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gifted-burnout-archive · 4 years

Text

we can never be friends

Requested?: Big mash up again... Oopsies. Someone wanted angsty luke smut, someone wanted the phrase ‘well i fucked your girlfriend and there’s nothing you can do about it’ implimented, someone else wanted a lil fake dating to get back at an ex, bad boy luke, the sex scene from charmed, y/n is a witch... also decided to make y/n a child genius to sweeten the pot.

Word Count: 10.2K+

Author’s Note: this story is brought to you by machine gun kelly, and the songs ‘bloody valentine’ and ‘why are you here’. i stumbled across the songs by mistake, and can’t get them out of my head, so now you get luke smut based on them.

also, everyone is aged up by like six-seven years, this takes place over a period of like a year and a half ish? yeah, read the nonsense and take from what you wish my doods. and a part two might come along if y’all want it, so like, lemme know.

song featured is ‘bloody valentine’ by machine gun kelly.

Warning: smut, drug and alcohol misuse, infidelity. and when i say smut i do mean smut. like oof smut. enjoy...

masterlist, i write more stuff like this sin.

It was always a mistake, whenever they got together.

Of course, it never felt like it in the moment: when his body was pressed up against hers, his lips on her neck and marking what was his, her fingernails clawing into his back and doing the same, it didn’t feel like a bad idea. It felt like euphoria, it was sweat and teeth and passion and sex. And for the first few moments after, as they came down from their highs and his arms pulled her close as they both caught their breath, there was a moment when they both wondered if they could actually work, they could actually be together.

“You’re thinking it again.” She muttered softly, pressing her lips to his once more before slipping out from under the satin sheets, making a beeline for the hotel bathroom. It was just chance they had run into one another in New York, what with them both calling Los Angeles, California home. But she had been called to Columbia University, and he had a habit of appearing where she least expected him to be.

For all the years Y/N had known Luke Patterson, he had never failed to surprise her.

“Is it so bad to think it? It’s not like we’re ever going to act on it.” He responded, biting his lip as his eyes scanned over her figure. He threw off the covers, recovering his boxers and slipping them on before walking after her, his thoughts giving him away, though he knew that already. “You sure you can’t stay for another hour?” He asked, leaning against the bathroom’s doorway as she freshened up. ‘Maybe this time I could fuck you against the window…’ her eyes shot up, a scowl upon her pretty face as she walked past him and back into the bedroom, quickly collecting her clothes.

“You really ought to control those thoughts of yours, Patterson. One day they might get you in trouble. Besides, I have an early lecture in the morning.” She muttered, pulling on her underwear, pausing to look for her second stocking. Luke walked over towards the door, lifting the hosiery from atop a lampshade.

They had been in a rush to get into bed.

“Crazier things have happened than you missing a lecture, Y/N.” He reminded when she came over to collect her second stocking, sitting on the bed and slipping it on quickly, the pair sharing glances.

“Not when I’m the one giving the lecture, you asshat.” She reminded, and Luke grinned. He forgot sometimes how unbelievably clever the girl before him was, and as she pulled on her dress, Luke took a step forward to zip up the back for her. One of his hands came to hold her waist as his lips pressed down on the exposed skin of her collarbone, his cold breath fanning over her skin and causing the girl to shiver and goosebumps to form. “This can’t happen again, understood?” She breathed out, the last of her words turning to a moan as Luke nipped at the crook of her neck, his free hand coming down from her shoulder, his fingers brushing faintly against her skin as their hands finally met.

He spun her around, bringing the hand he held to his lips and pressing a chaste kiss to her knuckles, his eyes locking with hers, his lips quirking to a smirk when she blushed at his actions.

Luke loved the effect he had on her. Y/N hated it.

“It’s cute how sure you are about it.” He remarked, moving away and breaking their touch, Y/N trying not to frown at the loss of his cold hands against her warm skin. “I mean, we’ve been saying the same thing since high school.” He swung open the hotel room’s door for her, and she quickly rid herself of any feelings of affection for the man before her: he always knew how to annoy her.

“And this time it’ll stick.” She snapped back, locating her purse with haste and slipping on her heels before marching for the door.

‘I like when you scream my name, Princess, don’t you?’ The intrusive thought belonged to the boy leant against the door, and Y/N scoffed as she walked out into the hallway, the carpet underneath a crimson red, something she hadn’t bothered to notice on her way up to his place.

“Get out of my head, Ghost Boy.” She ordered, not looking back as she made her way down the hallway, though she heard Luke laugh behind her, one of his smug chuckles that made her blood boil.

“I think it’s the other way round, your Highness. Rude to listen to what other people are thinking.” He called back down the hallway, earning a rather offensive hand gesture before Y/N stepped into the golden-door lift at the corridor’s end, the girl refusing to turn around until the doors had closed behind her, sparing her from his haunting gaze, those green eyes that managed to steal into her soul every time.

Luke watched the doors close at the end of the hall, letting out a soft sigh at the loss of the girl from his sight, though his moping was shortly interrupted by the sound of another room along the hallway opening its door, a scowling face looking back at him.

“You’re looking at me like I did something wrong.” He commented, walking back into his room and grabbing his jeans, that had landed on the back of the dining chair in the suite some five metres from the rumpled sheets of the bed. He pulled them as a set of footsteps approached, Luke again met with the disapproving expression of his band mate.

“Luke…” The concern dripping from Alex’s tongue with just his name had the guitarist shaking his head, walking across the room to grab his shirt, pulling it on quickly. “Luke, you know this is going to end badly.” He continued, taking a step further in the room while Luke grabbed his jacket. “Just like it did last time, and the time before that.”

“Alex, it’s fine, alright?” He said quickly. “What we have is good, it works.”

“It’s stopping you from finding someone you’d actually get along with.” The blonde disagreed, following Luke out into the hallway as the brown-haired boy started for the elevator. “Where do you plan on disappearing to? You remember we are meant to be on a plane in four hours?” He reminded, the other boy slowing to a stop, halfway between the golden doors and his friend.

“Is it really that late?” Luke asked, a smug look on his face, his iconic smirk and raised eyebrow causing Alex to roll his eyes.

“If you want a drink, order something up. Preferably, don’t order anything at all. Last thing you’ll want to be on an eight hour flight over the ocean is hungover, Luke.” He had always been the one with common sense, and Luke wavered on the spot for a moment, eyes fixed on the door. A part of him was sure he could catch up to her, that the pair could get a drink at the bar downstairs together. A part of him was sure she was waiting just beyond a press of a button, that she too was hoping he would join her.

“We’re bad for each other, aren’t we?” Luke found himself sighing happily, turning on his heels to face Alex once more. “God, she’s an asshole.”

“Most geniuses are.” Alex remarked with a smile, Luke taking one last glance back at the elevator before he headed towards the drummer’s room. Alex followed him in, walking to the drinks cabinet and pouring them both a drink: vodka, good stuff from what Luke could see, having taken a seat by the balcony windows. “You know, Julie’s got a friend you might like…”

“I don’t date, Alex. We’ve established this… Last thing I need is to break another one of Julie’s friend’s hearts. She’s only just forgiven for the last one…” Luke paused and nodded in thanks as Alex came over and took a seat across from him, handing over a drink. “Fuck, what was her name? It was something like Ruby or Pearl or Opal…”

“Crystal.” Alex corrected with a grimace and cold chuckle, finding the humour in his superior knowledge of Luke’s exes compared to the man across from him. “So, what? You’re going to spend the rest of your life like this, your closest encounter with romance being a girl you screw twice a year?”

“I mean, I see her twice a year… There are multiple rounds of sex involved each time.” Luke corrected with a strained laugh, downing the liquor in his glass. “I’ve really fucked myself over, haven’t I?” He asked, and Alex’s expression softened a little.

“Luke, don’t tell me you’re in love with her…”

“No, no… But it wouldn’t be the wildest thing, would it?” He asked, looking up at his friend for some sort of guidance: Alex was, after all, the one of their friendship group who had been dating his boyfriend since, God, since Julie’s senior year of high school. How far they had come since then…

“Everyone knows that you wouldn’t work out… For the obvious reason you’ve both been avoiding.” Alex sat straighter, picking up Luke’s empty glass and walking back to the cabinet to refill it, bringing the bottle back with him that time. “You may be alive again Luke, but it doesn’t change the fact that we’re not actually alive, and that we don’t mix with…” He trailed off, and Luke nodded, accepting the second glass and downing it in one, the alcohol in his veins the warmest thing about him.

He knew all too well what Alex was inferring, though in the guitarist’s defence, he hadn’t been privy to the rather large secret Y/N had until about a year into their… relationship. She had figured out his backstory rather quickly of course, but she had the advantage of reading his mind. Yes, Luke may have been a ghost, and that should have been complication enough.

But Y/N also happened to hold the title of supernatural being. It was just Luke’s luck, wasn’t it?

Just his luck to end up screwing a witch.

If there was anything to know about the intricacies of supernatural species, it would be that some of them didn’t get along very well: vampire and werewolves, mer-people and sirens, angels and demons. Amongst the long list of rivalries one might find in their research, one of the oldest and most conflicting pairings was that of witches and ghosts.

Witches, in practice, have one job: banishing spirits from the mortal realm. Alongside all the candle lighting and chatting with deities, witches like Y/N spent their lifetimes on earth getting rid of lingering souls. And with her family lineage and standing amongst the American covens, Y/N was rather good at what she did. Alongside her shocking intellect and undeniable beauty, she took on the part-time role of vanquishing ghosts to purgatory before they did anything stupid like come back to life.

Y/N hadn’t expected to find out her classmate Julie Molina was a medium halfway through their sophomore year, nor had she anticipated the arrival of three ghost musicians who could be seen by mortals when they all sang together in a band. Of course, her seeing them too didn’t help things, and her conflicted feelings over banishing the very attractive guitarist had led to a delay in her actions, and before she knew it, Julie was bringing them all back to life, or as alive as ghosts can be.

Noticing a resurrected ghost was nearly impossible: they age, they appear human, and if they avoid utilising their previous ghost powers, the only thing that would ever raise suspicions of a mortal, or any species for that matter, was how cold ghosts stayed.

It was a common misconception that vampires were ‘cold as ice’, popularised by teen movies that suggested the bloodsuckers sparkled in the sunlight, when it was ghosts who in fact held that trait (vampires were actually constantly warm from the excess of blood in their system). To touch a ghost was like shoving the body part into a freezer, there was an element of pain to it if the feeling was continuous, and it worked the other way around. A ghost touching the living could hurt, something that could perhaps be compared to the nipping on skin just a little too close to an open flame.

Y/N and Luke had found a loophole to that, of course: the heat of sex tended to offset the cold, mixing the inklings of pain with waves of pleasure.

Their relationship had been a complicated one from its beginning: there’s a certain level of tension that comes with the possibility that Julie’s pretty friend could destroy you and your friends with the same magic Caleb had threatened them with all those years ago, but when a year passed of the boys being present on earth, both invisible and visible to the human eye, and Y/N having done nothing to report them to her coven, the boys were sure they were in the clear.

And they were almost right…

“I need your help, Ghost Boy.” The words had Luke spinning on the spot as he stood under the early autumn sunshine. He had been waiting for Julie, tasked with picking her and Flynn up from school that day. Ever since the boys had stopped being dead, they had taken on chores in the house to help out Ray as a thank you for him letting them stay in the garage. Luke had expected to find Julie or Flynn, or anyone for a matter of fact: just not Y/N. The pair rarely spoke, most likely to do with the fact she should have reported him to some magical authorities over a year before.

“What do I owe this pleasure, Miss Magic?” He asked, his chipper tone and easy smirk causing Y/N to frown further. She disliked that she found him attractive, though it was exactly why she was approaching him that warm September day of her senior year. “Aren’t you meant to be at college?” He asked with a raised brow, and she sighed, folding her eyes.

“My academic schedule is none of your business.” She was, in fact, meant to be at college that day: Y/N had simultaneously attending high school and working towards her first degree, her parents insistent on her growing up amongst peers despite her summer having been spent working on her final dissertation for her first bachelor’s degree. “I am going to make this quick, Patterson, simply because talking with you makes me nauseous and I worry I’ll catch a cold if I stay close to you for too long.”

“You always had a way with your words, Princess.” Luke grinned, leaning back against the car’s bonnet and folding his own arms, his eyes quite blatant in their racking over her body: the sundress she wore leaving just enough to the imagination to leave the boy intrigued. “What can I do for you?” He asked, and Y/N snapped her fingers in front of his face, frowning.

“I can hear what you’re thinking, asshole… But you’re not far off.” She muttered, and Luke’s eyes widened. His thoughts had been far from pure. “I need you to come with me to Carrie’s party on Saturday, alright?” She exclaimed, clearly upset that she had resorted to asking assistance from the ghost. “My ex is going to be there, he’s an asshole, and if you say no I do have the means to banish you to purgatory.”

“I don’t get much of a say then, do I?”

“No, you don’t…”

“I’ll pick you up at seven.”

There was one thing certain about the relationship Luke Patterson shared with Y/N Y/L/N: they could never be friends.

After six years of casual sex in high-end hotel rooms and bathroom stalls; six years of cheating on ‘significant others’ with one-night stands; after Julie and the guys signed their multi-record deal and began touring and Y/N found her own level of moderate celebrity thanks to her genius brain; after all of it, they knew each other too well to like one another, and saw each other too little to develop anything beyond their physical encounters.

Because even though Luke annoyed Y/N with every smirk and his scoffing chuckle, and Y/N drove Luke to the edge with her superiority complex and constant need to prove her intelligence, it couldn’t be helped that whenever the pair found themselves faced with the other, all sanity went out the window. They became different people, and for the few hours they were in one another’s arms, who they really were didn’t matter.

Luke hated her a little bit for it, the effect she had on him, the same way Y/N hated him. There was no love lost between the two, there was no love to begin with. It was just convenience and desperation that had transformed into a primal hunger for one another. Neither had had better sex with someone else, no matter how hard they both searched. It wasn’t a secret that twenty-five year old Luke Patterson of Julie and the Phantoms, the four-time Grammy winner, was a ladies’ man and the free spirit of the band: it was plastered over every tabloid magazine across the globe. And while her fame was lesser than that of the rock star, the sophisticated twenty-three year old Y/N, the scholar who seemed to be headed straight for becoming a household name, was notorious in academic circles for her love affairs: at least two tenured ivy-league professors had slept with and left their wives for the young woman.

In recent years, concern had grown amongst their shared friends, mainly being Alex, who witnessed the rather undesirable parts of their relationship play out to their fullest. It wasn’t just that the pair used one another for sex, they were fine with that: but there was suddenly this need to impress the other, a competitiveness between the two. There was enough heat on Luke’s love life, but whenever Y/N came around, that seemed to escalate to excessive drinking: and one time, Alex and Reggie had to haul Luke into his apartment after he decided to get high on some sort of pill with the witch.

Despite disagreeing with one another on everything but sex, it was almost comical how quickly they could give in to one another. Constantly, even when they weren’t in the same country. It was too common of an occurrence that Y/N would be on the TV as the younger generation’s voice of science, sat on some couch in a studio in LA or New York or Paris or London, or she would be another key note speaker at an event: she had even managed to get herself on the cover of Vogue, an exclusive interview with Anna Wintour herself titled ‘The Sex of Science’. Luke saw all of it, of course, and like clockwork, he would then, for some reason, make it his mission to get another scandal on the front page of tabloids, like he was trying to one-up her.

And he was, and in a way, it was a form of foreplay for the pair. Luke’s insufferable gloating transcended physical presence, he was in every shop Y/N walked into, with a new girl on his arm. Y/N retaliated with success, building the brand she had been working on since high school as the country’s new scientific mind, acting like she was too above the rest of the world to even care to know who Luke Patterson was…

One year.

One whole year since that night in New York, and the band were back by personal invitation. With their third world tour finally finished, and their fourth album in the works for release later that year, the guys and Julie had been riding a high, not quite sure if they’d ever fall down.

Their half decade of commercial success had handed them their third invitation to the Met Gala, a PR opportunity to promote themselves, according to Flynn. Their manager was flown out from LA with Willie, Reggie’s girlfriend Kayla and Julie’s girlfriend, the group opting to share a plane with Trevor and Carrie Wilson, almost a reunion for them all. It wasn’t often they all got to see one another, with the band constantly on tour the past years, but it felt like there was no better place to catch up: over $1,000 champagne as they all talked about the clothes they wore.

“And stepping out onto the carpet now we have the Phan-tastic Four themselves, Julie and her Phantoms!” It was the first voice Luke heard as he stepped out of the limousine and onto the red carpet, suddenly joined by a barrage of questions and flashes of cameras, hundreds of reporters and fans calling out his name. He gave his signature smirk and a wave, opening the car door wide and holding out a hand to Julie, helping her onto the carpet and smiling as gasps sounded around them.

She was a vision, dressed in a tulle ballgown, a mixture of blues and greens and yellows layered on one another, decorated with butterflies like she was some type of goddess. The theme for the year was Sense and Sustainability: Fashion of the Planet, and she had hit the nail on the head with the help of their designer that year. The boys too, had gone for the blue and green tones to match their lead singer: Luke was in a dark blue suit, Reggie in an emerald three-piece and Alex in a topaz shirt, all of them looking like they were straight out of some utopian alter-reality.

“You know, Luke, I think it’s my job to help Julie out of the car.” A voice spoke, Julie’s girlfriend emerging in a white tailored piece, she too decorated with butterflies, a flower the same colours as Julie’s dress proudly displayed on her lapel.

“He has a habit of coming to these things alone, he just likes having something to do.” Julie teased her friend, giving his hand a quick squeeze before letting go, turning her attention to the girl by her side, the pair sharing a soft kiss, the camera surging into another frenzy.

“Honestly, it’s like we’re famous or something.” The next car pulled up, the voice this time being Reggie’s as he jumped from the still rolling car, assisting his girlfriend Kayla out the vehicle, she a beauty in purple. The pair were quickly followed by Alex and Willie, who both looked like they belonged on one of the Vogue runways instead of the red carpet.

“Divide and conquer, meet back at the steps?” Alex suggested, taking in the extravagance of it all, the constant flashing lights and the noise of it all. “Flynn and Carrie texted, they’re already inside.” He alerted on top of his question, the group sharing glances and nodding in agreement.

“Don’t say anything stupid.” Julie warned them all, the group breaking apart to make their ways down the carpet, towards the Met, respective partners in tow.

The next forty minutes were a slow crawl down the carpet amongst the world’s superstars, and Luke did his very best to answer the questions posed to him by prying reporters: he stuck to talking music, and the band and touring, and whenever questions about his love and sex life came up, he quickly laughed them off and changed the subject, a tactic that seemed to work quite well. He wasn’t the only person the journalists were looking to interview, and with each evaded question he felt the weight in his chest get lighter and lighter.

He had promised Julie and the guys, after all, that the night was about what really mattered: they had been asked to play a few songs for the event’s official after party, as well, their popularity shared amongst celebrities alongside the general public. Despite it being a fashion event, that night was about the music for the four.

“So, Luke, correct me if I’m wrong, but tonight is almost a school reunion, no?” The reporter asked, Luke stood to her left as the camera rolled, live feed of the night going straight onto TVs across the country.

“Well, yeah! I guess it is. It’s the first time we’ve had the chance to all be together since before the tour, and you can-” Luke was interrupted by a squeal, he and the reporter turning around to catch Julie and Flynn hugging in the centre of the walkway, coos coming from nearby celebrities who watched on as the girls embraced around the volumes of Julie’s dress fabric. “You can tell we’ve missed each other, can’t you?” He said, turning back to the reporter, who’s eyes flicked down to his arms and back up. He had forgone his suit jacket about twenty minutes before, the shirt underneath sporting sheer sleeves that showed off his biceps quite nicely.

“It’s uh.” The reporter cleared her throat. “From what I gather, the Los Feliz alumni make up over 1% of attendants tonight, and considering we have guests here from across the world, seems like there’s magic over at that school.” She suggested with a raise of the eyebrow, and Luke found himself chuckling. If only she knew…

“I should say hello to Miss Harrison actually, best music teacher in the world.” Luke waved at the camera quickly, and his eyes quickly surveyed the space. His friends had found themselves nearing the steps, and he was quite set on joining them.

“Of course, not all of the reunion class are in the music industry though, are they?” The reporter posed, and Luke frowned a little in confusion.

“I’m afraid you’ve lost me there…” He admitted, though his wonders were quickly answered as another car pulled up at the end of the carpet, yells and cameras flashing making it hard for Luke to focus on the person stepping out of the car, though it soon became rather clear with reporters crying out her name.

Plus, Luke knew Y/N’s body like the back of his hand.

There had to be something said for showing up to the biggest fashion event of the year in black, and more so for showing up in the iconic Coco Chanel fashion of a little black dress. There weren’t many people who could pull it off, but as she walked down the carpet, passing reporters begging for her attention, adorned in the form fitting dress that just passed her knees, the boatline neck putting focus on the gold chain necklace she wore, her stilettos red bottoms to match the crimson lipstick she wore, her hair in its natural waves and framing her face beautifully: no-one could have garnered more attention.

“Will you excuse me?” Luke asked, but before the reporter could speak up he was already making his way across to the centre of the carpet, a lazy smirk on his face as he looked her over, and she came to stand before him, the pair staring one another down. ‘You should’ve told me you’d be here, Princess’, he thought, a smile quirking on her lips as she held out a hand, Luke taking it in his own and pressing a soft kiss to her knuckles, his cold lips giving her goosebumps.

“I think your friends might be waiting for you.” She said softly, the pair breaking their hold on one another and beginning a walk for the steps, Y/N gasping softly at the sight of Julie in her dress. “My goodness, she looks stunning.”

“Yes, you do.” Luke responded, the pair sharing a glance before Y/N started up the stairs, Julie descending to meet her halfway as the pair held onto one another, Luke watching as they seemed to communicate telepathically: they had learned rather a lot from Y/N about Julie’s gifts, ones she had inherited from her mother, and Julie’s ability to see and speak to the dead also seemed to have the added bonus of receiving messages from witches. Y/N could read minds, Julie could mirror the effect.

“Oh, you haven’t met Hannah!” Julie exclaimed suddenly, the girl in black shaking hands with Julie’s girlfriend in white. “Why, how are you here?” The question seemed to perk more than Luke’s interest, microphones held out across the barricade by reports to try and catch a snippet of the words soon to leave Y/N’s mouth.

“Who do you think suggested the theme? The fashion industry is one of the biggest pollutants in America, and where better to flagship the reusable movement than at the biggest fashion event of the year.” Y/N giggled, Julie’s arm linking with hers as they began to walk again, a vision of colours against black. They complimented one another, strolling along the ways old friends do, Flynn coming across to greet them as Hannah and Luke followed behind, the four making their way for their waiting friends. “Besides, Anna owed me a favour.” Y/N added with a smirk, Luke catching the words and raising an eyebrow.

“Are you here on business, Y/L/N?” He asked, shoving his hands into his pockets and coming to a stop beside Alex and Willie, the former of whom glanced over at Luke with warning: the last thing they needed was Luke on another front page, this time with the brightest young mind in America.

“Wintour has… Bouts of lycanthropy, and a problem with the undead hanging around museums.” Y/N explained in a low voice, glancing over and spotting the iconic magazine editor, sending her a polite wave from across the way. “I promised to do some banishings if she would kindly assist in the environmental progress movement. An endorsement from Anna Wintour goes a long way.” She shrugged. “It seemed like a fair exchange.”

“I’m sorry, can we backtrack for a moment? Banishings and lycanthropy?” Hannah asked, the group turning to look at her, Julie taking her hand as they decided who might explain. She was the newest addition to the friendship circle, her and Julie having been dating for just over a year and a half. She had joined the band for a leg of the tour, met Flynn.

Y/N was not a person Hannah knew very well, and the sudden talk of magical things, quite understandably, made the girl uneasy.

“So, you know how we told you about us being the g word? And Julie’s a medium?” Reggie said, throwing an arm over Kayla’s shoulder and pulling his girlfriend closer. When Hannah nodded, he continued. “And you know how there was the dead magician who tried to kill us again when the band first formed?” He stopped again, making sure the girl was keeping up with him. “Well, Caleb was a witch when he was alive, and Y/N over there, the one in black, you two have met. Well, Y/N was the alive witch who was meant to banish us and didn’t, thank you for that.” He nodded to the girl, and she smiled slightly, her eyes more focused on Luke across the circle from her. “And now she’s the science girl that everyone talks to on TV since Bill Nye is too old.”

“So… Potions and spells and candles and stuff?” Hannah asked, the group joining in a light chuckle as Y/N nodded.

“Indeed, though it’s a lot more logical than myth has people believing.” Y/N said, her attention diverting from Luke as their host approached, the young men and women all finding themselves straightening up at the sight of her.

“Dr Y/L/N, it’s lovely to see you again. Might we have a word?” Wintour asked, removing Y/N from the group with the words and a quick wave goodbye, the young woman sending a wink Luke’s way before disappearing with the chief editor of Vogue, the pair stopping for an interview further down the stairway.

The title was one that made Y/N smile every time she heard it, the hard work of her youth paying off with respect from elders. It was important for her public persona too, people tended to believe you more if you had the suffix, and for someone so young, it helped her appear mature. There weren’t a lot of perks to getting your first of two doctorates at nineteen, the whole process of being a wunderkind leading up to it had been stressful to say the least, not to mention the added pressures of being groomed to lead the coven one day, but she made it work.

“So, Dr Y/L/N, perhaps we should talk about why you’re here?” The reporter’s question brought Y/N back to reality, stood beside Wintour with a practiced smile to the camera.

“Well, Monica.” Y/N was sure to use the reporter’s first name with a smile. “When Vogue made the move to promote sustainable fashion and opened the bid to make the top designer brands carbon neutral by 2030, I simply couldn’t refuse.” She had rehearsed what to say, she always did. Her appearances were important, her time on screen needed to mean something to viewers. “We are saving our planet, our economy, our livelihoods one step at a time here, this move to recycled materials is predicted to create thousands of new jobs globally within the fashion industry. And as someone who studies these things for a living, probability and the effects of pollutants, the political climate on these issues, I know that I’m here representing the entire scientific community tonight, approving of the incredible work done by our designers, our celebrities who help spread awareness, and by the people at home.”

“You know, I still can’t get over how young you are, I apologise.” The reporter responded with a light laugh, Y/N offering a soft smile back.

“Young, but wise beyond her years. She’s the one we need to listen to.” Anna interrupted with a nod to Y/N. “Two doctorates and five degrees under her belt, not to mention the sense of style.” She complimented, and the reporter rounded off the interview as the pair walked away. “How long until the banishing is over?” She whispered, the pair ascending the staircase to enter the hall, celebrities by the dozen milling around, finding their tables, sitting themselves down for the dinner soon to be served.

“Surely you can trust me to get the job done in a timely fashion, Anna.” Y/N remarked, hands clasped behind her back.

“You’re a witch, of course I don’t trust you.” She muttered, the pair sharing masquerade smiles as they quickly separated, the rather cruel thoughts wandering around the fashion icon’s head causing Y/N to smirk. Her night was just beginning, of course, and as she made her way towards the security corridors on the far side of the hall, her eyes scanned over the room to find Luke looking right back at her, that smug look her hated on his face, arms folded as he rather blatantly checked her out.

’12.05?’ Luke asked as they shared the gaze, the time meaning something to them both. When she nodded, Luke’s gaze focused back on his table of friends, leaving Y/N to disappear in peace, though her mind was once again at war.

She just couldn’t say no to him.

It was a fairly desperate call for Luke to have to rope Y/N into something, but she owed him a few favours from the year before, and he was not going to be the only person at the Halloween record label party without a date: especially not when his ex-girlfriend was going to be there.

As much as he disliked it, Luke was quite certain he needed the hottest person he knew, and it was, rather unfortunately, the witch. It helped that Julie, Flynn and Carrie had banded together that summer to reimagine their friend’s wardrobe: they had fitted Y/N with a style somewhere between ‘if looks could kill’ and ‘you wish you could’, outfits that all looked like they belonged on the cover of a couture magazine, with elements of the witch theme laced in. And while Luke and the band hadn’t seen Y/N in months, what with them recording in LA and her studying at Stanford, just outside of San Francisco, he was hopeful that he could salvage some shred of dignity if he had a pretty girl on his arm.

His breakup with Alice had been front page news for weeks, a mess of lies and cheating and constant scandal that had worked in everyone’s favour, even if it left Luke feeling worse for wear. It was the same as his relationship before Alice, and then his relationship before Alice and Rita… He was quite committed to swearing off romance until he hit forty, at least then he’d be avoiding the front page if things went south.

He arrived at the Fall Down Records HQ coming close on eleven o’clock, a slam of his car door echoing around the street as cameras flashed and caught him on his way in. He blocked out the bright lights and noise, the questions of how he was coping with the breakup, of how he was feeling about Alice’s new boyfriend: by the time the new month started, he had no doubt his tragic affair with the country singer would be overshadowed by the mysterious girl who had arrived at the party earlier that night.

“Luke, you made it!” As the boy entered into the lobby of the building, decorated from top to two in Halloween décor, Trevor welcomed his friend with a smile and quick hug. It was weird, Bobby now being Trevor and Trevor being the same age as Julie’s dad, perhaps weirder that he helped run the label JATP was signed to, but apologies had been handed out and late statements made by Trevor to credit the guys on his first album, so he had sort of just become an uncle now. He was older, wiser, changed from the kid Luke had known, but he still cared about him and Alex and Reggie, just instead of getting them fake IDs and letting them crash in his old garage, now Trevor read the fine prints of the band’s contracts and offered free use of his helicopter.

“Did a pretty girl dressed as an angel show up?” He asked, getting straight to the point. He himself was dressed in an all-black number, sleeveless of course, and had managed to put in some red contacts, a modern take on the Devil.

“She’s with Julie, doing a rather good job at outshining your ex-girlfriend…” Trevor muttered, gesturing to the left of them, Luke’s head turning to locate the girl he had effectively hired to date him for the night.

And she took his breath away.

Y/N stood at Julie’s side by a karaoke machine, the two singing to one another as crowds cheered them on, his ‘girlfriend’ looking like she could’ve quite literally come down from heaven: she had flat out refused to dress up as a witch, and when Luke suggested that their dressing as angel and demon could also be construed as cultural appropriation, Y/N had laughed until she cried. He had asked what was so funny, and she had asked if he had ever seen an angel in person.

It was safe to say that the fluffy white wings and halo mortals had commercialised was a far cry from the true essence of angelic powers: they more resembled blobs that floated, one large eyes in the middle, usually surrounded by rings of heaven fire and something one might describe as spinning wheels of death. All spikes meant to destroy anything impure that came close.

Safe to say, Luke didn’t plan on going to heaven any time soon.

As the song ended, the girls turning to the crowd to bow, Y/N’s eyes fell on Luke at the far side of the room, and she took the opportunity to pay him back.

“You’re here!” She squealed, sending a quick wink Julie’s way, their friend aware of the favour, before putting on her best performance: rushing through the breaking crowd to jump into Luke’s arms, his own instinctively wrapping around her waist to hold her up as he spun around to gain his balance again.

‘Happy to see me, Princess?’ he raised an eyebrow as she read his thoughts, Luke’s eyes drifting over to land on Alice, who watched from the corner of the room rather intently. ‘She’s looking at me…´he thought, Y/N glanced back as Luke placed her back on the ground, a thought coming to her head.

“Let’s give her something to gossip about, yeah?” She suggested, pulling Luke close to her by his collar, planting her lips on his in front of the entire room, making quite sure to embarrass the girl who decided to cheat on Luke Patterson.

“How’s everyone doing tonight?!” Julie called out, the crowd filling the Bowery Ballroom cheering back as she took the stage, microphone in hand. Julie had opted to change dress, her ballgown replaced with a white strapless number, keeping to the theme of butterflies that night and now matching her girlfriend, who stood in the front row of the crowd encouraging her on with a thumbs up.

The evening had been more than a success, with the crowd of celebrities migrating from the Met to the music venue she stood on the stage of as the formalities quickly came to a close. JATP had been begged to play a show, many of the celebrities that night major fans of the young rock stars, and after a DJ set from a mix of the Billboard 100’s top producers, Julie found herself taking the stage with the promise of a song.

“I just want to say thank you, on behalf of myself and the guys, for letting us play. And… Well, we’ve decided that for such a special occasion, we ought to give you something new.” Another chorus of cheers echoed in the space, Julie walking round to place her microphone on the stand by the keyboard waiting for her. “The guys and I have been working on album number four, and this song was one Luke wrote last year just after we left for the World Tour.” Julie paused, looking out into the crowd, her eyes finding Y/N’s as she watched from beside Flynn. “It’s called Bloody Valentine, and we hope you like it.” She finished, the cheers and applause dying down when a sudden guitar riff came from out of nowhere, Julie joining in with piano chords alongside a bassline and a drum beat from Alex, the sounds filling the air despite three of the four musicians being absent.

“The simulation just went bad, but you're the best I ever had. Like hand prints in wet cement, she touched me it's permanent.” Julie sang out, another swell of cheers as the crowd began dancing to the fast paced drum beat and guitar riffs of the song. A flash of light, and Reggie appeared on stage, no longer in his emerald suit from the event, but changed into a silk shirt of the same hue, a pop of colour under his trusty leather jacket and tucked into his ripped skinny jeans.

“In my head, in my head, I couldn’t hear anything you said but in my head.” Reggie took the melody line, Julie harmonising on top, moving away from the piano and crossing the stage to sing with her friend, the two beginning to dance along to the music they made. “In my head, I’m calling you girlfriend what the-” the curse word meant to finish the phrase was overshadowed by a drum fill as Alex appeared on stage behind the pair, his topaz shirt now half open, his hair a mess and his sticks hot from the sheer speed of his hands.

“I don't do fake love, but I'll take some from you tonight. I know I've got to go but I might just miss the flight.” The three sang the first half of the chorus together, Julie jumping up onto the drum stand with Alex to rock out as he played an sang, leaving room on stage as their final member flashed onto the stage, his suits pants switched for a pair of jeans and sneakers, his shirt now without it’s sheer sleeves, showing off Luke’s arms as they flexed, the guitarist taking lead on the song with a complicated guitar riff.

“I can't stay forever, let's play pretend, and treat this night like it'll happen again. You'll be my bloody valentine.” Luke sang to the screams of the crowd, a smile on his face as he sang, his eyes roaming the crowd for the girl dressed in black, stood a row or two from the front, sending her a wink as he performed. “Tonight.”

“I'm overstimulated and I'm sad. I don't expect you to understand. It's nothing less than true romance or am I just making a mess?” Luke and Julie found themselves singing together, his friend dancing across the stage and leading him along with her microphone as they played for the hundreds before them, Julie switching to the harmony line as the second pre-chorus came back around. “In my head, in my head, I'm laying naked with you, yeah. In my head, in my head, I'm ready to die holding your hand.”

“I don't do fake love, but I'll take some from you tonight. I know I've got to go but I might just miss the flight. I can't stay forever, let's play pretend and treat this night like it'll happen again. You'll be my bloody valentine tonight.” Luke took the second chorus by himself, while Julie hyped up the crowd, Alex and Reggie going hard on drums and bass behind him. He couldn’t stop his eyes from drifting over to Y/N as he sang, the girl stood there with a smirk on her lips. He wondered if she was reading his mind, if she knew what he was thinking, if she knew the song was about her, about them: about the chaotic and borderline toxic relationship they had developed over the years. He wondered if she remembered the year before, the night they shared in New York before he vanished off for a World Tour, before she had fully accepted her role as America’s Greatest Scientific Mind.

The instrumental break had the crowd going wild, Luke, Reggie and Julie harmonising on their separate instruments while Alex improvised on the drums, quickly bringing the tempo down and starting a roll on the snare, Luke coming back to his mic to sing.

“I can't hide how I feel about you. Inside, I'd give everything up tonight, if I could just have you be mine. Be mine, baby.” Luke’s voice had a gravel in it, something raw and powerful that took people’s breath away. He glanced over to Reggie and Julie as he sang, the three sharing smiles until Reggie glanced out at the crowd, his grin dropping to a frown, Julie’s soon following. Luke tracked their gazes as he held onto the microphone for balance, every piece of joy in him suddenly filled with rage.

There, in the third row back, was some guy, dressed like he’d just come from a giving a university lecture, with his arms around Y/N’s waist, his chin resting against her shoulder as he pressed kisses to her neck.

“I can't hide how I feel about you. Inside, I'd give everything up tonight, if I could just have you be mine. Be mine.” Luke continued, dropping back from the mic once he had sung the last of the bridge, leaving Alex to another drum fill, a chance to show off that Luke had before been so excited to hear. Now? He just felt numbing anger, it was clear on his face: he couldn’t tear his eyes away from Y/N, who seemed to be refusing to return his gaze, her eyes anywhere but on him.

“I don’t do fake love but I’ll take some from you tonight. I know I’ve got to go but I just might miss the flight.” Reggie and Julie took over singing the last chorus, trying not to show concern as they performed, trying to remain professional. They both wondered exactly what Luke would do once they got off stage, wondered if Reggie and Alex would need to hold their friend back while Julie attempted to talk him down, but it seemed like Luke’s frustrations were coming out on his guitar and the song. He stepped up to the microphone again, green eyes piercing into Y/N’s very soul as he played like he wouldn’t get another chance.

“I can't stay forever, let's play pretend and treat this night like it'll happen again. You'll be my bloody valentine tonight.” Her eyes finally looked up, her face one of blank expression, and it almost gave him hope. She almost look annoyed, though he couldn’t tell if it was at him or the man who’s hands had begun travelling across her body.

“No not enough, no not enough, no not enough, no not enough no just tonight.” The four sang, repeating the line over again as the song came to a close, Luke swinging his guitar behind him as Alex drummed them out, heavy breathing in a mix of adrenaline and wrath.

The moment the song ended, the crowd bursting into applause, with significant others quickly rushing to the stage to congratulate Julie, Reggie and Alex, Luke watched Y/N slip her way out of the mystery man’s arms, making a beeline to a door by the stage side. It took Luke a second, setting his guitar on the stand and following after her, ignoring a call of ‘Luke wait!’ from his bandmates as he slammed open the door walking down the backstage corridors.

He was hunting, following the scent of perfume, that sweet mix of apple and lemon that made him lightheaded, the echoes of stilettos on concrete. It wasn’t often that he used his ghostly gifts, more because he had gotten used to being human again, but it a moment of frustration at the endless hallways and rooms that seemed to filled that backstage of the Bowery, he poofed with Y/N in mind.

She had expected him to follow of course, they had agreed it earlier that evening. While Luke hadn’t been paying attention to the time, he appeared in one of the Bowery’s backstage bathrooms just as the clock hit 12.05, finding Y/N perched on the sink with a window cracked open and a cigarette between her blood red lips. She blew the smoke out the window, turning back to look at him, reaching out a hand from him to grip onto as he steadied himself. He hadn’t jumped like that in years, the feeling foreign to him.

“Luke…” She said softly, sincerity in her voice that was rare: she wasn’t a woman prone to expressive emotion.

“You could have fucking told me you were with someone before I got on stage.” He hissed, cutting off any type of apology she might have tried to give, not that she was known for them. “I mean, I knew you were a total bitch, Princess, but do I not get any warning?!”

“We don’t do feelings Patterson, you know that.” She whispered softly, taking another drag of the cigarette before stubbing it out and tossing it through the window, the smoke she blew out hanging in the air.

“Are you really going to sit there and act like we don’t have something?! Really?” Luke exclaimed with an angry laugh, running a hand through his hair in disbelief at the girl before him, who sat stoic, straight backed with her legs crossed one over the other, like she was being interviewed on one of those stupid news shows.

“It doesn’t matter what we have if it would never work, Luke!” She finally let her temper break, yelling the response back at him despite her perfect posture. “We aren’t friends! We can never be friends! We’re two different people leading two very different lives. And to be quite honest with you, Jackson fits into mine.” She admitted, trying to stop her bottom lip from quivering. The last thing she was going to be was weak.

“Jackson, so that’s his name.” Luke scoffed, taking a step closer to Y/N, and another. “Tell me something, Princess.” He muttered, his hand lifting her legs apart for him to get closer, his cold demeanour matching the chill that exuded from his body, causing goosebumps to form on Y/N’s arms and legs. “Does he have the same effect on you that I have?”

“No.” She confessed, her head hanging low as she let out the word. Luke’s thumb and forefinger caught her chin, raising her face to look him in the eyes, the smirk on his lips prompting Y/N to add to her confession. “But I suppose that’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

“Can you tell me honestly that you can give this up?” Luke posed the question, and for a moment Y/N had to pause, to gulp, the closeness of their bodies all too tempting. “You know, you may be the smarty pants young doctor out to save the world around everyone else, Princess, but I’ve heard you scream my name before.” He whispered, his lips centimetres from making contact with skin. “You like this, you love this. Us…Late nights in hotel rooms and sneaking out before morning.” A hand finally placed down against her thigh, the cold skin against her flushed body almost shocking had it not been a feeling Y/N had craved. “You like the adrenaline that comes with going back to what ever pencil neck you’ve wrapped around your little finger while my cum is still on your thighs, marks I left still on your neck.”

All of it was true, but of course Y/N had no intention of admitting it, of boosting that asshole’s ego anymore than she already had. She shouldn’t have agreed to even meeting him, no matter how badly she craved the feeling of Luke’s body against hers, of his hand around her neck as he fucked her senseless.

“Let go of me and I’ll leave. You’ll never see me again.” She promised, to which Luke laughed, the hand he had on her thigh pushing her skirt higher and higher, coming down towards the inside of her thigh, brushing the lace of her panties. Her breathing hitched, her body betraying her.

“Face it, Y/N…” He said softly, moving back to look her in the eyes as a finger hooked under her panties and pull them down her thighs, Luke biding his time, waiting for the fabric to fall to his feet before continuing. “You need me as much as I need you.” He assured her, his eyes flicking between hers and her mouth. He silently asked permission, Y/N giving it to him when her hands moved to the belt buckle on his jeans, quickly undoing it and letting Luke’s pants fall slack.

Luke didn’t hesitate any longer, taking her face in his hands and pressing their lips together, his tongue fast into her mouth and dominant. He often took control like this, something Y/N could never quite bring herself to resist, and she was almost immediate in her reciprocation of the kiss, her hands coming to the hem of Luke’s shirt, unbuttoning it quickly and pushing it off his shoulders as their lips collided.

Kissing him was like jumping from a cliff into waters one would assume were warm, only to land and hit the freezing sea below. It was the taste of salt on his tongue, the tug of his hands in her hair, the way she panted for breath between kisses like she might drown in him.

Y/N was always the one to make the second move, it was how they worked. Luke always initiated, she always responded, it was a back and forth. They didn’t speak, they knew each other so well they didn’t need it. Her hands coming to his boxers briefs and palming at his stiff member through the clothes, asking for him to take his turn, prompted Luke to do so, moving aside the last piece of clothing separating them from the thing they both begged for.

Luke lined himself up with her entrance, breaking the kiss to pull Y/N to the very edge of the counter, pushing her skirt completely past her ass. His body between her thighs spread her legs, Luke smiling as she whimpered.

“You asshole, don’t make me wait.” She moaned out, giving up on trying to feign resentment, her hand coming to his locks and pulling him in for another kiss, Luke pushing himself into her as they lips collided once again.

A year without one another, Luke had missed the feeling of her walls clenching around his cock. He had missed the way she whimpered curse words under her breath as he set a hard and fast pace. She clung to the counter top for some sense of stability, letting her head fall back as a moan racked her body.

“Fuck Princess, so good for me.” Luke groaned, his lips coming to her exposed neck and pressing down on her sweet spot, making sure to leave a mark, to tell whoever saw her next that she belonged to someone else. His eyes trailed over her in the vulnerable state, taking his cock like the good girl she always was once he had her panties on the floor. He admired the site: her tight cunt spread around his girth as he pounded into her, evidence of her arousal catching the dim lighting overhead.

“Luke… F-fuck…” Y/N whimpered, one hand coming round the back of his neck, pulling him deeper as she began chasing her high, the knots in her stomach slowly beginning to form, his body against hers beginning to burn with each touch. They weren’t meant to be compatible, and yet sex never felt better than with one another. “Baby, don’t stop.” She gasped out, her eyes widening as he bit into her skin, a guttural moan leaving her body, unable to fight back against the smug look on his face.

She had forgotten just how good he was, just how much she wanted him. As the knots in her stomach tightened, the tension in Luke’s abdomen increased, both chasing towards euphoria, Luke’s breathing grew shaky, his pace turning sloppy, his thrusts deeper and deeper.

“Cum for me sweetheart.” Luke muttered, a hand coming down to rub circles against her clit, the action throwing Y/N over the edge, into the waves of ecstasy as the knots in her stomach unfurled, her eyes squeezing shut and her head falling onto Luke’s should as he too spent himself inside her.

They stayed like that for a moment, ragged breathing and Y/N’s rapid heartbeat seeming to pound hard and loud enough for someone two rooms over to hear. She found herself holding onto him, letting herself relax for a moment, even enjoy it, as Luke’s hand came up and petted her head, only moving back when her cheek burned too much from his icy skin.

‘I think she’s in love with me…’ Luke’s intrusive thought wasn’t one he meant to think, but it seemed to be the one Y/N heard. She pushed him back to the other side of the small bathroom, Luke unable to rid himself of the smug expression he wore as he tucked himself back into his boxers and pulled up his jeans.

"He doesn't make you happy." Luke’s voice almost sang in victory, leaning back against the wall as Y/N cleaned herself of their scandal, their affair. Once she had finished, flushing the secret they shared down the toilet with the toilet paper, he reached out and pulled her close to him. His hand came up to her mouth, his thumb pressing against her bottom lip, ego inflating when her felt her tremble slightly in his grasp. "You know he doesn't…"

"Yeah, well at least he doesn't make me sad, Luke." Y/N snapped back in response, interrupting him from finishing his sentence, a stray tear rolling down her cheek as he held her in his arms, catching Luke off-guard and forcing his hands to drop away, his mind to go blank. He didn't think he had ever seen her cry before, but then again, Y/N never had cause to feel shame. She didn't have cause to feel it until then, storming out of that bathroom, knowing for a fact she would do everything in her power to stop herself from loving Luke Patterson.

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felassan · 3 years

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Thoughts on Dark Fortress #1

(This post is under a cut due to spoilers.)

NB, my thoughts on the first pages that came out in the preview are collected here [spoilers at link], so I won’t repeat myself.

Okay here we go :D I’ve posted up my fav panels but always want a space where I can burble at length.. (I’m late in posting this bc recently for the last few days I’ve been obsessing over politics in my country as it’s the run-up to election time.. I haven’t read anyone elses’ thoughts on it either so I could be behind on prevailing speculation or whats known or something) The preview pages ended at the panel when Aaron says “Vaea is right”, so that’s where I’m beginning.

I can’t put my finger on why but I really like the “don’t tell me I’ve had too much to drink” panel showing a Tevinter street. It’s a neat blend of “Tevinter is advanced relative to much of the rest of known Thedas, but also ominous, but also a place where people live and go about their lives, and also not going too heavy on the cyberpunk angle”. I dig the composition ‘leading’ the eye up the street and the consistency with the recently-seen DA4 materials that have red lighting in Tevinter buildings, similar building shapes etc. ig I’m pretty obsessed with the idea of the DA4 PC & party walking up streets like these.

I wonder how Aaron felt witnessing Tractus’ drunken scenes in the pub :(

Tractus’ attitude towards the barman here shows the influence and power Magisters wield in Tevinter, and the fear of them common among the mundane populace

digging the Tevinter-y motifs & design of the bartop, bar shelving etc. it feels like thought went into it

I’d watch a spinoff show or read a story where Marius and Ser Aaron have to team up in order to achieve something

Vaea is so badass and agile! I appreciate that the shot of her up high was tasteful and didn’t like, weirdly contort her body, have a weird leering angle or emphasize things in that way comic art often does for women at moments like these

so in Tevinter, lamps give off red light (seen in the bar scene). are the windowpanes themselves also red?

good thinking Vaea grabbing the staff. great sense of snappiness and motion in this panel. her landing reminds me of squirrels doing the superhero pose landing actually :)

tfw you and a dog burst out of a wardrobe

Tractus recognizing Fenris, it seems - did they encounter each other when Tractus was young, or does he just know of him (distinctive markings and all that)? if the former, I have a feeling we might get a flashback scene to that time in a future issue

cutting to look at Francesca when Tractus talks about Fenris murdering his father is GENIUS. look at the sadness on her face here; “you murdered your father” is exactly what she’s been telling herself and struggling with all this time

nice to see staff-less magic in action

Tractus seems to have drawn power from the red orb set in his staff. he reaches out to it and it responds by glowing and the staff moving, but he wasn’t doing a Jedi ‘use my Jedi powers to make my thrown lightsaber [staff] return to my hand’, as you might expect, he was instead charging up and drawing magical energy/power from it [the orb], as seen by the red light in his hand in the next panel. this reinforces my earlier wonderings that the red orb is notable and that there’s some connection between it and his red eyes. later in the panel when he’s trying to cast on the floor his eyes seem lit up (altho it could just be lighting & dramatic effect)

I wonder if Fenris thinks of Anders and Justice when Tractus says “justice”. There was once a mage in Fenris’ life who was really focused on justice..

the combat scenes are beautifully drawn, thought out and colored

Fenris’ lines here are really metal, badass and impactful. I could hear Gideon Emery’s voice in my head as I read these bits - the word choice of “hounded” helps with that I think, it immediately recalls Fenris talking with anger about how Hadriana denied his meals and hounded his sleep. they nail how Fenris speaks, the pattern and words he tends to use, etc

PHASING POWERS in action!! this is very cool to see, this ability of his didn’t get touched on much at all in DA2 outside of combat or a few scenes

I enjoy the contrast between the red and blue glows

Fenris is understandably merciless

“Perhaps if you had it carved into you” feels like foreshadowing for the ‘red wraith’

:( the reminder that the very thing Fenris struggles with feelings of hate and fear towards is carved into his skin for the rest of time and always will be

Vaea is brave to step in, standing up for what she believes is right and also re-centering focus on the critical mission at hand

;___; Autumn helping keep Tractus on the ground. she is such a good girl. she Help

“You’re lucky the mabari is here” - having Fenris in a dark light here relative to the rest of the panel is nicely symbolic

oh shit!! some plot advancement in terms of the ongoing story of the wider world. The Antaam have now reached Neromenian!! the invasion is progressing further and further into Tevinter. how far will it have come by the time of DA4? will there be an active war front not far from Minrathous? I appreciate the comics from this team a lot, here and there they push forward the ‘story of Thedas’ not just the story of the comic’s focus. also, I like that the Qunari soldiers here aren’t clones of one another but all look different. different hairstyles, sizes/bodies, clothes

love how our group work together, everyone has a strength and a role to play, the teamwork, the delegation, they’re like a DA basegame party or a D&D party

the way Fenris’ hand and arm glow in this sequence has been drawn/colored is smart - calling to mind the image of blue veins running through someone’s arm or below the skin on the backs of their hands

Fenris has surely picked up Fereldan sayings from Hawke.. stop .. my heart ;__;

the Fenris/Autumn exchange

this is so intense.. why do I get the feeling that Fenris has used this sort of torture technique before in his hunting and extermination of Danarius’ adult children campaign and/or his hunting of slavers as the BW with Shirallas campaign. it feels like he has done this sort of thing before in the time post-Kirkwall. I like that they didn’t hold back with a bit of gore here and there in this issue (phasing a hand and then solidifying it inside someone’s body, the Qunari attack portion in the street etc), while at the same time not being excessive with it.

this miniseries so far has good pacing, things moving along nicely and not being too slow or meandering

it’s smart having Tractus’ explanation of how to get in stay off-screen to the reader while we follow Francesca calling the alarm. It means we get to find out as we watch them infiltrate

omg those puncture wounds from his talons

when Fenris is about to kill Tractus after he tells him what he wanted to know, I’m strongly reminded of how he promised to let Hadriana go then killed her anyway, regardless of player choice. he has his ruthless streak and it feels like a callback. and before, when he was standing over Tractus when he was on the floor, echoes that scene in A Bitter Pill when he stands over Hadriana on the ground, who also reached for her staff

Tractus pale with bloodloss and fear

lmao @ Fran and Autumn’s faces when they walk in on this scene

Fenris listening to Vaea is nicely consistent with his character too imo - there are times in DA2 when Hawke can be like “Fenris no don’t do the Thing” and he doesn’t do the Thing

I have missed the way Fenris’ nose bridge crinkles when he’s angry

I wonder what the consequences of leaving Tractus alive will be. [tv announcer voice] FIND OUT NEXT TIME ON DARK FORTRESS

so the ritual will only take minutes to complete huh 👀

wow Neromenian has truly fallen, reeducation of the people of Tevinter continues as in Three Trees to Midnight in TN

explaining that they are speaking in Qunlat is a nice immersive touch and shows attention to detail of the lore of the world

bobbly-shoulders Qunari, Legolas hair Qunari, septum piercing Qunari, bobbly-brow Qunari, undercut Qunari. I wonder if the shoulder and brow protrusions are aspects we’ll see in the Qunaris’ latest design in DA4?

poor Tractus can’t catch a break lol. it has Not been Tractus’ day

Karasten: an infantry field commander

bit of Tevinter lampshading, lil fourth wall break with “This land and its obsession with magic. There is always a forbidden ritual with them” hhhhhh

Ringwraith on a horse moment at the end there

strong ending, can’t wait for next month weww.. 👀

#dragon age #bioware #dark fortress spoilers #dark fortress spoiler #spoilers #spoiler #fenris #the Fenaissance #dragon age: dark fortress spoilers #dragon age: dark fortress spoiler #video games #dragon age 4 #the dread wolf rises #da4 #gore cw #blood cw

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smartguyreviewed · 4 years

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1x6 - Baby It’s You and You and You

Original air date: April 30, 1997

Five episodes in and it’s already Prom™, AKA the most important event in a teenager’s life, right next to that huge rager that the richest kid in school throws post-graduation. Yvette and her episode-appointed friend are discussing possible themes. The blasian girl suggests something eco-related. TJ suggests Star Wars. Yvette has to remind TJ that Piedmont has no money for an IT department or AP classes, so there is no way in hell they can afford anything that doesn’t come from Party City.

Because the Prom™ is the thing, Marcus and Mo are also discussing it and how they have to find dates. Well, Marcus is. Mo has a date in his new squeeze Shirley, played by local vampire Bianca Lawson. She will show up again but will be named Tracy. Jesus be a continuity!

Marcus is in disbelief that Shirley would be into Mo, as if Mo is hideous or something. She defends her temporary man and says that he is a sensitive soul. Mo then proceeds to plagiarize “My Girl” by the Temptations but replaced “girl” with “Shirl.” Either sis was raised in the wild or she is the adoptive child of racist white parents because there’s no way she didn’t catch that. Although I do love that she told Mo it’s okay for him to cry in front of her. Together, we can all eradicate toxic masculinity!

After the credits, we see Marcus at the Henderson crib, elated about snagging a date with Mariah and HOLY SHIT, continuity! I spoke too soon. Mariah was the girl Mo and Marcus were fighting over in the pilot episode. She even has the same name and is played by the same actress. Wow. Usually, the only girl who gets mentioned repeatedly is “the wonderous Shaundra.” We never see her. She’s like the Heather Sinclair of the show and it’s obvious that she’s Marcus’s jump off.

Marcus goes on about how the Prom™ is so important and TJ, who was just offering expensive ideas about his ideal theme, is now dismissing the Prom™ as nothing but a room full of hormonal cases dancing to K-Ci & JoJo. He then says what would later be considered a #mood. Instead of socializing with other people, he’d rather watch Shark Week on the Discovery Channel. Marcus cracks a joke about how you never see black people on those shows and Floyd chimes in saying “we don’t mind lowering them down, though!” And they pound on it! If this were on television today, a bunch of white people would write letters and complain. I love this show.

Yvette is able to see through TJ’s facade. She knows he actually wants to go and labels his feelings denial because he’s devaluing the dance since he can’t go with anyone his own age. Marcus is against TJ going at all because he doesn’t want to babysit. I get it. I’d hate babysitting my little brother also, especially if he’s somewhere watching me dry hump girls.

The next scene, Floyd is discussing a possible roof job with a reverend. It just so happens that during their little chit chat, the Prom™ came up and Floyd let on about how TJ really wants to go but needs a same age date. How convenient that the rev has a daughter named Lily who would love to go to a dance! Gilligan cut to Floyd telling TJ that he has a date for him. Marcus barges into the room also informs TJ that he has a date. I hate that nobody even bothered to ask him first. He even lampshades this and says that Floyd’s action was pushy. Marcus clearly wants TJ to go with Mariah’s little sister because then he would be preoccupied enough for him to try to finger Mariah somewhere without TJ hovering around. He even calls Floyd’s pick a loser. Marcus is hilarious.

TJ actually does something selfless here! He overheard that Floyd sold a lot of slate to that church guy and now he’s getting pizzaid! TJ goes along with all of this because he wants to make everyone happy, exhbiting people pleaser traits. Every now and then, TJ just turns into this, even though he’s a master manipulator. However, TJ’s choice to please everyone goes south because now Yvette has a girl for him. He just went from wanting to veg out at home to now having three dates. To remedy the problem, they bring in Mo and you already know this plan is going to unravel as fast as it was conceived. Mo is wearing a black beret with his otherwise normal 90s garb, laying out the schematics for TJ to have all three women be his date.

Cut to the night of the dance. Marcus and TJ are mad jittery for obvious reasons. We get a cute little shot of TJ in his three piece suit and Floyd is foaming at the mouth to find his camera but Marcus is not having it.

Just as they’re about to leave, Floyd says that the rev is coming to the house. Not how they planned but per Marcus, they’re now picking up extra time. However, because Marcus seems to be cursed whenever he speaks positively about anything, Mariah shows up with her little sister. He slams the door in her face.

Now TJ and Marcus are panicking. Marcus opens up the door and lies that his fly was unzipped. They figure out a way to get Mariah’s little sister away before Lily and the rev show up. Then the doorbell rings and guess who? It’s none other than little Penny Proud.

Of course, like other love interests in this show, Lily went into the witness protection program and came back in season 2 as a hood tomboy named Brandy. Seriously, you could write conspiracy theories for these characters because the writers are clearly too lazy to rewatch episodes.

The doorbell rings again, only this time it’s Mo, dressed casually and thinking he’s about to shoot the shit with Marcus. Marcus asks why he isn’t at the dance and Mo responds, “That was tonight?” I mean, we all have that one friend! This was particularly funny because he only masterminded the plan yet forgot what night it was. He leaves and says he needs to contact Tuxedo Hut because they have a drive through. Mo is fucking hilarious!

Last but not least, Yvette, in a cheongsam-style dress that I love but is totally cultural appropriation shows up with her pick for TJ’s date and--fucking Christ, Naya Rivera shows up in a future episode as well but as this girl named Kelly that TJ spills a drink on. Here she is with a different name. UGH. I don’t know why I’m even complaining anymore.

Eventually, with one girl being held hostage in a treehouse, another in TJ’s room looking at a computer she doesn’t know a thing about, they eventually come downstairs and complain. Now they’re all in the kitchen with their arms folded looking at TJ. His response? “I overbooked.” I didn’t realize how funny this episode was.

Floyd takes TJ away to explain a very valuable lesson about setting boundaries and encourages him to say no without worrying that he’s disappointing anyone. I am still learning this lesson as an adult, so go Smart Guy for illustrating this so well.

TJ goes to the dance with all three girls and manages to dance with all of them. Pretty much everyone got what they wanted. Aww, underage polygamy is so cute!

Stuff I noticed:

- Yvette and her bestie are dressed alike.

#bianca lawson #smart guy #tj henderson #yvette henderson #marcus henderson #mo tibbs #tahj mowry #naya rivera #kyla pratt #90s #nineties #disney #john marshall jones #jason weaver #essence atkins

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forever-rogue · 5 years

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Unintended Consequences - Part 8

Summary: Y/N and Ben had been best friends since the day six year old Y/N dropped her ice cream in front of Ben and he had offered her his. The rest is history. Until Ben went to Hollywood and disappeared for five years, before suddenly waltzing back into Y/N’s life with one simple request.

A/N: Y’all were very split as to whether you were Team Ben or Team Joe. I’m curious to see it after this chapter as well… You guys know I like drama...Anyways, thanks for reading and enjoy! Taglists are open! xx

PS - big kudos if you can spot all my references that I’ve sprinkled in :)

Pairing: Ben Hardy x Reader

Word Count: 5.2k

Warnings: language, a lil sadness, some steamy moments

MASTERLIST

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“I’m starting to think that the only mistake was coming back to you, Y/N.”

The words washed over her like a cold waves crashing against a rocky hillside; cold, jagged, and searing.

Her chest started to rise and fall rapidly in anger. She spotted the glass lampshade near the door and thought about chucking it at him, at least that way he could physically feel the pain his words had inflicted upon her. But she stayed her hand, her body instead trembling with anger.

“Then why did you come back, Ben?” she shouted at him, not ready to let him have the last word. She followed him out of the room as he tried to retreat to his own bedroom. He stood in the doorway, shoulders tense but he refused to turn around. Crossing her arms over her chest, she was ready to demand an answer, unwilling to back down, “why did you come back? After five years…you could have just stayed away. You managed to for so long, why now?”

“I already told you,” his voice was lower than it normally was, a sense of both annoyance and anger. He knew it was probably wrong of him to be this angry still, but he was fuming; he felt like he had been used in the worst way possible.

“You gave me a bullshit answer,” her voice shook lightly as she thought back to the day he had unceremonious return. If she had known then but she knew now she would have just ignored him. But she had to be too soft hearted, so desperate to have a piece of her past back, “is that what you’re going to be sticking with?”

“Yes,” he answered simply, turning around and facing her, harsh glint to his normally soft sage eyes, “I needed you for a reason. You’re fulfilling that reason. And once it’s done, it’s done. If I had known you’d be so cold and bitchy this whole time, trust me, I would have stayed far away.”

“Oh yeah, it’s not like I have a reason to be mad,” she huffed, tired of arguing about the same thing over and over. If he wasn’t understanding by now, she feared they he might never get it. It was a constant game of going in circles and never reaching a resolution.

“I’ve apologized-”

“Words are wind,” she shouted at him, unable to control her feelings any longer. She probably sounded like something akin to a banshee, but she didn’t care anymore, “words didn’t help when I struggling through life while you off doing God knows what!”

“You think it was easy for me? It wasn’t exactly always a fun journey for me either,” he countered slamming his fist loudly against the wall. She knew it would be bruised later on, and was a little surprised that the wall wasn’t damaged from the hard slam. The neighbors across the hall could have probably heard their little fight.

“I never once said that!” she threw her hands up in exasperation, “all I’ve been trying to get you to see it that you could have been there. You should. Like you always promised. Or have you forgotten that too?”

“Y/N-”

“No, I’m not going to be quiet,” she raised a finger and pointed it squarely at his chest, almost jabbing his heated skin, “do you remember that day? We were seven years old. Playing with our Legos, and I asked you if we were always going to be friends. You promised me. You said we’d even get married and get a dog.”

“You’re hanging onto memories from almost two decades ago. Let them go,” he furrowed his brow as her face fell. She could have broken down and cried right then and there, the cruel reality of his words crashing down, and hard, on her ears. Y/N inhaled sharply, biting on the inside of her cheek to keep from crying, “we were just children.”

“See that’s what happened,” she said quietly, “I didn’t forget who I was. Or who we were. But you did…you never would have forgotten who you were.”

“Who we were…exactly, in the past,” Ben remained steadfast in his determination to be right. He knew he was being standoffish but he was beyond caring, he wanted her to hurt like she had hurt him by claiming what they had done was a mistake. Petty yes, but in that moment it was extremely satisfying.

“People don’t change that much,” it felt like he had sunk a dagger into her heart and was twisting it slowly, progressing with each word he spewed out, “I’m still that same person. Obviously, I came back to you, even most people would have run for the hills.”

“That’s a lie,” his nostrils flared in anger. She was staring to hit a nerve; he was always sensitive about how people perceived him. He’d never quite adopted that bravado and swagger he exuded outwardly into his heart, “people would love to be in your position and you know that.”

"Until they met the real you. Your outward appearance is wonderful, even I’m not going to deny that, but once they get to your heart, it’s a whole different story,” a single tear dripped down her face and she didn’t bother to wipe it away, “there’s no way for me to get you to see how much you hurt me. and honestly I’m done trying. Otherwise this will just keep going on and on, and we’ll hate each other even more.”

“I don’t hate you-”

“You could have fooled me,” she almost laughed at the nerve he was displayed. He shook his head silently in frustration

“I just hate that this what we’ve become,” he decided to end the conversation then and there, turning to go back into his room, “I guess things will never be the same.”

“That was your decision,” she shrugged, “not mine. I am sorry for what happened last night. I’ll take my share of the blame for that. It wasn’t fair to you and I should have stopped it. I suppose I even am sorry about kissing Joe…not sorry, but I should have told you I liked him. But you’ve got to take your share of the blame too.”

“There is no blame for me to take,” he scoffed, “you’re a big girl you could have walked away. You didn’t have to let it go so far.”

“See that’s your problem,” she huffed in frustration, “you’re not willing to understand or anything. You just get mad and shut everyone out. Life doesn’t work like that!”

“In case you haven’t noticed, our lives aren’t normal in any capacity,” he put his hand on the knob, ready to slam the door, “we aren’t normal!”

“I-I want out,” she almost shouted just before he slammed the door. He stopped, stunned at her sudden declaration, “I’m done with all of this, I just want to go home. I want to forget that any of this ever happened.”

“That’d be breaking a contract,” he informed her and she shrugged, “a legally binding one in case you’ve forgotten. There are consequences to what happens when you break a contract. Unintended or not.”

“Would you actually enforce it?” she asked with a raised eyebrow. She knew he was reaching low by even suggesting this; it seemed like he was willing to do anything to get a rise out of her, “what, you’re going to take me to court if I leave?”

“Yes,” he stated simply. Deep down he knew that he wouldn’t really do anything like, but he wanted her to think he would, even if it was just to get a rise for the time being.

“I’ve got no money to pay you,” she huffed, running a hand through her already messy hair in exasperation, “I’ve got no job, no place to call my own. You know that…and you don’t even need the money.”

“Sometimes it’s about proving a point,” he shrugged his shoulder innocently. Ben was starting to hate himself more with each word that rolled off of his lips, but he found himself unable to stop spewing venomous words, “actions always have consequences, Y/N.”

“I’m starting to see that,” she wanted nothing more than to punch him squarely in the face, to damage his perfect features, “if you want to play it that way, then fine. I’ll stay. It’s not like I’ve got much choice.”

“If you stopped because so overly dramatic about everything it would be fine. We can have a future together, you know,” she immediately shook her head at his words, “we can still make this work.”

“Not when you’re being like that,” she smiled tearfully, trying her very best to keep herself from completely falling apart, “I don’t even know you anymore. I had some hope that you were still in there, the real Ben – my Benny. But you’re not. I have no clue who you are anymore.”

“You say that, but you know it’s not true-“

“It’s true,” she interrupted sharply, a bemused smirk on her tear stained face, “but that’s okay…I’ll let used to it. I’ll do my job just like a good girl, and we’ll call it square. I’m done fighting with you, I’m done trying to rationalize anything that’s going on. We’re not the little boy and girl who met over ice cream, who shared their Legos, who grew up together. I’m going to accept that. I hope you do too.”

“Y/N, don’t be like this,” he said harshly, wishing she would just stop talking. He was feeling near a breakdown himself as she kept wearing down his already weak defenses. She had always known how to get him, how to bring him out of his shell, and she was slowly succeeding in it, “let the past die. Kill it if you have to.”

“I can’t do that,” she disagreed with him, “I’m not like you.”

“So, where does that leave us?” he asked suddenly, his hands on his hips, a foot tapping lightly against the cold floor, “tell me exactly what you want.”

“I want us to forget everything that’s happened between us. You want to forget the past, fine, we’ll let it go. But then the rest of this,” she pointed her finger between the two of them, still in their disheveled states after having spent the night together, “is forgotten as well. You agree to my terms, or I’ll walk away. I don’t even care about the money, I’ll find some way to pay you back.”

“What about your new boyfriend?” he almost spit the words out; he wanted to be mad at his other best friend, to call him a snake for kissing he girl he was in love with, “you want me to forget about him too?”

“You have no reason to be angry with Joe. He’s an innocent party,” she wished he was there to defend both himself and her, “he didn’t know about how you felt-”

“What did you tell him? Did you tell him how you felt about me?” he wasn’t sure if he wanted to know the answer, or if he would have preferred to remain in the darkness. When he had seen them kiss, it had broken his heart. The way they had leaned into other, it was a soft, tender moment, intimate and only to be shared between lovers. It should have been him, not Joe was drilled into his mind. If he couldn’t have Y/N, then Joe definitely couldn’t.

“I told him the truth,” she said honestly, “I told him I used to love you, that I used to have feelings for you. I told him what happened between us.”

“Oh,” there was a knot forming in his stomach, and he thought he might throw up. Joe knew too much; Ben had been very careful about what parts of ‘the truth’ he had provided to his closest friends, and it appeared to be coming back to bite him in the butt.

“And I told him that I had feelings for him too,” she felt her cheeks heat up as the truth came out. She hadn’t intended on falling for Joe; if anything she thought she would slowly be falling back in love with Ben. But things had gone very topsy-turvy, ending up in a mess that nobody had anticipated.

But there was something about Joe, his sweet smile, those soft hazel eyes, the musical laugh - everything that was slowly thawing her out and winning her over. He was kind, a gentle soul to his core, and he made her feel like nobody else had in a long time.

“How do you even know you like him?” Ben huffed, incredulous at her somewhat startling confession. He didn’t think they were actually getting to that part, “you’ve only known him for a few weeks.”

“That doesn’t matter, Ben, time is insignificant,” she countered, “and it’s not like I said I was in love with him. But I do like him, and I’m not going to hold back my feelings just because it makes you feel insecure. I’ve been up upfront with both of you. Joe wants to talk to you about everything, Ben. He feels like he owes you. Or are you going to just cut him off too?”

Ben let out a sound somewhere between a scoff and a half laugh, “I don’t want to talk to him about any of this. He should have known how I felt. It should have been obvious to him..”

“Not everything is obvious to everyone else, Ben,” Y/N sighed loudly, “you have to talk to people, open up to them so they know. You didn’t tell Joe anything about us, how could you possibly think he would have any inkling?”

“Whatever,” he threw back his head and squeezed his eyes shut, rolling his neck and relishing in the popping feeling, “you can do whatever you want with him. I don’t care, just don’t force me to look at it. You can at least spare me that much.”

“If you’re agreeable to my terms, then I’ll agree to yours.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?” she echoed back at him, a little taken aback by his lack of bite, or back chat. He did a number of avoiding her eyes, but gave her a nod of confirmation, a single golden curl bouncing and gleaming in the bright morning light.

“Yup,” he popped the p loudly, “I said okay.”

“Okay,” she repeated, almost in a mocking way just to annoy him. He remained wordless, but finally stepped back into the room and and slammed the door shut. It was such a forceful slam, the generic pictures that hung on the walls of the rented apartment shook, threatening to fall to the floor.

Much like me she thought to herself, ready to bend and break at any second.

Y/N sat in front of the television, aimlessly watching the reruns of The Office that were on loop. She’d seen every episode at least ten times, but it provided some good background noise; just enough to keep her mind from drifting too far.

She had been anticipating Joe’s return, waiting with nerves running high. She wanted to intercept and warn him about Ben before he went to speak with him. At least that way she could spare him some torture. Every sound she heard made her jump and look towards the door, sure she would be met with the sight of his face. But it never was, only the sounds of the bustling city met her ears.

Just as she was about to drift off, her eyelids getting heavier with passing second, she felt a soft tap on her shoulder. Almost jumping out of her spot on the couch, she glanced up to see Joe looming over her, a half smile on his face.

“Joe,” she breathed out, unable to prevent the smile that was threatening to break her face in half. He leaned down ever so slightly, pressing his lips against hers in a soft kiss, ala Spiderman. It caught her guard for a moment, but she quickly reciprocated the kiss, letting her lips linger against his.

“Sorry I’m back so late,” he finally said as he pulled away, sitting down on the couch next to her. He put his around on the back of the couch and she fought the urge to just snuggle up against him, “did I miss anything? Are you alright?”

“Honestly, I don’t know how to answer either of those questions,” she admitted nervously, suddenly very interested in the loose strands coming apart at the end of her sweater, “it’s been a day to say the least. I-I talked to Ben.”

He could tell by the shift in her tone, subtle but there, that it hasn’t gone extremely well. She pulled her knees up to her chest, and resting her head on top of them, let out a weighty breathe. Joe reached over and gave her leg a reassuring squeeze, trying to be as gentle as possible, “what happened? Is he…okay?”

“I fear that it’s just a pretty big mess and somehow I don’t get the feeling that he’s okay,” she closed her eyes, trying to block out the images of his upset face that floated around her mind, “he was mad that I wasn’t ready to fall back into his arms, I explained to him yet that I was just going to do that. I told him it would take him, especially considering he wasn’t anything like the person he used to be. He just told me to let it go.”

“Can you?” Joe asked, even though he had a pretty good idea of what her answer would be. She laughed though her nose, and cocked an eyebrow at him, “I suppose that was a silly question.”

“If your best friend left, the one you had known for years, the one you thought you knew, left and came back a different a person, could you just get over it?” she mused out loud, and Joe knew he wouldn’t be able to. He just shook his head silently, confirming her own response, “exactly. Which is why this is so weird. Bits and pieces of him are still there, but….it’s not the same.”

“It must be hard,” he commented dryly, watching as she stared off in the distance, not focusing in on anything in particular.

“There was a day, and I remember it so clearly, when we were children, playing with Legos and building a house and little versions of the us,” the same memory he wanted her to forget. But Ben had remembered it too; that’s why it pained him so much, “I asked him of we were always going to be friends. He said yes, and promised me even though we had decided even back then that adults were silly. We were going to get married and even get a dog. But that’s obviously so far from what’s happened.”

“Even though it’s not the reality that’s panned out, you should be able to hang onto that memory,” Joe could picture the young versions of the two of them, sitting around and intently playing the plastic bricks together to build their own little world, “you don’t have to let the past die.”

“I didn’t think so either,” she answered with a half-hearted laugh, as she traced never ending figures into the fabric of her pants, “but someone has other ideas. I just don’t know what to do with him anymore. I wish I could just let him go and forget about him, but I know I can’t.”

“Letting go of the people you love, or once loved isn’t it easy,” Joe agreed; he’d lost several close friends over the years himself, and it hurt just as much each time, “but it doesn’t you have to. Ben’s not a bad person, not the Ben I’ve known anyway. I realize I haven’t known him nearly as long as you, but I don’t think he’s a bad person. This hard for him too, although in different ways.”

“I know,” Joe just had to be the voice of reason. Even in her heart of hearts, she knew Ben wasn’t a bad person. He, much like her, was just confused and conflicted as well, “I just hope he sees my side of things at some point. I think I understand his version of things, but he needs to see him. And not just invalidate my feelings.”

“Well said,” Joe gave her a sweet smile, almost enough to melt her heart right then and there, “do you think I should…”

“No,” she cut him off abruptly before he could get another word in edgewise, “probably not the best idea, at least for now. I told him that I liked you, I was honest with him about my feelings. He wasn’t exactly thrilled.”

“I swear, I didn’t know before...:” Joe started but quietly trailed off, his voice almost cracking as he a wave of realization washed over him. He should have known Ben had feelings for her still. Why else would he have gone back to England to find her and propose this crazy plan to her? But the moment he had laid eyes on her at the airport, he had felt himself falling for her, “I should have been able to put two and two together. I feel like a complete fool.”

“It’s not your fault, Joe,” Y/N didn’t want to see him beat himself up over any of this. If nothing else, Ben should have been upfront with him about his true intentions as well; especially considering he claimed that Joe was his closest friend. Y/N had tried her best to be honest and forth and coming, even though it had been hard, “Ben should have told you how he felt, not just think you knew and then brood about it. Besides, I don’t feel the same about him anymore.”

“Positive?” he asked, needing the reassurance in order to prevent the nagging feeling rising in his stomach. He knew he shouldn’t feel bad about how he was feeling, he had nothing with malicious intent, but it was still there. He knew he couldn’t help how his heart felt. She wondered if she should have just told him about the fact that they had inadvertently ended up in bed together the night before, but decided against. Now wasn’t the time.

Y/N leaned across the couch, reaching out and gently taking his hand in hers, rubbing her thumb across the back of it gently, “I like you, Joe. And trust me, falling for my ex-best friend that still has feelings for me and I might have had repressed feelings for as well’s current best friend was the last thing I intended on happening. But well, it happened. You know, I’ve learned a lot over the past couple of years, had to do a lot of growing up, and while a lot of things still remain a mystery to me, I have learned that almost nothing goes according to plan.”

“What did Ben say about all of this?” Joe felt his heart start to thump wildly in his chest, mainly due to shock by the fact that she returned the exact feelings he for her. He could only imagine his soft face; how upset he must have been. He hadn’t been in Ben’s exact situation before, but the feeling was already weighing in heavy on him.

“Well, he said he didn’t care,” she almost laughed, knowing full well it had been a been a bold-faced lie, “the one thing he asked was that we just…weren’t together around him. Which I can understand, to a point. I also don’t want to have to hide anything.”

“Point well made, but even if we were to…go on a date, or whatever,” there was a small smile playing on the corner of his mouth, “we’d still have to keep it quiet. What would people think if you were supposedly dating Ben but you were out with me?”

“That hadn’t even crossed my mind honestly,” how could she have been so silly and forgotten that not so minor little detail. That was the whole person she was even here – the only reason she had met Joe, “I don’t want to have to hide my entire life, Joe. I can understand when we’re out in public, because obviously I agreed to that with Ben, but in private? I don’t want to hide in the shadows.”

“We can figure it out, sugar,” he took her hand and turned it over, running a deft finger along the lines of her palm, “we’ll take it one step at a time. But first things first…would you like to go out to dinner with me? As in yes, a real date.”

“You might either be bad at reading the signs,” she grinned at him, “or just a real sap. But I think you know the answer is a big obvious yes by now.”

“Really?” he asked enthusiastically, still somewhat surprised by her answer. She just looked at him and nodded, entertained by his childlike reaction, “what should we do about…you know…”

“We don’t have to tell him,” she almost surprised herself by how easily the words flowed from her mouth, “he doesn’t want to know, so he won’t. It’ll be our little secret. At least for now.”

“Okay,” he rasped out as she moved closer to him, their faces only centimeters apart, his breath fanning over her face. She reached up and gently touched his face, fingertips grazing the light stubble he had allowed to grow there.

He couldn’t stop himself from closing the distance between them, effectively pulling her onto his lap, and crashing his lips against on hers, desperate to taste her again, to her body against his. Y/N wrapped her arms around his neck, one hand carding through his auburn hair as his hands held firmly onto her waist.

This was so different from how it been with Ben the previous night. With him it had felt rushed, and more forced than anything else, her mind had wandered to all sorts of places. But with Joe it was so different; it was soft, but needy, a sense of fervent passion mixed in as their lips meshed together. Her mind wasn’t anywhere but on Joe, how good it felt as he touched her tenderly, the little bit of scratchy feeling of his stubble against her cheek, how soft his lips were, how he made little sounds of content as she kissed him.

In that moment all she knew was the she wanted him – him and only him.

“Joe,” she almost moaned as she pulled back for a moment, both of their chests rising and falling rapidly as they tried to catch their breath. She rested her forehead against his, nuzzling her nose against his. One of his hands slipped under the hem of her shirt, fingers ghosting over the soft bare flesh. She bit her bottom lip as she looked at him, “I-I don’t know if we should do this right now.”

“Do you want to?” there was a note of trepidation in his voice, like he too was questioning whether or not they should continue on. He wanted to, there was no doubt in his mind, but he wasn’t about to capitalize on the situation if she wasn’t ready to. He’d never forgive himself if he did that, “we don’t have to anything, especially if you’re uncomfortable or not ready. I want you to be ready.”

“I want to, Joe,” she reassured, rutting her hips ever so slightly in his lap, “I just don’t know if I’m going to be able to stop if we start.”

“Then don’t stop,” she looked like she was about to speak again, so he cut her off by pressing his lips against hers, pulling her body tightly against his, “but if you need to stop, just tell me.”

“Please just kiss me,” it was her turn to cut him off, smirking against his lips, and giving into his dominance. She would let him take all the control if meant she got to be with him.

Ben had thought he heard some commotion coming from the living room and wondered what it was. As far as he had known, only Y/N was home, and as annoyed and angry as he was, he wanted to make sure she was okay.

His jaw almost hit the floor as he realized what he had stumbled up. Y/N was perched in Joe’s lap and the two of them were going at each other like they were the only two people in the world. He thought about going over and punching Joe square in the face, telling to let go of his girl, but he stopped himself. He watched them silently, blood boiling and anger rising with each passing second.

But he didn’t do anything. He just watched them for a few more moments, wondering if they’d ever notice. But they didn’t. They were far too involved with each other.

At one point, Y/N pulled back from Joe, a small giggle escaping her lips, as Joe had let out a low moan, “shh, silly, or the whole world’s going to hear! Remember what we said.”

“Our little secret.”

The words crashed over Ben’s ears as he felt like he had been punched in the gut. He inhaled deeply a few times before turning around and rushing back to his bedroom, closing the door silently so they wouldn’t know he had stumbled upon them. He angrily wiped at the few tears that had spilled down his cheeks before throwing himself onto the bed. He had practically given them all the leeway in the world, but it still strung, cutting him like a knife.

Our little secret. Our little secret. Our little secret.

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dandelionpie · 6 years

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Okay @mentalwires all I can say is you fucking asked for it. This is

Madeline’s Lengthy and Mostly Very Positive Track-by-Track Review of

Off to the Races

by Jukebox the Ghost

(feel free to follow along at home on your Personal Listening Device; it’s all on Spotify or wherever)

(and I’m not going to follow any formatting rules because this isn’t being graded so fuck it quotes are in italics)

I don’t know if it’s just because I listened to it over and over again, but this album is an album. Friends, there are motifs in this album. There are themes. There’s something that’s not quite a narrative, but a strange awakening to the crises that plague people who have reached a certain stage of human development just beyond the beginning of real adulthood.

1. Jumpstarted

Our speaker is awfully self-aware for someone who admits to a chronic lack of self-awareness. This song is like the “I Hope That I Don’t Fall In Love With You” by Tom Waits for a new generation, except instead of tragic it’s just, like…incredibly goofy. It also follows in the footsteps of many other songs (the Temptations’ “Just My Imagination” springs to mind), it rehashes a very familiar theme: Young Man sees Young Woman*; young man becomes instantly fixated on an imagined future with her; young man admits that his imaginings are the product of his deranged imagination but, though he fully admits to his own emotionally compromised state in great detail (and your gravity / my depravity / won’t take my advice), he refuses to relinquish the fantasy and face reality, even as he does so in the utterance of the lyrics. Rather, he accepts his eventual heartbreak to be as inescapable as the laws of physics - what goes up must come down, after all, and as foolish as his infatuation seems, it’s even more foolish to try to change something as immutable as that. It’s too ridiculous to be properly sad, but we feel for him all the same.

There’s definitely a gender element happening here. I’ve been that guy, but far more often, to greater and lesser extents, I’ve been that girl. We have this idea in our culture that women are obsessed with love and will throw themselves into relationships with men at the drop of a hat, but I’ve seen it played out far more often the other way. In my (limited! human! biased! don’t @ me!) observation, women may throw themselves into the emotional side of a relationship, but the planning part (this person fulfills everything I want from a spouse/life partner/parent of my anticipated children) and therefore it must be Fate)…well, I haven’t done that since I was about ten. I’ve seen grown-ass men do it on multiple occasions, to me and many of my female friends. So like…make of that what you will.

The song also does that cute thing where it name-drops the title of the album in the lyrics, and I love that.

*the object of the speaker’s affections in this particular song remains mostly ungendered except for one she pronoun in the bridge. If you ignored that one tiny “she” (or changed the gender of the speaker), it would be easy to make this song about a very real and serious problem facing today’s LGBTQ Youth: Queer and Here syndrome**. That is, when you see another person of more-or-less your persuasion and they are around your age, breathing, and moderately attractive, you tend to fall in love with them regardless of actual chemistry or lack thereof. Again: I have been the speaker, and I have been the object.

**EDIT: Ben Thornewill, who wrote the song…might be queer? I can’t find any info either way, except for he helped with a fundraiser for Everyone is Gay one time. Someone with a longer attention span should google this for me.

Enjoying this nonsense? Click below for the rest!

2. Everybody’s Lonely

This track continues the theme of powerlessness in the face of one’s own self-awareness (dragged into another heartbreak / like a moth into a flame) while implicitly making the way for a gentle interrogation of the music industry. Are we programmed for broken romance? Probably, but we’re sure the hell not going to stop singing about it. And we have to admit, it’s more than a little diverting. The singer is having a marvelous time with the vocals for how much he’s complaining, and the track switches up the speed and time signature more than once (there’s some sophisticated musical term I’m failing to call to mind here, but dammit Jim I’m an English major not a music doctor).

The title itself is a simple statement on the nature of humanity, and a somewhat comforting one (to me, anyway). It’s hard, but if everybody’s lonely, then…well, no one is, right? And, of course, the lyrics could also be read (heard?) as a comment on the content of this very album, as well as the greater Jukebox the Ghost canon, which, self-admittedly, mostly concerns either love or drinking too much (and often both). Lampshading? Probably a little, but I think it works.

3. People Go Home

I will admit: I hated this song until I saw the album performed live. It’s just so damned cynical, and at the same time describes a lifestyle (car! boss who wears a watch! wife and children and a house and a dog!) my generation seems to have given up on aspiring to. Because the American Dream is an illusion, etc. But the thing about it is, despite its dour outlook on the life of its subject, the song itself is just so much fun.

The metaphor of the calendar pages being torn off and thrown away would be a bit too cliché in a more serious track, but the irrepressibly catchy beat makes it work somehow. The repetitiveness is really artful - of course it’s repeating itself; it’s a song, but it also evokes the passage of time and the subject’s own mortality (the tick of the clock / and the tick of the clock / mark the moments ’til the ticking stops). And the abrupt end of the song is…well, actually a little unsettling in light of its lyrical content.

Another motif arises: are we becoming who we hate? Is it inevitable that we should do so in growing up? And, again - if there’s nothing we can do about it, should we perhaps make an effort to enjoy the ride?

4. Fred Astaire

First, a confession: this song is primarily for me about the Blupjeans pairing in The Adventure Zone, so like…I’m gonna do my best to ignore that aspect in my analysis but no promises.

I love this song.

I think it’s the strongest track on this album From the very first bars, it’s psyching you up for something, and the powerful opening vocals do not disappoint. This is an excellent showcase of Ben Thornewill’s raw vocal power.

I’m also a huge sucker for the “man who has landed the partner of his dreams hardly daring to believe his luck” trope (cf: Blupjeans, Jake/Amy from B99, tons of other cute pairings I can’t call to mind just at the moment). There’s something so beautifully pure about watching someone realize how fortunate they are to have someone great in their life. In this case, the speaker seems almost playfully resentful as he wonders at his partner’s inexplicable admiration of him - “what are you even doing with a dork like me?” he seems to ask.

But in the bridge, he contrasts that playful exasperation with a genuine admiration of his beloved’s clarity of insight - when I lose myself / there is no one else / who ever sees through me quite like you, he points out, and something about his tone feels genuinely grateful. So for me, this resonates on a personal level as well - in my life, I’m continually astounded by the people who have seen me at my worst and continue to refrain from telling me I suck.

Well, that was distressingly sincere. Don’t worry; I turn back into a snarky pumpkin in just a sec.

5. Time and I

If previous tracks have hinted at themes of growing up and having way too many feelings about it, this track drives those concepts home with a freaking sledgehammer. I have less trouble with it than “People Go Home,” but it’s still a bit too relatable if you ask me. There’s a deeply sympathetic undercurrent of frustration (try as I might / it ain’t no friend of mine) - this guy’s been making an effort, and he’s announcing a sort of surrender, even as he continues to beg time to slow down for him.

I’m intrigued by we’re not the way we used to be - is he talking to a third party, or to time itself? If the former, the feeling t is one of those universal heartbreaks we all go through at this point. People don’t just change - relationships do too, and that can be even more frustrating and harder to pin down. And if it’s the latter, isn’t there something too beautifully futile about the act of begging an abstract concept to act against its nature?

This whole album is so wonderfully human.

Overall, the lyrics feel a bit weaker than the rest of the album to me, but I love the way it sounds. The vocal tracks in the bridge layer on top of each other one by one in this really evocative way, piano is perfect for a track like this - since it’s both percussive and melodic, it invokes bittersweetness of the inexorable passage of time. Maybe? I dunno, just spitballing here.

6. Diane

I hadn’t actually paid much attention to this track until I saw it performed live and the singer got the audience to sing part of the chorus for him. Neat trick, dude. I still didn’t like the song all that much until I saw @mentalwires spin very enthusiastic rope dart to it. Anyway - like many songs by Jukebox the Ghost, it would be downright obnoxious if it weren’t such a jam.

What really grabs me about this song is the line about not being able to focus. Maybe it’s just an ADD thing, and it’s certainly not an original thought - of course you can’t focus, dude, you’re basically worshipping this chick - but it’s true that people we like are distracting, and it is highly inconvenient. And it’s way more fun than most of the other inconvenient things that afflict our little species, so that doesn’t help matters. I relate similarly to I can’t sleep / why even bother, although that probably has more to do with my insomnia than anything else.

Damn I love power pop.

It’s another self-imposed tragedy — our dude doesn’t know how to let go of the idea of this girl, but how well do they actually know each other? The bridge (You make me feel like I’m alive / you make me feel like I’m the only one) brings home what the speaker’s been hinting at since the start of the track - it’s much more about how he feels than about the person he feels it for. Sometimes / I don’t even think you know my name could be read two ways - either she knows him but acts like she doesn’t (rude), or they’ve never even actually met.*

All the while, he begs her to tell him her thoughts, but does he actually want to know? And if they haven’t met, then how could she tell him she’s thinking about him at all? How is she even going to hear what he’s saying? Well, of course, she can’t - the classic futility of the pop ballad returns. So much in this song is about being unheard, and that fascinates me.

An observation: Songs in this vein hardly ever give any detail about the ostensible (usually female) subject. This is probably at least a little bit to make it easier for everyone involved to identify with them, but it also makes it clear that the speaker’s love has far more to do with his own hang-ups than with the supposed object of his affections. And doesn’t the way we love say so much about us? Maybe that’s why I’m such a sucker for romance.

*The tertiary Queer and Here interpretation makes itself available yet again. I mean, the whole bit about sweaty palms goes all the way back to Sappho, you guys.**

**Fuck I’m such an English major send help

7. See You Soon

Imma be real with y’all for a sec - I couldn’t handle this song at first. It’s about losing a person, and not even in a way that’s final. It gives me sort of the same feeling as “One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop (read it; it’s short and will tear your little heart from your chest). In both that poem and this song, the ambiguity of the addressee’s identity makes the loss all the more poignant - is the speaker addressing a lover or a friend? Is it both? And which is worse?

The painful wisdom imparted by the passage of time is another motif that keeps coming up in this album. Our dude used to get mad at the small things, and he’s realized what’s actually important, but like every lesson learned the hard way, it’s too late to apply it to the situation in question. And perhaps he never would’ve come to that revelation without the accompanying loss, but that doesn’t make it any less excruciating.

Remember when your life felt like it would be never-ending - if you enjoy the particular kind of masochism brought about by that sentiment, I’d encourage you to check out “I Wanna Get Better” by Bleachers. Not to get too philosophical, but grown-ups have this thing where they lecture kids about how they think they’re immortal. And we don’t believe it when we’re kids, at least I didn’t - I wasn’t particularly inclined to take dumb risks, or so I thought. But (dammit) somewhere, we actually do realize that life isn’t permanent, that the place we grew up isn’t the entire world, and that there’s so much of that world that we’ll simply never experience. Wondering how a relationship could have gone differently is more than just a painful (and arguably necessary) experience - it also calls to mind all the different directions our lives could take, and forces us to watch as all those paths converge into one.

It’s another special mid-20s crisis - by that age, we’ve had a few close friendships and relationships, and we’ve experienced the end of some of them. And after that end, we have to change, both as a result of the loss and - you guessed it - the unstoppable, unbending passage of time. If I say it enough it might come true, the speaker says as he leads into the final repetition of the chorus, and we get the sense that he almost believes it. Is it denial, willful self-delusion, or genuine hope?

8. Boring

This is the track that really got me thinking about this album. If “People Go Home” stands on a soapbox wagging its finger at The American Dream™, this song drunkenly embraces it in a bar a few hours later. And, like “People Go Home,” I sort of hated it until I noticed what a great time Tommy Siegel was having with it.

We begin with the inexorability of time again - the seasons are changing / but my world always stays the same. Of course, the use of “lame” to describe undesirability is crummy for obvious reasons, but it also reads as delightfully teenage - our friend is desperately clinging to whatever vestiges of youth remain to him. There’s also a charmingly youthful tendency to exaggerate - I guess they’ll procreate until they die / everyone is boring / everything is lame / everybody thinks they’re not the same could have come straight from the mouth of a fourteen-year-old in the back of a car on a family road trip.

What I love love love love about this song is how smoothly the speaker seems to come around over the course of it. He begins with a distressing observation: all my friends are having kids / but nobody’s sure why. And by the end of the song, he’s worked out exactly why. He’s a little ashamed to say that he’s figured out just what the big deal is. And he’s going through some internal conflict, but that doesn’t mean he’s got to be shy about how he feels.

After wondering for a minute how he got this way (I webmd myself but somehow nothing’s ever wrong has to be one of the most #relatable lyrics I’ve ever heard), he smoothly switches from lambasting the Nuclear Family™ to flattering his addressee:

Baby let’s get boring

Let’s get old and lame

Let’s get a house and kids and change your name

‘ cause I don’t think you’re boring

I don’t think you’re lame

Let’s get a house and summer up in Maine

(kind of a lazy rhyme there at the end, but still sorta cute)

While he acknowledges his frustration with his desire to become that which he most detests, he also acknowledges that the alternative is much worse: I’d rather rot in hell / than watch you become someone lame with someone else.* And yeah, growing up resolves a lot of exciting questions into formulaic predictability, but if you find someone to share it with who’s interesting, you can enjoy it anyway. It’s either a cute little bit of poetry or the most adorably fumbling marriage proposal in the history of time.

We could be so boring, he promises his intended, and he sounds, well, sort of excited about it. Because if everybody else thinks they’re not the same, he asks, why should we bother pretending? It’s not important if we’re actually boring. It’s that I don’t think you are. And I think I agree - the most important parts of any relationship only matter to the people in it.

I’m not sure what he’s doing to that guitar at the end there, but he sure is doing it.

*There’s another reading that he’s settling but I’ll go with the optimistic one thank you.

9. Simple as 1 2 3

I found this to be sort of a weird tone shift, but the more I listen to it, the better it fits. The lyrics are all about how you can’t fall in love without taking chances - a played-out theme that still meshes beautifully with this track’s youthful simplicity. When I saw this performed live, the singer literally counted on his fingers while he sang and played the piano, and it managed to be incredibly charming. Or maybe it was just his pretty pretty eyes.

When you feel your pulse / knock you over like an animal is so simple but so vivid and I’m not sure this is going anywhere; I just wanted to point it out.

The second verse,

So take a risk

and find a little love

hidden where you didn’t see it

‘cause the time you have is all the time you’ve got

briefly brings it back to the existential crisis that dominates most of this album, but it’s somehow much more optimistic with this new spin - life is short, so you might as well give the whole falling in love thing a whirl. And if it goes badly, hey, there’s always Track 7.

Lyrically, the bridge doesn’t do a whole lot, but I like how it just sort of sits there building on itself - it increases the tension, like, well, the moment of waiting in a corner before going over to talk to someone - and when the musical track drops out to leave only the singer’s voice, it’s like the strange silence that seems to accompany a difficult utterance, and okay, I’m definitely reading way too much into this. Whatever. Death of the author.

10. Colorful

So this is gonna get pretty sentimental, because that is the sort of track this is, and for that I halfheartedly apologize. In an album full of glibness and cynicism, this song stands out relatively devoid of artifice or dire warnings of death.

This song, to me, is about being an artist, and an aggressively happy one at that. I dunno if you’ve seen my art, but, well, it’s downright obnoxious. I mean - Wanna feel like a light in a dark place? Why yes, as a matter of fact; where do I sign. And For the lovers and the broken-hearted feels almost like a call to action - it’s important to bring out the beauty of the world for the people who want to revel in it and for the ones who might be too sad to notice it. All that stuff about trying to paint the world in a new way is probably meant to be a metaphor, but I like taking it literally. It makes me feel better about how I’ve chosen to spend the vast majority of my free time, dammit.

And while this track is pretty repetitive, it forms a perfect conclusion to an album that’s just as much about the ways we talk about romance as the romance itself. It’s one more frame to fit around the first two, if you like.

The bridge is a blatant and transparent excuse to show off Thornewill’s vocal range, for which I can hardly blame him. That man sings like a god.

Bonus Notes:

Stay the Night (single)

I know this one didn’t make it onto the album but I fucking love it. It’s so catchy, and I love that it doesn’t sound like “Pretty Woman” or “Come on Eileen” - I don’t feel like the guy is being coercive or weird. Sure, he’s lamenting that he can’t sleep with the object of his affections, but it’s very much a lament of circumstance - he can’t stay the night because they don’t have time, or they’ve got work in the morning, or it’s only their first date and they’re taking things slow, and you get the sense that he understands from the second verse - I’m singing Journey on the highway / I’m still believing; I’m still believing / that I’ll wake up beside you one day - it almost feels like a reassurance.

It also brings home a lot of themes that come up later in Off to the Races. We’re not getting any younger, and yeah, we might as well have fun with it. But again - I’m not getting a “To His Coy Mistress” vibe here. It’s feels much more along the lines of “Dream a Little Dream of Me.” Perhaps it’s just the evolving sexual mores of our society, or perhaps it’s that the speaker spends absolutely no time convincing his date - he simply states the obvious. It’s that universal thrill of something starting, and I am, as they say, here for it.

Anyway that was approximately 2.73 million times longer than I meant it to be. I guess I like talking about poetry? Who could have predicted this? (Really, I actually had a lot of fun with this, so if you liked it, let me know and maybe I’ll do it again sometime. Although, fair warning, it is liable to be about Fall Out Boy.)

#mentalwires #music #jukebox the ghost #music reviews #are apparently a thing i do now #sort of #i dunno if i'd call this a review

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sean-gaffney · 6 years

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Tatarigoroshi: Changes between the Original and the PS2/3 Version

Again, this is something of a work in progress as 07th-mod is still working on the differences. I will say, though, it is somewhat mind-boggling to see some of these cuts.

Part 1:

Once again, Kei-kei is changed to Keiichi.

Part 2:

A removal of yakuza here. Get used to this, as I’ve said.

I hate minor kanji differences. Something about K1’s bento having a fatal flaw is different, God knows what.

Keiichi describing the manga he’s imaginarily buying as “slightly perverted” is cut.

The boys calling the girls ugly was cut. No objections here.

Satoko says the meal has “ready-made” side dishes in the original, but “poorly made” in the update. Perhaps to avoid denigrating ready-made side dishes?

Part 3:

All references to Kameda being from Oshima are changed to remove the actual place.

All K1’s lines about being a pervert are toned down.

A lot of K1 and Kameda’s dessert description is toned down, including a few references to lolitas.

Part 4:

In the original, Mion is called “unhealthy”, and K1 encourages Rena to get a “sproingey” body. In the update, Mion is “underdeveloped” (?!?!), and he says breakfast will give Rena a “sexy” body instead.

Irie saying he would “re-educate” Satoko into a “maidservant” is made a bit less creepy. Only a bit, though.

Shion interrupting their conversation is hella censored. In the original, pretending to be Irie, she says she’ll put Satoko on a wooden horse and make her a sex slave. She and K1 then have an extended conversation about being careful when doing BDSM, and remember the rules. Needless to say, the update has this be “pretty maid”, and she and K1 get into a discussion of the fact that she used an English loan word.

Tomita and Okamura use Sakoto’s first name in the original, her last name in the update. Politeness censorship!

Irie’s “disciplining” maids is changed to “domestication”.

Part 5:

Keiichi asks Tomita and Okamura is they want him to explain how to remove the black censor bar from porn in the original. In the update, he wonders if they need help to see what Chie will put on the test.

The “Great Ariake Exhibition” loses its specific place name.

“Drug addict” changed to “deviant”.

“Staying with a lover” becomes “staying with an intimate lady friend”.

Part 6 (1):

“Parasite” becomes “Slob”.

“Bullying” Satoko becomes “be more serious” or something similar.

Again, the update removes the suggestion that Teppei and Rina are lovers.

“Is it really bad?” becomes “How’s the situation?”, and I am finding myself in disbelief that the PS version of this is removing the mentions of abuse from Satoko’s own arc.

“Abuse” becomes “a problem”.

In an odd instance of the PS version becoming MORE explicit, the references to the “regional” child welfare center are changed to Okinomiya, presumably as that’s a fictional town and therefore it’s OK for them to be as uncaring as they are here.

The person visiting the Houjous from the child center is made a “staff member” in the update, they’re a “commissioner” in the original.

Waiting for Teppei to “hit Satoko and leave a mark” is made just “wait”. All the abuse is not removed per se, but it’s made super, super vague.

“Orphanage” is made “institution” or removed entirely from several lines.

More removal of “drug addict”.

Satoko’s bruise on her hand is changed to a fever, making this more “neglect” than “physical abuse”. This affects a number of lines. And my blood pressure. What the actual fuck?

Again, Irie’s use of the word “abuse” is changed.

Satoko being described as an “empty husk” is removed.

K1 says if Satoko is in danger he will “take action” without asking anyone. In the PS version, it’s “report it”, because he is a good boy, like everyone else in Higurashi!

Part 6 (2):

Nothing!

Part 7 (1):

As with Watanagashi, the PS arc pretends Keiichi has met Tomitake before, the original has a “who are you” conversation. I assume this is due to actual branching choices in the game version.

Tomitake’s Maebara is changed to Keiichi in the PS version, presumably as he is an adult speaking to a child.

Again, abuse mention cut.

Again, Child Welfare officer changed to just a staff member.

Part 7 (2):

“You’ve ever got housekeepers” is changed to “maids”. I assume this is nuance that would be understandable in Japanese.

Part 8 (1):

Once more, Mion’s drunken shenanigans are changed to “I’m just tired”.

Let’s change “officer” to “staff member” again.

More deletion of abuse.

Satoko inflicting wounds on herself before she calls the center about her stepfather is made “making up a false story”.

And the original says Satoko sent an “SOS’, this is simplified to call.

Part 8 (2)

Nothing!

Part 8 (3)

Aiko specifically recommends “And Then There Were None” and “Murder on the Orient Express” to Keiichi in the original, in the PS version she avoids a specific title.

Part 8 (4):

Drunk changed to tired AGAIN in “Mion’s” phone call.

Let’s make that drug addict a lowlife. Again.

Part 9 (1):

Kraepelin test changed to a generic one.

Part 9 (2):

Nothing!

Part 9(3):

Nothing!

Part 10:

More removal of underage drinking. No one drinks, they just stay up too late!

Shion is downgraded from a blockhead to a troublemaker.

Irie still injects girls with chemicals to make them maids in both versions, but he also says “slaves” in the original.

Continuing on with creepy Irie, his line about :”secondadry sex characteristics” is changed to “puberty”.

Specific sedative names removed from the PS version.

More removal of Gifu.

Ooishi’s “only whores do both at once” became “people from the red light district” in the new MG version, and “stage actors” in the PS version.

Part 11 (1):

Nothing. Which means it’s OK to have Satoko boil herself alive in the bath, as long as it’s made clear no parental figure is hitting her.

Part 11 (2):

In the original, Irie has “incontinence” as a symptom of his death. In the PS this is changed to “dilated pupils”.

The line about if Irie used sleeping pills regularly is cut.

As we infamously know, Satoko’s nudity in the original was changed to “like this”, i.e. in a towel. And thank God.

“Walking to the festival in my sleep” is changed to “half-asleep”. Buh? Is sleepwalking taboo?

More adding a towel to Satoko here as well.

Part 12, Epilogue 1, and Epilogue 2:

Nothing here at all.

Tea Party:

In the original, Takano describes the gruesome scenes of the gas coming in and the villagers foaming at the mouth and dying, in the PS version this is “the tragedy unfolding”.

In the original, Rena introduces the new “character sprites” that appeared, in the PS version it’s “new guests”.

In the original, Satoko says Irie had too many appearances and too much dialogue to be a minor character. The PS version adds “too strong a role”.

Again, the PS version removes the fourth wall, as “the next scenario” is changed to “from now on”.

Rena introduces Chie as not having a character sprite till this arc, which isn’t true in PS, so that’s changed.

In the original, it’s lampshaded that Chie is a ripoff of Ciel, and Rena laughs nervously about the suggestion. In the PS this is changed to a curry joke.

Ooishi mentions Angel Mort by name in the original, this is changed to a generic resturant in the PS. Did a restaurant use that name? This can’t be copyright, can it?

In the original Rena used watashi (I assume), the PS changes it to her using Rena in the 3rd person.

Irie calls Higrashi a “sound novel” in the original, in the PS he calls it an “adventure suspense” game.

Some rewriting of K1 giving Mion the doll, making it more obvious it’s a choice. (In PS, I think it is.)

Still can’t call Rina Teppei’s lover. “Cohabitant”!

In the original, Satoko states “if Keiichi gave Mion the doll”. In the PS, it’s “if he understood her feelings properly” (I think), which is pretty much more accurate.

In the original, Mion says next time she’ll pound nails into Shion, and even says “bang bang”. This is made into more general threats in the PS version.

“Sacrifice” is changed to “Offering”.

Tomitake “dying” is changed to “Dropping out of the story”. No one dies in Higurashi!

Irie standing in for Teppei is lampshaded more in the PS version, where Teppei has a sprite. They say it’d be a pain to go get him. Also, Irie’s heavy breathing in his maid line is cut.

Again, Rena is made to speak third person when she punches everyone to death.

Keiichi and Shion revealing the new arc is changed a bit in the PS, but it doesn’t seem to be censorship, just rewriting.

In the original, K1 and Shion announce she’s the next main character as if it’s a big deal. In the PS, Shion says “it’s no big deal”.

Shion says the late-appearing younger sister has been more popular since the days of TH (aka To Heart) in the original, changed to “galge” in the PS. Copyright avoidance.

There’s some confusion on my part as to whether K1 says he’s not the main character – this may be due to the way the order the arcs play out on the PS.

In the original, Shion mocks Keiichi and insists he’ll still have no sprite; in the PS she’s far nicer to him.

Rena talks about this being the end of the first half, and the next arc being the “Investigation Arc (Temporary Name)” It became Answer Arc eventually. In any case, the PS version mentions Someutsushi and is vaguer about how far into it we are.

Mion predicting Shion getting tortured and meeting a violent death is toned down in the PS version.

TIP 1:

Mion saying Satoko was a Soviet military advisor is changed to a generic country.

“Vietnam” becomes “a guerrilla battlefield”.

TIP 2:

Tomita and Okamura’s voice actors weren’t available, I assume, so their revenge on Satoko is silent, as K1 lampshades. It even says their mouths are full of lime, which is why they aren’t speaking. In the original, of course, they speak.

TIP 6:

It’s our two most popular contestants, “drugs” and “lover”! Both changed.

#higurashi #higurashi no naku koro ni

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oumakokichi · 6 years

Note

I hear around a lot that Momota is both an hypocrite and extremely loyal to his ideals, I was wondering if you could explain how these two traits can coexist without entering a contradiction

That’s a pretty good question, anon! Walking contradictionsare kind of a recurring theme with ndrv3, I feel. When you have a game whosecentral theme is “truth vs. lies,” there’s going to be a lot of focus on thegap between what people say and what they mean, what defines them as a person,and where their own personal failings lie. Many lies, after all, are ones thatcharacters either tell themselves subconsciously or unintentionally—therebyresulting in many characters who are well-intentioned but nonetheless still somewhathypocritical in their behaviors.

This response will be somewhat twofold, as I feel like partof Momota’s hypocrisy was designed as an intentional character flaw, and partof it was a result more of Kodaka’s mistakes as a writer by failing to address asmany of Momota’s flaws as he should have.

The first part is somewhat easier to put into words: namely,loyalty and hypocrisy are bothintentionally some of Momota’s more noticeable character traits. It’s easy tosee these traits when playing the game: it’s a fact that Momota is quick tostand up for others, even to the point of putting his blind faith in themimmediately.

Not only does he demonstrate this with Maki, most notablywhen he stands up for her in the Chapter 2 trial despite knowing nothing abouther, but also with Kaede in Chapter 1, and with Saihara several times, startingaround Chapter 2. Momota is quick to sort out who his friends and enemies are;when he’s made up his mind that he likes someone, he likes them, and even cold,hard facts can do little to sway his opinion (if Chapter 4 is any evidence ofthat). He bases his decisions on emotion, rather than reason or logic, and thismeans that he’s inclined to stick by how he feels about people, rather thanwhat the facts are saying.

It also means that he’s almost unflinchingly loyal when itcomes to the people he’s decided to call a friend. This isn’t such a surprisingtrait for him to have, given that Momota’s character is intentionally based onthe tropes and characteristics of a “heroic shounen protagonist.” There’s a lotof lampshading of this in the actual game—not only does he call himself “theprotagonist” repeatedly, but even his character design itself alludes to it.The color and design on his shirt is meant to resemble that of a kabuki actor,playing the part of a protagonist.

In just about every shounen series that’s ever been written,themes like unflinching trust and belief in one’s friends and loyalty to one’sown ideals and ambitions are very, very common. Gurren Lagann is perhaps thebest example of this, as Momota’s catchphrase is meant to be a throwback toKamina, who fulfilled a similar role of “inspirational hero” to Simon as Momotadoes to Saihara. Therefore, the fact that Momota is an extremely trusting,loyal, and steadfast individual who doesn’t easily sway from his ideals orbelief in others makes perfect sense—and that stubbornness itself is actually,simultaneously the cause of his hypocrisy, in my opinion.

His unwavering, immovable belief in others is itself adouble-edged sword. As I mentioned earlier, nothing proves this better thanChapter 4. While believing in others and having faith in people is certainly animportant ideal to strive for, ndrv3 makes it very clear that being on theopposite end of paranoia or blind faith can often lead to disasters. Characterslike Kirigiri and Nanami also emphasize in their respective games that trulygetting to know others actually involves doubting them first, in order to trulybe able to rule them out from suspicion. Avoiding that doubt entirely meansskipping a vital step in the process of getting to know someone.

But Momota refuses to recognize that doubt or suspicion arenecessary elements, especially in a killing game that they’ve all been forcedto play. He likes who he likes, and hates who he hates, and absolutely nothingshort of a miracle is ever able to make him change his mind. This is why, evenwhen shown concrete, hard proof that Ouma absolutely couldn’t have murdered Miu in Chapter 4, he still maintains thatOuma must have done it, somehow—because he hates Ouma, and he likes Gonta.Therefore, in his mind, the murder is already “solved” regardless of what theevidence says. Ouma is the “bad guy,” Gonta is the “good guy.”

This hypocrisy of his in deciding things based on rawemotion rather than logic or facts is somewhat brought up by the narrative.Despite the fact that he claimed to want to help Saihara embrace his talent asa detective, it’s also clear in Chapter 4 that the moment Saihara “sides” withsomeone who Momota doesn’t personally agree with (even though Saihara trulydidn’t side with either Ouma or Momota, but tried to find a middle ground), hissupport and encouragement become… well, far more limited.

Even after telling Saihara to believe in himself and his ownreasoning repeatedly ever since Chapter 2, when the end result is somethingtragic or unfortunate (like Gonta being the culprit), Momota doesn’t want tobelieve it at all. He instead switches to telling Saihara to “open his eyes,”questioning his theories and his reliability at almost every point in thetrial. He even goes as far as to threaten to punch him again, because he’s soentirely convinced that his own trust in Gonta is correct and that Saihara mustbe in the wrong this time.

This hypocritical stance is somewhat alluded to andforeshadowed throughout even the earlier parts of Chapter 4, where it becomesevident that Momota is far less comfortable with Saihara actually becomingrelied upon and trusted by the rest of the group. Saihara’s role as the SHSLDetective means that, by Chapter 4, the others are slowly coming to trust himand rely on him—even too much, perhaps, to the point where they aren’t reallythinking or looking for clues on their own, but instead feel that Saihara cansolve the case on his own.

Momota, who up until this point had played the role of theinspirational figure, quoting very Kamina-like lines of “believe in the me whobelieves in you,” looks obviously uncomfortable or goes somewhat silent at mostof these lines from the others in Chapter 4. His FTEs also show that he has atendency to rely on his “sidekicks,” rather than the other way around; he takescredit for most of the accomplishments of others, including politicians, idols,and baseball players. The easiest explanation for this behavior is that inaddition to genuinely wanting to help others improve and better themselves—well,he also wanted the actions of others to reflect well on himself.

Personally, I don’t fault him very much for having thisflaw. This sort of subconscious, unintentional hypocrisy and jealousy issomething that I feel is extremely human. Jealousy is a normal, human reaction,and very often it’s not something we feel intentionally. It’s not impossible tobe a genuinely good friend and want the best for someone while also having moresubconscious, negative emotions. Momota himself admits that this is basicallywhat happened shortly before his execution in Chapter 5. He acknowledges thathe was jealous of Saihara’s talent and the way in which the others were relyingon him, and that it was unfair of him to lash out at him in Chapter 4 the waythat he did.

This covers the range of loyalty and hypocrisy assimultaneous existing traits in Momota’s character. I do think that to someextent, this walking contradiction was something deliberately written andcrafted by Kodaka—after all, it’s very clear that most of Momota’s charisma isbaseless, and that while he’s a genuinely good, inspirational person, he’s alsoincredibly quick to judge, and often fails to think things through. He has nosolid plans in mind most of the time, fails to take facts and evidence intoaccount as they arise, and is very clearly meant to parallel Ouma’s unrelentingparanoia with his own blind faith in the people he likes.

However… I do think that a certain degree of Momota’shypocrisy stems more from Kodaka’s own hypocrisy as a writer, rather than beingincluded as a deliberate character flaw. There are many flaws which Momotaexhibits throughout the game which aren’t actually addressed as flaws at all bythe narrative.

Toxic masculinity is a prime example; many of Momota’s “solutions”to the problems Saihara, Gonta, and Hoshi experience involve the idea of “manningup.” Being emotional or “weak” is seen as “unmanly,” and therefore,undesirable. Crying, feeling depressed or suicidal, and talking about one’sproblems are all seen as signs of “weakness,” and things that a “man shouldn’tdo.” Meanwhile, much of his advice for Maki is the opposite; much of hiscriticism of her is that she’s “not girly enough,” or that she’s “doing thingsa girl shouldn’t do.”

Rather than describing her backstory and the trauma sheendured as something horrible that no human being should ever have to gothrough, much of Momota’s dialogue simply boils down to how “a girl shouldn’tkill people,” or “a girl shouldn’t use deadly weapons.” Even his initial trustin her and decision to “rip off her mask” is because, as he says in Chapter 3, “hejust can’t believe a weak-looking girl like her killed people for a living.”

This makes the entire dynamic between them somewhatfrustrating to watch in later chapters, as a relationship that could easilyhave been about a child soldier coming to view herself as a human being ratherthan a tool is instead shoehorned into a stereotypical narrative about a cold, “unfeeling”girl discovering her “maidenly” side through falling in love.

Unfortunately, this mindset is never once really, trulyaddressed as outdated or flawed by the narrative. Saihara is encouraged tobecome more like Momota, rather than Momota being encouraged to tone down someof his more hyper-masculine ways. When the results for the first ndrv3popularity poll were released in Japan, Kodaka even noted in an interview thathe was surprised Momota didn’t place higher—a pretty clear indication that hedidn’t see much wrong with Momota’s mindset or intend for those aspects of hischaracter to be treated as flaws.

Even more frustrating still, NISA’s localization oftenremoved even these flaws entirely from the game. Much of Momota’s toxicmasculinity was toned down considerably for the localization, resulting inconsiderably tamer dialogue from him. There are two examples I can think of offthe top of my head.

The first is a more well-known one which I’ve discussedbefore: in the original version of the game, in Chapter 2, Momota callsKorekiyo the word “okama,” a word that’s essentially a slur on par with thef-slur or the t-slur, and associated with heavily homophobic/transphobicsentiment. It’s often aimed towards flamboyantly gay men, or trans women, whoare unfortunately seen as “not real women” and are lumped into the samecategory as “gay men.”

It’s frustrating enough that this slur was used for comicrelief in the original version of the game, but the localization doesn’tinclude it at all. Instead, Momota calls Korekiyo “girly,” which doesn’tcapture the same negative sentiment at all. As a gay and trans person myself, I’mpersonally all for removing slurs—the problem is that I’m pretty sure the slurwas removed mostly to improve reception of Momota’s character in the west, rather thanbecause the slur was offensive in the first place. After all, plenty of slurswere added to the localization by other translators (Miu’s being perhaps themost notable, with more than 6 additions of the r-slur that weren’t in theoriginal, and that’s just what I’ve counted so far). And I think it’s worth noting that Momota’s reception in the western fandom has, in fact, been far more positive than it was in Japan.

The second example I can think of is in Momota’s FTEs, whichI translated some time before the localization released. In the final FTE,Momota refers to Saihara’s entire backstory (including his trauma from havingruined a man’s attempts at revenge and sent him to jail) as “kudaranai”—a wordwhich is very noticeably not polite or formal, and often translated as “stupid,”“worthless,” “idiotic,” etc. It’s a very blunt, straightforward assessment,hence why there’s an option in the dialogue for Saihara to get very, very madat Momota and tell him off—but in the localization, “kudaranai” was translatedas “trivial.”

There’s a world of difference between telling someone, “It’sreally stupid for you to be traumatized over something like that,” and “That’sa very trivial thing to be traumatized over.” In fact, the localization’sphrasing was so absurdly polite that it actually made Saihara’s angry responseseem like a drastic overreaction, rather than something justified. This is notthe only time Momota’s dialogue was shifted to seem far more polite or lessblunt, but simply one that I remember stuck the most with me, as I hadtranslated those FTEs myself and therefore remembered very well what kinds ofdialogue Momota used in the original Japanese.

These flaws, both with the original writing and thelocalization, result in Momota having a few very noticeable flaws to hischaracter which aren’t ever actually brought up by the other characters or questioned.Given that Momota’s role in the story is meant to be heroic, inspirational, anduplifting to Saihara and Maki (two out of three of the survivors), this meansthat many of his more serious flaws are somewhat brushed under the rug by theend in order to remember him better as the sort of grand, larger-than-life herohe wanted to go out as.

This is what therefore results in a sense of hypocrisy abouthis character and role within the story. While it’s true that hypocrisy is oneof his actual character traits, it’s also true that it wasn’t exactly handledas a flaw or called out in the same way that it would’ve been for a lesscentral, heroic figure to the plot. Even his jealousy of Saihara, which Imentioned was addressed near the tail end of Chapter 5, is especiallyhandwaved, and only brought up within the last few minutes of the post-trial.

None of this is to say that Momota isn’t a good character,of course! He’s extremely important to the plot of ndrv3, and I don’t thinkthere’s any denying that he’s a good person inclined to seek out the best inothers and inspire them. All of his positive traits are definitely there:loyalty, ambition, and unwavering faith in his friends. But it’s also true thathypocrisy is a very recurring theme with his character—both within thenarrative and outside of it, from the standpoint of Kodaka as a writer simplyfailing to call out or address certain character flaws.

This has gotten pretty long, so I’ll stop for now, but Ihope I could help answer your question, anon! Thank you for stopping by!

#ndrv3 #drv3 #new danganronpa v3 #kaito momota #momota kaito #ndrv3 spoilers //#my meta #okay to reblog #anonymous

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ciceroisthefamilycat · 3 years

Text

My post on the first two BL books (here’s the one from Spirit Bound and Last Sacrifice)

Quick thing: I said they should rename the VA series Guardian Rose for the show- I would still be ok with that, but I put forth: Blood Rose (with Golden Lily for if Bloodlines gets a spinoff show).

Ok, so... ugh.. my love for Sydney and more focus on her, versus how quickly I get tired of some of the contrivances in BL.

Bloodlines:

I was reading along and I was like “huh, I really like Lee... what happened to him? was he caught up in the tattoo ring, I thought that was Keith?” so I was impatient and looked it up like a jerk... but yeah that is a captivating, horrible character; the part near the end where Syd notices the “chilling indifference” where this seemingly sweet guy doesn’t give a shit about his soul, or more importantly killing others relentlessly... that is some of the strongest writing in either of the two series. But it is frustrating because we’re left with so many questions with Lee- who turned him? I don’t think we got that answer ever, but was it Robert? No, right, since he only mentioned having turned one woman before? Why did someone restore Lee and then leave him, and is Lee so fucked up when he’s restored because he didn’t get the coddling after “rebirth” that Dimitri got from Lissa and Sonya got from Dimitri, or is it the (perhaps stronger message) that some people just enjoy power and cruelty? Also, Lee lost his Moroi magic whereas Sonya kept hers (that’s more a suspicion on Sydney’s part but I do think it’s right)- it could be a spirit thing that allowed Sonya hers back, but I wonder if it wasn’t because he killed multiple women to try to become Strigoi again (like maybe he did get his magic back, but then he killed Tamara). Also... he decided to try Alchemist blood in his desperation, but didn’t even try spirit user blood from Adrian? My dude, that’s either misogyny, or lack of imagination, or contrivances on Richelle’s part to keep Adrian safe.

Also... ew at Lee going out with Jill, but that should be a given. Someone protect that girl. Like actually. I do think it’s such a great contrast that Syd is like “I’m taking this job to protect my little sister Zoe, who Jill reminds me of, from known predator Keith, who tries to come off as charming and nonthreatening” (and Syd is so disgusted that Julia and Kristin think Keith’s hot) meanwhile Sydney is... aggressively pushing Jill toward Lee. It’s some fantastic (upsetting) irony.

I love the Amberwood supporting cast of teens. Micah is great (and better than Mason imo- sorry). Julia and Kristin are great. Trey is fantastic. I do hate how flat Slade and Laurel are though (typing out those names in a non-Arrow context is weird). I was surprised on rereading how little Ms. Terwillinger is in the first book- I thought she and magic played a much larger role. Also, while I love Syd getting to be a witch and all the characterization (including her discomfort with magic) that entails, I do wish she’d just gotten to enjoy studying Ancient Greek architecture like she wanted during her independent study. Let my little nerd flourish (while also being a volleyball badass).

I disliked Adrian more than I remembered in this book. Like boy, you have a 14/15 y.o. in your head. Stop with the alcohol and stop with the threesomes (did that happen? Sydney goes back and forth and seems undetermined based on the state of dress of his companions) where the minor is going to be stuck with those consequences. And stop pouting about being in the house with Clarence. Like, yes, he’s a kooky old man, but he’s also sweet. And the purposeful sabotage of his job interviews after taking Syd’s time for it... ugh. And the bitterness yet lingering obsession at Rose... I do love his art classes, and I appreciate at the golf course when he’s the only one to see how disturbed Sydney is by magic. I also have to admit to enjoying his decision to paint the apartment “goldenrod”- that ending scene with just the two of them is very sweet.

Eddie still never gets enough to do. I really do wonder what might have come for him if Mead had followed her original plan to do all 4 (Syd, Adr, Jill, and Ed) perspectives. But his takedown of the Strigoi at the end (with the assist from Jill and Sydney) is fantastic. Now if only we didn’t have the unnecessary Eddie/Jill crush drama.

On the Keith front... the eye for an eye is one of the most dramatic things. And I really think it’s interesting how much of these series comes back to sexualized violence against women (starting with Lissa raging on the jerk who assaulted a Feeder in VA flashbacks). Sydney lost her faith in the Alchemists for the first time when one of their own assaulted her big sister, and getting justice for that is what drives her more and more toward the Moroi and “outside corrupting influences.” Which... Abe is a villain in this one. I know fandom loves him, and I do enjoy him, but the man is revealed to be a drug supplier/trafficker... it was one thing when I thought he was involved in finding Feeders and the like, but we see just how much havoc the tattoos wreak at Amberwood, and knowing he’s doing stuff like it elsewhere is terrible.

on to Golden Lily:

chapter 5, pg 83: “But then, [Brayden] opened the door and I realized he was waiting for me to get in. I did, trying to remember the last time a guy had opened a car door for me. My conclusion: never.” I really thought I was about to make a point about Dimitri opening a car door for Sydney at the start of Chapter 2- apparently not and he only got her suitcase, my bad.

Ugh this one... I might have to give up this reread because it’s not even the most Sydrian-centric things get and I’m already exhausted. Look, Adrian is the (21 y.o.) guy who was essentially stalking high-schooler Rose in her dreams- she was surprised to see in Lissa’s mind that when she asked him not to smoke near her he apparently didn’t. Meanwhile, Adrian is ready to throwdown with Sonya, and especially Dimitri, when they request blood from Sydney and won’t take the graceful “no’s” she tries to give them. And I can appreciate growth, and the part where he’s protecting Sydney. But... given his other actions I’m not sure it does come across as growth so much as Adrian picks and chooses when to respect other people’s boundaries, and especially enjoys picking a fight with Dimitri (and then there are the elements where Rose was a biracial Turkish and dhamphir girl who people sexualized over and over, whereas Sydney is the white Alchemist who had never even been kissed before this book). When he gets drunk and interrupts Sydney’s Halloween Dance with Brayden, or purposefully delays her make-up date with Brayden, and messes up Brayden’s name constantly, and pretends not to know how to drive stick-shift, it’s inappropriate. That doesn’t change that he stands up for her with his dad (though he also leaves her alone at the table with him), or that he remembers what she says about hetaerae, or avoids touching her since it means something different to him than her, or that he tries to tell her about the tracker and then follows the Guardians and helps get her out. But like, ffs, could he not have just offered that she could drive the car whenever she wanted as long as he could supervise- it’s still manipulative, but at least it’s not lying and wasting her time?

Meanwhile, Mead writes Sydney as getting annoyed with Brayden for lesser nuisances, and “can’t he be more understand about my ‘family emergencies’” and Sydney just barely starts to call out Adrian interrupting a date yet again... then lampshades it with “oh, it’s an actual emergency for Sonya at least.” Like, in LS Rose had a very heavy-handed realization that Adrian was using her for strength rather than being stronger because he was with her, and Mead manages to be more heavy-handed, just in Adrian’s favor, in this book (series). Also, I swear to fuck, I hate how caricaturized Sydney and Brayden’s nerdiness becomes in this book. Setting aside that I never knew any 18 y.o. this nerdy and I was head nerd at my school, if these two dumbasses want to go to a textile museum or windfarm stop judging them and the fact that you wrote Sydney as liking these things. Also, Sydney really does not give a fuck about her job apparently. Like, I get it, but at the same time, it’s annoying how at first she cared about Jill genuinely as this younger girl she would look out for, and as part of her job, and yet it gets to a point where she’s like “oh no, something seems wrong with Jill- does that mean something’s wrong with ADRIAN?!”... like, babe, you’re compromised. How do you not see that? I don’t need her to be like Rose with Lissa (that was unhealthy for both of them and led to resentment, and Jill and Sydney don’t have that same base to start from regardless), but it is frustrating that it seems like Sydney starts to care less about everyone else than Adrian.

I will say the scenes with Sydney in her red Hetaera costume would be visually stunning, and the actual substance once she and Adrian get to his apartment is pretty fantastic. Heck, even Adrian’s “are you saying my sister looks like a prostitute?” is one of the funniest scenes in either series. But I hate that they’re all pretending to be siblings (or third cousins in Angeline’s case) and meanwhile all crushing on each other, and apparently Sydney and Eddie lose all good sense and forget that’s taboo? Um, WTF? Say what you will about VA, it always kept in mind that Romitri’s age gap was a taboo. Speaking of, I do not forgive Richelle for putting this in print: “Sonya gave [Dimitri] a sly smile. ‘And here I thought you had a soft spot for reckless young girls.’ ” EWW. Sonya was a teacher (even if we fuzz around on whether Dimitri was one). This isn’t funny. I will make an exception for the ship I love because sometimes I am a hypocrite, but don’t ask me to laugh about the idea of a 25 y.o. having a “soft spot for reckless young girls.”

Angeline honestly gets so mistreated in this one. Like to be clear, Eddie or Sydney should have felt free to say something sooner about how she was making him uncomfortable with her advances. But there’s a 15 y.o. who’s out in the world for the first time “there were more people at the school than had been in her mountain community” and Sydney acknowledges this and why she would be overwhelmed, then lays into her with more vehemence than she ever displays at Adrian, a 21 y.o., acting up, because the 15 y.o. was actually overwhelmed when a dumbass performance troupe invaded her space. Also, she and Dimitri are all “she’s here on a mission”... the Keepers don’t keep with your Moroi royalty or rigid Alchemist structure. You grabbed a second 15 y.o. to protect another from political terrorists because you couldn’t trust others from either of your societies to do that job. Heaven Forbid that a girl from the Keepers didn’t immediately adjust to the indoctrination that most Dhamphir girls her age have gone through.

Btw, if Richelle weren’t so focused from the outset on Sydrian, Trey/Sydney have so much potential given the way they’re foils of each other. I love Trey, even granted that he made mistakes. Also the Warriors of Light as the Alchemists’ brutish, less erudite cousins is annoying. Like, from a thematic place it makes sense and does help build toward Sydney’s defection from the Alchemists that she sees other humans are not always the good guys and her own organization has hidden secrets, but given how much VA was like “ew those classist royal Moroi” the absolute disdain Sydney has for the Keepers and Warriors for having older clothing or lesser means reads in this book as very classist. It doesn’t help that she’s simping over Adrian and Brayden’s expensive cars every chance.

On the Warriors Front, I have a major issue with how Sydney’s dynamic (and Jill’s) with Sonya are written in this book. Sonya is Jill’s mother’s cousin, who was one of the only ones to know Jill’s true paternity. Sonya admittedly went Strigoi for ~three years, but I don’t buy that Sonya wasn’t a constant for Jill at St. Vladimir’s during her elementary school years. And then Sonya was there for Jill after Romitri took care of the Dashkov/Doru brothers. Yet, Sonya and Jill never exchange any interactions on screen, and Jill doesn’t even get to be especially alarmed over her relative being abducted by the Warriors. Meanwhile, Sydney who saw Sonya’s restoration and literally described it as a miracle to Rose at the time, whose religiosity is a huge part of her character, and of her order, doesn’t mention it while trying to persuade the Warriors? Like, her dynamic with that type of magic could be fascinating, yet it’s totally glossed over rather than playing a part of Sydney’s increasing questioning around magic. Sydney knows with more certainty than anyone (save maybe Dimitri) that Sonya isn’t putting on an act- she saw Sonya go from feral Strigoi to repentant Moroi in front of her eyes. Her calling it a miracle would have even given the Warriors a better reason to try and discount her as magicked, so I don’t get why it wasn’t brought up. Setting aside that, two more minor grievances: 1) why did Sonya go over to Adrian’s (and no one made sure she got home safe) after the Warriors of Light made it clear they were watching his residence? 2) Sydney mentions 4 recorded restorations- that’s Dimitri, Sonya, Lee, and I guess the unnamed woman that Robert Doru first restored, but why are they including her when they actually know next to nothing about that one. ETA July 1: I had forgotten that it was Sonya who said the “in a fight they’re lethal” quote about Romitri- so that was a fun realization at least

Stray thoughts on the book: the Micah/Jill break-up was stupid and sad and pointless (and I like Angeline/Eddie better than Jeddie, though I’m not sure that was the case the first time I read the series). Shame on Lia DeStefano for manipulating Jill into the print ad. I really thought this book was going to end with Zoe showing up- I guess I forgot a full book of events. I know Keith’s dad is probably not a great guy given his son and exactly what Tom’s primary concerns were when we saw him on page, but I do tentatively like him? Everyone’s kind of an asshole to Clarence, especially given how they’re using his house and his presence for their convenience. I do like that Sydney has a rough time with the location spell and it takes hours of just sitting waiting before she can get it to work. I ended up hating Sydney’s storyline about weight my first time reading through Indigo Spell- it felt like Richelle threw it in and it didn’t actually seem any healthier to me, I think, that Adrian and Sydney were like... tit for tat pushing each other to stop their vices; that being said, I was surprised how much I kind of liked Adrian calling out Sydney’s obsession with weight at the end of GL. Like, I still don’t love a guy talking down to a woman about her weight (especially the phrasing of telling her to gain weight to be more beautiful) but the actual content was enough to overcome that while reading that scene, so I’m wondering if maybe my opinion on the plotline in IS will have changed.

The adaptation front:

so, like with VA and FB, I would combine the first two books into one season

I fancast a Latino guy as Eddie (with a book-typical blonde for Sydney), and a black biracial actress as Adrian... so um, as I mentioned, I really dislike how they try to “familiarize” Sydney, Eddie, Jill, Angeline, Adrian, and Keith... I’m not sure how to overcome those plot difficulties but anyway yeah

on the genderbent Adrian: so Adrian as a girl presents far fewer issues to adaptation than it did with the VA books; it maybe helps with the protectiveness from Clarence (he saw Tamara in Jill and Sydney, surely he would with Adrian too); since I mentioned how I don’t get why Lee never considered drinking from Adrian the spirit user, I do think that would be much more likely in a show with Adrian as a woman... so imagine Lee planned on draining Adrian that weekend in LA, but they lost track of each other, and after that he liked Adrian too much and cared about Jill, so it was a last resort like with Sydney vs. Keith; I realize this also means in Malachi Wolfe’s self-defense class, there are no guy students, but it could be the mom with three kids including a newborn is a dad instead, or other new various characters

lesbian Sydney: look, Frostbite was plenty evidence that sometimes even when you like someone there just isn’t heat to a relationship (Rose/Mason), and that was the point in Sydney/Brayden, but imagine Sydney going through the motions throughout GL and she’s really trying to date this cute guy, but she has no heat to it, and then Adrian (a fellow lady) kisses her and it’s a revelation... and she could simply be like, oh, so boys were the problem, and try to move on with a girl in IS (because even though she never considered it before, at least the Alchemists aren’t strictly speaking homophobic) but then realize... “yeah I had a crush on Rose too, and I’m into girls, but it’s specifically Adrian that I’m feeling this heat of real affection with”

like, this is something that majorly pissed me off while reading BL series the first time: you’ve got Jill girlcrushing on Sydney as a gag because of the psychic-link to Adrian, you’ve got Adrian having a threesome with two random Moroi girls, you have Adrian’s token lesbian art-class friend, and then Sydney gets caught in a relationship with Adrian and sent to conversion therapy (literally)... just give me lesbian Sydney otherwise fuck that noise

I mentioned the Hetaera costume already... I don’t care... I am ready for that visual, and her in the parking lot in it right before a storm... also Jill’s fashion runway and fairy dresses should be fun too

so if they get this far, would BL be it’s own series while VA is actually still running? I wonder how they would handle the time Sonya and Dimitri would be in Palm Springs? Could we get a fun crossover event with Mikhail coming to town with a quickness when Sonya gets abducted? He found out she was missing at 12 hrs. before the rescue mission- I don’t buy that he didn’t come to town to join them...

#I'm a VA girl #long underneath the cut #book appropriate trigger warnings (sexual assault disordered eating etc.)

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therealmaggiemedia · 4 years

Text

Maggie Simpson Show E1702 Return of the Kensingtons

FADE IN

INT, THE SIMPSONS KITCHEN-DAY

The Simpsons are sitting at the table having breakfast to Maggie its just a day like any other.

MAGGIE

Can’t wait for the school bus to take me to school!

LISA

Anything good happening!

MAGGIE

Not really I just like going there plus I like my teacher Mr Johnson he is really nice!

BART

If you like him so much why don’t you marry him!

MAGGIE

One day maybe but not now as I am 6 and he is how old he is!

HOMER

Well I hope you do well with your teacher sweetie!

MAGGIE

I will Dad thanks!

LISA

Want me to walk you to school Maggie!

MAGGIE

But won’t that make you late for your school!

LISA

The best thing about my school is if I’m not there nobody notices!

MAGGIE

In that case Lisa I accept!

EXT. SPRINGFIELD ELEMENTARY SCHOOL-DAY

Lisa has just arrived with Maggie at the gate

LISA

Here you are Maggie now you go in and have fun and I’ll see you at home tonight!

MAGGIE

Ok Lisa and thanks for the walk!

Maggie opens the gate and enters the school

INT, SPRINGFIELD ELEMENTARY SCHOOL-DAY

Maggie is standing at her Locker putting her things away then Judith comes up to her and questions her about not being on the bus.

JUDITH

Maggie why weren’t you on the bus!

MAGGIE

My sister decided to walk me here not my choice it was hers!

JUDITH

In future let me know ok!

MAGGIE

OK Judith Sorry!

IN THE KINDERGARTEN

The kids are standing around wondering where Mr Johnson is

MAGGIE

Oh great school has started and Mr Johnson isn’t even here what a crock!

JUDITH

He’ll be here he always is!

LILLY

Lets hope so Judith I mean we don’t want to be left unsupervised!

GERALD

Who the hell cares if he isn’t here I’m in charge!

Gerald takes a seat at the teachers desk

MAGGIE

I don’t like where this is going not one bit!

GERALD

There is something I’ve always wanted to do see a striptease Girls do the honours!

MAGGIE

Strip for you um ok as we don’t have a choice!

JUDITH

Not for all the gold in Texas!

GERALD

How about this ( SHOWS HER HIS FIST)

JUDITH

That will do nicely!

LILLY

Oh god oh god!

Meanwhile in principal Skinners office

Mr Johnson is talking to principal Skinner about why he is there

JOHNSON

You know I do have a class to teach and you know how Kindergarteners get if they are unsupervised!

SKINNER

They’ll be fine besides you have a new student joining you!

Then an old man and a little girl enters the office.

OLD MAN

(BRITISH ACCENT) My name is Mr Kensington but you can call m Avery all my friends do!

SKINNER

Hi Mr Kensington what can we do for you!

KENSINGTON

I do believe my daughter Emma will be looked after at this school this time unlike last time!

SKINNER

not to worry Mr Kensington she will be well taken care of right Mr Johnson!

JOHNSON

Yes indeed she will, hi my name is Mr Johnson what’s your name!

GIRL

(BRITISH ACCENT)

Emma sir!

JOHNSON

Nice to meet you shell we go to the classroom and I’ll introduce you to the others!

EMMA

Yes I would love to!

IN THE CORRIDOR

Emma can see something through the classroom door window that she doesn’t think is allowed.

EMMA

Mr Johnson do you allow students to enter the class with no clothes on!

JOHNSON

No why do you ask that!

EMMA

Because there are three girls doing that in the classroom right now!

JOHNSON

I’ll sort it you wait here!

EMMA

Yes Mr Johnson!

IN THE CLASSROOM

Maggie is walking around naked to Gerald’s amusement so are lilly and Judith

LILLY

This is not fun!

MAGGIE

It would have been if you had taken off your socks too!

LILLY

You know I can’t do that I have foot problems!

Then Mr Johnson enters the room

MAGGIE

Uh oh busted!

JOHNSON

(ANGRY)

What is the meaning of this Maggie I bet you started it!

MAGGIE

For once no I didn’t can’t believe I just said that!

JOHNSON

Girls put your clothes on or it will be detention for all three of you!

MAGGIE

Yes sir only because my feet are like icepops!

LILLY

A Maggie icepop!

FADE TO LATER IN THE CLASSROOM

The girls are now wearing clothes

JOHNSON

Now that you are all dressed I can finally introduce you to a new student everyone please welcome Emma Kensington

He opens the door and she enters the room and stands in front of the class she is wearing a pretty pink dress

EMMA

Hello I’m Emma and it is good to be back at this school

as Emma was talking Michelle tanner enters the room very late

JOHNSON

Michelle fill out a tardy slip and take it to Principal Skinner!

MICHELLE

Got it dude!

JOHNSON

Carry on Emma!

EMMA

Some of you may know me as some of you were at this school when I was here last time before I moved back to England I can see some furmillier faces and some who I don’t know but I will have fun getting to know the people I don’t know thank you!

JOHNSON

Thank you Emma you can now sit down on the carpet.

She sits next to Maggie

MAGGIE

Welcome back old friend I have really missed you!

EMMA

Missed you too!

They both stand up and hug

JOHNSON

Class what Maggie and Emma are showing here is true friendship well done girls!

Then the bell rings for recess

JOHNSON

The rest of you can go to recess but I would like a word with Maggie Simpson Judith Robertson and Lilly Hargreaves please!

MAGGIE

I can guess what this is about!

JUDITH

Not to worry we have each others back right!

LILLY

Yeah

MAGGIE

Sure do!

Mr Johnson closes the door and talks to them

JOHNSON

What I want to know is why were you three naked in the classroom

LILLY

I wasn’t technically I wasn’t naked I still had my socks on!

JOHNSON

What I don’t want to see again is that!

MAGGIE

We’re really sorry sir!

JUDITH

Yeah we are!

LILLY

Nobody is more sorrier then me!

JOHNSON

Just don’t do it again ok girls now you may go and enjoy what is left of recess!

IN PRINCIPAL SKINNER’S OFFICE

Michelle is stood at his desk facing him

MICHELLE

and that is why I was late!

SKINNER

Because your uncle forgot what time it was!

MICHELLE

He was rehearsing a song ok what did you want me to do come to school in my pyjamas!

SKINNER

In future I want you to be on time!

MICHELLE

I’ll try but you know what these musicians are like!

Skinner gives her an angry look

MICHELLE

Yes sir I’ll be on time I promise!

IN THE PLAYGROUND

Maggie and Emma are sitting on a bench when Michelle walks to them

MICHELLE

Whose the imposter!

EMMA

Let me introduce myself my name is Emma Emily Elizabeth Kensington pleased to meet you!

MICHELLE

Well my name is Michelle Tanner!

EMMA

Like I just told you pleased to meet you!

MICHELLE

I’m not get out of my seat before I knock your block off!

EMMA

I’m sure we can come to a reasonable solution without getting violent !

Michelle pushes Emma off the bench she falls into a muddy puddle

EMMA

Oh no this was a very expensive dress from harrods my father is going to go mad!

MAGGIE

Emma I’m quite sure your Dad will understand want me to come home with you for support!

EMMA

Thanks Maggie and at the same time I can give you your gift I got from london for you from a place called the trocadero!

INT, THE KENSINGTON’S LIVING ROOM

Maggie and Emma are standing in front of Mr Kensington

KENSINGTON

What in blue blazers did you do to my daughter’s dress Maggie!

MAGGIE

It wasn’t me it was Michelle Tanner!

KENSINGTON

I don’t know who that is but whoever she is will be paying for Emma’s ruined dress they cost £500 English money each!

MAGGIE

I understand Mr Kensington that’s why I am willing to give you the Tanners address and phone number!

She gives him a card and Mr Kensington takes it.

Maggie and Emma go upstairs to Emma’s Bedroom

IN EMMA’S BEDROOM

Emma is telling Maggie to take off her shoes as it is a house rule

EMMA

Before I let you in my room please remove your shoes!

Maggie does as she is told

EMMA

You may enter!

Maggie enters the room barefoot

MAGGIE

So where is this gift you got me!

Emma gives Maggie a small box Maggie opens it and sees its a gold necklace.

MAGGIE

This must have cost a fortune!

EMMA

What is a price between friends here let me put it on for you!

Emma puts it around Maggie’s neck.

EMMA

It really suits you!

MAGGIE

Thank you nobody has ever given me anything like this before!

EMMA

Your my best friend Maggie and I love you for that!

Emma and Maggie hug

then Mr Kensington enters the room with two bowels of ice cream

KENSINGTON

Here you go you two ice cream!

He sees them hugging

KENSINGTON

Oh I’m so sorry am I interrupting something!

EMMA

That’s alright father!

MAGGIE

Don’t worry about it Mr Kensington!

KENSINGTON

Good show enjoy your ice cream then I’ll get my chauffeur to give Maggie a left home!

MAGGIE

That’s not nesssery Mr Kensington!

KENSINGTON

Oh but I insist your my daughter’s friend so its the least I can do!

MAGGIE

OK Mr Kensington I just hope my Dad doesn’t go bananas he hates it when I mingle with rich people!

KENSINGTON

Is that because we treat you better!

MAGGIE

Sort of!

KENSINGTON

That is his problem not yours ok Maggie!

MAGGIE

Yes Mr Kensington!

OUTSIDE THE SIMPSON’S HOUSE

Maggie gets out of a big black limo but Homer is looking out of the window looking very angry.

MAGGIE

Thanks for the ride!

DRIVER

No problem!

Maggie goes in the house

IN THE LIVING ROOM

Maggie is stopped by Homer

HOMER

(ANGRY) You where the hell have you been!

MAGGIE

I don’t wish to talk about that!

HOMER

You tell me or I’ll-

MAGGIE

Or you’ll what spank my butt take away my TV what!

HOMER

Listen!

MAGGIE

Fuck off!

Maggie goes to her room and slams the door then a lampshade hits Homer on the head.

IN MAGGIE’S BEDROOM

Maggie is really angry with Homer

then Bart enters the room

MAGGIE

What do you want ass face!

BART

Mags is there something wrong!

MAGGIE

You could say that Damn monkey man wanted to know where I have been so I refused to tell him then we got into a heated argument!

BART

Don’t worry about that Maggie Homer will forget I’m sure of it!

IN THE SIMPSONS KITCHEN- THE NEXT MORNING

the Simpsons are sitting at the table but Homer is not talking to Maggie

HOMER

Usually on a Saturday I take Maggie out but not this week I’m not speaking to her!

MAGGIE

I’ll go with someone who does went to take me then screw you!

Maggie storms out

MARGE

Homer don’t you think your taking this too far!

HOMER

Look the girl’s got to learn!

EXT, THE KENSINGTON’S HOUSE

Maggie rings the bell the bell sounds like big ben.

Mr Kensington opens the door

KENSINGTON

Maggie you’ve just caught us as we are going swimming at Springfield waterpark!

MAGGIE

No problem I’ll go with you got my swimming kit in my bag!

KENSINGTON

Does your father know that your going with us!

MAGGIE

Do not care lets go!

EMMA

Bet something’s happened!

KENSINGTON

Now Emma we don’t know that lets take Maggie with us anyway might make her feel better!

INT, SPRINGFIELD WATERPARK

Maggie and Emma now wearing bathing suits are in the pool but Emma is asking Maggie about what happened.

EMMA

This is non of my business but I just want to know something what happened with your father!

MAGGIE

(LYING) Happened who the hell said anything had happened not me this for sure lets change the subject!

EMMA

Maggie!

MAGGIE

Alright I had this massive argument with him last night so now we are not talking to each other!

EMMA

Perhaps I can help tell him your sorry and if that doesn’t work turn the waterworks!

MAGGIE

I really don’t want to do that Emma but it looks like I have no choice!

EMMA

No you don’t!

MAGGIE

Hey you want to go on the waterslide!

EMMA

Okay!

They both get out of the pool and climb up to the top of the very high waterslide but Emma forgot she is afraid of heights

EMMA

Oh goodness me we are very high up reminds me when I was in the tower of big ben!

MAGGIE

Emma are you afraid of heights its ok you can tell me I won’t make fun!

EMMA

Yes I am ok!

MAGGIE

Don’t worry hold my hand I’ll take you down the slide with me!

They both hold hands

EMMA

I’m glad that I have you as a friend Maggie!

They both slide down the slide together they land in the pool at the bottom with a big splash they both go under the water then come up gasping for air.

EMMA

Thank goodness that’s over!

Then Maggie sees Emma’s bathing suit floating on top of the water

MAGGIE

Emma I don’t know how to tell you this but you lost your bathing suit.

Emma goes under water to check and she sees Maggie is right

EMMA

(GASPS) as a Kensington I have standards to maintain I cannot be seen naked for any reason!

MAGGIE

Would it help if I walked in front of you!

EMMA

Yes it would

they both get out of the pool as they are walking back to the changing room Maggie embarrasses Emma

MAGGIE

Nobody look at my friends naked ass nobody look nothing to see here!

IN THE CAR

Emma and Maggie are sitting on the backseat arguing

EMMA

(ANGRY) How Bloody dare you embarrass me like that everyone was looking!

MAGGIE

Sorry Emma!

EMMA

That’s alright Maggie!, oh we’re at your house remember what I said!

Maggie gets out of the car and enters the house

IN THE LIVING ROOM

Homer is waiting for her

MAGGIE

Dad I’m sorry for saying that to you!

HOMER

No its me you should be apologising to you if you don’t want to tell me where you’ve been that’s fine with me!

They both hug

THE END

#Simpsons Fanscripts

0 notes

alluratron · 7 years

Text

Voltron seasons 3 and 4 review

I rewatched the two seasons in one go so as to see how much I’d like it as one single season as it was originally meant to be and I did actually prefer it that way. So I’ll talk about the good aka what I liked and enjoyed, then about what I was kinda “meh” towards, before talking about what I disliked.

The good:

Allura. I love seeing Allura in the thick of things, hence my love of episodes like “Collection and Extraction”, and the confrontation with Haggar and the druids in “Blackout”. I was rather disappointed in s2 by how much of Allura’s screentime was to do with opening wormholes or sitting around waiting (although I did prefer that to her supposedly being ~racist~ -.-) so to see her always involved in the action this season was very satisfying for me.

Her pink paladin armour is glorious and watching her wield her whip bayard is magnificent. So many Wonder Woman comparisons made valid and I love it.

By “Code of Honor” she’s back in a co-leadership position with Shiro, where Shiro seems more of the battle strategy leader and Allura more of the coalition diplomacy leader.

HER MAGIC LITERALLY LIFTING VOLTRON UP!!!! They were actually going to be crushed by gravitational pressure but Allura saved them all on her own and that’s amazing. She’s explicitly untrained and yet she has so much raw power. I truly believe she’s some sort of Chosen One or something.

Lance’s insecurities not just brushed under the carpet after Shiro’s sharpshooter comment in season 2. It definitely seems like he’s going to have the longest running arc. We saw him attempt to use the black lion to ~cure~ his insecurities with the whole “this is your moment” thing.

We also learn that he worries that not only is he the least useful member of the team, he doesn’t even deserve to be on the team at all. As the viewer we know this isn’t true and this is especially highlighted this season, with Lance fighting at the forefront a lot more.

Evolution of Lance and Keith’s dynamic. I think it’s super interesting how Lance stepped up when Shiro was gone, consoling Keith and supporting him when Keith felt most alone, but seemingly steps away from that role when Shiro returned.

Lance was never afraid to call Keith out and somehow is able to get through to him and that made him the perfect balance to Keith.

The relationship didn’t just skip to BFFs though, because even though Lance is good at supporting Keith, Keith sucks at it and as such there’s still problems to address for them to grow.

Evolution of Lance and Allura’s relationship. Lance didn’t flirt ONCE with her!!!! In 13 episodes!!!!! Their relationship is so much more profound now. I made a post about this, but I love the contrast between “Red Paladin” where Allura motivates and encourages Lance to believe in himself and says why the red lion has chosen him, and then in “A New Defender” Lance motivates and encourages Allura to believe in herself and her abilities and says the blue lion chose her for a reason. I love mutually supportive friendships. Also, Lance checks in to see how Allura is doing in Blue. He also genuinely compliments her for taking out a bunch of sentries.

Shiro back in the black lion. I still have my doubts as to whether this is the same Shiro from seasons 1 and 2, but either way I’m glad to see his face in the lion. The more paladin armor in the matching lion the better imo.

More emphasis on how badass Hunk is. His piloting skills have come so far since season 1. He also elbow dropped someone in the face like daaaaammmmmnnnnnn son.

More emphasis on how loyal Hunk is. He wanted to form the head with the yellow lion 😭😭😭. He loves his lion and I love him. He also is very loyal to his friends. He split off and went back for Allura when she fell behind.

More emphasis on how smart Hunk is. In season 2 there was a tendency to downplay his intelligence (and everyone else’s) to make Pidge seem smarter. This season, however, Hunk was very much involved in the nerd talk, with him and Pidge (and Matt when he joined) bouncing ideas off each other.

Speaking of, Matt. I really didn’t want that storyline dragging out any longer so I’m glad Pidge found him finally. They have a lovely dynamic and he’s so sweet and supportive of her. I know some people are saying his personality is basically the same as Lance but I don’t see that. Sure, he flirts with Allura but if you think flirting is Lance’s most defining trait then uhhhhh. Well. Also Lance doesn’t really do puns. Also also Lance isn’t a nerd.

I saw spoilers so I knew Matt wasn’t dead but they still had me thinking Matt was really dead???? Had me tryna rationalise future Matt scenes like maybe that Matt is from an alternate reality. Really well done episode. I didn’t cry but I only cry for Allura so eh.

GROUP HUG!!!!!!!!!! It was so pure and cute and Keith looked so happy. I wonder if he’s been in a group hug before. Pidge crying that they’d miss Keith when she was the first one who ever tried to leave the team shows how close they’ve grown since season 1.

I know this a kids show and they aren’t going to kill any of the main cast but damn if Keith didn’t get me. I was in SHOCK, wondering if maybe Steven Yeun didn’t want to be part of the show anymore lmao. Props to them for actually making that really convincing.

The generals turning on Lotor “for Narti”. We see that they really are friends with each other. Ezor looked very upset after Narti’s death. Zethrid looked upset too. These girls care for each other.

The “meh”:

“The Legend Begins”. I’m really glad it happened because it was about time we got some backstory. I did enjoy certain aspects of it (Alfor’s “oh dear” and Zarkon’s “i must go” are big winners to me) and I especially enjoyed red paladin Alfor confirmation (because I’m petty and I hated how people acted as if it was canon confirmed that he was yellow).

But some aspects fell flat for me. I would’ve liked more female paladins, or for the one female paladin to not be in the same lion as the girl on our original team (bc really they could stand to mix things up once in a while). I would’ve loved Blaytz to be female and a lesbian, flirting with a female galra servant.

The queen of Altea’s design and role was a big disappointment. It was extremely lazy to just give her all of Allura’s features just with a different dress. She also doesn’t speak a word nor have a name. What happened to her? Who knows. Maybe we’ll find out in future episodes but I’m sceptical.

I’m not keen on how Alfor made a joke out of it when Zarkon was reinforcing class separation. It makes me wonder if that was present on all the planets, just not as enforced. I do like that Zarkon was already classist and power hungry before he died in the rift. It made it feel less like they were trying to excuse his tyranny and more like they were saying “he was a dick but quintessence exacerbated his dickiness”.

I love Honerva’s character, but I don’t like how she had a small, pointy nose before and once she turns evil she gets a hooked nose.

“The Voltron Show”. I know it’s supposed to be meta and make fun of itself/the fandom à la “Ember Island Players” but it just fell a bit flat for me. There were some really funny bits, like Coran sayin Shiro is the most popular character and telling him to put on a tight shirt, and I still don’t know whether I love or hate Pidge complaining about saying fake made-up science words.

But the “Humorous Hunk” thing was really not funny. Not because “oh boo more fat jokes, this time about farting” but because the episode was supposed to be this self-aware thing, parodying the show itself and the fandom and thus going over the top with everything. But them parodying using their fat character as comic relief doesn’t sit right when they continue to do just that outside of the parody. There’s a video called The Adorkable Misogyny of The Big Bang Theory and it talks about ironic lampshading (from around 13:04 if anyone’s interested). That’s what sits wrong with me about Humorous Hunk. They parody the fat comic relief character as a way to show that they’re aware that it’s an unsavory trope, yet continue to use it. I put this in the “meh” because I don’t actually know if they’ll continue to use it. Maybe they’ve finally heard the fans and will stop with the fat jokes. We’ll see next season.

Keith missing from 3 episodes. Don’t get me wrong I’m not upset about that at all, considering there was plenty of him in the first 8 episodes. But I was curious as to what this weeks-maybe-months-long mission would entail. I wouldn’t have minded, like, a minute long segment for Keith in those episodes showing us what exactly he’s up to. Even better would’ve been to show us him missing the team. They could’ve had a short scene of him watching the voltron show and smiling wistfully before he gets called away to the mission. Something like that would’ve had more people emotionally aligned with him.

The Bad:

“Hole in the Sky”. This whole episode a nightmare. Evil Alteans? Really? Is your writing that bad that you’re incapable of showing nuance without going down that route? Allura is apparently too clueless and idealised in her view of Alteans to understand what is going on by the time Keith yells “you’re taking away their will!” Keith has to be some sort of moral compass to her.

Allura saying “you’re no Altean” as if Alteans can’t be morally corrupt. As if she didn’t meet Haggar just last season finale. I know they wanted to make it hard for Allura by presenting her with the option of an idealised society, but they don’t have to make her stupid for that. I’ve come to the conclusion that any and all storylines involving race on vld are going to be badly handled and should thus be scrapped. I’ve had enough.

Lion ranking. The emphasis on Black as leader and Red as second in command feels like it’s devaluing the whole theme of voltron as 5 essential components by assigning greater worth to certain lions. Keith moving to Black and Lance moving to Red were portrayed as upgrades or promotions. Also, does this mean Lance is now Shiro’s second in command? Wasn’t discussed at all.

Allura in the Blue Lion. When Shiro was away, Allura should’ve been in the Black Lion. That’s the only rank that was established right from the beginning as leader and Allura is a great leader. She’s described in the show as the decision maker, and the black paladin is the decisive head of voltron. It’s clear she best fits the role. It also isn’t fair to have her taking orders from people she used to outrank. To rank her below Keith is bad enough, but with the second in command stuff as well, Allura ends up ranked below Keith and Lance. Depowering your WoC is not a good look.

When Shiro comes back though, the second in command thing seems to fly out the window and Allura is back to giving orders despite being in Blue so I guess they’re just inconsistent lmao.

The black lion refusing to let Shiro fly it for a grand total of 2 episodes. Seriously, that lasted 40 minutes. And 22 of those minutes we were learning the backstory. What was the point of that?

Lotor killing Narti. Hoooo boy I’m really mad about this one. It was completely unnecessary. The only reason it happened was for shock value. Lotor realised Haggar was watching him through Narti so he killed her. That makes no sense though, because Narti doesn’t fucking have eyes! She sees through Kova! So if anything, Haggar was seeing indirectly through Kova and Lotor could’ve killed the cat instead! Why he has to kill anyone anyway is a mystery to me. He could’ve knocked her out and left her and Kova there while he and the other generals leave with the ships. How is Haggar going to watch him through Narti if he isn’t even with Narti?

The whole scene was just really unpleasant. Killing off a disabled character never sits right. And there was so much more to her character that could’ve been explored. How did she come to meet Kova? Why did she join Lotor? And mind control! She could’ve used that on characters fighting in or with team voltron! Some quality angst material right there! But nope, she’s dead.

Possible redemption for Lotor. Soz pals, unnecessarily killing your comrade puts you in my shit books.

I don’t actually think he’s going to be redeemed - I think he’s just going to use team voltron while they benefit him and then turn on them as soon as they don’t - but I’m mad at the writers for making me have to sit through endless posts of fandom woobifying his punk ass. “Space Zuko!” they cry. I gaze weakly towards a hypothetical camera as though I am a character on renounced TV show, The Office. “Why.” the word is barely a whisper as it leaves my mouth. I am Tired.

#vld analysis #voltron meta #voltron #vld #vlds4 #vld spoilers

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jinjojess · 7 years

Note

Can you say what you think of each Exile Election character and the impression they left on you?

Sure, that sounds like fun.

Cut for length.

Ichijou Kaname

Kaname’s alright. I don’t love him but I don’t hate him either. His design is kinda dumb with the white hair, but I also kind of like that it’s just a touch of flair in an otherwise sort of normal uniform attire. The headphones are cool too and I really like that they actually have a story purpose and aren’t just decoration.

Personality-wise, so far Kaname’s very white-bread VN protag material, though the being able to see lies as a result of his synesthesia is kind of interesting. I hate how he talks most of the time because it’s so stereotypically anime douche-style, but I do like that he doesn’t spend all of his internal monologue thinking about how he needs to protect Ichika or anything. Plus if he’s filled with murderous revenge rage, that’s always a plus for me.

He’s flawed, is what I’m saying, which is really nice.

Houshi Ichika

I just cannot even with this design. What the fuck. Like I mentioned in my LP, she ticks so many boxes on the trope-o-meter that she just about breaks it: childhood friend/probable love interest; stupid pun name; love of sweet food (strawberries in this case, also relating back to dumb pun name); dog collar; chain; dog collar; thigh belt; ribbon; DOG COLLAR; school uniform no school would ever assign; etc.

However, despite her constant “I’ll do whatever you say, Kaname” thing, she actually seems semi-reasonable? I did like the part where she physically held Kaname’s face in place so he couldn’t see Misa get eaten because it could either mean that she’s a good friend concerned about his emotional state, or she knows that something else is going on here and wants to keep his attention focused elsewhere.

Fingers crossed for crazy mastermind-type but not of the yandere variety.

Ichijou Misa

Misa’s okay. She’s a stereotypical anime kid sister. Served her role in the story so far just fine I guess. May or may not be Noori. Makes me appreciate how dynamic Komaru is in comparison.

My only thing with her is that the game’s website claims she’s 13, but she doesn’t act 13, she acts like she’s 6. This is a common problem a lot of fiction has when people are not used to being around actual kids and pre-teens–this is what made later seasons of Buffy after Dawn was introduced so obnoxious.

Official site also calls her a moodmaker which in VN lingo is never a good sign.

Noori

Totally Not Misa You Guys. Man I really hope they subvert that…

What’s kind of interesting about Noori is that the game is treating her amnesia as the serious condition it would be in real life. Like there are drawbacks and side effects to it like not knowing how to speak or process what’s going on around her. Makes the situation less tropey and moe and more realistic and sad, so I appreciate that.

Since Alice already lampshaded the Imouto Route thing, I’m hoping we get to avoid that as well and instead Noori will be like…the personification of Kaname’s pathological desire to protect his sister and infantilize her rather than recognize that she was an individual.

(My hopes are not super high about that though.)

Himeno Miori

Textbook shy girl with glasses trope so far. It is a little interesting how her brother and Michimune sort of try to override her opinions all the time and we get to see her fighting back for once in the first(?) election in the flashback. She seems poised to get a character arc revolving around breaking free of her trio and being her own person.

Since Miori is only two years older than Misa and yet is recognized as acting more as a real person and not as a toddler, maybe the game could be setting up a clever parallel between how Michimune and Yuuri try to babify Miori and how Kaname never wanted to admit that his sister was growing up?

Hush, let me construct a more layered and nuanced story for myself to enjoy okay?

Himeno Yuuri

Shouta character extraordinaire. Yuuri hasn’t really done much so far so I don’t have much of an opinion on him yet. I do think it’s weird that Kaname recognizes him as a boy in the dark square just after a massacre but then gets confused in the relatively calm setting of the observatory under actual lighting.

Again, only one year older than Misa, yet acts completely different. Does ascending to chuuni suddenly make people rapidly mature mentally in this universe?

Also, is he wearing garters under his knees to hold up his socks? Watch yourself, boy. You’re edging in on Ichika’s dumb design territory.

Isurugi Michimune

I don’t know why, but I just really like Michimune’s design. Perhaps it’s the relative simplicity of it, or the fact that I just happen to like navy and orange as a color combo, who knows.

I don’t have much of an issue with Michimune so far–I like that he’s kind of hot headed but trying not to be. Like he’s easily goaded into starting to go for Alice just by Izuki calling him a pansy, despite that he knows deep down it’s a bad idea.

Basically he’s also clearly flawed and I like that. He’s a character dealing with an internal struggle–trying to temper is own natural inclinations for the sake of his friends. According to the website he’s best friends with Yuuri and wants to protect both him and his big sister Miori, which is a kind of interesting parallel with Kaname that I hope goes somewhere interesting.

Ayara Izuki

I love this guy. I just…look at him. Fucking look at him. Look at his blue hair. Look at his neon pink hoodie. Look at his skull spider tattoo. Look at his highlighter yellow t-shirt. Look at his 90s hi-tops and his edgelord piercings. Look at his black neck bandanna. Look at how he wears a pair of handcuffs as a bracelet. LOOK AT HOW HIS HOODIE HAS THE SAME DESIGN AS HIS TATTOO.

This character’s design is a fucking train wreck, but in an entirely different way than Ichika. Like the game both kind of does and doesn’t seem to be taking the character designs seriously (Alice does make a quip about Ichika’s chain) but like…oh my god. This is just so fucking wonderful. It’s like a kaleidoscope that’s been sharpened into a butter knife.

Anyway, Izuki is your standard combative bad boy archetype. He’s 20 and jobless, according to the website. Nothing TOO interesting so far but I just love his stupid design so damn much that I want him to hang around for awhile (and ideally subvert the obvious assumption that he killed someone in the past, but hey).

Ninchouji Issei

So if Ichika is here to bait in thirsty otaku dudes, Issei is a little something for the ladies. His design is basically “Togami, but a chef” and his personality is…well, basically it’s kind of just “Togami, but a chef and without the really obvious disdain for everyone”. What I mean by that is that he’s the character who seems almost intrigued by the premise of this game and has a bit of a haughty, I-know-more-than-you-fools vibe going on.

That might be because he’s 25 and a chef and he’s stuck in this theme park with a bunch of kids, but who knows.

Isumi Hakushuu

I am still not over the fact that his first name sounds so close to the Japanese word for “applause” or the fact that his design is best described as “preppy Amami” (I can picture Amami going undercover as Hakushuu and Avril Lavigne singing “Complicated” as a result). He’s 20, he’s in college, he’s apparently the twins’ neighbor in their, I assume, gated community with high HOA fees.

So far he seems like he’ll be the calm, smart character, possibly betray everyone later on in the story. Or like maybe he’ll seem like he’s really in the game to win but then later he and Kaname become bros or something.

Personally I’m about as meh about him as I was about Amami.

Tadenomiya Aasha

One half of this VN’s twin set (the older one iirc?). Seems like Aasha is more interested in Western Gothic fashion, and she wears a black rose-shaped patch over her left eye, perhaps as a fashion statement or perhaps because she and Kaasha share an eye or something I dunno.

God this design. Half blue/half green hair, the handle to her parasol being shaped like a gun, the headgear…like what is that? Is she some kind of maid queen?

Anyway, the twins so far are both overly formal, seems haughty and antagonistic, and obsessed with Hakushuu for some reason I assume will never be adequately explained.

Also of note is that both twins are the same age as Misa, and the website says that they’re very advanced for their age. No, game, they’re not really. They act like typical chuunibyou mofos. They are being pretentious and embarrassing and act like they know everything, and I have encountered many 13-year-olds who are just like that.

Tadenomiya Kaasha

Other half of this game’s VN twin set (I think the younger one). This one comes in Japanese flavor, with the hakama and sword handle to her hikasa and white…what kind of flower is that? Anyway, a white flower over her right eye because in my mind the twins share an eye between them that gives them the ability to see other people’s abilities and that’s how they find out about Kaname’s lie-seeing thing and sorry. Trying to keep myself entertained.

Anyway, Kaasha so far has pretty much the same personality as Aasha. I really hope they both team up to mess people up rather than fight each other for Hakushuu’s attention, but if I’m being honest I already know that’s where we’re headed.

*sigh*

Yurizono Shihori

We’re still troping it up but we’ve now hit the trope I personally like–resting bitch face. Shihori don’t give a fuck about what’s going on here. She doesn’t have time to wear a bra, to emote, or give one single shit about the situation. She’s also strangely absent in the flashback but I don’t know what that means yet. Possibly that she will be a fake-out mastermind candidate later on in the game?

Design-wise I’m not sure how I feel about the boots or the fishnets, but other than that it’s fine. Pretty simple and more to my taste than the complicated stuff. Love the Kingdom Hearts-inspired design on her shirt too. Also her last name is literally just “lily garden” I mean come on. This hole was made for me.

Shihori is apparently 21 and a college student, hence her apathy about life probably. Also according to the website she has poor eyesight and carries around glasses but doesn’t wear them. See, that’s the kind of small personal detail that makes a character likable. That’s like a DR character trait.

Alice

Alice is my actual fave so far. She’s not TOO close to Monokuma, but there’s just enough resonance to make her fun. Alice is the only one who seems to be lampshading these dumb design choices or stock personality traits too, which I appreciate immensely.

As for her design, I like it. There’s that one weird ¾ sprite that looks kind of odd, but other than that she’s really cute and otherworldly. Like she’s clearly robotic but also clearly a rabbit which fits with the Wonderland theme, and she’s got the cute voice that’s really expressive (and a nice change of pace from the human characters, who for the most part are all pretty monotone so far…especially Kaname).

So yeah. There’s my thoughts so far on the Exile Election cast. I suppose I can update as I continue to play.

#Exile Election #Jess plays Exile Election #追放選挙 #long post #ask #dendyfalls

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intriquate · 7 years

Quote

I run a bath for myself and for your memory in my head, two weeks after. Your father drove thirty kilometers yesterday, just to say he was sorry. He found me cleaning the house. 'You're messy for girls,' he said. I've never been good at that sort of thing. We never lived like they did in those movies: white thick-pile carpets, low luxurious bed, box lampshades. Ours was not a world Tom Ford would be interested in. We spilt pasta on the floor and our couches were overstuffed. Your T-shirts said things like FYI - I HIT LIKE A BOY. I've held on to that one, some small trace of you . I stop up the door with towels: I think that;s how it is done. I commit myself to the water, first one foot, then the other. I read the label on the luminous can: instructions for cleaning one's carburettor. I spray until the fumes fill the bathroom and the can emits no more of its cloying varnish-sweet contents. I slip lower into the hot water. I'm reading your journal. Maybe that's not the best thing to be doing: I don't want it to be ruined. I kissed you on the mouth three days after we met. You said it was a complication you could do without, and then you smiled. 'Saturday with Olivia - nice :)' the moment is recorded in your journal. We held hands on Lerato's couch in the aftermath of a Kirstenbosch Gardens concert. You were wearing your brother's hate. I can't explain the state I was in. I fell asleep on your shoulder. Though we have sparred since then, though we have had our silences, that moment is the one I return to. I'm falling into the insistent hypnotism of soothing water and noxious solvent. You ran down Long Street on your first weekend back, and you made me follow you. I couldn't keep up. We met your friends from university, the ones whose names I don't remember. 'Thabiso and Lorcia make a cute couple' Did I meet them? Is it all over now? We snuck into your parents' house at three a.m., raided the fridge. I think about that night every time I can't sleep. That shouldn't be a problem anymore. Change is absolute. The water level is higher than I usually like it. One Sunday you read my writing. 'If you don't show anything, you can write whatever you like,' I reassured you. You told me you were scared of what your father would say if he found out. He knows now, and I think he knew when we visited them that weekend. Your mother came by the day before yesterday, made soup. It was her way of understanding, you once said. She looks like you, when nobody's watching her. It's two a.m. and the monotony of the bath begins to get to me. I think of nothing. My head doesn't even have the decency to spin from these supposedly toxic fumes, 'Chemical solvents,' you would have said, 'are ill-suited to the task of snuffing out a human life.' Overcome by the shame of it all, I wrap myself in a towel and place your journal on the pile of laundry I've been folding. You never folded the laundry. You alphabetised the books. We compromised on the battle of music, but our books still jostle for space on the bookshelf, your classics alongside my crime. You said that being black was a state of mind. I said i didn't care what colour you were. We didn't know what to call ourselves, so you'd make up something new every time someone asked. I wonder what you told people when I wasn't there. You had a thousand faces I'll never know. We travelled downtown once, looking for old records to stick on our wall. I hoped you'd take my hand when those boys were making eyes at you. You told me that we were not molecules, that we didn't need observers to watch us clank together. The way you looked at me made my eyes hurt. Your face when you were stirring pancake batter, how you looked unbeatable at the top of the slide in the park. You were a little short for your age. People always commented on that. You took more risks because of it. I knew, even before trying, that my attempt would fail. I can't follow you, but there's a joyous recklessness in trying. You worried about your father. He worried about you. 'He needs to eat less salt,' you said. 'She needs to like boys,' he said. You would not be trapped by them, you vowed. We shared the same ideal of the world's beauty, could embrace the simplicity of hummus on toast and a shiny colander. 'What will we do for money?' I asked. 'I'll write the Great South African Novel,' you said, 'and you'll wear long dresses and braid my hair.' You made my heart skip a beat. Yours skipped far too many when it shouldn't have. Like that Thursday when you grew cold and I almost crashed, driving too fast to the hospital. A heart's a funny thing. An irregular thing. I used to listen to the weird rhythm of yours. I could feel the hard outline of your pacemaker beneath your skin, below your breast. Two days in a hospital bed, and your heart decided to be still. You said you wanted to live again, when I last dreamed of you. That was last weekend. I put your things in boxes, kept what I thought I could, gave to your parents what I thought they would want. I drove by the next day, and the day after that, in case they threw your things out. I strummed your guitar. The last thing you played for me was 'Saudade'. I asked you what that song meant. You called it a remembrance of things past. Sometimes you yearned for the quiet life. You yearned to be skinnier. 'Nobody likes a fatty,' you said. I protested, spoke about culture, and I squeezed your waist, and you laughed. You were into plain sailing, and saying what you meant. You were for the workers, for the revolution, whenever that came. 'Stay irresponsible,' you once told me. You though great universal thoughts. I tried to keep up. That book is closed now, I guess. Time to begin another one. You purposely lost us once, just to prove that it could be done. I don't know if I can capture those moments again. In their place is a layer of loneliness which pushes down on me. It may suffocate me if I'm not careful. Maybe that's good. If I give myself over to despair, then I won't have to venture out in the sunshine like the world hasn't noticed: the leaves, the flowers. I emptied a tub of frozen yoghurt into the sink last night. It was the last thing you ate before time stopped. Time stops when your heart stops beating. The doctor said that you didn't suffer. Thank death for that small mercy. No joy in observing that terrible monster. You joked about the ignominy of slipping in the bathtub. My feet were flat, like a hobbit's feet, you said. We pressed our feet together, yours brown, mine pale. We waltzed around the flat then, high on cheap champagne and the joy of being close. I stub my toe when I return the towel to the rack. No matter. It reminds me, I think, that I am alive.

Wamuwi Mbao 2013

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script101 · 7 years

Text

An alternate hypothesis of Clara and Twelve's relationship.

I know that Clara and The Doctor loved each other profoundly.

I think he remembers what Clara would have wanted him to remember.

I think The Doctor loved Clara more than he had ever loved anyone.

Clara was The Impossible Girl.

I think their love and their perception of each other was, appropriately, IMPOSSIBLE.

I don’t think their perception of their relationship was planned from day one, but I do give Steven Moffat quite a bit of credit in terms of remembering what has happened and understanding what will and won’t work.

They loved each other. Profoundly. Painfully.

I do NOT think they were IN love, though.

Fellow Clara stans, tell me if I’m crazy:

___________________

(I will preface this by admitting that I thought they were heading towards romantic love when it was Eleven and Clara, and I now I have to edit this because I remember that I felt cheated that we didn’t see more of those two actors together after Clara saved him from himself. But, after both Jenna Coleman and Peter Capaldi were adamant about there not being any romance between them, I can only guess that perhaps Matt Smith had a little crush on JC. And crucially, since Heaven Sent and Hell Bent show how much The Doctor loved Clara, Clara would have had to have been wildly out of established explicitly stated character, and have been a mindbogglingly shallow hypocrite for 4/5ths of her run, if she permanently fell OUT of love with The Doctor and dumped him for handsome Danny simply because Twelve didn’t look like he was in his late twenties/early thirties anymore. Jenny hung the lampshade on that in episode 8x01. Appearances don’t matter if you’re IN ROMANTIC LOVE. No. Romantic love doesn’t really work. Yes, they flirted. He was cute, he saved her life, and he followed her around like a puppy ostensibly finding new ways to entertain her. But instead he was actually trying to figure out what in the universe she was. He was sweet and cuddly and genuinely concerned for her safety, but Eleven’s interest in Clara was NOT pure. Clara was Eleven’s new shiny Rubik’s Cube, not his partner. He was Amy’s friend. He wasn’t really Clara’s. She fancied him, she adored him, she risked her life for him and then chose to DIE for him. But if we think about how Mme Vastra described The Doctor to Victorian Clara, he was cruel and almost dead inside. In HIDE, the kindest woman on earth, a true empathic psychic made no secret of her deep dislike and mistrust of Eleven even though “Eleven” is how high he had turned up the charm! She told Clara “He has ice in his heart”. This has a second meaning in terms of “The Impossible Girl” puzzle, but Emma Greyling wasn’t reading Eleven’s thoughts, she was reading his EMOTIONS. In the context she stated it, her meaning was unambiguous. Imho, until Clara walked into his Time Stream, Clara was no more then a pretty entertaining puzzle for the emotionally wounded Eleven to solve.)

“Romantic love” is also almost too easy.

It doesn’t explain why Twelve HAD to have his specific memories of Clara erased.

“In love” dismisses, denies, and insults both River and Rose, not to mention The Doctor’s first wife. Dismissing Rose makes Ten’s treatment of Martha inexcusable.

It undermines his friendships with Amy and Rory and Donna.

The Doctor is 2000 years old. He’s lost… everyone.

You can survive losing a love. You can survive losing a spouse.

There is one relationship, so rare that we don’t think about it, where the loss of one FOR ANY REASON AT ANY AGE, has (per Psychology Today) predicted the death of the other within two years at a horrifying rate of 50%. I read that and found it so disturbing I can’t bear to believe it. The idea that there is one person, and that if you have that person in your life, and they die, or worse you see them murdered in front of you, the chance that you will be dead within 2 years is a coin toss? THAT WOULD justify and REQUIRE a memory wipe.

______

I’m operating on the assumption that everyone reading this has seen seasons 7-9. I’m only pointing out a few episodes as reference.

Eleven met a doomed Clara in the first episode of season seven. That Clara was the same as all the Claras: so insanely smart that the Daleks wanted her, but so devoid of anything resembling a cruel thought that they were unable to make her a Dalek. Subtract love, add hate. You can’t subtract love if love IS what you are (please google the translation of La Habanera and note how it fits Clara’s arc down to the bird), you can’t add hate if you aren’t a hate filled person.

In The Snowmen, we meet Clara again. She’s so much like Eleven I remember thinking they were separated at birth! Just like The Doctor, she was running around with a fake name that we never learn. She was NOT calling herself “Alice Montague”. The closing credits, Amazon Prime, and IMDb confirm that Alice was the name of the housekeeper. We NEVER learned the pseudonym of the Governess*.

We finally meet Clara Prime. She and Eleven seem to flirt and he follows her around like a puppy. They hug, but never kiss. He isn’t interested in Clara, he is interested in trying to figure out what Clara is and how she continues to exist. There are no longing gazes. The one time that Eleven comments on Clara’s appearance in a sexual way, he immediately shudders. The shudder bothered me.

At the end of season 7, Clara, a human, walked into the Eleventh Doctor’s time stream (Name of the Doctor). While she was in his time stream, Eleven FINALLY kissed his wife like a man! Applause combined with me shouting “it’s about damn time!” After saying goodbye to River, Eleven was then able to pull Clara out safely. He found her a few feet from another version of himself (the War Doctor). We have two more episodes with Matt Smith and from then on it’s Clara and the Twelfth Doctor.

Then it starts getting bizarre.

After regenerating, Twelve describes Clara as “the NOT me one”. Huh? Seriously, what??? Because he thinks it’s hard to tell them apart?

The mystery is solved, but Twelve is more dependent on Clara than he was on anyone to date. Their relationship was odd, but now, for the first time, they were partners. They were EQUALS.

There are viewers who hate that Clara became arguably the most important person in The Doctor’s life. It logically really should be either Davros (the creator of the things that defined who the doctor wasn’t), or Missy/The Master (the only other member of his species still alive). Steven Moffat solidified Clara’s influence on The Doctor relatively early on in “Listen”.

From Twelve’s point of view, once Clara walked into his time stream Clara has been with him his entire life. In LISTEN the audience sees that she really has been with him his entire life. We also know from that script and the script to Dark Water that Clara never could have wound up in The Doctor’s bedroom to comfort him as a child if their time streams weren’t INTERTWINED and if they too didn’t share a profound emotional and psychic link.

Twelve is seemingly very rude to Clara, but he also still follows her around like a puppy. He insults her appearance by saying they look the same age.

So I have to wonder: what if he wasn’t insulting her? What if he actually thinks of her as being the same age as he is?

He clearly can’t live without her.

He is very troubled at the end of Flatline (a personal favorite of mine). He’s upset because Clara was way too good at being him. She should have been upset about the people who died. She wasn’t. He was. Quite a reversal of the previous week.

Clara WAS in romantic love with Danny Pink. They were both teachers. They both loved children. CLARA MET AND SPOKE TO THEIR GREAT-GRANDSON ORSON PINK. After Danny’s death (in a cruel irony, he died after being hit by a car. Clara’s parents met after her mother Ellie saved her father Dave from the same fate.)

Having met Orson, Clara wasn’t just grieving a boyfriend, she was grieving the man she believed was going to be her husband and CLARA WAS GRIEVING THEIR CHILDREN.

Clara believed, ever since Listen, that she and Danny were going to have at least one son, and at least one grandson who would be Orson’s father. She snapped. Who can blame her? We were never given proof that Missy murdered Danny. Clara is the type to blame herself. In her mind, because she was too afraid to tell Danny about all her lies to his face, she believed she had killed Danny, she believed she had killed their son, she believed had killed their grandson, and she believed she had killed her great-grandson Orson. Clara believed she had obliterated her entire family, and the weight of that was just too much for her. Again, who can blame her?

Clara threatens Twelve to try to make him save Danny, even though she knew it was impossible. Huh. Ok. Um… How DID human Clara know that it was impossible? Yes she’s very smart, but that’s a stretch. We in the audience knew. How did she? How much “Time Lord Wisdom” did she absorb while she was in Eleven’s time stream?

When did she learn his biography? He could have told her, but it doesn’t seem like something season 8’s Doctor would talk about.

The opening credits for Death in Heaven showed Clara’s eyes in the spot reserved for The Doctor. To play with the audience? Sure. To hint at The Hybrid? Why not.

We learn Missy put them together. Missy is insane, but she knows The Doctor. Out of all the people in the universe, she knew Clara was the perfect match for The Doctor. In her wacko mind, Clara was a gift.

On to season nine. Clara is becoming more and more reckless and more and more like The Doctor. Twelve is becoming increasingly worried about losing Clara.

Then he sees her murdered.

Stop. Back up. Why were we shown the Osgoods? >

Yes it was a brilliant two parter and I thought the political message was perfect and desperately needed.

But why did the Zygon story begin by showing us that when one Osgood died, her twin went insane? This element of the story was irrelevant. Moving, yes, but irrelevant to the larger narrative unless it wasn’t important to an even larger story arc. Grief was enough. Why madness?

In Heaven Sent, we KNOW The Doctor understands what is happening once he realizes the significance of the word “Bird”. But he keeps going. He wants to die. He is afraid to die but the thought of living without Clara is too much to bear. He is ready to give up. It’s only a pep talk from a hallucination of Clara that makes him continue through the most evil torture I can imagine.

He does it in order to cheat death. In order to cheat CLARA’S death. In order to try to attempt what Clara had tried a season earlier: rewrite a fixed point in time even though he KNEW damn well he couldn’t.

Once forced to accept that Clara’s heart will never beat again, we see that Twelve STILL refuses to accept it.

He’s still trying to cheat.

His logic makes no sense.

Ashildr (as the Voice of Moffat) is tasked with explaining “The Hybrid” to The Doctor and Clara (a human who has activated the monitor of the second TARDIS she’s ever been in, and who has been able to control THE TARDIS with a snap of her finger just like The Doctor since the 50th anniversary episode). Ashildr explains that she isn’t The Hybrid, the Hybrid is Twelve and Clara TOGETHER.

She’s right.

The two of them were The Hybrid. The hearts Twelve burned were his own.

_______

…I remember thinking they were separated at birth…

At the beginning of this essay, I mentioned that there is one death you can’t recover from. The death people can’t recover from is losing THEIR TWIN. Identical or fraternal, the surviving twin always feels that a piece of them is missing. If that surviving twin was a Time Lord with a Tardis, would he EVER give up trying to make his twin sister’s heart beat again? We saw evidence that 3.4 billion years of torture wouldn’t stop him. Twelve would never stop until the universe burned. THAT was why he had to lose his memory.

Somewhere Clara is still flying around in a TARDIS she shouldn’t be able to fly and she still loves Twelve. But once her murder was a fixed point, Twelve couldn’t handle remembering her anymore. The memory of her was too dangerous.

_______

So yes, I agree that they loved each other, but it wasn’t romantic love.

Clara and Twelve… their love was something else. Something, appropriately, completely IMPOSSIBLE.

I think that when Clara stepped into The Doctor’s time stream and splintered across it, she became psychologically more than a bit like him and he became psychologically more then a bit like her.

Danny recognized how close Clara was to The Doctor. Clara was worried about his reaction to her continued travels in the TARDIS, but Danny seemed as ok with their relationship as could he expected. Danny couldn’t stand Twelve, but even after Kill the Moon he had accepted that they were a set. If he loves one of them, he’s gonna be stuck with the other. He saw and stated that Clara and The Doctor very close and got along. He didn’t want her taking idiotic risks (he was right), but he had no problem at all with his girlfriend spending time with a man he hated (even when they had specifically gone somewhere that is inherently romantic like The Orient Express) as long as it was safe. He was amused by her concern about his reaction. As long as she was safe, she didn’t have to explain. Being the bait for a Skovox Blitzer? No. Hell No. Unacceptable. Running off with a man he hates to spend at least one night on one of the most romantic trains ever? Yeah, that’s fine. That was amusing and nothing he was going to try to stop.

Danny himself recognized that the only thing to do about his girlfriend running around with this “Time Lord” he hated was to accept it as long as she promised not to lie if he was going to put her in mortal peril. Danny seemed to know in Mummy on the Orient Express that if he wanted to date Clara, he was stuck with the pompous ass who would always demean and dismiss him as a PE teacher. They were a package.

__________

After Ashildr explained to how they TOGETHER were The Hybrid, Twelve tries to cheat Clara’s death with a memory wipe.

Clara won’t allow it.

Clara, a human, somehow manages to reverse the way the memory wipe device works. Instead of erasing her memory it erases his.

He knows something is wrong. He knows he’s forgotten someone. He still can’t remember Clara specifically.

Clara and Ashildr, in a TARDIS Clara should not be able to operate, leave. Just like in the lyrics to La Habanera, Clara beat her wings, broke the cage, and flew away.

Even though Twelve can’t remember Clara Oswald, he seems to still retain her humanity.

Eleven was at times terrifying. By the end, he was insincere more then he wasn’t. He was at times utterly terrifying in both Season 6 and in Season 7.

Twelve, in contrast, was ALWAYS not quite right. He was too human.

Does anyone really think Twelve could have done what Eleven did at the end of The Rebel Flesh? No. Even upon a second viewing knowing Eleven wasn’t trying to hurt Amy but was panicking and desperately trying to wake her up so he could rescue her, does anyone really think Twelve could have violently slammed a companion into a wall and hollered hostilely in her face? No.

Twelve couldn’t have done it because CLARA couldn’t have done it.

Look at Twelve in season 10. He’s a teacher. He didn’t need Clara’s “tact” cards when Bill asked him what was going on at the end of Extremis. He somehow REMEMBERED how to tell someone, ahem… very bad news. Clara would have been proud. He REMEMBERED how to comfort children in Thin Ice just like Clara would.

He has forgotten the specifics of Clara because he had to, but he couldn’t forget her personality, her kindness, her love of children. She is still a part of him.

So yes, I think Clara was the most important character in The Doctor’s entire existence.

I think they loved each other beyond what they could understand.

But I do NOT think they were EVER in romantic love.

She was The Impossible Girl.

I think their love was impossible.

When Clara walked into The Doctor’s Time Stream, I think she and he became Fraternal Twins.

Again, they never realized this. Ashildr had to explain how the two of them together were The Hybrid. But it fits the dynamic of their relationship. They would both die for each other. They bicker constantly. She bosses him around. There is NOTHING that one could do that could make the other leave.

I have lost count of the number of times their relationship was described as unhealthy or disfunctional. It reads quite differently if Twelve is Clara’s annoying bratty brother. Nearly every interaction going back to Deep Breath works if he perceives her as his sister and best friend and he’s always around annoying her because they used to do everything together but now she’s got a social life while he doesn’t.

I think they were The Hybrid because they were, on a deep psychological level, fraternal twins.

And I think they both perceived Clara as being the one who was a few minutes “older”.

Thoughts?

____________________ (*I like to imagine that Victorian Clara was calling herself “Becky Montague” because I find the reference to Vanity Fair funny. Victorian Clara and Vanity Fair’s Becky Sharp were social climbers, and Victorian Clara wound up literally climbing stairs for a social reason. Victorian Clara was sharp as a tack, but unlike nanny Becky Sharp, she cared deeply for her charges. Plus, one of Becky Sharp’s charges was named “Amelia”. It’s just too on the nose.)

#nevermore #clara oswald #twelfth doctor #oswelve #doctor who #danny pink #12th doctor #doctor who meta #jenna coleman #peter capaldi

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babylon-bitch · 7 years

Text

Just Friends ~ Surprises (part 25)

Harper White is best friends with Luke Hemmings, they always have been. Not only is she friends with the rockstar, but with the rest of 5 Seconds Of Summer, as well as a really nice girl named Erika

Harper has a few secrets, she can play all the instruments the boys play and many more. It’s a talent she has kept hidden, only very few people know.

What will happen to the six teens, wondering around the world together?

Warnings: swearing

***

It’s been two weeks since the boys have left, and I’ve been a fucking mess. I mean when am I not, to be honest. Erika has tried to help me but she hasn’t really had much experience with mental health problems.

I’ve spoken to the boys a lot, they’ve helped me be happy, but as soon as I end the call I sink back into darkness. Luke especially has helped me, mainly because he’s worried about me, but he knows how to deal with me.

I’ve missed him so much, a couple of nights ago I called him up crying down the phone, just letting everything out. I really needed his arms around me that night, I got through it though, on my own unfortunately.

My mother is back from her trip, she hasn’t said much about it, neither am I interested to be fair. A bit mean, I know, but she’s been on them for the last couple of years and I’ve gotten used to it.

I’ve just got back from my ‘studio’ I guess you could call it, Luke and I have never given it a name - that’s something we should do though. I’m meeting up with Erika, because we have literally nothing else to do. We had nothing to do with the boys around anyway but there were more people to talk to, rather than just two.

“Hello.” I smile as much as I can at this moment in time and hug her.

“Hey, how have you been?” She asks.

“As good as I can be I guess, you?” I shrug and she sends me a sympathetic smile.

“I’m great.” She grins.

At least one of is.

“So what do you want to do?” I question.

“Umm, don’t have a clue.” She chuckles.

“Helpful.” I smile sarcastically.

“Do you wanna go to your house?” She suggests.

“Yeah, I’m fed up with fresh air.”

We walk away from the park and on my way to my house.

Passing Luke’s house on the way, I look up into his bedroom. Seeing his blue lampshade, the amount of hours we’ve spent looking up at his ceiling in silence, holding hands.

Memories.

Inserting my key into the lock and twisting, the door opens and I step in, Erika following behind me. Walk up the stairs and into my bedroom, sitting on the edge of my bed.

Pulling my phone out and scrolling through Twitter. Suddenly realising that I’m getting a lot of hate. About me hanging out with Luke and the other boys, and one that really caught my eye is about my mental health. Now I’ve not told our subscribers about my mental health issues, so I dont know how they know. Maybe I’m not such a great actor.

I put on this really happy act, but as soon as the camera turns off I’m back to my normal fucked up self.

“Are you getting any hate?” I question.

“No more than usual.” She shrugs.

I frown, and continue to scroll through all of the mean tweets. “Stop scrolling through them.” Erika warns.

“You’re right.” I sigh and lock my phone, throwing it to the other side of my bed.

My laptop starts to ring and I see Luke calling me. Rolling over and accepting the call.

Suddenly Michael, Luke and Ashton pop up on my screen. “Hello.” I genuinely smile.

“How are you?” Luke asks.

I shrug in response and he gets the message. “So what have you been doing?” Ashton questions.

“Well Erika and I have just come back from the park and that’s about it.” I say and turn my laptop towards Erika, she waves.

“Hi.” Michael grins.

“What about you guys?” I ask.

“Not much to be honest, just practicing and messing around really.” Ashton answers.

“Where’s Calum?” I question.

“He is talking to his mum on the phone.” Michael tells me.

Erika comes and lays on top of my back, making me let out a groan. “Ugh, get off.” I laugh.

“You can’t do that, that’s my job.” Luke pouts.

“Sorry Luke, but until you’re gone I’m going to have to fill in boyfriend duties.” She grins

“Alright, just no kissing and no sex.” He warns.

“I agree with that too.” I tell her.

“Eh, I’ll try and keep my hands off her.” She smirks.

“No! I do that, not you, or anyone else in fact.” He pouts.

“Well I better get going, I’ll be ready for you babe.” Erika winks at me, starting to climb off me.

“Good, be ready for some kinky shit.” I say.

“Yep, I’ll set it up. Bye boys.” She smiles and walks out of my bedroom.

“Bye!” I call over my shoulder to her.

I hear the door close and I turn back to my laptop. “Well, we’ll leave you on that note.” Michael chuckles.

“We’ll give you and Luke some time for Skype sex, bye.” Ashton smirks.

“Wow you’re so funny you guys!” I sarcastically laugh.

“Fuck off.” Luke groans and they leave.

“So how has tour been?” I ask.

“Really fun, tiring though.” He smiles.

“Yeah, I bet. So where are you going to be next week?” I question.

“Umm I don’t know exactly but we’re going to be around Queensland.” He answers.

I nod, an idea coming to mind.

“I miss you guys.” He sadly smiles.

“We miss you too.”

“Have you been on Twitter today?” He questions.

“Yeah.” I sigh.

“I don’t know why all of a sudden they decide to hate on you.” Luke says.

“I’m used to it I guess, maybe it’s just getting to me now because of my mental state.” I said.

“I wish I could ask them to stop, but then they would get what they want, as well as drawing attention to it all.”

“I’ve dealt with it for the past few years, sometimes it gets to you, sometimes it doesn’t, usually the latter. I just want to curl up into a ball and watch Harry Potter, with you also.” I bitterly chuckle.

“You got much homework?” He asks smugly.

“Loads. Can’t I just drop out a play in your band?” I groan.

“What are you going to play?” He laughs.

If only he knew.

“I don’t know the triangle.” I huff and he laughs.

“Only you Harper, only you.”

***

I got off of Skype with Luke about an hour ago, we just chatted and messed around for a while, smiling for the first time in a while.

“So I was thinking that we could go on a road trip.” I muse.

“To.” Erika drags out.

“Go visit the boys, I mean we could fly if you don’t feel like driving.” I suggest.

“But we have school.” She points out.

“Half term this week, you idiot.” I say.

“Obviously, we don’t tell them.” Erika tells me.

“Sometimes, you are so stupid.” I mutter.

“Yeah well, I don’t have a come back so shut the fuck up.” She laughs.

“So are we driving or not?” I ask.

“I don’t think I could be bothered to drive that much.”

“Plane it is then.”

“How long do we stay for?” She ask.

“Only a couple of days, I don’t want to stay a long time. I just need a breather, and a get away will do perfectly.” I sigh.

“Okay, so this will be?” She questions.

“Umm well I saw that they will be in Brisbane in a few days. It’s Sunday now, and I read that they’ll be there on Tuesday or Wednesday. We’ll work from there.” I explain.

“I’m excited now.” She squeals.

“Me too.” I smile and just imagine the look on their faces.

“You and Luke can get it on, again.” Erika teases.

“Oh, yes we will.” I laugh.

“Eww, tmi, did not need to know that. Now that’s all I can think of.” She says in distress.

“You can’t expect me to not fuck my boyfriend after two weeks of absolutely nothing.” I reason with her. “I would expect the same from you and Ashton.” I throw a jab at her.

She flips me off and shakes her head laughing.

***

It’s Wednesday morning and Erika and I are heading off to Brisbane. I had to negotiate with my parents, but they finally let me fly out.

I spoke to the boys yesterday and it was funny because they haven’t gone a single clue that we’re going to see them.

We booked hotels instead of being on their bus, mainly because we don’t want to be sleeping on there, Erika is a bit claustrophobic also, and…

Maybe another reason for staying in a hotel is because I can have sex with Luke in private and a lot easily.

Just saying.

I’m looking forward to seeing them perform to be honest, I used to go to all of their shows.

We’re going for three days, possibly four. The flight takes around an hour and a half.

Erika and I are currently in the airport, waiting to get on our flight.

My phone buzzes and I look down to see I have a text from Luke.

Luke: where are you?

Shit.

Me: at home, why?

Luke: oh, I just saw a picture of you and Erika in what looks like an airport.

Me: no not us, I wish though. I’m at home and I don’t know where Erika is.

Luke: send me a picture then.

Luckily I have a picture that I sent to Erika a couple of months back of me sitting on my sofa at home.

Me: believe me now?

Luke: yeah, I wish you were though…

Me: maybe next time :(

Luke: okay, I have to go now, talk to you later. Love you x

Me: k bye love you too x

That was close.

“Someone has snapped a picture of us and Luke has seen it.” I tell Erika.

“Shit, what did you do?”

“I sent him a picture I sent you a couple of months back of me at home.” I answer.

“So he doesn’t know?” She ask.

“Nope, not yet at least.”

A voice calls out our flight and we make our way to go and board it.

We’re currently making our way through the airport. The flight was alright, a bit of a bumpy landing and popped ears, other than that its all okay.

“Fuck, I’m so excited.” I giggle.

We go up to a taxi and I tell him the address of the hotel. Getting into the back, the taxi driver starts making his way.

Making small talk with Chris (his name) and I go on my phone. “So let’s go to our hotel rooms and take a nap, then stay there for a while.” Erika says.

“Yeah, and then surprise them.” I grin.

It takes about 35 minutes to get to our hotel, we’ve just paid and we’re checking in.

Collecting our individual keys, and walking into the elevator. “I can’t wait, I feel like a child on Christmas.” I chuckle.

“Me too.”

The doors open and we part ways into our separate rooms.

Opening my suitcase and changing into some jeans and a flannel shirt, undoing some buttons, showing a bit of cleavage, as opposed to some yoga pants and a crop top.

I hear a knock at my door so I go and open it, still doing some buttons up. “Hello.” I smile at Erika.

“Sexy.” She winks and makes her way to my bed.

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

“There is a cleaning lady in my room and the sexual tension in there is unbearable so I came here.” She shrugs.

“Right.” I nod. “If I do this up, will I look like a lesbian?” I question and demonstrate.

“No, but I think you should wear something under under it and undo all the buttons.” She suggests.

I shrug and put a black crop top on with white stripes which has ¾ length sleeves.

This outfit looks alright without the flannel, and its comfy.

Finishing it all off I put on some black chunky ankle boots with a heel. “What do you think?” I ask.

“Looks great, Luke won’t be able to keep his hands off you.” She smirks.

I roll my eyes and start doing my makeup.

***

We’ve just gotten to the venue, and I’m kind of panicking. What if he is making out with another girl? What if he doesn’t love me anymore?

“Stop, he loves you.” Erika says.

“I know.” I sigh.

We know their security team, so they let us in easily. We’re on our way to their dressing room, just a couple minutes away.

Turning a corner I see their dressing room, hearing the music blasting out of some speakers.

Walking in, they have their backs to us and Ashton is shirtless.

“SUPRISE!” Erika and I shout in unison.

They quickly turn around and their eyes widen, all of them sporting huge smiles. “Oh my God! Harper!” Luke smiles and runs up to me.

I wrap my arms around his waist and take in his scent. “What are you doing here?” He questions.

“I came here to see you, I needed to get away from home so I decided to come here.” I explain.

“Are you o-” I cut him off my pressing my lips to his.

I just don’t want to answer that question to be honest, it seems he doesn’t mind either because he is as eager as I am.

He gently holds my waist and I wrap an arm around his neck. “Okay I understand that you haven’t seen each other in a while, but I really don’t want to see this.” Ashton complains.

Luke and I flip him off, Luke swipes his tongue along my bottom lip, I gladly accept it and part my lips, both exploring each others mouths and hands roaming all over our bodies.

After a while we reluctantly part and smile at each other. “You’re actually here.” He whispers as he presses his forehead against mine.

“Yeah.” I chuckle.

“Are you coming to the show tonight.” He questions.

“Of course! Wouldn’t miss it for the world.” I say.

“How long are you here for?” He asks.

“3 maybe 4 days.” I tell him.

“Where are you staying?”

“At a hotel.”

He smirk forms on his lips and I laugh.

“After the show Hemmings.”

I hug and say hi to all the other boys who are just as happy to see us as Luke. “So how have you been?” Michael asks.

“Been better.” I sigh.

“You never told us what happened. Like all of a sudden you were sad and never said anything about it.” Calum brings up.

I humorlessly chuckle and shake my head. “Well I don’t know what happened either. Like I came back from school one day and I felt so fucking down and empty. Everything was/is perfect, but I still feel down. You guys going away probably didn’t help.” I explain.

“Oh, I’m sorry to here that.” Ashton frowns.

“Did you know?” Michael asks Luke.

“Of course I did.”

“Oh that explains what you said at the airport.” Erika blurts out.

“What?” Ashton question confused.

“Oh shit did I say that out loud?”

We all nod. “Luke told me to look after you, and I didn’t know why but now I know.” She explains.

“Sometimes you remind me of Pheobe from Friends.” Luke mutters.

It’s a while later and the show starts in 15 minutes we’re all just messing around when Emperors New Clothes bye Panic! At The Disco comes on. Luke and I both look at each other wide eyed and smirk.

The amount of times we’ve sang this together.

Luke Luke starts off sexily sings the first verse being all dramatic about it. The high note is coming along and Luke points at me, I grab the air dramatically as I sing it.

The songs ends and we all laugh. Towards the end everyone joined in and it was a cool moment we all shared.

“Well, we better get going, see you after the show.” Erika says.

“Yeah. Good luck babe.” I tell Luke and kiss him.

“Thanks.” He smiles and kisses my forehead.

“Uh babe, where is my kiss?” Calum questions.

“Here.” I say and kiss his cheek winking at Luke as I do it, enjoying Luke tensing up.

“My first kiss!” He shrieks.

“Bye have a good one.” Erika calls as we walk away.

***

We’re halfway through the show now and its been really fun. I haven’t been to a concert in ages and this is a great comeback.

They’re currently just talking and messing around.

“So, there are some special people here tonight.” Michael starts off.

“Some people we love dearly.” Luke smiles.

“Someone Luke especially loves a lot.” Ashton teases.

Luke shakes his head and looks up at us. I flip him off and he repeats my actions. “Oh look there’s Luke’s girlfriend, I was looking for you guys. They wouldn’t tell us where they were. It was like Where’s Wally.” Michael blurts out.

My jaw drops and I facepalm. “Michael.” Calum groans.

“Well there’s our cover gone.” Luke laughs.

“Sorry.” He laughs. “I’m not really.” He whispers into the mic.

“Yes, I have a girlfriend, I’m not going to say who it is, but I think we all know who it is…” Luke trails off and looks up at me, mouthing ‘sorry’.

“Well done! It wasn’t that hard, so I don’t know why you guys kept it a secret for so long.” Calum pokes.

“Well I wasn’t the one who wanted to keep it a secret.” Luke takes a jab.

“I fucking hate him sometimes.” I laugh.

I they continue playing the rest of the show and Erika and I carry on singing along as well as cheering, just being a fangirl of my boyfriend’s band.

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