wooing, all the praise.

It’s fanservice, and Haruki’s good at it. It makes for good content. Everything: good.

Outside, bill paid, they take shelter from the sun and check the recording; thirty raw minutes of footage.

“Hanjae,” Haruki says, looking up after skimming the video, solemn. Hanjae leans a bit forward, eyes a little wide.“The Log will turn out very boring if this is all we do.”

It is, indeed, not the best vlog Hanjae’s ever made. Not that he’s ever been any good at them, or at anything on the media side of the job outside of music covers or choreography making. He’s seen the views on his solo variety content, Sangwon walked him through them all last month, said: nothing special.

They barely talked in 30 minutes – Hanjae didn't initiate a single conversation with him.

Quickly, Haruki’s eyes narrow as he scans the area around them, and Hanjae tries to keep up. He looks for a long moment at the barracks of food, at a man selling balloons, and finally lands far ahead, on a group of kids running on the sand. The leading one trips on air and falls face first on the ground, immediately wails, and they let out matching startled, horrified laughs.

Haruki jogs until he’s in front of him, and turns to walk backwards, closer to where the sidewalk gives into the beach.

“You wanna do that?” He arches a perfect eyebrow. “Run around on the beach with me. Like we’re in a movie.”

Hanjae steps on a stone, lands his other feet on the ground wrong. “I– No.”

“No? Well, I’m doing it! It’s what the vlog’s missing! Trust me, if we do this, it’ll fix everything,” he says, and before Hanjae can even think of what to reply, turns around and starts running on the sand, straight ahead.

Haruki’s already bent over near the ocean when Hanjae catches up with him, folding his jeans until they stop at his knees, barefoot. He insists: “Let’s go, let’s do it, you’re already here, it’s going to be fun, the fans will like it, let’s do it, let’s do it!”

With a resigned sigh, Hanjae unties his sneakers.

Haruki approaches a family nearby and asks for a beach chair, gets a yes. They place the camera cautiously on it, set it with a big zoom ahead. Haruki leaves his phone there, too, with a careless toss, and Hanjae can hear it announcing another call as he steps away, trailing exactly behind him – footprint over footprint, back near the ocean and then on the ocean.

“I thought– Hyung, I thought we were going to just walk,” Hanjae says, stopping. The salt water is a chill foam around his foot.

“Yeah,” Haruki flashes him a smile over his shoulder. He’s about to be knees deep, is taking his Hawaiian shirt off, Hanjae realizes now, with a flush. “We’re walking. Into the water.”

Hanjae catches the shirt when he throws it over his shoulder, looks at it, up at him. He takes a step closer. “Manager Choi’s– Haruki, he’s going to complain!”

“Fuck him!” Haruki tells him with a laugh. He says, with meaning: “Fuck him, fuck New Wave, let them complain, I’m going for a dive and no one can stop me!”

And then he dives, swims, disappears under the water for a long moment. Hanjae stays planted where he is, at a loss of words. When Haruki reemerges, pushing a curtain off black hair off his eyes, and walks back splashing water at him. By the time they’re side by side again, it looks like Hanjae took a dive, too.

“Are you…” He starts to say, eyeing Haruki worryingly, but then the family from before calls back to them, says they’re leaving, they need the chair back, and Haruki claps him on the shoulder, smiles widely, races him to reach them.

“Look,” Haruki says when they’re checking the footage, back on the sidewalk, showing Hanjae a clip: the two of them, a little blurry, walking. “We even got your good smile.”

“My good smile?” Hanjae echoes.

“Not to imply you have a bad one, because you don’t have a bad one,” Haruki says, and bumps their shoulders together. He has just put his shirt back on, is wearing it unbuttoned. “You just have one that’s relaxed, easy. A rare one.”

“Hm,” Hanjae responds, looking away, rolling a rock under his feet.

The walk back to the hotel is calm, windy. The sky’s cotton candy pink and it all looks like a movie, Hanjae thinks. He looks down, and their hands are loose, hanging close, like it would be in a movie.

The end credits roll when they get in the hotel’s lobby, and find Sangwon there – just right there. He catches sight of them immediately, like an alert dog; a quick jump off his seat, a stall near.

He seems to consider them like an equation, frowning: he takes in their wet hair, the wet clothes, the leftover traces of sand, solves it, fumes.

“Do you have any idea,” he says, and he’s struggling to look at the two of them, to not just gawk at Haruki – to not bare his teeth to Haruki only. “Any idea, you two, of how irresponsible this whole stunt was? You’re out on a foreign land. You know no one – no one. When I– The company, if the company calls, you pick your phone. It’s how it works. Pick your phone, immediately.”

Hanjae checks his own phone, a quick glance: no calls.

“Choi-nim,” he says, not looking directly at him, because he lost the ability over the years. Sangwon’s gaze now makes him incredibly anxious. He takes the camera out of where its hanging around his neck, stands it. “I notified– On the calendar, I added– We were just filming–”

“No need to explain, Hanjae,” Haruki interrupts, and puts a hand on Hanjae’s shoulder, steps in front of him, puts himself between him and Sangwon. “Go up. You did nothing wrong. It’s okay. Hyung’s going to solve this with the manager.” He turns straight to Choi-nim and bows, so pristine, so polite: “I take full responsibility for today. It was all me. I’m really sorry if I caused you stress.”

Sangwon considers him for a long moment, taking in the bend of his elbows, like he’s trying to measure his sincerity – there’s almost none of it, Hanjae can tell. He sighs, and then he adjusts his shirt, picks at the cufflinks of his uniform, breaths – his nostrils taking over his entire face.

“You’re dismissed,” Sangwon tells Hanjae, icely, with a corner of the eye glance.

“Sir, I–”

“Dismissed.”

“Go on,” Haruki encourages him, giving Hanjae’s shoulder a firm tap. And then he runs a hand over Hanjae’s hair, messes it up until his wet bangs are glued to his forehead, which he’s never done before; not with him, not with anyone, as far as Hanjae’s aware.

Hesitantly, Hanjae steps away, goes to take the elevator. He keeps looking at them over his shoulder, watching them trail away with growing uneasiness. Haruki keeps looking back at him until he can’t: Sangwon gets the door of the hotel open, shoves him by the shoulder out.

Up in his hotel room, Hanjae showers for a long time. There’s sand on a spot on his elbow where Haruki gave him a tap, and it takes him a while to notice.

He comes off the shower and goes straight to laying down. Zhiming, who had been awake when he came in, is also in his bed now, fully still.

He turns over once, and then again, goes back on his side. “Zhiming hyung?” Hanjae whispers. “You’re awake?”

When Zhiming finally responds, it’s with a minimal grunt, a tiny quick of his socked foot. “What.”

“Do you,” Hanjae chews on the words, “Do you think I have a good smile?”

A pause, a loud sigh. “You’re an Idol. You should hope so.”

“Okay. Okay, so what about– What about me do you think, what looks bad?”

Slowly, very slowly, Zhiming raises his upper body on his elbows. His air is a mess, recently dyed from gray to black too quickly. Without his glasses, he’s forced to squint at Hanjae, even this close, with their beds separated by a very narrow space.

“What the fuck are you even talking about?”

Hanjae takes in a sharp breath, and nods – puts a hand over his eyes, nods again. Stupid, so stupid.

“Nothing,” He says. “Nothing, just– Forget it. I’m sorry, just– Sorry.”

Zhiming goes back to laying down with a loud ‘oof’. He says, a crude whisper, “Don’t go out alone with him if it’ll make you come back like that.”

And with that Hanjae decides he must sleep, immediately, and end this day already.

It was just a day, he tells himself, rubbing at the scarred spot on his hand; a flower in eternal bloom, once. Just one good day. Drop it, forget it, erase it.

February 15, 2022.

“C’mon, you guys, c’moooon! On a scale of one to ten–”

“Na Seungsoo,” Minwoo’s voice rings out like a warning; an elastic pulled far above its limit, about to snap back into place, hard. “Shut your goddamn mouth.”

“She’s right there,” Haegon adds, equally as ultraged. “Are you dumb? Do you want to die?”

“Light up, you two. We’re just talking hypotheticals. I’m not actually gonna fuck our mananger,” Seungsoo says, crossing his arms, raising his chin high – his posture the embodiment of a practical joke about to take action. “That would be desperate and unprofessional, and I am none of these things.”

“You’re extremely unprofessional,” Jiahang laughs at him, a little mean – all his laughs have something a little mean about them, Hanjae can’t help but notice, when Seungsoo’s involved. “And extremely desperate. You just fucked our sound assistant. We no longer have a sound assistant, because you fucked her.”

“So did Jimin!”

“A fluke,” Zhiming defends himself. “Not happening again.”

“It’s never a fluke with you, Seungsoo. You’re such a man whore. A man whore for staff. Even Sangwon could have pulled you when he was around if he had a pair of tits,” Haegon notes, and Seungsoo gasps, mutters, scandalized, ‘You bastard!’, raises a fist up as if he’s going to hit him, and everyone’s laughing. Hanjae contributes with a grimace. “You’re that gross, you’re really that disgusting, all it would take–”

Behind them, Dylan begins to violently choke on a bite out of his granola bar, hard enough for the whole photo studio to freeze.

Taesong stands up immediately to check on him, and so does Jungwha, their three day old manager, Choi Sangwon’s definitive substitute and the topic of Seungsoo’s most recent infatuation: she rushes forward to aid alongside an assistant, a cup of water materialized out of thin air on her hand, like a trained lifeguard.

It’s too early for any of them to get a good read on her, but Hanjae has working eyes, so he will admit Junghwa is good looking in a mature sort of way, a bit above the ‘K-Pop staff adequate’. She’s not far from Seungsoo’s type, given the fact that he pretty much doesn’t have one. Hanjae has seen him flirt with Seo CEO’s third ex-wife, the second ex-wife, all of Minwoo’s half sisters and, in a disastrous attempt, Dylan’s mom. ("She's just so young, Chihoon! I thought she was your cousin!"

"I don't have a single cousin and you know that! You went for my mom, you animal, the least you can do is own it!")

“Holy shit, Chihoon,” Seungsoo says, tapping him on the back with one hand, fanning him with the other. “You’re alright?”

“My bad– False alarm, guys, my bad–!”, Dylan mutters, still coughing, watery eyes quick in their attempt to scan the room for something, someone.

Hanjae follows their frantic trail until they land on the quiet figure of Haruki by the coffee machine, his back to them, shoulders rigid and on display – wearing the same suit outfit Hanjae has been put on, his in a shade more close to purple than blue.

It fits Haruki splendidly, as must things do.

“Alright, boys, hey, boys!” Jungwha calls out when Dylan’s lungs go back to normal, clapping her hands one loud time. “Break’s over! It’s the real deal, now! So let’s try to have a good day at work today! Fighting!”

They’re set to scatter in trios and duos, the old unit formations, except for Haegon, who’s still on hiatus, still has stitches all over the crown of his head. He only made it because Haruki insisted, and he’s always insisting, lately: “How can we do well without our cheerleader,” he told Haegon in the morning, “Our cute, adorable cheerleader, my very favorite little brother–!”

“Hi,” Hanjae mutters, tapping Haruki gently in the shoulder. Haruki jumps, catching his breath, and Hanjae drops his hand, shoves it behind his own back. “Ah, sorry, if I– I was just going to say we should–”

But Haruki is turning and splinting in front of him before all the words are out, growing out of earshot, out of hold, entering a hallway on the left.

Hanjae, embarrassed, follows.

They’re supposed to go to room 4, but Haruki walks right past it. Hanjae calls back to him from the door, says, “Hyung, that’s not the–”, and then his voice falters, dies out.

Haruki’s already quick pace has grown even quicker, and he’s now running towards the door at the end of the corridor, the one with a red sign written ‘TERRACE’ over it – really running, to the point his body almost slams against the metal when he stops. The door handle makes a loud noise as he tries to push it open, can’t make it, tries again, harder – manages to step out with a strong shove. Hanjae goes after him, frowning, worried.

Outside, the terrace is a gray space, almost the same tone as the sky – rain’s a strong promise on the horizon, a reasonable fear.

Haruki’s standing right at the center. He tries to take in a big and loud gulp of air, can’t, makes a choking sound, lets out a hiss. Hanjae can feel the acute panic coming off him like electricity, gluing itself to his very own skin. He reminds himself to breathe.

Haruki stands an arm out and that’s the distance between them, that’s the nearest he’ll let Hanjae get.

“What’s– What’s happening, what’s wrong, what–?”

“Just,” he’s trembling bad. “Leave, I need– Leave.”

“Now?” Hanjae asks, and he’s making himself bite down on the trail of: ‘But the shoot’, ‘But the gig’, ‘But the job’ so hard, he’s actually got his teeth sinking on his lip.

Haruki nods, sharp and final, and Hanjae feels himself nodding back, frenetic. “Okay, stay– stay here, okay, you’ll leave– we’re leaving, just stay here.”

Hanjae walks back into the building with his head very low, tries to not walk too quickly to bring attention to himself, feels like he’s falling; feels like the whole world is looking at him. He holds his breath while sneaking back into the room they’re using as a closet, picks his and Haruki’s things like a thief: pushing everything into their bags without folding, eyes anxiously looking behind his back, flinching at every outside noise coming through the door.

Haruki’s phone is the last thing he grabs. He only becomes aware of it because it starts ringing. He looks at the screen, a quick run of his eyes. The contact name reads: ‘Don’t Answer Don’t Answer Don’t Answer.’

On the roof, Haruki’s sitting on the floor, resting his forehead against the wall. The back half of an air conditioner hangs close to him, and the leftover water pools near his feet, turning the hem of his pants dark.

They put on the yellow raincoats, plastic hood all the way up, and make a clumsy escape out the studio; Hanjae babbles something at the receptionist about there being equipment in the van, and the woman gives them a distracted ‘go ahead’ nod, an empty courtesy smile.

They walk without a plan, enter on the first bus that stops close: Haruki on the lead, completely reticent, Hanjae only following. There’s still a trail of glitter going down his neck, shiny with sweat, red from stress, Hanjae notices when they sit down. He’s still crying, still whipping at his runny nose with the expensive fabric of his shirt.

Hanjae looks down at his own clothes, the suit vest with no shirt under, a design piece New Wave doesn’t own – he’s wearing eyeliner, a strong smokey eye. They look expensive, and to an outsider, probably peculiar, weird. They don’t even have masks on…

Maybe, Hanjae hopes, trying to hold on to any trail of optimism possible, they could pass as very dedicated cover dancers, maybe–

The sound of Hanjae’s phone ringing makes them both jump in their seats. Haruki comes out of his state of anxious inertia to put a hand on his knee, pressing on it to get his attention. He says, through his teeth, “Do not– Hanjae, do not.”

Hanjae lets the phone ring out. He looks at the receiver: Uhm Junghwa (Manager).

Haruki’s peeking at it too. “Off,” he says, and it’s off.

It’s raining when they step out of the bus. They get maybe five feet down the sidewalk when a phone rings again – this time, Haruki’s. He comes to a sudden halt, and Hanjae bumps into his back and gets a close view of how, in an act of blind rage, he throws it hard on the floor.

“Fuck!” Haruki says, and steps on it once, twice, cracks the screen then the whole device in half. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

Hanjae looks at him, wide eyed, mouth hanging open, and watches him pace around, a tense moment, until he loses all steam, goes sit by the closest wall.

Haruki stays for a long time there, one hand gripping the fence, the other pressing over his face, being rained on. Cautiously, Hanjae slides his raincoat off, squats down, close to him, and stands it over both their heads. Rain drips directly into his shoulder, makes a cold path down his neck.

“I hope your–,” a hiccup, a sniff, a faint and unconvincing attempt from Haruki of laughing them both off, “your fantasy’s still– still up.”

“My…?”

“Can you not,” Haruki says, a hiss, “Not look.”

Hanjae complies, doesn’t look. Behind them, a car runs close to the sidewalk, splashes a wave of rainwater on their backs.

“Sasaeng?” Hanjae tries, “Is it a sasaeng, or…”

Haruki lets out a bitter snort. “Imja,” he says, and it makes more sense that he means ‘owner’ rather than ‘marriage partner’; Hanjae can’t hear anything else, can’t connect anything else to something he knows and decode it.

His throat has gone dry, sandy. He clears it, and still, his voice comes off clipped. “Your…? Ah. Ah, I didn’t know– Didn’t know you have someone you were–”

“You know him,” Haruki says. “For years. You– you’ve known him. He gave you your job– Made your job happen.”

It takes a long moment for it to click, for the shape of manager Choi to come to Hanjae’s mind. Haruki’s looking at him like he’s expecting Hanjae to do something horrible: mouth set for a fight, eyes so red they look like they’ve been painted over.

“Hyung,” Hanjae breathes. His voice is an even quieter thing, afraid. “Do you mean– Are you being serious?”

“Am I! Am I serious?!”

He’s up again, quick – Hanjae loses his equilibrium and falls back on the street. Haruki doesn’t wait for him to get up to resume stomping.

It takes two street turns for Hanjae to understand they’re detouring from the dorms.

They sit on another bus stop bench, hop on another bus. A quiet and tense drive, this one. Haruki’s no longer crying, just grinding his teeth.

They go to the front gates of a tiny building, their final destination, and Haruki tells the security guard an apartment number, wais to be buzzed in. He does soon, and Hanjae, yet to be told to leave, goes up with him on the stairs.

Delilah gets the door he bangs on, and Hanjae’s stuck blinking at the sight of her, who shouldn’t still be in Korea. Haruki barges into her place like a hurricane: shoes still on, pushing her a little back, closer to the wall.

They both stare at the spot he occupied on the corridor a second ago, a held breath.

She recovers much quicker than he does. Deh tucks a long lock of her caramel hair behind her ear, greets him with an awkward, “Hanjae, hi. Hi...”, and Hanjae gets overwhelmed by too many things at once; how glad he is to see her, the shame of how they had parted. Her sad face when she told everyone she couldn’t stand to work with them anymore.

“You’re back.”

“I am! I am back!” Deh says. “How could I not! Europe’s too gray for me. The food’s too bad, and...” She sucks air through her teeth, takes an anxious look behind her, back inside. “... And all that.”

Hanjae shakes his head, agrees – agrees to all that even though he has no idea what all that is. There’s a pool of spit on his mouth, and he has to concentrate on gulping it down, has to try more than once.

“Hanjae, baby, look– I’ll send him on his way later. Maybe tonight. Or tomorrow morning. Just…” She trials off. “Please don’t tell the others we met, okay? I don’t want Seungsoo looking for me or asking around. I don’t want to see him again, ever.”

Fair, Hanjae thinks. After everything, fair.

Deh flashes him a final grim before closing the door, still awkward, and it doesn’t last. She drops it for a split second, fully drops it, looks instead concerned, anxious.

Hanjae waits a moment, then moves before he knows it. He presses his ear against the shut door, closes his eyes and hopes to catch anything. A creek of wood. A vacuum cleaner being turned off. The sound of someone channel surfing. Deh saying what might be, “Haruki, what do you want me to do? I can’t know, love. I can’t know if you don’t tell me.”

Another sound drowns everything, nearer. Someone from the apartment on the left starts to unlock their door, it’s about to walk out, and it leaves Hanjae panicking, it makes him jog all the way out of the building, nonstop.

He makes the inverse way back home, alone. His own phone is a hot thing in his back pocket. When he gets to the dorm, Chihoon is the first person he bumps into, planted right beside the shoe rack. Hanjae’s seen him in this set of clothes, short shorts and a knockoff Pokemon shirt, more than he’s seen his own dad’s face these last few years.

Dylan grabs at Hanjae when he notices it’s him, pushes him back out quickly. He puts a finger in front of his mouth – quiet.

“I’ve given you some cover,” he whispers. They’re circling the house, Hanjae realizes, going to the backyard. “Said you were not feeling well. It won’t fly with Minwoo or Taesong, so think of something. And you're not gonna get paid this month, because of the clothes. Neither of you will.” He looks around, eyes sharp in a way Hanjae didn’t think they could be. “Where is he?”

“Deh’s,” Hanjae blurts out, and remembers he promised not to speak of her, grows meek.

He’s tired, deep in the bones tired, from all the walking, all the running. The socks inside his sneakers are still wet, his fingers have gone cold.

“Good,” Dylan says, remarkably unsurprised. “That’s good enough.”

There’s a moment of silence between them. In Hanjae’s head, a pinned image every time he blinks: Haruki’s eyes, red like a bruise.

“Chihoon hyung, I think– I think there’s something wrong with–”

Dylan’s grip on his arm is steady, but no longer comforting when he says, “Hanjae, listen, yes. Yes. Something’s wrong. Too many things–” He shakes his head, clicks his tongue once, and again. “No need for you to worry about it, because there’s nothing you can really do, okay? It’s been too long, now. The time for anyone to really do anything, over.”

He looks like he doesn’t want to be saying it, like all those words taste bitter, bad.

“So just keep being nice,” Dylan concludes, and his voice breaks at the end. “Be nice with him right now, alright? And patient, and normal, just like always, and…”

Dylan doesn’t say what else. He looks down, and Hanjae follows. Near their feet, a trail of black nicotine ash and tiny bits of paper; someone’s worry, someone’s wait.Kind, maybe, Hanjae concludes on his own. Maybe kind was what he was going to say.

March 12th & a Bit Of 13th, 2022.

Sunyoung immediately strikes Hanjae as someone who’s never held a small house party before, and it’s a bit painful to see her try.

She greets them at the door, a little overdressed: Chanel earrings, Chanel bag. “Is that everyone?”, she asks, craning her neck to peek behind them, and when they mumble ‘yes’ she visibly withers.

Taesong steps in front of them to give her a gift – a flower vase so yellow Zhiming had to look away from it, rubbing at his eyes.

She stares at it for a minute, frowns hard, then composes herself, says, “Ah! Thank you so much, oppa! This is so– Yeah, thanks! But you didn’t have to! Gon, baby! I said they didn’t have to!”

“I told you they don’t listen to me,” Haegon mutters. There’s a dark cloud over his face and Sunyoung seems to not mind it. She squeezes his arm when he passes her by, smiles at him prettily. 

She checks the corridor one more time, and for a moment Hanjae thinks she looks sad; that she looks angry.

The party is a housewarming party for the brand new double storey apartment in Nine One Hannam she’s sharing with her BombShell leader Yoorim, who strongly opposed herself to throwing anything. Hanjae catches a glimpse of her looking displeased and bothered behind the kitchen aisle, and bows his head a little – she rolls her eyes, turns her back on him, disappears behind a small group of people.

Beomseok refused to come, decided to take the afternoon to go grocery shopping, the night to visit family he can’t take Haegon to see; the side that calls him a parasite. It had been a clear jab, right at Haegon’s face. Even Minwoo thought it was insensitive, and his response to the invite had been nothing but a disgusted face that spelled out ‘no’.

Hanjae watches him move through the living room, greeting some people. Haegon’s been here yesterday, and the day before that, and if Hanjae’s not cautious, he’ll stay over despite their early shooting tomorrow.

“That old man put you on babysitting duty, eh, Hanhan?” Seungsoo leans in to whisper to him, a drink in hand already – white wine. The smell of his cologne is probably stuck to Hanjae’s bottom up by osmosis.

“He’s just concerned. It makes sense to be concerned.”

On their first day back from L.A, Haegon had announced over dinner that he now had a girlfriend: they met last week, and had been dating for three days. The situation had driven Beomseok crazy. Haegon asked if him if wanted to meet her every day for two weeks straight, and he said: no. He eventually got around to meet her and said with even more conviction: no, break up, now.

It’s an age gap, even if very small, but she’s about five years his industry senior, he told Hanjae. And Sunyoung’s from YG Entertainment, the face of too many brands. She’s going to eat him alive, spit him out, leave him heartbroken and Beomseok is going to have to deal with it, and he doesn’t want to have to deal with it.

“She can just like him. People can just like him,” Taesong tried to intervene, high pitched, and Beomseok cutted him off right away, said, “No. No, there’s something– Be serious, Taesong. No.”

The front door dings again, and it takes a long minute for Haegon to untangle his arms from Sunyoung’s waist and let her go get it. Hanjae watches her walk across the house, a firm walk of a supermodel, of someone important, and gets embarrassed with how bad he is at this, how obvious.

Another glimpse her way, and the person with their two feet planted on the ‘welcome home’ carpet is Haruki. He also said he wouldn’t come but gave no excuse, yet: here, dressed nicely. He’s got the same convenience store from years ago under one arm, the one from a memory.

They talk, talk, talk, and he still won’t leave the entrance. Haruki makes her laugh, the most genuine thing Hanjae’s seen Sunyoung do all night. He sees her look at him, look around, then lean closer again: point upstairs and give Haruki a thumbs up as he finally makes his way in, into the stairs and out of sight.

Sunyoung’s back on the couch, to Haegon, and Hanjae makes himself look. They’re fine, they appear very fine, holding hands, he doesn’t have to watch them all night, there’s no need to watch them at all, and–

Hanjae goes up the stairs, which he knows it’s technically off limits. He tries to not let his eyes wander to the photos on the walls, the books on the shelves tucked next to an award behind protective glass, a big shiny plaque framed above it.

There’s only one door with light peeking through, right at the end of the corridor. He taps at it three times, and waits. Another three taps, slightly stronger.

“Occupied,” a voice says from the inside – a tone he knows. “All night.”

Hanjae can’t think of what to say: can’t think of anything at all, for a second. He gives the door another hopeful tap, waits more, and he lets out a sigh of relief when it creeks open. He goes in, closes it quietly behind him, and looks down.

The room’s a bathroom, straight out of a home decoration magazine, all black and white. Haruki seems to be setting up an improv bar on the floor, in the big space between the bathtub and the sink. There’s a bottle of something Hanjae can’t read, blue and half empty, tucked in between his legs like a treasure.

“Ah, you,” he waves at Hanjae’s vague direction, not looking up. “Hello, you. I’m just– Don’t mind the mess. Someone made me something once. ‘Trying to put it together.”

Hanjae hums. He can’t make his hand ease its grip on the doorknob.

It’s been weeks since they abandoned the shoot, and since then Haruki’s been avoiding him constantly. Looks at him from across rooms and seems pained, constantly, and Hanjae hasn’t had the heart to come near.

“What is happening?” Haruki asks, suddenly, and tries to land a smile. He blinks a lot and then not enough looking up at Hanjae. “Down. Down there.”

“Nothing much.”

“How is he?”

“Haegon?” Hanjae asks, and Haruki nods at him loosely, mouths the name without making a sound: ‘Haegon’. “He– Uh, he seems alright.”

“Great couple, yes or no? For our maknae, is she great?”

“I– I don’t know.”

Disappointment flashes vividly through Haruki’s face, and it lands on a sad shagrin. “You don’t know,” he says, to himself, and goes back to emptying his bag with a slouch to his shoulders.

‘Be normal’, Dylan had said that day, his only instructions: ‘Be nice.’

Hanjae lets go of the door and goes to sit in front of him, legs crossed like his are. “What’s it supposed to taste like? The drink.”

There’s no humor in Haruki when he says, “Acid.”

He offers a thermo bottle to Hanjae filled with the failed replica. Hanjae takes a tiny sip and can’t swallow it, feels like his tongue is on fire, and it makes Haruki huff a laugh. “More disgusting than that.”

He makes more combinations that demand more tasting, and Hanjae at times struggles, at times doesn’t – Haruki empties a Soju bottle and refills it with Somaek, calls it ‘Hanjae’s palette cleanser’. He also makes Hanjae go downstairs to grab things they don’t have: more cups, ice and fruit juice, if Sunyoung has any, which she does – too many options.

Hanjae comes back from the trip and sets all his findings at Haruki’s feet, then feels weird about it, exposed about it, and pushes some of it closer to himself.

The bottle opener, they notice a minute later, has disappeared. Hanjae thinks he took it with him to the kitchen and abandoned it on the counter. Worry not, Haruki says; worry not!, because he knows how to open them with his front teeth. It’s a hidden skill, a secret talent.

Haruki asks him to hold a bottle close to his face so he can prove it, and Hanjae does so, but it’s a frail grip, not good. Haruki puts a hand over his to make it steadier, makes it worse. Another hand, a shove closer until their knees are touching. Hanjae adds his free hand into the pile, the lonely hand, and Haruki looks straight at him – looks like he’s saying, ‘Bet?’

It takes a second, really. A pop and the lid comes off in the company of an enormous foam eruption. Haruki gets both his hands away, does a smiley flourish: ‘ta-da!’

“But you shook it! Too much, you–!’ He laughs, and can’t stop laughing. Hanjae’s still holding the bottle and tries to hand it to him, but Haruki shakes his head ‘no’. “For you. It is for you.”

It’s bland beer, he takes notice when he drinks it, but somehow it tastes sweeter.

From the corner of his eyes he catches a glimpse of metal in a corner, and it’s Haruki’s new phone, exiled.

Hanjae is surprised to hear himself ask him, “Are the calls– the calls still coming? The ones from–”

“Always,” Haruki responds, eerily nonchalant. “Always will.”

“It’s not over, then? You still–”

“It is. It is over. It is over the way it can be over.”

“What wouldhe,” Hanjae closes his eyes, reiterates, “If it’s over, what would he still want with you?”

“What do you think,” Haruki asks, staring fixedly at the alcohol going from one bottle to the other. A bit of it it’s running straight to the floor. “What do you think people want with me?”

It’s said– weird. Something in his uncaring tone makes a lump of sadness form in Hanjae’s throat.

“Hyung, you know that, if you everneed to talk to anyone about anything. Me and the guys, we all– We all listen. We would listen.”

“Anything?” Haruki pretends to be impressed. “Big. That is big.”

“Seriously. I’m being serious.”

Haruki looks up at him. Even more alcohol spills to the floor.

“Okay. Okay, anything. Anything…” he hums, dropping the bottles, mimicking being in thought with an obnoxious pout. His mouth is now a purple dot, and his eyes a shiny brown daze...

Hanjae often catches himself wondering if he just knows. If he looks into a mirror and just knows that he’s beautiful in a way that looks hand drawn, that looks meticulously planned: a subject of equal envy and admiration. If Sangwon ever told him that, and if so, how many times, had it come close to enough, had he used the right words to say it, did Haruki believe him when he said it, or if he didn’t – what did it make him feel? What exactly did he make him feel?

Hanjae always thought he was so mean, so bitter. He can’t remember ever hearing him say anything nice to anyone about anything.

Hanjae’s staring, he’s realized, and his eyes hurt. He makes them look down to where Haruki’s got a firm hold around the slim of a bottleneck, tapping a weird rhythm into it, impossible to decipher. He has long fingers with hard skin on them, which isn’t something you would expect. He used to paint, used to do calligraphy; used to go to a prestigious arts academy during high school, all boys.

Hanjae’s still starring, and he’s too close to drunk to properly command himself to stop. He hears Haruki huffs an unheard laugh, suddenly, short and maybe frustrated, maybe not that, and Hanjae’s head snaps up to his face to meet it.

He’s being stared at, too – is being analyzed, too.

“I thought of something. Something I want to say, a thing,” Haruki announces. The grin on his face suddenly looks very, very sharp, like there’s something tugging the corners of his mouth up. “I will whisper to you. On your ear. ‘Gimme your ear and I will tell.”

And with that he comes forward, a sudden and ungracious movement, and doesn’t stop when they’re front to front, an inch apart. He climbs Hanjae up – actually climbs him up, his legs around the middle of his body, cageing him in.

Haruki grims again and it’s lazily, in slow motion. He puts a hand on Hanjae’s chin, tips it high, says, “Not your ear.”

He turns his head to the side. His nose rovers near Hanjae’s head, and Hanjae tries to escape it in reflex, but they’re all too slow, drowned in alcohol.

Into his ear, lips touching skin, Haruki says, “I know you like me. For a very long time. Since that one time. Ever since we went out, we got drunk, that one time.”

“Sorry,” Hanjae mutters, hushed.

“‘Sorry’,” Haruki laughs again, like that’s the funniest word there is, like it’s the meanest. It rings so loud, it has an echo. “Now you sorry?”

Hanjae sinks more into the floor, almost laying down, and Haruki follows, saying, “Are you going away? This close? I am this close, and you going away?”

They’re kissing before Hanjae fully processes how, and it’s a weird kiss at a weird angle; Haruki won’t bend his body all the way down, and Hanjae has to keep craning his neck to meet him midway, his elbows pressing against the tiles, hurting.

He feels a hand slide up his shirt almost immediately, and Hanjae understands, with drunken horror, that he’s being undressed – quickly.

“Ah, wait–” He says, and then can’t get out anything else: Haruki shoved a thumb inside his mouth, in between his teeth, as he goes for the spot where Hanjae’s shoulder and neck meet.

“You smell like home here,” he says, a goosebump. He buries his face there, opens his mouth above it, bites and sucks hard enough to make Hanjae jump  – for him to know it’ll leave a pinkish mark, evidence–

It’s exactly then and there that someone bursts in through the door, says a curse loudly, startles the two of them slightly apart, knocks the air out of their lungs.

“Close your eyes! I need to pee right now, right now, close your eyes!”

It’s a tall woman, this one – Hanjae sees her quick rush to the toilet and closes his eyes tight shut.

“If any of you try to act funny and take a single peek, I’ll fucking castrate you both– Hey! Hey, you, back on the floor, don’t come near, I’m fucking serious, I’ll kill you, you fucking–!”

The door clicks shut, and it takes Hanjae a moment to take in the lack of heat above and around him, to correlate the two: Haruki’s gone, walked out, left him.

From the side, he hears an instrident, “Can you at least cover your fucking boner, dude?!”

Hanjae rolls to his side, facing the opposite wall to where the toilet is; he pushes his knuckles into his shut eyes, for good measure. He waits for the girl to finish peeing, and tries not to have an anxiety attack or a heart attack or a nerve attack about everything that happened in the last ten minutes: Haruki on top of him, Haruki no longer on top of him, having to hear a stranger peeing.

“I’m done,” she announces, and he turns back to the same position as before.

There’s little dots of light in his vision, dancing. The girl’s using the sink now, and she has a blonde bob, so blonde and so short. It follows the shape of her mouth and up, even shorter at the back.

“Not a word from you, ever,” she warns, drying her hands on her skirt, pushing it down more, back in place. She gives him a pointed glare that makes Hanjae look down at the state he’s in, at his busted open shirt, a single button in the middle holding it all together. “Not a word from me. Now get the fuck out, please. People need to use the bathroom.”

And she gets going too, without closing the door all the way. The hum of the party downstairs carries over.

Hanjae inhales, looking at the bright ceiling light. His fingers have gone pruney where they were holding him.

[…]

Eventually Hanjae has to get out of the suite, and do a walk of shame back to the housewarming party. He takes down with him all the glass and cups he can manage, not a lot of them, goes straight to the kitchen sink, and begins to wash them, it’s done with them, goes for all of Sunyoung and Yoorim’s dishes.

Around him, the kitchen has emptied out – on the front the living room, mostly emptied out, too, except for little clicks. He spots J.J right in the center of the one installed in the couch, gesticulating enthusiastically, telling someone some story until they make eye contact. He stops, excuses himself, rushes near.

Up close, Jiahang looks at him, up and down, bug eyed, and Hanjae understands he didn’t do a good job of piecing himself back together.

He got a glimpse of his face in the mirror before walking out: lips glossy, bangs far apart and sticking up, somehow, not all the buttons of his shirt tucked in the right cases.

“Hanjae, oh my God. Dylan, Dylan, look!” He calls out, and Hanjae sees Chihoon appear on his left, face slightly dazed. “Oh my God, Dylan! Hanjae!”

“You fucking animal!” Seungsoo, coming out of nowhere, slaps him on the chest hard. “Who? Who who who who?”

They’re all too close, too soon, and Hanjae can’t look anyone in the eyes for too long– he just can’t.

He catches a glimpse of Blonde Bob Piss Girl in a corner, looking bored, on her phone, and stares at her for a moment too long. Everyone follows, looks at her too, and his bandmates erupt into enthusiastic ‘Eeeeeeh!’s. Someone, proprably Seungsoo still, raises his soupy arm up so he can be given high fives, and Hanjae doesn’t know what to do – to let the lie linger or to kill it. What can he even say? What can he say if not that–

Hanjae finds himself grabbing Dylan’s sleeve and tugging at it, leaving behind a damp. He feels like a little kid that broke something, suddenly – overwhelmingly so. “Where ‘d Haruki go?”

“Dude, I didn’t see him. You sure?” Chihoon asks, and Hanjae’s not; he’s not sure.

“Whaaaaat? Haruki came? Haruki’s here?”

“Great. Another one to hunt down. We’re never gonna leave this fucking place in time,” Jiahang whines. “Yoorim noona’s going to delete my number.”

Hanjae asks all of them at once, “We’re leaving?”

“Yeah, you didn’t hear? Sunyoung and Haegon ditched,” Seungsoo says, and Hanjae’s stomach drops. “It’s her house and they ditched, disappeared, poof! Yoorim’s pissed, told everyone to leave. And Taeng’s freaking out! Someone broke his little vase, someone spilled something on him. I think he’s gonna snap. We need to get that freak home.”

“Shit.”

“Yes, Hanjae,” Seungsoo laughs. “Old man was right, after all… Shit.”

[...]

They do a small search around the apartment, the balcony, and conclude: no Haruki anywhere, so they group everyone they have to leave, go wait to be picked up on the sidewalk in front of the Nine One Hannam gates.

“You just dreamed him up, Hanhan! Wouldn’t be the first time,” Seungsoo jokes. It’s a bad joke. O.z shoves him in the chest hard about it, tells him, “Quiet.”

Hanjae looks straight ahead, not at them. In front of him J.J keeps bouncing on the wheel of his feet, saying, ‘I’m going in the front, I’m passenger seat, forget it, it’s me me me me,’ even though no one’s putting up a fight about it.

Minwoo pulls up soon enough on the curve in one of the two black company vans, and downs the window just to give them all an open scowl, then a frown. “I’m only seeing seven of you.”

J.J circles the car to get to the front door, struggles a little to get it open. “Hyung, you’re not gonna believe.”

“I don’t wanna hear it, Jiahang.”

“Shut up, you do. You really really really really do. You were–,” and then he becomes aware of the slouched figure of Hanjae trailing behind him, turns and frowns. “What did I just say!”

“No, I’m…” Hanjae looks at Minwoo looking at him, one eyebrow raised, says, “Sorry.”

Minwoo pinches at his nose, hard. “Just get in the goddamn car, Hanjae, Jesus Christ.”

Hanjae thinks, out of everyone who has a driver’s license, Minwoo drives the shittiest. He needs glasses, he never wears them, he grumbles curses at every slow driver and every rush driver and every driver, in general.

On the way home, he stops the van only once, by popular demand. Taesong steps out to vomit, and spends the rest of the ride jittery about it, cracking his knuckles even when they make no sound.

“We’re so fucked,” Chihoon says when they park inside the dorm’s garage, rubbing his eyes. “It’s 3AM. We’re so fucked.”

While everyone rushes to their rooms to piece pajamas together and form a long row to shower, Hanjae’s elbow to elbow with Dylan, going up the stairs to the second floor as quietly as they can.

He and Haruki have, by far, the best room in the whole house: spacious, with a nice window. It used to be Haruki and Sangwon’s up until he got fired – some excuse about rooming with the manager to learn Korean quicker, about making sure Haruki wouldn’t sneak beer into his room. It makes Hanjae sick now, seeing it, standing so close to it.

Dylan tries the handle once, and the door doesn’t budge, only makes a stubborn click – locked.

Hanjae dries his hand on his jeans, still wet, somehow, asks him, “Is he– He’s in there? Or…?”

Chihoon rests his head against the mahogany and sort of sighs, sort of laughs. “Yeah, definitely home. He’s the only one with the key to lock me out. Classic. Just classic.”

“Get my bed,” Hanjae says – implores. “Use mine, you can– mine, I’ll couch.”

“You’ll couch?” Chihoon looks at him with the trembling smile of someone who’s about to laugh. It falls off his face quickly when he takes in the guilt Hanjae knows he’s wearing openly on his face.

“Hyung, I–” It’s out of his mouth before Hanjae even knows it. “Tonight, something – Something has happened, and I think, think I should– say.”

Dylan’s giving him an analytical once over, and he stops at his moving hands, on his marked neck, looks at the door again – locked. 

“Hanjae,” he says his name like it’s an insult, and for a moment Hanjae feels like it really is – his name, an insult.

He crumbles. “I’m sorry, so, so sorry, we just– I didn’t mean to– It was just, just a kiss, I think, and I– I–”

“You kissed him?! ‘You think’? What does that mean? What do you mean ‘you think’?!”

Hanjae looks around and then down, behind him. “Dylan…” he manages, airy, and doesn’t know what he wants the rest of the phrase to be, where he’s trying to take it.

Chihoon’s mouth hangs open, a painful disbelief, and then slowly shuts.

“You know what,” he says harshly, but not angrily – he sounds more disappointed than anything, more tired than anything. “I don’t want to know. Not now. I’ll know, just– Not now. But fucking Hell, Hanjae, you. You just had to, didn’t you? You saw an opportunity and you just had to.”

Hanjae’s breath catches. Dylan is a figure in his eyes, growing blurry.

“I’m taking your bed,” he announces. ”Eveytime he kicks me out from this day on, I’m sleeping on your bed.”

He storms off, his bare feet on the floor a sound until it isn’t anymore.

Hanjae knocks on the door, a small tap. Nothing.

He thinks of saying it again: sorry. But no one’s around to hear it, no one’s around to accept it. There’s no point.

#fictional idol community #fake kpop group #kpop au #kpop fanfic #kpop oc #&& ⠀ [ . . . ] hound on a hunt ⠀⸻ writing . #&& ⠀ [ . . . ] hound on a hunt ⠀⸻ haruki . #&& ⠀ [ . . . ] hound on a hunt ⠀⸻ hanjae . #&& ⠀ [ . . . ] hound on a hunt ⠀⸻ dylan .

[slow-burn-sally]

20 questions for fic writers

Thank you @totallysilvergirl for tagging me <3

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

171

2. What’s your total A03 word count?

2,559,305

3. What fandoms do you write for?

I live for the days when anyone asks me this question, because listing things I love is just so great. I don't actively write for all of these any longer, but I would go back to all of them if anyone threw me like, half a prompt.

BBC Sherlock

Good Omens

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell

The Terror

Our Flag Means Death

What We Do In The Shadows

The Adventures of Tintin

The Hobbit

BBC and CBS Ghosts

Pacific Rim

Father Ted

Lord of The Rings

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

Death In Paradise

Dalgliesh

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

1. Crowley's Game - Good Omens (Ineffable Husbands)

2. Return To Sender - Good Omens (Ineffable Husbands)

3. Silk All Around You - Our Flag Means Death (Ed/Stede)

4. Oh Good Lord - Good Omens (Ineffable Husbands)

5. Out Of Suffering Into Love - Good Omens (ineffable Husbands)

hmm. Guess GO fandom is where I've cashed in the biggest, kudos-wise *Raises a glass to Good Omens Fandom*

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I try to respond to as many as I can, and I want to respond to all of them, but ADHD and work and life keep me from doing it right away, and then ADHD and being off work and life make me forget. I will sometimes loop back around to read a new comment, then see that I never replied to another, far older comment, then go about replying to several, two years after they were left. I hope people don't mind. I promise everyone who's ever left me a positive comment, that I eat them all up like chocolate bonbons and count myself blessed for each and every one.

6. What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Probably that Childercelles fic where Henry dies in the end. I think maybe 10 people read it. If you're in JSAMN fandom, and you ship Childercelles, and you want a link, PM me, but I can't remember the name of the fic for the life of me. It was pretty angsty. Outside of that, I hate angsty endings. Everyone eats ice cream and cuddles at the end of my fics.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Gonna echo the wonderful @totallysilvergirl and say that I don't do unhappy endings. That Childercelles fic was the only one I think I ever wrote with an unhappy ending, and even that was more of a melancholy ending. Everything else is Häagen-Dazs and rainbows.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I've gotten a few harsh criticisms, and a few snarky comments, but never actual hate.

9. Do you write smut?

I sure do! I've written a whole lot of smut, and I really love it. Regardless, it can be challenging sometimes. I have to be in the right place, and have the right focus to write smut, and lately, it's been feeling more labor intensive. I've been taking a step back from the explicit stuff lately, and playing around in M rather than E, and less sexual waters for a change. Sometimes a gal needs a break. I'll always happily write it for others, but don't feel inspired to write it for myself right now.

10. Do you write crossovers?

I really see my Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell/BBC Sherlock crossover as my first and only crossover. It involves main characters from both fandoms meeting one another, and John and Sherlock live in a world where England's history is the same as the history in JS&MN. It's been a very fun experience, but I'm really writing it for @keirgreeneyes 's birthday, because we share a lot of stuff between those two fandoms, not because I love crossovers. I don't feel drawn to them at all usually.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Nope. Someone came to me a couple of years ago, saying they were being bullied over accusations that they were plagiarizing my good omens fic. They even showed me the fic people talked about, and after scanning it for a bit, I didn't see anything that looked like plagiarism. I posted on tumblr saying I'd rather people plagiarize me than cause one moment of suffering due to bullying, and left it at that. I was really just jazzed to have people *want* to plagiarize me, honestly. It was flattering.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes! In Korean I think.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

No, and I'm not sure I could. I also don't like cooking with other people or showering with other people. I just like having the reins on writing and cooking and showering fronts I guess.

14. What’s your all-time favourite ship?

Oh god please don't make me choose. My children, my precious children. After careful consideration though, I'm gonna have to go with Crozier/Jopson - Jopzier from The Terror. I mean. Come on. It's me.

15. What’s the WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I wrote many chapters of a really fun, but really complex and pain in the ass multi-chapter mystery fic for the rarest of rare pairs, Jack Mooney/Florence Cassell from Death In Paradise. So yeah, I would love to finish it, but I don't have the spoons, and it will have a readership of roughly four people.

16. What are your writing strengths?

I think I write good dialogue. I write good smut. I can make up stories at the drop of a hat, and then put them down very quickly, in large amounts of words. I'm a long distance runner when it comes to fic. I like my sense of humor in fics, and I'm always so happy when someone leaves me a comment telling me they laughed really hard at something I wrote. Ditto incoherent babbling about my fics making them horny. Those comments are so good.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Eh, my weakness is I'm just not an amazing writer? I do it because I love it, and it brings me so much joy, and people reading my fics brings me so much joy, and that's pretty much it. Also, I use a lot of run on sentences, and I have like six tropey things my characters always do, and I can't break out of it.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I didn't understand this one. I would love to write dialogues in other languages if I spoke them fluently. Outside of speaking a bunch of Spanish, I'm not fluent in anything but English.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

eeeeeeeeee @keirgreeneyes @totallysilvergirl my first ever fanfiction was BBC Johnlock! I tried writing a fic, probably back in 2013 or something, and gave up after a handful of paragraphs. I just lacked the confidence. Then, it wasn't until 2019 when I went nuts for Good Omens and wrote a bunch of fic that I wanted to go back and write that one, first, Johnlock fic. And I did it! It's Homecoming. BBC Sherlock is my first fanfiction fandom, and my introduction to fanfiction.

20. Favourite fic you’ve ever written?

Oh wow. That's a tough one. I really loved my one Father Ted fic, A Sweet, Hot, Sticky Romp, because I loved emulating the comedy style of the show and thought I did a good job.

I loved Out Of Time, my Jopzier time travel wackadoo fic for The Terror.

I guess I'll stop at two. I've written 171. I should get at least two favorites.

I tag @fol-de-lol @ilthit @yeswevegotavideo @keirgreeneyes @holycatsandrabbits

#the terror #good omens #jsamn #ofmd #fic writer asks #this was fun ya'll

[sustainabilitythoughts]

Climate "doomerism"

Many people are influenced by “climate doomism” – the belief that nothing can be done to slow or reverse global climate change and that the earth is doomed.  Others believe the problem is “too big” for anything they as an individual can do to have an effect.  Some believe that only governments and large companies need to change.  The link below leads to a BBC article that includes a discussion on the climate change problem and debunks the “doomerism” view that it’s already too late. 

The underlying theme of my blog is that small changes add up, and that if enough people, companies, and governments begin making changes, even if they start small, we CAN slow the rate of climate change and begin to work toward reversing the effects.  I’m not suggesting you sit at home in the dark and cold while everyone else parties.  We all need to include in our lives those things that bring us joy and connection with others.  However, almost everyone can make small changes without much impact on their overall quality of life and those small actions by individuals are part of the solution.  You can also get involved in helping on a larger scale by letting governments and corporations know you support actions to reduce climate change.  Action will be needed at all levels to solve this.  Let’s not give up on the earth and its inhabitants without trying to do something. 

Do what you can, where you are, with what you have. 

#sustainability #environment #environmental #climate change

[ratherembarrassing]

2023: WEEK 1

triangle of sadness (2022): nearly didn't go see this because i was deeply nervous about the vomiting scene, which turned out to be hilarious and only a little bit incredibly gross. a tremendous visceral movie about, amongst other things, how lacking in viscera society is at the moment.

the menu (2022): i watched this the day after triangle of sadness, and it was the perfect time to watch it. the impulse, i imagine, if you saw this some random day in your life, would probably be to extrapolate out a general commentary on rich people ruining everything. but it's so much better on a microscopic level, to think about it only and specifically in relation to the intersection of something so fundamental as food and something so abstract as art with a capital A and something so revolting as money.

wednesday (2022, netflix): the 1991 addams family movie and the 1964 addams family tv show are keystones to my existence, so i was somewhat skeptical about this because to be honest i hate tim burton. but i think everyone else involved in making this was likely tasked with tying him to a chair and telling him "no" a lot, because beyond the bounds of where you could feel his touch all over something, there was so much where you could feel his absence, which made the bits where he was allowed mostly better. i did not care for fred armisen's uncle fester.

just a minute (1967-, bbc radio): the answer to what did i do on my two 9-hour car journeys across australia was listen, non-stop, to every episode of just a minute on the bbc sounds app. now i'm making my way through random compilations of earlier series on youtube.

the lgbtqia themed rubik's cube that was going around on tumblr like 6 months ago that finally arrived this week in my mailbox: this thing is fucking hard to do. i can do a rubik's cube, but when you have to also hold the colour arrangements of every pride flag in your head as well, it's fucking hard.

a tiny pink plush cube with face like : 0 embroidered on it: thank you kmart.

#this week in ashleigh

[gay-jesus-probably]

Random old movie suggestion: The War Game (1965), which I believe may have been the very first movie seriously exploring how nobody can possibly win a serious nuclear war. At the time, it was considered so disturbing that it was immediately banned from being shown in theatres or aired on TV; they decided it could only be shown to an audience that had specifically been invited to watch it.

it was supposed to be released on October 6th, 1965, but the ban meant it wasn't premiered until April 13th, at the 1966 National Film Festival, where it was shown until May 3rd. This movie is specifically about the United Kingdom's nuclear policies and how they would fare in an actual attack, but it ran for less than a month in Britain before being shut down for good - after that, the only audience the film got was in foreign film festivals (where it routinely won awards anyways).

The ban was eventually lifted, and The War Game was aired on British television... but not until 1985, twenty years after it was made, and that was only because it looked like a cheerful distraction next to Threads (1984), the infamous movie that thought The Day After (1983) was being too optimistic about the aftermath of a nuclear apocalypse. And The Day After full on showed you a third of the cast being obliterated in the nuclear strike, then made sure you knew they were lucky to die instantly as every other character died slow, agonizing deaths in a hopeless, radioactive wasteland. Threads was much, much worse.

Anyways, I'd call The War Game the earliest incarnation of The Day After and Threads, and it's a very important snapshot of British nuclear policy and public opinions during the 1960's. Especially since they treat the movie as an interesting blend between fake documentary and real documentary - half of it is a mockumentary of a nuclear war and its aftermath, with interviews of people discussing their lives in the aftermath of the end of the world, while the other half is an actual documentary about the nuclear policies of the time, featuring interviews with actual civilians and officials about how the nuclear policies are supposed to work, and how much the general public actually understands. The whole movie just sort of bounces back and forth between the two, and it really works.

One thing I really like about comparing The War Game, The Day After and Threads is that you can actually see each movie focusing on different things as science learned more about the effects of nuclear bombs. Like, The Day After goes hard on how the bombing would kill a lot of people, but the radiation in the aftermath would get everyone else, and the people that didn't die of radiation poisoning would eventually starve to death, as all the livestock are dead and the topsoil is too irradiated for planting. Threads took that even further, as it was the only of the three movies to be made after Carl Sagan had published his theory of nuclear winter - as in, Threads was literally the first movie to ever show a nuclear winter.

The War Game barely even mentions radiation, they don't consider it to be something worth worrying about - they're a lot more concerned about the fact that a nuclear strike would set the entire goddamn island on fire, and that alone would kill most of the population while leaving the survivors horrifically traumatized. Also, they just genuinely did not have access to that sort of information - British Civil Defence knew they were making a movie criticizing nuclear war as being suicidal for everyone involved, so they refused to cooperate with the filmmakers at all, they had very little access to government information on nuclear bombs. The movie focuses on the devastation of the fire, because the only officials willing to work with them were firefighters, who were absolutely fucking terrified of a nuclear war occurring, because they were the only ones that had realized just how bad the fires would be. The filmmakers also studied the WW2 bombings of Dresden for their research on the firestorm phenomenon (which was definitely a risk in Britain, with very limited land and very dense population).

[invisibleicewands]

BBC One’s Best Interests captures the horror of parental grief

When does Jack Thorne sleep? When does he eat? Right now, he has plays on at both the National Theatre (The Motive and the Cue, about John Gielgud’s 1964 Broadway production of Hamlet starring Richard Burton), and the Donmar Warehouse (When Winston Went to War with the Wireless, about Churchill and the BBC); a new series, Best Interests, beginning on BBC One, which I’m about to review for you; and an adaptation of William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies, also for television, firmly under way. Speaking as something of a Stakhanovite myself – I write this from the spike on which I begin sitting every morning at 9am sharp, Protestant to my very buttocks – his output amazes me. And it’s not as if he’s knocking out gentle comedies. Everything he does is potentially hazardous, its subject matter thorny and contested.

Best Interests stars Sharon Horgan and Michael Sheen as the parents of a severely disabled child who is lying in a hospital, unconscious and attached to many machines. Her doctors believe her latest crisis has resulted in brain damage, that no future treatment is likely to be effective in her case, and that she will never be able to go home. They would like her care to be palliative. Her mother, Nicci (Horgan), however, refuses to accept this. When the series begins, we see her arriving at a courtroom, where she will fight the hospital’s decision on legal grounds. But we also see that she is alone. Her husband, Andrew (Sheen), turns up separately, looking exhausted, lost and sad.

The first half of the series is told in flashback, as we find out how the couple got here. I think, perhaps, that Thorne has made Nicci and Andrew just a little too saintly as parents – in the better times, before their daughter Marnie (brilliantly played by Niamh Moriarty) suffered this crisis – and it seems unlikely to me that a couple who are carers would be so frisky as to attempt sex in the loo of a train. But everything else feels just right. I admire particularly the attention Thorne gives to their other daughter, Katie (Alison Oliver), whom they inadvertently (and sometimes not so inadvertently) neglect, so taken up are they by Marnie’s needs. It’s beautifully done, the quietness of Katie’s rebellion; the way her protests are always stymied by the whole family’s fear and guilt over Marnie.

I read one review that insisted Best Interests is “even-handed”, which makes it sound more like a school ethics lesson than an involving drama. But I don’t think this is so – which is why, in the end, it works for me. As Marnie’s health deteriorates, and the hospital brings in mediators, Nicci is visited by the blank-faced representative of some Christian right-to-life group, which feeds her untruths and offers to fund her legal battle. Thanks to this, a kind of madness besets her. If its real engine is her grief – and Horgan makes us feel that it is – the fuel on which it’s running day to day has to do with delusion; she has been preyed upon.

Horgan and Sheen are magnificent in their roles, fully inhabiting their characters. Sometimes we like them, and sometimes we really don’t, which is as it should be. Horgan gives Nicci a fierce distractedness that comes to exclude everyone and everything save for Marnie. Sheen makes Andrew, who is kind and patient, resilient at first, and then painfully isolated. When his frustration – and horror, for he cannot bear his child to be in pain – finally breaks through, it makes emotional sense, as if it’s the end of something rather than its beginning.

I hope Sheen takes note of this: my admiration of him in this series; the complete suspension of my disbelief. A few days ago, in an interview, he spoke about who should be allowed to play what. He said he did not really believe it when non-Welsh actors played Welsh characters. Also, that most actors are not able convincingly to play a social class different to their own. Personally, I think this is a bit silly. But the best argument in his case is probably simply to tell him that I was moved and convinced by his role as the parent of a dying child. And wasn’t it more of a stretch by far than Tony Blair’s evangelistic estuary, Brian Clough’s snarling Smoggie?

#Michael Sheen #Best Interests #Review

[judeswhore]

hi original anon here and obvs i understand that you won’t post this but i’m really sorry for how this has all spiralled. your blog very much IS a safe space for me and i always enjoy reading your work, it was just that one (the bbc one, sorry i didn’t properly specify) that didn’t sit right and i brought it up with you because i’ve followed you for so long and trusted that you would handle it well.

i’m so sorry for how other people are taking a tiny bit and completely running with it and now making absurd claims about your character, that’s not right and also not true. your writing has always been great it’s more some of the anons that send slightly weird things in which is not in any way your fault, you can’t control what enters your inbox

hi this is the last thing i’m gna post on the matter just bc this is where it stemmed from and i appreciate u coming back. i’m glad u brought up that one ask bc like i’ve said previously it helps me to educate myself and to know what kind of things i need to avoid answering. i’m aware that sometimes i get anons that are weird (there are so many that i don’t answer for this reason) but u pulling me up on that one has simply just made me aware that i should be more wary of what i do reply to, instead of brushing over a certain phrase like i did that one i should just not post the ask at all. i have no control over what i get sent but i can just choose not to answer if i think it’s gna cause offence or harm to anyone so again, i appreciate u originally bringing that up.

as for everything that has stemmed from that ask it isn’t ur fault, anons on here just seem to think it’s okay so cause problems and drama when they don’t need to and i don’t think they realise how harmful what they’re saying is to everyone involved. i’ve never done any of the things they’ve tried to claim i have so it is just a bit weird that they’re trying to paint that narrative and it just shows the kind of people they are. i’m glad that u do think this is a safe space, i’ve had a lot of people say the same and that makes me happy bc that’s all i’ve ever wanted for this blog. i don’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable or like they aren’t included bc that’s awful and that really isn’t the kind of person i am. i want everyone to enjoy every aspect of this blog no matter who they are. receiving those anons after urs just made me very wary abt posting abt jude bc some of the things they were saying were completely out of it. again, i apologise for that ask and i appreciate u mentioning but for everyone else the claims you’ve made have been awful.

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

Hey everyone, guess what’s on the internet? It’s the Daniel Kitson archive 2.0!

This first appeared on the internet a few months ago, and by "appeared", I mean I did a small amount of work and someone who isn't me did a large amount of work, and that put it online. My contributions were mainly listening to too many hours of radio files so I could work out what each one was, digging through things like old message board threads to match dates and radio stations and other metadata to those files, and cutting up some of the older ones to make song-free versions but saving titles and artists of those songs to make tracklists. Most of the files where I did the editing were from the older years when Kitson was not so diligent about back announcing and on some occasions told us that even he didn't know what the song was, so this involved a fair bit of Googling lyrics to indie music. That was my main contribution, really. I Googled a lot of lyrics to indie music. Those were my contributions, unless Daniel Kitson ever breaks his promise that he doesn't Google himself anymore and finds that website, in which case, my contributions were nothing and I have never heard of Daniel Kitson.

Seriously, though, someone else who has been amazingly helpful to me for the past year did all of the actual work of designing and creating the website, amassing the collection of audio files over many years, and quite a lot of the editing too, and I am very grateful for that, and all other comedy fans should be as well, and everyone should check out this beautiful bit of archiving.

A few updates have been made to the site since I first posted it months ago, and this weekend, a whole bunch more updates were made, which is how I justify the 2.0 designation. I re-listened to Kitson’s 2019 run last week to complete the last few tracklists that we were missing – so now every file that has songs also has a text-based tracklist as well as a music-free version. And for the 2019 run specifically, may I recommend the music-free version? Going back over that one really reminded me of how bad the music was in that year specifically – I didn’t love it in 2018/2020/2023 either, but I think 2019 was the worst. Anyway. Daniel Kitson has put some great music on his radio shows over the years and has introduced me to lots of music I now really like. But most of that is stuff he played before he got really into LCD SoundSystem in 2012.

 Anyway. There are other significant updates, as compared to when it was first posted, in the misc. radio section. A bunch of files that I haven’t seen floating around anywhere else, and I have looked quite hard. The BBC Loose Ends clip from 2003 that he famously told a long story about in one of his early shows, and it is fascinating to get to hear the actual episode and compare it to the story (he is, of course, spot on). Just this weekend, a radio interview from 2002 was added that was fantastic Classic Kitson. And a bunch of guest spots on Australian radio from various years between 2006 and now. It’s good stuff.

The biggest update is that there’s now a whole new tab for writing. We avoided including reviews of specific Kitson shows, but it includes all kinds of other stuff, like interviews with him and profiles about him and even a few things written by Kitson. It’s heavy on stuff from early in his career, before he stopped agreeing to do interviews or be profiled. But there’s some recent stuff, from people who have profiled him whether he wants them to or not. A lot of those PDFs back up my theory that there are like five people in the world who are capable of sounding like a normal person while talking or writing about Daniel Kitson, and none of those people work for any major arts-reviewing publications (to be fair, none of them write this blog either).

I highly recommend going through this thing, even if you're not hugely into Daniel Kitson, because this is a great way to start. For specifics of what's contained in each section of the archive, I'll just link to the post I made when it first went up in May, since the information is basically the same now as it was then. But there's more of it now. A whole bunch more and it's all enormous fun.

[myddrinmob]

Coenen Onnen

It’s long past dusk, but the market never truly stops. Only changes faces - vendors, stalls, patrons - like a mummer in a masked show. The stranger who stalks through its crowded thoroughfare is entirely unfamiliar with its many guises: so, though he strides like a predator, he looks over his shoulder like prey. In the hidden nook to which he is heading - though, pertinently, cannot yet see - wait two figures. One is the owner, short and middling in age, surrounded by the accoutrements of high war. We might assume he is a master armourer and weaponsmith. The other is in shadow.

Chapter two! This episode probably gets the top spot for 'least changed from canon'. The original episode is just so good: the beginning of a rapport between Merlin and Arthur, growing to trust; first showing of the worth of commoners vs nobility in Camelot; Gwen! Gwen! Gwen!

So what changes are there? Well, for starters.

Why does Arthur have literally no other servants?

ARTHUR My chambers are a complete mess. My clothes need washing. My, uh, armour needs repairing. My boots need cleaning. My dogs need exercising. My fireplace needs sweeping. My bed needs changing. And someone needs to muck out my stables…

Like, arguably none of this should be Merlin's job. The world of BBC Merlin exists in a quasi-historical fantasy medieval setting, sure, so we have wriggle room, but even in the earliest and lowliest of post-antiquity royal households, most of these are done by different people. Merlin, as a personal manservant, might organise them, and get different servants to do them, but he largely won't be doing them himself.

A castle would have a laundry, where they'd probably also do repairs, and may have the bootboys too. They'd have a dedicated stable staff, farriers and stablehands and horse breeders and so on - depending on the household, they'd have a Marshal or it's equivalent to oversee all that. The knights would have pages and squires and drill masters and armoursmiths - who would probably be different from the weaponsmiths, and definately different from smiths that make general goods, like nails. You'd have kennel masters for the dogs and chambermaids to do the cleaning and -

You get the gist.

I get why all this wasn't shown - budget, rotating cast of extras, it's just easier to have Merlin involved in literally every aspect of Arthur's life - but! I think it also kneecaps Merlin's character.

This is the tip of the iceburg of my ongoing quibble with the series regarding Merlin the perpetual servant. I'll get into it more in future episodes, but essentially I think the maintenance of the shows initial premise - high school au Arthuriana, Merlin-as-servant - reduced the potential character growth we could have seen, and a real fulfilment of the idea of Arthur and Merlin as equals (two sides of the same coin, anyone?).

It's also really funny to imagine Arthur driving away everyone who might be in his service, to the point he doesn't even have a squire. Like damn, how bad an employer are you?

The only other thing that got changed was the weird...thing... between Arthur and Morgana. Whatever that was, it died a death midway through season one and was never addressed again. I'm not against weird incest vibes in my Arthurian media - it'd be terribly genre-blind of me to be so - but it's not what I'm going for here. Or at least, Arthur and Morgana themselves don't see each other that way - they have lived too long as childhood peers to do so - and if it ever comes up, it'll be in the way that Gwen mentions it. People on the outside of the relationship assume that Uther means to betroth them at some point, to the pairs unbridled objection. Everyone else unknowingly condones incest, but not the actual participants.

That's it for ep two - ep three is already up as well, so I'll do a bts on that sometime soon.

In other news, our priestess is back >.>

#bbc merlin #arthur pendragon #merlin #valiant #season one

[newstfionline]

Saturday, May 27, 2023

Guam ‘very blessed’ with no early reports of major damage in the messy aftermath of Typhoon Mawar (AP) Chainsaws buzzed Friday as neighbors helped neighbors clear toppled trees and began cleaning the wreckage of Typhoon Mawar, which walloped Guam as the strongest typhoon to hit the island in over two decades but appeared to have passed without leaving death or massive destruction in its wake. While it was still early going in the recovery effort, police Sgt. Paul Tapao said there did not seem to be any major damage, main roads were passable and “Guam has been very blessed to have no storm-related deaths or any serious injuries.” To Tapao, the roar of the mechanical saws was a reminder of the resilience of the storm-prone U.S. Pacific territory and its people. “Everyone helps out with the cleaning,” he said. “That’s the Guamanian way.”

Welcome to America! Now learn to be in debt (NPR) Every time you swipe your credit card for a coffee or a carton of eggs, you take out a tiny loan from your bank. In many ways, the U.S. runs on borrowed money: a mortgage for a home, financial aid for college, a loan for a car, credit cards for nearly everything else. Over just two years, Americans went from pandemic-fueled, near-record savings to today’s highest-ever levels of personal debt. The U.S. economy counts on you to borrow money and stay in debt. Almost in a matter of a single generation, America has developed an extensive, even casual reliance on debt. Its epitome is the credit score, which often snares newcomers into a financial Catch-22—building credit history hinges on getting credit, but credit approval is dependent on having credit history. Being financially responsible in the U.S. has come to mean “borrow and repay,” says Barbara Kiviat, an economic sociologist at Stanford University. “It sort of crowds out the idea that maybe not borrowing in the first place is also a good idea,” she says. “But we’re now living in a world where so much hangs on that credit.” But what if you were taught to never owe anybody anything? “It’s such a cultural shift,” says Adina Appelbaum, who works with immigrants as a financial counselor and lawyer, “because in many countries they don’t have this culture of debt ... and there can actually be shame around having debt or a credit card.”

Henry Kissinger’s Legacy (National Security Archive) As Henry Alfred Kissinger reaches 100 years of age, his centennial is generating global coverage of his legacy as a leading statesman, master diplomat and realpolitik foreign policy strategist. “Nobody alive has more experience of international affairs,” as The Economist recently put it in a predictably laudatory tribute to Kissinger. But the historical record also documents the darker side of Kissinger’s controversial tenure in power: his role in the secret bombing campaign in Cambodia that killed over 100,000 civilians; the overthrow of democracy and the rise of dictatorship in Chile; disdain for human rights and support for dirty, and even genocidal, wars abroad, as well as involvement in the Nixon administration’s criminal abuses, among them the secret wiretaps of his own top aides.

More Russian Raids Down The Road (BBC) On Wednesday, Denis Kapustin, the leader of a Russian paramilitary group that conducted a border raid from Ukraine into Russian territory promised that more attacks are on the way. He claims that his group was able to seize “some weapons,” an armored personnel carrier, and multiple prisoners while only having two soldiers injured, though Moscow claims that Russian troops killed over 70 of the raiders. The Liberty of Russia Legion (LSR), which claimed joint responsibility for the Monday attack on Russian territory, said two of its forces were injured while ten more were killed. Both groups claim they want to take down Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government, though their motives are a little less than pure. Kapustin has stated that he wants a mono-ethnic Russian state (Russia is home to over 190 ethnic groups), and an independent Ukrainian investigative group has shown his links to neo-Nazis in Ukraine. Ukraine’s Azov Battalion has similar ideals—it was founded by a known neo-Nazi, is consistently described as “a far-right nationalist” group, recruits known white supremacists from Western countries, and regularly uses Nazi symbolism.

Russia’s Old Bombs Elude Ukraine’s Modern Defenses (NYT) As Kyiv gears up for a much-anticipated counteroffensive, Ukrainian officials, independent analysts and American military officials say the Russians are increasing their use of Soviet-era bombs. Although they have limitations, the weapons, they said, are proving harder to shoot down than the fastest, most modern missiles that the Ukrainians have become adept at intercepting. The aircraft bombs don’t have propulsion systems like cruise missiles or stay in the air nearly as long as drones. The bombs are aloft for only 70 seconds or less and are much more difficult for Ukraine’s air defenses to track. They are little dots on radar screens that soon disappear after being dropped, Ukrainian officials said, and then they slam into villages. According to Ukrainian and American officials, the Russians have retrofitted some of the bombs with satellite navigation systems and wings that stretch their range, turning an old-fashioned weapon, which Moscow has thousands of, into a more modern glide bomb. “This is the evolution of the air war,” said Lt. Colonel Denys Smazhnyi of the Ukrainian Air Force. “They first tried cruise missiles, and we shot them down. Then they tried drones, and we shot those down. They are constantly looking for a solution to strike us, and we are looking for one to intercept them.”

Climbers celebrate Mount Everest 70th anniversary amid melting glaciers, rising temperatures (AP) As the mountaineering community prepares to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the conquest of Mount Everest, there is growing concern about temperatures rising, glaciers and snow melting, and weather getting harsh and unpredictable on the world’s tallest mountain. Since the 8,849-meter (29,032-foot) mountain peak was first scaled by New Zealander Edmund Hillary and his Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay in 1953, thousands of climbers have reached the peak. Recent research found that Mount Everest’s glaciers have lost 2,000 years of ice in just the past 30 years. Researchers found that the highest glacier on the mountain, the South Col Glacier, has lost more than 54 meters (177 feet) of thickness in the past 25 years. The glaciers are losing ice at rates that likely have no historic precedent, said Duncan Quincey, a glaciologist at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom. The change is happening “extremely rapidly” he said. “It’s causing challenges for everybody within that region and, of course, for the millions of people who are living downstream,” since much of Southern Asia depends on rivers that originate in the Himalayas for agriculture and drinking water. Both floods and droughts are likely to become more extreme, he said.

Chinese hackers spying on US critical infrastructure, Western intelligence says (Reuters) A state-sponsored Chinese hacking group has been spying on a wide range of U.S. critical infrastructure organizations, from telecommunications to transportation hubs, Western intelligence agencies and Microsoft said on Wednesday. The espionage has also targeted the U.S. island territory of Guam, home to strategically important American military bases, Microsoft said in a report, adding that “mitigating this attack could be challenging.” While China and the United States routinely spy on each other, analysts say this is one of the largest known Chinese cyber-espionage campaigns against American critical infrastructure. Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said on Thursday the hacking allegations were a “collective disinformation campaign”. Mao said the campaign was launched by the U.S. for geopolitical reasons and that the report from Microsoft analysts showed that the U.S. government was expanding its channels of disinformation beyond government agencies.

Son of local lawmaker arrested in rare killing that left four dead in Japan (Washington Post) The police arrested the 31-year-old son of a local lawmaker on Friday in connection with an assault that left four people dead, according to police. The suspect has been identified as Masanori Aoki, the son of Nakano City assembly speaker Masamichi Aoki. The armed and masked suspect had barricaded himself in a building after allegedly killing a woman and two police officers in the central Japanese prefecture of Nagano on Thursday. The first three victims died at a hospital. The gunman, who was wearing camouflage clothing, a mask and sunglasses, stabbed the woman and then opened fire with what appeared to be a hunting rifle when police arrived, reports said. A fourth person injured in the attack, Yasuko Takeuchi, 70, was unable to be recovered from the scene until after police apprehended the attacker, when she was pronounced dead, according to local media. Gun crimes are extremely rare in Japan, where firearms are strictly regulated. Anyone trying to get a gun in Japan needs to apply for a permit, attend a class on gun safety and laws, and pass a written test. There is a full-day training course on safe shooting techniques.

Leaked Report: “CIA does not know” is Israel Plans to Bomb Iran (The Intercept) Whether Israel’s escalating threats of war with Iran over its nuclear program are saber-rattling or something more serious is a mystery even to the CIA, according to a portion of a top-secret intelligence report leaked on the platform Discord earlier this year. The report reveals an undisclosed military exercise conducted by Israel. “On 20 February, Israel conducted a large-scale air exercise,” the intelligence report states, “probably to simulate a strike on Iran’s nuclear program and possibly to demonstrate Jerusalem’s resolve to act against Tehran.” “CIA does not know Israel’s near term plans and intentions,” the report adds, speculating that “Netanyahu probably calculates Israel will need to strike Iran to deter its nuclear program and faces a declining military capability to set back Iran’s enrichment program.” Biden has not opposed a unilateral Israeli attack on Iran—and his national security adviser recently hinted at blessing it. “We have made clear to Iran that it can never be permitted to obtain a nuclear weapon,” Jake Sullivan said in a speech earlier this month. Sullivan went a step further, adding, “As President Biden has repeatedly reaffirmed, he will take the actions that are necessary to stand by this statement, including by recognizing Israel’s freedom of action.”

Plastic Bags (ABC News) While many places purport to collect and recycle plastic shopping bags, a new investigation found that in reality it’s rare that bags make it to designated recycling centers even when properly returned to retailers who claim that they’ll recycle them. ABC and nine local stations and affiliates across the country dropped 46 bundles of plastic bags fitted with electronic trackers into drop-off locations associated with the American Chemistry Council’s Wrap Recycling Action Program, which has 18,000 drop-off points nationwide. The trackers were superglued inside multiple layers of clean plastic bags, and were monitored over the course of their journeys. After months of tracking, as of May, half of the trackers last pinged at landfills or incinerators, seven last pinged at refuse transfer stations that don’t recycle plastic bags, and six still remain in the store where they were dropped. Another three are now thousands of miles overseas in Malaysia or Indonesia, exported to Asia, and three were inconclusive. Only four of the 46 bundles last pinged in a facility that recycles plastic bags.

#headlines #news

[torterracotta]

BANSHEE???? THE COP?????

look, i went from the available choices, and my vote went to Beto anyway

Let's break these choices down, yeah?

Cyclops - tl;dr There are specific periods of time where Scott is "hot," and the vast majority of the time he isn't! Is he my blorbo? Yes. Do I run a sideblog where the header is his Foxy Grandpa Ass jutting out? Of course. Can I vote him in good conscience? I don't think so.

Colossus - the man spent how much time trying to fuck a fourteen year old? He heard Mutants were moving to a sex cult island and was baffled because his dead pal Jeff was a human. Pass.

Gambit - not even with Rogue's dick.

Wolverine - I only barely believe he can find the clit, and have ZERO confidence he could locate my prostate, and I'm unsure enough about his grooming habits that I wouldn't willingly put any part of myself in any part of him. Pass.

Iceman - Closeted Iceman? Maybe. But out Iceman is an overcompensating baby gay written almost exclusively by straight dudes, and I have a strict policy of never touching white gays who have "BBC" in their search history.

Warren Kenneth Worthington the Third - do you know what happens to Angel's love interests? I'd rather not be hatecrimed by Cameron Hodge for a few sweaty minutes of underwhelming halfhearted bottoming from a princess who provides the own stuffing for his pillows. Keep flying, birdboy.

Nightcrawler - I know, I know, the man is a sex icon, but I'm not getting involved in any of that family drama. If it's not his evil lesbian moms trying to kill me, it'd be his step-sisters trying to get back in his spandex. Not worth it, especially after all that shit in Way of X.

Havok - Matt Fraction's Clint Barton: The Mutant Flavor???? Listen, I adore a broken man who knows his place as much as the next nigga, don't get me wrong, but if I'm not picking Scott, I'm definitely not picking his Luigi.

I do appreciate his commitment to the bit, though.

Banshee - let's jump back to Cyclops for a minute. Without getting into shipping war bullshit, most of the times he's been "hot" are when he's playing off of Emma Frost, right? Emma's tertiary mutation is the ability to make everyone else more interesting just by association, because she's fucking great. I mean I just read an Iron Man book for her, for fuck's sake. Back in the 90's, when she was newly not-evil, she and Banshee were essentially the co-leads of Generation X, a book that, when it wasn't being the New New New Mutants, about two unreasonably sexy people who couldn't stand each other being unreasonably sexy at each other. Even putting that aside (and if you read a few issues, you'll get it), the man's spent decades dedicated to flying around with his tits out due to mysterious clothing damage, amd I appreciate that.

Sunspot - look, I fixated on him when I was nine, as the only character I could find who was like me at all, and that was ignoring all the gay subtext with his best friend even before it turned into outright queerbaiting. I grew up with him, and he's only gotten better since then. He's the only dude in my top 5 muties. He's flawless (give or take bad taste in men and a propensity for being whitewashed), he's perfect, he's hilarious, he's my vote AND yours, he's Sunspot.

Cannonball - in my seminal 2020 fic, "How Many Times Would You Say You've Been In Love," I summed Beto's Best Boy up thusly:

Sam laughed, a quiet, gentle, chuckle that crinkled the corners of his eyes, not that Roberto could bring himself to look at them. Instead his own eyes travelled everywhere else, from Sam's mess of a mop, to his strong jaw, to the gap in his front teeth, his okay-for-a-white-boy lips, the freckles that covered his nose, and ending up… 

Do I love Sam as a character? Absolutely, he's one of the best. But he's not hot, he's a lapse in taste. Love conquers all, they say. 😔

Bishop - as one of exactly two Black men the poll listed, I want to give Bishop his flowers, but I have never read a good Bishop story where he wasn't awful. No baby gays, but no self-hating Black genocidaires, either.

#x men

[galacticlamps]

I while ago when I was watching Evil, I know I referred to Kemel as the worst racism-driven POC caricature of the era, and now that I’ve gotten to Toberman, I really feel like I should expand upon what I meant by that.

For one, I hadn’t forgotten about Toberman when I said that - in fact, he was exactly who I was thinking of - and I’m not trying to make an argument about which is more offensive (I don’t really think there is a definitive answer to that, nor does trying to rank them in that way achieve anything, what upsets a person upsets a person at the end of the day & that’ll never be the same for everybody) but Toberman’s case is significantly more complicated and less straightforward than Kemel’s, which is why I want to talk about it a little instead of just being like ugh the annoyingly racist 60s.

To just recap what I find so appalling about Kemel: his character comes to us from a historical background - Victorian England - and is first introduced into the story as the hired servant of the human villain, a man who’s more than happy to aid the Daleks in enslaving the whole human race as long as it benefits him personally. In short, he’s exactly the kind of character who both by circumstances & personality, you’d expect to be totally fine with de-humanizing someone like Kemel - so why does the script need to do it as well, by making him mute? Maxtible already doesn’t respect or trust Kemel in any great regard, so he certainly hasn’t given him information that would alter the plot if he could share it with Jamie or Victoria, the other characters he primarily interacts with. In fact, Kemel seems perfectly capable of communicating with & being understood by both of them as well as Maxtible, so his not being able to speak for himself never seems to serve any purpose to the story itself, while it does rob him of one of the most important tools a character on a tv show can have. His overall role, objectifying and degrading though it may be, is understandable in-universe, and even his death on the Dalek planet, where only the 3 main characters are permitted to survive because the story demands both that they live and that everyone else on Skaro, human & Dalek alike, dies, doesn’t feel particularly racially motivated compared to other characters of color who meet similar fates. That’s not to say that having a story-motivated reason would justify treating him worse than the white characters of course, but the lack of one really does seem to emphasize that his muteness is instead the result of active 1960s bbc racism specifically - the writers themselves not seeing anything wrong with making the one character of color literally unable to speak for himself. It’s somewhat easy to single out both the problem there and the would-be solution that doesn’t involve either omitting his character or even changing any major events in the story itself - and with Toberman & Tomb, that’s definitely more complicated, simply because his status as a negative racial stereotype is much more involved in the story in which he appears.

Obviously, I am not about to claim that Tomb is not racist. But it does walk a very strange line with regard to when it’s conscious of that racism - and might even be trying to acknowledge it & make a point about it - vs when it just seems to take it for granted as totally normal & un-noteworthy (and the fact that it never seems to take pick a side of that line is what makes it inconsistent in general, racist for sure, and also very difficult to pick out just the racist parts only from)

As usual with characters like this, the problem with Toberman being treated the way he is, both by characters & the narrative itself, isn't exactly that he's black, but that no one else is - that he represents 100% of the black characters in the serial, and that 100% of the characters in his degrading position & who suffer his horrible fate are in turn black. That none of the 'good guys' or even the neutral characters are people of color of any kind - and that the other villains are also POC - or, I almost want to say, like, POC-coded? Between the complicated racial politics of Europe & the monochrome film though, the literal color of their skin is secondary to the fact that they're very clearly made out as Foreign in general. Which should in itself be considered an oxymoron, if we're being honest - not only because we're on another planet, but because just look at the rest of the (white) team - English, Welsh, American - there is some variety here, a fairly conscious attempt to represent more than just one homogeneous culture - and yet the result is still so blatantly racist.

Part of the story in Tomb is the shock & horror of seeing our first ever converted or partially converted character. Before now, we've seen full Cybermen and even men acting under the Cybermen's control (in the Moonbase) but until Toberman, we aren't faced with seeing a character we knew beforehand go through a transformation that strips them of their free will and turns them partially into a machine, and the first time I watched classic who, I was pretty surprised by that fact, given how that aspect of the Cybermen had always seemed like the creepiest thing about them & their biggest strength as villains. I did not expect to have to wait until their third serial within a year - proof that they were already considered very successful antagonists - before that element was presented in its full horror, and of course it’s no accident that the first time we do see it, it’s Toberman this happens to. The fact that he’s suspicious, large, strong, violent, silent, & obedient make him an unsurprising choice for conversion, someone the plot can use to demonstrate the threat of the Cybermen without asking the audience to stretch their minds too far or re-evaluate their stance on a character’s motivation or trustworthiness. He’s easy to write off, and not that far from what we expect a Cyberman to be like in the first place - which will of course become a plotpoint in itself, when it takes the other characters some time to realize he’s been partially converted.

But of course, at the end of the day, Toberman proves himself not to be anything like the Cybermen. He saves them all, defeats the Cybermen, and does so by overcoming what they’ve done to him. He’s so much more man than machine that it’s seeing his mistress - someone we only now learn must’ve been somewhat important to him personally, more than just an employer or even an oppressor of some kind - killed which breaks him of their conditioning & frees him from their orders. The unsurprise with which we saw him converted is now turned on its head into shock at the twist that this silent giant who we weren’t sure if we’d ever seen really think for himself before is not only capable of it, but so willful that he can break through and personally defeat the Cybermen, while our heroes are able to do little more than cheer him on. That is frankly a pretty ingenious plottwist, and a way of elevating Toberman’s status retroactively - because even if he seem ed like little more than a futuristic slave when the program began, looking at the end, it’s hard to believe Kaftan or Kleig or anyone else could ever’ve made him do anything he didn’t already want. So, was the serial really racist the whole time, or did we just bring racist assumptions to it ourselves because we recognized tropes we’re used to seeing used in racist ways? Is it possible that Toberman’s role in the ending - not only as the hero but as the character who surprised us by being one, now making us re-evaluate everything that came before - is that enough to totally change the verdict on his character? Personally, I don’t think so, but I think it’s worth posing that question in order to really zero in on which parts of the story are an obstacle to that anti-racist reading.

No matter how intentionally the writers meant it, the reveal that Toberman can defeat the Cybermen through his unique combination of strength, willpower, thought, and unsuspecting demeanor does actively play on the fact that the audience presented with this racially polarized group of characters will have seen him in the first few minutes and immediately recognized him as the strongman, the black man who’ll die, the villain’s henchman who doesn’t do anything but carry out orders other people think up & believe in, even if he takes a savage joy in doing harm. For the surprise of the ending to land, in many ways he needs to be that character the audience passed over too quick - dismissed on grounds that were partially racist on their own, and partially a simple recognition of the racist patterns that recur in media. In another context, his heroism & the specific way he achieves it in the end might’ve been a successful critique of the negative assumptions the audience willingly laid onto the character as a result of his race. But it still feels a stretch to say that’s definitely what happens here. Again, the problem isn’t that Toberman is black, or even that he’s black and strong and silent and evil in the first place - he needs to be those things for the audience to be properly surprised when the dismissive attitude those traits had earned him proves to be so wildly incorrect. The problem is that nobody else is, even within a group that’s notably diverse in origin, and even among the villains, he’s given a substandard role.

And that’s what I think is so unsalvageable about the idea, and why it’s impossible to prise the good elements apart from the shitty ones in Tomb - for Toberman to be in control of himself enough to save the day in the end, he must also have been equally on-board with Kaftan & Kelig’s plan at the beginning, rather than an unwilling accomplice or even a victim - but not only does that make him more of a villain & another piece of evidence in support of a moral divide running exactly parallel to the racial divides in the group - it also begs the question of why he isn’t treated by the script & the camera as equally worthy of attention, one in a Trio of Bad Guys and instead secondary to Kaftan & Kleig. Why don’t we know what his views on the Brotherhood of Logicians and the whole plot to ally with the Cybermen are, if he’s also a partner in the evil plan? The character has to be both the racial stereotype viewers expect to see (even if they aren’t particularly comfortable with it) while also being in the inverse of that trope - so the script & the camera must also treat him as secondary, not worth consideration beyond the fact that he is strong, so that there’s nothing in the text or on the screen inhibiting his strength from being used for evil in one scene and good in another. He isn’t allowed to have presence & agency of his own, because even when the characters (Kaftan, Kleig, the Cybermen) have stopped robbing him of it, then the needs of the script step in & start making demands which he’ll need to lack a great deal of specificity to be able to fulfill.

And last but certainly not least, with the story set in the future, what possible in-universe reason is there for the characters in the story never challenging - but instead, supporting - those same racist assumptions the writers are so clear banking on the viewers bringing to the episode, either consciously or unconsciously? Why don’t they ever balk at Toberman’s status as such a silent, obedient servant, other than the fact that it would spoil the ‘surprise’ that we should indeed have considered him his own person all along? Bodyguards might well still exist, but I wouldn’t say Tomb paints the picture of a highly stratified futuristic class system particularly well - and without one, it seems strange that this small party of explorers on an alien world would all default to treating Toberman as secondary when their group is so limited to begin with. He’s not even the only one there who doesn’t really belong, it’s well-established that neither Kaftan nor Kleig have any claim to being there in an archaeological capacity. So why ignore him, write him off as a forgone conclusion? Wouldn’t your default be to treat him like any other member of the team, who doesn’t quite belong there in an official capacity but is anyway? Why treat him as a literal extension of Kaftan herself, who doesn’t think or act on his own? Oh right, the racism. Perhaps if the story had been set in the past instead of the future, that point in the serial would’ve been quite nice indeed - we’d understand why it’s the default for the white members of the party not to pay too much mind to him, and never pause to consider what he might or might not want, whether it’s for them or against them. There would be an element of dramatic irony throughout the script inherent from the fact that the audience knows this is foolish, bizarre, unfair behavior, while the characters limited by the rules of their age’s society could be believably ignorant (or at least acting as such). But of course, if it’s set in the past you can’t have an expedition looking for the Cybermen or villains whose intention it is to use this technology to conquer and enslave the whole human race, to say nothing of the fact that it’s sympathy for Kaftan that breaks Toberman of the Cyberprogramming - he can be her victim, or he can be in control of himself enough to save the day, but not both.

This isn’t really going anywhere except to say that there truly isn’t some hypothetical, 21st century ‘good’ version of Tomb, or some lens of looking at it without the 60s racism, or even a way of distilling that racism down into particular points without which the rest of the serial stands up. There’s no clear way it ‘would be done now’ to achieve all the same clever parts (be it an unexpected plottwist involving an under-appreciated character, or a critique of the audience’s complacency with racist assumptions) that doesn’t also call for major alterations to the rest of the story, plot, and characters, to the point that it all falls apart anyway. However, Toberman is a fascinating character in as much as he appears to be a negative racial stereotype trying to be used for a good, anti-racist point - but unsurprisingly, the story attempting to do that gets caught up in its own contradictions & inconsistencies, failing so spectacularly that it doesn’t stand up to even the lowest level of scrutiny, and betrays the fact that the writers either weren’t overly concerned with the anti-racist implications, only the twist ending they could provide, or they didn’t think that an important enough area to even look into thoroughly enough to see the failings of in the first place.

At the end of the day, you can’t have Tomb without Toberman, and you can’t have a Toberman that doesn’t fit all of the negative racial stereotypes he does, or there’s no point in having him at all, and in turn, no resolution for Tomb. I don’t think there’s anything standing in the way of the case that Tomb might actually have had anti-racism on its radar as a vague, minor goal, likely only because it serviced the larger goals of the plot in general - but there’s also no question about how it failed if that was the plan. In a way, it’s a shockingly sticky cycle that racism has trapped this story in, particularly compared to the preceding serial, in which the most blatant example of real-world racism actually felt tangential and infuriatingly optional, considering how Kemel really had no great need to be mute, and could’ve still fulfilled all his plot- or character-development purposes just the same - better, even - if he’d been allowed to speak. With Toberman you absolutely have to take the good with the bad, whereas Kemel just got needlessly - though tellingly - mistreated by the writing itself.

#tomb of the cybermen #second doctor era #ah i'll also tag this #evil of the daleks #this got long sorry #i just think there's a lot more to be said about the racism in tomb than oh the black guy dies or oh the villains are all nonwhite #even though the conclusion is pretty much the same

[mariacallous]

The rapturous standing ovation at the end of Liz Truss’s conference speech looked straight out of a future Netflix documentary from the cults strand. Outside the sect’s meeting hall, the party is polling an average of 25 (TWENTY-FIVE) points behind Labour. Inside, the people were clapping like they’d just heard a really charismatic argument about why it’s important to marry teenage girls, shun dissenting family members, and build gun turrets round their compound.

Truss’s government is now too weak to implement its maddest plans and too ideological to implement its most sensible. Last night it emerged that the government has blocked a public information campaign to help people save money on energy – and, by extension, to conserve usage in the face of suggestions that rolling blackouts could be in the post for this winter.

Apparently Truss regarded it as too nannying, despite it having been drawn up by her own business secretary, Jacob Rees-Mogg (a 53-year-old who admittedly still has a nanny). One cabinet minister reportedly said “the public is smarter than you think”. Unfortunately, Liz Truss isn’t. If we do reach the blackout scenario, the failure to plan or use foresight will be blamed on Vladimir Putin.

The Conservatives have been in power for 12 years. In dog years, that’s 304 (and arguably feels longer) – yet you’ll have noticed how every single thing is still someone else’s fault. The government is obsessed with people having to take responsibility for their own lives, but takes none for its own mistakes. Truss, Kwasi Kwarteng and the other authors of Britannia Unchained deplore the feckless, the useless and the undeserving.

Yet throwing that absolute hot mess of a party conference this week while the country is sliding deeper into its various interlocking crises is surely the last word in fecklessness, uselessness and being undeserving. The salaries of every single person involved in what we saw in Birmingham should be withheld, like a benefit, until they’re at least housebroken. How do you return to functional government after that? It’s like the end of Deliverance, except instead of the characters giving each other haunted looks and saying “I don’t think I’ll see you for a while”, they’ve had to say: “Let’s … run a country in crisis together?”

You’ll have seen a lot of in-group analysis of Truss’s speech and its esoteric meanings, but what most normal people would have seen if a random clip drifted their way was the PM whining her little heart out. For someone who has always been gratingly keen for everyone to see her as a ray of sunshine, Truss is starting to present as a real Negative Nigel. Honestly, Liz, just stop moaning! Get on your bike and be the prime minister. If all you can do is complain about stuff, then resign and find more appropriate employment – eg hygiene inspector or newspaper columnist.

The other thing anyone normal will have clocked is that we’ve entered the realms of pure gibberish, where pies can be grown and a bunch of witless catchphrases are a placeholder for effective ideas. There’s a problem when the only time you see people using your big catchphrase is when they’re making a joke and it’s fitted with sarcastic air quotes. John Major had this with “back to basics”, which was at least a simple phrase. Expect the clunkfest that is “anti-growth coalition” to go the same way.

Anyway: the anti-growth coalition. This is a shadowy group bent on scuppering our heroine. It includes, but is not limited to: TV pundits, Extinction Rebellion, markets, unions, possibly Jamie Oliver, all other political parties, thinktanks, people who voted remain, podcasters, Twitter users, people who “taxi from north London townhouses to the BBC studio”… the list goes on and on. Liz Truss appears to hate more elements of Britain than the hard left. Worryingly, this was the most popular bit of her speech in the hall.

It’s all very well for politicians to find elegant ways of defining themselves against things in the interests of showing voters who they are. But imagine standing on stage and barking out an actual list of your enemies. It’s a bit Ernst Röhm, isn’t it? And that’s before you get to the eye-catching inclusion of the descriptor “north London”. Does this phrase, interpreted as a dog whistle in the past, no longer mean what it has been seen to before – or are Truss’s speechwriters so devoid of historical and cultural hinterland that they don’t even know what they’ve picked up off the floor and put in her mouth?

In the meantime, you can tell how desperate the gambit is from the fact that Iain Duncan Smith decided it gave the Tories something to unite against. Great to hear advice from him on how to win over the British public. Were Holly and Phil not available?

Yet the anti-growth coalition is the government’s favourite new conspiracy theory, the mindblowing catch-all cabal which somehow explains it all. Redpilled prime minister Liz Truss is like that relative who no longer trusts what the government says about anything, and prefers to “do her own research”. The trouble is – and I’m sorry if this is one of the many things she doesn’t like to hear – TRUSS IS THE ACTUAL GOVERNMENT. Creating some mad conspiracy to explain your shortcomings really is the last refuge of the loon. On this form, Liz is very close to claiming that paedophiles are using BBC taxis to transport children to remoaner pound-shorters. Watch out for signs of radicalisation, then – we’ve officially entered the era of L-Anon.

[ingravinoveritas]

Honestly I really don't care if saged 3 will be bad. In the worst case it will have some cringy parts and it won't be successful and we won't get s4. So? I never thought we will get s3. What's important is that we will get M&D new content of them in the same place, and I don't think even bad writing will be able to ruin their chemistry. And also we get behind the scenes special, and that has a lot of potential in my opinion to give us M/D fun content. So as opposed to GOs2, I really don't care how well it will be.

But what is weird to me is that they announced it only a week before the release. Why not earlier? What about promotion?

Hi, Anons! I so appreciate you all writing in and sharing your diverse thoughts and opinions, and I love that we’re continuing this discussion about Staged 3.

The more I have been thinking about Staged 3, the more two things are becoming clear to me: 1) This is going to be very different to what came before, with the first two seasons; and 2) I am so incredibly, unutterably grateful that we get to see Michael and David together again. Anon #1, to what you said about the writing, I agree with you. I absolutely do not think any writing (or anything else, for that matter) could ruin the chemistry between Michael and David. They could be acting in a hemorrhoid commercial together and we would still see all that chemistry and flirting and loveliness.

So Michael and David are not at all who I am concerned about when it comes to this new season. I know--as I think we all do--that they are more than deserving of merit, and that everything involving them is going to be adoring looks and longing stares and joking/taking the piss in the most heartfelt way imaginable.

What I am more concerned about when it comes to the third season is the potentially awkward/boring scenes with everyone else, as well as the show becoming so self-referential/meta that it no longer feels fresh. I also am hoping the episodes will not be filled with as many (or more) guest stars than the second season, because those guest stars will take up screen time and ultimately give us less time with Michael and David.

And the fact that it was announced so close to air date is also a strange thing, as you pointed out, Anon #1. We haven’t (to my knowledge, at least) seen a single trailer, or any sort of promotional material other than the two photos that were released. Georgia and AL have posted about it on their socials (in perfectly-timed synchronicity, as it were), but Michael has not promoted the third season anywhere on his Twitter, nor do I expect he would have the time to with being busy rehearsing for Amadeus.

I do wonder if it has anything to do with the show being on Britbox this time around, as opposed to the BBC, which is where the first two seasons aired. Given the change in network, along with a very limited promotional period, I’m honestly not sure how many people are going to watch the third season, at least via legitimate channels. (Also, I realize it’s a UK-based show, but why on Earth release it on Thanksgiving in the U.S./a Thursday in general, as opposed to on a weekend? It just doesn’t seem to make much sense, at least from a marketing perspective...)

And I agree with you, Anon #3, that the show is an historical artifact. Did it make me laugh on multiple occasions? Absolutely. But I feel like that laughter was a form of pathos, of our collective consciousnesses needing some way to make sense of/survive those strange, overwhelming, (hopefully) once-in-a-lifetime circumstances. How and in what way Staged fits into the world as it is now is something I’m not sure of, especially when said circumstances have changed so much.

But...you know what? Michael Sheen. David Tennant. On our screens again, together in the flesh. (Plus the behind-the-scenes special, which hopefully has lots more outtakes and clips of those cute tangents between them.) It doesn’t get much better than that, and while Staged may not be the ideal vehicle for their chemistry, I will take it, damn it...

#anonymous #reply post #michael sheen #welsh seduction machine #david tennant #soft scottish hipster gigolo #staged #or 'Brokeback Mount Him' which is what I am referring to Staged as from here on out #i very much appreciate Simon for giving us more of Michael and David together in the first place #but i just feel that their chemistry could be better served in something else #honestly i just want to know how they are going to top David putting a saddle on Michael and riding him #just bros being bros #casually making innuendos about fucking each other #platonically of course #the eternal optimist in me is hoping for the best #so we'll see what happens #discourse