#also men playing instruments but I rarely see pictures of girls playing them so...

[brattyfics]

— until we meet again, preciosa

PAIRING || bishop losa x black!ofc, miguel galindo x black!ofc (mentioned)

SUMMARY || She’s not his, and she won’t ever be, so he leaves her with words whispered like a promise. “Until we meet again, preciosa.”

TAGS || angst, unresolved feelings, not a hea, mentions of toxic relationships, sex (referenced).

WORD COUNT || 1.6k

Shadowy clouds hang overhead, blocking out the warming glow of the Sun. Raindrops pelt the roof above, drumming a beat of their own before pooling down to the concrete paved streets below. Isis watches stray droplets gather on the tall windows for several moments before stepping out onto the covered balcony. It felt colder than usual inside the three-story, Spanish-style shophouse, but outside it’s the opposite-- balmy, earthy. The air is heavy with humidity, so she has to take deep breaths, but she doesn’t enjoy it any less. Invigoration comes with the rain, brings hope for new beginnings, renews faith for the hopeless.

Down below, people dart between vendors to continue their shopping as the rain lightens. Colorful rays spring from puddles up towards the sky. A pair of young siblings splash each other while their mother sells delicious smelling tamales wrapped in banana leaves. Another young woman peddles gold necklaces, praying candles, and other little knick-knacks to the tourists of Sonora. Everybody has to make a living, including Isis.

She spends her days stroking the strings of a guitar or the keys of her piano, helping patrons of the music shop in between. The ground floor of the shophouse boasts string instruments and an extensive collection of vinyl records. After hours, she makes money hosting private piano lessons. She performs at the Discoteca down the street on weekends, fueling her passion for music almost 24/7 except when Preciosa is closed for ‘maintenance’.

Overstock merchandise and whatever else the Mayans’ Motorcycle Clubs needs to store clutters the second floor. Don’t ask, don’t tell is her motto, so whenever they come to the shop, she simply flips the sign to closed. There’s no point in fighting it. Besides, El Presidente always makes it a bearable, if not pleasant, experience. Bishop had called ahead to warn her that he was bringing Hank, Angel, and the new prospect, Angel’s baby brother, along. She could hear them bumping around, a noisy reminder that her shop only thrived because of the illegal deals happening in the back.

“Why don’t you put all that time and energy into something that’ll get you somewhere?” Being a musician wasn’t an acceptable career in her mother’s eyes, so the woman took every chance she could to crush her daughter’s dreams. “Nobody wants to hear all that noise!” Staring out into the street, she can’t help but wonder where she would’ve ended up if her mother had been supportive. Maybe she could have been a star rising to the top of Billboard charts or someone who worked behind the scenes, writing songs, singing demos. She had the skill set. Yes, her path would have been much different.

Isis had stood front and center, crooning out an old school blues song at a hole-in-the-wall spot when Miguel Galindo first laid eyes on her. It was a chance meeting, one that felt like fate at the time because dive bars weren’t his scene. The owner was a business associate who decided to try his hand at being a restaurateur; Miguel had been kind enough to come out and support. When he caught sight of her shapely frame in a slinky, satin number, he insisted on being introduced.

Miguel stood out in a crowd, wearing a tailored button-down, dark dress pants, and an expensive pair of Italian leather shoes. His salt and pepper beard groomed to perfection, hair gelled so that no strand was out of place. The moment she’d looked into his eyes, she was caught in his web. His masculine scent drew her in like honey to a bee. His charisma held her attention. Miguel sweet-talked her all night, insisting Isis sit next to him, eat h’orderves, and drink overpriced champagne. She obliged. Who could say no to that face? He used their close proximity to reel her in like a fish on a hook, leaning down to whisper in her ear. You’re beautiful. He told her. You have such a smooth, seductive tone. You should be performing for bigger crowds. Have you ever thought about branching out? He told her everything her mother never had, so she was a lamb to the slaughter.

For months, Miguel had treated her like his very own LifeSize doll to play with. He took her on shopping sprees, kept her draped in silk and lace. Isis didn’t think of herself as materialistic, but she couldn’t deny being showered in gifts felt splendid. He was always so tender, handling her delicately as his newest prized possession. As time went on, she became more like an ornament. Something for him to marvel at when he felt like it and then hide away the rest of the time. But nothing was worse than him leaving her to harden after he was finished molding her like clay. She asked for more—time, commitment, only for him to do the opposite.

Thus, Preciosa was born. A way for him to placate her and later make it easier for the M.C. to make him money.

“Just a few more minutes, and we’ll be out your way.” Isis jumped at the sound, turning away from the street to see Bishop. She hadn’t heard him come outside; didn’t expect him to venture up into her personal space.

Isis’ smile rarely reached her eyes, Bishop noticed. He stepped forward, holding a velvet box that felt heavier than it was. Her fingertips tickled him as he passed it over. Diamonds surrounded in white gold gleamed as the clouds cleared away for the Sun. Even Bishop could admit the set was gorgeous, but she didn’t look impressed. He hated being Galindo’s delivery boy, watching the way her face fell when the gifts she received became increasingly impersonal with each week. Not long ago, he’d also been tasked with passing along handwritten love notes or antique music sheets that she caressed like she would a lover’s skin.

“Thank you.”

She couldn’t hide her disappointment from him. Not for lack of trying-- Miguel always reminded her, appearances were everything. Smile. Don’t make me look bad. But Bishop watched her closely, knew her tells. Despite every nerve in his brain urging him to walk away, he steps forward to stand next to her. His calloused hands rest on the balcony’s edge next to her delicate pair, brown in varying tones of sepia and mahogany contrasting against the white paint.

Bishop feels the heat of her eyes on his frame, but he doesn’t let himself respond. Sharing this moment, a quick breath of fresh air will have to be enough. But she’s all around him, smelling of florals and sweet spices. He can’t think. He fumbles with his pockets in search of a cigarette. “You mind?” She shakes her head but is otherwise silent. Still watching him as he smokes; the way he takes long, steady pulls, cradling the stick between his full lips and then between his strong, veined fingers. She would bet her last dollar that he was an expert at other things involving his fingers and mouth.

When his hand drops again, she links her pinky with his, hesitant but exploratory.

Bishop looks at her, really looks at her like he sees her. It’s nice to be seen, especially when you’re the princess locked up far, far away from everyone you’ve ever known. She’s a black girl from Texas living in Sonora for goodness’ sake. This is no life, and she knows it. Several moments pass where neither can look away, both weighing their desires with the potential consequences.

With a deep breath in, she musters up the courage to ask Bishop what she’s been wanting to for months.

“Stay?”

Her heart feels like it might just explode while she waits for a response.

Bishop drops his head to his chest, cursing under his breath. “Fuck.” If Miguel ever found out… But he already knew what his answer would be. He’d been waiting for the invitation. The heated looks they exchanged, the way her fingers lingered on his when he passed her something. That damned pout she wore when Miguel forgot to send a flower arrangement-- she had no idea Bishop had been the one buying the flowers for some time now. No matter what mood she was in, fresh flowers always brightened her day. He loved watching that lonely look transform into something more lively, curious as she marveled over his choice for the week. He went for variety, slowly learning what she loved and what she just liked; her favorite color, favorite scent.

The subtle tension between them, he wasn’t even certain she noticed. The cash and the bling could’ve blinded her to all other men. But it didn’t.

When the Sun had gone down several hours later, and the guys were gone, Bishop redressed. Belt buckling with a clink, leather sliding over his shoulders easily. He let himself take one last look at her wrapped up in a poofy comforter set. The mustard-yellow velvet complimented her skin in the best way, bringing out a gold undertone. Her eyes seem to have brightened as well. He couldn’t resist leaning over to stroke her sweaty skin. Dark coils stuck to her beautiful face, frizzy in some parts from when she rode him, sweat escaping from her pores, flat in the others from when he laid her on her back and hooked her legs over her shoulders.

He wants to stay, to prop himself up against the intricately carved wood headboard and hold her in his lap while they whisper sweet nothing to each other, but he can’t.

She’s not his, and she won’t ever be, so he leaves her with words whispered like a promise. “Until we meet again, preciosa.”

NOTES || This fic and the collage above was inspired by @isisafrofairy’s gorgeous moodboard! Also, the wonderful “Until we meet again, preciosa” line is hers as well. This is my thank you for the moodboard you made for me. I really leaned on the pictures you used for inspiration and I think I managed to capture/include each element. It was so hard not to ruin the surprise, but I was able to shut tf up for once 😂 I’m really proud of how this turned out, and hopefully you enjoy it just as much! Also, I realize the moodboard had nothing to do with Miguel but he lives in my head rent-free apparently 🥴

GENERAL TAGLIST || @woahitslucyylu @briannab1234 @sheeshgivemeabreak @breakingnewsin-no-oneasked @angelreyesgirl @blessedboo @glimmerglittergirl @apantherinmypastlife @brownsugarcoffy @marvelmaree @starrynite7114 @scuzmunkie @thewarriorprincessxo @sadeyesgf @pearlkitten33 @imanerdychubbyqueen @literaturefeen @ourlittlesecretsoveragain @everyhowlmarksthedead @yourwonkywriter @trulysuccubus @sparklemichele @luckyharley1903 @thesandbeneathmytoes​ @amorestevens​

MAYANS M.C. TAGLIST || @cant-decide-at-this-moment

#mayans mc #bishop losa x oc #miguel galindo x oc #bishop losa x ofc #bishop losa x black!ofc

[perfectlymarilynmonroe]

Hey babe, I had a q about your last photo caption. The bit about Marilyn refusing to be a kept woman is somewhat misleading to me- didn't she live with Johnny Hyde for a time, and didn't his influence grant her favorable notice during casting for films like The Asphalt Jungle? Maybe I'm not remembering correctly, but I don't think their relationship was precisely sexual even if he clearly doted on her for a time. Obvi she got further on her own merit, but I do think that's an oft unexplored moment in her life that was definitely instrumental because of her choice to link up with him. Just wondering about your thoughts on this! Love the blog <3

Hi! Thank you for your sweet comments about my blog :) Sorry for the delay in response, but I wanted to give a thorough response to this. I’ve actually received a couple of comments on Instagram lately regarding this, and I don’t mind addressing this confusion.

*Disclaimer to everyone reading: This is based on the research I have done and is to address a number of issues. This isn’t to glorify Marilyn or deny any flaws or imperfections, but to state the facts. I’m publicly sharing this so I can later refer back to it. It’s a longer response to answer any follow-up questions I may get but, of course, you can still ask any you may have. ♡♡

--

It can be deceiving, but I think the bigger concern is what she took for what she got, rather than vise versa. If she was looking to be a gold-digging, role-stealing actress, she would have married Hyde the minute he asked her to. She would have inherited his millions and could have bought her way through Hollywood. For a young woman with hardly anything, she chose herself and said no. 

Just before she met him, she was getting help from John Carroll and Lucille Ryman, so when she said, Johnny was the first to believe in her, that isn’t entirely true. Due to her lack of a father-figure as a child I think that when she saw the belief in her from a man like Johnny, at a reputable agency, who was willing to do anything for her, she latched on to it.

Hyde’s co-workers at William Morris later reported being furious with him because he slowly began to abandon his other clients and focused only on helping her. In the case of The Asphalt Jungle, since you asked, it was actually the help of both Hyde and Lucille Ryman that she was given an audition. However, director John Huston later said she didn’t get the “role because of Hyde...she got it because she was damn good.”

In my personal opinion, based on the facts, whether did not sleep with Johnny - some historians even refuse to believe they were ever sexually involved - it was never for roles, auditions, etc. As I mentioned, if it were, she would have married him, taken his money, and used that to her advantage. She actually stopped seeing him - both  personally and professionally - by Fall 1949 because she was so sick and tired of being called, “Mrs. Johnny Hyde” by him and hearing from colleges that he was calling her his wife. 

When it came to being a “kept” woman, she was referring to the large number of “casting directors” or studio execs, etc, who faked an upcoming film to lure her into their office and attempt to seduce her, or held their hand on her thigh while she auditioned, almost forced her, etc... and each time she managed to walk out. 

She wrote an article entitled, “The Wolves I’ve Know” that was published in a number of places like Motion Picture in 1953, The New York Daily News, and more. When she met with Ben Hecht for her autobiography interviews, she also spoke of them and it was published in a London newspaper in August 1954, and in Australian magazines in 1955.

He did leave his family and move into a bigger place and invited her to live there, but she never officially moved in. She did spend quite a bit of her time there, but by early Spring she was living on her own and was very low on rent. This is why she posed nude on red velvet in May 1949. She admitted to thinking of asking men she knew for money to help her, but felt she wouldn’t have been able to forgive herself, and it made her sick to even think of it.

For everyone reading this, remember, she was twenty-three. She was still a very young girl and had grown up with little guidance in her life. She was abused, and was in and out of so many school and homes, she was never taught how to do things. She figured it out on her own, and of course, like anyone in that situation, maybe didn’t always make the best decisions or have the best thoughts.

--

I know this answer was very long, but I felt I needed to address a number of points because things are rarely black and white - especially for Marilyn Monroe, who is the subject of much scrutiny, then and now - and there are many things to consider in regards to a sensitive subject like this! 

I hope I’m not missing anything, but I hope it answers your question! xo

--

Below is a list of various quotes said by Marilyn that I hope everyone will find helpful :)

From “The Wolves I’ve Known” published in The New York Times:

The first real wolf I encountered should have been ashamed of himself because he was trying to take advantage of a mere kid. That’s all I was and I wasn’t suspicious of him at all when he stopped his car at a corner and started to talk to me.

He looked at me all over and then came up with that famous line: “You ought to be in pictures.” That was the first time I’d ever heard it, so it didn’t sound corny to me.

He told me he had an office at the Goldwyn studio and said why didn’t I come and see him and he would get me a screen test. It sounded pretty good to me because I was crazy to get into the movies.

I was modeling at that time and I asked the people who ran the agency where I got my jobs what they thought of his offer. The manager called the studio but never was able to get in touch with my would-be benefactor. However, the wolf called the agency and I made an appointment to go to his office on Saturday afternoon.

I didn’t know then that the producers and other movie officials don’t make Saturday afternoon appointments. I found that out later. I also found out that he didn’t really have any connection with the Goldwyn studio but had borrowed a friend’s office.

He was fat and jovial and, of course, drove a Cadillac. He gave me a script to read and told me how to pose while reading it. All the poses had to be reclining, although the words I was reading didn’t seem to call for that position.

--

Of course, there are other ways a girl could survive until another studio came along. A starlet could take on a lover, usually a well-heeled married man who could pay her bills, or she could become the mistress to an old man and through his connections help advance her career. Believe me, there were and still are many starstruck girls that do get by that way. But for myself, respect is one of life’s greatest treasures. I mean, what does it all add up to if you don’t have that? If there [is] only one thing in my life I [am] proud of, it’s that I’ve never been a kept woman.  

And believe me, it wasn’t because there weren’t opportunities to become one. I think I had as many problems as the next starlet keeping the Hollywood wolves from my door. These wolves just could not understand me. They would tell me, “But Marilyn, you’re not playing the game the way you should. Be smart. You’ll never get anywhere in this business acting the way you do.” My answer to them would be, “The only acting I’ll do is for the motion picture camera.” I was determined, no one was going to use me or my body—even if he could help my career. I’ve never gone out with a man I didn’t want to. No one, not even the studio, could force me to date someone.

You can’t sleep your way into being a star. It takes much, much more. But it helps. A lot of actresses got their first chance that way. Most of the men are such horrors, they deserve all they can get out of them!

The one thing I hate more than anything else is being used. I’ve always worked hard for the sake of someday becoming a talented actress. I knew I would make it someday if I only kept at it and worked hard without lowering my principles and pride in myself.

#ask #Johnny Hyde

[arsnovacadenza]

Day 5-Stilts

Characters: Napoleon, Jean, Isaac, and Yukari (MC)

Pairings    : Jean x Napoleon, Isaac x MC

Ao3 Link  : Here

All was quiet, save for the soft pitter-patter of rain on the attic window. If it wasn't for his superior hearing, Jean might've missed the heavy sigh that escaped his companion's lips.

Napoleon was leaning on the sill with his cheek propped by the back of his hand. He looked neither sleepy nor deep in thought, gazing absent-mindedly towards the city down below.

They had been sitting this way for half an hour. Jean recalled how the emperor gently took his hand and urged him to come with him after sparring.

"I haven't spent enough time with you," Napoleon spoke sternly. "Can I borrow you for today?"

Jean was correct to let Napoleon lead him up the stairs, thinking that it was loneliness he saw in his eyes. This strange relationship between them, toeing the lines between amour and camaraderie, allowed Jean to see Napoleon's colors which he seldom revealed to anyone.

That 'anyone' apparently included Isaac, the subject of today's woes.

Jean was by no means unobservant. His newfound courage to come downstairs more often in daylight (which Sebastian applauded) meant he could observe the other mansions' residents more closely. Though he still had to dodge the troublemakers Arthur and Dazai whenever possible.

But that also meant he was able to discover new facts about his fellow residents, both directly or from other sources, namely Sebastian. Sometimes, when he entered the kitchen to ask for Rouge (at Napoleon's urging), he'd get roped into the butler's early morning gossip with the mysterious young woman whom he'd learned came from the future through that despicable count's door.

The girl, Yukari, was Isaac's paramour.

Jean supposed her arrival was instrumental in making Napoleon seek his company. What little time Isaac had when not teaching the children, he'd spend more of it with his lover, and less with Napoleon.

It must be boring being a reincarnated emperor, seeing as Napoleon latched onto Jean and his weapons shop. He even made Jean a new tutor in his makeshift school where he, Isaac, and Yukari, taught.

(Jean himself thought it was sweet seeing Napoleon interact with children).

Recently, he'd been sensing something amiss between the two original teachers. Isaac was more awkward with him than usual (and that was saying something), while Yukari's expression changed to a troubled one at any mention of Napoleon. But the woman always skilfully dodged Jean's questions when he asked if his partner had done something towards her.

( Not a very good liar, Jean concluded.)

Everything fell in place when one of the younger children casually asked if "Napoleone" was fighting with Isaac since they were now rarely seen together. " I don't know about that" was his answer, the same one he used when Sebastian suddenly spilled all his speculations on the physicist and former emperor's state of affairs and egged Jean for details.

"They're almost brothers, the two of them." Sebastian sighed. "To think they'd drift apart like this was unthinkable."

It's because of the girl Jean was tempted to say. But he decided to keep his peace instead. Napoleon would come to him in due time. That led Jean to where he was now, spending the gloomy rainy afternoon with a similarly gloomy man.

The taciturn soldier came to attention when the man before him sucked in a deep breath.

"Relax, Jean. I wasn't going to whip you." Napoleon snickered. It sounded hollow.

"Forgive me," Jean apologized for nothing in particular. Time seemed to halt at that very moment, emerald eyes locking with his.

"Isaac is afraid of getting hurt," Napoleon began. "So much so that Yukari even refrains from being frank with him, even when she needs to be. When they need to be with one another."

The eyepatched soldier gazed at him intently, waiting for him to finish.

"Handling people like Isaac, well, it requires you to be cautious both ways," He combed his bangs back with his hand. "If he wants to be comfortable with you, you will have to assure him that you don't feel burdened with his presence, that having him come to you is gratifying enough."

Napoleon paused, seemingly in conflict over what he was about to deliver next.

"In hindsight, maybe this was an error on my part." he sighed, for what was the umpteenth time this afternoon. "I told him, once..."

Jean closed his eye and nodded.

"'At this point, there is nothing that you can say or do to hurt me'" Napoleon repeated his promise he gave Isaac long ago." And trust me that no circumstance will ever cause us to part."

Jean's eye flew open. Yet he remained silent. His eyed one of Napoleon's hands, clenching and unclenching the fabric of his cape. Then, with the same trembling hand, the emperor reached out to graze his cheek. He leaned into the touch, thinking that it might offer Napoleon some respite.

It was true. The softness of Jean's skin was soothing. Warm despite the frigid air outside.

After some time, Napoleon withdrew and looked at Jean expectantly, allowing him to speak.

"But you hurt him instead," Jean stated, matter-of-factly. "And he is now avoiding you."

"Sure did," Napoleon mumbled, gazing out into the drenched city below. "Too many times over the course of their relationship, of course."

"You're worried."

"Well, why shouldn't I?" he barked. "I can't say this out loud. Won't say this out loud. Not even to my real brothers. I dote on him the same way I did them. I was stern, which I'm not with Isaac. I took responsibility for them as their guardian. Still, I need to respect my distance and believe that they'll make the best decisions for themselves even without my input."

"I've heard of historians and even courtiers of my time accusing me of steering my family to further my goals. Well," Napoleon paused to catch his breath. "They can say whatever they wish to say, but bold of them to assume that I waste my nights thinking about what my brothers do or don't do to keep their marriage afloat."

Jean took Napoleon's tirade in a sedated manner, mollifying the emperor's burst of anger to some extent.

Shame soon took over Napoleon's conscience as the lone dark eye regarded him calmly.

"In the end, I have to admit," Napoleon exhaled. "I do care too much about him. And Yukari too."

"I noticed little things that didn't sit well with me about their relationship. In good faith, I tried relaying my thoughts to Isaac, but he didn't take it well." He admitted. "I was a fool. It was a matter of Isaac's pride as a man. Who wouldn't feel wounded if an outsider came up to him and pointed out the faults in his intimate relationship with a woman?"

"I failed to think of him as a man," his lament continued. "I saw him as a brother and failed to acknowledge his worth as his own, mature man with responsibilities." Napoleon finished, burying his face into the crook of his arm.

Outside, the rain was ceasing. Jean could discern the arc of a rainbow in the far-off distance.

Gingerly, he covered Napoleon's hand with his own. He has long removed his gloves, eliminating the barrier between flesh.

"That wasn't a brother you were describing," Jean whispered. "You spoke of him as a son."

Once, they too had walked on eggshells with this particular subject.

Sebastian spoke to Jean once —in meticulous detail —about the King of Rome and Napoleon's distraught at being torn apart from his son. Jean pretended not to know about it afterward, only for Napoleon to bring up the topic himself one day when they were out in the fields letting their horses graze.

He allowed —nay, invited Jean to indulge in his nostalgia of lost family and friends, even his previous loves.

(Jean felt a tinge of irritation whenever Napoleon mentioned Josephine, though he supposed there was no point envying a woman long dead and buried.)

Jean understood Isaac by a fraction. The man saw relationships as walking on stilts, carefully balancing yourself lest you tip and crash.

And bring the other person down with you.

Jean had numerous other parables to illustrate his connections, but he'd rather not dwell upon them now. Not when the man who helped complicated them were here to seek comfort

(In him).

Napoleon's snicker brought Jean out of his reverie.

"I suppose I do play the role sometimes," he contemplated Jean bemusedly. "That would make you his mother, then."

"But I'm not —" Jean flushed upon realizing what he meant. " Napoleon Bonaparte. " He mock-threatened.

Napoleon laughed, a sound Jean had been yearning to hear.

"But I do like to picture us with children," Napoleon leaned back. "I bet they'd be just as beautiful as you."

Jean's blush grew redder at the moment, provoking the other man to tease him further.

"Knowing you, I hope you don't scare them too much," Napoleon cooed. "You frown too much. It breaks my heart to see that delicate face contort into a scowl."

"Stop it already," Jean was burning scarlet right up to his ears. "You're embarrassing me."

"But I know you'd spoil those tykes to no end," the Nightmare of Europe continued. "I wonder what they'd grow up to be, under our nurture."

Jean furiously wiped his face. "That's impossible. You know that."

"True," Napoleon smiled wistfully. "But what an entertaining thought."

The exquisite soldier peeked warily at Napoleon behind his sleeve.

"What?" the smirking man chuckled. "Was that a bit too sappy?"

Jean pouted at him impishly. "For an allegedly terrifying conqueror such as you? Definitely."

"But now that I've known you, nothing about you is ever surprising anymore, Napoleon." Jean lied. He knew there were still many layers of Napoleon that he had yet to uncover.

In that familiar attic, the two men beamed at each other in comfortable stillness, the problem of Isaac and Yukari temporarily forgotten.

They could hear Jupiter's cry in the open, a sure sign that the rain had ended.

Made for @kissmetwicekissmedeadly‘s Napoleon Birthday Prompt 2020. The prompt was “was that too sappy for you?”.

@kisara-16​, @thedollarstoresatan​ @delicateikemenmemes​, @ikesensrandomninjagirl​, @ashavazesa​, @hokkaido-fox​, @nuclearwinterexe​, @lulu-the-hedgehog​, @longingkisses​, @weird-profiterole​, @napoleonstan​, @scummy-writes​, @an-otome-cally-correct​, @nafeary​, @orangenji​

#ikemen vampire #ikevam napoleon bonaparte #ikevam jeanne d'arc #ikevam fic #jeanpoleon #riri tries ikevam

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #430

“when the girl in the corner is everyone’s woman, she could kill you with a wink of her eye”

What kind of dog do you find most ugly? What a mean question. ;-; I don't think they're ugly, but I probably find chihuahuas to be the least visually appealing. Do you like wood floors or carpet better? Wood. Do you think the USA bullies other countries? Quite frankly, yes. Are you currently in love right now? No. Favorite fast food joint? Sonic. What would you do if your ex contacted you? THE ex, have a panic attack. Cry. Be wordlessly ecstatic. Be scared and confused. Do you still have feelings for your ex? Two, yes, but one is unrealistic considering I have no idea who he is anymore. It's been way too long for me to possibly, accurately like him. Ever tasted a flavored condom? No. Do you know CPR? No. How much do you care about your best friend? I'd die for her. Do you watch Dr. Phil? No. What age would you like to have a child? I don't want kids ever. Are your parents wealthy? Mom, absolutely not. Dad seems to be financially stable, but not wealthy or anything. Pick one state you’d love to live in? Alaska. How many pets do you want? And of what? Man, I want a LOT. I know I want more ball python morphs, a plains hognose, a woma python, numerous tarantulas, a fat-tailed gecko, a boa, orchid mantises, a sphynx, a tegu would be super cool... I'd love to have like an empire of pets one day, aha, but only so long as I could maintain them all and adequately provide for them. Have you ever asked someone out? Yes. When do you want to get married? I mean, I don't have a set age in mind. I want to get married when I'm ready. Can you play a musical instrument? I played the flute for yeeeaaaars in middle and high school, but I remember almost nothing by now. What if you stopped orgasming for the rest of your life? Idc, honestly. Does money make you happy? Money probably makes me happier than it should, but I'm not like madly in love with it or anything. Happens when you're poor your whole life. Your favorite breakfast food? Ugh, cinnamon rolls are a godsend. When was the last time you went to a funeral? I actually don't think I've ever been to one... only wakes. I really, really wish I could have gone to Jason's mom's, though... There was just no fucking way that I was going to risk upsetting Jason on THAT day of all days by popping up. Have you ever stolen someone’s boyfriend/girlfriend? Well, we never actually dated, but you could say that... Tell me the date of your first kiss. I don't know the exact date, but it was March 2012. Are your legs long or short? Normal, I guess? How many phobias do you have? Man, a lot. Is there a bookshelf in your room? No. Do you use the Facebook chat often? Barely at all. I only really use it to chat with Girt on the rare occasion we talk. Who got you hooked on the addiction you're addicted to (If you have one)? I discovered Mark on my own; I needed help in an Amnesia: The Dark Descent custom story, so I found his playthrough and watched it. Got a few laughs, subscribed. It was Jason who introduced me to Amnesia, though, so I can indirectly thank him, I guess? haha Are you currently worried about your parents finding out about something? No. Have you ever lived with a friend? Yeah, for a couple months. Have you ever only liked someone because you found out they liked you? No. Ever been on a real diet, or did you just stop eating? I've tried multiple diets. Have you ever known a white supremacist? I know multiple. Welcome to the South. Do you like the smell of a barbecue? Yesss. It's funny because I hate the food itself. Have you ever gone out in public in your pajamas? Yeah. It's not rare, if I'm being honest. How many times have you been to the ER? Too many times because of being suicidal. How many people are you currently texting? None. Anything exciting coming up? My nephew's birthday is in a few days! Would you rather get money or gift cards for your birthday? Money, so I can use it for anything. Do you have Instagram? I have three, ha ha. One for my basic photography, another for my morbid photos, and I went through a very short phase of having an Instagram for my pets. It still exists, but I don't really use it. Have you ever spoken to a detective before? No. Do you believe in ghosts? Yes. Do ladders scare you? Yes. Hot dogs or hamburgers? Cheeseburgers may possibly be my favorite food. Do you have any tattoos on your arms? I do. Have you ever owned or known someone who owned a black cat? I've owned plenty of black cats. What album is the last song you listened to from? It's from Disguise. What’s the last funny movie you watched? Probably Elf. Can you remember your parents’ birthdays? Mom's, yes. I only remember the month of my dad's. If you had to get a tattoo tomorrow, what would you pick? I think I want to get my tribute to Teddy next. How do you feel about band tattoos? Hey, go for it. I see nothing wrong with it. What piercing do you like most on the opposite sex? Probably snakebites. Lip piercings in general are hot lmao. Are you any good at applying make up? Noooo, my hands are so shaky. How old were the last 3 people you kissed? Sara's 23; idr the exact ages of Girt and Tyler. I think Tyler was a year younger than me, and Girt is at the bare minimum three years older than me. If you found out you got someone pregnant, what would you do? Well, I'm a cisgender female, so... Do you ever wonder what your ex is up to? Very frequently. Do you like your cell phone? I mean it's fine, but I'd like a new one. Is rap your favorite genre of music? No, it's actually my least favorite. Have you ever thrown up on anybody? Oh god, no. Do people think you’re happy? I think it's safe to say most people who know me know I'm clinically depressed. Or you know... maybe not. Quite a few people have been surprised to learn that about me because I can put on a good facade. What band would you stand in line for 24 hours to see? None, honestly. That's way too long. What was your worst childhood experience? I guess my dad's alcoholism. As a child, I thought it was a normal thing, but I do wonder if my fear of men has anything to do with how volatile drinking had a 50/50 chance of making him. He never hurt anyone, but he was just so mad and hateful towards the world sometimes. You can trade another person’s emotions for your own. Whose do you take? I have no idea. What was/is going to be your first waltz at your wedding? That'll depend on my partner and what song means the most to us/fits us best. "When It's Love" by Van Halen has been a consideration for forever, though. When it’s not summer, what do you miss most about it? I hate summer. I miss nothing about it. Do you consider yourself patriotic? No. What is the one thing that you need to do to die happy? Feel like I accomplished something notable. Do you consider yourself mainstream? No. What’s the riskiest thing you’ve ever done? Overdosing on cold medicine. What is life’s greatest mystery? Probably from whence we came. Humanity has fished for a definite answer forever. What was your favourite make-believe game as a kid? Pretending I was a meerkat hiding in a "burrow" that was a blanket fort, ha ha. Do you try your best at everything? Honestly, no. Who is your shoulder to cry on? My mom, without fail. What’s your standard excuse for not doing something? I dunno... it depends on the topic. Name the most beautiful person you know. As far as physical appearance goes, my friend Alon. Have you ever been to jail? No. What is one moment you wish you could have taken a picture of? Sara's face when I surprised her at her house for her birthday. It was absolutely fucking priceless. What place holds the most memories for you? Jason's house. Who was your first date? My puppy dog-love middle school bf Aaron. We went with a group of friends to a skating rink. My first one-on-one date was Jason. What’s the best trip you’ve ever been on? The zoo in 5th grade. It's the one and only time I've seen meerkats. For some weird reason, our zoo moved the meerkats not long after that visit. I THINK they said the environment just wasn't suitable for them, which I never really got... I think they mentioned the cold, but like, you have heating for them, and also, have you ever experienced a desert night? You consider all the other areas that have meerkats in their zoos and it's like... why, man. Bring my meerkats back. ;_; What do you think the earth will look like in 1,000 years? Oh dear God, I do NOT want to visualize that. My gut tells me it'll be a wasteland, probably without humans or most forms of life we have now. We have to get our shit straight, so very badly. I could rant for hours about how horribly and ungratefully we abuse our planet. Who makes you happy to be around? Sara! I feel like I can be my 100% authentic self, and we just vibe really well together. Like every time I've been there and she here, our friendship felt so natural and chill. I really, really need to save up for another trip up there. What secret have you tried to hide but it got out anyway? I kept the Joel situation to myself from pretty much everyone, but it eventually came out in front of Mom and Jason. It was actually the night of the breakup; I don't remember how it was relevant at all to mention, but I did in some form. Mom wisely never asked about it, and Jason obviously didn't. I was a stupid 12-year-old anyway, it's whatever now. Who/what is your everything? I will never. Ever. In five billion millennia. Let anyone be that again. How many people have you turned down when they asked you out? Ummm three? I think that's it. How many exes do you have? If I include everyone who ever had a title of "boyfriend/girlfriend," I have six. Who was your worst relationship with? Tyler. It was just pointless and the result of nothing but loneliness. What’s your ‘label’? (ex. punk, prep) I really, really don't care. Do you swear? How much? Like a sailor. I swore some beforehand, but I got really bad when Jason and I started dating. He swore a lot, and his mother did even more. I was around them as much as possible, so it rubbed off on me. What is the one thing that would make everything in your life fall apart? Losing my family, like being disowned or something like that. Especially when it comes to Mom. I rely on her so heavily, as much as I hate that. :/ What takes your breath away? Nature is very capable of that. Something like seeing big waterfalls in the mountains or something would marvel me. Are you patient? No, honestly. Are you a good dancer? No. Even when I took dance, I don't think I was great; however, I do think I was pretty skilled at clogging. Who would you call first in a life-threatening situation (not 911)? My mom. Who do you miss? Jason and his family, Megan, Alex, Hannia, Emily, Journee... a lot of people. Do you like snakes? I adore snakes.

#survey #surveys #random questions #lyrics: ''ballroom blitz'' by 3teeth

[joachimnapoleon]

The Flutist

This latest addition to my and @histoireettralala‘s ever-growing Trifecta AU was partially inspired by our love of the fact that Michel Ney played the flute, and partially by a scenario we randomly came up with one day regarding baby Louise Murat being fascinated with Ney’s red hair. 

... Also, partially by my constant need for Marshalate fluff these days. 

Enjoy! :)

***

[Age: 1]

Michel Ney can't remember the last time he's been stared down this hard by a baby. But he is prepared to give as good as he gets; blue eyes lock on to blue eyes. The contest commences.

He hasn't spent much time around this one-year-old who bears such a striking resemblance to her father. In addition to sharing his eyes (both in color and mischief), little Louise Murat has also inherited Joachim's dark, curly hair, rounded chin, and thickset lips.

His attention span, too, apparently, Ney thinks, as the baby quickly grows bored with the stare-down; the wide blue eyes shift upwards. Settling on Ney's hair, they widen yet further.

Murat, holding the squirming child, grins at Ney.

"You're the first redhead she's ever seen."

Ney can't help but smile.

A plump little arm stretches towards him. A stream of incomprehensible baby gibberish babbles forth.

"I think she wants to touch your hair," Murat interprets without missing a beat. "Is that okay?"

Ney chuckles. "Sure, why not."

Murat gently lowers baby Louise, guiding her wobbly steps--she has only recently started walking--across the narrow gap on the sofa between the two men. A moment later she latches onto Ney's shoulder, mouth agape in wonder as she continues studying the red hair intently.

"Bababababa," Louise says, staring Ney in the face.

"My, aren't you a talkative one," Ney replies. "Just like your Papa." He gives her a wink.

"She is indeed," Murat says proudly.

A tiny hand reaches towards Ney's hair.

"Gently, sweetheart," says Murat.

"It's okay," Ney reassures him.

Her face full of wonder, baby Louise pets and pats the strange red hair, narrating the exploration with a series of random coos and gurgles. Murat is smiling in delight; he pulls out his cellphone to take a picture--no, a video! Caroline and Aglaé will both love this!

Ney is beaming too--until Louise suddenly grabs a fistful of his hair and gives it a much sharper yank than he would expect from a one-year-old.

"AHHH-D-D-D-D-D" Ney grits his teeth, bending down slightly towards the baby to alleviate the pulling. He sees Louise opening her mouth wide and--Wait, is she trying to--

Yes. Louise is trying to eat his hair.

"JOAC--"

But Murat has already dropped the phone and is hastily reaching over to gently extract Louise's hand from Ney's hair, scooping the baby up into his arms. The little girl looks, for a moment, as if she is about to cry--she flails towards Ney, whining--but Murat is an expert at this sort of thing, and has her distracted and laughing again in no time.

Twenty minutes later, Murat has to take a phone call.

"Go on," Ney says. "I can keep an eye on her."

"Thanks."

By the time he returns, the reconciliation is complete: Louise is sound asleep, snuggling against (and drooling on) Ney's shoulder. She hadn't even tried to eat his hair again.

Murat reaches out tentatively. "Here, I can--"

--Ney shoots him an indignant look, unconsciously pulling the slumbering baby away from her father.

"Um. Okay then," Murat says, chuckling as he runs a hand through his hair. "Just, you know, make sure to give her back to me eventually."

"Do I have to?"

"Yeah. I've gotten pretty attached to her."

That makes two of us. He and Aglaé have four sons, but no daughters. He'd always hoped a girl would come along for them eventually, but it didn't seem to be in the cards. Now all of a sudden, tiny Louise Murat, with her wild curls and curious blue eyes and grabby little hands, has stolen his heart.

Either Ney's face is betraying his thoughts far more than he means for it to, or Murat is a mind-reader.

"Tell you what," Murat says with a knowing smile. "How 'bout if we share?"

"Deal."

***

[Age: 6]

Ney has been invited to a tea party.

Although he isn't entirely sure whether "invited" is the right word.

Actual invitations can be declined. But Louise has no sooner "invited" Ney to the tea party than she takes him by the wrist and begins dragging him up the stairs. He looks down at BunBun, being likewise dragged along by Louise's other hand. The giant, floppy stuffed rabbit has been Louise's favorite toy since Murat brought him home from a recent trip to an amusement park with Ney and Lannes. Apparently BunBun has been "invited" to the tea party too.

"Is there going to be room for both me and BunBun?" Ney asks.

"Yes," Louise says. "It's a big table. And you're my special guest!"

"I thought BunBun was your special guest?"

"BunBun lives here," Louise says dismissively. "You're my special, SPECIAL guest."

"Well then," Ney says, "I consider myself honored."

They finally reach the top of the stairs and Louise opens the door to Letitia's room, where all the tea parties are hosted.

Already seated at the table are Letitia, Mr. Bear, and Murat, the latter scrunched precariously into a pink plastic chair that is clearly much too small for him.

"Greetings!" Murat says with a broad grin. "I take it Louise invited you?"

"Indeed," Ney confirms with a nod. "I'm a special, special guest."

***

[Age: 10]

Ney's fingers flutter expertly over the keys of his flute; the cheerful notes of Bach's Partita in A Minor peal through the air. It is a difficult piece, but also a long-time favorite, and after playing it for so many years, he has little need to reference the sheet music in front of him anymore.

He had fallen in love with the instrument at twelve years old. The only boy in his school band to choose the flute, Ney had endured some teasing from his peers for picking what they considered a "girl's instrument," but it had never fazed him. In his eyes, it was their loss for not being able to appreciate the flute's beauty and versatility.

By high school he was the best flutist in his class, and his talents ended up earning him a college scholarship. In college, they helped him charm Aglaé, who played the clarinet in the college orchestra. And the rest was history; as far as he was concerned, Ney could trace all of his current happiness to learning to play the flute during his childhood.

He had hoped one of his sons would develop a liking for it as well, but so far they were all gravitating to--Ney grimaces inwardly--the brass section. Where did I go wrong?

Ney concludes the final notes of the piece, and is startled to hear applause. He turns to see Murat and little Louise, clapping happily from the doorway.

"That was so pretty Uncle Michel!" Louise exclaims.

"Incredible!" says Murat. "Why have I never heard you play before?"

Ney blushes. "I rarely play in public anymore. Thanks though, I'm glad you liked it."

"Well you absolutely should play in public more! Our friends would love to hear it! Isn't that right, darling?" he asks Louise.

"Papa is right! You play so good!" the ten-year-old says.

"Thank you, my dear."

"May I hold the flute? I've never held a flute before."

"Yes, of course!" Ney hands Louise the flute. The child studies the instrument in rapt fascination, running her littlefingers over the intricate keys and tubes.

"Next year she'll be old enough to play in the school band," Murat says.

"Oh yeah? Has she chosen an instrument yet?"

Murat looks down at his daughter, who is still captivated by the flute. He smiles.

"Possibly." ***

[Age 11]

The following year when Murat informed Ney that Louise had, indeed, decided she wanted to learn to play the flute for the school band, Ney had scarcely been able to contain his joy.

"Also," Murat began, "she's wondering if you'd be willing to teach her some of the basics, before her formal lessons begin next month?"

"Tell her I would be delighted to."

Sitting in the Murats' beautiful garden now, he has, so far, taught Louise how to put the flute together, what all the various parts are called, how to clean the instrument, how to hold it, and proper posture. Now, for the most important part: how to make the sound come out.

He shows her how to form the necessary embouchure--the positioning of the lips in relation to the blowhole of the flute--and demonstrates with his own flute: a clear, sonorous B-flat emanates through the garden.

Louise tries to copy his face, and blows into her flute.

PPHHHHHTHTHHTHTHTHHHHH.

She tries again.

PPHHHHHTHTHHTHTHTHHHHH.

And again.

PPHHHHHTHTHHTHTHTHHHHH.

Louise is dismayed. It isn't working! Is her flute broken?

She hands the instrument to Ney; he holds it up, arranges his embouchure, and plays another B-flat.

"Your flute works perfectly," he says reassuringly.

Louise tries again and again, over and over, but still fails to get any sound to come out of the flute. Ney can see that she is getting frustrated.

"Don't be discouraged," he tells her. "This is usually the hardest part for every beginner."

"Was it hard for you too?"

"Oh yes. It took me hours to do it right the first time. And multiple lessons. I was in total despair after a while, but then I just... did it. Somehow. And once I made that first note, I didn't have any problems doing it again. It was like something had just clicked, and now I could play the flute. So, don't worry. You'll get it eventually, I promise. We're not going to give up. Okay?"

"Okay."

A little over an hour later, the PPHHHHHTHTHHTHTHTHHHHH suddenly morphs into a resounding OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

Louise lowers the flute, staring at Ney with wide eyes.

"Uncle Michel!! I did it!!! I'm playing the flute!!!!" she raises the flute again and, making the same embouchure as before, plays a full, crystal-clear note.

Ney turns away just for a brief instant, to wipe away a sudden, unexpected tear.

***

Ney makes his way towards the front row, his eyes finding Murat's curly hair in the dim light of the school auditorium.

"Glad you could make it!" Murat greets him. "Caroline and I saved you a seat."

"Thank you," Ney says, sitting down beside his friend. "Wouldn't miss it for the world."

Louise has been working very hard for the past six months, and tonight is her first concert with the school band. Additionally--and Murat had barely able to contain his excitement when he'd told Ney--she was going to be performing a duet with another student. The band instructor had been so delighted with the progress of both girls so far, that he wanted to give them a moment in the spotlight to showcase their developing talents.

"Is she nervous?" Ney asks.

"Honestly, I think she's more nervous about playing in front of you than anything," Murat chuckles.

Ney grins. "I can't imagine why. We practice together all the time!"

"Yes, exactly. She's worried she's going to mess up and disappoint you."

"No, that won't happen," Ney says firmly.

The concert begins. While the band of eleven- and twelve-year-olds performs its ensemble, Caroline dutifully records it on her phone, Murat sniffles and wipes his teary eyes with a handkerchief throughout, and Ney wallows in nostalgia, vividly remembering his own days playing with the school band. He smiles at the sight of Louise, so poised for her age, playing every song without missing a beat, as if she'd been in the band for years.

"My little princess," Murat wibbles during the break between pieces, falling apart into the handkerchief again. Caroline smiles and runs her fingers through his hair, but Ney can't help but notice her own eyes are glistening in the darkness of the auditorium.

"You should've seen him when Letitia played the Butterfly Queen in her first school play," Caroline tells Ney.

Murat gives a shuddering sob into the handkerchief at the memory; Ney, shoulders shaking, conceals his laughter behind a hand.

Now it is time for Louise's duet. She is introduced to the audience. Only the firm hand of Caroline on his forearm keeps Murat from springing up out of his chair to cheer for his daughter.

"Don't embarrass her, dearest," Caroline whispers reprovingly.

"Right. Sorry," Murat says sheepishly.

Louise and her companion begin playing Beethoven's "Ode to Joy," with the band instructor accompanying them on thepiano.

Ney smiles. The Ninth Symphony has always held a special place in his heart, and now it is going to be even morespecial.

Louise hits every note perfectly.

The audience applauds after the girls finish their performance. Louise curtseys, lighting up at the sight of her parents and Uncle Michel in the front row. She gives them a wave before returning to her seat with the rest of the band.

Murat is a mess. But Ney is surprised to find his own face suddenly wet too. He fumbles through his pockets for a tissue. Damn it all. Probably should've anticipated this.

Murat hands him a handkerchief.

"I always bring a spare," he explains.

"Thanks." Maybe I should too. What is happening to him? He's slowly turning into Murat--a big, blubbery, walking catastrophe. Oh God.

After the concert, he stoops to give Louise a hug.

"Did I do good, Uncle Michel?"

"You were brilliant, my dear. I'm more proud of you than I can possibly put into words."

Louise is beaming. She hopes he'll come with Papa and Mama to all her concerts from now on.

"As your special guest?" Ney asks.

"My special, SPECIAL guest."

Murat claps him on the shoulder cheerfully.

"In that case," he says, "you might want to order some handkerchiefs."

***End***

#Trifecta AU #Papa!Murat AU #The Flutist #the second fluffiest fluff I've ever written #@histoireettralala

[imagine-organization-xiii]

Hey!! Can I get the org as youtubers?? Love your writing!!

Xemnas

Internet cryptid. Rarely shows his face. Uploading schedule is random and everyone is always surprised and excited when he decides to post a new video.

Everyone flocks to his channel for his voice. Most of his videos are of him reciting poetry or short stories. Has the perfect voice that makes you feel as though you’re listening to an audiobook. That being said, he goes pretty far into the ASMR thing, usually with his low voice reading to you, but everyone loves it so he doesn’t really want to change.

Doesn’t go to conventions or events, partly because he wants to keep the mystery of his appearance alive and partly because he doesn’t like meeting people.

Xigbar

Literally posts whatever the hell he wants, maybe once or twice a week depending on how busy he is. His channel is very Jenna Marbles-esque in the sense that he goes off the rails all the time. He’ll video himself trying a new workout routine, attempting and failing to cook a meal, going to a gun range another day, getting Xion to paint his nails in another video, telling stories about why he wears an eye patch that get more and more ridiculous as he goes on, etc.

Chill with fans. He’s super casual and actually likes meeting fans. Will be cool with you if you’re cool with him and don’t treat him as some big celebrity. He’s just a random guy who makes a few videos on the internet and that’s how he wants everyone to see him.

Xaldin

A workout channel, of course! Does a series of different types of workout routines that are good for different people with different body types and different levels of energy. A very body positive channel! Also has a series on different types of diets and the positives and negatives of each - more in regards to living healthier lifestyles than losing weight.

Went viral during a collab with Lexaeus about healthy food and organic versus non-organic fruits and veggies.

Will definitely talk to fans if they meet on the street or by chance, but doesn’t really go to conventions. He does videos because he finds it fun, not because he wants to be famous.

Vexen

Has a Bill Nye the Science Guy type of channel where he teaches people about the wonders of science and how science can answer nearly every question you might have about the universe. Did a whole, scathing series about climate change that went completely viral and caused quite a few stubborn conservatives to condemn his channel, but he’s fairly well-liked throughout the entirety of the scientific community.

One of those rare Youtubers that actually has a day job as a scientist for some fancy laboratory or university.

Doesn’t really like meeting fans because he doesn’t know how to talk to people, but will happily talk if someone strikes up a conversation that happens to be particularly intriguing.

Lexaeus

Honestly, this man has a cooking channel, but the actual cooking content varies. He has a whole series about cooking tips and hacks, as well as good tools to have in your kitchen. Videos concerning food range from beautiful aesthetic baking recipes for cookies and cupcakes to an Epic Meal Time level of food insanity.

His fans are intimidated when approaching him because he’s so large and intimidating, but they soon realize that he’s actually a sweetheart and is happy to answer questions and give tips to his viewers when he meets them.

Zexion

Mostly does reviews about things. The majority of them are about books, but he’ll sometimes do movies if they were book-to-movie adaptations. His reviews are fair, brilliant, and well-thought out, so he’s actually been approached by several movie studios that wanted him to review scripts before they start production.

Feels like he’s awkward around fans but they don’t think so. Gets exhausted by social interaction so he’ll talk to people, but he has to take some time alone afterward to re-charge.

Saix

Makes How To videos and educational videos. Saix’s channel is something you stumbled across when looking for tips for writing a resumé or for tips when going into a job interview.

Fairly informative in his videos, if a bit long-winded. The videos are worth the full watch, though, because he has some scathing, dry humor that you enjoy.

Did a whole series on his channel about politics - the important of voting, explaining governmental processes, explaining impeachment, giving information about various candidates, etc. This is the series that really made his channel fly up in subscribers.

Awkward with fans and doesn’t know how to interact with people fawning over him. Stopped going to events after some girl groped his ass because he felt too uncomfortable.

Axel

A travel blog! He goes all over the world - worlds - exploring the sights and local favorite spots. He gets a little extreme sometimes because he likes to try everything, whether that’s scuba diving with sharks, sky diving, riding camels through a desert, rock and mountain climbing, etc., but he likes to have the full experience.

He also does gaming, mostly group games like PUBG or Overwatch or Gary’s Mod games that he can co-op with Roxas.

Absolutely loves meeting fans. He really cares about his fans and loves making conversations with them - everyone finds him really easy to talk to, so they flock to conventions when they hear he’s going to be in attendance.

Demyx

A music channel! He writes his own music, does covers of popular songs, experiments with different instruments, does online lessons and teaches how to tune certain instruments.

He also does some travel stuff with Axel, depending on where Axel happens to go. They always have a lot of fun together so they like to collab whenever they have the chance.

Adores meeting fans and gives some really awesome hugs!  Gets super excited and flattered whenever anyone recognizes him in public.

Luxord

Does a little bit of everything. Got popular with doing unboxing videos for different types of subscription boxes. Also does a follow-me around where he goes to different sights around his hometown and explores things. Has a series of videos about classic foods and snacks from England.

Surprisingly, he first went viral for a video explaining what Brexit was and why it was important to vote.. Everyone was super impressed with the resources and information that he gave in the video.

Doesn’t mind meeting fans but doesn’t go to conventions or events. He’s usually pretty busy, so he’ll probably stop for a picture and a handshake and be on his way.

Marluxia

Marluxia’s channel is a mash of makeup tutorials and gardening tips. He has the most phenomenal garden that people love to look at and makes videos about soil pH, fertilizer and composting, and which plants go well with different types of environments and weather.

But then he also has his beauty guru side where he makes these incredible makeup tutorials that people can’t understand how he can possibly have such a steady hand when doing his contour and eyeshadow.

Viewers are a combination of 60 year old men and women looking for gardening tips and teenagers looking for makeup tips. Is fine with talking with the teenagers but will absolutely have hour-long conversations with anyone who starts talking to him about his plants.

Larxene

Self-defense, particularly for women who need to protect themselves but they could be applied to men, too. Good friends with Xaldin and has him on her channel a lot, usually when she needs a test dummy to try out new moves on. It helps her viewers to know that even though she’s small, she can still take out guys twice her size - and that her viewers can, too!

Sometimes does makeup tests with Marluxia because she can make some wicked sharp eyeliner wings.

She’s pretty cool with meeting fans as long as you’re cool with her. Do not hit on her or think you have a right to monopolize her time just because you’re a fan. You will regret it.

Roxas

Roxas is first and foremost a gaming youtuber. He loves video games and would play them all day every day if he could. Sometimes does charity livestreams on Twitch and he’s raised a lot of money for good causes!

Doesn’t really have a particular kind of game he plays - has a fondness for Nintendo, but he’ll play a little of everything. it really depends on what kind of mood he’s in at the time.

Gets really shy around meeting fans but he loves his fans to pieces! He thinks that they’re all super awesome and give great recommendations for new games he should try.

Xion

Craft videos! Xion loves arts and crafts so you can bet that she’s going to be showing you how to make different projects in an easy and fun way that doesn’t cause too much stress. She also dabbles in trying different types of painting, sculpting, sketching, nail art, etc., and makes awesome tutorials that are easy to follow.

Gets embarrassed around fans because she’s super flattered that anyone would love her videos enough to watch them consistently.

Xion gets the occasional fan that’s a little… too familiar with her, but she usually has someone with her when she goes to cons and events, so they happily act as her bodyguard.

Collabs with other Youtubers a lot, particularly Lexaeus, to everyone’s surprise. They usually do videos together when Lexaeus makes some kind of sweet dessert.

#kingdom hearts #kingdom hearts headcanon #organization xiii #organization xiii headcanons

[angelaiswriting]

Hawkeye | Clint Barton x fem!OC

[original picture found on: pinterest]

✏️ Pairings: Clint Barton x (non described) fem!OC 

✏️ Requested by my moods

✏️ Summary: For ten years now, Clint Barton has been Larisa Goncharova’s greatest fantasy. And now that they’re both sent on an undercover mission together, she doesn’t miss her chance to pay him back for the way he’s made her feel at Stark’s charity event.

✏️ A/N: just happy reading and sorry it’s so damn long.

✏️ Warnings: 18+ only. It’s mainly due to themes (violence, killing, female sterilization, manipulation...) + some mild (I think) smut (talks of and general blowjob, slight thigh riding, general talks of sex, initiation of public sex, general heavy flirting and greater slow burn that before I’m so sorry @kind-wolf haha). If I didn’t list something that triggered you, feel free to let me know so that I can correct the mistake.

✏️ Word-count: 10,466 (wow)

REQUESTS ARE OPEN IF YOU WANT ME TO WRITE FOR YOU 💛

📚 This is the second part to The Mantis (you can find the link to my Masterlist in my bio. Unfortunately Tumblr hides my posts if they have links)

📚  Translations: Shokoladny soldat = Chocolate Soldier | Izvestnyj Bogomol? = The famous Mantis? | Drug? = Friend? | Muzh = Husband + ЧРВД stands for (in my fic obv) “Чёрная вдова” (Black Widow)

HAWKEYE 

A month had passed since Tony Stark’s charity event and Larisa had seen Clint more than she ever had in the previous ten years. It was a great step forward, but also ten steps back as her mind kept on wandering back to his mouth on her, lips latched around her clit as he fingered her slowly.

Nasha often joked about it, but what Nasha didn’t know was how Clint’s burning tongue had felt on her, nor how often or how ardently she had imagined him kneeling between her legs with his face buried against her.

Even now, as she stared at his back from the other end of the recruits’ training room in the main SHIELD facility, she could barely focus on something that was not the aching between her legs. It didn’t matter that her muscles were sore from the intensity of the workout she had had with Nasha, nor that sweat was dripping down her spine, spreading the uncomfortable sensation of sweaty clothes throughout her whole body, for her eyes had zeroed in on his back and on the muscles covered by the fitting tank top he was wearing. The way they flexed and relaxed as he paced in front of the recruits was probably the most tantalizing view she had seen in forever.

Before she could stop it, a low moan tore from her throat. It was sudden and unexpected and all she could do was slap a hand over her mouth.

The incriminatory sound hadn’t been loud enough for everyone to hear, but Natasha was sitting right beside her and she had heard. The smirk that blossomed on her face was proof enough that Lara hadn’t been as subtle as she had hoped.

“You know?” Natasha hummed, leaning her chin on Lara’s shoulder. “It’s entertainingly sweet, the crush you have on Clint. It truly burns your whole KGB-agent façade to dust.” She chuckled in her friend’s ear and then kissed her cheek.

“Fuck off, Nasha.” The tone of Lara’s voice pretended irritation, but both girls knew that was a game, the same game they had been playing ever since they had met at the Academy.

Natasha let out a low laughter and suddenly, her body wasn’t leaning against hers anymore. When Lara turned her head to the side, she saw the woman leaning back on her elbows as she stretched her legs forward, crossing one ankle above the other.

“Hush, Goncharova,” she smirked. “Is this how you thank your friend for hooking you up with her partner?”

“‘Hook up’,” Lara huffed, imitating her friend’s voice unsurprisingly well. “You still decided to walk in on him giving me head as the stubborn cockblock you are.”

Natasha’s smirk was one that denoted deep knowledge of her fellow spy’s antics–of how she worked, how she teased, of the games she used to play when her targets let their guard down. She had witnessed Lara’s charm bring men and women alike to their knees before she stroke the last hit, and she had found herself in that situation, too, once, although it hadn’t been as deadly. “I know you were going to stop there and you know it, too. You’ve always enjoyed playing with them until they begged, haven’t you? And for how often you could get off with Barton’s name on your lips, you still want to push this decade-old tension to its limits now that you’ve been given the chance, just to see how it goes.”

Larisa shook her head and after a moment’s indecision, she returned her attention to the two Avengers lecturing the rookies. Rogers was talking, delivering what she was sure was Fury’s speech–or verbose list of rules and prohibitions, the same they had uselessly tried to subject her to–, and she cocked her head to the side when her gaze drifted down to his ass, unabashedly outlined by the stealth of his suit, something Barton had decided to leave inside his closet.

Captain America was magnificently big: tall as a trunk, with large shoulders, narrow hips, thick thighs–probably even sturdier ego, she thought with a giggle. But even from the seven-meter distance, she could see the veins in Hawkeye’s arms and she was… lost. It was like being a teenager back in the Red Room, on the rare occasions where they forced her and the other girls to spar against male KGB agents to polish and refine their training. God, how many nights Natasha had spent with her in the darkness of their dorm, gushing and giggling because they weren’t used to all that testosterone, to all those male bodies they couldn’t have…

“Yeah, you’re right,” she eventually admitted as she looked up until she was focusing on the side of the very face that plagued her lonely nights. She wasn’t one to let herself go to such desires: she had been brought up a spy, a killer, an instrument of manipulation, and she knew better than that. She knew better than to let someone into her mind and underneath her skin because she knew all too well what that brought to–she had been, in fact, delivering that same treatment to her targets ever since day one and just because SHIELD now owned her ass, it didn’t mean that she was going to change the very core of her strategy. “I’m going to push him to his limits.”

There was a mischievous grin on her face when she turned her head to look at her friend and she wasn’t surprised to see it mirrored on Nasha’s lips. They knew each other like the back of their very own hand, knew all the details in the other’s body and soul like they knew those of their favorite weapon, and it was no surprise to them to see that, even after all those years, they were still on the same page.

“Was his mouth game that good?” Natasha wanted to know, pushing herself back up from the floor to sit up straight next to her.

Lara let out a low, dreamy hum as her eyes drifted closed and her chin tilted upwards. “Remember when I told you that you were an eight?”

“Lamest bluff of your life, I guess.”

She chuckled. “Well, Agent Barton is a nine.”

Natasha gasped, but Lara was too engrossed in her own memories to even care.

*

His touch was starved as he pushed her into a bathroom and his insistence prevented her from looking around and check if the place was indeed as empty as they were hoping it to be. Lara wasn’t complaining, not when he was kissing her like that, almost as if he wanted to make her forget her very name.

Not that he wasn’t succeeding, be it clear. It didn’t happen often, for she never let anyone kiss her like that. And the fact that no one had ever been that passionate with her out of their own free will made it all a thousand times better.

It was like being back in Chișinău all over again when he had almost brought her to her knees with his lips and tongue on her body. She felt him pressing himself against her, his fingers bruising on her thigh, the one exposed by the slit in the silk of her dress, as he seemed to want to squeeze it to the bone. She felt his breath against her skin as the kiss deepened to a clash of lips and teeth, both too desperate to slow it down–or to take it slow altogether.

He grunted when her hands sneaked their way around his neck and then up into his hair. She tugged on it, lightly scratching his scalp as she did so, and suddenly they were staring into each other’s eyes, breaths mingling and lips still touching and the sight of his clouded eyes with their pupils blown wide made her moan. The sound seemed to tear its way out of her very soul as she tugged on his hair once again and it got mirrored by Clint’s second grunt as he took her lower lip between his teeth and pulled on it in the most gentle of ways.

He drove her silly. He had been plaguing her memories for so long–so long–that it all felt surreal now. His bruising lips, his selfish hands, that hard-on of his she felt against her belly as he pushed himself against her… It felt all like a dream, as cliché as that could sound. She had never been given the privilege of having lovers, and she had denied herself of that chance even after the rules she had grown up with had ceased to exist. She could have had anyone she wanted and she could have had it without manipulation. She had never acted on it, though, she had never given herself the chance to be something more than the hound she was. And to be in the situation where that eventuality could materialize a body of its own, even just for one night, was far more than her affection-starved and love-deprived brain could endure.

“Tell me to stop,” Clint muttered next to her ear as he smothered the skin of her cheek in wet and sloppy kisses. He was panting against her and the harshness of his breathing turned deeper when his hands finally slipped underneath her dress.

Lara chuckled: it was almost like they were reliving that Moldovan night all over again, acting the improvised script they had played that time once more. It felt almost cozy, it gave her a sense of safety she hadn’t known she’d needed now that this man could play with her bare vulnerability as he pleased.

She wasn’t going to let him stop, though, not now that he had finally acted on his instincts and desires after having spent the whole night staring at her flirting with his friend. “Please, no,” she breathed back, turning her head to the side to catch his lips for another kiss.

*

Clint saw the change in Larisa’s eyes more quickly than he would have had Natasha not taught him how to read that woman. He saw the smile on her face fade into her usual inexpressive façade and the tension return to her shoulders as she straightened her back as she snapped out of her reverie.

He smirked at her when their gazes met and he was both pleased and surprised to see her answer back with the same expression.

“She’s a level one,” the insolent rookie he had felt like punching in the face ever since the introductive meeting with Maria Hill that morning repeated. “She should be training with us.”

No one spoke and in the silence of the room, he stared as Lara stood up, followed closely by Natasha, who was more than ready to catch her friend if she decided she truly did not want to stand such an idiot and was pleased to see her walk towards his group. She had an almost catlike stroll in her step and she made sure to take her sweet time to reach the center of the training room just so that everyone could see and feel the strength her whole demeanor revealed.

“What’s your name?” she asked and Clint couldn’t help himself but smirk at the thought of what could happen.

The blonde newbie, twice the size of agent Goncharova, took a step back, but did his best to keep the impassible expression on his face and, in his stupidity, he should have been recognized such guts. “Agent Jethro Freeman.”

“He calls himself ‘agent’,” Larisa snickered, head turning slightly to the side to glance at Nat. She stretched her neck to the side before opening her chest a little more to intensify the stretch. “I remember how our insolence got punished, do you?”

Natasha nodded and grinned at Clint, almost as if she wanted to tell him to trust her and her friend on this one and not to intervene. “Sight, hearing and movement deprivation.”

Goncharova’s smile seemed to mirror a past memory as she heaved a long breath. “It gets scary, after a while. At first, it’s fun, it’s something new, and you don’t have to hear all the girls you live with. But after a while…” She shrugged her shoulders, gaze wandering around the room. Her legs had opened a little wider, almost as though she was readying herself to lunge forward, and the longer he stared at her, the more Clint felt the unbearable need to touch her. “Your own heartbeat drives you crazy.”

“‘No acts of intimidation towards fellow agents’,” Freeman stated. “It’s in the regulations.”

“You see, this is the difference between a nobody like you and a global threat like me.” Larisa took a step forward and stopped right before the rookie. “People like me are going to kill people like you because you simply do not know how to keep your mouth shut. I’m a level-one agent simply because Fury fears me too much to give me access to SHIELD’s databases and intel, not because I’m a washout like you. I could defeat you with my eyes closed and my ears stuffed because, unlike you, I am an agent, and more than that, I’m someone who knows how to do her job.”

They all saw and heard Jethro Freeman swallow, and the sound he made as his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down was almost louder than it normally would have been in the silence of the training room.

“You’re here to learn and to train,” she went on and Clint saw Natasha move a hand on Lara’s shoulder to keep her grounded. Unlike what he had expected, that sudden touch didn’t startle Larisa Goncharova and he wondered whether she truly had the ability to be aware of anything surrounding her or if she simply expected such a gesture from her friend. “And I am surely not here to kill you and risk having our annoying director up my ass. You want to train with me? Come back when you learn how to think with your brain and not your prick.”

She never lost her cool. Even when the rookie’s insolence forced her to her feet, she never lost her unreadable expression. Not even Clint had mastered that ability so well and it was something that went beyond even Nat’s stoic façade. It made him want her more and he wondered who was more stupid: he or the rookie that had thought he could challenge someone like the Mantis.

“But since you seem like you want to see how a real enemy agent fights, I guess I’ll give you a demo. I usually don’t do this because…” She sighed and lowered her shoulder until Natasha got the message and removed her hand. “Well, because I tend to kill insolence, but today’s your lucky day.” She then turned toward Steve, throwing a grin at Clint as her gaze wandered to find the new object of her attention. “Is that alright with you, Captain?” She stressed the word as if to tease him and took a step in their direction.

Steve nodded in agreement, taking a step back and showing her the sparring mat with the movement of his arm. “You choose who you want to face.”

Walking past him and Clint, the grin on her face stretched wider as she gracefully moved to stand on the ring defined by the thin, black mat positioned in the center of the room. The sprint in her step was now lighter, Clint noticed, and the muscles in her back, whose movements he could see through her sweaty tank top, had lost any trace of tension. She was in her element and everyone in their right mind would have noticed that. And they would have stopped. She was the beast preparing for the upcoming attack and she seemed to savor the moment as the adrenaline intoxicatingly ran through her veins.

“Don’t take it personally, Nasha,” she hummed when she found a spot she liked on the mat and turned to face the group of both recruits and Avengers. “I’m not picking you since we’ve spent the afternoon throwing punches at each other. You know, I know your moves and you know mine, so it gets boring after a while.”

Nat chuckled. “I was thinking of going out to have fun anyway,” she winked, following her friend’s script.

“And I’m not going to risk and hurt our golden Steve since I sort of have an unspoken agreement with his bionic pal and I would hate to fight him again, since he knows how to be a pain in the ass,” Lara went on. They all frowned at those words, for neither Clint nor Steve had known Bucky and Larisa shared some kind of past. Probably Nat knew, but considering the light crack in the imperturbability of her face, Clint doubted it to be the case. “So I guess I’m picking a fight with Hawkeye.”

Right then, when her eyes met his, Clint knew it was all a game. That was her trying to tease him and while she was also giving him the chance to not follow her lead in this wicked dance of hers, he still wanted to see where all of the subtle flirting they had kept up since the end of Tony’s party took them.

“Sounds fair,” he agreed. “Want me to take my shoes off?” She was barefoot, the top of her feet reddened probably during her training session with Nat. Again, it only seemed fair to be on the same level, also seen as this was just a demonstration and not a real fight against a real enemy.

Just as the thought popped up in his mind, he knew, then and there, that she would still kick his ass even in the case where he had the upper hand. And what thrilled him the most was knowing that he would let her do and that he would let her win. It was a sick wish for defeat, the one that prompted a shiver down his spine and straight to his loins, and the second thing he suddenly became aware of, was realizing that she did indeed have him wrapped around her pinkie as Nat had said at that damn party.

Lara shrugged her shoulders and, unfathomed to him, Natasha chuckled. “I don’t know, Clint,” she drawled out, savoring his name on her tongue and winking at him. “I’m used to fighting men naked and I wouldn’t mind doing it now, but I’m not sure this is the time nor the place for such a show.”

He clenched his teeth, for he knew what she was trying to do and he wasn’t sure he wanted her to stop. Eyes fixed on her, he kicked his shoes off and bent to free himself of his socks.

Larisa Goncharova was, according to her classified file, ‘intoxicating’. She knew the shortcuts to people’s weaknesses, she knew how to play them, how to wiggle her way straight to the center of their minds. There was nothing she didn’t use to reach her target and her body was perfect for her strategy. Whether she had based it around herself or shaped her whole being to become the deadly weapon it was, Clint didn’t know and he probably didn’t even care.

She was intoxicating and it felt like that was the only thing that mattered in the whole world. The playfulness in her stance, the half-grin on her face, the sparkling amusement in her eyes, her every curve put on display by the form-fitting clothes she wore that day… It was all playing against him and he knew it. He knew it and he let her play her game. Was it reckless of him? Most likely. But a look at her and he was lost.

He met her in the center of the mat and forced himself into a defensive stance, guard up high to protect his face from the blows he knew she’d deliver–just like Hungary all over again. “Ladies first,” he said with a chuckle.

Her laughter was unexpected as she moved. She seemed to dance on the mat, her weight in the balls of her feet as she moved to guard herself. It was like a match between a heavyweight and a lightweight–and not in the strict sense of the term. His technique was what was heavy, while she looked like a ballerina on stage, weight light and movements delicate. A butterfly against a boar. “It’s always nice to know I still fool men into believing I am a lady.”

Clint got almost distracted by her amused sigh, by her head turning to the side to shoot Natasha a grin. It was only thanks to a last-second sensation that he managed to block her hook and he met her punch with a grunt, but was too slow at reacting and her hand slipped from his grasp like water.

She moved on the mattress, still light and swift, movements carefree and calculated at the same time. The mere sight of her dancing around him like that stirred something inside him and he knew, on the spot, that he was fucked.

Another chuckle ringed in his ears and only then did he avert his gaze from the movement of her bare feet and met hers. “You gonna attack, agent?” She grinned, lips teasing and pearly teeth threatening. “Or you gonna let a lady do all the hard work?”

Clint lunged forward for a reverse, but his movement was too thoughtless and she saw it coming even before he jumped into action. She dodged his fist and performed half a pirouette to move away from him, grin always stretching her lips.

He couldn’t explain himself how she could still be this reactive after the hard fight he had seen her put up with Nat just before the rookies entered the training room. It made him wonder whether she was human and if she was, in what percentage. Even the blind could see her unfaltering speed, her steady strength. She could go on like that forever and everybody around them was aware of it.

Evening out his breath, Clint tried to do what Nat had started to explain him at that infamous party: study Larisa’s stance, the look in her eyes, the smile on her face to foresee her next move. And while Natasha had managed to do just that in Hungary, he failed. Pivoting on his heel, he went for another hook, one that only managed to brush against strands of hair that had escaped Lara’s hairdo.

She seemed to dance around his body, so close he could almost feel her heat. “Faster, Clint,” she whispered, so low only he could hear. She slapped the back of his head and he turned around, but she wasn’t there anymore. “This is my favorite kind of foreplay,” she murmured again, lips brushing against the shell of his ear before she ducked under his blow.

Whether he had been quicker this time or she - slower, Clint didn’t know and part of him fooled himself into thinking he was gaining the upper hand when it was, in fact, just part of her game.

Then, right when he least expected it, she swung her leg into a roundhouse kick and he only caught her ankle in his hand at the last moment, her foot a breath away from kicking his side. She grinned and let him straighten her leg before he took a quick step forward, yanking her in his direction as he came to a stop chest-to-chest. She surprised him by hooking her leg around his waist then and more than a rookie whistled.

Lara leaned forward and her lips grazed his cheek. “Just like on that plane, eh?” Her nose nuzzled the skin behind his ear and Clint had to stop his hips from bucking forward. “I can feel you against me and I am soaking wet.”

*

After much begging and grunting on their part, Fury had eventually consented to fly out a small private plane to fetch agents Barton and Romanoff and their prisoner in Budapest. And if SHIELD director’s reticence in giving him and his partner just that one comfort hadn’t soured Clint’s mood enough, the playful banter that had been going on for two days straight between Natasha and Larisa Goncharova had proved to be just the cherry on top of that fatigue-tasting cake.

Sprawled out on one of the luscious leather seats as the plane flew over Europe, Clint Barton could feel every single bruise marking his skin and his muscles scream in sore agony. And while it had been far easier to handcuff her than he would have ever thought possible, the hand-to-hand combat against the Mantis had exceeded even his wildest thoughts.

“You should move to the other seat,” Larisa said suddenly and his eyes flew open with the same speed of a snail. He was tired–and even more than that, he was physically and mentally exhausted. All he wanted to do was sleep, much like Nat was doing, curled up like a cat on one of the front armchairs. “Stretch out just right.”

“I’m just fine right where I am,” he groaned, turning his head to stare outside the window as they cruised over Austria.

From the corner of his eye–for he was not going to lose sight of her–he saw her smirk. “Do as you please, then, Clint. I was just suggesting you take some well-deserved rest after I kicked your ass.”

“You’re a prisoner, you should keep your mouth shut.” Shut around his dick, he thought, and he shifted in his seat. He was not going back to Moldova all over again. All he had to do was deliver her to Fury and get her out of his system like the poison she was.

Just then, her foot teased his ankle before moving up and down his shin. He shifted again, moving his leg back and slightly more out of her reach, despite not being able to do so completely given the cramped space between them. “Oh, I’m just fine where I am,” she mocked him, moaning lowly as she made herself more comfortable against the back of the seat. “Are you sure I am the prisoner, anyway?”

The smirk on her lips made him snap. “Keep your mouth shut.”

She moaned again and her eyelids seemed to grow heavier as she lowered them enough to tease him with her gaze. “I love it when they’re bossy.” She said so in Russian and it made him gulp, for he indeed spoke that language. “I wanted to thank you for Chișinău,” she started again after endless minutes of silence, just when Clint had started to feel himself doze off to sleep. “Truly rid me of any trace of fatigue.”

He groaned: the bump on the back of his head still throbbed insistently at times, even if the uncomfortable feeling had positively diminished over the past two weeks. “Glad I could be of help.”

He had just closed his eyes when he felt her move and when he reopened them again to stare at her, she was sitting closer to the edge of her seat, her knees lazily settled between his wide thighs.

“You just have to say it,” she murmured, handcuffed hands moving to his thighs and slowly sliding closer to his crotch. “And I’ll do it.”

Clint was suddenly and completely awake, then, no trace of tiredness in his mind or his limbs. He felt himself stir in his pants but still did his best to ignore the feeling. “I’ve already said it: shut your mouth.”

It was impossible to wipe that smartass smile from her lips and he had to resign himself to that realization. He should change his game, he thought, change his behavior toward her: stop paying attention to her tricks, stop letting her play with his mind and his body.

She asked him to use the restroom, then, voice polite and sickeningly sweet, almost as though she wanted to make fun of him. Clint looked her up and down, trying to convince himself of how bad an idea that was, and sighed. He stood up and pulled her to her feet by grabbing the chain between the handcuffs she wore.

“Such a gentleman,” she whispered in his ear as she walked past him, brushing against the side of his body.

He scoffed and stopped just before the door of the toilet. There was no way he was going to resist until their arrival in New York. He was either going to fuck her senseless or kill her, and he wasn’t so sure the second option was that bad.

Before he had the time to answer Larisa’s call, the sliding door opened again and she stared at him. “These nice bracelets need to go, I’m having problems with my pants.”

He grunted, rolling his eyes and crossing his arms over his chest. His weight shifted to rest on one leg as his hip slightly pressed to the side. “You need a hand?”

“I wouldn’t mind one,” she smirked. She was eyeing him just as she knew every little thing going on in his mind and Clint couldn’t stand it.

Then, before he could react, she pulled him into the cramped space of the toilet and they ended up being pressed into each other. One of his legs ended up pushing between hers and she smiled a knowing grin when his uncomfortable erection made itself known against her thigh.

“Nice gear I feel against my leg,” she drawled into his ear as she pressed herself against his side. “I’m starting to think you need to use the restroom more than I.” Her lips skimmed along the line of his jaw and all he managed to force himself to do was clench his teeth, her tied hands taking a hold of his side–one on the side of his chest and the other on his back.

“You should hurry up,” he swallowed, hands unwillingly moving to her hips to keep her in place.

He knew better than this. Why he always acted like a horny teen with her was truly beyond him, but still, he wasn’t sure he wanted to stop.

She ground against his thigh then and against any kind of training he ever received, he inhaled sharply, eyes drifting closed. All he could feel was her–her hot core against his clad leg, his arm pressing into the valley of her breasts, her warm breath against the skin of his face and neck as she lazily kissed his jaw and the sensitive skin under his ear. Then, unexpectedly, she whimpered and he felt himself come just as unexpectedly in his pants.

“So good,” she hummed against his cheek, kissing it lightly before she pushed him out of the toilet. “Now give me a moment.”

It took him a couple of minutes to realize she had stolen the keys to her handcuffs right out of the back pocket of his pants.

*

The next encounter Larisa had with Clint happened a week after the events in the training room.

In nothing but panties and a satin nightgown, she sat in front of the jet-black grand piano in the middle of her sunny penthouse living room and she was trying to ease the discomfort of her past on the notes of Nero’s Nocturne. Ever since she was a kid, gentle music had always helped to soothe the harsh angles of her memories or of her days. Fighting against the blaring metal music blasting from the television, she was forcing the piano notes to war against the loud cries of the Red Room, mitigating the thirst for Todorovsky’s blood that had plagued both waking and sleeping hours in the last few days.

Auditory overload. It was something they had subjected her and the other girls to at the Academy with the goal to sharpen their focus skills: when their heartbeat became the loudest sound in the training room, they could leave. She had mastered it. She had been forced to if she wanted to survive.

Despite her training being over–and it had been over for ages now–, she still submitted herself to that technique, for it was the only thing that helped her mind find its peace.

It had never been that hard to push the music of her piano to overcome that of the television, though, and the reason had a name: Hawkeye. He distracted her from her target, he dulled the precision of her aim, and the thoughts of him inevitably brought her mind back to the only scar on her body and hence, to Todorovsky.

No man had ever been the cause of such faltering in her self-control, and it was both enticing and frightening. She had managed to live without such a distraction her whole life, and this was why she had managed to take down her targets the way she had. But it was almost ten years now from her first encounter with Clint Barton and he had managed to become her weakness. Whether she showed it or not, it didn’t matter, for the terror the idea of falling in love with–or worse, of having already fallen for–him was what kept her on edge day in and day out.

The way he walked, the way he talked, the way he smirked, fought, drew his bow, looked at her… It all felt calculated: it was almost as though he knew what she liked and exploited his knowledge to mold himself and attract her into his trap.

She grunted, fists smashing on the keys on the piano, causing a nightmarish cry to win against the deafening music coming from the switched-on television. She punched the keyboard again, biting her tongue to keep that scream from tearing her whole being apart, as all her muscles tensed and her body leaned forward.

Three things happened almost at once, then: a foreign sound from behind caught her ear; her hand closed itself around the grip of the gun sat on the flat surface of the piano; the TV switched off.

Lara turned around in her seat, gun aiming in the general direction of the sound she had heard, a finger automatically taking the safety off and the other moving over the trigger. She smirked, though, when she saw Tony Stark staring at her, TV remote still in his hand.

“You should be thankful I go by the rule of ‘ask first, shoot later’ in my own house,” she said, standing up and putting the safety of the gun back on. She stuck the weapon into the elastic band of her panties and closed the piano. “I don’t take trespassing lightly, though, I’m afraid.”

“He’s with us,” came Natasha’s voice. “Clint and me,” she continued when Lara cocked an eyebrow.

She caught Clint’s eye then and the look he gave her would have made her shudder hadn’t she been who she was. She allowed herself to blatantly stare at him anyway, though. He was wearing his stealth suit, just like Nat, and she found herself almost moaning at the thought of him tearing her nightgown apart dressed in Hawkeye’s typical attire.

And she knew he was staring, too. His gaze swiped down the length of her legs and then back up, to the thin material of the nightgown swooshing in the afternoon breeze that came in through the open windows. She could feel her nipples bead both in the chilly air and under his burning gaze, and he swallowed–slow, and hard, and almost painfully.

Just then, Iron Man cleared his throat. “If you’re done eye-fucking each other…”

“I could I fuck you, too, if only I wanted,” she grinned, walking past him to close the French windows that opened onto the huge terrace she had bought that penthouse for. “Shokoladny soldat is turning me into a nun,” she chuckled.

“Fury?” Nasha asked with a chuckle just to then open up into a real laughter when Lara nodded. “You’re nuts.”

“We don’t have the whole day.”

“What’s burning under your ass?” Lara asked, frowning at Stark, who had the audacity to start and act as lord and master of her place.

“We got a mission we should be leaving for.”

She shrugged and took the gun from her hip to rest it on the glass surface of the coffee table. “You need me to hold your hand and tell you it’s all going to be fine? What, mommy didn’t reassure you enough? I might be into roleplay, but this…” She chuckled. “Not gonna work.”

“I truly don’t see why you had to push Fury to make us bring her along,” he said then, head turning towards Natasha.

Disbelief and confusion flashed across her features, but Clint was the only one to see her ever changing expression. She didn’t notice it, though, engrossed as she was in questioning Nasha with her gaze.

“We’re going to Italy. Stop-an-auction-and-catch-the-bad-guy kind of mission,” she explained, eyeing the gun her friend had discarded a few minutes before. “Got a guy I’m sure you remember, that’s why I not-so-gently asked for you to be assigned on a real undercover mission.”

“Who’s the man?”

A smirk. Pure, unadulterated cruelty flashed in Natasha’s eyes. “Todorovsky.”

*

Waking up felt like drowning.

Head heavy, lungs burning, body weightless and massive at the same time.

Sounds and breaths and heartbeats mingled together into a cacophony that pushed her into a downward spiral of throbbing agony.

Waking up felt like being electrocuted with thorough pain. The pulsing ache spread through her every muscle and bone like a maddening poison, forcing her body to tense like a bowstring, toes curling, nails biting into the flesh of her palms.

It took Larisa hours to swim her way back up to the surface, to remember how she had ended up in that cold and uncomfortable bed, to understand why her body felt like shutting down against the onslaught of excruciating pain.

They had collected her from her dorm in the middle of the night–which night, she truly didn’t know, she couldn’t remember it, not now that her brain’s fight against the throbbing feeling made her stiff. She had been transported to an unknown location and handed into the hands of men she had never seen.

Graduation was a word she had often dreamed of. An essential rite of passage in the hierarchy of the Red Room’s student corpus. Natasha had gone through it not long before she did and ever since that day, they had moved her out of the Academy, sent her into the real world. Larisa had only dreamed of going through the same ceremony, whose trials were guarded with the same intensity of a state secret.

First had come hand-to-hand combat. Twelve men she had to take down, one after the other. She had endured blow after blow and she had fought back with the same intensity, polishing her technique with every opponent she knocked out. Moving around gracefully and swiftly, she had poured ballet into her combat strategy and had managed to pass the first test.

Auditory overload had come second. Closed in a dimly lit room, the KGB deafened her with howling dogs, with crying children, honking cars, shooting machine guns. And under all that confused noise, a subtle voice that repeated the same four words over and over again in a murmured litany she had to do her best to pick up. Верность Партии – Верность Родине – Loyalty to the party, loyalty to the motherland. Sixteen minutes, forty-two seconds, seventeen milliseconds – the second-best time of the agency, just after the man that went under the name of Зимний солдат. No one ever told her so, though, not even the Winter Soldier when she eventually met him, for no initiate got to know their time.

The third test was what the Academy called ‘partial sensory deprivation’. Hearing, sight and movement had to go for a specific amount of time. It was something she had mastered in her years of training, for she didn’t take well submission, nor dictatorship, not to talk about regulations. She had found herself in the sensory-deprivation room more times than she could recall and what had to be a punishment had slowly turned into one of the arts she was better at. She had learned how to slow down the rhythm of her heart, how to even out her breathing when her whole body started to tingle with the need to move and see and hear and scream. Despite her mind always being vigilant, she knew how to relax under the constraints of the trial.

She got out of the room with a smile on her face.

Much easier was the fourth examination, for it involved the angency’s standard batch of foreign languages–English, German, Italian, French, Romanian, Arabic. She had mastered them, like everyone at the Academy, even though at varying degrees. The low intensity of the test was just the rest before the last part of the initiation, but it still prolonged the varying intensity of the whole ordeal to test candidates’ stress endurance. More important than what all the tests examined was, in fact, the person’s ability to withstand lack of sleep, constant forced concentration, and overall mental and physical resistance.

Therefore, all languages were tested thoroughly. Casual and formal conversations were tested almost at once, and Lara was forced to shift from one registry to the other and from one language to the other without warning.

She thought she had it. She could taste her success on the tip of her tongue, she could feel it pouring ecstatic excitement into every fiber of her being.

The fifth trial was killing. And more than that, it was torture. And if candidates could do it on loved ones, they would never have problems doing it on strangers. Lara’s examination had to be performed on her mother. What she did to her then would plague her sleep from months to come and she would only find freedom and comfort in the discovery of her mother’s secret: the billion roubles she had been paid with as a thank-you note for selling her daughter.

It all came back slowly to Lara. And the more she squeezed her eyes to put the ceiling of the room she was in back into focus, the more details popped up in her memory.

The kick she had received in her back.

The blood she had tasted in her mouth when one of the agents she fought with slapped her cheek hard.

The congratulations of the KGB examiner upon her passing initiation.

And then, a phantom-like face among all those memories: Todorovsky, the surgeon in charge of sterilization.

*

The five-star hotel bedroom was amazing, the view on Lake Como was even more. Water, mountains, trees–it made the idea of embarking on this mission a little more bearable. What he enjoyed the most, though, was the place’s tranquillity. Up there, in that hotel that gave on the lake, Clint almost felt himself at home.

“We should get some sleep,” Lara’s voice pulled him out of his contemplation as he leaned against the balustrade of the balcony. “It’s probably going to be a long night.”

“I’ll take the couch.” There was no way both in heaven and hell he’d lie down beside someone like her. She was already in his mind and underneath his skin, he truly didn’t need her that close.

“Don��t be stupid.” She scoffed, taking off her shoes by pulling on them with her feet before undressing until she stood there in matching white bra and panties. “If we have to play this cliché part of husband and wife, you might as well get used to sleeping next to me.” She smirked then, plopping down onto the four-poster bed and sighing in delight. “I wouldn’t mind it if you slept with me, but I’m sure we’ll get there in due time.”

While the general plan had been Steve’s idea, it had been because of her that he found himself in that room. She had excluded partnering up with Steve, for he was almost a celebrity, just as she had said no to Bucky–too risky since Todorovsky and his former KGB and current friends knew about the Winter Soldier. Nat hadn’t even been considered, for everybody knew Black Widow stood with SHIELD, unlike Larisa, who had done anything in her power to keep the status of her affiliations on ‘unknown’.

Instead, she had personally chosen him. There are only three people I trust on this jet, she had said as they were landing. One is yours truly, the second is Nasha, and the third is Clint Barton. And since she’s not a possible option, I’m going with dear Hawkeye.

“We should talk about the mission, instead,” he pointed out, re-entering the room and closing the French window behind his back. He considered laying down on the bed–for a moment, he truly considered such an option. He was tired from the flight, he had a mild headache and a more than mild need to sleep with her as she had not-so-blatantly proposed. Ever since their fighting demonstration, things had gone to shit: she was always–always–among his thoughts and he felt like he’d never be able to get her out if he didn’t act on his impulses.

She hummed and he stared as she took a deep breath, her eyes closed, ankles crossed and hands on her tummy. “What is there to talk about? Steve,” and she stressed his friend’s name, “already went over the plan so many times that now I almost think I’m truly married to you.”

He swallowed and it was then that he realized the thin layer of cold sweat covering the palms of his hands. “We should go over the details,” he retorted. Like when we got married, how long we have known each other, where we met, how we met, who I am. How you like sex. “To make it more credible.”

Lara sighed and she opened her eyes to stare at him. “First of all, you’re playing my husband, so stop avoiding my tits. Nasha gave me a pretty revealing dress and I–we–can’t afford you being a prude with your wife.”

He considered biting back, but instead thought that playing her game could benefit everything–the mission and whatever it was that still lingered between them. He let his eyes gaze down from her face and focused on the lace of her bra. He could see her nipples.

“Second of all,” she went on with a smirk on her lips when she saw what the focus of his attention was, “just follow my lead. I know Todorovsky and the majority of his guests. Plus I’ve already been in this particular villa, so I know my way around.”

“Why didn’t you-”

“Reveal my secrets?” She chuckled. “I told you. I only trust two people apart from me: Nasha and you. I might work for Fury and now for your Scooby-gang of superheroes, but I’m not risking compromising my mission.” She stood up on her knees then and crawled over to where he was standing at the foot of the bed. Her fingers hooked in the belt holes of his jeans, into which he had changed before exiting the quinjet, and she tugged on them. “Nor my chances of getting laid by you.”

It was astonishing, the way she let known the fact that she wanted him. It surely was part of her usual strategy, but good Lord, the things it did to him! He was always there, thinking he was finally a step ahead of her, and the second after he found himself on his ass as she opened that sinning mouth of hers. It wasn’t like he didn’t want that, it wasn’t that he didn’t want to take her on that damn bed, rather, it was the way she said she wanted it and the way his body and his mind reacted to her words. His mind went blank and all blood seemed to rush to his loins.

“Do I make you wet?” he decided to tease.

He truly didn’t think it would fire back. He probably should have expected it, but the truth was, he didn’t. Her hand trailed down her body and it disappeared into her panties. His lungs seemed like they had been caught in a grip as he stared into her eyes.

“Oh, yes, indeed,” she confirmed after a couple of seconds, hand still teasingly moving inside her lingerie. It was then that he noticed the faint, horizontal scar just above the hem of her panties. “Look, I’ll tell you the basics,” she continued then, returning serious, “but we will be together the whole night. You have nothing to worry about that’s not pretending you love me like more than some head you’ve given in a bathroom.”

With a sigh, he resigned to her will. And three hours later, when it was too late to pull back and find someone that could replace him, he found himself staring at the glimmering lights of Bellagio reflecting on the placid waters of the lake.

He was doing anything in his power not to think of the glimmery golden dress Lara was wearing and even less of the fact that she didn’t wear a bra. He was all in for the lovebirds-undercover kind of plan, but he wasn’t sure that was a good idea with the past–and present–he already shared with her.

“You got your earpiece in?” He sensed her behind him even before she spoke, breath warm behind his ear as she pressed a light kiss to the side of his neck.

“Sure.”

He felt her take it out from his ear, then, before she chirped a ‘sorry, guys, end of transmissions’ and let it fall to the ground. He didn’t manage to stop her in time: her golden jewel sandal had already stepped onto it, crushing it. “What?” she shrugged when he glared at her. “We can’t risk anything. Moreover,” she added, taking his hand in hers and guiding him toward the entrance of the villa, “it’s a two-night event. Todorovsky will join his guests on the last night and on the last night only.”

They got quiet when they came too close to the entrance and the gorillas that guarded it. Smiles on their faces, they stopped right before them and Lara handed them their invitation.

“Bogomol,” one of the two men muttered, reading the invitation again and then gazing up at Lara. “Izvestnyj bogomol?”

Clint saw her roll her eyes before her fingers came up to her mouth. She pulled on the lower lip, showed the БГМЛ she had tattooed there and flashed a grin when excitement bubbled up on the two men’s faces.

Then they pointed at Clint. “Drug?” they smirked, eyes evil.

“Muzh,” she retorted, turning to press a kiss on Clint’s cheek.

They let them pass, and Lara guided him across a crowd of seemingly wealthy people and to the open bar. “Two vodkas,” she ordered in Russian and then turned to him. “I also chose you because your Russian is sexy,” she smiled. It was a half-code for ‘you’re the only one besides Nasha that I trust when it comes to Russian,’ something she used to elude the curious stares of the people leaning around the bar.

“Glad you chose your husband based on his knowledge of languages,” he smirked, taking the shots the barista left near them and handing one to Lara. “You’re stunning tonight,” and she truly was. Dressed to the feet in gold, with a neckline that ended right in the middle of the valley of her breasts, she looked like a goddess.

She downed her vodka and he mirrored her and once he was done, she took his glass and put it down onto the bar with hers. She closed the distance between them, then, and her arms circled around his neck. “We should mingle,” she breathed against his neck, lips trailing along his skin and the underside of his jaw, voice low so that nobody would hear. “Get to know the buyers, collect the intel your people want…” She looked up at him then and pecked his lips. “Find a bathroom I can use to repay your favor.”

There was no time to answer her, for she was already tugging him back through the crowd. Anywhere around them, Russian could be heard and rich people could be seen.

He had expected for people to stop mid-conversation and stare at the woman walking before him as they recognized her, like the two men at the entrance, but no one did. He asked her once the crowd wasn’t as thick as they made their way deeper into the villa.

“Those people are just a cover,” she shrugged, showing her hidden tattoo to yet another guard, who stared at her in disbelief before letting them through the closed door. “The real party is in the other wing of the house, and only people like me,” and she turned to wink at him, “can pass.”

“With that tattoo?” He asked and she nodded. “What does it mean?”

“БГМЛ,” she spelled. “Bogomol, or Mantis. Todorovsky was the first one to call me that and when the time to get my passe-partout came, I used that name. Everybody knew me as the Mantis, so it only seemed easier.”

“Does Nat have it?”

She nodded, flashing the acronym to yet another guard. They walked in silence for a few meters before she spoke again. “ЧРВД. I’m sure you know what it stands for.”

Ten minutes later they both stood in the heart of the real party. The music was a little louder, but not deafening as the one that had given him a headache in Lara’s apartment. There were fewer people, but the ones present looked richer, their clothes of better manufacture, and the place in general looked like out of a Russian palace–or like Moldova all over again.

He shouldn’t have been as shocked to see naked women dancing around, glittery golden dust making their bodies shimmer under the lights of the chandelier, but he truly hadn’t expected something like that. This whole party looked friskier than he had thought it to be.

“The auction,” he decided to ask, following Lara outside, on the balcony. “What are they selling?”

“Things,” she answered, enigmatic amusement twinkling in her eyes. She pulled him closer then, hugged him to pretend like they were dancing to the slow music. “Relics from Russia’s glorious past, weapons, people…” She nuzzled her face in the crook of his neck, kissed his pulse-point, swiped the flat of her tongue over it.

To anyone watching, it would look like a couple–whatever the roles between the two of them were–taking some liberties in the cool summer air. To Clint, though… He wanted it to be like that–he truly did want it, against his better judgment and his common sense–, and he couldn’t help the shiver of irritation that ran down his spine as his hands rested on her hips and pulled her closer. “People?” he asked.

She nodded. “Fellow girls from the Red Room were sold in these auctions. Some agents choose this outlet as a way to gain more missions or general visibility. Others,” and she sucked the sweet spot just below his jaw, one hand snaking down between their bodies to palm him over the pants of his tuxedo, “are simply sold for their bodies.”

He gasped when she gently squeezed him and he couldn’t stop himself from leaning his head down to kiss down her neck, inhaling her perfume, the same that had driven him nuts at Tony’s party.

“I hear they’re selling one of Rasputin’s nails,” she revealed after a while. “I’d really like to try my luck with it.”

“We’re not here for fun,” he reminded her and he felt her pout against his skin.

She moved back a little, stared up at him, caressed the sides of his face and then those of his neck. “Tonight we are. I told you: your man will only be here tomorrow night. Today, though, is our chance to get to know the guests, identify the buyers so that you–the good guys–can arrest them or do whatever it is that you do-”

“You’re supposed to be one of the good guys, too,” he pointed out, hands crawling up her bare back, awaking goosebumps on her skin.

Lara’s lips stretched in one of those smirks he loved so much. “Key-word: supposed. I’m neither good nor bad, I’m simply neutral. This is why no one questioned my presence her or my sympathies. I’m the wild card that could screw everyone and everything up. Plus, I have ways to keep my life classified, and no one knows anything about what I’m doing in America. And I’ll tell you a secret,” she grinned, lowering her voice even more. “Most of the things in my file-”

“It’s classified,” Clint frowned. She had a level-one pass, she shouldn’t have been able to read it.

“I have my ways,” she answered, tilting her head to the side and pressing a kiss on the corner of his lips. “As I was saying, though, many of the things in my file are not even remotely true. Only Nasha could spill my secrets, but she won’t do it, for I wouldn’t tell hers even if I was tortured.”

He looked down at her, scanned her features in search of any trace of a lie. And he didn’t know why he did that: below that lovely-wife façade, he couldn’t see anything else. But he stared at her and his hands slid down her body to rest on her butt. “Tell me one of your secrets?”

She snorted at that and smothered her hands over his hair to fix what the unexpected wind had tousled. “What will I get in change?”

Clint shrugged, making her twirl around when a guest passed by them. He pulled her toward him, her back against his chest, and ground his hard-on against her ass. “Anything.”

He heard her swallow and waited for an answer as her head fell back against his chest, his arms wrapping more tightly around her. “The thing I have for you,” she whispered. “It’s not a strategy. I think I really do like you. And it scares me because it’s never happened before.”

They both swayed at the rhythm of the music in silence then, both enjoying the physical contact with the other, and the calm lake night. They stared at the guests they could see inside the lit hall, the way they moved around each other, read their lips as they talked in hushed Russian, studied their body language.

It took them a while to snap out of their reverie and it was Lara who broke the silence. “You said I could have anything,” she said, turning around in Clint’s arms and staring up at him. “I told you my secret, so it’s only fair I get what you promised.”

“You want me?” he asked, eyes trailing down to her parted lips. He slightly bent to kiss them, tugging on the lower lip as if to tease her tattoo and for a split second he wondered how much it had hurt to get those four letters marked into the sensitive skin.

“I want you,” she confirmed, fingers playing on the back on his neck.

“You want me now?”

She nodded. “I want you now.”

“What about these people? Weren’t you the one saying we should gather intel from them?”

Her hand snaked between their bodies again, but unlike before, it now slipped down his shirt and straight into his pants. In the constraints of his pants, her hand seemed to press deliciously harder against his erection. “The night is still young, Clint,” she whispered against his cheek, slowly teasing him with her fingers. “And I’ve been wanting you for almost ten years.”

When they met each other’s gaze again, he could only imagine his pupils to be as blown as hers. His breathing was heavier against the skin of her face, his skin felt hotter, his mind dizzier. “Yeah?” he swallowed.

She removed her hand from his pants and moved him so that he had his back to the hall and the French window that led to the terrace that gave onto the rich gardens of the villa. “Yeah,” she hummed, kneeling down before him.

She was fumbling with the button of his pants and the zipper before he had the time to realize what she was up to. And when he caught up, he had to fight against himself and put a hand on hers. “What are you doing?” He could barely focus, breathing slow and hard, as he felt his heartbeat throb in his loins.

“I’m thanking you for the amazing head you gave me at Stark’s charity bullshit,” she grinned up at him, freeing her hand from his grasp and lowering the zipper. “And this time there’s no Natalya Romanova cockblocking us.”

Terrified of the idea of someone seeing them, Clint stood as still as he could, eyes fixed on the woman knelt between his legs. He stared as she took him out of his briefs, as she gently stroke him, as she smirked at the sight of the angry-red tip of his cock.

“On that plane from Hungary,” she started, lips inching closer to him. “The only thing you had to do, was ask.”

Right then, she kissed his head, pressed her lips against his hot skin, and he could only let out a shuddering breath. He should have done that–he thought–, should have asked for what he wanted. He had taken her in Chișinău and he had taken her at Tony’s party, and in neither occasion had he had her as he wanted.

His mind went blank when she wrapped her lips around him, tongue teasing the head, her hand slowly massaging his base. He had to close his eyes when she hummed lowly around him as she took him deeper into her mouth and he steadied himself by putting his hands on her shoulders to avoid bending his knees.

It was slow, but Clint didn’t mind. He had wanted her so badly, all those years spent fantasizing, and now that he finally had her–or as much of her as she was willing to give–he wanted the moment to last, he wanted to savor it, to remember it.

 ***

Part three anyone? hmu

TAGS (to be added to or to be removed from any list, shoot me an ask. Same goes for ‘Bratva’)

Everything: @idhrenniel @saibh29 @fuckthatfeeling @aya-fay @pebblesz892  @mblaqgi

Bratva (people not on the lists but that might still be interested): @sweetvengeancee @kind-wolf + a couple of lovely people that showed interest when I asked: @flowers-in-your-hayr@pagan-geek-girl-4-life

#clint barton #clint barton imagine #clint barton smut #clint barton marvel #clint barton x oc #hawkeye imagine #hawkeye smut #hawkeye marvel #hawkeye x oc #angelaiswriting #oc larisa efimovna goncharova #oc larisa goncharova #oc larisa #marvel imagine #marvel fanfiction #marvel fanfic #marvel smut

[kathryninjapan]

June 9th - Free Day 

Path on the Kumo Gawa 

     Today was our last free day in Japan. I woke up a little later than usual and made my (now usual) breakfast of udon noodles and instant soup. Most of my friends went to Osaka today, but I really just wanted to be by myself. We’ve been together every day for 3 weeks, and I miss having time to be alone. It sounds a little bad to say because they're all really cool people, but it was so nice to not have to consider anyone else when I decided what I wanted to do today.

     I played stardew valley for about an hour in the mid-morning, then took a short nap because I could. I really wanted to walk down the main river in town, as there are always people walking down it and it has some really beautiful views. I started off at around 12:45 without a clear goal in mind, and just enjoyed the company of the ducks on the way. I’ll talk about it more in my media reflection, though. 

      When the river split in two, I checked the map and noticed I was halfway to the Kyoto botanical gardens. Since I was already out, I finished my walk over there. The gardens were really nice! The map included a calendar of when everything bloomed, and the big thing in the summer are the lily and rose gardens. The rose gardens were my favorite, with over 200 species of rose grown there. They filled the entire space with a really nice smell (made nicer by the fact that this is one of the first days I’ve been able to smell for a while), and I enjoyed walking around the different gardens. I had a really nice coffee at the cafe in the center and saw a couple taking wedding pictures as well. 

     After I got back, I went to a cat cafe with Valerie to try and satiate my need to pet my cat. The cafe was a lot better than I thought it would be - clean smelling with really friendly cats. They handed us a book with their names and personalities and made sure that everyone treated the cats properly. My favorite was a huge girl named Sumomo, who made meows that sounded like she was talking. The cats here liked to be pat really hard on the end of their backs, which I thought was strange, but it was the only way to get them to like me so you do what you need to, I suppose. 

Roses at Kyoto Botanical Gardens 

This flower looked like it was from the Lorax 

Japanese Lily garden at Kyoto Botanical Gardens 

Orchids at Kyoto Botanical Gardens 

Latte I got at Kyoto Botanical Gardens 

Cats being fed at the cafe 

This boy hung out under our table! 

Media Reflection - Kumo Gawa 

OP of K-On, featuring the Kumo Gawa 

     Rivers are commonly found in Japan, and therefore just as common in anime. Any anime set in Kyoto will probably have a shot of Kumo gawa in it, but in general, rivers serve as a meeting place, an easy place to do a dramatic running scene, and a beautiful area to pass over in between scenes. Even in anime that takes place in other cities, these are common tropes. In hinamatsuri, which doesn't have a specified location, there is a battle on a river bank, While Iroduku features many breathtaking shots of rivers in Nagasaki. These are often my favorite scenes when I watch anime, so I was really excited to see what kind of environment drew both the characters to these places and the authors to include them so often

      In K-On, a Kyoto animation production, there is a famous shot in the opening where the girls cross the river. At several points during my walk, the river was crossable by way of large stones, sometimes in the shape of turtles. I saw many children playing across them, very much like the shot in the OP. It was cute to watch, and I also tried it myself on the way home - super fun to do by the split in the river because there are small beaches on either side and lots of kids around that made me smile.

     There is also a shot of them racing around on their bikes down by the bank, and that could not be a truer portrayal. When I made my first walk not many older kids were out, so it was mainly children riding bikes next to their parents, or groups of people biking to exercise. There was a couple riding on one bike, with the girl sitting sideways behind the guy, which I thought was cute. On my way back, though, it was a whole other world. I had to walk on the grass for a good portion of it because the path was taken up completely by teens biking in huge groups going who knows where. I can only imagine what it would look like on a school day.

     As I walked down the river, this was exactly what I saw. There were children running around with butterfly nets, young couples sitting on the river bank, groups running and biking, men taking their lunch break in the shade, an old man and his wife spreading birdseed under a river. It seemed as though the paths on either side of this river were a unifying force in a town that holds so many kinds of people. Every age group and walk of life could be found here enjoying the day. 

     One thing that didn't quite meet my expectation was the massive groups of people that accumulated in certain areas, and just the amount of people in general. In an anime, the focus needs to be on the action at hand, so people in the background tended to be limited in number. However, actually walking down the river was quite different. I swear I passed entire classrooms of schoolchildren eating lunch at one point. Also, there was so much more noise than I thought there would be, In addition to the large pockets of people I would pass and the general chatter of birds, I passed over 10 people practicing musical instruments. From a man playing his trumpet to a young boy and his teacher going through a violin lesson, very rarely was I not listening to some kind of music. It was really fun, but definitely not something I would have ever expected. I feel as though a lot of the life of the river is cut out to make the drama happening between characters more isolated and easier to understand. 

Comparison of the Kumo Gawa in anime and in real life 

Scene in Hina featuring a riverbank

Path on the Kuno Gawa

Path on the Kumo Gawa 

Stepping stone bridge on the Kumo Gawa

#japan #japanese #travel #kyoto #garden #flower #botanical gardens #abroad #study abroad #anime #hinamatsuri #river

[livmoose]

Va, Tosca!

I’ve been fascinated by ‘Tosca’ since three years ago, when I first heard it in Kiev opera. What motivated me to dig deeper was the stubborn anti-Puccini bias of music critics that started with the opera’s (nay, it's antecedent play’s) premiere and didn’t really cease by this day. Which I cannot understand at all: ‘Tosca’ is literally one of the most popular operas in the world, outperformed only by such eminent names as Verdi’s ‘La Traviata’, Mozart’s ‘Die Zauberflöte’, Puccini’s own ‘La Boheme’ and Bizet’s ‘Carmen’. So what gives?

‘Tosca’, original poster, 1899

The premise of this 3-act opera by Giacomo Puccini is rather simple: a villain wants a girl who loves a boy who loves her back and also helps revolutionaries. And also it’s a tragedy, like in a Shakespearean Everybody Dies kind of tragedy. You can pretty much guess the plot from there.

What I personally like about this opera is the combination of lightning-fast plot (the action takes place within several hours on June 17-18, 1800), finely developed character portraits, and music that explains and foreshadows everything you need to know.

Naturally, I don’t take the vague criticisms of ‘Tosca’ all that well.

Ha più forte sapore [bits of history and background]

Puccini’s opera is based on a 1887 5-act play ‘La Tosca’ by Victorien Sardou.

Puccini had seen La Tosca at least twice, in Milan and Turin. On 7 May 1889 he wrote to his publisher, Giulio Ricordi, begging him to get Sardou’s permission for the work to be made into an opera: ‘I see in this Tosca the opera I need, with no overblown proportions, no elaborate spectacle, nor will it call for the usual excessive amount of music.’

M.J. Philips-Matz ‘Puccini: A Biography’

I found this quote, and it instantly clicked: it’s exactly why I like ‘Tosca’.

In contrast to Sardou’s initial work, Puccini’s opera is much more succinct and direct. It has almost zero overblown dialogues and soliloquies that don’t promote the plot or develop characters (well, maybe there is this one lyric soprano-tenor duetto ‘Amaro sol per te m’era il morire’ [‘Only for you did death taste bitter for me’] in act III that’s a bit too long for my taste, but even this slow moment is essential because it gives the audience an opportunity to breathe as the final shockwave looms closer). But the rest of it is actually interesting to see and hear.

For me, ‘Tosca’ is one of the very few operas that are targeted at people who are not fifteen and overly dramatic adult audiences who don’t need same things repeated at them all the time and who can catch what is happening without seeing each and every small detail. Puccini squeezed Sardou’s acts II, III and IV into a single second act, and it works. We as an audience don’t need to see the whole scene at Cavaradossi’s house to understand what happened there. We can use our imagination to paint the rest of the picture.

Looks like the critics do not agree with me on this one.

Perché, perché, Signore [criticisms galore]

The infuriating part about the critical landscape of ‘Tosca’ is that the critics don’t seem to agree on a single point of reproof. Some complain that the opera is too wordy; others, conversely, are not satisfied with the plot rushness (the view that both librettists of ‘Tosca’, Illica and Giacosa shared). Critics called the opera ‘three hours of noise’ that lacks style and cohesion. Julian Budden [opera scholar] faulted the ‘inept handling of the political element’ while commending ‘a triumph of pure theatre’. Burton Fisher [opera writer] described the sensuous love duet ‘Qual’occhio’ as ‘an almost erotic lyricism’ and ‘pornophony’.

Is it just me, or do the critics dislike ‘Tosca’ precisely for the nuances I love about it: coherence of the plot, acute and restrained drama, absence of excessive political speculations (it was not meant to be goddamn ‘Les Miserables’) and, well, musical puns? More on that later.

Not to say ‘Tosca’ didn’t receive its share of praise. Charles Osborne [music critic] believed the plot of ‘Tosca’ was taut and effective while the characters had enough opportunities to shine both in terms of dramatic development and musical elaborateness. Some also praised the richness of Puccini’s score:

[Puccini] finds in his palette all colours, all shades; in his hands, the instrumental texture becomes completely supple, the gradations of sonority are innumerable, the blend unfailingly grateful to the ear.

Ippolito Valetta [music critic] ‘Rassegna Musicale’ in ‘Nuova Antologia’

The aspect of criticism that I did find explainable was based on ‘disconcerting vulgarities’ as put by Gabriel Fauré [composer]. To be honest, the opera really does not lack in violence: Tosca undergoes sexual assault, is broken by the need to defend her chastity with murder and by the death of a beloved, and finally commits suicide. For the public back in 1900 such developments truly could be regarded as a bit too much.

For modern audiences, however, the events are nothing to be shied away from. The opera aged exceedingly well, not losing a bit of its attractiveness in romantic and dramatic sense. Even more so, the criticism that ‘Tosca’ still receives today makes little sense. Joseph Kerman’s [musicologist] remark on ‘Tosca’ as a ‘shabby little shocker’ from the middle of the century, well after the actual real-life shock of two world wars and the brusque shift of public morale, was way off the mark. Thomas Beecham [conductor] bitingly responded that anything Kerman said about Puccini could ‘safely be ignored’ (it almost makes one thing something personal’s involved).

Besides, some modern scholars share my perception of ‘Tosca’s treatment:

Scholarly presses and journals still deeming [Puccini’s] operas too popular to be worthy of serious study continue to shoot themselves in their collective foot.

Deborah Burton ‘Tosca’s Rome: The Play and the Opera in Historical Perspective (review)’

By Burton, Puccini was often simply ‘snubbed by the musicological establishment’. The fun part? Puccini put on his Scarpia persona to cynically and kind of affectionately if you ask me describe ‘Tosca’ as ‘zibaldone’ [‘hodgepodge’]. He referred to it as ‘a vile opera’ and ‘quella putana di Roma’ [‘that Roman whore’]. If this isn’t love.

Già, mi dicon venal [quick glance at the initial play]

Similar criticism of abundance of violence was applied to Sardou’s play. Tosca’s behavior was deemed ‘unchaste’, and the brutality disturbed both critics and theatre fans. Jules Favre [statesman] even called it ‘cette pièce vulgaire, sans intrigue, sans caractères, sans moeurs’ [‘vulgar piece, without intrigue, without characters, without morals’].

The most offensive part of the play was, apparently, Cavaradossi’s torture. Even off-stage, his screams prodded the critics to warn women against seeing ‘La Tosca’ as the play could ‘inflict irreparable injury on persons yet unborn’.

Despite this, the play was an immediate success. It toured around the world, and even the harshest critics couldn’t ignore its dramatic effect:

As to the play itself, I will only add that it is offensive in its morals, corrupt in its teaching, and revolting in its brutality, and yet everyone who admires acting is bound to see it.

Cecil Howard [theatre critic] ‘La Tosca’, ‘The Theatre’

So. Let’s see what threw people in such a dismay, shall we.

Io de’ sospiri [plot and why it’s good]

Sylvester Feodosiyevich Shchedrin ‘New Rome. Castel Sant’Angelo’, oil on canvas, 1823

It all starts with Roman ex-consul Angelotti escaping the clutches of tyrannical justice. The fugitive runs into Mario Cavaradossi, painter and Bonapartist who agrees to help him. Two men are interrupted by Mario’s passionate lover and Roman opera celebrity, Floria Tosca. After a fit of jealousy she leaves the church, and Cavaradossi leads Angelotti away from the city to hide in his villa. Right afterwards, Baron Scarpia, chief of police and the embodiment of tyranny emerges on stage and, when Tosca returns, devises to use her jealousy to lead him to Mario and Angelotti.

Second act is all about torturing Cavaradossi (off-stage) and Tosca’s gradual breakdown. Scarpia demands the location of Angelotti, which she surrenders to save Mario from suffering. Then Scarpia tries to force Tosca to give herself to him, which she agrees in exchange for her lover’s life - only to stab unsuspecting Scarpia with a knife.

The rest of the main cast dies during the third act. Mario’s ‘staged’ execution appears to be not so fake as Scarpia promised. Tosca, inconsolable and heartbroken, jumps to her death as the soldiers, who discovered Scarpia’s body, corner her on the ramparts of Castel Sant’Angelo.

The plot pretty much follows Sardou’s play, although the action was tightened (mostly by avoiding obvious plot turns) and the list of characters sharply compressed.

Sardou’s act III features a scene that is not present in Puccini’s opera: Cavaradossi’s villa, the painter, Angelotti, and later Tosca and Scarpia. One of the things I liked about the opera is that it doesn’t have this scene. It’s excessive and basically tells nothing that audience couldn’t have picked up from the unobtrusive operatic dialogue in act II. Puccini - Sardou 1:0.

Obviously, Mario’s execution was not fake. In the play, Spoletta reveals this fact to Tosca. In the opera, he at first misunderstands Scarpia’s order (hilariously so, as he nearly confesses the whole thing to Tosca), which allows the audience to guess their scheme. 2:0 for subtlety.

In act II, Scarpia questions Mario with the backdrop of Tosca’s cantata performance off-stage, in the depths of Palazzo Farnese. 3:0, this whole piece is just gorgeous.

Puccini wanted ‘La Tosca’s plot stripped of everything excessive (which is, lamentably, a rare practice for operatic genre):

[Puccini] cut Tosca to the bone, leaving three strong characters trapped in an airless, violent, tightly wound melodrama that had little room for lyricism.

M.J. Philips-Matz ‘Puccini: A Biography’

Ignoring criticisms, Puccini also persevered in his clear vision of how the ending should be - by the way, nearly the single thing he and Sardou agreed upon. A good thing undoubtedly; I’d hate for this to happen:

Puccini’s librettists also disliked the suicide, and an alternate ending for the opera was (briefly) considered: rather than leap, Tosca would go mad, collapse, and die on the body of her lover (presumably of Sudden Operatic Death Syndrome).

Susan Vandiver Nicassio ‘Ten Things You Didn’t Know about Tosca’

Pure gold of a remark. Thank you, Susan.

‘Tosca’ is a very tight, succinct work, beautifully paced. I like how the acts are structured and developed. Act I, the longest one, was clearly meant to be expositional. Also, it’s the melodramatic one, with inclusion of comedic motifs that significantly lighten the mood (think the character of the Sacristan and continuous good-hearted mocking of Tosca by her lover).

Act II is unexpectedly macabre: there’s not a trace of the lightheartedness of act I. A real drama ensues, with torture, violence and grim ending (Tosca murders Scarpia in cold blood, which I, as a cynic, viciously enjoy every time). This act is also shorter while it still has enough room for Scarpia’s intricate manipulation and blooming deconstruction of Tosca. The characters are well-developed and nicely motivated (at least in part Sardou’s merit).

Act III is the shortest (just over 20 minutes), and it’s a full-on tragedy. The final plot twist was hardly intended as one. This act is an emotional roller-coaster. Combining hope and death, it is based on fragmented pieces, which makes the whole thing feel real, not operatic. The opera ends strong and loud, and it’s perfect that way. The audience is left with the sense of tragedy that is not undermined by unnecessary lyricism of long pre-death arias (like in Verdi’s ‘La Traviata’, I absolutely hate the last act). With the rush of events, the delay at this point would be unendurable.

‘Tosca’ is chaotic in its final scene, just as it should be. Tosca the character makes the (suicide) decision in a blink of an eye, and I absolutely love the impression that she makes it out of egotistical motives: she is to be captured by the soldiers - not because Mario is dead. This is the kind of nuance that defines the difference between real living people and operatic character embryos. When the opera ends, I always find myself speechless and anguished not irritated at how annoyingly long it takes for the characters to die (looking at you, Verdi).

E lucevan le stelle [characters breakdown]

Palazzo Farnese, 2018. Now French Embassy in Rome

First and strongest impression about the characters of ‘Tosca’: gosh, they are not dumb! So it is possible.

One of the major appeals of ‘Tosca’ is that the characters feel like real people instead of archetypal damsel in distress, knight in shining armor and flat cardboard villain. Although Scarpia bends a bit in that direction, being completely satisfied with his villainous villainy, he acknowledges it, giving off the air of a ‘connoisseur of evil’ instead. William Ashbrook [musicologist] recognized Puccini as a portraitist who honed lifelike characters. Even the smaller characters like the Sacristan (‘an avaricious hypocrite’), Angelotti (exhausted but proud-spirited escapee) and Spoletta (when Scarpia says ‘jump’ he asks how high a perfect minion) are miniature studies of human nature. ‘Tosca’, in his opinion, is a portrait gallery of real-life people.

Floria Tosca [soprano]

For some unfathomable reason, ‘Tosca’ is defined as a melodrama, which is totally different from how it feels with its darkness and the fact that everybody of significance dies in the end. Wiki says melodrama is ‘a dramatic work in which the plot, which is typically sensational and designed to appeal strongly to the emotions’ - basically, plot over characters. Instead, [scenic] tragedy (defined by Google) is ‘a play dealing with tragic events and having an unhappy ending, especially one concerning the downfall of the main character’.

The latter is literally the plot of ‘Tosca’, especially as the title character undergoes a whole set of the most traumatic experiences (concessions to conscience, attempted rape, murder in defense, witnessing torture and execution of a loved one) in a span of just several hours. This set of experiences naturally draws a basis for her downfall (literally): under stress and with no opportunity to think thoroughly, it is not surprising that Tosca commits suicide.

She is strong-willed and passionate, pure-hearted (which is probably why she doesn’t see through Scarpia’s schemes) but not stupid, loyal but also jealous. More out of habit, if we to believe Julian Budden [opera scholar]:

[Cavaradossi, act I, scene 5] Mia gelosa! [My jealous [Tosca]!]

[Tosca] Si, lo sento, ti tormento, senza posa. [Yes, I feel it, I torment you unceasingly.]

All in all, she is a harmonious character in dire circumstances, and it’s a true delight to observe how Tosca, despite how broken and devastated she is, finds the power to oppose her offender. This is the real plot twist (character twist?) of the opera - and I assume the reason that ‘Vissi d’arte’, Tosca’s major aria (an emotional plea of a character who is about to betray her very self) is so well-known and recognized.

Mario Cavaradossi [tenor]

In comparison with Tosca, Cavaradossi is a deceptive character. At first glance he might appear rather flat: nothing more than a loyal lover and a proud revolutionary. Upon closer inspection, however, the audience discovers liveliness and realism many male operatic characters severely lack: he jokes with Tosca instead of oh-so-common sickeningly sweet sighs of love. He knows her flaw of being prone to jealousy - but doesn’t take it too close to heart. He listens to her without interruption as she tells him about Scarpia’s advances (for sure, I was waiting for a hateful scene where he would scream ‘how could you’ at his lover and bang his head against a wall). And he actually knows how to appreciate that she willingly sacrificed her purity for his sake (and he sings an aria about it, too: ‘O dolci mani’ [‘Oh, sweet hands’]).

Besides the believable romance with Tosca, Cavaradossi has excellent dynamics with Scarpia. As the news of Napoleon’s victory arrive, Mario - once tortured - cannot resist the urge to relish in how stars turned for his nemesis:

[Cavaradossi, act II, scene 4] Vittoria! Vittoria! L’alba vindice appar che fa gli empi tremar! Libertà sorge, crollan tirannidi! [Victory! Victory! The avenging dawn now rises to make the wicked tremble! And liberty returns, the scourge of tyrants!]

Tosca tries to stop his prideful speech, aware of how this flows right into Scarpia’s intention to lock revolutionary Cavaradossi up. But Mario is lost in his surging emotions and forgets both himself and his lover at this moment - truly a detail each of us can relate to.

And also Cavaradossi seems to know that his death is not going to be faked - a twist that no one but pure-hearted Tosca is fooled by. He doesn’t believe in Scarpia’s generosity for a moment, and so he doesn’t even try to pretend he is surprised but ironically ridicules the mere idea of a magnanimous villain:

[Cavaradossi, act III, scene 3] Scarpia che cede? La prima sua grazia è questa… [Scarpia yields? This is his first act of clemency…]

Unbelieving but relieved by Tosca’s appearance and intoxicated by her hopeful rambling, Mario chooses to spend his last moments languishing in her presence: he doesn’t want to spoil this time for neither of them. Beniamino Gigli [opera singer, performed as Cavaradossi] wrote in his autobiography that ‘[Mario] is certain that these are their last moments together on earth, and that he is about to die’.

This interpretation of the character is common among the opera singers:

Unlike Floria, Cavaradossi knows that Scarpia never yields, though he pretends to believe in order to delay the pain for Tosca.

Tito Gobbi [opera singer and director]

However, instead of displaying understandable despair, Cavaradossi falls back to his original optimistic self and starts to subtly mock Tosca’s attempts to teach him how to die theatrically. She replies with ‘non ridere’ [‘you mustn’t laugh’], and he softly reassures her. They’re just so sweet together without the usual operatic mawkishness.

(I suspect Tosca is not entirely convinced of their unscathed escape from the clutches of now-dead Scarpia, as well. No wonder she feels uncomfortable at the prolonged preparations.)

Baron Scarpia [baritone]

The villain of this story was actually the first among the main cast to catch my attention. Scarpia is just so explicitly entertaining in his sardonic wickedness. Still, I can see how he could be interpreted as the least 3-dimensional of the three.

Scarpia is a clever interrogator and a talented manipulator. He knows where to hit and when to push to get the answers he needs. Pressing Tosca more and more, he breaks through her defenses until she is frustrated and annoyed to the point of losing her self-control:

[Scarpia, act II, scene 4] L’Attavanti non era dunque alla villa? [So, the Attavanti was not at the villa?]

[Tosca] No, egli era solo. [No, he was alone.]

[Scarpia] Solo? Ne siete ben sicura? [Alone? Are you quite sure?]

[Tosca] Nulla sfugge ai gelosi. Solo! Solo! [Nothing escapes a jealous eye. Alone. Alone!]

[Scarpia] Davver? [Indeed!]

[Tosca] Solo, sì! [Yes. Alone!]

[Scarpia] Quanto fuoco! Par che abbiate paura di tradirvi. [You protest too much! Perhaps you fear you may betray yourself.]

Tosca, with her passionate, fiery temperament, explodes - Scarpia knows about this peculiarity all too well and is able to use her outburst as a clue in his investigation. He continues the pressure all through act II: Mario is tortured, and Tosca is forced to listen to his agony. She eventually crumbles, unable to persevere in keeping Mario’s secret:

[Tosca, act II, scene 4] Nel pozzo… nel giardino… [In the well… in the garden…]

This confession is so succinct, just like the rest of the dialogue in this opera. Tosca doesn’t say ‘wait, I’ll tell you everything’, doesn’t try to play for time; she just betrays the whole thing in two short phrases, without specifying what she means. There’s no need: they’re on the same page.

And then Scarpia goes one step beyond and acknowledges his villainous ways, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing but makes him a bit more caricature. Delightfully so, but still. While Tosca nurtures released Cavaradossi to conscience, Baron cunningly waits for the opportune moment, and strikes, ordering Spoletta to bring in Angelotti. He gloats at Cavaradossi, smugness dripping off of him: see, she betrayed your trust! Mario, tortured, exhausted, half-conscious, falls for it, throwing Tosca’s hands away:

[Scarpia, act II, scene 4] Nel pozzo… del giardino. Va, Spoletta. [In the well… In the garden. Get him, Spoletta.]

[Cavaradossi] Ah! M’hai tradito! [Ah, you have betrayed me!]

Cavaradossi picks this up from the dialogue between Scarpia and Spoletta - again, no one clarifies anything. Like you do in real life. Subtlety y’all.

Now that the villain has Cavaradossi locked up and preparations for his execution in progress, he is one step away from getting what he wanted from the start. Tosca consents to sleep with him but still cannot conceal her hatred, unavoidable ‘you can have my body but not my heart’ trope, which doesn’t stop his lust in the least - on the contrary, inflames him more:

[Scarpia, act II, scene 5] Che importa? Spasimi d’ira, spasimi d’amore! [What does it matter? Spasms of wrath or spasms of passion…]

Naturally, when Scarpia is finally killed by Tosca, the audience is bound to feel satisfaction and not regret. Even Floria, the established virtuous character, has no shame as she recognizes Scarpia as the ultimate threat:

[Tosca, act II, scene 5] Ti soffoca il sangue? Muori dannato! Muori! Muori! Muori! È morto! Or gli perdono! E avanti a lui tremava tutta Roma! [Is your blood choking you? Die accursed! Die! Die! Die! He is dead! And now I pardon him! All Rome trembled before him!]

But Scarpia is a disillusioned aristocrat rather than a one-dimensional villain. What lets him gain more flesh is his motivations - get rid of the rebels (for power rather than ideological considerations) and get the girl (personal gain), - his backstory and notoriety among the revolutionaries, working relationships with other characters and the fact that he continues to live through his actions (arguably the main theme of the opera). Even when dead, Scarpia continues to serve as a villain of the story: Mario dies, and Tosca shouts her curses at him:

[Tosca, act III, scene 4] O Scarpia, avanti a Dio! [Oh, Scarpia, [we meet] before God!]

This gives weight to the character as Baron doesn’t disappear as soon as he dies. His life and death both have consequences. His actions have lasting power - a feature that fictional villains far too commonly neglect.

Even though Scarpia possesses some cartoonish features, he is far from being as simple as Wile E. Coyote. Meep meep.

Vissi d’arte [finally, let’s talk music]

Riccardo Manci ‘Mario Cavaradossi singing ‘E lucevan le stelle’, inspired by the tenor Giancarlo Monsalve’, 2014

William Ashbrook described Puccini’s music as ‘telegraphic’ and ‘highly charged’. The reason behind such an impression is the combination of several major leitmotifs that interact, evolve and explain the story. Fugitive motif, love of Tosca and Mario, Scarpia’s theme, torture motif, Tosca’s theme and Cavaradossi’s farewell to life are used as a patchwork that tells the story. These leitmotifs - what Edward Greenfield [music critic] calls ‘Grand Tune’ concept - are memorable and unique, as well as quite distinct from their musical surroundings:

Puccini does not develop or modify his motifs, nor weave them into the music symphonically, but uses them to refer to characters, objects and ideas, and as reminders within the narrative.

Burton Fisher ‘Tosca: Opera Study Guide and Libretto’

Torture motif is one succinct example of how a single simple melody is used to pump up the mood. It first appears as a foreshadowing with Scarpia’s forming intention as he learns Cavaradossi was taken into custody:

[Scarpia, act II, scene 2] Meno male! [Not bad, not bad!]

It grows more and more pronounced as Cavaradossi is questioned - threatening but not quite powerful yet. On the backdrop, Tosca’s cantata also gains volume and solemnity - pure delight mixed with anticipation of terror:

[Scarpia, act II, scene 3] Questo è luogo di lagrime! Badate! Or basta! Rispondete! [Beware! This is a place for tears! Enough now. Answer me!]

And the theme finally loses its careful insinuative tone and thunders at full volume when Scarpia orders Mario into the torture chamber, right before Tosca’s eyes:

[Scarpia, act II, scene 4] Mario Cavaradossi, qual testimone il Giudice vi aspetta. [Mario Cavaradossi, the judge awaits your testimony.]

The melody elaborates with Mario’s torture heard from off-stage, reaching its breaking point as Tosca breaks and reveals Angelotti’s hiding. It repeats again after Mario is released - slow and woeful, intertwined with Tosca’s and Mario’s love theme that is now devoid of its previous light hopefulness.

Statue of Michael the Archangel, Castel Sant'Angelo, 2018

I love how music acts as a separate character in the opera. It talks to the characters, responds to them, inquires and leads the conversation. In act I, while Cavaradossi sings about his love to Tosca, the Sacristan reprovingly grumbles about obscene youth on the background. Besides, here lies the great benefit of veristic [realistic] opera that allows the characters to have duologues - Mario and Floria sing their lines separately in a conversational form rather than a boring duet.

Music gives the opportunities of quieter moments, to talk in phrases but also in gestures. During act II, Tosca uses gestures a number of times to answer Scarpia: a nod of the head, a wave; subtle yet expressive. They nearly don’t talk while Scarpia writes her a letter of safe passage. This quiet scene also allows Tosca’s character to unfold, her decision to feel earned. She sees the knife, she hesitates a moment; then she grabs it and hides behind her back: the decision is made. No words necessary; the score allows the characters to be silent while it tells and develops their story.

And it also allows the characters to talk all at once, without listening to each other. By the middle of Act II, as they learn about the battle of Marengo, Mario starts to shout about victory, Tosca tries to shut him up, and Scarpia reels about hanging the revolutionary. They clamor; chaos ensues, and music supports the flurry of eddying noises by playing disparate motifs. The best part about this scene is that it delivers the message loud and clear, on both levels of plot and emotions.

Talking about Puccini’s score, it’s impossible to ignore the musical cohesion and integrity: each of the three main characters has their theme and their own designated aria that allows them to shine. Moreover, as each of their arias happen once per act, I enjoy the interpretation of their dominance: Scarpia in act I, Tosca in act II, Cavaradossi in act III.

Act I. Scarpia’s ‘Te Deum’: lust, menace, church bells

The theme of the villain is played out in contrasts that reflect his character: cunning and smart - but ruthless and just on this side of crazy. Scarpia is also a figure of power, both literally and figuratively, and he is foreshadowed in the score long before the actual appearance of the character on stage. As Baron is first mentioned in the conversation of Angelotti and Cavaradossi, his dark theme abruptly breaks through the much less strident music:

[Angelotti, act I, scene 6] Tutto ella ha osato onde sottrarmi a Scarpia scellerato! [She has dared all to save me from that scoundrel Scarpia!]

Immediately, this menacing ascending theme is associated with the villain. Later, as he enters the stage, no one calls him by his name, yet the audience immediately recognizes him as Scarpia as he is accompanied by that same simple motif.

The appearance of Baron sobers and darkens the mood instantly, his leitmotif invading other themes unscrupulously. Establishing yet another contrast, his conversation with Tosca is escorted by the tolling of bells that lasts till the end of act I. Scarpia raves about his poison spreading through Tosca’s thoughts, and his unnerving, acrid soliloquy transforms into the solemn Adagio religioso in ‘Te Deum’.

This superposition of profane lust of a ferocious man and sacred sublimity of the Catholic chant is what makes the audience shudder. The final ‘Te aeternum Patrem omnis terra veneratur’ [‘Everlasting Father, all the earth worships thee’] should be the solemn virtuous hymn to God but instead the act ends with Scarpia’s theme reiterated in thunderous chords - an ominous admonition of impending threat. Brilliant. Act I definitely belongs to Scarpia.

Act II. Tosca’s ‘Vissi d’arte’: plea of a broken soul

Second act is all about tempo. The action rushes forward non-stop. Scarpia gives Tosca less and less time to think, to estimate her situation, pushing her to her into the abyss (count how many falling jokes I make through this post). However, he misjudges Tosca’s limits and pushes her just a bit too far.

The point of no return for Tosca is her aria where she asks God why she has to endure all this suffering.

[Tosca, act II, scene 5] Vissi d’arte, vissi d’amore, non feci mai male ad anima viva! […] Nell’ora del dolore perché, perché, Signore, perché me ne rimuneri cosi? [I lived for art, I lived for love: never did I harm a living creature! [...] In this hour of pain, why, why, oh Lord, why dost Thou repay me thus?]

The score is lyrical, slow and wailing as Tosca mourns her faith. The aria ends with a low sob that is nearly spoken with raw emotion instead of sang. (Fun fact: while today the opera is probably most well-known for this aria, Puccini didn’t really like it and wanted to cut it out of the opera altogether; in all honesty, it does lack the musical potency of ‘Te Deum’ and ‘E lucevan le stelle’ even though it’s a palatable piece that delivers the idea of character deconstruction rather well.)

Tosca is left completely broken. Modern sopranos commonly fall to their knees while performing this aria, and there’s a good reason: when Tosca finally finds the power to stand up, she is a different woman. For me, this is when the main plot twist happens: usually, heroines in operas are meek and hesitant instead of decisive and offensive. Tosca breaks the pattern and shoves the knife through her offender’s ribcage. She owns act II.

Act III. Cavaradossi’s ‘E lucevan le stelle’: I die in despair

This aria is so renown even people who dislike opera have heard it at some point. It starts with a subtle, tender clarinet solo (possibly the most well-known operatic clarinet theme of all times). The melody is forced up but then sags, losing its power. It’s the pace of destiny, dragging and sorrowful, measuring what little time Cavaradossi has left. This is Andante lento composed in minor key and slow tempo - something that Mosco Carner [musicologist and conductor] calls ‘Puccinian lament, reserved for a character in an extreme situation - death or suicide’. Perfect to denote present anguished dolor.

Mario meditatively recites the first two lines, which feels like an improvisation. The audience witnesses an extremely intimate although fragmentary memory that ends in a grieving ‘muoio disperato’ [‘I die in despair’]:

Puccini insisted on the inclusion of these words, and later stated that admirers of the aria had treble cause to be grateful to him: for composing the music, for having the lyrics written, and ‘for declining expert advice to throw the result in the waste-paper basket’.

William Ashbrook ‘The Operas of Puccini’

Bravo, maestro!

I dislike the currently popular hysterical sobbing at the end of the aria that can be heard from modern tenors (e.g, in staging of ‘Tosca’ at La Scala). It sounds as a ‘hoquet tragique’ [‘tragic hiccup’] that jumps out too much and is slightly out of character - such rendering is more appropriate for Tosca’s character not Cavaradossi’s.

Still, this is arguably the most beautiful, heart-wrenching lyrical aria I’ve ever heard; I’m literally still not over it, after 3 whole years of listening to it, sometimes on repeat. Also, Placido Domingo is the best  Cavaradossi, shut up I’m not wrong (1976 film starring him and Raina Kabaivanska is wildly enjoyable).

As a bonus, act III (specifically its beginning and ending) deserve an honorable mention. Despite where the plot says the most dramatic moment of the plot is, for me, it’s the beginning of act III. Here’s the pinnacle of the opera: the contrast between the serene aria of a shepherd boy accompanied by the love motif - and the grim, heavy, shuddering theme of Cavaradossi’s farewell that the orchestra splashes on you as if it is a bucket of ice cold water. The music swells - you wait for the volume to stop growing, but instead it just tears through your eardrums.

The timpani are impossibly good for this piece. Intruding the peaceful, pastoral Roman morning full of hopeful dreams and the colors of sunrise, they suddenly throw the audience into the pit of pure unadulterated horror. Trembling and vibrating on low frequencies, they gift you with the feeling of earth opening under your feet, sucking you into the dark depths you’ll never get out of to see light - say farewell to life.

Similarly, the ending is extremely powerful. The drums start slowly at first, setting the rhythm. Before Cavaradossi’s execution, the orchestra is subtle and insinuating; it accrues and thickens in its vicious predictions. After the shots, as Tosca discovers Mario’s death, the tempo breaks through the roof. The music is desperately, deafeningly loud, it screams of tragedy. And, well, I am aware of the plot of the opera by now, but I’m caught off guard every time. I blame this on music. It just so perfectly reflects the mood of the events; it’s pure gorgeousness that gets to my very core every time.

There’s another point of criticism I need to mention in regard to the final theme that ends the opera: against logic, it is Cavaradossi’s farewell instead of more fitting love theme or, even more appropriately, Scarpia’s motif. This I cannot disagree with as, plot-wise, using this theme would provide the dramatic closure for the opera. However, given my love for theme of farewell, I cannot find the heart to dislike Puccini’s choice after all. Act III is largely focused on Cavaradossi, and the finale acknowledges this.

...Undoubtedly, Puccini was a genius. It’s not easy to comprehend the mastery with which he weaved a handful of simple motifs into a powerful story I cannot stop listening to. But also, there’s this:

Puccini’s sense of humor was often of the schoolboy variety, and he found risqué musical puns irresistible. In Act II of the opera, after Spoletta has assured Scarpia that ‘everything is ready’ for the execution of Cavaradossi, the Chief of Police turns to Tosca and softly asks, ‘Ebbene?’—’Well?’ She says nothing, and the score tells us that she indicates her submission by nodding her head. But at her silent reply the orchestra, anticipating the two-note theme of the ‘execution’ motif, plays the two-note phrase, A and C, or in Italian solfeggio, La and Do. The syllables, in addition to being musical symbols, also happen to be words in Italian: the words ‘La do’ mean ‘I'm giving it,’ and it is the usual way for women to say, I'm ready to give ‘it’ (to you).

Susan Vandiver Nicassio ‘Ten Things You Didn’t Know about Tosca’

It is quite possible there’s more of such minutiae. I’m not sure how to feel about a piece that simultaneously cracks me up and throws me into a pit of despair. But I definitely like it - that much I know.

Castel Sant’Angelo, 2018

Recondita armonia [some fun trivia]

The tone of the dialogue was elevated quite a bit. Get this: comforting Cavaradossi after he was tortured, Tosca says ‘Ma il giusto Iddio lo punirá’ [‘But a just God will punish [Scarpia]’]. The initial line was ‘Ma il sozzo sbirro lo pagherà’ [‘But the filthy cop will pay for it’]. Far less distinguished, my dear.

Puccini visited Rome specifically to mimic the early morning bells. Kudos for authenticity. Also, initially, the composer spent an ungodly amount of money to cast the bells he needed for the performance of ‘Tosca’. The orchestras till today have difficulties satisfying the composer’s vision.

Sarah Bernhardt, an actress who became the prototype for Tosca in Sardou’s play, while performing in Rio de Janeiro in 1905, injured her leg in the final scene when jumping from the rampart. As a result of poor treatment, she lost her leg ten years later. Gory.

Two of the most famous opera singers chose this opera as their farewell: Maria Callas as Tosca gave her last performance in 1965, and Luciano Pavarotti as Mario Cavaradossi in 2004.

In one of the performances with Placido Domingo as Mario Cavaradossi, his son was featured as a shepherd boy.

Before Puccini got to write ‘Tosca’, Giuseppe Verdi expressed his interest. He didn’t like the ending though and wanted it changed - I think we’ve barely avoided another ‘La Traviata’ there, oof.

Oscar Wilde saw ‘La Tosca’ and believed the torture scene was great as it showed how far people can go (no wonder; he was working on ‘Salome’ that evoked indignant discontent of the critics in a similar fashion). George Bernard Shaw also saw the play and, while disliking it utterly, still predicted it would be great as an opera.

In Sardou’s play, Cavaradossi gained a reputation of a Bonapartist in large part because of his mustache. That’s the conclusion I’ve made after seeing these two quotes: ‘Even his mustache was suspect’ and ‘Tosca’s confessor told her it marked him as a revolutionary’. This is gold.

#opera #puccini #tosca #IMHO #why criticism #lots of rambling #greatest opera ever #i don't understand why critics abuse it

[justadram]

Words Written on Wings

Jaime x Sansa fic written for @storey1. Thank you for your donation to help fight Nazis!

Request: continuation of Words Written in Steam

The soft sweet sound of Sansa’s high harp echoes in the chill of the corridor. Sansa once told Jaime that the harp was one of her weapons, and while that might be the case, he has heard those who play with more skill. Lady Leonette, her first teacher, while proficient and pleasant enough, was not Prince Rhaegar returned. Knowing it is Sansa’s head bowed beside its golden frame, however, lends some enchantment to the playing that few could duplicate in Jaime’s estimation. The only thing that might improve upon the glissandos would be the accompaniment of her voice. She rarely sings, but the beauty of her sad voice can cut as keenly as any blade. That is her true weapon.

Listening to her fingers pluck the taut strings is a fleeting pleasure: when he makes his presence known, she’ll put her instrument away for the night. For she plays either in solitude or for company, and he is something else to her. She doesn’t think to entertain or win him over, as she does the others, but he is also not yet a fading piece of furniture adorning her chamber.

Slowing his steps, Jaime tries to recall the song without the benefit of the words sung over it, but as soon as he thinks he’s caught a thread, she misses a note, two, and the music stops. Without yet turning the corner, he can picture her elegant white hands pressed flat to the strings, dampening their ring. Her face will be pinched with annoyance, drawing her finely arched brows down. It isn’t like her to make a mistake. Not on the harp, nor on any other field she commands, and yet tonight, she was not herself long before her notes went astray.

Something disturbs her practiced calm, enough that Jaime wonders whether he should have bent his feet this way to stretch out before her hearth and stare into the flames as is their habit. Custom overcame hesitation. That and the fear of the emptiness he feels, when he is left to his own devices. Those long nights when she must see to those more important than him in this new world order reverberates with voices lost forever, the past washing over him as relentlessly as the tide.

His good hand wraps around the thick frame of the door, as he dips his head through its entrance, clearing his throat to announce his presence. She ought to have a guard posted. It is a well-worn argument between the two of them.

Why do I have need of constant guard, when a lion stands beside me?

To protect us from each other, a more honest man would admit.

She lifts her gaze to him, and he swallows at the pull of her lower lip through her teeth as she stands and lets the harp rest back flat on the floor. How long was it before vague attraction, a sort of detached appreciation turned into this clawing hunger?

“You’ve been listening long enough to know I’m in need of practice.”

“Are my footfalls that heavy?”

“Just a wager.”

Sansa’s intuition is honed sharply enough that she could make a real menace of herself at the gaming table, should she ever take it into her head to indulge the pursuit. Indulgence of any kind is not her practice. Ned Stark’s daughter indeed.

“But yes, I heard. A disastrous effort to be sure,” he says with a slow grin.

If she would give an inch, he would be lost. It is her caution that keeps him in check. He is half a man at best, and the loss of his hand was not the cause. Nature made him this week: strong in body, weak in character. He is at best the reflection of others. Choosing the right mirror is the real trick. Ser Arthur Dayne for a time, his sister, now Sansa Stark. His honor, the one he sought so desperately, is only hers reflected back.

She hums her assent, though she knows he teases, and gestures at the two chairs before the hearth. It is an invitation he scarcely requires, as he strides to take his place beside her, but she is nothing if not courteous. It gives them a script to follow, which he appreciates. Knowing one’s role is half the battle.

“You might wish you’d sought out better company tonight, ser. It’s not only my playing that suffers if that weren’t yet plain.”

Even on her worst day, Jaime has known worse company. Certainly less beautiful company. Less quick. Less gentle. It is she that is forbearing of his moods more often than not, so he can afford to be tolerant.

“Will you ask what is amiss?” she asks, as she sinks into her chair and rests her head against the side of its high back, turning her lash shadowed eyes on him.

Crossing his ankle over his knee, he watches the light play over her unlined face, tracing the slope of her nose, her cheekbones, the bow of her lips, consuming every detail to sate himself. This is how they wile the hours alone, trading verbal intimacies and looking. It is only in the attendance of others that he ever dares touch her, freed from constraint by the safeguard of their presence.

Kneeling at her feet, he could wipe away that careworn look she wears.

The silence between them beats with the pulse of the blood in his veins, not yet sluggish with enough wine, watered down as it often is, though spring has come. Thriving vineyards are not the most pressing need of a thawing Westeros.

Giving up on his ever prompting her, she lets her head roll towards the fire with a purse of her lips. “A raven brought word today. Jon has arranged a marriage. For himself.”

His gut twists.

Just as Sansa’s giving of Winterfell to Jon Snow as a poor substitute for herself brought Jaime no real joy, he feels no thrill in this announcement. If she’d gone with Jon to the North, he could have dispensed with this attempt to be someone he fears he’ll never quite manage to be. The mummer’s act could be dispensed with and there would be some relief in that, he suspects.

Though Sansa will never admit it, Jaime can’t even claim victory over the dour faced bastard. He knows he is not Sansa’s first choice anymore than she is his. It is circumstance—mostly unwanted circumstance—that has thrown the lion and the shewolf together and formed them into a two person pride or pack.

If anything, he feels trapped. Like a hare in a foot soldier’s snare.

He runs his hand over the plush fabric covering the left arm of his chair. The fibers give under his touch and spring back, as he asks flatly in what he hopes sounds like bored disinterest, “One of the Mormonts?”

“The daughter of that hedge knight Daenerys raised up in High Garden.”

Jaime snorts. The men elevated in these days aren’t fit to sit at the same table with the likes of Tywin Lannister, much less hold a great house. He supposes his brother thinks it helps his queen consolidate her power to surround herself with loyal upstarts.

“She’s a child, is she not?”

Her narrow shoulders lift and fall. “Older than I was when Daenerys made land.”

“A child and a Southroner.”

That is like to irk Sansa more than the girl’s age. She is wary of all Southroners, and with good reason given what she endured at their hands. His family’s hands. He does penance for that, keeping his hands to himself, when he would like to run them over her smooth skin.

“Yes. It’s not what I was expecting from Jon.”

“You’re... disappointed? In his choice?” he falsely clarifies for her benefit.

“No,” she says, her eyes narrowing as her lips curl into something approaching a smile. “It makes more political sense than I gave Jon credit for.”

“How astute. That hedge knight’s wife was a crofter. A finer match was never made.”

“That doesn’t matter now,” she says with a wave of her hand. “Daenerys favors these new families. She’ll be pleased. And Jon prefers a simpler woman, I think. It might suit him.”

He lifts his brows at her insincerity. “This message appears to have earned the old saying for you. Dark wings, dark words. What is the source of your upset then, if he has chosen so wisely, pray tell?”

She refuses to turn her attention on him, staring fixedly. Never will she admit what she really feels for her bastard brother, and while he taunts, the last thing he truly wants is an admission from her. Jaime seeks assurances of his place here. With her. If he is a rabbit, he’s sought the warmth of her lap. There were no need of snares.

“I own I am surprised in his choice. He demonstrated rather more refined preferences in women when last I saw him. More appreciation for those he’d call family too.”

That finally rouses her. Its an icy glance, as cold as any Northern winter she casts his way.

He’d rather she be full of wrath than sullen, so he presses further, as he extends a boot towards the fire. “Shall I arrange an assassination? Solve both your problems once and for all?”

“Don’t jest.”

“Was I?”

She exhales slowly as if in exacerbation. “Sometimes I don’t know with you, ser.” She reaches across the space and trails her fingertips over the linen of his shirt. His hairs respond, standing at attention in the wake of her touch. “But don’t you dare.”

He lowers his voice. “I’d do it for you, my lady.” Perhaps he would. He’s done worse or close to it. He’d feel some conflict, but not enough. “And then your honorable Jon Snow would come for my head.”

As surely as if he’d spoken of what he might do with his cock in the seclusion of her bedchamber, her cheeks color. She’s a bold thing, when she wants to be, however, and her hand finds his, slender fingers slipping between his sword calloused ones.

“No, I wish Jon and his bride all happiness.”

He would laugh at the absurdity of her statement if the tension in his chest permitted it.

He curls his fingers in, squeezing too hard in his rising desperation to hold tight to what feels like is slipping away from him even as obstacles are removed from his path. “Of course you do. Your concern for his happiness was most evident when you sent him away, trading him a kingdom for your love.”

She didn’t choose Jaime, but he would accept her claiming she did, plying him with some prettily worded lie here alone with her hand in his. He could live off that lie.

Her fingers dig half-moons into his palm. “Jon does not always know what is best for him.”

“And you do?” She normally does a better job of obscuring the fact that she believes she knows better than anyone else. Men do not like to be so blatantly managed. Most men. Jaime finds it easier to submit. Just a touch of artifice will do.

“His parentage doesn’t change what was. Ned Stark was his father. He needed to believe in the meaning of his Targaryen blood, but Jon and I are both Starks. Not Targaryens.”

“Nor Lannister.”

She nods. “We can’t always silence our hearts, but we can choose what’s right.”

It is not a romantic girl’s notion. She sounds like a septa. It would cool his ardor if he did not think stripping a septa’s veil from her coppery locks appealing. Jaime always appreciated playacting.

“Well, he lacks a sense of humor and fails in conversation, but I cannot fault him for his taste.” Neither in choosing Sansa nor a sister. “Best wishes to them both, I suppose.”

She gives her head a tired shake. “It’s all for the best.”

He turns his hand, letting her palm fit into his. “Sounds practically medicinal.”

“Not all tinctures are loathsome.”

Pulling their clasped hands from the arm of his chair, something dances in her eyes. Something other than the reflection of the flames. Something freed by a raven’s message.

“I can be plenty odious.”

She clicks her tongue and draws their hands to her breast. “I am aware of your questionable qualities, ser.”

Tilting her head down, she kisses each knuckle in turn, as his breath quickens.

“The songs never celebrate those who did what was best for them.” And while this Southron upstart might be just the thing for a lovesick bastard prince, Jaime wonders that Sansa’s skills at deception—even self-deception—can extend so far as to believe him a salve for what ails her.

“Imagine how dull it would be if they did. But they might sing of the wolf and the lion. Mightn’t they?”

They might.

#jaime x sansa #got fic #fanfic #fightingnaziswithfic #game of thrones

[orbemnews]

Ethel Gabriel, a Rare Woman in the Record World, Dies at 99 Ethel Gabriel, who in more than 40 years at RCA Victor is thought to have produced thousands of records, many at a time when almost no women were doing that work at major labels, died on March 23 in Rochester, N.Y. She was 99. Her nephew, Ed Mauro, her closest living relative, confirmed her death. Ms. Gabriel began working at RCA’s plant in Camden, N.J., in 1940 while a student at Temple University in Philadelphia. One of her early jobs was as a record tester — she would pull one in every 500 records and listen to it for manufacturing imperfections. “If it was a hit,” she told The Pocono Record of Pennsylvania in 2007, “I got to know every note because I had to play it over and over and over.” She also had a music background — she played trombone and had her own dance band in the 1930s and early ’40s — and her skill set earned her more and more responsibility, as well as the occasional role in shaping music history. She said she was on hand at the 1955 meeting in which the RCA executive Stephen Sholes signed Elvis Presley, who had been with Sun Records. She had a hand in “Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White,” the 1955 instrumental hit by Pérez Prado that helped ignite a mambo craze in the United States. She may have produced or co-produced the album that contained that tune, but April Tucker, lead researcher on a documentary being made about Ms. Gabriel, said details on the early part of her career were hazy. Ms. Gabriel often said that she had produced some 2,500 records. Ms. Tucker said officials at Sony, which now holds RCA’s archives, had told her that the number may actually be higher, since contributions were not always credited. In any case, by the late 1950s Ms. Gabriel was in charge of RCA Camden Records, the company’s budget line, and was earning producer credits, something she continued to do into the 1980s. In 1959 she began the “Living Strings” series of easy-listening albums, consisting of orchestral renditions of popular and classical tunes (“Living Strings Play Music of the Sea,” “Living Strings Play Music for Romance” and many more), most of which were released on Camden. The line soon branched out into “Living Voices,” “Living Guitars” and other subsets and became a big profit-generator for RCA — which was not, Ms. Gabriel said, what the boss expected when he put her in charge of Camden, a struggling label at the time. “I’m sure he thought it was a way to get rid of me,” she told The Express-Times of Easton, Pa., in 1992 (too diplomatic to name the boss). “Well, I made a multimillion-dollar line out of it, conceived, programmed and produced the entire thing.” There were other profitable series as well. Ms. Gabriel was particularly good at repackaging material from the RCA archives into albums that sold anew, as she did in the “Pure Gold” series. In 1983 she shared a Grammy Award for best historical album for “The Tommy Dorsey-Frank Sinatra Sessions” By the time she left RCA in 1984, she was a vice president. Yet, unlike the top male record executives of the era, she rarely made headlines. Ms. Tucker, an audio engineer, said she had never heard of Ms. Gabriel until one day she went searching to see if she could find out who the first female audio engineer was. She brought Ms. Gabriel to the attention of Sound Girls, an organization that promotes women in the audio field, and soon Caroline Losneck and Christoph Gelfand, documentary filmmakers, were at work on “Living Sound,” a film about her. Ms. Losneck, in a phone interview, said they had been hoping to complete the documentary by Ms. Gabriel’s 100th birthday this November. Ms. Losneck said Ms. Gabriel had survived in a tough business through productivity and competence. “She knew who to call when she needed an organist,” she said. “She knew how to manage the budget. All that gave her a measure of control.” Many of the records Ms. Gabriel made fit into a category often marginalized as elevator music. “It’s easy to look back on that music now and say it was kind of cheesy,” Ms. Losneck said, “but back then it was part of the cultural landscape.” Toward the end of her career, as more women began entering the field, Ms. Gabriel was both an example and a mentor. Nancy Jeffries, who went to work in RCA’s artists-and-repertoire department in 1974 and had earlier sung with the band the Insect Trust, was one of those who learned from her. “Being a woman and having ambition at a record company in those days was something that just didn’t compute with most of the male executive staff, but I was fortunate enough to land in the A&R department at RCA Records, where Ethel was established as a force to be reckoned with,” Ms. Jeffries, who went on to executive positions at RCA, Elektra and other record companies, said by email. “She had developed a couple of deals that, while they weren’t particularly ‘hip,’ generated a lot of income and financed some of the more speculative workings of the department. Lesson one: Make money for the company and they will leave you be.” Mr. Mauro summarized his aunt’s career simply: “She was successful early on when the playing field wasn’t level.” Ms. Gabriel, interviewed by The Cincinnati Enquirer in 1983, had a succinct explanation of her ability to thrive in a man’s world. “I didn’t know I was somewhere I shouldn’t be,” she said. Ethel Nagy was born on Nov. 16, 1921, in Milmont Park, Pa., near Philadelphia. Her father, Charles, who died when she was a teenager, was a machinist, and her mother, Margaret (Horvath) Nagy, took up ceramic sculpture later in life. Ms. Gabriel studied trombone in her youth and formed a band, En (her initials) and Her Royal Men, that played in the Philadelphia area. While at Temple she began working at RCA in nearby Camden putting labels on records and packed them before advancing to record tester. After graduating in 1943, Ms. Gabriel continued her studies at Columbia University and worked at RCA’s offices in New York, including as secretary to Herman Diaz Jr., who led RCA’s Latin division. She spent a lot of time listening in on studio sessions, and by the mid-1950s trade publications were referring to her as an “RCA Victor executive.” In 1958 she married Gus Gabriel, who was in music publishing. The couple counted Frank Sinatra as a friend. In a 2011 interview with The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, she said that in 1973, when her husband was dying in a hospital, she walked into his room one day and found his nurses in a tizzy. “I asked, ‘What’s wrong?’” she recalled. “They said, ‘Oh, everybody got autographed pictures from Sinatra!’” Ms. Jeffries said that Ms. Gabriel had always mentored the women at the company no matter where they were on the corporate ladder. But her helping hand was extended to men, too, as the producer Warren Schatz found out when he joined RCA in the mid-1970s, as the disco wave was building. He had an idea for an album that might catch that wave, he said, and she came up with $6,000 to get it made. It was by the Brothers and included a song, “Are You Ready for This,” that became a dance-floor staple. “So Ethel basically started my life off at RCA,” Mr. Schatz said in a phone interview. Soon he was vice president of A&R, and she was reporting to him. “Whatever she wanted to do, I would just say yes to,” he said. “She was so calm, and so knowledgeable, and so self-sufficient.” Ms. Gabriel left RCA in 1984, in part, she said, at the urging of Robert B. Anderson, a former U.S. treasury secretary, who persuaded her to turn over to him her retirement package — more than $250,000 — so that he could invest it in the hope that the proceeds would finance future music ventures. The money disappeared, and Mr. Anderson, who died in 1989, was later convicted of tax evasion. Ms. Gabriel lived in the Poconos for a number of years before moving to a care center in Rochester to be near Mr. Mauro and his family. As she died at a hospital there, Mr. Mauro said, the staff had Sinatra songs playing in her room. Source link Orbem News #Dies #Ethel #Gabriel #rare #record #Woman #World

[chiseler]

JEAN HARLOW: Bombshell

Her mother Mama Jean called her “The Baby” during her short life, and Jean Harlow did exhibit a babyish sense of delight when she smiled in her films and in stills, but the men who looked at her on the movie screen saw not a baby but a babe that they wanted in their arms. She was the successor to Clara Bow and a kind of bridge to Marilyn Monroe, and she was more good fun than both of them combined. Very few film stars made such an impression in such a brief time as Harlow, or grew as a performer so quickly.

Notoriously, Harlow didn’t wear underwear, and when James Cagney asked her on the set of The Public Enemy (1931) how she kept her breasts up and at ‘em, she good-naturedly replied, “I ice ‘em!” Harlow had hair so bleached blond that it was nearly white, and her legs were Dietrich-level beautiful and shapely. When she died unexpectedly at age 26, rumors ran rampant and ugly about why and how this had happened to her, culminating in the 1960s with a nasty and inaccurate biography by Irving Schulman and two equally inaccurate movie biopics, one with Carroll Baker and one with Carol Lynley. Thankfully, David Stenn’s biography of Harlow in the early 1990s set the record straight just as Stenn’s 1989 Clara Bow book gave the It Girl a fair shake.

Harlow was born Harlean Carpenter in 1911, and she married at 16 to a society boy, but she worked for a while as an extra at star-struck Mama Jean’s urging, getting her skirt caught in the door of a car and walking away with her black underwear showing in Double Whoopee (1928), a Laurel and Hardy short where childlike Ollie seems genuinely hot and bothered by this cotton candy blond looker. She posed for beautiful semi-nude shots for Edwin Bower Hesser in Griffith Park with her body covered only by a wet piece of fabric, showing off her curves for him with joy and abandon, but Harlow was still stiff in front of a moving picture camera. Bit parts proliferated, including one with Bow in The Saturday Night Kid (1929), where Harlow had one line of dialogue that she delivered in an amateurish way as she looked at her watch.

Harlow fell under contract to breast-obsessed Howard Hughes, who put her in his aerial epic Hell’s Angels (1930) as sexpot relief. He had a party scene shot in two-strip Technicolor in order to show off the pearly beauty of his new star’s skin, her breasts barely covered by her backless dress, and though Harlow delivers dialogue in a very stilted way in Hell’s Angels, she already had a way of looking at men that was unmistakably carnal.

“Would you be shocked if I put on something more comfortable?” she asks Ben Lyon in Hell’s Angels, taking joy and pride in the way she makes his temperature rise. The distinctive thing about Harlow is her total lack of shame about sex on screen, her sheer anticipatory enjoyment of it as an idea, and an ideal of pleasure, a force that totally loosens her up. Harlow’s relation to sex in her movies makes Bow seem slightly jittery and insecure about it in comparison, and makes Monroe look like a sexual basket case.

“I want to be free, I want to be gay and have fun!” Harlow says in Hell’s Angels, leaning back happily on a couch to be admired. “Life’s short, and I want to live while I’m alive.” No bra, no panties, no problem! Her smile is so open, so inviting, as if to say, “Come on, let’s enjoy ourselves,” and she wants to take that enjoyment to the limit, and beyond that limit. Harlow in Hell’s Angels is the kind of person who will make out with you in a bar and won’t care how many people are watching. In fact, she obviously gets a kick out of being watched, in the bar on screen and from the dark of the movie theater, because that attention adds to her pleasure.

Luscious and so gracefully knowing, with her fantasy hair and her freely moving and nearly exposed body, Harlow tries to sound ritzy and classy in her first few talkies but she has a nasal, funny voice that keeps betraying her sense of humor. Hughes loaned her out and kept her working, paying her little and pocketing the rest of her salaries. Expected to play disparate roles in her 1931 movies, Harlow became mainly chastened and inhibited, though she has a brief moment of connected wisecracking with Clark Gable in The Secret Six.

Harlow is embarrassing in The Public Enemy with Cagney, descending to an Ed Wood level of wooden dialogue delivery, and she tentatively played Louise Brooks’s part in a remake of A Girl in Every Port (1928) that was renamed Goldie for her hair. “Men don’t marry carnival girls,” she earnestly tells Warren Hymer in that movie. “They think we’re all bad.” Harlow had trouble seeming like a manipulative society girl in Frank Capra’s Platinum Blonde, even though she had moved in society circles herself during her first marriage. She knew she wasn’t cutting it as an actress and even told her agent that she would try to get work in a department store if her acting didn’t improve soon.

MGM producer Paul Bern, who had been instrumental in shaping many careers for women at his studio, got Harlow a very good part in The Beast of the City (1932), and she’s much improved in that due to the gentle Bern’s coaching, closer to the magnetic tough-girl style of her star period (seen in a line-up, she gives a raspberry to the cops who are grilling her). When a tough guy grabs her hard and she says it hurts her, he asks, “You don’t like to be hurt, do you?” She looks at him steadily and says, in her “ritzy” voice, “Oh, I don’t know…it’s kinda fun sometimes if it’s done in the right spirit.” Harlow on screen knows or senses that sex is partly theater, and theater is best, or “kinda fun,” when it’s boldly rough and dramatized in terms of fluctuating power dynamics.

Harlow keeps her hands on her hips and does one helluva seductive dance for a copper in The Beast of the City, filling her undulations with that distinctive “sex is fun!” spirit she had, rubbing her hands down her gyrating body and fluffing her hair. She harnessed all of her sexual energy and put it on screen without any inhibitions, and it still makes for a hackle-raising spectacle. “Are you gonna try and reform me?” she asks the copper breathlessly, after they kiss.

Bern convinced her to go titian for Red-Headed Woman (1932), where we see her hair being dyed in the first scene. “So gentlemen prefer blondes, do they?” she asks, in that pinched voice, before looking at herself in the mirror. “Yes they do,” she drawls, smiling and giving a pure 1930s sock-it-to-‘em nod. “Can you see through this?” she asks a saleswoman, striking a pose against a window in a new dress. “I’m afraid you can, miss,” the prim saleswoman informs her. “I’ll wear it,” Harlow cheerfully replies.

Her ruthless and hotheaded Lil goes through five men in Red-Headed Woman, and Harlow gets away with it because she is so funny and so good-humored about her man-eating. Bern told her that if she made the part funny that the audience would forgive her anything, and he was right about that. And she gets away with a lot in this movie. When Chester Morris smacks her, Harlow lets out a growly little noise of excitement and approval and says, “Do it again, I like it! Do it again!” and then kisses him, which goes shockingly further with her “kinda fun” rough sex formulation from The Beast of the City. Her growl of S&M excitement is not to be forgotten once heard, once she has let it out of its box, so to speak.

There is no part of sex or the sexual instinct that Harlow doesn’t openly enjoy on screen, and that’s what made her such a radical presence in the early 1930s, and that sexual radicalism hasn’t dated; it would still cause an uproar today if done in the swaggering way she does it in Red-Headed Woman. And she is not made to be redeemed or reformed or even punished at the end of that movie, where her designing woman winds up with a rich older protector and still gets to keep her handsome chauffeur lover (a young Charles Boyer). Screenwriter Anita Loos gives Red-Headed Woman the essentially French and Colette-like morality and frankness that went into her classic novel Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and you can see why moralists in America at the time were outraged and alarmed by Lil, who is a truly amoral, even homicidal wretch but so filled with Harlow’s saucy pep that she still winds up being somehow attractive.

Yet this brazen woman on screen was living with her mother off screen, obediently following Mama Jean’s wishes. (Mama Jean had wanted to be an actress herself, and she lived vicariously through Harlow’s success.) Compliant in some ways but also rebellious, Mama Jean’s “Baby” got into big trouble off the set. Harlow married the gentlemanly Bern, and shortly after that marriage Bern shot himself, leaving behind a cryptic suicide note. Their marriage had not been consummated, and Bern had in his past a mentally unstable common law wife named Dorothy Millette, a woman who was still obsessively attached to him. Millette confronted Harlow and Bern one night, and whatever transpired between them led to his suicide. Millette killed herself a few days after his death. This was a rare mess, and it was feared that it might ruin Harlow’s career.

She was midway through shooting Red Dust (1932) with Clark Gable at that point, and she returned to work under duress. To the studio’s surprise, public sympathy was on her side during the Bern suicide scandal, and it helped that she was at her very best in Red Dust, with all her sexuality and humor at her command but a new shading of vulnerability, too, just enough to make her irresistible to just about everyone. Look at the pained way she stares after Clark Gable and Mary Astor as he carries Astor out of a storm, which reveals the strength of her feelings for him underneath all the other slangy “I like it!” sexual fun she still offered us. This scene proved that Harlow’s on screen persona could handle a show of hurt feelings, and it also showed that she could be appealingly stoic about them, too, and toughly gallant and magnanimous. In the scene where she good-naturedly pours a drink for her love rival Astor and gives her a little advice, Harlow is one of the most appealing of all American screen women.

Red Dust was perhaps Harlow’s zenith, but she advanced even further in three more films the following year. She turned to rat-a-tat-tat verbal comedy in the very knowing, often scathing Bombshell as movie star Lola Burns, who is “born for men,” according to salacious studio advertising, but mainly born, it seems, to support a family and retinue, just as Harlow herself was. “You’re a boon to re-population in a world thinned out by war and famine!” cries Lee Tracy’s publicity man, and that’s certainly one way of looking at it.

Role and star get deliberately confused in Bombshell, for Lola is called back to shoot retakes of Gable catching her nude in a rain barrel in Red Dust, as if she and Harlow were the same person. “You can get another ‘It’ girl or ‘But’ girl or a ‘how, when and where’ girl, I’m moving out!” Harlow’s Lola cries toward the end, saying that she wants to retire to domestic life, but Bombshell knows that some people are just more charismatic than others, and some women would be imprisoned by the threat of home and babies. Harlow was certainly one of those women, at least on screen.

Cleverly, shortly after filming, Harlow married her much older cameraman, Harold Rossen, who did much to shape her visual image (Mama Jean put the kibosh on that one after only eight months). And then, for director George Cukor, who egged her on to just the right degree, she was Kitty Packard, a gutsy trophy wife putting Wallace Beery in his place in Dinner at Eight, a monument to the enriching vitality in unabashed sexual vulgarity.

Sitting up in her absurdly billowing white bed, taking bites out of chocolates and then throwing them back, ringing out her powder puff, Harlow gets laugh after laugh in Dinner at Eight, one after another, like she’s ringing gongs. She throws herself into her scenes with both abandon and accuracy of expression and timing, a very different style from Clara Bow or Marilyn Monroe, much brassier, more self-sufficient; if she talked baby talk, as Monroe did, it was in a very knowing, parodic way.

Harlow is the only big female movie sex symbol who never seems dazed, never seems really out-of-control. “I’m gonna be a lady if it kills me!” she tells Beery in Dinner at Eight, standing up to him all the way down the line and applying more lipstick in between. (She was sown into her gowns, so that she couldn’t even sit down on set but had to resort to a slant board.) Harlow throws some left hooks and gets caught in her bath again by Gable in Hold Your Man. “Yes sir, that baby’s got rhythm,” Gable says appreciatively as he watches her walk away from him at one point, after she visits him in prison. She is at her toughest in Hold Your Man until a redemptive ending, a harbinger of worse to come.

“The vulgar, cheap, and the tawdry is out!” promised Joseph Breen, the new chief of the Production Code censorship bureau, in a newsreel from 1934, and that meant that proudly vulgar, cheap, and tawdry Harlow was hardest hit by the new Code. Her first film under the Code was supposed to be called Born to Be Kissed, but the title was changed to The Girl from Missouri (1934), and it made Harlow stuffy and bent only on matrimony in a way that feels very constricted and depressing.

They even began to darken her platinum hair to a light shade of brown in Riffraff (1935), where she played another virgin holding out for marriage and sparred with Spencer Tracy. Harlow was at least somewhat brassy again as good-time girl China Doll in China Seas (1936) with Gable, but in Wife vs. Secretary (1936) she played a true-blue stenographer who wouldn’t dream of putting the moves on Gable’s boss, a far cry from the rapacious Lil of Red-Headed Woman. Even her car horn voice got tamped-down and refined back to the level it had ludicrously sought in her first awkward years in movies, as if speaking quietly were some sort of triumph for the “good taste” that now reigned on film.

In Reckless (1935), Harlow was asked to talk her way through a risible song and act out a suicide drama that was exploitatively close to her own ordeal with Bern. She is made to defend herself from a stage, confessing to an audience her dead husband’s unhappiness and how she tried to make him happy, and the result on screen feels very punishing and unfair, so that there was no star who was so humiliated and ruined by censorship as Harlow, not even Mae West. She got one more chance at rapid-fire comedy in Libeled Lady (1936), where all she wants to do is marry Spencer Tracy, and she has her moments in that, but the great sexual thrill of Harlow is confined to Hell’s Angels and her movies from 1932 and 1933 only.

She really did want to marry her Libeled Lady co-star William Powell, but he kept putting that off. Harlow looks and seems ill and low energy in Personal Property (1937) and in her last film, Saratoga (1937), which was finished with a stand-in after her death at 26 from kidney disease. She collapsed on the set and was attended by physicians for eight days before she died, contrary to the stories about her never seeing a doctor because of Mama Jean’s Christian Science leanings. MGM chief Louis B. Mayer had Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy sing “Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life” at her funeral, which certainly would have made the screen Harlow guffaw. It was a short career, but her initial impact is still fresh, and it can still be felt as liberating, sexually and otherwise.

by Dan Callahan

#Dan Callahan #Jean Harlow #The Chiseler #pre-Code #Bombshell

[btstaejimin]

Desire or Comfort? (Jimin and Taehyung Angst)

Hey guys, 

I haven’t posted any original content for a while, but recently I have reconnected with a friend who is also an ARMY as a result of me sksksksk ^^. She managed to get me to write up my personal dreams in the form of an imagine/fanfic. While also encouraging me to post them, this is my first ever smut post(well first chapter is suggestive, second and third chapters though... oh hunny ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) )

I apologise for being MIA for the last year or so, I’m currently in my second year of university... ya girl is getting old T_T. I think I started this blog back in 2015 when I was a year into being an ARMY, I was very active and then exams were around the corner and I just focused on reblogging content from blogs dedicated to BTS. Anyway enough rambling. I’ve written 3 chapters so far (we all know I prefer one-shots cos I'm lazy heh), but if the first one does well I’ll post the other two. Hope you enjoy xx

(A/N: Apologies my writing style might’ve changed a lil bit xx)

Warnings: Smut(in future chapters), Adultery... and Angst heheh

Word Count: 3984 

Part 2

                                                               -

                                                       Chapter 1

                                                                -

It had been 2 and half years since he seized the opportunity to step past the friendship boundary I had created. Though I was in love with him, I was okay with watching him from afar. Our friendship started off with a rare opportunity I came across.

You see I was a freelancer, a teacher in the day and anything in the evening to make extra money on the side. Though most of my jobs were either being a runner on set, makeup artist or hair stylist or even a cleaner. My passion was photography. Non-profit projects were often funded by my side jobs, luckily enough one of the works I did, managed to be viewed by an assistant whom worked for a popular boy band. At the time, I was unaware of their popularity but I did appreciate their music.

Through word of mouth, I managed to work on set at a shoot with the said boy band, and later on, was gifted the opportunity to work full time with their team. I was intrigued by the shortest boy of the group, his skin was fair as snow, ebony hair and hooded eyes that could trap your soul if you were not careful. He was living beauty at its most divine. His looks were intimidating until he smiled, that domineering feeling vanished once she showcased his pearly whites with pride.  His name was Park Jimin. He was the reason for the sins I proceeded to commit, though aware of the consequences.

It was innocent at first, he was one of the seven boys that continued to captivate me without ease. Though he was the most enchanting to me, there was another that did not fail to make me question my sanity. He was tall, shoulders as broad as a door frame, lashes that aided in losing yourself in his uneven brown eyes, fingers slender yet gentle, his rectangular smile would make your heart flutter to the point you forgot how to breathe. He too played a role in my confusion between my heart and my loins. Kim Taehyung. That devil bastard, ruined everything in one simple moment of weakness.

In the first year of working for the seven talented boys, I amassed deep connections to a select few, though I was on good terms with all the handsome men, a select few proceeded to play with my heartstrings as though I was a harp and they were beginner harpists whom they’d break in till they learned every inch of the instrument.

I was like putty in their hands, anything they asked for, I’d do, but their smiles were enough reward for my sore legs. After eight months, Jimin decided to seize the opportunity into asking me on a date.

His hair now blonde, cascaded effortlessly across his forehead, lips plump and rosy, he begun..

“Let me take you out to eat sometime, Y/N” he insisted.

His hand found the small of his neck while he shun his teeth through his thick lips.

‘*Sigh* .. I hate when he does that... Why does he have to do that?’ I thought as I felt my face flush with crimson

‘If I just play dumb and say sure as friends, then maybe, he’ll catch on’

It's not that I did not want to date him, but over time as I stood next to him or remotely near the piece of artwork, I was reminded of my insignificance and how much I didn’t deserve to be even breathing the same air as something so beautifully breath-taking.

“Yeah, let's go get some spicy rice cakes or something, it’s important for friends to hang out” I exclaimed brushing past him to the practice room where all the other boys were waiting.

Though I recall that moment being very awkward, it didn’t stop him.

He followed me into the room, making his presence known.

“Y/N, I didn’t mean as friends, I want to date you, for goodness sakes!” He spoke with haste.

The room did not fail to submerge me in ‘oooh’s’ and ‘ahhhh’s’ and ‘wooo’s’. I was drowning, not only in embarrassment, but fear.

He was something I wasn’t deserving nor worthy of, he was someone whom was my forever person, but things took a turn for the worst in our second year of being together.

Things became dull, overfamiliar and repetitive. We both were undeniably uncomfortable in an environment we labelled to be a place of comfort.

Overtime, it created an issue with his best friend Taehyung, as I often found myself indulging in his company to escape the blandness, I called my lover.

Jimin hated the way I smiled so often around Taehyung, the way he was able to change my body language just through entering the room. He was jealous, and I was ignorant to it. We both found comfort in other things, unfortunately for him, my comfort was found in the other members.

Jungkook, the youngest of the seven managed to find my portfolio of old works and had asked to accompany me on one of my projects, he was the only one who knew about my passion, he was respectful, humble and willing to learn. He had helped me on set that day, our bond became stronger through our mutual interest. After arriving at the dorm that evening, Jungkook continued to discuss possible concepts to explore in my work till he stumbled upon an idea.

“Considering, you’ve been doing minimal projects lately, I’m guessing you’re suffering from mild artist block?” He hummed leaning his head to one side while lifting the corner of his mouth.

“How did you know?” My eyes widened from the sudden intrigue.

“Mmm, you don’t seem yourself lately, I mean we’ve known you for 3 and a half years, yet only 3 months ago did I find your portfolio while you were cleaning out your apartment”

The young man decided to take it upon himself to read me like a book?

I wasn’t offended, more confused, I’d be lying if I said I was myself lately, but with the current tension with Jimin, I never had time to plan projects as I was always preoccupied with my growing concern for our relationship.

“Ahhh, photography is like my little secret you see, it's my guilty pleasure, I don’t really like sharing my work with others” I smiled faintly.

“I see, but your works are beautiful, they are something to be showcased, you know Taehyung is into photography too” He chimed.

Speak of the devil, the handsome figure walked into the open planned kitchen with nothing but slacks, a beanie and a long sleeve t-shirt hanging from his frame. Bastard. He was so effortlessly attractive and he knew it.

“What’s this I hear about photography?” He cheeks balled up as he poured himself a glass of water.

“Hyung, did you know Y/N is a photographer? She refuses to be credited for her works though.” He turned to the older male.

Taehyung stopped drinking, and in that moment, I felt the piercing eyes of the male search for my soul.

“No, I had no idea” He whispered, I could almost taste the betrayal he felt from the string of words, he let slip from his lips.

My head remained low as I searched the cupboards for something to eat.

“Why didn’t you tell me Y/N?, I thought we were close.” He spoke, looking for my eyes.

“I don’t know, it never came up, so I never got around to telling you.” I shrugged.

“But how come Kook knows?” He took a seat at the island, crossing his arms.

“Oh, that’s my fault, Hyung. I went to her apartment while she was cleaning and found her portfolio” He spoke.

The air was thick, I wasn’t exactly sure why, possibly because Taehyung felt left out of the loop, but even Jimin didn’t know much about my hobby, only that I take pictures on occasion.

For that moment, I wanted the floor to swallow me whole.

“I have an idea, since you’re suffering from a block, how about we flip roles, you be the subject and I am the photographer” Jungkook jumped up from his stool, excited from the prospect.

“How about I pick a place personal to me and then the concept I come up with, you have to recreate as the photographer and me as the subject?” He added.

“Umm, I don’t know Kook, I’ve never been the subject before, I’m much more comfortable behind the camera, I mean its a good idea bu-“

“I’m in” Taehyung cut.

“Huh?” I questioned.

“I’ve always wanted to shoot you Y/N, I’ve told you time and time again, that you should model or something, but you never listen to me, this would be a great opportunity, to switch roles and stimulate your creativity!” He answered while Kook nodded his head in agreement.

“I don’t wan-“

“I want to join in too” A voice spoke from behind the nearest wall.

“I mean she is my girlfriend after all, plus I’d get to spend some quality time with her” Jimin smiled.

“I didn’t sign up for this, I don’t want to” I hissed.

“I mean you owe us an explanation about this deep-rooted hobby so this is a nice way out of it and its beneficial to all of us” Taehyung demanded, eyes dark as he stood from the island.

“We’ll let you know what we plan to do, just keep the next two weeks free for us” Taehyung spoke once more, turning his back to me while lifting his hand as he left the kitchen.

-

The time had come where I’d be the subject of the boys eyes, though I didn’t want to, the more I thought about it the more I convinced myself that this was an opportunity for new inspiration. With most things Taehyung requested to do things first, in this instance it wasn’t an exception either.

He had planned to take me to Daegu, his home city and place of origin and birth, he had always been proud of his dialect more than others. Yet, something seemed off with him, he had requested to have me for 5 of the 14 days I was told to keep free.

Why would he need 5 days for a simple photoshoot?

As we began walking through the local market, he began

“To put it simply Y/N, the boys and I decided we would have to do 3 concepts with you each, I got the most amount of days because we will be going to Japan for two of them, the other three we shall be in Daegu” he sung while spinning on his heel with hands stretched out.

“I didn’t agree to go to Japan for this stupid project! I’m going home!” This was a bad idea, I didn’t want to be a pain but my gut was telling me being alone with Tae was dangerous enough in itself, but being abroad with him.. I don’t know whether I’d be able to control my hormones around him, the sexual tension was high enough in itself. The prospect of something so romantic could jeopardise my relationship with Jimin.

He was quick yet firm to grab my wrist while pulling it up to a 90-degree angle parallel to my face.

Stopping me before I could find my way back to the train station.

“Hey, I already booked our tickets with the help of Jimin, it’s too late to go back now”

What... why would Jimin give him my passport and other details so easily if he detests our closeness?

Was he testing me? Or did he genuinely trust me?

-

The first shoot with Taehyung was awkward, seeing him crouched in different positions to find the angle he wanted was intimidating, I hated myself for how I admired his passion, the white shirt he wore showcased his collarbones and abnormally muscular neck. All I could think about was how his skin felt while he pranced around his chosen studio, showing me his body in all angles.

Taehyung appreciated the simpler things in his photography, he had always had an eye for vintage cameras. He’d always exclaim how he like capturing moments and snippets in time loops when it came to scenic pictures. However, with subjects he found it difficult to explore ideas as he appreciated candid shots. The first shoot took place in a modern yet minimalistic studio. Choosing soft fabrics such as satin and cotton, against a white background, mostly using the natural sunlight to capture his shots.

“Y/N, this shoot is about capturing you in your most innocent state, I want you to be vulnerable but willing” He hummed.

“Tae, what do you mean willing?” I questioned.

“I mean, as in willing to learn, I want you to be vulnerable but open-minded to the prospect of exploring a relationship” He demanded.

Yeah, Taehyung was never good at conveying what he wanted from others.

“Okay, let me give you context, you have just come out of a difficult relationship, you meet this guy, he is genuine and he makes you excited, but you are reluctant” He explained.

“Okay, I’m following...” I replied.

“Right, now I want you to be open-minded to the prospect of exploring a relationship with this new guy” He smiled.

At the time, I should’ve realised where he was going with this concept, however, I was too caught up in the moment of feeling oddly vulnerable in front of the camera. I didn’t like it, so I tried to convey what was asked of me so I could return to my comfort zone. Taehyung had made it a point to keep my face natural and the set minimal.

-

“Tae, what’s the general theme of your shoots?” I asked while packing up his equipment.

“Hmmm, I want to achieve three images of you in your rawest form” he hummed while folding the sheets.

“Any particular reason why?”

“I think that’s when you are the most beautiful” He showcased his boxy smile, making my heart flutter for a moment.

I felt guilty as I paused to watch the tall figure move around the studio so gracefully, I wanted to embrace him yet kick him at the same time. He knew I was with his best friend, yet he proceeded to taunt me like this?

“Ha ha, so cringey, anyway I’m going to give Jimin a call” I spoke sarcastically, quickly removing myself from the tension he caused.

Rapidly searching for Jimin in my contacts, I wanted to hear his voice, I needed to hear it, to keep me grounded! I needed to be reminded of the difference between love and lust.

“Jagiya, I miss you” I spoke. [Jagiya=Honey, sweetie, love]

“How’s Tae?” Chim asked.

Odd. Instead of responding to me, he’s concerned about Taehyung.

“He’s well I guess, you could call him if you’d like” I hissed.

“I will, I’ll see you soon”

“Yah! If you dare hang up on me Park Jimin, you’ll have another thing coming” I shouted.

“Like what?” He questioned snidely.

I hung up, his sass was too much for me right now, if anything that call pushed me even further away from him.

“Everything alright?” Taehyung was quick to attend my bruised ego.

I debated making a snide remark about his best friend but the prospect of showing Tae the cracks in what was left of my relationship would hurt what was left of my pride.

“Yeah, I’m going to back to then bnb to have a nap, I’m quite tired after today” I whispered.

“What? No! its only 2pm Y/N, you promised you’d let me show you my home city!” He pleaded.

“Yah, Taehyung-ah.. I’m not in the mood, with you being all happy around me will just make me feel guilty!”

“You argued with Jimin didn’t you.” That boy could see right through me. I didn’t realise how transparent I truly was.

“I did not.”

“You did, you’re so obvious” He sighed.

“And wha-“

In moments, I felt the boy’s strong arms wrap around my torso, pulling me into his embrace. He hot breath dispersed across my scalp. Why? Just why did he have to touch me? He was contributing to the cracks in my relationship. I felt responsible for putting my guard down.

He was the puppeteer to my heartstrings, and I was the idiot allowing myself to be played.

“It’s okay, you can cry. I’m here, I’m always here.” He spoke, placing his chin on the crown of my scalp.

My ears were pressed against his broad chest, his heart was steady and calm.

“Taehyung. I don’t mean to be rude, but can you let go of me” I said brazenly.

“uh?”

I pushed myself away from the figure. I already felt bad for being close friends to the boy, but the tension he was causing within every dynamic I shared with the boys and myself was becoming unhealthy.

-

The second shoot with Taehyung took place in a studio filled with heaps of flowers.

“This is the second stage of your new relationship, you’re blossoming, figuratively and literally” he skipped searching for flowers to encase my body in.

“Imagine that this is a new chapter of your life, better yet a new volume, you’re a new person and this guy brings the best out of you”

At this point, I should’ve seen what was coming, but I was still offended by Jimin’s disregard for my being and feelings, he was purposely being spiteful because he was bitter.

“Ah, one second, Jimin’s calling me” He laughed.

Wow. They are both bastards. I’d half expect Taehyung would not pick up, but I’d also hope that Jimin would contact me back first.

“Jimin told me to tell you that you should unblock him”

Oh, I forgot... I am quite irrational when I’m irritated.

“He also said that he is sorry, and that he misses you”

Suspicious, why would Jimin provide any insight into our relationship when he detests the fact that I, too am close to his beloved Taehyung.

“Ok” Is what I chose to reply with, possibly because I wanted to be an asshole, but also because I refused to show any ounce of emotion to all parties concerned.

-

Before I knew it, I was on a plane to Japan. Sitting next to someone whom was beautiful even when they were drooling. Taehyung had always been irritating due to the sole fact that, that boy could be dressed in a bin bag and he’d still look like a model.

“If you’re going to stare at me like that while I sleep, I’m assuming you’re giving me permission to do the same?” He spoke with his eyes still closed.

That cocky bastard, he had eyes at the side of his head now too?

“Oh no, I was just admiring the string of drool that’s hanging from your chin” I hissed, turning my head to face the seat in front of me.

Hastily, the boy wiped his string of saliva with the back of his hand. Classy.

-

I refused to speak to Jimin till I had landed back in SK. Taehyung and I were booked to be in Japan for 2 and a half days after all, might as well make the most of it, right?

Wrong. That’s where I committed the sinniest sin amongst sins. [not an actual word, but in this instance... is a word]

Japan was beautiful, Taehyung seemed to have perfectly timed such a trip, or it was due to his sheer luck. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was based on luck, due to his undeniably beautiful features and personality to pair.

Sakura. The season of cherry blossoms gracing the country. Taehyung had booked a hotel in Kyoto, his demeanour changed the moment we checked in at the hotel. Something sinister yet determined, became evident in his actions.

-

This hotel had a bath that emulated that of the hot springs famous around Japan. He had me dressed in nothing but a large white shirt. I felt even more vulnerable than I did in the first shoot. I’d hope I wouldn’t have to be in the bath. If I had known what would’ve happened after the shoot, I would’ve protested.

“Y/N, I know this seems outrageous, but I promise you that this is only in sight of our project, I want you to submerge yourself in the water” [water is wet]

“I want you to be completely wet, this is the last stage of your relationship blossoming, you don’t have to feign innocence, you can allow your body to be possessed by lust in its rawest from”

“I’m not going to judge you nor scrutinise you, but I want you to look at the camera as though you’re seeing Jimin naked for the first time” He sang to me.

He was playing a dangerous game, I was only wearing that t-shirt and a pair of knickers, didn’t he know that the material would cling to every orifice of my body. What was he playing at exactly?

“Umm, I don’t feel comfortable with doing that, Tae” I spoke stepping into the mist filled tub.

“Just do it Y/N” He demanded.

“Show me your sensual side, show me what else there is to you” He pleaded.

Was he talking to be directly or figuratively? Or both?

“Taehyu-“

“Seriously, we flew all the way here for you to do this?”

I found myself almost completely submerged under, leaving but my nose to forehead above water.

“You’ve done this for me twice already! I just want to see the real you, okay?” He reassured the knots in my stomach, that this was for art. If I should part-take in such a project, I should at least commit completely.

The transparent liquid aided in adjusting my nerves, it was warm and comforting, I just needed to use my imagination to give the shots that was required of me.

I began posing in ways that were foreign to me, mostly using my eyes to envelope Tae into a façade that appeared real, yet was entirely fake.

I wanted to take him, he was my muse in that moment. I was not making love to the camera, I was making lust to him. He was cruel to put me in such a compromising predicament, but to his surprise, I did not falter at the task at hand.

-

Moments passed and we were finished with his project.

“Wow, that was beautiful” He said in awe as he looked back at some of his prized shots while I continued to sway in the liquid.

He placed his camera in a dry place, reaching for the nearest towel.

Reaching for my hand, he aided in helping me out of the safe haven. I realised later that my skin was visible through the saturated material. Nipples apparent and erect. His eyes darkened before me as he wrapped the cotton cloth around my frame. Pulling me closer, he looked down on me with eyes that had a motive.

“Forgive me for what I’m about to do”

Before I could speak, I felt pressure against my lips. Soft, subtle even pressure, against my lips. He was cruel. I found myself melting into his mouth, wanting more than just a chaste kiss. His firm hands snaked around my hips, allowing the cloth to fall at our feet. Gripping tightly, I yelped, earning him access to explore my moist cavern. Knots found their way into my abdomen. I was excited as a thick fog claimed my vision.

In that moment, I did not give Jimin a second thought. It had been so long since I’d be touched like this, felt wanted like this. Taehyung respected my space, time and individualism. He was enticing, comforting and appreciative. God, he was a bastard for that.

#bts #bts reaction #bts scenarios #bts taehyung #bts angst #BTS jimin #BTS jungkook #bts maknae line #bts fanfic #bts fanfiction #bts photography #bangtan #bangtan boys #bangtan scenarios #bangtan sonyeondan #bangtan scouts #bangtan scenario #bts scenario #bts imagine #bts imagines #bts imagination #BTS jin #bts jhope #bts jealous #bts jungguk #bts hoseok #bts hope #bts hobi #bts yoongi #BTS suga

[punk-rock-pixie]

1-100

I need to be careful what I ask for lmao

Spotify, SoundCloud, or Pandora?

Spotify

is your room messy or clean?

It’s messy rn just cuz I was looking for something

what color are your eyes?

Hazel

do you like your name? why?

Yeah. Picked it myself.

what is your relationship status?

single

describe your personality in 3 words or less

Really McFuckin Gay

what color hair do you have?

Black and blue

what kind of car do you drive? color?

Grey chevy cruz

where do you shop?

I’m a slut for Barns and Noble lately. Dropped $60 on classic ghost stories, Norse Mythology, and a Deathly Hallows journal. I’ve dropped over $100 literally in the last two months on books. I don’t work anymore though so that won’t be a thing anymore

how would you describe your style?

Sad college kid chic 

favorite social media account

Youtube

what size bed do you have?

Queen

any siblings?

One older sister.

if you can live anywhere in the world where would it be? why?

The Nordic region. They’ve been doing so much right in terms of education and gender equality. 

favorite snapchat filter?

The anime one

favorite makeup brand(s)

NYX, E.L.F. and Bare Essentials

how many times a week do you shower?

I shower every other day, but I wash my hair like every 3-4 days to keep the color in.

favorite tv show?

Currently, really love trollhunters. 

shoe size?

Like a 7 in mens or something

how tall are you?

5′6.5″ The half is so important to me because I’ve hardly grown since 2012 

sandals or sneakers?

Trick question- no shoes at all. Our feet get hurt like men.

do you go to the gym?

Rarely, but yes.

describe your dream date

Dear god. Almost any date I’d be okay with. Coffee? Sign me the fuck up. Hang around a park/go on a walk? Lemme get my heckin sneakers. Cryptid hunting in the wee hours of the night? You just won my heckin heart buddy.  

how much money do you have in your wallet at the moment?

Like $30-$40 I think????

what color socks are you wearing?

None sock

how many pillows do you sleep with?

Too many for my own good.

do you have a job? what do you do?

Not anymore :)))) There weren’t enough hours.

how many friends do you have?

How many friends? Many. How many close ones? Like 3-4

whats the worst thing you have ever done?

Something I’d rather not say.

whats your favorite candle scent?

Lavender always but peppercorn and pumpkin are the ones I’ve been using lately.

3 favorite boy names

Marshal

Ethan (NOT BECAUSE OF NESTOR)

Quinn

3 favorite girl names

Rose

Sadona

Rickie 

favorite actor?

Always and forever Chris Evans, but also Hugh Jackman found his way back to my heart recently. The Rock, Ramin Karimloo, Sean Gunn, Michael Rooker

favorite actress?

Zoe Saldana, Zendaya, Melissa McCarthy, Allison Janney, Julie Andrews, Maryl Streep.

who is your celebrity crush?

See above two questions, but mainly Hugh Jackman, Chris Evans, and Zendaya

favorite movie?

If you couldn’t tell, I’m hyperfixating on Greatest Showman, but also Book of Life, Monster in Paris, 1937 Phantom of the Opera

do you read a lot? whats your favorite book?

My favorite book is Dracula currently, but I also love Dodie Clark’s “secrets for the mad”, most of Shakespeare’s plays and Edgar Alan Poe’s works

money or brains?

Brains. 

do you have a nickname? what is it?

I have way to many dude.

how many times have you been to the hospital?

Like 7-8 I think???

top 10 favorite songs

In no order:

-I’m counting all of greatest showman as one

-Cat Stevens: Father and Son

-Raspberries: Go all the way

-Silver: Wham Bam Shang a Lang

-Babeo Baggins: Thunder Bird

-Dodie Clark: You

-Beatles: Wanna Hold Your Hand

-Vanessa Paradis and Sean Lennon: La Seine 

-Dear Evan Hansen: For Forever

-Karen O: Moon Song

do you take any medications daily?

No but I should probably get back on them.

what is your skin type? (oily, dry, etc)

Normal to oily

what is your biggest fear?

Abandonment :) Also I have claustrophobia

how many kids do you want?

I mean if we’re talking baby goats, as many as I can afford.

whats your go to hair style?

I kinda just brush my hair back and hope for the best

what type of house do you live in? (big, small, etc)

It’s not a mansion, but it’s pretty big

who is your role model?

@thatsthat24

what was the last compliment you received?

From @mild-soapog something about how I deserve a wholesome life and honestly I just love Elle???

what was the last text you sent?

“Hey, how are you feeling?” to a former coworker

how old were you when you found out santa wasn’t real?

I grew up Jewish so I never really thought it.

what is your dream car?

I don’t really care tbh. I’m pretty happy with the one I have.

opinion on smoking?

You do you just not around me cuz I will cough like a mad man.

do you go to college?

Soon

what is your dream job?

Professional film or stage actor or singer/guitarist in a band

would you rather live in rural areas or the suburbs?

suburbs

do you take shampoo and conditioner bottles from hotels?

Nope. I’m a good noodle.

do you have freckles?

Several

do you smile for pictures?

Yes, but only after make a bunch of stupid faces

how many pictures do you have on your phone?

659

have you ever peed in the woods?

Yes and uh 4/5 would not recommend 

do you still watch cartoons?

Yup

do you prefer chicken nuggets from Wendy’s or McDonalds?

Neither.

Favorite dipping sauce?

hek dude idk 

what do you wear to bed?

Usually like a tank top and underwear. if it’s super cold I’ll wear sweats too

have you ever won a spelling bee?

Have I ever even competed in one????

what are your hobbies?

Guitar, singing, ukulele, drawing, writing poetry

can you draw?

I’d say so

do you play an instrument?

Check hobbies with the addition of bass guitar

what was the last concert you saw?

I think it was a Beatles tribute band???

tea or coffee?

Both

Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts?

Starbucks

do you want to get married?

Honestly, first let me find someone local that will love me for more than 4 months

what is your crush’s first and last initial?

HJ, EJ, EN. 

are you going to change your last name when you get married?

You mean… IF I get married

what color looks best on you?

Blacks and purples

do you miss anyone right now?

Several people

do you sleep with your door open or closed?

usually closed

do you believe in ghosts?

Yes and no???

what is your biggest pet peeve?

chewing with your mouth open, snoring, pen clicking, leg jiggling (if it’s in my peripheral vision)

last person you called

My crush actually. He and I are friends and I asked if we wanted me to hang with him after school since he had to stay up until I had my callback scheduled

favorite ice cream flavor?

Chocolate chip cookie dough and cookies and cream

regular oreos or golden oreos?

What the shit are golden oreos

chocolate or rainbow sprinkles?

Rainbow cuz I’m queer

what shirt are you wearing?

 A black tank top

what is your phone background?

a greatest showman wallpaper

are you outgoing or shy?

it depends on the situation

do you like it when people play with your hair?

Yes but ONLY IF THEY ASK BEFORE HAND.

do you like your neighbors?

I don’t even know my neighbors

do you wash your face? at night? in the morning?

Both

have you ever been high?

nope

have you ever been 

Nope

last thing you ate?

Like half a pizza

favorite lyrics right now?

Idk my favorite currently, but these are the ones that keep circling my head

“When the world becomes a fantasyAnd you’re more than you could ever be‘Cause you’re dreaming with your eyes wide openAnd you know you can’t go back againTo the world that you were living in'Cause you’re dreaming with your eyes wide open

So Come alive”

summer or winter?

Winter

day or night?

Night

dark, milk, or white chocolate?

All????

favorite month?

October-November

what is your zodiac sign

Scorpio

who was the last person you cried in front of?

Honestly, I have no fuckin clue lmaooooo

#pixie interrogation #punkrockpixie #anonymous

[thegroovethief]

#TGTfeature 008: Lea Luna [Magik Muzik; Dim Mak; Raid Recordings: Denver, Colorado, USA] Fresh off my interview with world champion turntablist DJ Shiftee, #TGTfeature 008 is with the skilled Lea Luna, who kills it on the decks whether bass, house, or beyond! She took the time out for a chat just before headlining a hometown show at The Black Box. This and forthcoming #TGTfeature articles will highlight dedicated musical talents by featuring their recent work as well as an in-depth interview. Known for her passion and dedication to dance music as well as the art of DJing, Lea Luna is also a chart-topping singer and a respected music journalist. She kindly shared her thoughts on bass music, repping Denver, dealing with online trolls, and more. A bit about Lea Luna: - With nearly 20 years behind the decks, she’s played numerous noteworthy clubs: NYC's Limelight, LA's Avalon, and Denver's own Beta - Frequently called on for vocal collaborations, she’s recently worked with the likes of Sydney Blu, Manufactured Superstars, and Quivver - Also known for her production work, she regularly releases her own music, including “Rock Show” out via RAID Recordings

TGT: You’re leading an excellent lineup of bass talent at The Black Box, all representing Denver. What styles will you be bringing for this set, and how do you determine ‘tough bass’ in 2018? LL: I’m definitely planning on keeping it bass-driven, much like my last Black Box set was. Bass house, maybe a few breaks, maybe a few trap drops to break it up. I’ve always said this as my overarching quote: “Genres don’t define artists, artists define genres.” I pretty much live by that ideology. I’ve been DJing for nearly two decades now and have seen many music fads come and go (fidget, for instance, was one such fad genre in the bass category I used to like that died). Everything all stems from two main influence points- the first influence is the roots of the underground— the old history behind the emergence of the new sound. People like classic vocal hooks in newer remixes if they were a part of the scene back in the day, and bass house wouldn’t be where it is now without the original house music and garage innovators. The second influence is technology. Bass music sounded way different before the VST (virtual instrument) plugin Serum was invented because producers had different tools. I remember when the VST called Massive first came out and dubstep as a genre resulted. Electronic music is largely affected by these nerds who make virtual instruments and how artists interpret that technology as tools for creative flow. While everyone as listeners are pulling apart which bass music artists are making new genres, most real artists are at home dorking around with compression ratios and wave tables trying to invent an actual noise. So it’s hard for me as an artist to talk about bass music as an evolving fad because I sit here with the tools all day looking at the other perspective of what’s really evolving. TGT: Denver is certainly a unique place! How would you describe the realities and complexities of the scene here as a local artist with a global following? Any advice for up-and-coming DJs/producers on navigating our “island?” LL: I could not be more proud of Denver, and even electronic music as a scene in general. This city used to only offer these (beloved) secret warehouse-type hideout parties with a bunch of obscure DJs, vinyl collectors, and underground ravers interested in coming, and now every large venue in the city is wall-to-wall packed with dance music fans on any given night. There’s a lot to be accredited to the increase in our culture, but also a lot that has been bastardized. What I will say to the new kids is if you’re out here letting a controller do all the work for you onstage, playing the top 40 dance chart releases in order so you can be popular, you are sh*tting all over my craft and culture. It’s not a popularity contest and the DJ booth is not a bottle service area. The best way to become a DJ is to care about actually DJing. Be authentic, know your roots, respect your predecessors, respect women, respect other subgenres, and don’t spend your life savings on social media likes. Inspire people, ask for help, collaborate, offer something OF yourself before asking about something FOR yourself. Create. Learn. Be humble (but please stop humble-bragging). Start a crew. Give a damn, you know? We’ve all had our bouts with fame and drama as artists, but if you’re not creative at all and you’re not keeping it real, you shouldn’t be doing this.

TGT: There’s a lot of debate about whether certain strains of electronic music have reached full saturation, or have become so derived they’ve practically lost relevance. What are your thoughts on the current electronic dance scene, particularly within house music, and what’s your approach to keep your own productions sounding fresh? LL: People of the underground like to worry I’m too commercial, people of the commercial world like to worry I’m too underground. Some people want to hear music everyone understands, some people act rude when something becomes popular because they want to be viewed as purists. Like I said before, know your roots, know the trends, give a damn, create something original, and keep it moving. That’s the motto. If I claimed to be a purist 10 years ago and stuck to it, I’d be in hot water right now trying to play washed up music that pales in comparison to new mastering and technology on those fresh new funktion-ones (the incredible speakers they have at Black Box). If you stay current in your arena and true to your roots, genre and saturation thereof can be left to the listeners to decide. Ain’t nobody got time for that in my world. Artists. Define. Genres. I play what I think is ahead of the curve, and what I think is classic, all in one set. There’s no genre about it, but I will say that my tempo lately in clubs is 122-128, with an occasional drop to 100 just to grab people’s attention. All things house, garage, and breaks fall into that first category, and trap/twerk drops (second category) make life fun.

TGT: You’ve recently posted about receiving online threats from a random stranger. This is, sadly, nothing new for female public figures. How can readers (particularly men) succeed in eradicating this all-too-common misogyny within our music community? And offline, what should promoters and venues be doing to keep their dance-floors safe? LL: As for keeping clubs safe - I truly believe in strength in numbers. I have a strong, supportive, loving crew of friends and fans, as well as professionals and security guards. I take threats very seriously and file reports and blacklists when they happen to protect myself and other women. I have very strong security measures held at all of my shows, including this one. But in the big picture, the biggest thing that is going to make any club a safe environment is a positive example of the members of any audience at any show ACTING RIGHT TOWARDS WOMEN. If you see someone put something in someone's drink, report them. If you see someone abusing a woman either verbally or physically any way whatsoever, DO SOMETHING. Inaction is still an action. I come with a large group of friends that I deeply trust to every event and there is no way in hell someone is going to act in public like they do on the internet towards me or any woman in my presence and get away with it. One time someone lifted my skirt up and hit me on the ass at a show and although they were "only joking," they were being held by the neck of their shirt over the patio rail and reprimanded by my friends a split second later until security came and got them. These types of people will always be outnumbered and will never get away with what they think they can. They try it on the internet because they can troll and hide. [As for online threats:] Here’s the deal. People are jealous. It happens to both sexes, but primarily females because sexual iconography or lack thereof triggers people who writhe in unnecessary hatred from the comfort of their hate-hobbit computer den. Being attractive does not make me stupid or talentless. There is no such thing as “using” your looks. I look this way. That’s a fact, maybe a hobby, not a tactic. I also write music consistently and contribute a lot to this scene. Do all girl DJs do that? Likely not, but many do. The problem lies in the prejudice, pegging all women as having a backhanded agenda or a lack of intelligence or avoiding authenticity. This claim emerges from the hearts of people whose mothers didn’t hug them, whose girlfriends cheated on them, whatever. Hurt people hurt people. Do I care what these specific people think? No. I care if I screw up publicly and true fans lose interest in me. I care about staying true to myself and my brand, and I care about doing what I say I’m going to do for my shows, my opening DJs, the promoters who believe in me, my agent and manager, my crew, my friends, and my fans. Anyone who is so clearly coming from a place of jealous bigotry who tries to threaten me, embarrass me, or thwart my success always fails. Because they aren’t battling me, they’re battling something very dark and unhappy inside themselves. TGT: And, to end on a lighter topic – what’s your favorite spot in town for a post-gig meal? LL: Post gig? I’m always exhausted around then, but definitely just as junk food hungry as anyone at 2am leaving a bar. I rarely go out after bar hours to eat though. I’m more likely to hit a grocery store for a pizza to pop in the oven at home or if I’m feeling extra self-loathing I’ll get cheesy popcorn and pop tarts from a gas station [laughs].

#Lea Luna #Lea #Luna #DJ Lea Luna #DJ #TGTfeature #Interview #The Black Box #Denver #Colorado #Bass #House #EDM #Electronic #Dance #Music #TGTstylee

[maria-carmelia]

The rape culture thriving in the online Filipino setting

Op-Ed on the perpetuation of sexual violence and abuse on multiple social media platforms, waving the rape culture that exists in the Philippines. 

***

The feminist movement has come a long way from the first wave. With the increasing rise of technology, feminists are now able to quickly revolutionize the current politics of sex and gender, aiming to achieve equality among all.

In western countries, the #MeToo movement gradually grows and empowers women to voice their stories of sexual maltreatment. Whereas in the Philippines, although indeed feminism has evolved from its ancestral male-female traditions, the liberalism of the female population, is still quite a topic that is still in incredulity.

Nonetheless, there is an up rise of women embracing more their womanhood. In social networking services (SNS), we see an increasing number of women profusely sharing their experiences not only in sexual violence and assaults but also in their own sexual practices. Women are now confident in sharing photos of themselves in swimwear and lingerie. They are more willing to re-post articles that discuss sex and relationships. They admit their watching of pornographic videos. There also has been a widening growth in women supporting other women, rejecting the patriarchal dictation of beauty and behavioral standards. These are only some of the things that signify the development transfigured by feminism.

However rampant, there is still an ongoing battle between liberal and progressive thoughts and conservative and traditional beliefs. The evident magnification of confidence instilled in women is still strafed with criticisms and rejection from society. They oppose the new sculpture women have molded for themselves. It is an image that defies what once used to be accepted as true and correct. They belittle what is voiced now and attempt to sustain the truth of the past. What is most tragic is that they breed ideas that continue to subdue the newly found voice of women.

SO, WHERE HAVE WE GONE WRONG?

Rape culture is the normalization of ideologies that condone sexual violence and assault. It doesn't just concern the actual act of rape but the behavior that warrants the thinking of undermining targets of sexual violence. This includes blaming and slut shaming.  It proposes a thought targeted towards the "faults" of the victim, rather than the perpetrator. Condemned are the women who want to be sexually active; shamed are they who feel lust; and blamed are the victims of sexual assault. On top of this, women are continued to be sexually objectified, majorly disregarding the role of men in the picture.

Despite the hope of utilizing SNS as a platform to inculcate why preaching feminism is a vital component in reaching equality, social networking sites platforms have proven to be a dangerous playing field for those who want to overpower the scrupulous criticisms and stratagems of the patriarchy. In fact, SNS has also been an instrument in deepening the ideologies of rape culture.

SHARING – A friend tags a friend tags a friend

Perhaps the most notable dawn of rape culture on SNS in the Philippines is the sudden surge of the ‘Pastor/Hokage Groups’ back in 2017. In essence, ‘Hokage Groups’ were different online communities based on illicit posting and sharing obscene photos and videos of women without their consent. Members of the group were expected to be active in commenting, contributing files, and rating women in the videos. Although Facebook has investigated and removed pages that were utilized as platforms to disseminate such, some continue to do so. Time and time again, there will be a pop of scandal on Facebook, igniting a race between several interested netizens to hold a grab of the footage. A quick search on Facebook’s search engine would also show a list of such content.

COMMENTS: They want it. They would’ve fought if they didn’t want it. They only pretend they don’t like what’s happening. She asked for it.

The idea here is that if women are humiliated by the public, they should not have agreed to perform in sexual activities, to allow it to be filmed or recorded and that they are to blame for their circumstances. How this extends the arm of rape culture is that not only have the women been violated of their privacy rights, they will now carry the burden of externally invoked indignity; whereas men are hailed champions for their conquer. Women are stripped off respect; whereas men are given it. Women become the object to lust over, and the subject of discussion; whereas men are rarely given the accountability and enlightenment about the harmful effects their actions triggered.

Some people, men, and even women forget, or rather dismiss the idea that it takes two to tango. Women have much liberty to engage in any form of sexual activities as much as any men. They can indulge in pleasure as men do. The only thing that people don’t into account is that women give their consent to the activity, but not to its broadcast.

TARGETING – We hit the bull’s eye!

After the disbanding of the Hokage Groups, a number of pages and groups continue publishing obscene content. However, it is important to point out that some of these groups broadcast these only for clickbait. Photos will be edited and will include captions that insinuate sexually invoked ideas to entice people, and many of the videos shared online cannot be played at will. To have access, permission from the administrator of the page is required.

A well-known YouTuber, Rei Germar, has been a target of this. In her tweet, she shares a post originally posted from a Facebook account (Christian Marbella) objectifying her and another unidentified female in the photos. Germar was quick to call out the post and threatens to sue the Marbella. He then excuses himself by claiming his account was hacked. Regardless whether this is true or not, the post poses as a danger not only to Germar, but to all women because it shows how easy it is to alter visuals and create stories sexually shaming and objectifying them.  

In early 2018, the Pick-up Artists (PUA) Academy has also been under heat for their disreputable seminars on how to ‘pick-up’ girls. In a video that went viral, PUA Academy teachers were found coaching their participants how to coerce women into sex. Apparently, when a woman says no, it’s because “gusto nila nagpapaforce."

When asked, PUA Academy defends its purpose and claims that they encourage ‘shy-type’ boys to pursue courtship. However, Paula Valbuena shared on Twitter multiple screenshots displaying how conversations among PUA Academy participants converse with each other. From her screenshots, we see that men are not exactly encouraged to be confident, more so that they are fuelled to prey on women and hate on those who oppose their actions.

COMMENTS: It’s not really rape. He didn’t mean to. They are misunderstood.

In this scenario, women are unknowingly being sold off digitally from one man to another – acting as sex slaves to please the satisfaction and entertainment of men. They have become puppets stringed to their own masters, moving to the will not of their own.

What’s more despairing about this is there will be people who will defend these perpetrators and argue that their actions are misinterpreted and that it wasn’t their true intention of sexually violating these women. Again, we see a behavior that belittles the assault, and that disregards the consequences. We see a mindset that cannot grasp that women feel offended and suffer trauma because of the objectification.

We have to accept that men are not incapable of thinking and assessing the weight of their actions. Predominantly assumed to be the more powerful sex, it should be safe to also assume that they have the capacity to have reason and logic just as women have. But rape culture has evolved them to be naturally blinded from the repercussions that affect women and the toxic masculinity that emulate from their actions. Rape culture trained them to choose not to see because they are reinforced by the notion that ‘boys will boys’; that men cannot change the way they behave and think; that men are fueled by an array of sexual desires; that women are designed for the purpose of serving and amusing men; that women are tools set to fulfill the satisfaction of men; the women have no intellectual potential. Essentially, rape culture identifies our roles for us in society.

Stories like Germar’s and Valbuena’s are only a couple of the many victims from the digital sex trade.

HAHA - THE JOKE’S ON US

Studies have shown that there is an under-reporting of cases. Victims of rape have also outspoken online the difficulties in coming forward – from admitting to themselves that it happened to sharing their stories, to pressing charges, to their finding themselves being the ones under question rather than the perpetrator.

There has been a handful of posts on Facebook in 2017/2018 where men are caught in the act of sexual assaults. Many have similar foundations to their stories: in a public transportation vehicle, a man has his genitalia out or is taking pictures of women across or beside him. 

Similarly, a video went viral in December 2018 of a woman reprimanding a man who has his genitalia out in front of her inside a bus. Admittedly, these posts did garner a negative response from netizens with them having a common agreement the absurdity of the men’ actions. There was a sudden peak of discussion of the sexual assaults women face every day while commuting.

Unfortunately, over time, the part of the video where the woman yells “putang ina mo!” has been transformed into a meme. The extremities of what had happened had been downgraded to a mere laughing matter. No longer is it associated with a crime against women. Rather, it has turned to the many of the memes that will be forgotten in due time.

Note: I can no longer find the links to these as Facebook seemed to have removed them from the system.

COMMENTS: It’s not really rape. It’s only a joke.

Although Filipinos have been known to make the most serious of matters a lightweight, the danger of making into it a meme only suggests that the issues women face can easily be overlooked. Remarks such as “it’s not really rape” and “it’s only a joke” harm women because it does not consider the disrespect, humiliation, and trauma that they encounter.

How many women must come forward, and how long do women must suffer before men begin to believe and accept the consequences of the rape culture?

***

These examples reflect only a portion of the rape culture that lives on SNS. Because of these examples, women become restrained. It becomes a backlash in the feminist movement of empowering women to be open about their sexuality.

Issues like this frequently focus on publicly shaming women and their involvement in sexual matters. Perpetrators are less given attention, and are, therefore, a little bit more emancipated from societal condemnation. This is because men have been predetermined to have sexual appetites, to be sexually active, and to act on them; whereas women hold the role of feeding these said appetites. The rape culture unfetters that patriarchy and continues to enslave women.

How women portray themselves online and how they behave is not automatic consent for men to take ownership of their sexuality. How far feminism has gone to empower women in their sexuality is not consent that men can sexualize them too. Why women no longer conceal this is because they no longer want to be chained by the expectations of men. Women have the same hunger as men, and we have much power to say yes or to say no in this matter.

#eng